A pretty fun metroidvania with some strong screen design. A bit glitchy and frustrating at times though.

Maybe this gripe won't ring true to everyone, but there's an item one can acquire relatively early that lets you switch between each character at will out in the 'field', instead of needing to find a station to do so. This actually took away a lot of the fun for me. It was enjoyable to make mental notes and think about traveling to certain areas as the other characters, as opposed to the extreme convenience of pressing a button and being any of the three at once. If you were going to turn off the mechanic so soon, It might as well have simply been 1 character that had all 3 weapon types and abilities, as opposed to 3 distinct playstyles and limitations. Maybe just me.

Taking care of your cult is fun and charming at first, even after someone comes up and asks you to feed them fecal matter, but quickly there becomes nothing much to do with or for them, it turns into maintenance and busywork, a tedious distraction that constantly keeps pulling you out of the roguelike dungeons. Which, sad to say, aren't exactly great either, as they're pretty easy and lacking in a lot of variety.

It's not a bad game by any stretch; there's plenty to like about it, but overall I think too much time and effort is devoted towards keeping the player outside of the action roguelike elements, and instead towards the maintenance of perpetually dying cultists who need you to wipe their asses (more literally than you'd expect) or else, they'll die or rebel.

Having played many, many hours of the original Diablo 2, I thought this would be a great bite of nostalgia to sink my teeth into for some hours. Maybe complete the campaign, do a little bit of farming, why not? Having just done my first league of PoE and having tried Last Epoch recently, I was in the mood to play some more ARPG. So I gave it a shot.

I should not have given it a shot.

Diablo 2's atmosphere is still wonderfully grimdark and broody, with color in all the right places to make things pop, but the actual act of playing the game is a torture of the senses. Slow, plodding, unsatisfying to press buttons in, incredibly boring bosses even relative to the rest of the genre, the most flaccid endgame experience of all time... it goes on. Besides the graphics and its own namesake, I don't know how this game competes with its contemporaries in today's age.

Hell, I guess those things are what got ME to buy the remake, so egg on my face.

One day I will stop trying to revisit my old nostalgia games only to be disappointed. Maybe.

Perhaps leans in too hard to the frustrating angle of its own gameplay and themes at times, what with constant coin flips that lead to your untimely demise and whatnot, and I don't think every ending is a winner, but Fear & Hunger is a determined and uncompromising in what it's trying to express.

Note that you will likely game over many times and have to restart many times to make any headway at first, and even then it can all go wrong very fast and suddenly, but if you have the patience for it, there's not a lot of games that offer the same high stress, brutal atmosphere this game goes for. Certainly with not this much care put into it, at least.

Demons Roots. It is a game that many will scoff at the idea of playing upon learning of either its premise or its engine. Especially when they learn it has tons of porn in it, some of which is... on the extreme side, to put it mildly. However, beneath the surface is a heartfelt, if a bit too tropey at times, story about history revisionism, the oppressed, and the 'us or them' mindset people are so eager to adopt, and at a lightning-fast pacing with constant twists and turns to keep the reader engaged.

Of course, Demons Roots does sacrifice a lot for this pacing. Indeed, while the game does try to evoke the feeling of a grand invasion, the reality is that the game is clearly hamstrung by what is feasible to depict. What should be huge kingdoms are... 6 houses, 10 npcs and a dungeon. The culture of each place is described to you in off-handed sentences. There's no time to develop this or expand the scale; the game's gotta plan, you see, and dammit you are going to go on this ride whether you like it or not. Next plotpoint, next kingdom, go go go, no time.

While this leaves a lot to be desired on the setting of the world itself, the game doesn't skip out on its characters. Many that are feel trope-riddled initially or boring prove themselves to be anything but as the story goes on, with nuances and belief. The war, and the reasonings for the war, while boiling down to the same greater goal, means something different to everyone. It reminds me of a smaller-scoped Wrath of the Righteous in that way.

