Minecraft is the best selling video game of all time, its mix of building, crafting and survival elements having brought in massive audiences and profits which, naturally, inspired a whole lot of developers to make games like it. Most of those games had little to offer other than a surface level resemblance and shallow mechanics, and at a glance, you might think Terraria would be in that category. You would be so wrong.

Terraria takes place in a sidescrolling, procedurally generated tile-based world. You begin your adventure in the middle of nowhere, and as soon as you can, you should gather some wood and build a house that you can hole in for the night while you craft equipment. As soon as night falls, all manner of monsters will come for your hide. If you survive, come the next morning, you're off to explore, mine and get progressively better materials.

That's as far as the similarities go. Minecraft's 3D space allows for building elaborate buildings, and had Terraria banked on that, it would likely have been a far less interesting game, as in 2D, construction is not that endearing. Terraria instead banks on the strengths of the 2D sidescrolling perspective: despite its innocent looks, it is an intense action game about slaying Eldritch horrors.

A few nights in, once you get your bearings, Terraria becomes less about survival and more about arming yourself to the teeth, then kicking down the door of evil's den, if not summoning it to you in a ritualistic fashion, and bringing them down. There is a laundry list of bosses to battle, each with different requirements, fight mechanics, and most importantly, rewards: their loot will allow you make better equipment and fight stronger foes.

There is a wide variety of equipment to obtain, and it never gets dull, as new sets of gear always represent a vast increase in power and often allow for a variety of branching playstyles. You begin the game with a sword in hand, but you might finish with a shark-shaped machine gun or as a summoner of magical dragons. And it's not just about combat, either: accessories dramatically change your play, with the slow movement speed of a new character soon giving place to running and dashing, then to hovering and flying, and a myriad of other tricks.

And you need to be at your best, because the world is out to kill you. There are several types of biomes within a Terraria world, each with its own enemies and characteristics. The craziest part, and what's probably my favorite thing about the game, is that as you defeat more bosses, the world itself begins to transform: new biomes appear and expand, new materials and enemies spawn in zones you may have thought were beneath your character level. The unexpected twists and turns are what keep the game fresh for dozens and dozens of hours.

Of course, a game that keeps changing so much is a complex beast, and in that comes what I'd say is Terraria only noteworthy downside: there's a huge barrier to entry, as figuring out what to do next is almost never obvious, and the sheer amount of items and interactions will have you constantly alt-tabbing into the wiki, losing sight of the amount of tabs open in your browser. It's one of those games where you need to not be ashamed of looking up stuff.

Honestly, though, it's a small wrinkle in a fantastic experience. Terraria is such a gem, a game with so much fun packed into it and that is still getting updates to this day. Those willing to put the time into it will find a constantly rewarding experience.

Now if only I can find the time to play the 1.4 update...

Almost ten years after its release, Papers, Please remains one of the most memorable games I ever experienced, a feat that is especially notable considering it is ostensibly a game about bureaucracy and stamping documents.

You play as a border agent in the one checkpoint at the border of the Glorious Nation of Arstotzka, which has just come out of a war with its neighbors and is reestablishing immigration. You work at the checkpoint for twelve hours a day, going over the documents of people headed into the country and ultimately allowing them entry or not with a stamp on their passports. You make some money for every person you see to in a day, unless you give them the wrong stamp. Make too many mistakes and your pay gets docked.

There are many games out there that try to evoke an atmosphere of bleakness and oppression, but too many of them fail for either being dark to the point of disbelief, or for outright killing elements that would make the game interesting. In the same vein, many games fail to establish stakes through its gameplay systems, making it so the player isn't really invested in what they're doing. Papers, Please is so stellar because it succeeds on both those fronts, giving reason for the player to stay invested while maintaining haunting parallels to the real world that make it feel like Arstotzka is not so absurd, after all.

Your daily life as an Arstotzkan border agent is dystopian. As the only one in the family with a job, the low pay often barely puts food on the table, and every mistake, every fine could spell the difference in being able to afford heating for the cold days, or afford the doctor in an emergency. By diligently performing your duties, however, you'll survive, and maybe even be able to afford luxuries like buying a birthday present for your son.

It's this feeling, your own humanity in this setting, that gets contrasted with the people you interact with at the checkpoint. So many of them have as little as typographic errors on their passports, or maybe are lost in labyrinthine paperwork requirements, that should be reasonable to just ignore, but must be followed to the latter. Because of your judgment, families are separated, jobs are lost, and worse.

When someone comes in, begging to be let into Arstotzka at the risk of dying if they stay, do you take the pay cut to save them? If someone offers you a bribe, do you take it, in an attempt to secure financial stability for a few months, but at the risk of losing your job? It's a struggle where you are, at the same time, powerful enough to control other people's lives, but too powerless to control your own fate.

