A wonderful amalgamation of several different tactical genres, Unicorn Overlord is an excellent triumph. Combining elements from Fire Emblem, Suikoden, and Ogre Battle, the game manages to slam those ideas together to form a truly unique experience that I did not think I would again anytime soon.

Tactical and real-time with the ability to pause at any second, each map consists of several enemy units to defeat, bases to liberate, and characters to sway to your cause. Fine-turning your squads as they grow in size and strength is the bread and butter of the game, and I've never been more enthralled to dig through menus to see it happen. Equipment loadouts, unit positioning, and mastering how the battle system works is a joy that isn't front-loaded with tutorials and endless chatter, but more of a basic explanation and a willingness to try new combinations out to see what works.

Battles take place automatically, based on initiative speeds, and what attacks or buffs each unit preforms. There is a special kind of thrill to be gained from setting up a unit to preform all their best moves and take minimal damage and watching it play out with perfect success.

Like Suikoden before, there are MANY characters in the game that both join your army automatically or have to be persuaded through your actions. All of them are beautifully unique and fully voiced, making building of your battalions even more exciting. The artwork, both on character models during dialog and battles and on the world map, are both stunning and charming. Vanillaware has always been kings of beautiful character designs and it's absolutely no different here.

The main gripe within the game is the story. It's not that it's bad, it's just that it's boring. It falls into many tropes you've seen play out in film and other video games with elves and beast/human hybrids, a super evil bad guy and his second in command super evil wizard, and other less than stellar story beats. Alain, the protagonist, is likely one of the most vanilla leads I've ever seen, just 100% the nicest guy you'll ever meet and never has a bad thing to say about anyone and everyone loves him 24/7 with little to no complaints. It's a thrill to recruit a new member, but sometimes the people that join you would have killed you ten seconds earlier, but Alain said two sentences about helpin' the little guy and saving the country and suddenly all is forgiven.

You can also build relationships with your entire crew, akin to Fire Emblem, which improves their stats in battle and gives you small scenes between each of them when certain benchmarks are hit. It's a nice addition, especially if you share beautifully drawn meals that always look delicious, but a lot of dialog also falls into a repetitive nature, especially if Alain is involved, as he'll just wax poetic about whatever the other person likes and use flowery language to cover up for somewhat stale storytelling. You can romance people as well, but it amounts to very little unfortunately. It's a nice touch and will somewhat change how you need to approach the final battle, but otherwise it's a bit lacking.

Overall, the gameplay, strategy, and tactical prowess of this entry far outstrips the lackluster story. The difficulty on Normal is a pushover, so cranking it up is highly recommended if you want more of a challenge. This is one of the closest things I've seen to Ogre Battle 64, one of my all-time favorite games, so it has a lot going for it when it comes to the gameplay elements. If a sequel or second game in this style is made, all they need to do is improve the story and I'll sing their praises until I die.

An absolute masterclass in how to remake a game from several generations back, Resident Evil 4 keeps everything you remember being cool and updating things you forgot were outdated and does it all with style and perfection.

The story is B movie excellence and I love every second of it. Leon is a quip machine and a hell of a hero and every other character is wonderfully realized. Ashley, in particular, is someone I truly care about getting off the island alive and well. Luis is a suave and shady wingman. Ada, despite some flat voicework now and again, is a perfect self-serving yet still on-your-side counterpart. Even Mike the chopper pilot is a great addition and you can't even see his face! The story and characters sing at every moment, and the villains also bring a much needed screen-chewing presence. I love Krauser a LOT.

The gameplay is also top notch, setting a standard that I'm sure will be replicated for years to come. Precise aiming controls, great change ups to how you fight enemies throughout the game, and some truly memorable boss fights culminate in an absolutely stunning experience for the full playthrough.

I'm a big fat dumb baby when it comes to horror, but the balance between scary moments and action thrills is JUST right here. The Regenerators had me pausing the game and just cursing to myself, like it would make them go away. But an hour later I'd be blasting ganados with a shotgun and grinning as they all flew down a staircase.

I watched other people play the original 2005 game (see: big fat dumb baby) and the changes they made here like removing QTEs and updating character dialog and story (Ashley is massively improved) are all exactly what it needed to maintain both a remembrance for what came and an update for what is.

RE4 is a blat to play from beginning to end. Highly recommend. (It also has a gun called Killer7 which not only kicks ass as a weapon, but references one of my absolute favorite games.)

This is some of the best co-op gaming I've done in a long while. The comical vibe that's clearly inspired by Starship Troopers is wonderful and the dialog both spoken and written is on brand and hilarious. The set up is perfect and leads to one of the best times you can have with friends. The shooting feels great, killing bugs and robots in the name of democracy is as patriotic as it gets, and the simple act of changing outfits (which always look badass, especially the capes) is gratifying as hell. When this game sings, it belts so loudly and proudly and BOY is it fun.

It must be said, however, that during the launch, the servers were absolutely ill-equipped to handle the gigantic number of players trying to log on. it does NOT feel good to fork over 40 dollars only to sit around for an hour just simply waiting to get into a game and then give up. This happened for over a week, and frankly that's pretty awful. To be fair, it's a small team and Helldivers 1 never had anything close to this player count, so I can't blame them fully for not expecting big numbers. But it happened and it was pretty unbearable. If you're starting now, you shouldn't encounter this at all anymore, which is wonderful! The devs did a fantastic job pulling themselves out of the hole and should be commended for it.

Otherwise, there are small gripes like micro transactions (something that's always unwelcome but seemingly unavoidable now), which aren't super intrusive and can be ignored, but still stain the experience nonetheless. It's also still buggy in places, albeit nothing like what it was at launch. Harder difficulties are brutal and it's a truly excellent challenge, but playing with less than 4 players is essentially not possible. You can always open up the game to random players, but communication is so key to survival that playing with friends that know who is talking, where, and when is almost a necessity.

Overall, Helldivers 2 is a banger of a game with some blemishes that don't ruin it, but certainly make you wish they weren't there. The story and gameplay is evolving day to day, so with that in mind, things can and will change, and I'll be here ready to dive into hell. For Democracy.