Seamlessly and in an incredible fashion, Monster Train manages to make the best card tactics game I've ever had the privilege of playing. An increasingly dense set of cards and clans to master all built extensively around the base tactical mechanics, all mercifully easy to learn and accessible to get into. I had no intention of playing so much of the game and was only intent on trying the game out, and managed to spend an entire week's worth of time into. The difficulty curve is absolutely pristine too, with every covenant ascension providing a fully tangible bump in challenge. The art and music mostly meets a 'just works enough' charm and often times is a bit bland, but the game could've definitely gotten away with just being minimalist and I'd still love the fuck out of it. I'm still finding new tactics as I hit the triple digits in spent hours. Good shit

A bit of an interesting one.

I was avoiding this franchise from like leagues away, mostly cuz I don't do horror and I knew that these games will scare me, but already after finishing the first one I don't regret it a bit. Playing with the lights out really gave a whole new level to how absolutely perfect the atmosphere of the game is, just completely intricately paced from beginning to end. The horrors of the town slowly developed and enveloped the entire aesthetic as things never really stopped being intrinsically unsettling and spooky on most fronts. My favorite moments have to be the hospital in terms of art design, but the sewer to the amusement park really takes the cake on the heartpounding rush side of things. The sound design is absolutely excellent too, with the radio sound etched in my mind in a good way, as well as the industrial vibes that bleed through the hospital and dark overworld. Music's pretty swell here too.

It's really a shame then, that when removed from that aesthetical core, the game starts to have its edges dulled. And I do mean removed, the gameplay of juking monsters and """"managing"""" resources wears itself thin by about halfway through, to where all intents and purposes the atmosphere begins to be enveloped by its own form of mediocrity. You do get some neat moments, I quite liked the first boss and I think a few of the actual puzzles here are really interesting to figure out. But generally once you're used to the controls and have gotten through the hospital, you've done everything. There's also not really much here to say in terms of the story, mostly following rather straightforward beats in an incredibly obfuscated way. It does lead to a couple genuinely great moments, but a lot of it is so incredibly background that I don't think it deserves attention.

Real emphasis on how fucked the resource management is though for a second, what is most definitely the one way this game could ramp the hell up out of the tension is so massively overtuned to where you'll never run out of anything unless you realllllly try.

This kind of sums up to an experience that really peaks early and ends with more of a whimper than it really deserves, at least for me. I even went out of my way to dodge more enemies instead of just shooting them, and that still didn't save sections that could've been a lot more crazy to go through. Definitely still ABSOLUTELY worth your time, but with expectations set very low.

Genshin Impact is certainly uhhh, something.

Or at least, it really wants to be something, it takes a lot of different things and smashes them together, somehow coherently, in the hopeful goal of being a something. But it really doesn't, it's not a something at all.

That's the long and short of it, but let me break stuff down to the specifics. Genshin takes a shitton of inspiration from other ps4 anime titles (weirdly Atelier Ryza kept coming to my head), BotW, and korean mmos in this weird mesh of trying to be a hack n slash anime open world. You have exploration, dungeons and character class and element mechanics, a pretty standard anime story, and a somewhat sweet vibe in the visuals. But like, each every one of these components are soulless, they don't really come together to make anything special, they're just there.

Exploration is route and boring, with a lot of fucking about getting numbers to go up and seeing very uninteresting sights. You might find some neat gear but gear generally just means number and stat ups rather than anything of much worth.

Mechanics boil down to being very simple, mostly picking whichever buttons you want to mash to make enemies keel over because enemy design asks nothing of you and all characters can functionally instawipe a group in their own way. Elemental play leads to very particular lock and key options but not anything dynamic, sheikah slates and element play of BotW it certainly isn't or really trying to be, it's just dressing.

The vibe itself is very disturbingly stolen from BotW, with the overworld music using the same kind of piano timbre that goes back to it, but it's just MISSING something. It's easy to say it's just missing a soul, but there's more to it, there's not even a sense of direction to what the music is playing. It feels ethereal but in the bad kind of sense, the one where you're playing around anime open world limbo rather than something serene.