And that's only part of the game: as the plot moves forward, there's friendly and unfriendly faces you'll get to know: terrorists, conspiracies, fraud... all of which make the work at your cramped desk all the less mundane. The choices you make can lead to one of twenty endings, and while some are a bit redundant, there's a legitimate weight to your actions and a fascinating story being told here.

And you'll want to work, because as dreadful as the atmosphere is, the day to day activity of trying to process as many applications as possible, slowly getting better at the job, getting into a rhythm, is fun. The Arstotzkan government is always throwing new rules out, constantly changing the requirements for entry, and in turn, you optimize your process. The limited space on your desk is a genius move from the game's developer, as you have just enough space to work with two documents, and it rewards strategizing around whatever the rules are on a given day.

As such, Papers, Please is one of those indie game gems I recommend to just about anyone. It tells a story that's all the more compelling due to being a video game, and succeeds in creating a new, unique type of experience. If you haven't checked it out yet, you owe it to yourself to do so.

Glory to Arstotzka.

The town of Salem is haunted by The Bell Killer, a serial killer who has left behind many bodies and very little leads. Ronan O'Connor, a detective working on the case, tracks the killer down to an apartment building in town, but ends up overpowered by the killer and becomes a victim himself. Bound to this world by his inability to close the case in life, he sets out to search Salem for clues as a spirit and try to find closure.

Like its protagonist, Murdered: Soul Suspect was done dirty. The game was developed by a small-ish studio called Airtight Games, pitched by Square-Enix as part of the publisher's initiative to capture more of a Western audience, a push that, in 2022, we know didn't end well. Square never really understood what Western audiences wanted and racked up many failures while blaming the studios for it. Murdered was one such failure. Upon release, Murdered was priced at $60 and was marketed unrealistically, resulting in a mixed reception, lukewarm sales, and the closure of Airtight Games just weeks after the game hit store shelves..

Which is sad, because it's such a fascinating game. It can't be said that it is a masterpiece, nor that it justifies its original price tag, but at the prices the game is usually sold -- I bought it for a paltry $4 -- it offers a great bang-for-your-buck, so long as you approach it as the mystery thriller, almost story-driven game that it is.

It centers around investigative gameplay: the map is semi-open for exploration, but generally, Ronan will be led from location to location as he discovers new facts about the case. Whenever he spots a place of interest, like say, a place the killer has visited, the game enters an investigative mode in which Ronan poses questions and the player searches the scene for clues that can answer it.

Of course, there's the twist highlighted by the game's title: Ronan, the main character, is dead, which brings a series of mechanics to the investigation that make the game stand out as unique. As a spirit, he can go through walls, which lets him visit places living people cannot. He can also possess people, and while that doesn't allow direct control over them, he can listen in to their thoughts and even subtly nudge them towards performing certain actions.

Each area is also filled with collectibles that yield some information about the game's world. It could be a character, or the town, or historic events. It might not even relate to the plot at all. While some may cringe at the thought of having so many collectibles in a game, it felt, to me, like Murdered was enhanced by their presence, as they allow it an opportunity to enhance its setting and characters. Plus, if you pay attention to the tidbits you collect about the Bell Killer, you might figure out some of the twists in the story before they happen, a testament to how solid the overall plot is as a detective story.

The game is mechanically solid, with the most direct comparison I can make being either Frogwares's Sherlock Holmes games, or Ace Attorney but in 3D. Walk around inspecting everything you think is relevant, talk to those present, and present the correct clues to advance in the case. Sometimes, there's also puzzles to be solved. It's simple and straightforward as far as investigative games go, which makes me think that the expectation for AAA mechanics and storytelling where the only thing that made reviewers look at the game so negatively.

Okay, that's not necessarily true. There's one aspect of the game that's disfunctional in a way that feels jarring when held against the overall experience, and that is the combat. Not a single soul ever praised this, and for good reason: there is one (1) enemy type in the game, a demon, which Ronan is defenseless against unless it's approached from behind, from where he can perform a stealth takedown.

There's about ten instances of such combat sections popping up in the game, and each of them feels like it was set up so that you can get dispatch every enemy quickly and then go back to the actual fun part of the game. It reeks of meddling from upper management, as the way in which it feels disconnected to the rest of the game is like it was made with the explicit purpose of ticking a box that higher-ups thought the game needed to be successful.

Ultimately, more than anything else, Murdered: Soul Suspect feels like a wasted opportunity. Had its scope been kept a bit more under control, had the game been marketed correctly, and had it been given a more approachable price tag, much in the vein of Frogwares's work with Sherlock Holmes, there might have been room for a franchise here. As it is, if you're a mystery fan, get it on a sale -- the developer is gone anyway -- and kick back for an enjoyable whodunnit story.

Despite, at first glance, looking like a AAA game, a competitor for WRPGs such as BioWare's, GreedFall is not a AAA title, having had neither the budget nor the team size to reach that level. It is, however, a game made with a lot of heart, and if you open yourself up to it, it might just be able to scratch that WRPG itch.

