A lot of cool new mechanics and jobs, bunch of fanservice for the series players, a whole new location. By all accounts this should be my personal 5 stars.
And yet, I kinda felt that some parts of the experience were underwhelming. My gripes are mostly with the story part being (once again) locked by a pretty bad grindwall, that you basically have to do, if you want to progress. This is the second time RGG studio does this, and if they wanted to be faithful to the dragon quest roots (I still remember the grind in XI), then I guess they succeeded, but the grinding dungeons are generally pretty bad in this one. At least in lad:7 you could just spam auto and let it grind by itself in the tower, but here you have to go through these cookie cutter dungeons that are really boring. I’d say that even Tartarus in P3P was more fun than this.
Kiryu is cool as always, Kasuga continues to be a perfect protagonist, the new characters and all the old ones are great. The cast is almost perfect, although that one character being voiced by Toru Furuya even in English is still a bit weird to me.
Ultimately I feel like it’s an almost perfect JRPG for me, if only they made the grind somewhat more fun.
Oh, and dodonko is fine I guess.

I can say that I liked what the game was going for.
If Resident Evil is a holywood blockbuster with a coherent storyline and a narrative you can follow from start to finish and not be confused, Silent Hill is more akin to a David Lynch film, an arthouse piece, with a narrative that is scattered all across the medium and is never 100% clear with what it's doing. You always have to finish picking up what it's trying to put down.
I'd say this is probably the strongest part of the whole package here - the story, the dreamlike way of it's storytelling and the ambience of Silent Hill. The enemy designs are great, and the music really makes you feel unwell in the more suspensful parts of the game.
However, as much as I like the ideas of the game, it's "gameplay" part leaves me wishing for more. This was my first playthrough of it ever, I never had the chance to play it when it was more relevant, so I come with some of the modern ideas about gameplay design in the genre, and I am just not a fan. Sometimes it's the janky camera, sometimes it's the hitboxes, sometimes it's just the encounter design in general. None of the bosses were memorable (except maybe for Eddie, but that's a maybe), and they are most often just damage sponges that test your patience.
I can sense some artistic statement in the way the gameplay works, but I just honestly did not find it that fun or helping the other parts of the game (I'd say even the puzzles are somewhat better).
One metaphor that I noticed was that when you first start going to Silent Hill on the beach, the camera actually shows you the face of the protagonist, and does not show you the way forward, almost as if it wanted to say "Turn Back". There are many cool camera tricks in the game, but that maybe stuck with me the most.
I feel that it aged, and a newer coat of paint would do it good, but boy i am not sure if Bloober team is going to hit the ball.
We can only hope.

Very solid modern interpretation of a classic JRPG.
Has a whole lot of QOL features, that are sorely missing in more modern releases, focuses on the best parts while removing all of the busywork. The battle system is genuinely pretty fun.
The story is pretty captivating, but at points it gets a tad too slow, especially in the middle. It kinda finishes on a high note, so ultimately I'd say it's good, but far from the greats.
The character writing is ehhhhh.
Beat it in about 42 hours with all of the extra content beaten.

Masterpiece.
I loved BOTW, but this hit me on an entirely different level.
It is very similar to BOTW, as in 80% of the systems and logic of that game is transferred here.
But overall, the narrative is much richer, the shrines are definitely more fun (cept for labyrinth ones, I hate those everywhere), and the new gameplay mechanics are super fun.
It is really like gmod+besiege and I love both of those, so the whole mix was an explosion of fun for me.
The final boss was so much better than BOTW imo, and the way the story closed left me very satisfied.
Another thing I want to mention is the polish of the game. I don’t remember a single game in the last 10 years that was this polished. EVERYTHING WORKS. I know it might sound stupid, but in the modern gaming landscape it is a thing to be praised. I encountered pretty much 0 bugs from start to finish, except for some performance issues, but we all know the drill, old mobile chip from 2016.
Anyway, what a great journey, can’t wait for the inevitable DLC to add master mode to this lol.

MOEAGARE MOEAGARE MOEAGARE
RAVEN
basically ace combat zero but mecha.
Also beat NG+ and NG++
Still alive, buddy?

Played the nightdive remaster. It works.
ep 1 - good
ep 2 - worse
ep3 - fast and cool
ep4 - cool tricks
ultimately ok

Amazing story and worldbuilding, incredible music by Yatsunori Mitsuda (I'd say it's even better than Chrono Trigger's!), but oh so tedious gameplay.
The amount of random battle triggers was REALLY too much sometimes, but i overall prevailed over it to enjoy the story and pacing.
Disk 1 is absolutely incredible, and at times I could not believe the amount and quality of content that was put on it. And yes, the second disk is really a big surprise, as it just drops a lot of story in VN-style "cutscenes", you'd rather play and experience yourself. This game, more than FF7 is SCREAMING for a AAA remake, but alas.
Ultimately - a great time was had with this, and I will remember this game and it's lessons fondly.

2.0 was good, quest quality of the expansion is leagues better than some of the main quests of the original game.
New endings are interesting as an alternative, however I feel like they could do just a tad more to be incorporated in the main plot.
Gameplay improved for sure, builds actually make more sense now, and crafting is no longer OP, like in 1.0, which is good. Like balance-wise, in 1.0 I could wipe bosses and enemy stacks with a click of a net runner skill, now that build is a tad harder to achieve, and I feel it’s kinda less fun.
Anyway, glad I replayed it, graphics good, music good, Idris Elba is amazing.