I won't deny that the game at least looks pleasant, if anything that was the one thing I enjoyed in the amount of time I spent, getting a literal "ooo pretty" out of my mouth in the first five or so minutes. I guess another plus in this game's direction is that the gacha isn't overbearing as it is basic f2p design really, it's pushed in your face once and then it at best only subconsciously works for people going for completionism shit. From what I've been told, you can clear the story just fine without interacting with the shop at all, so that's nice.

That's kind of all the positive sentiment I can scoop up for this though, it really just kinda sucks otherwise. None of this ends up with Genshin Impact having its own identity, being something from even just one of its parts much less the sum. It really feels like a game made for eastern audiences that does 'just' enough to be relaxing and comfy to waste time in, but then offer nothing in return. Originally I was going to make this review just as I tweeted about it, saying that Genshin Impact is just Destiny 2 for eastern audiences.

I don't really even know about that anymore though, there is certainly a lot more I can give and recommend about Destiny, this is just going to be an afterthought eventually.

The game is in such a currently awful optimized state, probably understandably so for running on an engine that feels like it's over a decade old. But it's buggy and fucked up enough to where I can't recommend ever trying this. I say this with a decently high-end computer too, and I had to run it on the lowest settings for it to not drop frames too badly, it's wild.

Even past that, what you get is a lot of weird contradictory vibes. Because of its current state you have potentially excellent combat wrapped around enemies that go down in less than 4 hits for more than a couple hours, paired with a story that's stupidly paced and tone changing on a dime. It does have a soul in all of this with its actually competently done cinematics with good choreography, and clear understanding to NOT WASTE THE PLAYER'S TIME with its quest design. It gets good I hear, eventually once your level matches back up with what the missions were supposed to have you on, but the hill is too tiresome to climb with such awful other things attached around it at the moment.

Best to wait for a massive rework before even considering touching this one, otherwise I'd just put it on ice.

When I first started playing it, I felt like everything was a bit too simple. That's been a common thing for me sometimes when I start with the shoto character, but I legit thought less of the game initially.

I was very very wrong. Akatsuki's reflector based neutral is pretty sick. Every character has some neat options on their general archtype form of grappler, zoner, etc. and it's so fucking competent that I did keep forgetting this is a doujin fighter.

The main appeal or mechanic that separates this out is how you have a zero-cost but high commit reflector move that is invincible and allows you to immediately counter on followup, basically functioning as a parry of sorts. Anyone can activate it by pressing two buttons and it's all built around reading the opponent. Working out this metagame though through the combat of Akatsuki is actually interesting, with a neutral that relies on your usual approach game but now with trying to read the opponent's head with this new dynamic. Blocking also has an armor rating that can deplete and replete with each hit on it, meaning you can't just hold back and get lucky with a reflect. This kind of tug of war really lends itself to interesting play.

Akatsuki Blitzkampf also has an awful lot of singleplayer options, and a highest difficulty mode with actually pretty decent AI (wtf??). Working my way to playing all of the characters only to realize on vallhalla mode that I didn't understand their neutral at all really brings home the deceptive idea I had of this game initially.

It's really good. Maybe not one of the best fighters by any means but it's extensively easy to pick up, has a decent combo game, and pretty sick neutral. It's also free and has rollback. Great stuff!

A pleasant surprise from Destiny, finally.

This one's a pretty interesting one in that it seems to have a full understanding of almost every gameplay issue Destiny 2 had before. The campaign this time around is really good, with a super strong set of missions each with interesting encounters and fun to fight bosses. In fact the game revels in this structure, with a complete boss rush of sorts in various arenas each around one of the eight you send to the grave, and other than maybe one or two stinkers, it's the most fun I had in destiny outside raids. The campaign itself is also solidly presented to, with an intro mission that sets the pacing and some of the tone, and even leads to a couple strong narrative beats.

Not to say this story is any good now, cuz hoo boy it's not. Themes of Forsaken are minimal as they are washed out in grime. You do get like one or two raw moments especially in the 'final' campaign mission, but the ideas of "going down the dark path" or having so called "character motivations" are completely thrown out by one) the villain literally wanting to go genocide a whole race so you're completely justified in going down to kill this guy, and two) the villain motivation ends up being, (spoilers), oooooo this evil was the thing that made him insane and was pulling the strings the whole time oooo. It's super disappointing, because there's potential to be explored here that isn't even touched again.

