so i feel like i have to justify my rating to this game because everyone always questions it.

so breath of the wild. "the definitive open world experience."

so some positives before i shit all over this game. the art style is nice, looking at the large empty fields of this game is made more tolerable by the nice artstyle. you have a lot of choices in how you approach situations, which is always great. anyway,

the fact that you have this option means nothing when the most viable option is almost ALWAYS to do it normally. sure, there's a lot of imagination you can have but the problem with not building scenarios out of imagination itself rather than leaving them open, is that you really don't encourage people to take the time to do something interesting when it's always a blank slate with the most convenient option is to do the same exact shit every time. i see people compare this game to mgs V all the time and i dont really think thats fair, because in mgs V the worst option is almost always the most convenient and easy to think of one, actively making you think "ok how could i creatively do this faster."

the open world is extremely empty, with the only real things filling it being meaningless side quests, stupid korok puzzles and boring shrines. lets talk about side quests first.

so the thing about the side quests is that minus the one where you build a town they're all boring fetch quests where you get extremely subpar rewards. you aren't encouraged to do them because there aren't any real upgrades you can get from them. often time the reward is just ruppees or something else stupid. so you never really feel encouraged to do any of them.

the korok seeds basically all boil down to "oooooo out of place rock?!??!!??!" i dont feel like i need to explain myself here because i feel like this is something most people already know.

the shrines are probably the most defendable parts of the game. there are plenty of interesting ones, like the twin shrines, or the ones with really elaborate, out of the box puzzles. however most of the shrines aren't like this, and are either "duplicate shrine of another shrine but HARDER" or "puzzles where you use one of your abilities twice." rarely do you actually have to use your brain for these puzzles because they're all so obvious on how to solve them.

so if the world is empty, the engagements are uncreative, what about the main story?

well, the main story is probably one of the worst parts about the game. actually doing the quests before the divine beast you're currently going for can be interesting. however, the divine beasts themselves are literally the same dungeon repeated 4 times with the same art style as every other shrine in the game. the story itself is bland and forgettable, especially compared to the wild creativity of other Zelda games. actually beating the game gives you nothing. the ending is weak and pathetic.

i hope ive given a somewhat decent summary on why i despise this game. anyway if you disagree with me you're wrong and fuuuck you.

people talk about this game like it's some groundbreaking, breathtaking, wonderful pinnacle of video games and i really wish i understood that. this game feels really nice to move around in, its visuals are really appealing and its score is pretty cute. but there's not much of a real narrative (or writing at all), no memorable characters, no cool side-quests, no dungeons, a pitiful lack of enemy variety + almost no bosses, and nothing that made exploring feel worthwhile. most of it feels like filler check-list fluff (towers, shrines, koroks). the world is well-designed but there's not much substance inside of it beyond its sandbox elements. i genuinely feel like, insane for not liking this the way people talk about it but i just do not see it personally. it's just okay!

Loved this game, and hated this game. Everything on the surface is fantastic. The world is incredibly detailed and easily the most impressive looking game I've ever played, from a technical standpoint. There's lots to customize and deck yourself out with, like guns, outfits, horses, etcetera. The world feels incredibly alive, and it always feels like every character and NPC has a place. There are never robotic ones, which is also really impressive. The gunplay is also really snappy, with top notch sound effects and feedback behind it. I played with gyro aim on PC and it made it that much more fun.

Buuuuuuuut, this has the WORST, THE FUCKING WORST mission design and pacing of any game I have ever played. I ended up dropping it for years because it got so boring. Sometimes I can be so moved by amazing writing and characters and not have the motivation to see what happens next. Go to person, talk, ride on horse for 5 minutes, run into a problem, shoot your way out, rinse and repeat. Sprinkle 1 or two wholesome missions in there every 10 hours and you've got your video game. It's genuinely infuriating, and Rockstar needs to shake things up next time.

I love this game and I hate it at the same time. I'm glad I experienced this story, but It's one I'll never come back to.

After 80+ hours of Red Dead Redemption 2, a question pops up in one’s mind:
In the process of making a game that examines the fall of the American frontier and the decline of the Wild West, did the irony register at all with Rockstar that they were also making a game about the end of the triple A design structure that has plagued the medium ever since the birth of the 7th gen?

