Fellow Silent Hill fans! Don't wait for Konami to do something, they'll only make a Frankenstein out of the dead franchise. As someone who is a huge fan of SH2, I'd highly recommend Funger games, but you have to keep a few things in mind, I'll explain them further.

While very conflicted initially, I'd say I liked it by the end, even more than the original game. But not in all aspects.
A word of advice: if you are new to this game/series, please, start with the easier difficulty. It's a much better experience with much better save system.
The normal difficulty though, is quite crazy and up until the very endgame I was struggling a lot. I was going in blind and it was really damn hard to understand how to recruit anyone other than Abella. In the end, my party consisted of Marina (me), Abella and Daan. And you receive some insane amounts of damage on normal difficulty too, so playing solo is practically out of question, even for Marcoh who can more or less deal with the first few encounters on his own.
And that leads us to my main complaint: the game has very poor, sadistic game design. Yes, I know it was basically intended for the player to suffer. But hear me out, hardcore players, please. Losing HOURS of progress isn't difficulty. It's an annoyance and a waste of time. If I have to replay 4 hours to try some new enemy/boss because oh wow the saves aren't random this time, but just LIMITED, it's a bad game design and you can't convince me otherwise. Real difficulty is in difficult situations and encounters a game presents to you while having an at least decent save system like in the Souls games where you lose your souls for new levels, but every other progress you made remains. And no, this game is NOT a roguelike. It has a semi-decent replayability, worse than the first one despite here being more characters because the map here is bigger and all the encounters are the same anyway.
But the story and some encounters, and also the feeling of learning more about the game and getting better are truly one of a kind. The final bosses of ending B made me run around, do some things and use some items at my disposal to defeat them and THAT is a good difficulty. That is an interesting encounter. Also, unlike the first game, this one has more interesting builds because of a bigger skill tree. That's commendable. Loved what I got with caster Marina with Osaa's skills.
Loved the development of ideas from the first game and how ending A is basically a thematic remake of the same ending from the first one.
Also happy to see Miro do better work on his characters, some of them are very good in this game. I just wish the encounters with them weren't so easily missable. The same issue was in Black Souls 2. Speaking of BS2, Pocketcat is literally Cheshire Cat, but better. Love the guy.

Miro, please, bring back Prelude to Darkness. It was such a good track. Not that the new ones are bad. In fact, this game has probably more cool tracks overall, but Prelude to Darkness was special. Would've loved to hear some remix or something.

Anyway, waiting for the next game (probably set in some distant future this time) and hoping the issues with the first and this one will finally be resolved and the game will finally be fun to play. At least I've seen some steps in the right direction. It's just that one of them (limited saves) turned into the wrong one. But if you play on the easier difficulty, you'll get the book that'll allow you to save on some ritual circles and those saves won't be limited to just 1, but 3!
That's why I recommended starting your first run with it to get to learn about the game and then replaying on the normal one for some remaining endings you wanna get, but couldn't.

Better than the first game in some things, but much worse in others.

What I liked:
+ The characters. The strongest point of 2. Nia especially was the reason I actually never complained about anything. Because she was so cute and fun to watch. The others, except Rex, are also good. One of the villains probably takes the spot of my second favorite character here after Nia.
+ The world. Even more beautiful than the first game's. Walking around those titans was a real joy.
+ Combat. It's much more fun than the first game's, more dynamic, more things to do and it doesn't feel as mmo-ish with lots of time just standing idling waiting for the cooldown of your abilities.
+ Chapters 8-10 and the general setup for the grand finale of what 3 is apparently going to be. Really, the Land of Morytha is the best presentation of 'Takahashi's twist' (won't spoil, those who know - know).
+ Some music is really damn good like night Tantal theme and Power of Jin. You can beat Jin, but not the feels.