There's a couple strong low points that end up as large cracks around the expansion as well. Mostly being that the grinds are still here and they say hello, especially when the campaign forces you to do one of them (two if you care about the optional epilogue mission). Even in seasonal content, the lore is yet again tied behind pretty meh grindy quests, although at least more than a few of them have more solid arenas now. The lore itself is pretty good, but when has it not? It's just really disappointing that postcampaign content is yet again checkbox grinds that I very well do not recommend actually playing through.

THAT BEING SAID, the raid here is fucking excellent. Last Wish is genuinely great, with incredibly good challenge and mechanics. There's a lot of constant team synergy at play especially in the final couple parts of it, and the fight against Riven is mwah. You still have to toy with Bungie's ass LFG option if you want to get into the raid without joining a guild, but it's worth the pain this time around, moreso than Leviathan.

I was really overall impressed with Forsaken, and it's certainly actually worth most of a recommendation now instead of "haha never touch this game." You can honestly just skip straight to it, don't worry about literally anything else, none of it matters.

I will admit that I came in with a kind of expectation that it's a bit of a meme game, often heard be it called the poor man's grisaia. Even still I tried coming in hoping maybe I'd be surprised.

And boy was I surprised.
Never have I seen a more exploitative prose that treats its starring cast as math problems to be solved, complete stand ins for real mental issues that feel less like honest understandings of PEOPLE and more like caricatures to be toyed with. Everything about this prose SCREAMS awful, and no amount of unintentional 4chan brain worms excuses any of it.

Don't ever read this mess.

It is increasingly dawning on me how much it may have been a mistake to play through the original content.

I don't have much to say here, because there is very little to talk about. It's a super boring completely inconsequential bit of content with even worse strikes and encounters. Despite having the enemies fresh in my mind after The Red War and only just getting into the game, I still felt like shit was being recycled in front of me.

It's that much devoid of a sense to go on that I wished I didn't spend any time in it.

Stand tall, my friend.

Shadowbringers was very much a personal journey for me, as was largely the intent of the game I imagine. Its excellent writing between each of the major characters reflected equivalently on the Warrior of Light's development. Its themes of post-apocalyptic despair and the misgivings of humanity of the past are shined brightly on as the shadow of the world is reclaimed. I felt a strong attachment to the setting by the end, an irreplaceable memory of all that transpired that left me walking away at the end bittersweet and in tears. There's a lot to get into, especially in terms of the utopian breakdown in Amaurot, but I would choose to move on with the idea that people on their own can come to play Shadowbringers and think, hear, and feel exactly how these stories came into play.

The music and aesthetics themselves are the best the MMO's ever had too. Though it does similarly work with Heavensward and Stormblood's motif usage, the way tones were remixed and placed in the story were incredible. The oft-memed song is A Long Fall, but I have stronger attachment to Tomorrow and Tomorrow. The cutscenes also have phenomenal lighting and direction, and there's actual animation with some of the scenes now, especially with the latest ones.

The gameplay has also reached new peaks, especially with the latest patch's trial. While there are a lot of issues with how they made classes simpler (that I guess fortunately haven't experienced myself having joined afterwards), the ending rotations in Shadowbringers are still intensely fun to manage, some even for the first time. The solo duties continue to be interesting now since the tail end of Stormblood, and dungeons now let you play with the Scions, which is such a welcome change in terms of making the experience more personal. The raid and trial content especially hits new peaks, with the Seat of Sacrifice being my all time favorite fight in the entire game up to this point. Or at least, my favorite fight on Normal, since I have yet to do any of the Savage/Extreme/Ultimate content.

There are a few issues in the rough through it all. Despite my massive love and respect I hold towards this game and Yoshi-P now, there were definitely still weak points to cross over I can't easily forgive. The first half of the tempest pace breaker and the trashy trolley subplot I could very well have done without. The Alliance Raid, while WONDERFUL NieR fanservice, is mostly disappointing in its story and newest content too. The Raid and postgame Trial storyline are similarly at underwhelming ends here, the latter much worse for the potential it could've explored.

There's still three major patches of content left we haven't seen out of Shadowbringers by the time of this review, but it doesn't matter at this point. Shadowbringers is my favorite FF game, and I recommend anyone reading this make it a point of consideration to get far enough in FF14 to make it to this point.

