a deeply upsetting experience. perfectly captures the feeling of bitter nostalgia - reminiscing over awful times. there are stories in this that are so beautiful it's absolutely insane.

could easily see this in 5 stars but i'm not sure how i feel about the way this game treats death. the core message feels like it's about accepting death, but it falls into a kinda common trope i see where the deaths are pointless and preventable. this isn't a huge fault but it does make me like the game a bit less. high recommendation though.

Fallout 3 is an easy game to make fun of and definitely is abundant with issues. Even at release, people had a grievance with the questionable writing particularly with the main quest's end game content.

Regardless, I can't help but have a soft spot for this game. It was one of the first PC games I played after getting my first real gaming PC and downloading Steam. It has a fair amount of fun quests, like the Wasteland Survival Guide, finding the Declaration of Independence along with other historical artifacts in the DC ruins, and the whole Tranquility Lane sequence. It also incorporated the turn-based aspect of the original 2 Fallout games in a creative way with the whole VATS system, which I think serves to really improve the game's combat considering its wonky shooting mechanics.

Something about this game is just super addictive to me. It's easy for me to spend hours and hours in this world exploring and solving quests for its inhabitants. Clearly Bethesda did something right here, because they did save this franchise. It's just a shame they had to go and ruin it themselves later.

Also here's a quick rundown on the DLCs:

Operation Anchorage: Okay I guess. Short enough that it doesn't overstay its welcome even though it's basically just a Call of Duty mission. Plus you get good loot out of it.

The Pitt: Surprisingly great, with some genuinely interesting moral choices to make.

Broken Steel: Objectively the best one since it fixes most of the issues with the original ending, increases your level cap, and adds a fair amount of new content.

Point Lookout: Second best one, even though I think it's stupid that they artificially increased the difficulty with how damage works with the enemies here. Has a fun main questline along with some cool side quests.

Mothership Zeta: Absolute trash. A boring, excessively long corridor shooter with damage sponge enemies and has no RPG elements to it at all.

Alright, strap in. I have a lot to say.

Let's get the elephant out of the room before I actually talk about this game. I am going to bring up issues I have with the game's art direction later on but none of that has to do with how sexualized the character designs are. I am fine with all of those other characters you want to use as a counterargument. That is not the core of my issue with this game, but before I get into that, I'll talk about what I DO like because I do still like this game.

I think on a graphical level, the game looks amazing. It runs consistently well and has been thoroughly play-tested which I shouldn't have to appreciate, but most great games usually have at least some small level of bugginess that this game does not have. Additionally, on this aesthetic front, I love the game's soundtrack, probably one of the year's standouts alongside Rebirth and Prince of Persia. I also think the linear and open-world missions in the game are, for the most part, quite fun! There are some survival horror-type missions that I found particularly memorable, even if they clash really hard with the rest of the game, but we're not there yet!

But the place where I have the hugest amount of praise for this game is its combat and enemy encounters. I'm gonna talk more about the game's "identity" later but this is where Stellar Blade's identity is strongest as it can't really be put in any camp for these 3D hack-and-slash games. It's not slow-paced and deliberate like a souls-like, but it's not super quick and combo-heavy like a DMC or a Bayonetta. The combat feels like a good mix of light comboing, really nice feeling parries, strong finishers, and a good amount of diversity in the way that you can approach combat. The enemies and bosses are also very well-designed and super difficult. The game shines brightest when focused on its great combat and there is a sequence near the end that works well for this game. It's great!

The game for the most part is really fun, super polished, and not particularly painful to go through. If someone might not have some of the same issues I do later on in this review, then I can see someone loving this game to pieces. But.. I have some SERIOUS issues with this game.

Starting off is the one that everyone, even the people who like the game is bringing up. On a narrative front, Stellar Blade is an absolute mess. The game's script is written so awkwardly, almost like it was machine-translated rather than actually localized. The dialogue is super awkwardly written and some moments in the side missions just feel kind of... embarrassing? The story setup is mildly interesting (until you notice something I'll bring up later), but the story's themes are barely explored apart from naming conventions and a couple of moments at the beginning and end.

The narrative didn't even need to be particularly deep or anything. Bayonetta and DMC games don't have deep stories, but A, they're not really trying to, and B, they do have a memorable cast with personalities at least. When I heard from reviews that Stellar Blade's cast isn't the strongest out there, what I DIDN'T expect to find was the most emotionless and barebones main character this side of The Callisto Protocol.

Eve is such a remarkably bland character, lacking a single actual personality trait. They try to develop Eve in a couple of ways regarding her ambiguous relationship with Tachy, who is also boring and has no character and then dies. They do a scene with this relationship in particular near the end of the game and it just felt so stilted and not super earned. But surely the other characters are better, right? I mean... I guess so? Lily at least has.. a personality and Adam, as boring as he is, at least has some interesting things happen with them later on, but the character writing is so incredibly weak in this game and the voice acting, both in Korean and English only makes it worse.