The once bustling harbour town of Serene finds itself a shadow of its former self as it's ravaged by the Malichor, a plague that blackens the blood of those it touches, killing them slowly, painfully and without failure. Corpses of the afflicted line the streets, and the final hope lies on the far shores of Teer Fradee, a recently discovered island of exuberant nature that's said to be home to miracles.

Multiple nations begin colonization initiatives in an attempt to find a cure to the Malichor, among them, the Merchant Congregation of Serene. You play as Lady (or Sir) De Sardet, a daughter of a noble family who, as the game begins, has been named Legate of the Congregation. De Sardet leaves for Teer Fradee to manage the new colony's diplomatic relations with its neighbors, as well as with the island's natives.

To get this out of the way, yes, this is a story ostensibly about colonizers, which, understandably, might be off-putting to some. But while it's impossible to claim that the Greedfall never veers into problematic territory, it's a fact that, as its name unsubtly suggests, the overall message of the story is a criticism of its own characters, to the point some of the factions are explicit parallels to Christian-European colonizers and their horrifying practices.

Plus, judging the game for that alone it would do a disservice to its worldbuilding and character writing. Here, it's worth repeating that this is not a AAA game, and as such, it doesn't have an extensive, infinitely branching plot, nor lavishly written codex pages with poems and history of small villages, but it still manages to deliver on a world that feels authentic, with history, religion, politics and lots of conflict at play.

It is among this turmoil that the main story of GreedFall takes place, with De Sardet managing diplomacy as she uncovers the truth about Teer Fradee, as well as about her own people. The beginning parts drag somewhat as the game tries to get you up to speed with the setting, but once it gets going, it's a thrilling mystery, with some fantastic story beats, lots of twists and some incredibly well acted and directed scenes.

GreedFall's narrative design is efficient in how many decisions it leaves to the player: there are few pivotal moments where De Sardet is allowed to influence the story, but those choices do affect the world in meaningful ways. So do most of the quests you do, which almost always involve developing the story either of one of the island's factions or of one of the party members, and on the latter case, even when the quest does not revolve around them, you can expect them to chime in to certain situations or even act on your goals directly. Questing is one of GreedFall's strongest points.

Where the game drops the ball... For the more minor points, while repeated environments generally are a concession that games have to make, in GreedFall, there are instances where they'll take you out of the world, like when you realize all governors have the same house, despite coming from distinct cultures. Romances feel equally as dry, all of them following the same blueprint and feeling like an afterthought. And there's a lack of polish in the amount of typos in the in-game text, or in how Lady De Sardet often gets addressed as male.

As for major issues, most people that don't stick with GreedFall are probably going to name the combat system and its repetitiveness as the culprit, a criticism that unfortunately is fair. While the game's tactical pause feature might initially make the player think of the strategic gameplay of CRPGs, in practice, it's nothing like it: companions just do whatever, and the player is allowed a limited amount of decision-making during fights, focusing mostly on sustaining DPS while avoiding damage themselves. This is compounded by a streamlined skill tree that doesn't provide variety within character archetypes, requiring the player to splash points between all classes to achieve that effect.

Combat also features parry and dodge moves as well as a balance system, a feature set reminiscent of modern action games, but while those moves are powerful -- it's even possible to parry bullets, if timed correctly -- the lack of mechanical precision like in those action-focused experiences leaves GreedFall in a weird sort of limbo where it plays neither a fully-fledged tactical game nor an action one. Overall, combat is functional, but is also definitely the weakest part of the game.

The non-combat systems could also use some polish. De Sardet has talents which are sometimes required to take certain paths in quests and exploration, but not only are those requirements often easy to sidestep, but (probably because of the cost involved in creating branching levels), most situations end up being resolved through conversation, which limits the usefulness of field related skills. While this doesn't ruin the game, it cuts on the role playing and replayability.

Even with these shortcomings, however, there's still a lot of ambition behind GreedFall, as in these suboptimal systems there was an effort to give the player freedom to solve problems in different ways, and give distinct endings to quests depending on the paths taken. Plus, there's the little things, like how when a quest has the player gather information where to find a McGuffin, if they happen to already know where it is or just stumble on the location, the unnecessary quest steps can be skipped. It's a small detail, but it shows that the developers cared.

Overall, GreedFall might not be the best RPG I've ever played, but with its compelling narrative and world, as well as a passionate, if flawed, approach to genre staples, it's a solid experience that stands proudly amongst its genre peers, and one you might want to give a shot the next time you get the WRPG itch.

While originally a massive stepping stone for the series, being the first (non-spin-off) game in HD and with a fully controllable camera, Yakuza 3, due to being left without a remake, is definitely the one game in the series that aged the most poorly.

Its story is enjoyable enough. Although it begins by retconning the resolution to Kiryu and Kaoru's story that Y2 brought along, and as it goes on, it jumps the shark even harder than its prequel did, at the same time, it brings along some memorable characters, such as Mine, Rikiya and the members of the Ryudo clan, that resonate with the philosophy behind the series and its themes of what it means to be a gokudou.

