Yakuza Kiwami's writing and style are both fine, but Majima should not be Everywhere, and every 30 minutes you get thrown into yet another fight that has its own dedicated corner of reddit where people insist it's the worst bit of the game

Yes it's largely unremarkable, but in an enjoyable way. The only mind blowing thing about it is that it stands alone--for some reason, there aren't hundreds of 3 star magical girl JRPGs, and Blue Reflection is a clear sign that there should be

You work for anyone, which means you work for the corporations, administering expensive, frustrating, blink-and-you'll-miss-it violence on their behalf. What for? Money, parts, choice. In exchange for power, your agency is subsumed by the machine (I named mine Big Iron)

Elden Ring is a competent souls game spread thin across an open world that came alive only once: transported to Caelid without a map, I navigated my way back to Limgrave, leaving directions for would be victims of my own misfortune. For this to happen I had to ignore fast travel

the unravelling horror of Bloodborne's mystery is matched only by how sick it is to nail a boss with the stake driver. It's a shame most of the fun weapons are locked in the back half of the game, because few things in souls are as cool as trick weapons

you max your damage by swapping turns, alternating physical and magic attacks, moving enemies into a stack on a grid, uppercutting that stack into the sky and doing honest to god air combos complete with hit counter

so it's a real shame it has characters and a plot and both suck