This was the perfect game to barrel through and consume during the pandemic but now in hindsight it's only halfway to being as good as other entries in Animal Crossing - particularly New Leaf on the 3DS which is still unmatched. The striped back launch and roll out of content to it being "complete" were so painful in real time. New features were great but the town's or Island's felt incomplete, and the well of content to draw from was so deep but Nintendo's bucket had a gaping hole in it. Even though it came at the perfect time to explode into popularity the vision for this game was decidedly less ambitious and couldn't anticipate we'd all go feral paying off debts to a talking raccoon. Hopefully the next game can be the equivalent of the Ultimate of Smash, or the not so on the nose Infinity of Mario Kart 8.

This was really special for the very well done personal stories and small moments brought to life. With just simple outlines and shapes of people it's more expressive and personal feeling than other games that try to immerse and connect you to people and places (the quality of the voice acting is great too.) Could it have gone deeper and further 100% but what's here is really quite charming in its simplicity, and I got a better sense of every person on this space station than a LOT of other games. I was rooting for everyone pretty much the entire time. Mileage on this will vary depending on how much you explore, read, and understand events through these actions. I should've jumped into Tacoma space station years ago but I'm glad I finally took the time to go on this little journey. Happy for you ODIN.

It's hard to play this and not think the best of it on pretty much every front for what it wants to achieve by the end. Horror without player intervention has never really worked for me but the designs and world were enough to grip me. Most faults are proped up by something immediately more interesting from the eerie soundtrack and deep water visuals to the script and story that plays out as you progress. I had some minor issues but they're really minor. I'm really not sure what changed with Frictional Games going into this and leaving it but this is the best they've done. While the Amnesia series generally has more interactivity and gameplay the story and writing in the more recent entries has significantly less legs than Soma's closed loop story (though I think it could go beyond this great game.)

A good few hours too long with two enemy types that don't land at all really set this up for abject failure on the horror front. But I can't say it was all disappointing because of the third omnipresent "enemy" which anchors this game in both nostalgia and quality to Amnesia The Dark Descent. Everything good about what's here is in part due to the groundwork done in that first Amnesia game - with some obvious assets from Soma and lessons learned in the writing it comes across as a more personal story which tries to attach you to events through your Amnesia to, at times, greater success than any other Amnesia (particularly A Machine for Pigs.) Too much emphasis on your passenger gives the game away on what's going on with the protagonist Tasi. Other aspects like her experience with loss and recalling what happened to her and her companions is very strong and I felt for her along the way in those moments. While at times the more personal story is told in awkward dream sequences, for the most part it did well enough to keep me going - some loading screens are better than hours of onscreen story. So while I wasn't as concerned as Tasi in the present the source of her Amnesia kept me somewhat intrigued till the end about her past.

Atmosphere, sound, music, and presentation are all great here and I'd say better than the Dark Descent. Even the writing (as much as it spews the themes) is good and I'd say an improvement that ends far better and is paced better too. The trade off is it's much more linear and lacking in complexity in the gameplay so no sanity or inventory management. When it comes to "enemy encounters" they're serviceable at best but they lack punch. The real horror comes from the well constructed tension and air that the machinery around you is alive and ominously waits for you to press on. And you will it's very hard to pull yourself away when death lingers but doesn't entirely threaten you because the gameplay isn't constructed to make you feel threatened directly. It feels like the best game of the series in most ways but the gameplay is too lacking and striped back to make it really special.

Terrible story, decent gameplay, excellent music, and some spectacular bosses and cutscenes. 30 hours too long and a convenient plot drag this down so much. It was down hill from the moment I met my dog, childhood friend, and a way out of slavery within 5 minutes just so convenient. The cast has more character outside of the game than inside it. Ben Starr as Clive could be amazing if the script used him and his supporting characters to any great effect. Sometimes it felt like Jill had less lines than the dog, and even less plot relevance. The VA work is not as great as its been lauded to be it can try talk and look like GoT (sometimes) but the moment to moment conversations and pace is awful. So many unnecessary pauses for dramatic effect and it being in English doesn't make it better. The combat is fine I expected better from Devil May Cry 5 lineage there's not much complexity here, plus it being tied to an FF game, not having party members to switch to means by the 15 hour mark the Clive experience is pretty wrung out. Basic combos, and the even more basic (but flashy) ability system work for a time but I'm almost always more interested in what bosses are doing than me, I'd rather play as a coeurl or an Iron Giant anything with more options and control. That spectacle from bosses is what's most enticing about the game and kept me going but for the story and plot development, being dragged by the threat of a dominant and its corresponding Crystal is a massive waste. Even if those fights and setpieces are great in the moment it doesn't add to the diminishing returns and vapid nature of the narrative. I cannot drive home enough how little of what happens in the game in terms of the story is good. From the slavery concepts to Game of Thrones-ification of some elements its all wasted and cumbersome after the initial 2 hours, so if you've played the demo maybe stop with that good memory in mind. I'd love to see this gameplay further developed in a game with a good story and engaging cast of characters but I'll not hold my breath. I hope for a better FF game much like I did when Final Fantasy 15 came and went but it's looking more and more unlikely. I can only be thankful there are plenty RPGs with much better stories than this even in 2023.

This game has a lot of sauce but it’s not Disco Elysium sauce like I was led to believe. Some QoL stuff on PC with clicking forwarding text was really annoying when I wanted to interact with important terms and names it’s a lot in a game full of text. The story structure is great but I don’t think the character backgrounds are used to a great effect per playthrough though they add flavour initially. I loved the art style and use of it in the acts that have more classical literature and biblical text use that break up the narrative nicely I think it needed a lot more of this - Andreas’ mind palace was great and the use of the Aeneid was good but this game begs for more of this. The greatest touch in the medium is the use of correcting/updating the story via font/text types for characters and how the use of the pen written stuff is used to express emotion it’s really amazing stuff I don’t see in other games for example rough and ink dripped text can express anger or volume. I want more from Pentiment or this world/style but the story closes really neatly worth every hour spent.