Pray don't forget us, your bygone kin
With one world's end does a new begin
And should our soul scatter onto the wind
Still we shall live on.

A bit of a disclaimer, this game is in early access and by the time of this review, only Prelude + Act 1 is out for it.

Although that doesn't matter, there's really no reason not to pick it up. The game holds options to satisfy every single part of the action fps spectrum. Every single enemy design is used spectacularly, every arena is a fun roller coaster to constantly position and shoot at enemies from, and the continuous aggression leads to a nonstop thrill. Weapons have great utility and distinct use between each other, and your movement toolkit is especially impressive with dash jump, slide jumps, and combining those two to get a pseudo-bunnyhop

And in a genre rife with really bad bosses, Ultrakill manages to even break that expectation, grinding it into dust as it takes cues out of the best bosses of other games and combines them into incredible encounters. A couple bosses in particular remind me heavily of Vergil, down to somewhat similar uses of attacks.

It's definitely the best FPS that's come out this year, even if it's not exactly finished. I'll have a lot more to say and analyze when Act 2 and 3 release, but for now I can't recommend Ultrakill enough.

Stormblood really pisses me off. It's not like it's one of the most frustrating games or anything, or even that it's bad. It's just that it does so much to destroy any ounce of its potential and the interesting themes it brings up to the story, drowning its legitimately engaging writing of how rebellion divides and changes the common folk in a sea of garbage filler, uninteresting characters, and continuous fucking about.

In short, Stormblood is basically A Realm Reborn 2 in all its flaws reincarnated, but now more infuriating from a critical lens because there's wayyyyy more interesting potential beneath. There was so much that Stormblood could've been that I went to practically fanfiction levels of script doctoring, seeing how its themes could've been made interesting with characters that were actually developed.

Granted, the majority of these issues do go away in the patch content, just like ARR's Before the Fall. But it's still at the forefront of my mind that the quest design for Stormblood base generally ends up having a lot of FIVE BACK TO BACK FETCH QUESTS THAT DEVELOP NOTHING even as I finish up the last couple quests in 4.x. Whoever was in charge of making the design for quests I hope never gets put in that position again.

This sounds excessively negative, but I wanted to get that vent out primarily to refocus then on why I think stormblood, at the least, is still good and a solid worthy time investment. Kind of a weird sell after all that crap, but there is a slew of amazing stuff especially in the patch content. For one, rotations for your job classes are extensively interesting now, and solo duties now start to get downright challenging if at the least requiring your attention. Dungeons and raids are the best they've ever been too, with especially the Omega raid questline being absolute nonstop raw energy.

One of my favorite instances is Alphascape 3.0, where the boss tested crazy spatial awareness by having a difficult to read attack that depended on its position right before it turns around and does another 50/50 read you have to be on high alert for. The alliance raid also again has no shortage of spectacle, especially with the FFT/XII fanservice. The story of it is absolute trash though idk what happened there. And while I haven't been able to do them, just from what I've researched and the hours I've spent watching them, the Ultimate raids are absolute peak mmo gameplay. Incredible tests of rotational skill, mechanic knowledge, and potentially some of the best team gameplay I've ever seen.

The music and aesthetic is also still incredible, although they kill the motif to death more than they ever have before to where I don't want to ever hear the regular battle theme or stick around in rhalgr's reach. But holy hell is the Steppe and Doma just wonderful places to explore. There's also a good amount of worldbuilding in certain areas that really engage me in (you know, when they're not making you do a bunch of dumb filler).

One last thing that needs to be said is how strong the patch content story gets, with solid characterization and emotional moments that now I'm extensively excited for Shadowbringers. Just thinking about the amazing cutscenes in 4.5 really have my blood running. Hopefully that faith isn't destroyed, but I'm led to believe it won't be.

Overall, Stormblood definitely is a hill to climb up to to a large extent, but thanks to the best gameplay in the mmo so far, and a patch content story that saves it, plus its general aesthetical leanings, it became a solid game to play through.

Fuck Zenos though. Why the hell do people like Zenos, he's worse than Gaius, hell maybe one of the worst FF villains in general.