This was my first Yakuza game, and it completely hooked me into the series. I'm glad I was recommended this because I think I found one of my favorite series outside of Persona and Danganronpa.

To start off, I'll talk about the story. This was the main reason I kept playing. It has one of the most realistic and engaging stories I've seen in a while. It feels so genuine, maybe helped by the fact that there's no supernatural elements (unless you count Ichiban's schizophrenia, lol). Its characters are definitely its strong-suit. I think in the beginning, it was very slow, which is why it took me a bit to finish this, but once it picked up, it picked up. I can't compare it to any other Yakuza games yet, but I assume that's how it usually is.
Story: 9.5/10

Next is my second favorite part about this game: the music. I don't see it discussed a lot, but this is some of the best soundtracks I've heard in a while. It completely pumps you up during fights and 100% adds to the tone of the story.
Music: 11/10

Next is the gameplay, which is iffy for me. I love turn-based combat, but there's a lot about this one that is off to me. Not only are the moves terribly balanced (Joon-gi Han's head trauma, god) but pretty much 75% of the moves on each character are useless. Idk what was going on in Sega there, but yeah. I also hate how the auto mode doesn't fast-forward, because god are the animations long as hell. I kind of dreaded running into Sujimon... As for the boss fights, I had a hard time with a lot of them, but that was what made theme exciting for me. I absolutely LOVED the challenge of the boss fights. It always felt good to defeat them. For the RPG aspects of the gameplay, it felt like there was too much for you to do. Not only were the side quests like, way too much, but there were TONS of things you could do and it just felt overwhelming. I decided to ignore most of them and focus on the story. If I didn't. I probably wouldn't have finished this game.
Gameplay: 7/10

For the voice acting, I played the dub. I think the dub voice actors did an amazing job, as much as it's criticized. Kiryu and Majima's voices were... odd choices, though. I love Robbie Daymond, so of course I loved Zhao's preformance, but I also adored Joon-gi Han and Ichiban's. I love how Joon-gi Han actually has a Korean accent, and how low and chill it is. when I listened to his Japanese voice, I felt it didn't fit his sort of melancholy tone to his character. Ichiban was just perfect. He perfectly captures the goofy but also rough-tone of his character. Props to these dub voice actors; you do better than most English dubs.
Voice acting: 9/10

Overall, I fucking loved this game, and it'll probably go down as my favorite ever. Thanks for teaching me capitalism and family, Yakuza 7.

This game exceeded even my highest expectations in almost every way.

I could talk about it for hours but as with Remake I don't think it's possible for me to do it justice, it's peak. I've spent over 200 hours with FF7 Rebirth now and I could easily jump back in for a 3rd playthrough today.

This game is such an achievement, and home to some of the most beautiful scenes, characters and music in memory. If the final part is able to do even half as many things as well as this does, then we're in for a phenomenal trilogy of games.

As an aside, getting the platinum for this was insanely fun and surprisingly easy ... until the last few combat simulations. It took me around 40 hours over 5 days to get them done. I am begging that part 3 is easier 🥹
Thanks for reading folks, hope you're all doing well!🙏

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was a game that I adored so, so much, that I couldn't bring myself to start writing a review for it. I could talk about that game for hours, and yet, I'm lost for words.

There is no way to properly explain the way this series hits any more. Half the reason I never tried writing about XC3 was that so much of what I wanted to say would touch on spoilers in one way or another, and given the nature of this expansion the same is going to apply here. (So this is more a rant summarising my feelings on this series as a whole)

One thing I will say, however, is that I am honestly devastated that my memory is as bad as it can be, in particular with this franchise. I have loved, loved all 3 parts of this trilogy but if you asked me to even summarise one of the first 2 games I'd get maybe 5% of the story right, it kinda sucks😭

I'm pretty confident that 3 is my favourite, and not just for recency bias, but the combat, the party, the world, the story, the relationships and development of the characters.. It is truly deserving of the label peak because it genuinely sits at the top of the JRPG mountain in my opinion. I fucking love that game dude, they even added a navigation line to follow!
(Unfortunatley, this expansion removes that again 😭 2 games and 2 expansions to finally stop me from getting lost only to rob me of it again, wounded!)