Unfortunately, the gameplay only ever reaches 'alright'. Decent, and potentially more interesting if Ange didn't shatter the game across her knee by being fundamentally broken, but rarely great. It does the best with what it can by giving characters strongly defined roles and differences, but it is RPG-maker combat through and through.

If I were to labor critiques at the game, I find the dialogue to be a bit unnatural at times, so focused on explaining and expositing the plot and getting to the next plot point that the characters, when in some focal scenes, start feeling like expository devices, or answering machines that are responding to questions the reader might be having. Lots of "Hey, why doesn't X/Y/Z help, or why don't we do A/B/C" "Well, that's because of X/Y/Z reason, because of A/B/C". Much of this is owe'd to the story moving at such breakneck pace that it leaves so many natural holes that the game must constantly seek to answer lest it be buried under a weight of contrivances.

That being said, that's mostly a gripe. A real complaint would mostly be the final act and chapter, the 'epilogue' as it were. The situation behind it makes sense, but it feels like something that needed much more time and development to properly get across. As it is now it feels like a needless appendix to get across a point the game had drifted off of due to focusing on the antagonist. It's thematically fitting, but feels excessively fast and honestly unwarranted. Not to mention a lot of characters just... aren't involved in it, which is unfortunate.

Either way, I enjoyed my 30~ish hours with Demons Roots. I don't know if it's an all-time great for me, but I respect it a lot for what it does, and what it grows into.

Fantastic visuals, nuanced and tightly designed combat, a great sense of progression, and The Narrator From The First One all combine to create an experience that, in my opinion, supersedes the original in most of the ways that matter.

Of course, I say 'most' intentionally. I can't honestly say Darkest Dungeon 2 is an improvement in 'every' way to its predecessor; it is a different game in many ways, but I think many of the developmental struggles and gameplay balance problems the first game ran into have their solutions implemented much more elegantly in this game.

Corpses are now genuine obstacles that have pronounced counterplay to them in abilities instead of the lackadaisical, tedious bump in the road they were before. No longer is the gameplay about minimizing terrible RNG rolls at 70-90% hit rate, instead any risks you take are visible thanks to any accuracy drops being visible as tokens (which carry their own interaction points aswell!). Of course, there's still a decent bit of RNG; critting, especially, makes it's haunting return to kill your favorite units, but the game being single segment, 'run' based means the sting doesn't go quite as deep.

Darkest Dungeon 1 does carry a bit more gravitas each time you step foot into a dungeon, as anyone coming in may not come back. However, moving into a 'run' based format as opposed to the city building dungeon delver, it also allowed red hook to move off of the extremely frustrating 'this dungeon is below my skill levels' nonsense, and constant fiddling of bits and bobs of sanity, trinkets, weapon/armor levels, etc.

It always felt like red hook didn't know truly how to match it's macro elements with the atmosphere and gameplay it wanted to encourage with the original game, and here they found it.

As an aside, I do think hero shrines are excessive amounts of meta-progression that are too important, and too numerous to do. I like how each character has a story now, and I like the interactive segments, but grinding each characters 5 unlockable moves essentially by hoping you scout or run into things in the map, as opposed to everything else (which is just spending a currency at the altar of hope) is a trial of pain. It feels like you can't even begin to even theorize what a character can do before you drag their body to 5 shrines. Runs take a long time; it can be 2 hours for 1 trip to the mountain. That's a lot of time just to MAYBE get ONE character into 'usability.'

Anyways, overall, a great, new take on the original style, if a little derivative (surely there's something else out there besides the STS map?). Can't wait to see what dlc will be like.

Holy fucking mid batman.

Find all the flags? Bosses are a joke once you're above or at their honor level. AI companions distract and tank enemies with ease. All the combat depth from Nioh and hell, even strangers of paradise, is replaced by a passive reactive, light attack heavy attack and deflect snore fest reminiscent of Sekiro but without nearly the design focus.

You can at least turn off the AI companions if you want the game to not be a complete snooze, but then you'll never get their gearset in the drop pool. Shame!

Absolute fucking tragedy of a game. Have to go out of your way to not use as many systems as possible to turn the game into anything but a lazy stroll through the park. All the worst aspects of Team Ninja's modern games with absolutely none of the good.