What I didn't like:
- Gacha. Feels like Monolith were trying to make some mobile game with those blade gachas and it negatively affected the combat. So while overall the combat is fun, it's also not if you don't have at least some decent blades from that rng gacha system. Why not make them obtainable through side and main quests thus making sides actually matter and more fun (and they did it once!) - a mystery.
- Side quests still suck. I don't even need to elaborate. I'm generally not a fan of side quests, especially in JRPGs, but XC sides are just awful. They're slightly better than the first game's mess, but still not close to being fun and worth doing. Rewards are just funny except for one that rewards you with a blade.
- Skill checks. Just fuck that mechanic that destroys any enjoyment from exploration. You always need to go and change blades in that poorly designed ui.
- UI. Very confusing and hard to navigate through. Even by the end game. And also shitty minimap that doesn't show anything. Why did they break something that was working perfectly in the first game? A mystery again.
- The ending. God damn that ending sucks! It was a buildup for nothing! I mean, the final scene after credits kinda makes sense? But that forced drama literally out of nowhere before that didn't. While I'm not as mad at that ending now, I still don't like it as much as the first one. Takahashi forgot what he was building in this game and what he was talking about with Mythra and Rex relationship just to make some very sensitive people cry.

So there we have it. An ambitious game that could be much better than its predecessor, but shot itself in the leg with some questionable gacha mechanics, skill checks and poorly designed ui. If not for them, I'd have rated it higher than the first game. Because the sheer FUN from the game is higher here and the peaks are higher as well. But I just can't endorse gacha.

Ok, this was probably my biggest surprise of the year.
I first heard about this game from one of the streamers I watch. Apparently, it was some early Fromsoft inspired dungeon-crawler. I watched a bit of it on stream and I thought it looked quite interesting.
And so I decided to give this game a shot.
I never played dungeon-crawlers like this before and... I really liked what I got in the end.
Akuma Kira, the developer of Lunacid, also made Lost in Vivo, a very cool SH-inspired game.
And this game practically had Vivo's vibe all the way through. It's very spooky. That was what I did not expect.
Exploration is very good and is actually a main selling point of the game. There are plenty of cool different areas to explore, each with its own gimmick: using torch in some areas, platforming in others, finding keys and opening new paths in the castle, more standarad Fromsoft area design with shortcuts like the Library and an eerie, but captivating Sanguine Sea.
I thought each area would have a boss, but there were only 2 of them (3 counting the ending E boss) and both were... kinda ass. The final one had a cool second phase, but there was a bug and I had to restart it.
Also the combat... is not the best here. I enjoyed it, but it's very basic. Fortunately, there are plenty of different weapons and spells to make the basic dungeon-crawler combat more fun. But still, by the end of the game it gets a bit stale.
What surprised me more was the endings and the story of the game. Aside from heavy Fromsoft (and Miyazaki) inspirations, Akuma Kira also seems to be a heavy Drakengard fan and it shows in the storytelling and endings.
While the story itself is nothing to write home about, its execution is crazy in a good way. Something you can only see in an indie game like this one.
I won't spoil anything here, but let me say that the final ending was a HEAVY Drakengard reference and I loved it. It was both a great love letter to those games and something new too.
Almost forgot to mention that Lunacid also has a really damn good soundtrack. The Library themes are my favorite along with the 2 final bosses.

If you are a fan of the Souls games, dungeon-crawlers or Drakengard (maybe even Black Souls?), this is a must play!

Demi is very cute, I kneel.

Looking out for more new Akuma Kira's games and wish him luck and future success. He's doing great so far with 3 very successful games, but he needs more attention, he deserves it.