Most importantly, this is the game that introduces the Okinawan orphanage of Morning Glory, which becomes Kiryu's raison d'être for several of the games that follow. During the game's intro, you get to see Kiryu fully dedicated to the day-to-day tasks of the orphanage and the care for its children, who have become his family. It's the happiest his character ever felt in the series, and it sets up a stark contrast to, say, him in Yakuza 5, where hope has nearly left him.

The real reason it has aged so poorly is its gameplay. It's an improvement from the original Y2, alright, but if you're coming from the variety of 0 or the fluidity of YK2, Y3 feels horribly janky and restrained. Kiryu feels heavy in the worst possible sense, making even normal fights long. And famously, bosses are incredibly resilient to basically anything, blocking every attack, not allowing grabs, instantly turning to face you from any angle, and having hyper armor for days. Most fights boil down to whittling them down hit by hit, and are incredibly boring.

Plus, the side content in the game is just... not good? There's a handful of fun stuff, like the revelations, the dad sidequests, and that one substory where Kiryu has to take ice creams back to a family, but for the most part, side content feels dry and unpolished, and minigames like bowling, pool and darts became broken in the remaster when the game's FPS was bumped. Many substories drag because they involve winning in broken minigames, notably the fishing, which pardon the pun, I wouldn't touch again with a ten foot pole.

It's for these reasons that Y3 became a bit of a rite of passage in the series for new fans, separating those who want to get the whole of Kiryu's story from those who want to cut to the chase and get to Y7 and the other more modern games -- nothing wrong with either approach, of course. I do think, though, that if you can spare the time, it's worth going through Y3, focusing on main missions and maybe trying some of more fun substories, as it's an important piece of Kiryu's life.

SpaceChem is the nichest of puzzle games. It's a fascinating game, brilliantly designed, with unthinkable amounts of depth, breathtaking to read about and watch unfold. It's also so complex and cumbersome that few people can actually handle playing it.

The game puts you in charge of a series of chemical plants in space colonies. There, you have to design processes that assemble specific compounds inside reactors from a given set of inputs. Yes, "assemble": despite the chemistry theming, gameplay has little to do with chemistry and is more like creating factory lines or concurrent programs, with a lot of time management as well as spatial thinking involved.

The difficulty escalates hard and fast: less than a quarter into the game's levels on my playthrough, puzzles started to take an eternity to solve. The main plot, which is actually pretty suspenseful and satisfying on its own, became diluted, and with every new stage, SpaceChem felt more like a job than an actual game.

It takes a particular kind of mind to get into it, minds whose brilliant solutions can be found online. Back when I played this, there used to be a website entirely dedicated to different solutions for each stage, and I would try several of them out just to see them unfold, mesmerized by the game's mechanical precision. The thought of trying to figure them out on my own, though, was soon met with rolling eyes and a loud groan.

I admire SpaceChem a lot. I cannot possibly recommend it to anyone else.

Video games have a bit of an odd track record with romance. There are some genuinely great ones that tie into the narrative or otherwise make you remember that character, but the thing about games is that they really like their reward systems, and relationships framed that way often have sex as the end goal, as the big thing that happens and that must happen, and so we end up with stuff like awkward clothed sex scenes or collectible cards earned from sleeping with people.

On that same note, it's really rare to see established relationships in games, probably because not only they are a handy way of creating conflict within the narrative, but also because it runs counter to the idea of having as blank a slate as possible for the player to self insert into. It's easier if you focus on having the relationship develop over the course of gameplay, be it through the narrative, navigating dialogue trees or showering the other character with gifts of foraged items and homemade dishes.

It was a surprise to find a game that purported to do both of those things: present two characters that begin the game as lovers, and have that relationship tie into the mechanics. Haven puts you in the role of Yu and Kay, a couple who fled their homeworld in order to escape their arranged marriages and live together in peace. The two land on a mysterious, deserted planet called Source and quickly realize that the planet is not only dangerous, but that they are far from being the first people to live there.

The story that unfolds from the couple exploring the planet is pretty fun on its own: you get to learn more about the civilization Yu and Kay come from, how it is organized, and why there is no way they could have stayed. You also get to unravel a bit about what went on in Source and how the planet reached its current state. However, the real treat in Haven is in the main characters' relationship, as well as the incredible amount of scenes and dialogues, all fully voiced, that occur between the two.

Some of these scenes trigger from story events and from exploring the world, but most of them come from performing certain tasks while at home or camping. Haven shines in its focus on the mundane happenings in the daily life of a couple together. The food they eat, dreams had at night, the awkward flirts, the small arguments, the big fights, the in-jokes... there is a feeling of domesticity all throughout Haven that confers upon its protagonists an organic and authentic feel, as fantastic as the situation they find themselves might be.

