A good art style and interesting use of Resident Evil-like puzzles isn't enough to salvage what's otherwise an well below average metroidvania.

The animations are terrible, the movement is generic, combat is boring, exploration is standard, additional abilities aren't interesting, the story is kind of a mess, the soundtrack is forgettable...

Really, the only reason this isn't flat out the worst I've played is because this game really does make a great use of Lovecraftian aesthetics and I loved the idea of incorporating puzzles in a metroidvania. Because otherwise this game is just... One of the games ever made. It isn't even outright bad, it's just perfectly mediocre.

It's really impressive what they accomplished in 2012. The game takes into account player agency in a way a lot of modern RPGs don't. It's also one of the few games that took inspiration from Demon's Souls, but didn't just copied mechanics 1:1. The online component is an unique take on players helping each other asynchronously, something we only saw again in 2020 with Death Stranding.

Gameplay is fun. A bit of a thoughtless hack'n slash where the gear matters more than skill. It starts off really hard and with the heavy "wait and punish" combat, but by the end it allows for some ridiculously overpowered skill combinations. I might be tempted to say that it "didn't aged well", but fuck it, I still enjoyed it far more than a lot of modern titles. It's fun, that's something Capcom always put in their list of priorities even in their bad games.

The attention to detail is quite impressive at times, like making heavier characters activate pressure plates faster and taller ones having more reach in melee weapons. The oil lamp goes out if you roll in the water. Metal conducts electricity so every armored enemy is a walking "please thunder magick me" sign. There's one quest that allows you to forge the delivery item and "complete" the quest twice by delivering it to both people who want it. It doesn't actually change events later, which is a shame, but these things make the game more memorable by itself.

Sadly, the story is a trainwreck. Starts off fine and honestly stays at mostly "OK fodder" throughout its play time, but the ending throws it all away. It's clearly not a narrative-focused game, yet the ending tries to pretend it is and... It doesn't pull off gracefully. At all. It's so messy that it makes me wonder if the second game will just quietly never acknowledge the events of the first game, or will "reboot" it entirely but this time trying to flesh it out.

Dragon's Dogma is a great game, but also visibly an incomplete one. It's a game where you can see the signs of "crap, we've blown the entire budget. Wrap it up and release it NOW", a sign that is depressively common in the gaming industry. It's still a good game on it's own right and worth playing it, but clearly doesn't reach its full potential.

Did you ever said or though that modern games are too handhold-y? Did you wished for puzzles that treat you like an adult and not a toddler? If so, you're legally complied to play this game.

If I were to be fully objective about it, the game's around 4 stars, but it gets full marks from me for having such a strong design and sticking to their guns. It's an old-school dungeon crawler/RPG with "outdated" controls (which are still fun if I'm being honest) and an amazing level design.

I mean, let me just end this review with an personal anecdote so that you understand what kind of game this is, and why I love it so much:

I was walking around a dungeon and spotted a small button hidden among the stones. It opened up an ambush and a large subsection of the dungeon. At its end I found some loot and a scroll. The scroll is a cypher with things like AR UHU LAM written alonside some symbols. I went back to a part of the dungeon where I remembered using these words. Spent a while theorycrafting and put my guess to work. The gate opened! Inside there were... Three letters. Telling a story. Out of order. After putting these in chronological order and deciphering the sentences into directions, I remembered one place in another biome entirely where this might've been pointing at. I went there, tried the combination, nothing. Then I remembered I needed an additional item to further give context to the instruction and then, BAM. Solved.

Know what was my reward for it?

I got to continue the story.

That wasn't a secret, the game expects you to do all that just to finish it.

I absolutely love this "ur problem, make it work" design. The game isn't afraid to have you stumped. It's not interested in having you LOOK badass, it actively challenges you to beat it. People praise From Software for this kind of design and I kinda agree. But this here? This is the real, unfiltered thing. Because this game isn't just intentionally cryptic in directions, it's also hard as fuck.

This is a gem in the rough, and I wish more games were made with this design in mind. It doesn't need to be AAA 6 billion USD budget titles, but it wish it wasn't something once every 10 years...

It's decent. Combat is interesting and boss design is above average. But it's also painfully generic, like most soulsborne clones. Cheap ambushes at every corner? Check. Breakable floors as gotcha? Check. Shit storytelling? Check. Atrocious scaling with NG+ where enemies grow linearly but you have exponentially diminishing gains? Check. Dexterity build as the best one? Check.

Look, the long and short of it is, if you love Dark Souls, you owe it to yourself to try this one. If you think it's overrated or outright doesn't like, it's not this one that'll change your mind. It does nothing new.

I think this game is the best RPG Bethesda made since Oblivion. There's a catch with that though, people haven't been playing their games for the role-playing ever since Skyrim made everyone collective ignore lore and player agency because it was just so relaxing walking nondescript mountains with Soule's score in the background. Exploration is the key word for everything from Skyrim onwards. People want the "kill -> loot -> explore" cycle and not much else. And for this cycle in specific, Starfield is bad.

