Slightly better version of Risen 2 due to just including more narrative elements from the first game. I still like the Pyranha Bytes formula and you can have a lot of fun questing, but these last two games have just lost a bit of that charm. I feel like the two biggest contributors here are the visual design and the combat. I dislike the cartoony look the series decided to pivot to and I absolutely hate the combat. PB combat up to R1 was nothing to really praise but I didn't active hate it. It was nice and something I was used to. This new style is just awful.

Hogwarts Legacy is quite an odd title, because in theory I like all the elements that the game comprises of, and I had a lot of fun in the first 20 or so hours but then something just snapped and I didn't really see myself wanting to play any more.

The environments are beautifully crafted with the Hogwarts Castle being exceptionally well done. I enjoyed the combat, the story and I think the initial exploration was nicely done. There's definitely love for the universe in this title. The game started running into more issues once the wider world opened up, and it just sadly became a bit of a chore. It's a tiny bit repetitive and the more time I spent in the open world the more I realized that I want to be in the actual castle more than anything else. Once I realized that a bunch of omissions like proper focus on the actual school life became more apparent and the magic was lost for me.

Evoland is such a cool idea, but sadly it never manages to land the execution. It is very charming near the start, but it soon becomes clear that apart from the idea every actual gameplay mechanic you touch during your evolution is incredibly shallow compared to the history it is channeling.

That being said I do find the story of how this game got made and the rise of Shiro Games inspiring. I am glad that Evoland found an audience because from what I have seen they took this idea and polished it a lot in the sequel which I definitely plan to check out!

On many levels, Ys Seven embodies everything a Ys game should be. Coming from Origin I immediately loved the sense of adventure that oozes from this game. It's one of my favourite elements of the series so getting that right is a big bonus. I love traveling the lands, helping people, collecting different items to progress, and upgrading my equipment. The map progression is satisfying along with interesting dungeons and landscapes to explore. There's an epic story about saving the region and as always - a banger soundtrack.

I enjoy the new party-based combat system as well. Ys always has satisfying combat, but it's naturally a bit scary when they switch their style every few games. Now it is nowhere near to being as polished as the two final Napishtim engine games, but it does remind me of Napishtim itself which very similarly had to introduce a new combat style in a new engine. We did sacrifice jumping because flying enemies have to be attacked by specific party members, but the overall feel of picking the right tool for the job is nice and party progression is well handled.

All apart from one aspect - for some reason, the boss fights in Ys Seven are quite poor. I can chalk some of it down to the more hack-and-slashy combat not being as well suited for boss fights (esp since for these you can use any party member freely without having to think about their damage type), but the primary issue here is that for the most part the boss fights themselves just aren't interestingly designed. There might be an exception or two, but for the most part, the phases aren't that interesting and you don't have to think or adapt all that much.

That being said I liked nearly everything else about this game and regard it quite fondly. I am interested to see how this party-based combat system evolves moving forward and whether we can see another jump in quality akin to the one between Napishtim and Felghana.

Yakuza 5 is probably the most conflicted I have ever been about a game in this series. It excels at so many things and yet there's an almost equal amount of stuff I wish were done better. I'm torn to the point that you could tell me Yakuza 5 is either your favorite entry in the series or the worst one and I would probably see some merit in both views - for me it ends up somewhere in the middle.

It continues what Y4 did with the multiple protagonists and I am still not sure I like this approach. In my opinion they did not end up cracking the code to satisfying multi-protagonist progression / story until Yakuza 0 which came a few years afterwards. This large cast creates a problem with progression since you only get a limited amount of playtime with each character which means levelling is happening at supersonic speed making you an instant powerhouse and then you are forced to start all over again as you switch to a different character. In Y4 each character got around 7 hours of playtime which made it all feel comically fast, while in this one I clocked out at around 10-15. It feels a little better, but by improving one aspect the entire game as a whole started to drag for me. It's not necessarily the length itself, but rather the structure. This approach itself is very difficult to get right, but the feeling of slowness is likely made worse by the main narrative.

In Y4 the main narrative between each of the protagonists was closely intertwined with reveals that keep up a constant level of tension; Y5 acts more like a collection of short stories following the lives of each of our characters, but it is frequently undermined by forcefully inserting points of an overarching story that seems like it has no place in the narrative or reason to exist there apart from "well there has to be some connective tissue". Due to the insistence of all that being there, the personal stories feel a bit unfocused and drag more than they should. It is a shame because the individual tales are really well done. Not only are they interesting, but they are actively supported by all the side content both narratively and gameplay wise.

Something that really works well with that is the addition of Side-Stories, which are a collection of optional tasks, minigames that tie into the journey of your character and are far more robust than substories. Kiryu is trying to hide so he becomes a taxi driver with a fake name. There is actual driving, street races, contained narrative and a separate progression just for that job. Saejima gets stranded in a village during winter and has to learn hunting which comes with a proper system for all that where you out on hunts, and fulfil requests of villagers while trying to uncover a local spooky folk tale mystery. Haruka is an idol, and her entire Side Story is about going on talk shows, dancing, battling rival dancers etc. All of this is the heart of Yakuza 5 and is what makes the game special. I know I come across as really negative up above, but it is only because I feel like if the developers had chosen to go all in with this individual journey approach this could have been something truly magnificent. I understand some of the desire to have it all be connected by a more traditional 'Yakuza' story, but I think that would have worked much better if it was perhaps condensed to a single character and tied to their journey instead of forcing it on every single one of them.

So yeah there are things I hate about this game, there are things I love about this game, but in the end it just wore me down.

Origin is an interesting entry in the Ys series, as it drops many qualities that I would generally expect from one. The biggest one is that instead of an adventure, we get a straight-up dungeon crawl exploring the tower from the first game. There are various biomes, although I still ended up missing some variety. The game also has to be completed 2-3 times to get to the canon ending with most of the layouts remaining the same - something I am also not a big fan of. It is quite short as is and I feel like making the paths more unique would have added a lot to the experience. The saving grace here is that the combat is damn solid. Very similar to Felghana, but just a tiny bit tighter. It just feels really good to play. It was nice learning more about the lore of Ys as well and getting to beat different incarnations of all the bosses from the original game was very fun. Not fun enough to be in contention for my favorites in the series, but a damn good game regardless.