This blends into the gameplay as the game ties that relationship into the mechanics. Experience points, for instance, can come both from fighting battles together and for experiencing scenes at home. Leveling, in turn, is a rare occasion and expressed as a celebration, kind of like an anniversary of sorts. Last, but definitely not least, combat centers around synchronizing movements between characters and, if you're playing co-op, communicating timings and strategies. It's simple and feels almost experimental, but it's very appropriate and suits co-op play surprisingly well.

Since everything is focused on the characters being a couple, being able to get into their roles is central to enjoying the experience. If you don't identify with the default Yu and Kay, it's possible to change their genders. In what's one of the gutsiest moves I've seen from an indie studio, The Game Bakers took to including alternative versions of Yu and Kay so to allow playing as a same-sex couple. This was added with an update published in early 2022, and it's not just a reskin of the game, but rather, involved redubbing every single line from the main characters, some lines now having three separate versions, one for each couple. All of the 2D art, such as the ones in menus, loading screens and such, gets replaced as well, to reflect the current pairing.

I say the move is gutsy not because the potential public reaction -- people who would complain about such an addition probably wouldn't have liked the game anyway -- but because, considering the amount of dialogue there is in the game, it's an insane undertaking from such a small developer, one which would get shot down fast in product meetings elsewhere simply because of the amount of work involved. Yet, it was executed so smoothly, when playing as one of the new couples, it's easy to forget the game usually features a straight pairing. It's incredibly pleasant to see.

Moving away from Yu and Kay, though, the other way in which Haven felt unique is that, which so many games to play in so little free time, it's rare that a game manages to make me relax and take in the sights. Somehow, the fragmented land of Source succeeded. In part, this is due to the amazing art direction: the game's use of color in its natural landscapes makes everywhere the camera is facing into a beautiful picture. There's also the incredible and unique soundtrack that sets the mood for many of the game's locations, as well as some of the story beats.

The mechanics also help a lot. There's an idle animation where the characters embrace each other if left alone, and in doing so, the one with the lowest HP is healed -- this has the side effect of giving the player a moment to slow down and look around. In addition there's the choice of traversal mechanics: instead of characters running and climbing through the fields and mountains of source, which a lot of games would do, they smoothly glide above the ground, later in the game getting the ability to do so through the air in certain situations. It not only feels great, it looks visually stunning and makes for a lot of pretty screenshots.

Haven is just such a marvelous experience. Its overall simplicity might make it not click with everybody, but it felt wonderful to me, and I'm left wanting more of those comfy vibes and that sweet awkwardness it gave me. Maybe one day there will be a sequel, or a spiritual successor, or maybe other people might be inspired by The Game Bakers' work and decide to put some of that spice into their games. I can only hope.

Have you ever wondered what happens to failed startups? The answer might surprise you -- it turns out, the entire company sinks into the earth, its employees imprisoned within its ruins, forced to wander them as monsters for the rest of their lives.

Well, at least, that's how it goes in Going Under, which puts you in the role of Jacqueline "Jackie" Fiasco, the newest (unpaid) marketing intern at beverage startup Fizzle. As a startup, Fizzle is routinely attacked by employees of flopped companies that rise from the sunken ruins to cause trouble and steal office supplies. As the intern, Jackie is sent underground to keep the invaders in check.

Jackie explores the failed startups in a roguelike fashion, grabbing whatever items are around in the procedurally generated rooms to fight off their inhabitants. As she progresses, she will find skills that can help her reach the end of the dungeon, as well as money to spend in shops found in certain rooms. It's actually pretty simple as far as roguelikes go, with skills being all passives that can be explained in one sentence and no complex numerical systems. It's all about you and the weapons you find.

In that sense, Going Under is a lot more of a true roguelike than a roguelite, and that's a double-edged sword of sorts. The game is easy to get into and play a few runs casually. Also, since almost nothing is kept between runs, there is no feeling like you're forced to grind to finish dungeons, and when you die, it's almost always your fault and not the RNG's. However, it also means that there's little room for growth for Jackie, and you never reach that critical mass seen in other games of its genre, making it a lot less welcoming to people not used to action games.

In fact, even among people who are used to them, a lot of people drop the game during its second half, or even in the final stretch. It's not that the game gets unfair, but dying while fighting the game's challenging bosses at this point means redoing 10~20 minute stretches of dungeon before getting to try again. I, myself, despite enjoying the level of difficulty offered by the fights, turned to the game's assist options in the final section, as I felt the repetition getting to me pretty hard. Those options are also practically mandatory for getting the platinum, if you want to keep something of your sanity.

Even if you are going to play with assist options always on, though, Going Under is worth checking out for its satire of corporate culture alone. Not only does the game boast a gorgeous art style that mimics corporate artstyles in 3D, with well-defined, simple shapes and vibrant colors, but the writing for the game knocks it out of the park with the references to real world issues and its absolutely brutal criticism of the tech industry. The satire is everywhere, from flavor text to skill design to character dialogue, and it hits so hard, and so accurately, it feels almost personal.