That's not to say the game is an underrated gem. For one, it's poorly optimized, no matter how snarky Todd acts about it. It's a game that demands an SSD to run and is composed mostly of loading screens. What the actual fuck Bethesda? The player agency is still no shining beacon either, especially in a year with a behemoth like Baldur's Gate 3, this game feels like a straight line in comparison. But it's noticeably better than Skyrim or Fallout 4. Hell, it's even better than Cyberpunk 2077 in this regard, and this isn't an compliment to Starfield as much as it is a criticism of CDPR for making a linear action/adventure game where everything is dictated by an NPC stuck in your head and not who you roleplay as.

The story itself is actually good. It's one of the few games that makes for good use of time travel and multiverse shenanigans. It's not great, but it's compelling at least.

Building ships is fun, but the controls are clunky as hell and I feel like most people won't care to interact with this system at all. Building outposts is also cool, but the game locks too much behind arbitrary skill point and leveling up is painfully slow in this game.

I mean, I'll just cut this short. It's an painstakingly average game. If you're here for the exploration loop, it's outright bad. If you're in for an WRPG, it's one of Bethesda's best in the last decade. Still doesn't trump Morrowind though, and at this point I feel like they never will.

Backloggd really needs to get their search engine in order. You can't find Tevi in it because it lists all ResidenT EVIl games and never finds this one. You have to reach here from an actual search engine... Anyways, copying my review from Steam:

MASSIVE improvement over Rabi Ribi.

Gameplay is basically more of the same, but even more fluid. You no longer need to manage a "hold button" charge along with another to mash for melee attacks, so that allows for melee combos to become more elaborate as you have less of a mental stack to manage the shots. Ranged combat itself is far better for it too, you can either dump tons of damage at once with multiple charged shots or pace them alongside with the combos (although the target always "unstaggers" after a while). Customization is also huge with sigils, to the point where it kinda becomes a con. Building Sigil loadouts is a double-edged sword where you get to customize a build to perfectly enhance the way you play or cover your shortcoming, but managing the Equip Points can be an boring task when you're juggling which 8p you're dropping to make space for 2 4p or vice-versa.

Boss design is also an huge leap. Unpopular opinion I guess, but bosses in Rabi Ribi weren't that good. They were too much bullet hell and not enough metroidvania. For a genre blender, it was massively unbalanced. This time around though? Perfection. Bosses have (most of the times) reactable patters while also not constantly pissing bullets everywhere. The actual bullet hell segments are left for the fight's climax only, which makes for a much better pacing and challenge. You can also turn the hitbox for it to be always on in bosses which makes the fight far more manageable.

The game isn't easier though. It's still borderline frustrating if you just beeline it to the story's boss and never explore. Hard+ and Inferno is still a gauntlet for the aficionados. Even regular enemies can be your downfall up until the very endgame when you're truly and well overpowered.

And this time around, the story actually makes sense! Because the true ending of Rabi Ribi feels like the dog ending in Silent Hill 2, but instead of being an easter egg you unlock as a fun sideshow, it's the climax to the whole game. In here, story makes sense throughout and the whole just just feels like a coherent story. Art style is also a massive improvement. Prettier HUDs, menus, user interface, backgrounds, character sprites, and more. Plus an amazing OST in boss fights.

Really, Tevi is a hit on all sixes. I have some gripes with how the story doesn't actually come full circle and leaves some questions unanswered, there's a couple of stages where the level design REALLY pissed me off (Verdawn Forest fog map can go ♥♥♥♥ itself), some songs get annoying, the design is far too linear and resistant to skips, but none of these issues drag the overall quality down. Tevi is just consistent all around, showing that even if nothing really "new" is done it can still be enjoyable if it's just polished enough. Lessons were learned, improvements were applied. Can't ask for more from a game that was already good really.

The first thing I gotta say about this game, which I don't see mentioned as often as it should, is that the optimization on display here is mouth-watering. 2023 was home to tons of poorly optimized games and devs using the high requirements as crutches. This here? This should be the gold standard. This game is the first one that puts SSD as a minimum requirement that actually makes it worth it. The "menu" in this game is an independently rendered 3D room with all of the collectibles, upgrades and records laid out, and you physically walk around with your character in it. You can enter this "Mind Palace" at ANY TIME during gameplay and the game NEVER stutters for it. My PC is average at best and I ran the game on medium-specs, having to downgrade to low in some visual-intensive areas, and the game still holds together with high FPS and no stutters. Speaking of graphical qualities, this game on low is much more beautiful than a lot of other modern titles on high. Seriously, I can't praise the optimization work in this game enough.