Regardless of what pre-established biases one might come into RDR2 about the value of graphical fidelity and closeness to real life and focus on cinematic design and film language in games, it’s impossible not to be impressed by Rockstar’s commitment to the simulation of realism. Your character will meticulously grab each item he loots and place it in his satchel, craft each new tonic or bullet one at a time with detailed animations, remove and place his weapons on his horse whenever you switch them up, shuffle dominoes and grab each piece one by one in every game, and skin every hunted animal with gruesome detail and carry them on his back to his horse every single time. NPCs all have their per-determined schedules that happen regardless of your presence or not, wild animals behave accordingly to their nature and even hunt other species, and every mundane action, be it taking a shower, mounting a camp, cleaning your guns, or brushing your horse, carry a level of detail and weight never before seen in a blockbuster game. It also boasts one of the most beautiful environments to walk around, filled with detail and big expansive nature landmarks, frequently creating moments of awe as you ride around the mountains and landscape.

This level of realism is further elevated in the gang’s camp, where you have a group of misfits you can deal with daily and who all have their respective quirks, goals and actions. Rarely will you hear the same line of dialogue from these characters in the course of 80 hours, and the impressive amount of scenes and conversations that occur not only between your character and them, but also between themselves, means that you will finish the game without experiencing half of the camp scenes that happen dynamically and without feeling like scripted events. When you find yourself around a campfire with your gang after a well succeeded mission, being able to join in the singing and festivities with them, suddenly all the effort in creating a realistic world comes together and for a few seconds the immersion is achieved and one feels like he is a part of a fully realized world and that these characters are tangible and real.

It’s unfortunate then that each time you get into a story mission, that effort is collapsed and you are thrown back into the videogame. What was once acceptable in RDR1 now feels incredibly dated and restrictive, with the usual design structure of having you ride to the mission on horseback and having a chat with an NPC while you follow a yellow line, following every single instruction the game tells you without any chance to deviate from it, waiting for something to inevitably go wrong, and then shooting a comical number of enemies that spawn out of nowhere like a NES game until everyone is dead. Rinse, and repeat. The level of realism found in the open world aspects of RDR2 only serves to call attention to how detached and out of touch the story missions are, leading to incredibly absurd scenes where the main character chastises a crew member for killing too many people during a story cutscene, when you the player yourself have been forced to kill 50 people during a house robbery just the previous mission.

What ends up happening is that most of the stuff you will be doing in the open world won’t matter at all because that would be stepping on the story’s toes. Regardless of how much money you have or how much you have contributed to the camp and NPCs, nothing will have effect on how the story will progress, with the exception of a very simplistic and outdated Honor system. This in turn inevitably leads to the open world map feeling like just a bunch of lines between check marks to fill, with the occasional scripted event to deviate you, but not much!, from the beaten path, and the rare exploration quest that happens when the game decides you should. Even the act of hunting an animal in the wilderness is affected by Rockstar’s grip on your hand, having a highlighted line on the ground that flashes and leads perfectly to your prey. The simulation aspects end up being surface level mechanics used to visually impress the player, not really influencing in any meaningful way either the gameplay or the story. It’s all shallow spectacle.

Which is a shame, because RDR2 has one of the most compelling videogame characters ever created. Arthur Morgan’s story takes a very contemplative and introspective direction in it’s final act, as he finds out he doesnt have much time left in this world, and it leads to some of the most interesting and emotional moments that Rockstar has ever created. Arthur’s effort in making something out of the few life he has left ends up influencing the player’s action outside of the story, and in one of the most poignant and humane moments in the whole game, you are forced to lay down your controller for a few secs, as Arthur requests a moment from you so he can catch his breath, something that makes the player care and empathize with a bunch of polygons much more than any cutting edge cutscene in the whole game could. Even the act of playing the last stretch of the game mimics Arthur’s new perspective, the missions feeling like a slog to go through, Dutch becoming increasingly frustrating, repetitive and annoying to be around, and the creativity being lesser and lesser, which would have been an interesting and insightful direction, had that actually been the intention by Rockstar. But RDR2 is adamant in separating the story from the gameplay, even bafflingly inserting black bars on top and bottom of the screen each time control is removed from the player, as if to signal that it’s now movie time and no time for interactivity. Regardless of all the issues with the story and gameplay, Arthur’s story is enough to carry the whole game on it’s back, and any player invested in his tale will have a hard time not getting emotional at the gut-wretching ending.