I'll make this review short.
At first I didn't understand the appeal of this game, to be perfectly honest. It looked pretty bland and boring with too much confusing and overcomplicated stuff like many hidden walls that you need to check by going into the ball form and trying to blow up every wall.
For that reason I also got stuck real hard several times in the first half.
But after I got how the game worked I decided to give it another chance.
And I was pleasantly surprised by what I actually got. Even if the whole exploration and atmosphere is pretty light and not anything special at first, it gets REALLY DAMN INTENSE by the late game.
Before trying the Metroid series I knew 2 things about it: hot blonde Samus and those cute-looking transparent aliens with some small ball inside them.
And I thought that those aliens would be some chill early game monsters.
Imagine my surprise when I got to the area with them near the end of the game.
I was really, REALLY terrified. I was shocked how they made some cute monsters into literally one of the scariest beings in gaming.
Overall exploration in the game is actually great too. It's nothing special at first, but the game rewards you a lot with time to the point that you get some ability that lets you literally crush everything in your path.
Unfortunately, music is nothing to write home about. It's eerie at times and helps create some atmosphere, but I won't be listening to it outside of the game.
Now what I also wanted to talk about is my favorite segment in the game - the one added in this remake.
It's the first time I see a 2D metroidvania with stealth and actually done amazingly well. I had the most fun in this section and getting your suit back, transforming it to the ultimate suit and that final boss - simply the best parts of the game.
Oh, and the final boss of base game sucks. Literally who thought standing on small blocks surrounded by lava while being fired at from all directions was fun?
Now the boss in the new section is super fun and cool both design and gameplay-wise.
I'll be trying more of the games in this series, for sure. Especially curious about the famous Prime games and that Fusion game where people say the creepy atmosphere is at its best.

Oh, wow... That was one hell of a ride of both good and bad emotions.

I want to try to explain what makes it so great and what's done really bad here.

Let's start with the good.
And it's the story. I couldn't believe it (I still can't), but it's... probably even the best RGG story. Why? Because first things first, it's a very well-done murder mystery. The identity of the killer may not be that hard to guess, but there's so much more behind that, even the characters from the game keep telling Yagami that constantly.
And that leads us to the other major strength of this story. Its themes. Never before have I seen RGG Studio being that thought-provoking and profound. It was always about the importance of family and loyalty, but here... My god... Let me name all the themes I could count: the usual family and loyalty, what is justice, do ends justify the means, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Want to especially elaborate on the last 3. Will be hard to do it without spoiling, but I'll try. You see, Yagami will have to meet many different people with many different motivations ranging from "I'm a crazy psycho" to "I want to save people". And the latter technically aren't wrong, they have good intentions, but not the means to achieve those... And Yagami follows his sense of justice too.
You may be surprised by this sudden and maybe even weird comparison, but I find the themes picked by this game quite similar to Fullmetal Daemon Muramasa, my favorite visual novel.
One more positive thing I can say about Judgment is the antagonists. They're all very cool and memorable, especially the Mole. Such a crazy professional psycho that you really wanted to beat the shit out of that person and following their rivalry with Yagami was incredibly intense. And the finale... it was perfect.
Another good thing I can say about this game was that after properly upgrading the skills and finding skill books and qr codes (will shit on those later), the combat became very fun. So yeah, at least it's not the damn resident sleeper 7 with its literally blandest and most uninspired turn-based combat.

Alright, that was all for the good.
Now moving onto the bad and I'll be merciless here.

1. Mortal wounds. Honestly, the least of my concerns. I can even say they add depth to the boss fights by making you dodge and fear the boss' charged attacks. But healing them is a pain + you also get them from every gunshot which sucks. First aid kits cost quite a lot of money. So yeah, I'd rather the bosses just took half or even 90% of your health with charged attacks, but didn't limit your hp bar. Heard it's fixed in the sequel.

2. Minigames.
And no, not those in Sega clubs or that vr minigame, we'll get there. I'm talking about the detective minigames like tailing, lockpicking, choosing the right dialogue option sequence or evidence and, my favorite, choosing the right key for a door.
I won't even explain why the last one is bad. You can probably laugh just from reading what it is. I wanna delve into the others. Their problem is that they're shoehorned and half-assed here. You don't get punished for picking the wrong evidence or dialogue option unlike in AA (which this game took inspiration from), lockpicking requires you to be too precise and most of all just gets boring and tiresome real quick. Too many locks to pick, especially in the vr minigame.
Tailing is simply the worst of all. It's done horrible on so many levels. Why does Yagami hide behind objects like cars? I think he stands out way more like that lol. Every time your target goes into some alley or just gets behind a building, an epic music starts playing and telling you that you're losing your target. Excuse me, what the fuck? I can't go side by side with them. Oh, also chasing. That's the funny one. If you press the buttons right, it slows you down anyway for some reason and if you try to completely avoid people or objects like bikes, you can just suddenly lose your target for whatever reason. Mmm, perfection, right, Judgment fans? Peak game?

