I really wanted to like it more, and it's objectively it's a high quality game with excellent visuals... Just not really my thing. A death by 100 cuts situation. The story was kinda interesting... but a LOT of it is delivered through audio logs or holograms you have to stand around during gameplay to watch, and I didn't find many of the characters outside of Aloy very entertaining. The gameplay is solid, but I didn't like how restricted movement felt. Specifically the restrictions on climbing locations felt very at odds with the game a lot of times. I could go on.
The sequel looks like it improves most of this, so hopefully it's something I can be more on board with!

Gameplay is fantastic and a great improvement over the first, I love the parkour systems and the combat is simple but satisfying. The main character's voiceover is also insanely good, I was shocked at multiple points. The story starts good to fine and slowly devolves into the worst video game story I've played in recent memory. The last 4 or so missions are a mess on every level, featuring the worst story beats, the most confined and unfun areas, and a ton of glitches (the game nearly crashed on me 3 times at least before finally doing so in the credits). I was a champion of the first, so it's a bummer to see this one turn out like this... not outright bad but has a lot of issues.

It's basically the same game with all of the rough edges sanded off. Limited climbing and traversal options? Now there are plenty of them. Uneven dialogue? It's universally been improved, especially in side quests! Speaking of side quests? They're actually worth doing now, crazy! Unfortunately I still really dislike the lore and world, but at least it's beautiful and well designed. I have more minor gripes, but all in all I'd like to see a bit more ambition out of the next one, and that said I enjoyed it enough to play it all the way through and would be interested in another.

The Mysterious trilogy is my least favorite Atelier trilogy. I found the casts a tad bland and it just generally felt like a weird in-between period for the series where Gust games were having some growing pains, especially after the fantastic Dusk trilogy. When I heard Sophie would be getting a sequel, I was cautiously optimistic at their second chance with the main character, and the premise sounded interesting.

Well, I'm happy to say that I finally liked a Mysterious game! The characters especially are crazy good, I loved all of them, but especially the younger Plachta was much more interesting than I ever found Plachta herself. The turn based battles are fun and snappy, and there is a lot more care and variety put into every aspect of the game. I think some of the late game is a bit strangely balanced and it definitely feels like they pointed the game in a more Ryza-ish straight up JRPG direction, I'd like to see a liiiittle bit more of a return to the daily life shenanigans that the series used to frequent.

But overall this is definitely a top 5 in the series for me, maybe my new favorite! Maybe a Dusk sequel next? Please?

This game has some issues don't get me wrong, but overall I'd say it's getting slightly more of a bad rap than it deserves; I would consider this one of the better Mario Kart clones.

It's fun to play and the amount of content without even having to touch the microtransaction weirdness is not too bad. It has a decent lineup of characters, a nice cute story mode that doesn't outstay its welcome, a decent selection of modes in general... I also really like some small quality of life things, like the quick respawning of items during races. I played a little of the GP mode and although it was slightly slow to matchmake, it seemed to run and work well enough, and the premise of the mode is neat.

Unfortunately the item stun time is unacceptably long, if it was half as long it would be a vast improvement. And of course, the weird battle pass thing they're going with... I don't even think in itself it's horribly bad, but the way the menus present it as if it's a mobile game trying to juice you is a good chunk of the problem, and the fact that it will probably be dead fairly quickly at this rate will also create issues. I also don't think you level fast enough from my small experience, but I cannot say that definitively.

I could say more, but overall a pretty decent game with some flaws, I like it and will probably stick it out for awhile without spending anything, maybe see where it goes. Maybe they'll see the hubbub and fix it.... hopefully lol.

A moderately interesting but easily skippable little extra. Though I guess it's free so I can't complain too hard.

Presentation is pretty nice and has a couple really cool effects, and there are some (very) light gameplay elements to keep things from dragging. It also has some choices to be made, but they make minimal to no difference in the end aside from different dialogue (I guess it kinda adds replay value....?). Unfortunately, it is very short, so there is no real time to build any connection to the characters. It sets up some small points of interest for the full game, but they're mostly done in 3 text boxes, so there isn't much intrigue to build on either... It leaves this "prelude" feeling a bit empty. It's also very unpolished and feels thrown together, at times the transitions seem to hang a bit, the portraits are pretty inconsistent, and there are no basic features like a log. It would have also helped to have full voice acting, but the short voice clips are better than nothing.

I kinda enjoyed it I guess, here's hoping the full game is good.

The definition of a game that is more than the sum of its parts. I liked it a lot, but it isn't perfect.

Through the memes and the advertising, I think the thing I was most caught off-guard by was the story, it was legitimately really good I felt, and the datalogs were really interesting. The last couple chapters in particular really pop off.

Gameplay is really solid and fun, and has a really good implementation of the job system that encourages a lot of experimentation. On Action difficulty you will focus on figuring out how to run a train on enemies and counter their attacks, which I enjoyed. The Soul Shield parry is really great as well.

Unfortunately, the levels are fairly linear, and with the wiggle room you are given it is very easy to get lost since there's no map, very little landmarking, and a lot of reused assets and textures. The game pulls levels (or inspiration from levels) from across the series and while I was impressed with some of the more eclectic choices, there are just too many damn ruins and dark caves. The game is also just generally super dark and I couldn't find a way to balance my settings perfectly.

I think the general presentation is where the game really falters. There are many cutscenes that feel like the patched in FFXV cutscenes that just look weird and unfinished to the point where I wonder if there were significant additions to the story late in dev. The beginning also feels weirdly rushed. Meanwhile, normal cutscenes look great luckily, and have proper lip sync. The music is pretty good too!

But the biggest visual issues comes in the form of the display modes in gameplay. Most of the time when a dev offers these it is something to be admired, but there is really no winning here, all of them are bad for one reason or another. I found Resolution to be the lesser of two evils because it isn't as much of a blurry smeared mess and mostly hits 60fps, but just be aware of the drops when things get chaotic.

Overall I could see this ranking pretty high for me this year, again I loved the story and the action gameplay was fun, but just don't expect a perfect polished experience.