Going Under might not be the deepest roguelike, but it's one with a lot of heart. It's a special game worth checking out.

Working From Home DLC: Since the DLC doesn't have a page, as it was distributed as a free update: Going Under has a DLC called Working From Home, which adds a new dungeon accessible from Jackie's room. It's basically recycled content, it's very long and tedious and you're better off not engaging with it at all. Stick to the main game.

Final Fantasy XIII is a game I picked up basically expecting to dissect it to try and understand what went wrong and how it could be so bad. In the end.... I kind of enjoyed it?

The game was part of an ambitious subseries project for the Final Fantasy series called Fabula Nova Crystallis that was meant to contain various games with different stories and world, but connected through their lore -- the origins of the world at the hands of Bhunivelze and his creations -- and their themes -- the conflicts between humans and gods as the latter group intervenes in the former. Something of a Final Fantasy multiverse, I guess.

The idea did come through, but due to XIII not being that well received, it happened in a much more muted form than originally planned. Those who were around to see it announced might remember there were originally three XIII games: this one, Versus XIII and Agito XIII. Versus and Agito went on to become XV and Type-0, and aside from some terminology being reused between games, you have to really dig into those two to find the connections of their worlds to XIII's. FNC's lore is pretty deep -- to not say convoluted.

Which is, in fact, one of the first problems people complain about in XIII: the game opens by throwing confusing terms such as "Cocoon Fal'Cie", "Focus", "Bodhum Vestige" and "Pulse L'Cie" without much regard for whether the player knows what's going on or not. Well, more or less. I suffered from this issue for a grand total of five minutes, then I opened the datalog like the game told me to and lo and behold, a few blurbs of text later I was up to speed with the setting.

Now, I don't think codices are an elegant method of storytelling, but they're one this particular genre, with its intricate worlds, leans a bunch on, so it's a bit confusing to see some claim that having to read in an RPG is an absurd idea. Yes, show-don't-tell would have been nice, but considering how slow the start of the game is known to be, doing something like starting the game at Bodhum, before the events of the opening, and dropping exposition bombshell after bombshell would have slowed it down even further.

Also, just like in many other entries to this franchise, there's a tendency of conflating "I don't like this character" with "this is a bad character" when it comes to the game's main cast. The writing for a lot of XIII leans on the main party members being in conflict with one another, as well as some of them going through some rough spots, such as the loss of someone close. Sometimes they act in a cocky, whiny, depressed, or irrational way, and that is normal -- it's reflective of a person in that situation. Here's a video essay that talks about this better than I could. Yes, I too derive extreme satisfaction from seeing Snow punched across the face, but that does not make him poorly written. In fact, the character writing in this game is some of the best in the series.

That said, those two criticisms out of the way, there are a lot of very valid complaints that can be leveled at the game's main plot. For instance, a certain recurring antagonist feels unthreatening after repeat fights. In addition, some plot threads could have timed their reveals better (e.g. Hope's mom's final words) to be more effective, and less scenes could feature the words "Pulse l'Cie, enemies of Cocoon". Incidentally, despite all that talk about its enemies, you never grow attached to any particular place in Cocoon because, as pretty as the sights are, you're never given time to get to know those locations. Cocoon ends up feeling less of a living world than Gran Pulse, which is saying a lot when you consider the history behind those two locations.

Which leads us to the elephant in the room, which is the linearity. To play devil's advocate for a bit, it too serves a purpose in the game: it creates a sense of urgency that reflects, one, the characters being fugitives hunted by the military; two, the six of them having a ticking time bomb attached to them in the form of the Focus. There's a desire from the game's direction to keep the momentum of the plot going, and in this, the game is successful: you're constantly switching teams and areas, as characters get split up and meet again in a sequence of twists and turns.

But then again, urgency, being hunted down and the like have never stopped any game in the series (except FFX) from offering at least some degree of side stories and activities, and it's also not possible to do without severely handicapping the gameplay. Sidequests and the like are where the player is allowed to branch out, experiment with the gameplay systems, try out different equipment and fight some tougher mobs. When you take all that away, even if only until a certain point in the game... many say this game takes twenty hours to get good, and it's a fair assessment. The game holds its cards too close to its chest for most of the game, restricting the kits of party members and preventing players from experiencing what it has to offer.

It's a shame, because the game's battle system is actually pretty solid. Like FFXII, FFXIII gets called out a lot for mostly playing itself, this time due to the Paradigm system and the Libra spell dictating your party members' behavior, however, also like FFXII, there's a surprising amount of depth in that automation and in the player input given during battles. It's also really fast-paced and relentless: the game allows you to retry any battle instantly, and that feature is there because it will murder you without mercy, forcing you to learn many of its battles and adjust your paradigms to proceed.