But then the game continues. For 5 more hours. And it’s at this point that the dam breaks and the flaws of the game become full center and aren’t easy to ignore anymore. The epilogue, which lacks any self awareness as it presents itself as a two parter, drags it’s way into a fan pandering ending, filled with needless shooting, redundant subplots, and characters that completely undermine the impact of the actual ending of the game. We can’t have a simple mission about just herding some sheeps, shopping with a friend, or fly a hot air ballon. No, every mission has to have a bloody battle with a body count that would make Stalin jealous, because Rockstar cannot bear the idea that some players might be bored if there isnt anything to shoot at. During an exchange between Morgan and an NPC the screen fades to black as they start talking about their lives, as if to spare the player from all those “boring details”, instead leading straight to the action once more. Rockstar can’t bear the thought of giving more opportunities for normal interactions between the player and the NPCs, while I sit here thinking about how one of my favorite missions was when I crossed the whole map to see a character I was fond of, only to get a kiss and that being the end of the mission.

RDR2 is a bloated game that can’t read a room on when’s it’s time to bow down and stop the show, deciding instead to outstay it’s welcome for an absurd amount of time, like an old frail man clawing at the last moments before his time to move on. And maybe it’s also time for Rockstar to move on, and let ideas of cinematic grandeur and realism in videogames finally lay rest once and for all.

(Summary below if you dont want to read thoughts)

Yakuza 0 was a massive disappointment. I was excited to try this one based on the hype surrounding it with some gamers hailing this game as the ultimate modern-city type masterpiece.
I cant stress enough how this game failed with many things it tried to do.
The story is very inconsistent and its structure is weak, the pacing is sloggish and the overall theme was actually interesting, but its filled with many plot holes that takes me out of it, for each chapter i managed to find a couple, an example of that is around chapters 8-12 we have a person who gets shot in the back and suddenly few hours after we see him torturing a character and is acting strong and mighty as if nothing happens. Another example is slightly after that in a prison where one person opens the cell that contained 5+ people previously only for them to disappear after that making the whole thing nonsensical. On another occasion we find a person knows about a secret but we dont get to see how? its a major sin, tell dont show, and many more plot holes to count that i can fill this entire review with, in short the plot is weak and full of problems, for a game hailed as masterpiece story it was far from that.
Next are the characters, they are unbelieveable inconsistent, they keep switching and changing out of the sudden, well except for 2 major ones, a character will do a sudden 180 turn on his loyalty just when the author demands it, its a plot device tactic and its cheap plot convenience because the writers dont know how to advance the plot naturally without it, characters are flat and most of the villains act very stupid, to give an example we have the encounter with Kiryu when Dojima is on the hunt, the characters wanted to capture him, instead they resort to stupid plans and waste him, in fact a guy comes driving with a car and they are standing and watching the whole time, the game is filled with moments like this, and other edgy moments to show the poser villain how mighty and strong he is by shooting a harmless woman, he is angry listen to him...lol bad and edgy writing.
For worse things Women are treated horribly in this game, they exist for pleasure only, which sucks too. A lot of the characters are a bunch of flat and boring angry faces that are dumb as rock.

Gameplay is also bad, the controls suffer from clunky movements and during combat it gets even worse, with inconsistent hitboxes and bad target system. The enemy A.I is very bad and they will take turns to get beaten.
The movesets have some variety but they wore off quickly due to the game being long and it keeps the same human enemies with no variety at all, while also having a lot of useless weapons as a second arsenal that all play out the same.
The visuals are bad even for their year 2015, with visuals that look like PS3 game.
The music is actually good and the sound effect helps immerse the player in the city hubs.
The side quests are weird and dont make sense within the context of the world, like why would a Yakuza drop by randomly on the street to help a girl pretend to be her boyfriend? or help a couple get married by play crosswords? or buy a girl panties? or play rock with a band..and so many other thing, not only they lack the impact on the world and multiple game and choice paths, they also make no sense in the context of the world and add nothing but pointless hours of text.
The minigames are not inspired or anything but they give extra fun hours for those who seek more so im neutral on them.
The cinematic cutscenes are good but inconsistent, transition from cutscene to ingame dialogue is very janky and kills the immersion and intense of it, with terrible animation (literally talking faces) lol.
It's also very tedious, walking from point A to point B each quest only to fight the same 4 thugs around every corner of the street for each 30-60 second makes the game tedious and more of a slog to view the story.