3. Grinding.
This game is VERY... GRINDY!
Maybe even more than 7. You see, you get very little sp for story missions until like the final 3 chapters where you get about 300+ for every little thing you do (and that's still too little, trust me). And so, if you want to be capable and kick asses in combat and not the other way around, you practically have to grind. Now you see, this game, unlike many other mainline titles, doesn't have any business minigames that could help you get lots of money quite easily. The only way to get money here is by playing the vr minigame. And I'd have no problem with it if it didn't require lots of play passes which can be obtained either from normal encounters with very little chance OR bought at casinos for chips.
So basically, it's the first game in the series that makes you play casino and waste all your money there. Fortunately, I was smart enough to savescum. But all that grinding left a bitter taste.

4. Skill books and QR codes.
Another annoying thing. Basically, half of your skills are locked and you can't even upgrade them until you find either the skill book or qr code for it. Finding all of them without the guide is almost impossible unless you 100% the game. Even then I doubt it's that easy. And most of all, it's just not fun. Learning new styles in 0, new EX skills in 3-5 was very fun because of those funny cutscenes where the character watched someone and came up with some fighting moves. They should've further developed those, not do those half-assed boring qr codes and skill books.

Conclusion:
To sum it all up, I really enjoyed the second half of the game once the story got really going and I upgraded most of the skills. But many gameplay elements in this game don't work as they should and are either broken or plain annoying.
Sad that the game with probably the best story in the series got such a half-assed gameplay. But I'd still recommend you to give this game a try if you can look past those annoyances and don't mind savescumming to grind lots of money here.

This will be a review for both the main game and the dlc as I think they should be counted as a complete experience of the first Xenoblade game.

My story with Xenoblade 1 is a weird one. I loved Gears, couldn't get into Saga and then tried Blade 1 last year.
Unfortunately, the gameplay, which was too grindy if you just wanted to experience the main story, turned me off and I dropped it on one of the boss fights mid game. The story and characters, however, were pretty cool.
And now, a year later, I found out that there was an easy mode all the time, came back and finished it.
It literally saved the game for me and made it a very smooth fun experience. I even started enjoying the combat.

Anyway, the main pro of XB, like Gears, is the story. True, it got more... anime shounen-like. BUT! Takahashi hasn't abandoned any of his ideas and, imo, perfectly implemented them in this game. I just wish there was a bit more of that, not only in the end.
In the end, this game turned out to be, what I felt like, a mix of Trails and Xenogears, both some of my favorite games.
Unfortunately, the gameplay wasn't as enjoyable as in the later Trails and even as Gears for me. Even minor enemies took forever to kill and if you accidentally catch one more enemy, there's simply no chance to win.
But as I said, easy mode got rid of any grinding, minor enemies were killed easily, but major bosses still provided some challenge, even if minor. Still not as fun as the later Trails, but damn I had fun with the game in the end.

2 more things to note before I get to the dlc:
1. Absolutely gorgeous world. Every area was a blast to explore and walk through. Especially love how they change depending on the time of day. The bodies of Bionis and Mechonis (the latter a bit less) were tons of fun to explore.
2. Fantastic music. Loved it, nothing more to add. XB music also has Nier and Kara no Kyoukai vibes. So if these tell you something, you know how high quality the music here is.

