I’m a big fan of how Tales of Berseria’s story played out. This game’s world building is incredibly deep and convincingly authentic and the main and side characters are colorful and beautifully written. Velvet Crowe became one of my favorite video game protagonists, because of one of her decisions! The villains and their motives are wonderfully portrayed and I really felt a lot of empathy for them. This game’s dark tone was rather refreshing, I loved it.

Unfortunately, the combat system is a no brainer and very tedious, but it has some fun mechanics, nonetheless.

A short and unnecessary sequel to the already completed story that was Xenoblade Chronicles.

The plot is shockingly uninspired, which is unusual for Monolith Soft, and the two new characters are boringly written. Their move sets are literally copy-pasted from Reyn and Sharla. I appreciate Tyrea’s appearance and how they fleshed out Shulk and Melia a little bit more.

Bionis’ Shoulder is a very beautiful region and it is fun to explore its various areas, but it lacks interactivity and it is filled with tedious fetch quests. The frame rate when all Ponspectors are found is incredibly low and it almost made me drop the new epilogue. The Quiet Moments (equivalent to the Heart-to-Hearts) are fully voiced and that’s an improvement in terms of presentation. I want to see that in future games as well!

Nintendo promoted this game with a brand-new combat system, but they just swapped the chain attacks with an all-out attack. Everything else remained the same, so it was a bit deceiving.

They could’ve used the time and money to improve the main game even more, instead of giving us an unnecessary epilogue.

The Witness fold my brain and subsequently rearranged it. I can’t describe this master class of lateral thinking and bustling exploration in any other way. Knowledge is everything.

The progression depends on how many secrets of this island you have discovered. The Witness could’ve scattered its hints scantily. Instead, hundreds of exciting puzzles are lined up in every corner.

The minimalism of many line puzzles should be a matter of taste, but I am beguiled by the elegance with which The Witness rebuilds such a simple scaffolding every minute — in shapes that surprise for many hours of gameplay.

An overlooked and underrated visual novel of Steins;Gate that wonderfully expands the backgrounds and personalities of the characters we love so much.

The artworks are fascinating as ever and the soundtracks are either very playful or atmospheric.

Other than Steins;Gate, Steins;Gate 0 or Steins;Gate: My Darling’s Embrace, Linear Bounded Phenogram is totally linear and you unlock the character’s stories one after another.

It’s included with Steins;Gate ELITE on PlayStation 4 or Steam, so don’t miss this one. It’s worth it.

Steins;Gate is a visual novel at its finest and tells one of the foremost and most complex time travel stories you could ever experience in all of media.

It features fascinatingly detailed and unique artworks, an atmospheric and playful soundtrack, well-written and relatable characters and interactive choices leading to different endings hitting your emotions in a different way. Critique of Japanese pop culture and society are merged with a dramatic, joyful and humorous narrative, science fiction adventure and love stories - all of it is excellently balanced.

The script is wonderfully translated and tips are explaining Japanese memes, cultural references and more, preventing you from getting confused. I personally recommend the original Steins;Gate visual novel, but ELITE is doing fine as well, if you have no access to the original.

Steins;Gate is one of the most cathartic experiences I've ever had.

An action time-travel visual novel developed by Vanillaware. It’s a project purely made out of passion and there never was and probably never will be a game like 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim ever again.

It’s a love letter to all classic science fiction movies, books and games from 1898, the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, but it tells its very own and unique story, bombarding with plot twist after plot twist, one of them totally being a game changer.

The narrative is told non-linearly, but I won’t say anything more about the story, except that I honestly think it’s one of the very best visual novels and time-travel stories of all time, It’s peak science fiction.

The artworks are fascinating and the soundtrack is absolutely impressive.

You definitely should NOT sleep on this masterpiece.

Another Metroid 2 Remake is a prime example of how many skilled fan developers exist. Milton Guasti proficiently crafted one of the best — if not the best — remakes and fan games in existence.

AM2R is an expanded and faithful 16-bit remake of “Metroid II: Return of Samus”, technically based on Metroid: Zero Mission and amazes with fresh and new ideas, areas, puzzles, bosses, quick travel and a diary to register levels and enemies automatically, so you can always take a look for more lore details.

Its colorful and beautiful 2D pixel retro look is mesmerizing and its sound design is as atmospheric and metroid-ish as it can be, but the best part of this remake is its thoughtful level design: nothing feels unfair, the item and enemy placements are on point and its level design teaches you how to make use of your abilities.

Without a doubt, AM2R is the best way to experience Metroid 2.

This game is a farting horse corpse that deserves to be poked at with a knot. Can you name a game worse than that? Well, I can, probably Fallout 76 or Superman 64. Continuing this way, this contemptible game offers nothing, but horrific graphics, dreadful and unbalanced gameplay and uninspired areas that are way too linear. There is no exploration, no difficulty, no adventure, no story, not the full compendium of monsters, not a full game. But you can buy the Pokéball Plus for 50 bucks to get access to Mew, I suppose.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a grand adventure including a fine story and lovely characters. The story is filled with subplots and fan service distracting from the main plot and the story gets incredibly focused after 70% of story progression. Its sluggish combat system feels like a long wait for bureaucrats finally doing their job, but once you finally understand the deep mechanics, it feels like getting a revelation from the Architect himself. The inconsistent tonality of this game is awful and the game design is anything but good: Field Skills and Gacha are slowing down the progress and exploration. Many characters are massively, unnecessarily and questionably over-sexualized which would not be a problem if these were optional costumes, but they are not.

I also want to mention its fantastic soundtrack. It’s probably one of the best video game soundtracks my ears have ever experienced. It carries a lot.

Although some textures remained untouched, this remaster heavily improved the visuals of the original and greatly remixed or even re-orchestrated the original soundtrack. Xenoblade Chronicles‘ partly inconsistent story offers an intense revenge plot filled with mysteries and plot twists whereas many of them are meant to be predicted. Quality of life additions may have improved the experience with this games’ tedious side quests and its sluggish and broken combat system, but these are only fighting the symptoms rather than the causes.

Skyward Sword made full use of the Nintendo Wii’s hardware and even today, it just looks absolutely graceful. This gem has one of the best designed dungeons in the entire series and it’s a shame they’re remembered poorly, just because people were too ignorant to deal with the motion controls, although they were totally justified for implementing interesting gameplay and dungeon mechanics. I really loved the relationship between Link and Zelda in this title, but its linearity and frequent recalibration prevent me from giving this game a higher score.