In that, I found a lot of joy in FFXIII. Together with its intricate world and characters, beautiful visuals and amazing soundtrack, the game left me wanting more. Which, eventually, Square delivered on: FFXIII-2 is a thing, and it tackles a lot of the issues in XIII, such as the linearity, not being able to switch party leaders, and so on, and I like that game even more. I'll get to it eventually.

For now, though: Final Fantasy XIII is a fun entry to the series. It's definitely not my favorite, and it has profound issues: if you couldn't put up with its long introductory session, couldn't wait for hours until the game got good, that's valid, and I respect that. But those who stay for the journey will find a better game than what its reputation makes it sound like.

The Solitaire Conspiracy is a beefed-up version of Streets and Alleys solitaire where face cards have special abilities depending on their suits, some good and some bad, that can trigger during gameplay. It boasts outstanding production values for a game of its kind, having been developed in a modern game engine, which allows it to present fancy graphics and VFX together with FMV cutscenes that put you in the role of a spy working to overthrow the most powerful man in the world.

It's fun while the novelty lasts, which is not very long and much less than the game's length. There's three main ways to play the game: one with a time limit, one with a move limit, and one with neither. The game really wants you to play the former two, and both work to an extent, but the thing about solitaire is that not only is it too luck-heavy to be treated as skill-based, it's also a casual game to be played once in a while, to burn five idle minutes, and the way TSC requires you to be confortable with each suit and its associated abilities runs counter to that. Picking it up again after a few months away, having to relearn everything, is painful.

And the story? Good grief. The FMV cutscenes are cringy, but even giving the game the benefit of the doubt by assuming that was intentional, the overall writing is still dull and repetitive. It didn't take me long to just start skipping every blurb of text, just clicking random missions and trying to finish the game faster. For a game so short, it manages to stretch its plot thin.

Despite all that, The Solitaire Conspiracy still makes for a fun couple of hours, again, while the novelty lasts. After that, though, I'm not really sure who this game is for.

Yakuza 5 sees the series expand once more, now featuring five playable characters and five cities to visit. It's an ambitious expansion to an already ambitious concept Yakuza 4 pioneered, and that failed to live up to expectations in that game. It certainly works better in this game than it did previously, making it the highest point of the Remastered trilogy, but it still feels like more for the sake of more.

The game feels like a big brainstorm, where lots of ideas were put forward and every single one of them made into the game, regardless of whether they were good or fit together with the others, resulting in one of the most extreme cases of a mixed bag I've seen. The plot is where this issue is the most evident: it features a strong cast, great direction and clear, resounding themes, but its scenes feel like they come from different versions of the script, what with their nonsensical twists that don't fit together and what's probably the clumsiest conclusion in the franchise's history.

While the western version has no subtitle, the game's full Japanese name is 龍が如く5 夢、叶えし者, which translates roughly to Like a Dragon 5: Fulfillers of Dreams. "Dreams" are in the original title because they are at the forefront of the story: how people hold them dear, how sacrifices are made for their sake, and how, in the failure to fulfull them, others around the dreamer may come to inherit those dreams. Both the main and supporting casts have a lot to do with those ideas, and there's some genuinely poignant moments springing forth from them.

You'll also notice there's a '5' in the title, which is a reference to the 5D chess the plot is constantly playing with itself.

If you thought Yakuza 4 took things to a new level with its constant backstabbery and nonsensical schemes, well, you're in for something special here. We have turncoats in every scene, we have people getting shot before revealing plot-critical information, we have uncharismatic or outright evil characters getting instantly redeemed at the whims of the writer, we have "he's my ex from decades ago", we have "we went to high school together, you just don't remember me", we even have "he's secretly my father".

It's not the worst plot in the franchise only because it never reaches the self-destructive level of its prequel, but it has to be said, unlike that game, which features a strong final chapter with thematically appropriate antagonists, the finale for Yakuza 5 struggles to tie its four acts together and falls flat on its face. As it turns out, some of the main characters are part of the story only due to sheer coincidence, to a point that they get recycled fights for final bosses. The fights that are not recycled are contrived and devoid of any tension, since the plot has already been resolved by the time they happen.

The main antagonists for the game really didn't think anything through, their schemes are incredibly flimsy and count on Tojo people being, among other things, very bad with faces. The final boss is completely random, outright admits not to even knowing why he's there, and then that fight leads into an incoherent, almost dream-like ending that almost had me booting Yakuza 6 at 11PM, wondering how in the world it would pick up after that. I'm still not sure.

Yakuza 5 also suffers from the pacing issue that comes from completely changing characters every act, so much so, that many of its fans argue it should be looked at as five different games. After all, most characters have complete archs that work as individual stories, and those stories are often better than the major plot they're in. Four of the characters even have a side story with plot and mechanics exclusive to themselves. It's one of the bits of 0 that you can see forming up here, and it helps a lot in giving more meaning to each individual character.

