This is the first Musou-game I actively found cheap, that didn't happen to me even with the FE-spinoff. If you have to recycle bosses in normal battle beginning halfway through the story in order to keep the action somehow exciting, something went wrong. Technically, the game is in a miserable condition, frame drops and blatant pop-in - all that in an already mediocre-looking game. The titan sequences in particular are legendarily unfinished, both technically and in gameplay. Every battle becomes a fetch quest at some point - this has nothing in common with the previous Warriors titles, in a bad way. The rest of the content is also insultingly lazy: no side mission is exciting, the main missions are ok enough at best. The characters and their play styles were the only exciting factor for me for a long time, but that feeling has now also disappeared. Age of Calamaity - in its best moments - is still painfully mediocre. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I have more fun not playing this game than when I pick up the controller.

Oh, and also: I will never understand how anyone can find this story exciting. Even when its piggy-backing on BotW, everything presented in this story is... kinda worthless?

There rarely is a sequel that makes the game before it better. This is one of those cases. This game builds upon the imagery and themes established in the first Little Nightmares and expands their meaning. All the while, Little Nightmares 2 is also a better game than its predecessor, leaning a bit more into the surreal while staying true to the more grounded feel the first part establishes. The atmosphere and worldbuilding are still absolutely amazing.

The first and the second game are in a dialogue with each other - and combined they are way more than the sum of their parts. This is a must-play for everyone who liked the first game. And to those who are new to the series: start with the first game, your experience will be all the better for it. I am in awe of what Tarsier managed to create here. These games give me hope for the entire industry.

My biggest wish for the potential follow-up: please lean more into the surreal. Seeing all the amazing visual ideas in the artbook really makes me thirst for this type of Little Nightmares, filled even more with powerful surreal imagery.

Okay, I have finally come around to mark this game as retired. I absolutely loved my first three months with this game - how could I not given the circumstances? After that tho... I kinda didn't like it anymore? I played 130h in one month and then 10 additional hours in nine, which I think speaks for itself. The events weren't able to reel me in at all - they all felt kinda... worthless? The rest of the updates just implemented stuff I would have used during those first 130h... not after. And the newest one just added insult to injury for me - a person that owns neither a Nintendo Switch Online subscription nor Sanrio amiibo cards - by not including a feature I could actually access??????

So yea I'm torn on this game. A year ago I would have given this four stars. Today... not so much. Let's hope the updates to come will make me pick this up again!

Ok, I finally played through game that can be best described as part pretentious kurzgesagt video, part crazy Doctor Who episode.

I am incredibly torn on this game. On the one hand, two chapters in particular just absolutely blew me away with everything they did (Improvisation and... the other one ;>). "The other one" in particular is an especially amazing experience. It clevery turns the tropes of the Film Noir on its head, delivering a message that is so simple yet they manage to make it feel ethereal. The improvisation chapter managed to hook me too - I spent way more time in it than I had to. And overall: the presentation is brilliant, absolutely top-notch in soundtrack and visuals. And then there's the less good parts...

First, this game has heavy scripting problems. Sometimes I was able to fix them by going to the pause menu, sometimes I wasn't. These NEED to be adressed, I had to replay some chapters because I was stuck at some point. Also: many other chapters feel quite hollow, gameplay- and presentation-wise. The last two chapters retroactively kinda help in justifying that, but it's still unhelpful while first playing through the game. Some puzzles also seem... a little dumb. And I would advise every developer in existance against Simon Says, please. It doesn't work. At all. The improvisation chapter worked despite of it, not because of it. This game is also incredibly pretentious at times and it never really works for me.

I'm still giving this 3 1/2 stars. Why? Because of the amazing presentation, the clever twist on Film Noir tropes (which I actively hate when they are recreated uncritically), the brilliant soundtrack and the two chapters I absolutely loved. Everything else in this game is mediocre at best. But I love it for these parts in particular, and these will always stick with me. And now to wait for the soundtrack on Spotify...

"You know it's a good game when I finish it at 2:30 in the morning, completely sleep-deprived!" was the original review of this. Since then, I thought a lot about this game. Disco Elysium has had a profound impact on me. The writing is striking and brilliant, so full of sadness, so full of hoplessness - yet it manages to cath sparks of hope inbetween. There's so much humanity in the characters, so much sorrow in the world, haunted by the past resurfacing, or burying itself. Over and over again, Revachol, the city of ghosts. A Hauntology of pasts long gone. I love this game so, so much. There's more here than I could've ever wished for. And it takes the player seriously. It's actually art. And that cannot be said for most of the current gaming landscape. At least for my definition: something with precise theming, profoundly striking in its impact.

I'm tagging this now because I played the "Walking in the Sky"-Chapter and now consider this game done for me. The main game has a lot of ambition and is beautfully put together (with some minor hiccups along the way) but in the end it falters because it doesn't have the time to explore most of the concepts it touches upon.

The bonus chapter tho? It's the most artificial dialogue I've ever seen, with characters talking for literal paragraphs, but that's exactly what makes it work. Because you can tell these are the thoughts of the writer condensed into a love story, and quite entertaining. It feels so much more personal than the main game, because it's... honest. How it is made made clear to me that some love stories are just there to construct a way we all would like our relationships to go, there to assure us that everything is going to be okay. And I think that's actually quite beautiful.