You know, it's almost disappointing how good this remake is. I really wanted to hate it, call it terrible, say mean gamer words on the internet, etc. But no, unfortunately, EA, the same company that slaughtered the IP in tribute to the almighty dollar in the first place, has somehow coughed out an incredibly faithful remake that not only enhances the original game, but supersedes in nearly every category.

There's definitely a couple of strange choices in some of the new story direction, one of the armor sets in the second half of the game looks like an MCU villain, etc. Overall I would call most of the changes either better, or just different, with very little being straight up worse... minus the handling one 1 character. But the gameplay is refined with exploration at its best in the series, the new visuals enhance the gameplay with you being able to now SEE how far down a limb you are, the upgrades to your arsenal are fantastic... it goes on. I could go into detail but plenty of others have already done so.

I don't think it quite beats out Dead Space 2 for me, but it got as close as anything has ever gotten. Fantastic stuff.

Shoutouts to Callisto Protocol. Gave this game the biggest advertisement it could have ever given it, by being so incredibly mid it made people pine for Dead Space again.

This hurts to write about.

Troubleshooters as a game is something I liked a lot. I played for close to 80 hours and loved making builds, watching ideas come together, all the different characters and playstyles. The map design is way too big and there's way too much chasing down singular enemies when the mission is clearly over, but in general, actively playing the game is a good time. It's got some of the most fun RPG stats to mess with in the genre since FFT.

But sadly, this is all mired by the absolutely terrible translation this game is. The dialogue is stiff, there's no character voice, everyone speaks like stiff broken robots. This game reads like minimally edited machine translation. This could be ignorable, but there's a LOT of story cutscenes, rules text, everything.

At the 80 hour mark, with the dripfeed of mechanics and characters finally slowing, the mission design is starting to get repetitive, and the story keeps introducing more characters and stakes that are hard to really appreciate because the translation is just THAT terrible. It's a pity, because there's some amount of charm and clear effort in what you can gleam through, but it's not enough.

I might come back to it one day, but not now. I think if this game had some more varied mission design and a better translation this would have been one of my alltime favorite games ever, but that's sadly not the world we live in. To spoonism I go.

Beaten on Maximum Security. This is VERY much a 'mixed' review, but I think someone who hasn't played Dead Space before would enjoy it more than I did.

I'm a huge fan of the Dead Space series, apart from... well, the obvious one. So I was pretty excited about this game. Was it worth it? ...Kind of. Largely, as much as I maybe shouldn't, I'm going to be comparing this game to Dead Space 1 and 2 generally.

Much of my problems come from the fact that I find the game to be a bit of a regression from Dead Space 2, and the game's primary combat loop being unsatisfying to both use and master, and the horror elements being only 'okay'.

This might be a bit of a hot take, but I've always been on the opinion that Dead Space 2 absolutely windmill dunks on Dead Space 1, from horror to gameplay to atmosphere. And the reason for that is because I've always viewed the IP as something more closer to splatter films than I do your typical horror might be. The games have always... not been very subtle. They don't build tension for very long before blaring trumpets and noise at you. Not that the series can't, indeed the abandoned tram in the later chapters of 2 proves it can, but it often is contrasted with limbs and fervor.

Dead Space's horror, has, largely, been about the 'frenzy' form. A confusion of sounds and stimulus and worry of 'what the hell is going to come next'. The pants-shitting moments, as they were, in the original games are when you hear an AI go "lockdown in process." or something similar, as you know the next few minutes of your life are going to involve alot of things trying to eat you. The game's are 'scary', but they aren't about a continual build of tension. This is largely why I think Dead Space 2 is better, with its huge enemy variety (shoutouts to the raptor encounters especially) and better contrast. It leans into the chaos (even if, yes, the iron man stunts are a bit silly, im not gonna pretend they arent) and contrasts it better with nightmare visions, quiet terror. Where as Dead Space 1 likes to >think< its building up tension, but pays it off way too fast and way too often. It has a heightened sense of 'general' tension for most of the game, but there's clear safe rooms, and it often dispels it's own attempts at scaring the player by overplaying its hand.