As my first entry into the Amnesia series I'm aware this direction is completely different and may not be for fans of the series since it has combat and has a more Resident Evil design. But I loved it for the 5 hours I put in it. Not as scary as I'd hoped this was lost within the first hour but it kept tension up most of the time. It wasn't too challenging for me on Normal I fairly quickly had an abundance of resources which felt good. Since there's no penalty on the players part for being in the dark (no mental health stuff) It felt infinitely more rewarding for me to smartly play in the dark at most if not all times, avoiding using everything. While this meant I only used some of the systems at play here I didn't feel I was missing out so combat was limited until the final act for me, a wise choice when every ammunition box is limited to one bullet I feel. I hoped for more and a better/longer structure into the final act but It held me completely for 5 hours. It's put Amnesia on the map for me and I'll be trying out more of Frictional games work because of this!

Good pace, great music, great animation, some decent puzzles and platforming segments. Doesn't outstay its welcome, and has a story that isn't overly obscure and difficult to follow in the "lore" aspect. Unlike other games that I'd compare it to like Inside, Limbo, Journey, and Abzu. Makes great use of colour and scale but maybe doesn't focus on it's best areas artistically the opening chapters are by far the most breath taking. It's an Indie game worth seeing to the end like most 2D platformers you can compare it to.

This is a good game worth playing for many different reasons, It being a Zelda game is not one of those. Much like my thoughts on the predecessor BotW (which incidentally you should play first otherwise you won't want to after TotK), it's an enticing and wonderful open world game wrapped around one of the worst Zelda's in terms of story, combat, abilities, and dungeons, which follows my thoughts on BotW 1:1 albeit slightly better in the story. Since this criticism of mine of BotW extends to TotK, clearly nothing has changed enough in the six years it's been since that 2017 release of BotW for me. What's here in the sequel is yet another of the weakest 3D Zeldas in the 4 core aspects of the game; story, combat, abilities, and dungeons. Things that always orbit the exploration and discovery the series is known for and most importantly these two games have perfected. While that exploration remains here as strongly as it was in BotW - it cannot be overstated how little some things have improved or changed from then to it's direct sequel here. Link, the not so titular protagonist, plays and moves the exact same which I really did not like the first time around in Hyrule (seeing it unchanged is insane), his basic movement in combat, and exploration is not good. Slowly struggling to grab onto a surface while awkwardly titling your glider, and dealing with the hangups of the flow of combat like the flurry rush not working and awkward fighting/dodging ensuing. Again all of this I didn't like at all in BotW and was fundamentally broken like the flurry rush. Considering this is the series that invented Z targeting all the way back in Ocarina of Time, I expected some significant improvements to the game feel of Link. Beyond this there's many more issues for me notably in the optional content specifically the Shrines. Out of the 152 I've made my way through to completion I can think of less than 20 that I enjoyed. Even less that explore a puzzle concept more than once with added depth. I don't like these bite sized rooms because they don't do anything that interesting - they're best when they scratch your brain to think outside of the box like some of the combat shrines. Most importantly out of these 152 shrines 46 (that I've kept track of) were shrine blessings - essentially for free, and 13 were tutorial shrines (possibly more I'm not thinking of.) Which means, in reality, less than 100 of these are Shrines in the sense you complete a small puzzle or battle and move on to a reward. While this was true for BotW (sadly) - I've already done it once and I was sick of it there too, it's much the same here with little change in complexity, and the fatigue remains. Side content in terms of koroks is also bland and are similarly unchanged, with a lackluster reward process of an extra item slot. Hudson signs are another "collectathon" addition which I didn't mind since they make you engage with your ultrahand better than the shrines do but not by much, certainly not enough to do 82 of them. Actual quests this time however are better than BotW - but again this is let down by more collectathons which out stay their welcome. The main content of the game is the dungeons (temples) which I was very disappointed in after expecting a lot of improvements from BotW's Divine Beasts - it's again a mixed bag but with some that are worse than the Divine Beast's and some that are marginally better. For TotK this criticism sticks more for two reasons; This is a direct sequel which had strong criticism on Dungeon's, and these dungeons or Temple's are trying to emulate those found in classic 3D Zelda games - They feel a lot less unique than the divine beasts did. They fail on both counts for me with only one of them forcing the player to engage with the dungeon's layout and map without being able to break it - the Gerudo Temple. I could talk at much further length why this game fails but these are the points on the critical path to me for improvement from BotW > TotK. Which this game simply has refused to do so it's unfortunately again a good open world game in a pretty mediocre Zelda game. It's also strange to me there's maybe less than 12 unique sky islands - was expecting a lot more from this. Then finding out there's an underground area that's 70% just empty space did not help. Everything people love about this game I mostly love too from the creativity available to the player to small things that have changed in the world in this sequel. I just don't think it's amazing despite it's flaws, I think it's only decent because of these flaws - some legacy issues from BotW some entirely new ones created for this game like having to chase around your abilities to use them (and the lack of utility 3 of them have) or having to manually attach fuse materials to your arrows. If this is your first Zelda I would strongly recommend playing previous entries to get a better idea of how bad a lot of the content is here in comparison from puzzles and dungeons, to the story and writing it hasn't been much worse than this other than Breath of the Wild, and here comes Tears of the Kingdom which has totally failed to improve upon the core problems with that entry so this is unfortunately a weak sequel.