Onto the other aspects of the game though: Gameplay is overall great. Adding a second protagonist with Saga Anderson was a great call to adding some balance to Alan's excessive brooding-ness. The detective mechanics in her gameplay are amazing, and makes me wish Remedy does an investigation game in the future while improving on this system. Combat is pretty much Resident Evil, but slightly worse. Remedy is STILL insisting on making overly bullet sponge enemies, the kind that would put RE2R zombies to shame, and they don't trust you with resource management and therefore resort to the almost demeaning mechanic of dynamic drops. Are you low on ammo? Enemies start dropping resources and every single box or drawer has ammo in it. Do you save ammo by using the crossbow and/or carefully placing headshots so that you always kill an enemy with the least amount of bullets needed? Have fun opening 5 empty containers in a row. If you want to copy the RE formula, you need to understand why it works. Either reduce the enemy density and health, or make resource management a required skill to play it. This is the major thing holding back an otherwise solid gameplay. My only other complaint is a really personal gripe, but I hate that HUD with a burning passion. Boring, lifeless and generic. You could put that in any other TPS and it wouldn't feel out of place because that thing doesn't have an ounce of personality. For a game with such an strong artistic design in other areas, this HUD feels like a stock option you get off an Unreal Asset Store.

Story is an improvement over the first game, but it still uses the Stephen King's precepts as a crutch too often. I can't say that the story is bad, but it's also not conclusive and entirely depends on Alan Wake 3 if we're ever gonna judge its quality because so far it only runs in circles. (Or a spiral... No context spoiler FTW). The narrative is great. The way it tells the story is compelling, I just hope the actual story in the end is worth all this meandering.

All in all, it's a great game. One of 2023's best. There's still room for improvement though.

I first played this game near release, shortly after playing Quantum Break. Now, I absolutely hate QB, and back then the first hours of Control didn't convinced me it wouldn't be yet another cheap TPS with sponge enemies.

Well, joke's on me because this game is nothing short of amazing. First, the story. They aren't bound the Stephen King precepts of "horror stories can't have explanations" and so they actually do try writing a cohesive supernatural story. The FBC is an organization meant to detect, contain and study the type of events like what happened at Alan Wake. Therefore they HAD to explain it or at least offer a substantiate amount of theories and studies about the thing they deal with.

The story in this game is great, not exactly perfect, but such a step up from everything that came before it that left me pleasantly surprised. Jesse is also an extremely charismatic protagonist. They managed to make a character with quirky/joke-y monologues without her sounding like TikTok zoomer BS like most character in this archetype does. Her reactions are mostly believable, and her story as a survivor of another event much like the one that happens in Alan Wake is intriguing.

Gameplay is also a massive improvement, and it also only falls short of perfection by little. The main problem with Control's combat is Remedy's insistence of making enemies be bullet sponges while dealing ridiculously high amounts of damage to the player. This coupled with a bad health pickup system makes combat sometimes infuriating when it should be awesome. The accessibility options that come with the Ultimate edition do offer a damage resistance option and I feel like the endgame pratically demands that setting to be turned on if you don't want to cheese the health gate mechanic like the Borderlands series.

All in all, this is a really great game, with only minor shortcomings preventing it to be a true masterpiece. It's my favorite Remedy game so far (and yes, that includes AW2).

It's decent, but sometimes far too inconvenient. Like, everything in this game is painfully slow. The menu, the animations, the prompts, buying packs, opening packs...
You pretty much HAVE to be playing the PC version and put Cheat Engine's speedhack to 50 to play it like a normal game. And then it's pretty fun... Until you start buying packs. Then there is no speedhack that improves this slog because not only it's really, really slow and the thing drops duplicates for some reason... I mean more than three copies. And no, you don't get to sell or trade them. They just do into the Bowels of the Cards because you can't have more than three copies in your deck at any time and the game refuses to do anything with these extras. Can't craft cards, can't sell cards, can't trade cards, just press Enter 4 times in a certain rhythm until you finally get the last 3 cards a particular pack is missing... It's maddening.

Also, this thing should be considered an documentary because it perfectly explains the slow powercreep you feel with each campaign. By the time you reach Link Summons even the game breaks and the computer takes upwards of 3 minutes to think of its play and 2 more to execute all the looping Link summons

...it's fun outside of those cases though. It's just that it's REALLY annoying when you have to deal with all this bs. lol

After yearsz living under the shadow of Gran Turismo, I really hoped this would be the breakthrough the series needed. I wasn't a fan of GT7 or Sport, and the promotional material for this game promised a LOT great things... Sadly, it under-delivered a lot of them. The graphics had a Watch Dogs level of downgrade. The game is incredibly buggy. One common bug in particular will make you lose progress in the last race. Car models and sounds are still subpar. The XP system is needlessly grindy and detracts to what would otherwise be a pretty decent tuning system.

The only thing this game got right was controls and physics, but they're meaningless when the rest of the game barely functions. Ditching the number wasn't a fresh start. It was a return to ground zero...