Not going to lie I don't know about this one. I think if you're a real diehard for this genre, Bloodborne especially, and are willing to put aside some really baffling design choices (enemy patterns, system decisions, etc) and at best mediocre writing, aesthetics and performances I'm sure you'll get something out of this.

A little note about parries in soulsbornes:

I understand wanting to do a parry system, Sekiro is cool and great and that parry is crucial to it, but this and Wo Long both miss the core aspect of it feeling extremely satisfying to actually do. In DS, a parry is met with a sound effect with some weight, a noticeable stagger and attached opening for a cool finisher. In Lies of P, we instead get the perfect block system, which is close, but the payoff is a red light, a kinda-muted klang, and then a stagger that requires a follow up attack (that can miss and still lets the enemy attack you) and then ANOTHER attack, which for me at least sometimes didn't work. All of this for a limp canned animation. The payoff just isn't there, and that's kinda demonstrative of this game as a whole; cool stuff, but the payoff is missing or limp.

This is so deeply whatever. Bethesda has managed to find a way to tell a story about the beauty of discovery and space while making the actual exploration of space so deeply boring and tedious all at once, what an achievement.

Space traversal is a loading screen and fast travel nightmare, the environments manage to be completely empty and yet somehow so cluttered it's hard to move around, necessitating the need for a detective vision, which is... certainly a thing in the game you can use, no matter how completely useless it is otherwise. The menus are unbelievably cursed as well, a maze of layered clunk that make inventory management a pain, which is unfortunate because doing inventory management is about 50% of my playtime. Also why is there crafting? What's even the point?

The writing is bland and the characters were mostly boring and flat, with kinda whatever voice acting. I liked Sarah a good amount, and Barrett was okay, but otherwise the characters could've just been signposts for quests and I would've gotten the same experience. My real issue is that there's no RPG in the RPG. You go through the whole process of deciding a backstory and all it amounts to is a single dialogue prompt every few hundred conversations and a minuscule % bonus to skills that didn't even feel useful or apparent (e.g. having high persuasion didn't make persuading people easier, it just meant that the system that randomly decided if I won or not sometimes didn't matter at all). Dialogue is just clicking 'yes' or 'yes (but ooh aren't I a scamp!)', because saying no doesn't actually lead anywhere interesting. Sidequests are going to a place and fighting some dudes, which you think would be different for the main quests, but it's not.

I know that some people are going to say that this is all the Bethesda charm, and that the gameplay stuff will be fixed with mods. But if it wasn't for gamepass I'd be spending $100 on this, and even if it wasn't, why should I have to wait for other people to fix the game for the devs? Skip this unless you can't imagine a world without 'Fallout 4 but with even less personality somehow'.

Not going to bother rating this one cause I dropped it so early (chapter 3) but it really wasn't doing anything for me.

Love Bayo as a character, but I just wasn't interested in anyone else, or the overarching plot (and I understand that you might think thats the point but like, I'd at least like Platinum to try) and it doesn't help when the dialogue veers from boring to deeply cringe (never want to hear Bayo say "bust a cap in yo ass" again). Music is okay, presentation is okay and the combat feels alright, but I never really felt engaged enough with it to want to learn all the combos (which seemingly aren't available from the pause menu? If they are I couldn't find it)

Kinda feeling whatever on most of the platinum games I've tried at this point, mgr has so far still been the only exception

Yeah, no. I really hate this.

Terrible combat, especially once they begin to introduce the space pirates and weapon specific enemies. Terrible platforming that feels floaty and way to weighty in exactly the wrong places. Terrible progression, even with some tolerance for backtraking, the items the game chooses to guide you to versus the ones they don't is baffling to me.

The only real positives I can see are the music, which is very tense and genuinely beautiful in moments, and the atmosphere, which is extremely solid.

I wonder if this game's reputation is because of it being in a more popular genre (a kinda-FPS), being a spin on an old franchise or simply because people were starved for good shooters on the GameCube.

Maybe we'll never know.

This was really cool! It definitely has a lot of the mistakes other pokemon-likes have, like getting too cute w/ type matchups and some pretty underwhelming designs, but the vibe is neat, the music is good, and the graphics in general are pretty neat (especially on the major bosses).

The overall plot was good, but I wasn't super in love with most of the companions (except for Kayleigh) and the individual plotlines are pretty whatever. The same is true for the moment to moment writing, which flips from philosophical thought to a joke about 80's movies in a second.

I think this is a good use of time, and it's getting a console release soon, so I def hope more people try it.

Homestead Arcana and Infinite Guitars share a weird space as "Games promoted by Microsoft as major Gamepass releases that are at best interesting". Both are games in genres that have seen a big boon (rhythm action games and, for some reason, magic themed Harvest Moons), and both are kind of disappointing.

Homestead Arcana is certainly a better game, for sure. The voice acting is genuinely pretty good, and the game has some strong aesthetics, even if the quality of the models is not the best. There's also a real story! One with interesting set ups and that could've been really cool if everything else wasn't holding it back (and if the text wasn't so small c'mon game devs help a dude out.)

But the game is janky, doing basically anything other than moving is a nightmare of pointing an inaccurate cursor repeatedly, and the tutorial is not particularly clear on how to actually, k'know, farm anything. There are survival mechanics as well, a gameplay element that has ruined so many other farming games in the past for literally no reason and does exactly the same thing here.

i think this game can improve with some updates, and I applaud the team for making something this intriguing. Hopefully either their next game or an update can really refine this into something magical.

It is really unfortunate that Hi-Fi Rush came out before this, since we got what a perfect action/rhythm game hybrid would look like and this... is not it.

The game looks nice, and the music is decently enjoyable, but both repeat constantly and the joy of seeing the art is lost when you've seen the same animation a hundred times.

Gameplay is also just as repetitive, do rhythm minigames, walk very, very, slowly through hazard filled areas that the game feels too sluggish to properly deal with, then fight more guys and do a little more story.

I wish there was more to say, but there really isn't. If you really love rhythm games, or like YIIK's gameplay then maybe there's something here for you, but otherwise it's best to leave it on mute.

Shelved for now but I really enjoyed what I've played.

I think a few of my issues with metroidvania's are solved here, if only because its a little bit more railroaded than other games in the genre.

I'll get back to finishing it eventually.

All of RGG's best aspects (stellar writing and performances), mixed with a surprisingly fun and engaging JRPG system.

Ichiban is one of the best video game protags of this era, and I have never been more excited for a new direction for a franchise in my life.

There's a lot more to say here; like how the game's writing handles issues of social inequality and corruption better than almost any other mainstream game out there. Or it's handling of it's legacy characters ascends from mere fanservice to something more. But it would extend this review out into a full-on essay.

Play Like A Dragon. Seriously.