Anyway if you can't tell I'm already losing myself, these games have got me bad, man. It is all heart, I have no brain, no thoughts (no memory 😔) - I barely understand myself how they've touched me this much, but there's an undeniable charm and sincerity to them that's really just 😩

To make some comments about Future Redeemed specifically, I fully understand the reasoning behind Matthew et al, but I can't help but wonder if I'd have preferred somehow getting to bring things to fruition with familiar faces. Matthew is great don't get me wrong, but his specific personality archetype is an interesting one to go with for the main character of this expansion lol.
Also, without saying anything else: Holy shit the glow up, the future is not the only thing being redeemed god damn.

Final thoughts I think I preferred the combat and overall dynamics in the main game vs this, and locking arts and accessory slots behind finding rare items instead of your player level is kinda oof, but I got by. It felt a bit like XC3 but stripped back a little instead of further improved which is a shame, but with the bar set by XC3 I really don't think there was anywhere to go but backwards anyway.
Difficulty wise there was one boss near the end that was a huge spike for me, but admittedly I'd been playing somewhat lazily until then anyway and it didn't take too long to overcome it.

Overall: this is insane. This series is nothing short of beautiful and if you don't believe me then the soundtrack alone can prove you wrong with ease. I don't know if I want more or not but I definitely want more of something from this team. Do not let British voice acting put y'all off these games bro, yes I know XC2 sounds kinda goofy but you can play in Japanese if you must and even if you don't I guarantee that the voicework does not detract from how good they are. (Also Mio and Nia's accents are too good to pass up on smh shame on you)

Thanks for reading to all who did, hope it's okay that this is just word vomit but I really wasn't kidding when I said I have no words. Hope you're all having a wonderful December and enjoy any festivities you may or may not partake in. Until next time🙏

Gears 5 is the best looking, best playing, most compelling game with the best story in the series to date.

Growing up, I was an Xbox gamer. Sure I had a DS and my family had a Wii because so did everyone, but the majority of my gaming time was spent on Xbox. Naturally because of this I ended up playing a good amount of the Gears series. Despite that, I actually never beat a single one of them. Eventually I moved on to Playstation and hadn't looked back since. That was, until this year. Seeing the great value of gamepass and how the future of exclusives was really starting to look up (barring the Redfall setback), I decided it was finally time to return to my gaming roots. As much as I was excited to be able to play things like Hi Fi Rush or Starfield, honestly one of the biggest incentives to get one was to play a series I had always liked but never given the treatment it deserved.

And that brings us here, now. A few days past a month of owning an Xbox, and I have played through all 5 numbered entries and Judgement. The original trilogy is not without its flaws but were all a very fun time, with 3 feeling like a fitting conclusion. Of course its a mega popular series though, so obviously things weren't gonna end there. First was Judgement which, well, its not very good. Its not bad either, I liked it. But... the gameplay changes are very clearly a step down from the trilogy and the story wasn't particularly interesting at all. As a spinoff being developed with a different studio, it was understandable that it was significantly weaker than the main games. The new control scheme meant to be more like Call of Duty didn't help.

But then there was 4. Looking amazing, feeling great to play, absolutely awesome set-pieces. But wow. As a setup for the future of the series, it does a piss poor job. The story feels both padded and incomplete. There's a long stretch in the middle that feels entirely designed to make the game longer, but my jaw dropped when the credits rolled because it felt like half a game worth of plot. It introduces three new main characters in JD, Kait and Del but does barely anything with JD and Del is literally a nothing burger of a character. Combined with how the new characters in 3 and Judgement are treated (Jace, the most useless man to ever exist?), the series seemed to have a serious issue with providing anything interesting for the characters beyond the core 4 (That being Marcus, Dom, Baird and Cole). I still enjoyed 4 but it was hard to feel anything but disappointed coming off from the end.

