The state of the art in RPGs. Simple as that.

Is it perfect? No, it has quite the sum of glitches (as do all of the great RPGs I've ever played); a too harshly introduced set of villains; and a few things (party size, level cap -- no expansions ;( ) I wish were different, but it's all overshadowed by the greatness of everything else.

An instant classic, straight to the hall of greats. A must-play title.

It is quite an enjoyable experience once you get past the (good?) old maze-crawling RPG scare. If you can't embrace the 80s... yeah you'll be in for a bumpy ride.

Now if you endure the initial hardships, you will be rewarded with a rather well-flashed-out, creative demon-merging system—the Persona system! The setting and character structure are also really fun (though that's SMT if...'s merit, I guess). And I just loved the whole demon contact thing, though I guess that also comes from other games (this was my first Megaten). I've always found most JRPGs to be way too combat focused, so that was just lovely, though the final reward is still combat-related. One negative takeaway is that the combat encounter rate is way too high, making leveling up Agility on your MC a necessity, hindering your roleplay possibilities. Story wise, I guess I just wish the good ending requirements were clearer and that there were more story options overall.

TL;DR simple, old school, though watered down (yeah you read that right) maze dungeon crawler, with super cool RPG mechanics that set the game apart from others, even from previous Megaten games. Rewards patient players that are willing to overcome the steep learning curve (coming from modern games), though the reward is definitely not that great.

If you're a modern RPG player, this is a scary one. If you're a hard-boiled Ultima/Wizardry/Bard's Tale player, this is one hell of a cakewalk -- you just need to figure the Personas out, and grind a little bit on the Snow Queen route).

Baldur's Gate II brings everything one can ask for in an RPG. It's bigger and better than the first installment, expanding in roleplaying opportunities, not only in sheer size. Even my previously useless, painfully uninformed build found a chance to shine in the myriad of approaches this game presents, and I've barely scratched the surface in terms of exploring its content.

Still, SoA retains all elements from the previous entry, even the not-so-great ones, namely the sometimes obtuse combat and janky pathfinding and navigation. That and a minor lack of outcomes through dialogue—it's not bad like the first one, but I still felt like I should've been able to get out of some situations merely through my 18 Charisma. It's not a golden RPG standard in that aspect, like Fallout, but it is in pretty much everything else.

So what if you took most of what made a game special and replaced it with Star Wars and GTA III? Sounds lame, right? Well, it was actually better than I expected, though that aspect of Jak II sucks nonetheless.

It has a pretty well executed, though overextended, gameplay loop with its main downsides being the very artificial, checkpoint-lacking difficulty; and Jak's movements just not rocking really well with the guns (though it's rather decent most of the time).

Everything else (this is, story, setting, characters, etc.) is either generic, cringefully edgy, or completely out of place, with some actually funny moments shining through, mostly coming from Daxter.

TL;DR Terrible in theory, decent in practice.

The pinnacle of superhero games, while also managing to be one of the best games of all time.

One has to dig deep to find flaws in this experience: beautiful graphical fidelity and art direction that will hold solid regardless of time; an engaging and absolutely memorable storyline; an outstanding soundtrack; and, most importantly, a gameplay loop that perfects what was already great in its predecessor build the influential behemoth that is Batman: Arkham City.

I played through the whole thing again, trying to find noticeable problems, but just couldn't. Maybe Batman is way too stiff (personality-wise) at times? Very debatable anyways. Time simply flew by through every single piece of content. It's an absolute masterpiece.

A heavily derivative experience that overlooks and misunderstands most of what made its predecessor great.
Generic bosses, terrible movement, ridiculous enemy placement, and some of the worst level designs in a game are some of the numerous burdens Dark Souls II carries. Still, it has interesting combat and multiplayer innovations and is not absolutely unberable like its counterpart, Scholar of the First Sin, which is an experience only masochists can enjoy.

This is a deeply flawed game, but it can still be enjoyed by patient players.

The true first next-generation game. If the first one was a masterclass in metalinguistics, this is the full-on doctoral dissertation. Super tight and solid mechanics execution, wonderful presentation, rock 'n roll, Alan Wake II has it all.

LOTS of crashes on the Series S though, very unfortunate.

Sam Lake is the GOAT; and this is GOTY.