Overall this game is a hugely overrated, i expected a lot better gaming experience from it.
The flow of the story was enjoyable and i enjoyed watching Majima kick some ass, he is by far the best character of this game.
It's not a terrible game, but it was a mediocre one. I was let down, sadly.

Summary:
+ Music and Ambient Sounds to enhance immersion
+ Engaging Story that keeps you interested for more with its twists and turns
+ Minigames to spend your extra time
+ Great main character (Majima)
- Badly written plot, filled with holes and inconsistencies
- A lot of characters are simple plot devices and a tool for asspulls out of nowhere
- Rely on over the top action that kills the tensions
- Stupid and flat villains
- Bad women representation
- Clunky movement and controls
- Generally basic and dull and shallow combat system with low enemy variety and easy challenge
- Tedious walking from A to B sections
- Uninteresting Side Quests
- Disappointing ending and pacing is off
- Janky transition of animation and text dialogue.

How do you even review a game like Elden Ring? A collaboration by Hidetaka Miyazaki of FromSoft fame and one of the biggest and best High Fantasy novelists since Tolkien AKA George R.R. Martin known for his world famous A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones series in the form of a massive open-world action RPG? No amount of words or arbitrary scores and ratings will ever do this game justice. Elden Ring is the kind of game that comes around once in a generation. A rare game that has an immense amount of hype and expectations behind it and yet lives up to and even exceeds everything it promises, this must be a dream right? How is this game even real? I truly believe people will be playing and talking about this game for years to come.

The story premise is simple and very much in line with other works from Miyazaki. Elden Ring takes place in a world known as the Lands Between sometime after the Elden Ring has been shattered, there are various demigods, the children of Queen Marika the Eternal who each hold a piece of the shattered Elden Ring in the form of Great Runes that taint and corrupts them. All these demigods are locked in a constant struggle to take all the shards of the Ring so they can reforge it and become the next Elden Lord. The player character, the Tarnished are exiles from the Lands Between who lost the Ring's grace, but are summoned back after the Shattering and now hope to claim the Great Runes, repair the Ring and become Elden Lord themselves.

Simple story premise aside what makes the Lands Between so special and unique, much like any other Souls is the world-building, character back-stories and lore itself. This is where George R.R. Martin's influence in the game shines. The Souls games have always had great detailed world-building if you dig into it by reading weapon descriptions, wikis and videos on YouTube. Elden Ring however is a bit more straightforward and easier to connect with for the average player and I can only imagine that was partially due to GRRM's involvement. NPC dialogue tells more about an NPC and their personality than ever before, item descriptions aren't nearly as vague and even some cut-scenes are much more descriptive now. The Lands Between is dense when it comes to lore, maybe even more so than any past Souls game and despite being less vague than past Souls games, there is still a lot of mystery to it still. This world is also an incredibly unique combination of various mythologies and legends like Celtic, Arthurian and Norse alongside obvious influence from Martin's own A Song of Ice and Fire series, Eastern mysticism and some Lovecraftian themes of occultism and cosmicism especially how the concept of sorcery fits into the world. The Lands Between is one of the most creative and immersive worlds I've had the pleasure of exploring in years and I just can't get enough of it.