Now its finally time to talk about the actual one that I'm reviewing! Gears 5 fixed just about every issue I had with the series. JD's character is genuinely interesting, Del turned from a complete nobody to such a bro that he's top 3 characters in the series for me. They finally start to treat their female characters with a little more respect by not killing them offscreen or doing nothing with them by putting Kait front in center as the new protagonist. They finally make the gameplay more interesting by having two big areas with optional objectives, as well as upgrades you can work for. The open areas are really great, and even if the side locations aren't anything amazing what they do do is give great room for character development and by the end of the game I really liked and cared for the whole cast, something that hadn't happened for me since 2. Another thing I really liked was the game letting you make a story effecting choice near the end. It doesn't really effect things much for now as obviously by that point the game is almost over, but assuming Gears 6 doesn't discard this altogether - it really makes me even more excited to see how the series continues to evolve with more choice and options.

All this is to say is that Gears 5 is by far the best in the series, and after Judgement and 4 I'm very happy that my binge has ended on a high note. This year is absolutely stacked so I need to focus on other things for now, but I do look forward to trying out Tactics in the future. Gears 6 can take all the time it needs, but I'm more excited for it than just about any other Xbox property. Not to mention finally being able to play a multiplayer mode that isnt completely dead <3

Also, couldn't figure out where to fit his in my review but even though all games in the series have plenty of funny moments, this made me laugh out loud several times without betraying the darker tone and I really appreciated that.

Nancymeter - 90/100
Achievement Completion - 8% (20/181 - ffs lol)
Time Played - 12-13 hours
Completion #29 of August
Completion #161 of 2023

I had been meaning to review this when I platinumed it but once I did I just sort of went to bed and never got around to it. I think the fact that my gf still hasn't played beyond the prologue has me hesitant to say much about it, but I also feel icky having not said anything at all about what is almost certainly going to be my GOTY.

Yep, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, I loved it. I remember way back when the first trailers for this dropped and I really wasn't sure how I felt about it; the English VAs and the very Game of Thrones-esque setup and focus on politics, I was cautiously optimistic at best and maybe even slightly disappointed that it wasn't more familiar at worst. More fool me honestly, the "this isn't Final Fantasy" argument is so old by now it's as much a staple of the franchise as the deities. I don't care if this doesn't look, sound or play like 4, 7 or 10, it absolutely bangs.

I agree with a lot of the criticism I've seen around the combat, more specifically that the basic attack button is limited to essentially a single 4-hit combo, but what I don't agree with is that this makes the combat boring or plain. I've preached to everyone that will listen by now to play this game with controller mapped to scheme C so that magic is on L1 and I stand by this making the combat 10x more fun and fluid. Being able to chain together attacks, follow-ups, combos and specials in a variety of ways is so satisfying, and the "one combo" point is completely lost behind the ways you can use the skills together to slap around your enemies and look great doing it.

Furthermore, the story feels pretty damn "Final Fantasy" to me, the core plot is even built around giant crystals smh. I won't go into spoilers, but following a single character through multiple stages of their life ends up working really nicely I think. The timeskips aren't just noticeable but they're meaningful, you can physically see the changes to people and places based on the events of the previous arc. They could've done more with it I'm sure, but I think it's neat.

To that point, this means our boy Clive carries this game on his shoulders start to finish, and I'm not the first to say that Ben Starr totally nailed this performance. The cast across the board were superb - special shoutout to Charon for sounding exactly like every woman in the town I grew up in - but Square have shown once again that casting actors that don't have massive VA backgrounds can pay off really nicely. I love all the regular names as much as anyone else, but seeing Ben come in out of nowhere and leap to the top of my 'best performance' vote list somehow makes me appreciate the game even more than if it had been aced by somebody that I would expect to nail it.

In classic fashion I've said very little about the game itself, but hopefully this little gush was at least somewhat interesting to read. It can now serve as evidence that this franchise truly does have me by the balls. They aint perfect, but these games deliver for me personally on so many levels.

