Glad that I finally got around to beating this expansion. I originally gave up on it after getting stuck on Artorias, and it was only on my new game plus that I finished it. While I don't think it quite reaches the highs of the base game (Anor Londo & Undead Burg/Parish), I can't deny that this is a great expansion. The atmosphere is as strong as always, the NPCs were memorable (although a bit underdeveloped), the lore implications are very interesting, and the bosses were some of the best in the entire game. Sanctuary Guardian was solid, Artorias & Kalameet were great, and Manus was my favorite boss of the game. Although there was other parts I liked, these bosses for me were the standout part of Artorias of the Abyss. The only thing that really held this DLC back for me was the areas. As although the atmosphere is great, they are really annoying to traverse due to the amount of powerful enemies & the lack of bonfires. But even with these issues I still found Artorias of the Abyss really enjoyable, and it reminded me why I love this game as much as I do.

I'm genuinely surprised that Yakuza 3 is considered one of the weaker entries of the series, as I personally had such a great time with it. The combat may be less polished than later games, but I still found it so much fun, especially in the last chapter. And like the other games, there's plenty of fun side stories and minigames to make spending time in Kamurocho and Okinawa really fun. The story may have some pacing issues, but as a whole I feel it's very strong. It puts on display what makes Kiryu such an endearing character (his kindness and empathy) but also such a tragic one (unintentionally putting those he loves in danger). This combined with some of my favorite side characters and one of my favorite antagonists made this story so compelling for me. And when it all culminated so beautifully in that final chapter, it feels very easy for me to call this one of my favorite Yakuza games.

Now I remember why I didn't bother finishing this lol. By no means a bad dlc, just a pretty forgettable one. The gameplay was fun and nice to look at; but just like the original game it's extremely easy. I beat the whole thing in only an hour on Normal difficulty. The story was also underwhelming. The premise of it was interesting enough and I get what they were going for with Gladio's development; but in execution it felt very underdeveloped and unnecessary. Like I said this DLC is not bad, but it's just so vastly overshadowed by Episodes Prompto and Ignis in pretty much every way.

Besides the fun side content and enjoying Sayama as a character I'm feeling really mixed about most of this game. The combat although pretty satisfying at times did feel a bit repetitive without the option of multiple styles. Also I'm surprised that a lot people consider this to be one of the better Yakuza plots, as it felt extremely uneven to me. It starts out really interesting and there were some great moments here and there; but there was a ton of reveals that didn't work for me and subplots I didn't care about. I also didn't find Ryuji Goda as compelling as previous antagonists. I found him entertaining and he had some good moments; but I didn't find him too interesting personally. So even though I enjoyed the final fight with him it just didn't have as much weight for me as the final bosses of Zero or Kiwami 1. Kiwami 1 was also pretty messy, but I still felt it had a really emotionally compelling story at its core; while Kiwami 2 has a solid story but didn't resonate with me nearly as much. I still think Kiwami 2 is a good game, but personally I didn't feel it reached the emotional highs of the other Yakuzas I've played, and for that reason it's my personal least favorite.

I heard this was a divisive DLC but I wasn't expecting to actually dislike it. Ariandel was one of my least favorite locations in the game. Despite having beautiful visuals and some cool shortcuts, it has a lot of annoying enemies that made it a pain to play. I can't say I love the bosses either. Gravetender & Greatwolf was really annoying, feeling like it was just hard for the sake of it. Sister Friede on the other hand was a pretty good fight with beautiful animations, great music, and a challenging move-set. But the combination of its difficulty with how long it takes to finish did sour the fight for me a little bit, and I ended up summoning an NPC to speed things up. Overall a bit of a disappointing DLC.

While this was a fun game, I feel pretty comfortable calling it my least favorite Souls game so far. What FromSoftware has done here is extremely impressive in terms of scale and visual design, but it does so at the cost of what made me love these games. Despite the massive amount of content in Elden Ring, it feels less satisfying to explore due to the amount of copy-paste content. This along with the late game difficulty spike made this game pretty fatiguing at times. The boss roster is probably the worst out of the Souls games I've played, even in terms of main bosses there's so few I would call good, and even those don't come close to the best bosses of Dark Souls 1 or 3. And in terms of storytelling and lore, this is the least I've cared about a Souls game. The Dark Souls games may have a lot of ambiguity, but they more or less tell you everything you need to know about its premise and themes. But even after beating Elden Ring I feel like I wasn't given nearly enough information despite the increased amount of cutscenes and dialogue, making any motivation for progressing the game beyond gameplay nonexistent. Even if I enjoyed most of my time with Elden Ring, I can't help but look at it as a bit of a letdown. And I can only hope that this isn't a sign for FromSoftware games to come.