Speaking of the world, let's talk about the actual open world design and levels now because Elden Ring is already being called one of the greatest open world games of all time and I have to say I agree wholeheartedly. The sheer sense of adventure and exploration Elden Ring gives is simply unparalleled. The entire game feels like one grand, epic fantastical journey that takes you all over an amazing, detailed world with so much gorgeous (and sometimes grotesque) scenery. Every single one of Elden Ring's 13 different regions from the grassy fields of Limgrave to the swamps of Liurnia or the volcanic rocky mountains of Mt Gelmir feels completely unique and distinct from the rest so they're all an absolute joy to explore and never feel boring. Elden Ring is open world in the purest sense, much like Breath of the Wild (Though I think Elden Ring is even better personally) as soon as you get out of the tutorial you can go anywhere and do anything you want to do. There's no map markers until you start discovering Lost Grace Sites (the Bonfires of this game) and dungeons. The game let's you discover things at your own pace and it feels so natural and authentic unlike most open world games which tend to overwhelm with map markers and make you feel like you're just checking things off a list. Elden Ring also has an insane amount of side content from optional dungeons (that remind me of Bloodborne's Chalice Dungeons, but even better), NPC quest-lines which you'll randomly stumble across in the open world in true Dark Souls fashion and whole secret areas with plenty of optional side bosses. I would honestly say 80-90% of Elden Ring IS optional content. You can explore as little or as much as you want, but I would recommend exploring as much because you get rewarded for it since some of the best content in the game is optional or hidden in secret areas. I also can't praise the topography of the map enough, the way it plays with elevation is unlike anything I can recall seeing in a video game before and there are areas that are obviously designed that way because the developers gave the player a horse that has the ability to double jump and they want you to utilize the feature. Elden Ring is the new benchmark standard for open world games as far as I'm concerned and I truly hope more games follow suit with its design philosophy because we need more Elden Ring's and less of the typical Ubisoft formula.

However the open world isn't all Elden Ring is. No, there's plenty of secular levels which are called 'Legacy Dungeons'. These are in the form of castles, ruins, cities etc. These are smaller more intimate areas us Souls fans have grown to love over the past decade which typically lead to a main story boss and right alongside the open world, these Legacy Dungeons are also some of the best levels FromSoft has ever designed and how all of these flawlessly connect to the open world is simply a master-class in level design. What makes Elden Ring's design philosophy work so well is because it never compromises what the Souls games have always done. Excellent handcrafted levels with tons of hidden secrets and items to find. This is just now done on a much bigger scale than ever before. I like to think of Elden Ring as a bunch of little Dark Souls areas that combine to make one massive Dark Souls area. Oh and if you're worried there isn't a hub area like our Firelink Shrine or Nexus of the past, there is one and you can upgrade weapons and talk to various NPCs there as well. This game legit has everything.

I could talk about the lore and world for days, but let's be honest, Souls fans are mainly here for one thing and that's the combat. So let's talk about the meat of the game and boy is it meaty. This is the culmination of everything FromSoft has learned in the past decade. This is the absolute best Souls combat has ever been. The pacing of the game is in a sweet spot between Bloodborne and Dark Souls III. Not quite as fast as Bloodborne, but not as slow as Dark Souls III either. You have your ol' reliable light attack and heavy attack as always, but now there's new mechanics like Sekiro's stealth and jump attacks (which deal heavy poise damage and help break your enemy's stance quicker) and the Elden Ring specific guard counter (immediately after blocking you hit the heavy attack button for an instant counter attack which makes defensive play styles more viable than ever) and of course even mounted combat. All these features add so much more depth and flexibility than you'd ever imagine. There's a joke that the Souls fan's favorite button is R1 because we tend to just spam and rely on the light attack as it's the most useful option, but there was a point in Elden Ring where I realized I was just naturally always using my entire moveset because the game is designed to make you do so, nothing feels like a useless addition and to make matters even better Weapon Arts which were powerful skills from Dark Souls III come back in the form of Ashes of War, but now these can be changed and experimented on with new weapons whenever you want and they can even change your weapon's status effect too. This isn't even mentioning how many cool and fun spells and incantations there are for magic or faith users to use, the insane variety of weapons and armor or the return of dual wielding power stances from Dark Souls II. Elden Ring is without a doubt the pinnacle of Souls style combat with the most variety in build options and playstyles than any other Souls style game and since you unlock a way to respec your character fairly early on (you can do this multiple times just in one playthrough too) and you find ample materials to upgrade weapons, the game encourages you to experiment and try new weapons and builds.