Quick shoutout as well to the lore catalogues in this game, Harpocrates' tomes and Vivian's map are two of the coolest and most dense lore-libraries I've seen in a game, maybe ever. Also the map actually wrinkles under her finger in cutscenes which is hot. And speaking of hot all the characters are super pretty again, especially Jill😌
I'm looking forward to Rebirth being my 2024 GOTY as well, (Sorry Persona 3 Reload 😔)

Thanks for reading all, hope you're enjoying your summers and whatnot! Not sure what my next review will be but I'm surprised to be really enjoying Sword and Fairy 7 right now so there's a good chance it'll be that!

I completed this game a month ago so my review points are a little buried in my memory, but what hasn't been buried is how much I adored playing through it. The visuals in Octopath are gorgeous, and the box art for this being so nice honestly had more impact on my interest in it than I care to admit, but what I didn't expect was for the music to surpass it.

The OST for this game has got to be one of my favourites, ever. Such an amazing number of tracks with a huge range of tones and styles, all of them a joy to listen to. It's hard to overstate how pretty some of the songs are, and I think if my bottom-tier memory remembers only one thing about Octopath Traveler II, I'd like it to be that.

... However, it won't be that, because this game made the eye-watering decision to lock it's platinum trophy behind it post-game megaboss. Now I love JRPGs, but I'll be the first to admit that I'm not very good at them. I get by for sure, but any time I look up a strat or hear how someone else is running their party I realise that mine is using maybe 15% of it's full potential. This game does not allow you to buy-back equipment that you sell, so when my dumbass sold a weapon that turned out to be essential in just about every megaboss build I found online.. 🥹

It took me around 100 hours to beat the story, maybe 20 to cleanup everything else for the platinum and (I can't be certain because reloading my save meant the time wasn't tracked) I'm certain I spent no less than 20 hours grinding and throwing myself at this boss for the final trophy. Honestly it was probably closer to 40.
10 days worth of on-off grinding/attempts, sometimes for hours, sometimes just 2-4 tries. At one point I was so discouraged and quite frankly broken that I uninstalled the game to spare myself the pain of failure, only to redownload it a few days later with hopes of beating it out of spite.

I have seen people beat this boss with ease over 30 levels lower than my party were (I grinded from 50-60 range to 80-90 just for this) and despite having almost exactly the same gear (aside from stuff I'd sold) I wasn't doing nearly as much damage as they were 🥹 (I had also spammed all my stat nuts in inopportune ways without realising bc I am ranked #1 worst jrpg player)

Anyway all this to say, I finally did it. I don't know how, the numbers fell in my favour and by some miracle I actually beat it, and that's rad 😭

This "review" is unhinged but I should also say that I love the characters and the combat system was immensely fun to use the whole time, really enjoyed it. Biggest gripe with the game would be the difficulty spike but I expect that's a skill issue. Also the way the travelers meet is kinda goofy but I really don't think that affected my enjoyment at all.

Overall I would definitely recommend this to anyone even remotely interested, it's a fantastic time and a really refreshing structure in how the story was told (for me, I haven't played 1 or Live A Live) -- Just maybe don't worry about the platinum or play on Switch (which I might have to for the first game 🥹)

Thanks for reading! Hope everyone's having a good mid-year, Final Fantasy XVI is around the corner and with this being my 124th platinum I'm hoping that one isn't quite so painful to make as my milestone 125! 😌

P.S. I just remembered there was a line near the end of Temenos' story that went so fucking hard, it was like "[Your Gods] created this world, and in their folly saw fit to taint it with humans" and that's so fkn raw😩

13 years ago, Alan Wake became my favourite game of all time. Something about this game resonated with little 13 year old Jake, and much like my crush on Ramona Flowers, it's nice to know this adoration has survived through my teens and well into my adulthood.
Back then, I couldn't properly explain why I loved this game so much, and honestly I'm not even sure I can now. The closing sentence has stuck with me for half my life at this point, and my dumbass still doesn't even fully comprehend what it means 😌

Replaying this for the first time in over a decade and using the very same collectible guide as I did back on my Xbox 360 was such a great nostalgia trip, I didn't mind the jank and rust that was still ever-present from the original release.
The last time I went for a 100% run was at my old bff's house, where I played through the entire game in one long, uninterrupted sitting. A playthrough that I'm certain was my 2nd that weekend alone, I was obsessed.