Alright, onto the dlc. Future Connected.
I applaud Takahashi and his team. This is Fromsoft level of dlc quality. A brand new area to explore (even more fun than the base game's) and a new short storyline that continues after the events of the main game and serve as a kind of epilogue to the first Xenoblade. That's why I said that separating the dlc isn't really fair, imo. And I know that this game first came out more than 10 years ago with no dlcs, but Monolith Soft did a great job remastering the game (seriously, it looks awesome compared to the original) and adding an epilogue to finish Melia's story that was kinda left hanging at the end of base game.

Overall, I had lots of fun and would definitely recommend this game to any jrpg fan or anyone who's just looking for a good game. If you have trouble with the gameplay and just want to see the main story, because yeah, side quests suck here, don't be ashamed to use easy mode. Trust me, it'll just make the game much more fun.
I'd talk about weird stuff like clunky animations, but there are awesome cutscenes. Side quests kinda suck, but I almost always ignore them unless they're super good. So no big deal for me. Though I collected all ponspectors and finished their story. It was funny😄

So yeah, really, go play it if you can and haven't yet. The age of the game definitely shows, but it's still a great experience with gorgeous world to explore, amazing characters to meet and an epic touching journey to go through.

This will be a review for both the main game and the dlc as I think they should be counted as a complete experience of the first Xenoblade game.

My story with Xenoblade 1 is a weird one. I loved Gears, couldn't get into Saga and then tried Blade 1 last year.
Unfortunately, the gameplay, which was too grindy if you just wanted to experience the main story, turned me off and I dropped it on one of the boss fights mid game. The story and characters, however, were pretty cool.
And now, a year later, I found out that there was an easy mode all the time, came back and finished it.
It literally saved the game for me and made it a very smooth fun experience. I even started enjoying the combat.

Anyway, the main pro of XB, like Gears, is the story. True, it got more... anime shounen-like. BUT! Takahashi hasn't abandoned any of his ideas and, imo, perfectly implemented them in this game. I just wish there was a bit more of that, not only in the end.
In the end, this game turned out to be, what I felt like, a mix of Trails and Xenogears, both some of my favorite games.
Unfortunately, the gameplay wasn't as enjoyable as in the later Trails and even as Gears for me. Even minor enemies took forever to kill and if you accidentally catch one more enemy, there's simply no chance to win.
But as I said, easy mode got rid of any grinding, minor enemies were killed easily, but major bosses still provided some challenge, even if minor. Still not as fun as the later Trails, but damn I had fun with the game in the end.
2 more things to note before I get to the dlc:
1. Absolutely gorgeous world. Every area was a blast to explore and walk through. Especially love how they change depending on the time of day. The bodies of Bionis and Mechonis (the latter a bit less) were tons of fun to explore.
2. Fantastic music. Loved it, nothing more to add. XB music also has Nier and Kara no Kyoukai vibes. So if these tell you something, you know how high quality the music here is.

Alright, onto the dlc. Future Connected.
I applaud Takahashi and his team. This is Fromsoft level of dlc quality. A brand new area to explore (even more fun than the base game's) and a new short storyline that continues after the events of the main game and serve as a kind of epilogue to the first Xenoblade. That's why I said that separating the dlc isn't really fair, imo. And I know that this game first came out more than 10 years ago with no dlcs, but Monolith Soft did a great job remastering the game (seriously, it looks awesome compared to the original) and adding an epilogue to finish Melia's story that was kinda left hanging at the end of base game.


Overall, I had lots of fun and would definitely recommend this game to any jrpg fan or anyone who's just looking for a good game. If you have trouble with the gameplay and just want to see the main story, because yeah, side quests suck here, don't be ashamed to use easy mode. Trust me, it'll just make the game much more fun.

I'd talk about weird stuff like clunky animations, but there are awesome cutscenes. Side quests kinda suck, but I almost always ignore them unless they're super good. So no big deal for me. Though I collected all ponspectors and finished their story. It was funny😄

So yeah, really, go play it if you can and haven't yet. The age of the game definitely shows, but it's still a great experience with gorgeous world to explore, amazing characters to meet and an epic touching journey to go through.