Difficulty will always be a major talking point when it comes to Souls games and Elden Ring is no exception. Here's my take on it. Elden Ring is simultaneously one of the hardest and most punishing FromSoft games, but also one of the most forgiving and newcomer friendly. How could that be you might ask? It's because of the open world. All other Souls games are linear. If you want to get past a specific area and progress you either have to 'git gud' or farm/grind in the same spot to level up more. Elden Ring isn't like this though because if you're having trouble in a specific area or find a boss you aren't strong enough for yet, just come back to it later. Go explore some more, get new gear, maybe level up a bit and you'll find that the boss won't be nearly as impossible. If you're a Souls veteran you probably won't have to do this as often, however the game does expect you to do this and certain areas are naturally going to have stronger enemies and bosses so you could get punished a bit for lack of exploration. This isn't Dark Souls 4, so don't play it like it is. Elden Ring also gives Spirit Ashes which are helpful NPC summons you can call on for boss fights even when in single player mode. This could range from a pack of wolves to a jellyfish or even a dragon knight, these help a LOT. There are definitely areas of the game that were designed with this mechanic in mind and if you don't utilize it, that's not the game designer's fault or poor balance. There is also a very useful quality of life feature called 'Stakes of Marika' which act as spawn points before boss fog gates. Some people might say this makes the game more 'causalized', but let's be honest here, speaking as a decade long FromSoft fan spending 3 minutes running back to the boss was never a highlight of these games. Having spawn points incentivizes trying things you might not have before and gets you to fighting the boss quicker which makes it more fun than ever before. You've been given all the tools necessary to succeed, you need only use them to overcome your adversaries now.

Another very crucial aspect of Souls games is the bosses themselves. Demons Souls, Dark Souls I-III, Bloodborne and Sekiro all have some of my absolute favorite boss fights in all of gaming and now I happily add Elden Ring to that list as well. Due to the sheer size and scope of the game Elden Ring has the most bosses of any Souls game yet with a whopping 80+ bosses. Yeah there's a handful that are reused, but I feel some people make that seem like a bigger deal than it actually is because the fights are still fun and with a game this size I can't fault them for reusing a handful of bosses. I'd say at least 50 of those bosses are still unique encounters, that's still more than any other Souls game yet none of them feel forgettable, even mini-bosses in dungeons are awesome. They're all incredibly designed with amazing move-sets, designs and memorable locations you fight them in too, as always you feel rewarded for your patience and determination to win when you memorize a bosses move set through trial and error and beat them afterwards. A few bosses also have fun puzzle/gimmicks as well which really make the fights stand out even more. The end-game areas especially have some of the absolute coolest and most fun bosses FromSoft have ever made in my opinion.

I have to mention that I'm hardly a graphics guy, but there were multiple times my jaw dropped because of the indescribable beauty of Elden Ring. I was playing on PS5 and this has to be one of the best looking games I've ever played. I think that's due to two reasons, 1), FromSoft stepping the graphical quality up a good bit because they didn't want to be outdone by the Demons Souls Remake and 2), an absolutely impeccable art design. This game truly shows how far an amazing art design can go to improving the visual look of a game. Every single area of the open world, the characters, the dungeons, the weapons and armor and most importantly the enemies and bosses, it is all peak art design. This is the absolute best visualized dark high fantasy game setting I've ever seen bar none.

Last but not least I have to mention the immaculate OST by master composer Yuka Kitamura. She helped compose the OST for both Bloodborne and Dark Souls III alongside Motoi Sakuraba and she composed the Sekiro OST by herself. However Elden Ring might be her best work yet. From the calm ambient tracks which add to the atmosphere of the open world to the various distinct bombastic epic orchestral boss themes Elden Ring's OST is a treat to the ears and one you'll remember and still be hearing melodies from long after your playthrough.

All in all Elden Ring deserves every single bit of praise its gotten, it has fully lived up to the hype and even far exceeded my astronomically high expectations in every way possible. I never could've imagined I would end up loving it nearly as much as I did or that it would become my all time favorite game. Whether it be masterclass level design and the greatest open world ever made with an unfathomable amount of side content, the pinnacle of Souls style combat, the most build variety and options yet, a one-of-a-kind and unique world and lore, cool, creative and memorable boss fights, some of the best art design and graphical capabilities in gaming or masterfully composed OST, Elden Ring truly has it all. I struggle to find a flaw in the game because it is as close to a flawless, perfect game as you can possibly get aside from some minor performance issues that I'm sure will get patched anyways. Simply put Elden Ring is the culmination of everything FromSoft has done since Demons Souls, it is FromSoft and Miyazaki's magnum opus, a true evolution of the Souls formula, a groundbreaking, genre-defining masterpiece that everyone deserves to experience in their lifetime.