This isn't much of a review I realise but my appreciation of this game is on a deeper level than it's surface. The combat may be simple and sorta clunky but I've always really liked the unique approach of using light to basically break shields. The characters are great, a lot of them are a little one-note or weird but considering the consistent Twin Peaks vibe the game gives off, everything feels much more deliberately uncanny than lazy or amateurly written. I am of course speaking with all the bias on earth, but it's my review init 😌
The core premise with the writer and the manuscript pages you find and how everything ties together is really cool too I think. I just think it's neat :)

Hoping and praying that Alan Wake II lives up to the first, I remember liking the AWE DLC for Control so I'm confident that whatever my boy Sam has cooking will be worth the time. Maybe my review of that game will actually be a review, who knows :p

Tchia, for all its faults, is still one of the most wonderfully unique and charming games I've played in a long time. The story, while maybe it could've used being a bit longer to flesh out some characters a little more, is such a wild ride that constantly had me laughing whether because it was being legitimately funny or batshit insane (it was often both). Its also surprisingly dark for something that looks like an animated movie for kids. We're talking a villain who eats babies whole and a visual gag of a headless chicken with blood included. Also fucking like a bunch of people die, its crazy. While doing all the side content will probably take you 4x as long, the main story should only take you around 5 hours or so and I really think everyone should give this a shot especially if you got it on PS plus last month just to experience it. Also it features lesbians! Girls kiss! The story also gets wholesome with it so that's like an extra five stars.

Where Tchia will lose some people is the gameplay. The charm is absolutely still there, you can literally pick up a dog and hold it over your head, its hilarious. It also features a really cool mechanic where you can posses nearly every small animal or object. Some of the animals have different abilities you can use, like Cats have night vision. I did not find almost any of that really useful but its a cute little thing. However I did always have several birds stored in my backpack to use them to fly around when needed. And yes, the birds do have a dedicated poop button, if you were wondering. Now yes everything I've just described is awesome but then the open world stuff comes in. You've got your usual clearing out camps or doing races and stuff. None of it is bad but, I just never really wanted to do it. It just felt like a distraction when all I cared about was the story. Unfortunately as well, a lot of the gameplay in the story amounts to fetch quests. Finding an animal or item for someone and bringing it back to them. Its pretty boring, if I'm honest. There also some combat, which just involves soul jumping into explosive objects and launching yourselves into enemies. The soul jumping is fun but the combat is just pretty eh, and the enemies can be pretty annoying to deal with in dense areas where they'll constantly trap you, drain your stamina and force you to do a little qte. That's another thing, you'll drain stamina from doing almost everything. You're encouraged to find fruit around the islands to increase your stamina but they are very minor increases. If you run out of stamina too you'll basically faint and be returned to the nearest campfire. Thankfully there is an option in the settings to basically make it so you'll never faint. This really isnt a game that benefits from being difficult, and the challenge really is just annoying more than truly hard so I'd really recommend playing with that option on to keep Tchia the chill fun time its meant to be. My final gameplay critique is there are way too many campfire rhythm minigames. I do actually quite like rhythms games (Miku gang rise up) but they were just a bit excessive here, sometimes happening within ten minutes of eachother or less. You do have an option to let them autoplay which I ended up doing most of the time. These are full length songs and while the music in this game, vocal tracks especially, is amazing it just is another part of the gameplay that feels repetitive.

Tchia may suffer from some common open world problems, it may not run the best, it may bore you sometimes but despite all this, I wholeheartedly recommend it. Its bold, its hilarious and it is downright unforgettable.