Okay, so that's the narrative stuff out of the way, what's that other major problem I have with the game that I've been edging you out of? This game does not have a fucking identity. I've been trying my best to hold back on comparing this game to NieR Automata up to this point, because I wanted to judge this game on its own, but it's so blatantly apparent just HOW MUCH of this game was derived from it. You play as a sexy android lady from a space base and are sent down to get rid of all of the bad guys that took over the Earth. You run around a semi-open world with a little drone that follows you around everywhere and talks to you. The game goes into detail on who the guys you are fighting and who you're working for REALLY ARE and there are themes of Identity and Religion and Life. The main character is very stoic and emotionless, but unlike 2B, here it's because they aren't written to have one. Hell, there are characters named Adam and Eve IN NIER AUTOMATA.

I know this all seems super surface level, but these comparisons wouldn't be such a huge problem if they had a super strong identity on their own and it really REALLY doesn't. The most distinctive thing about this game is that you're fighting Semi-religious gross penis monsters called Naytiba instead of robots. But that feels more like it clashes with the game's sci-fi aesthetic more than anything. Speaking of clashing, the character designs don't even really feel like they belong in the same game, most notably when you compare Eve, Lily, and Adam's designs. And they are the main 3 characters of the whole game. And most of the side characters don't even have faces, which is super weird? Why does the hairdresser have no hair? What are we doing here?

This also extends to the locations, Xion just feels like a pretty generic post-apocalyptic world. Half the time, in these linear missions, you fight in ruined cities and sewers and the two semi-open world areas you get are both bare empty deserts. I know asking for visual variety in a post-apocalyptic game is asking the wrong questions, but maybe have at least one of the open-world areas not be a desert??

All of these things combined, the art style clash between the different characters, friend, and foe, in this game, the super generic areas, the basic and derivative story, the lack of any characters with more than one personality trait, and the themes it doesn't touch on very much at all, leads to a game that doesn't really have an identity of its own. Hell, even though I love the music, it sounds very much like NieR music. The game's identity shines brightest in its combat, in its missions, in its boss encounters, and in one section near the end of the game that I thought was actually excellent.

This is clearly a talented team and the fact they were able to make a big console game this good on their first try is astounding. I can only hope their next game has more of a unique identity.

TLDR; The game is well-polished, has some great music, some decently fun linear and open world missions, and some exceptional combat and boss fights, but the character designs clash super hard with each other, the environments don't feel distinct, the story and character writing are incredibly bad, and the game just doesn't have a strong identity outside of copying NieR Automata's homework.

Here is a list of every single joke review I considered making:
Shellden Ring
Floodborne
Dark Shoals
Lies of Sea
Black Myth Dugong
Shellkiro: Shallows Rise Twice
Coral Shell

I couldn't pick one.

Anyway, weird how the funny-ass crab game is the best soulslike ever made that wasn't made by fromsoft. A fun art direction, a surprisingly good story, a really cool shell mechanic, and some very strong boss encounters. It's certainly lacking polish in a few areas and the music is occasionally quite bad, but I had a really REALLY good time with this game!

I can't think of the last time I played a game where I mulled over its themes like this one. I do this all the time for great movies (I did this for The Zone of Interest a couple of months ago), but I don't think I've seen a story come out of a game that fully utilized its medium and was so artistically unique, quite like this one. It throws a LOT at the wall, and while not all of it sticks gameplay-wise, I still recommend people try this out. It's short (almost too short), cheap, and it'll gnaw at your brain hours after beating it.

Don't mistake me. This is a HIGH 7, and don't be surprised if it's bumped up by the end of the year, as I can only see myself appreciating this game more from here.

Shadow Warrior 3 has a fairly competent foundation, thanks in part to imitating the speed and style of something like Doom Eternal. Its even got the beauty and soundtrack to boot (even if music was a little hard to hear at times). However, there's a surprising amount holding this game back from becoming something more.

Perhaps the biggest issue of all for me is the game's pacing. Where something like Doom Eternal sprinkles rewards down its side paths to encourage exploration and includes plenty of fights in between its big arenas, Shadow Warrior 3 does away with any of the in-between content in favor of a mostly linear FPS. This could work in some instances, but what you get here is a game that's arena of enemies, followed by parkour section, followed by arena of enemies, followed by arena of enemies, fol- you get the idea.

This results in the game feeling like, outside of cutscenes, it never takes a moment to let the character breathe. It's all just this nonstop train that needs grand battles or crazy parkour sections constantly. It feels awesome at first, but after the first hour you feel yourself almost wanting to catch your breath.

It also causes the game to feel much longer than it actually is. I put in about 5 hours to complete the story, but I came away surprised I hadn't gone past 10. By the end, any hit of dopamine felt muted as I just kinda wanted it to be over.

The other major issue is in the upgrade system which, for most upgrades, feels niche. Stuff like the Riot Gun's full auto and removal of reload feels essential, but buffing explosive barrels and traps feels pretty niche. I can count the amount of times I though Chi-Blast would be useful on one hand.

Still, credit where it's due that it does manage to make things feel visceral. The twist on glory kills with power weapons you can get off finished enemies is a great choice, and the grander traps being able to deal with many enemies at once was nice.

Overall though, Shadow Warrior 3 feels like one of those shooters I'm going to forget most of now that I've concluded. It's a roller coaster that has some interesting thrills, but ultimately uses a few way too often.

P.S. I hope I never have to hear Hoji's voice ever again. My poor ears can't handle it.