I definitely want to come back to this game eventually since I've only played up to chapter 6 (About 25 hours), but from what I have played I do feel a bit mixed about Like a Dragon.

The story starts out really strong, for the first 3ish chapters I was completely sold on Ichiban as a protagonist and although they were cutscene heavy I enjoyed pretty much all of them. But chapters 4 and 5 weren't quite as interesting for me, they had some interesting moments but in general just kind of bored me and kind of just felt like filler with not much interesting plot developments or character interactions. From what I hear this is longest game in the series, and I could really feel its length with these chapters.

There's also the gameplay which I also feel mixed about. It's mostly enjoyable and it translates the silliness of combat in previous games really well; but the amount of grinding was annoying and there's one dungeon at the beginning of Chapter 6 was by far the most boring part of the game for me. In terms of side content though I don't really have any complaints. Yokohama is massive and is so dense with things to do; I spent hours just wandering around and doing side content. I loved the additions of minigames like go-karting, staying awake at the movie theater, and aluminum can collecting.

So although I do have issues with this game so far, there's still so much that I enjoyed here and I really hope that when I come back to this game I get more of what I liked about it.

Ehhh, I really wanted to like this one with how much of a fan I am of MGS 2 and 3. But there were too many things here that just don't work for me. The stealth action gameplay is pretty good despite me not liking the controls, but it also has large amounts of backtracking that were extremely boring. There were some fun boss fights with cool gimmicks, but some of the later boss fights were infuriating for me. I wasn't the biggest fan of the story either. It was strange since it has all the elements you see in later games. The anti war themes, the convoluted storylines, balancing of different tones, characters going on long monologues whenever they get the chance. Yet I couldn't help but feel bored by the story, not feeling particularly intrigued or impacted by anything that happened. It does have some scenes I genuinely liked and I appreciate it setting up all the storylines that the next games will build upon; but I just don't feel any strong emotions towards the plot as a whole. MGS 1 by no means a bad game, just one that I really wish clicked with me more.

Besides having great visuals and a couple fun additions; this was kind of infuriating to play. I didn't like the gimmick with the ghost enemies, the placement of some bonfires was annoying, and the amount of ganking is just as much of an issue as in the main game. I was hoping I'd at least get some good bosses, but I didn't even get that. The Sinh fight was fine, but the fights with Elana and the Gank Squad were terrible IMO. I'm hoping I'll like the other DLCs more, as this just didn't do much for me.

Just an incredible experience in almost every way. Out of all the Souls games I've played, 3 is the one I struggled with the most. It’s more accessible than the previous two in a lot of ways, but is balanced out by some incredibly brutal levels and enemies. This is also the Souls game with my favorite lineup of bosses. There's a few that I disliked, but the rest ranged from good to some of my favorite bosses in video games (The Nameless King easily being my favorite). The storytelling although abstract I found incredibly moving due to the existential ideas it touches upon. I was also a big fan of the callbacks in this game, the complaints I've seen about these callbacks always felt a bit surface level to me when they almost always add something to the themes and narrative beyond just being fanservice. My only real complaint for the game is the areas. Despite looking really good at times, the game’s color palette made for a handful that weren't visually interesting. But besides that the areas themselves have too many enemies and generally lack the creative level design found in Dark Souls 1. These issues didn't ruin my experience at all, but because of them I would rate 3 a bit lower than 1. Still an incredible game that I can easily call one of my new favorites.

The more I think about it this is probably my favorite video game. It's very far from perfect, having a good amount of jank and some really weak areas in the late game. But it still manages to be such a special overall experience. The level design and atmosphere surpasses any other Soulsborne game I've played, the combat is fun and allows for so much variety, the boss roster although inconsistent has some incredible highs (Manus, Kalmeet, O&S), and it has a strong emotional element thanks to its endearing side characters and thought provoking themes. It was a bit overwhelming on my first playthrough, but upon replays it has become something of a comfort game for me. I've replayed this game 3 times now and I still have yet to get bored of it.

Top 10 Anime Betrayals



But for real, I forgot how fun and genuinely hilarious this game is. So much so to the point that I got 100% completion and still kind of wish there was more. Really my only complaints were the occasionally frustrating controls, certain plot points not aging well, and certain requirements to get 100% being very annoying (Nut Shot made me more angry than I care to admit). But even these things seem minor with how much fun I had overall, good game.