Trophy Completion - 0% (not the best trophy list lol)
Time Played - 5+ hours
Nancymeter - 81/100
Game Completion #75 of 2023
April Completion #5

This is a couple days late but it feels wrong not giving this at least something despite my internal love for it, so here's a "brief" gathering of what thoughts I have. (it was not brief, oop!)

Unfortunately, I really struggle to focus on VNs for long periods, and with these games being pretty lengthy with huge chunks of reading, the duology ended up taking me around 15 months to finish... Which as you can imagine means that thanks to my awful memory, I really don't remember all that many specifics, and therefore only the positives are left.

As such, I've simply forgotten about any gripes I took with either game, any weak or flawed case has been condensed so much that I can't recall anything negative to say, and what I'm left with is a heavily biased adoration for these games based on what I do remember: The characters.
(... and the music)

The cast of the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles is nothing short of delightful. One of the better parts of playing this in chunks with such long breaks was that each time a character came back on screen I was beaming with joy. Those with their own themes would be especially welcome, making every time I picked the game back up feel special, like reuniting with an old friend.

I can say undoubtedly that some of the witnesses in the series bothered me, be it for their designs or disgusting animations, but everyone I remember strongly, I remember fondly, and that's pretty awesome. Susato is my precious bean, of whom I will hear no criticism whatsoever. Ryunosuke is an excellent protagonist - I haven't played any of the older Ace games but I'd be surprised if old fans thought he didn't fit the bill nicely, am I wrong? - Herlock Sholmes was a hugely pleasant surprise, Iris, Gina, Gregsy, TOBY! I love them all honestly. And of course, pray forgive the discourtesy of leaving Barok Van Zieks until last, a prosecutor so good that I'm genuinely a little worried the ones from earlier in the franchise won't live up to his impeccable demeanor.

Aside from the characters, the music in these games slaps, hard. Every song is a banger and I must've spent at least 90% of my playtime bopping or humming along while I read. I also got to enjoy the music for a lot longer on account of me getting distracted and having the game serenade me while I do shit on my other screen, making this game one of few that truly benefitted from me being really bad at playing it

As for the story, there are huge chunks of my memory missing but from what's covered in 2 and what 2 recounts of 1, I really like what they did. The whole foreign student practicing law in Britain (my homeland 😌) angle fit perfectly into the overarching plot, as well as making for some really interesting relationships and scenarios between the characters, even before establishing any personal history that may have played a role.
Hell even the journey itself plays a role! When I started I had basically no idea how Ace games worked, so there were multiple times where I felt like Leo DiCaprio in that meme, snapping my fingers at the screen thinking "No way! The thing!"-- It was just really fun to play, idk how else to say it. Nothing stuck out to me as feeling forced or shoehorned in, (but ofc take that with a grain of salt bc I played it over 15 months so) it just worked, and I think that's neat :)

Overall, while my memory is foggy as hell, I am absolutely certain that I adored these games. Resolve served as both a step up from the first game as well as building on it's story and cases for what I found to be a satisfying conclusion. Maybe the very very end wrapped up a little quickly but idk, the actual ending of the game was so long already idk that I would've even wanted to spend longer getting the specifics of the outcome, so it's forgiven.

If you like the Ace Attorney games then you'd be a fool not to try these two. I believe the cases may be longer but there is so much to each of them between the trials and investigation that I don't think that's a bad thing at all. Capcom have been killing it in recent years and I'm really hoping they plan to port/remaster 4-6 of Phoenix's games as well, at least before I beat 1-3.

That's about all I have to say, leave it to me to write walls of text just to say "character and music good :)" but y'all know what you're in for by now :p

Much appreciated to anyone still reading these, regular amount of thanks to those who just like the review or gloss over a few sentences 🙏 Next review is looking likely to be Lost in Play, possibly Like a Dragon: Ishin! after, as I need to beat both before Resident Evil 4 drops. Stay tuned.
Have a great weekend!

I'm not very big into Star Wars nowadays, but after having a blast with Battlefront II and seeing how hype the trailers for Survivor have been I decided it was the perfect time to replay this as I've been meaning to get to it for a while. I also made sure to play it over a month before the sequel comes out to avoid burnout and as I'm sitting here writing this while watching the credits scroll I think that was definitely a smart decision.