Kiryu's act is the opener to the game. He's living in Nagoya under an alias, driving a taxi to make money to send to the orphanage. It's perhaps the most emotionally charged it's been for him since Yakuza 3. You can see him struggling to get away from his past, and over the course of the game, the survivor's guilt eating away at him is palpable, the realization that no matter where he runs to, the people he loves will always end up in danger because of him. Some say Kiryu feels dead in this installment, but I think they're overlooking this aspect of the character.

Gameplay-wise, he gets a useless new ability in Dragon Spirit. It's a precursor to the Extreme Heat in 6 and K2, but it sucks: most goons can block it, to say nothing of bosses, so you're better off spending that gauge shoving their heads into the pavement. Otherwise, he plays like his previous iterations. He also gets an awesome taxi-driving minigame as his side story, which is split between normal fares and street races.

Saejima follows Kiryu. His kit was enhanced with abilities that reinforce his gargantuan bulk and superhuman strength. His story, however... I found his side story, which has him living in and aiding a hunting village, much more interesting. Saejima's time on the main stage is home to an incredibly long, nonsense, tutorial-like couple of chapters, that follow into a section absolutely ridden with enemy encounters and questionable writing decisions. It's definitely the game's lowest point.

He's followed by the star of the show, who is, of course, my precious daughter Haruka. Haruka leaves Morning Glory for Osaka, striving to make it big as an idol and give back to the orphanage. As such, she does not engage in combat, instead challenging people on the streets to dance battles, a rhythm game played with the d-pad and face buttons. It's fun, but really needed more songs to continue being engaging -- I really wish they'd taken this idea and put more resources into it.

The most interesting bit of Haruka's part is in her side story, which revolves around the Princess League, a huge idol contest that takes place in Osaka. This involves more rhythm gameplay as she presents on stage, but also other idol activities, such as handshake events, talk shows, quiz games and so on, each of which has its individual mechanics. One thing to note is that it surprises me when people call Haruka's part "girly", because there's a surprisingly dark undertone to it all, multiple scenes highlighting the possessiveness, voyeurism and even sexual harassment that goes on in the idol industry.

Akiyama makes a brief appearance in Haruka's part, also having received an improved kit, but it's the newcomer, Shinada, that steals much of the spotlight through his sheer charm. Shinada is a disgraced ex-baseball player that finds himself pulled into a conspiracy involving his city of Nagoya, one which ties back to the reason he fell from stardom in the first place. Shinada's characterization is incredible: he's a silly, but good-hearted, down-on-his-luck guy who turns out to be a rather layered character. Plus, he's really passionate about baseball: so much so, that if you try to pick up a baseball bat during a fight as him, he will calmly place it back on the ground, pointing out that "bats are not made for hurting people". So yeah, he's great.

His fighting style is arguably the weakest, however, combining sluggishness like Saejima's with not much power to back it up. He's supposed to be a weapon's specialist, but weapons suck in this game even more than usual, and he ends up working better as a grappler than anything else. His baseball side story is also pretty lame in comparison to everyone else, as all he gets is a more interesting version of the baseball minigame you can play in Kamurocho.

Which begs the question of why there are two baseball minigames in the game, with one being clearly superior. In fact, why so many unnecessary minigames made the cut. Some of the minigames in Y5 are my favorites in the entire franchise, like the manzai club with Haruka and the ramen-ya with Kiryu, and but several others are probably the worst. I do not understand why they even shipped the chicken races or the snowball battles. And it's not just minigames, entire gameplay systems in the game hurt the game more than if they were entirely absent.

The gourmet eating, for instance, are something I never found much meaning in, while the weapon skill levels make weapons essentially unusable even for the weapon specialist in the team -- good luck spending millions of yen in Kamiyama to get the most powerful gear, only to find out you can't equip any of it. And the level caps and breakthroughs? Why? Why is this even here? It gimps your characters, forces you to grind, then tosses you against an incredibly unfair fight to get the rest of your character's skills.

But then again, the game is in many ways a huge improvement over the previous entry, being much closer to 0 than to 3 and 4. The characters play much better, the plot is... has more to like about it, and there are several lovable side activities to choose from, even if there are many terrible ones. I might have disliked the game more if I had played it near its launch, but with the hindsight of later games and the knowledge that 5's ambition helped pave the way for the series to become better, well, it's hard not to respect that ambition.

Like I said, Y5 is one of the most extreme cases of a mixed bag among the games I've played. It's an alright game, but people going into should be warned that it's far easier to enjoy it if you have fun with the individual moments instead of waiting for them to form a great whole.

Between Dimensions is baffling. It's not the worst DLC I have ever seen, but it's the first I've seen showcase the flaws of its base game, front and center, so thoroughly. Everything that's bad about Moonlighter is worse here: the repetitiveness, the grind, the wonky progression, the dodgy writing, the reliance on RNG, the uneven boss battles... Heck, the game makes you go through the same dungeon over and over to get very rare items, and then fills that same dungeon with enemies that can pick your inventory clean of loot. It's incredibly frustrating. The only good thing about the DLC is that it makes 100%ing the main game slightly less annoying.