That is not to insult this game as I did actually even enjoy it a little more this time around, but there are some pretty big issues I have with it that hold it back for me. For one, the gameplay isn't always the most satisfying. When I first played this game I had virtually no experience with Soulslikes but now I consider them a genre I really enjoy (even if I rarely find the time to play them) and I was able to pick up on more of the similarities this time around. But really its more of a Soulslite and I don't find the implementation of many staples the genre is known for to really compliment this game in meaningful ways. The lightsaber combat is pretty good - the lack of dismemberment disappointing but understandable - but it doesn't really feel as tight or as in depth as I'd expect other games like this to be. Also quite frankly while there is a good amount of enemy types, I found virtually every single one that wasnt a stormtrooper variation to be a huge pain in the ass to fight. Thats not to say that its not fun still and pushing enemies off cliffs will never not be fun, but by the time i reached the final boss I was just pretty over the system in general and ended up dropping it to story mode just to get done with it. Skill issue? perhaps but I know if FromSoft added an easy mode update to all of their games right this moment I would still never go for it. Basically the combat is good but the challenge feels more reliant on being annoying than actually honing skill.

My only other big issue with this is that the PS5 version at the very least is quite buggy. I don't remember if it was this noticeable for my first playthrough on ps4 but there were a whole lot of little things that just kinda got in the way. Once or twice Cal just randomly died for no reason during platforming sections, sometimes in fights where you get swarmed and stunlocked the camera fucked off and made it really hard to see and there were multiple cutscenes with out of sync audio that had to be fixed by closing the game. Another thing thats not really a glitch but a bit bothersome is the huge amount of clipping. The ponchos are stylish (but severely lacking in color options like cmon) and optional but its a pretty big distraction to see Cal's hands and legs phase through them in every cutscene and I wish they put a little more care into that. And this is the game that has multiple different lightsaber holstering animations that have a lot of personality so I really doubt its from a lack of love.

Story wise I think the game is pretty solid. I like the whole cast and it has some pretty good arcs and emotional moments. But it does really suffer from feeling like the first in a series. I am very curious to see where the story goes with Survivor but the story definitely feels a little underwhelming where Fallen Order ends off. Its kinda at a point where the main goal is complete but theres no real setup for how the story will continue and it just doesnt entirely work. Cal is a likeable protagonist and I am looking forward to see what they do with his character, I especially want to see more of Merrin as well. The gameplay loop mostly has you traveling back and forth between planets and there is maybe a bit too much backtracking but there are always new areas opened up so its not like you're replaying the same exact thing again and again. I also found the puzzles to be a lot more enjoyable on this playthrough where I remember them being kinda annoying to begin with. I don't generally like puzzles but the ones in this are pretty well thought out and done so I dont have any complaints about them. Overall despite having some technical issues and some complaints about the story and combat as a standalone this is a really great single player Star Wars game that I'm glad is as successful as it is.

Seeing as its been said that this story is planned as a trilogy I am more than okay with that. I definitely am a little unsure on what the story of Survivor will end up being. My biggest hopes after completing this was for a bigger cast and more of them beyond mostly just staying back at the Mantis but It seems like Survivor is going in a different direction. There is apparently a prequel graphic novel meant to explain what happens inbetween the two games but I ain't paying 15 dollars to read it and so I really just hope they have some good ideas and that they don't give the game an ending that super suffers from middle child syndrome. Beyond that I just hope its a little more polished and honestly it's looking like a big step up in a lot of ways. I'll get back to you in May for my review on that one as well :p

Thanks for reading y'all. Still working on a couple other reviews but can't say when they'll be out. I really appreciate you if you've made it this far. See you next time <3

Nancymeter - 81/100 (oh wow a 2 point increase!!)
Time Played: 14 hours for this playthrough
Trophy Completion - 100%
Game Completion #4 of March
Game Completion #54 of 2023