Now, I've talked a whole damn lot and have only really talked about dead space. What does any of this have to do with Callisto Protocol, beyond the obvious 'the dead space guys made it.' Well, because for all intents and purposes, this game is Dead Space 1.5. It's got that industrial, nostromo-alien feel to it for the vast majority of the game, a lot of the 'they're in the walls/vents/what have you' atmosphere to it, and it has much more of an emphasis on general tension than specific scares. Even the way Jacob is constantly looking over his shoulder reminds me of how Isaac would look in space 1.

And this certainly isn't a bad thing; Black Iron keeps the series speciality of being very well thought out and practical. You can see how the prison functions, even during its destruction. And I think it nails its atmosphere better than Dead Space 1 ever did. The problem is that not only do I feel like it took a step back from Dead Space 2, which meshed its horror elements much better and made them something that made sense for the splatter film type goreshow the games rightfully are, it kept the problems of the original dead space 1.

An example. Early in the game, you are crawling through a small squeeze while you come face to face with a webbed up, infected corpse. You get a pretty good close look at it. The eye of the corpse shoots open to follow Jacob as hes leaving the squeeze. This is a pretty creepy moment, but ruined by the extremely loud blaring of noise and orchestra that happens right when the eye opens. The Dead Space devs struggle to hold it in their pants for longer than a few minutes before needing to shout over the clifftops at that something scary is approaching. It's only when they go after long, singular chapters of quiet that it works. This 'general' tension thats supposed to linger over the whole game never works, because dead space is by its core, a loud splatter film.

So what about the gameplay? A mixed bag. Gone are the inventive and unique armory of Dead Space 1, of mining equipment turned arsenal, or the high powered sci-fi military equipment of 2. Instead we have the most basic, unimaginative weapons possible. Pistol, shotgun, assault rifle. Woopie.

The biggest question mark with the gameplay, however, is the melee system. Essentially the game locks you into a soft QTE with every enemy you face. Everything is dodged by holding a directional button. No timing element. This makes avoiding attacks >extremely< easy when it comes to 1 enemy, barely even a threat. When another enemy gets involved, one of two things happens; the other enemy will sit, and wait its turn like a good little Not!Necromorph, or they will try and hit you during this soft QTE. If they do, and you've already pressed the attack button, then oops, you're getting hit with no input, because once you press the attack button nothing on gods earth is stopping you from finishing it. This leads to the gameplay, especially in the first few hours, to be tedious. Things will only ever hit you if you've accidentally committed to something without seeing an attack or out of vision, because its impossible to fail otherwise. Rarely does damage you receive feel like a mistake as much as it does your little brother taking your controller out of your hands in the middle of a QTE.

Also, sadly, gone is the system of upgrading. Power nodes are gone, instead you inject money directly into the gun to make it stronger. It's not a terrible idea, but I found power nodes to be much more satisfying as a reward for exploration and tinkering around where you maybe shouldn't be. The monetary rewards you get in this game... never feel like enough up until the third act, where it suddenly showers you in it right before the final boss.

So... overall, do I recommend this? I don't know. I can't really help but feel disappointed as someone who likes dead space 1 and adores dead space 2, this game feels like a lot of missed opportunity. But we don't get much survival horror, especially not at this production quality. And while the game is clunky at times and derivative in a bad way in others, it's also artistically sound, with a strong atmosphere and great, haunting area to explore. Maybe that's all you need. I suspect it will be for most people.

(I literally just copied my steam review lol)

The motto of gamefreak - For every 1 step forward, make 2 grand leaps backwards.

Though truthfully, at this point I can't blame them anymore. I have to wonder if gamefreak has any control over the game at all. Pokemon games are essentially mandated to come out at a certain time to follow along with the anime schedule, and will NEVER be delayed, so any internal conflicts and problems are never allowed to be polished. Not only that, gamefreak only has what, 130 employees? Incredibly small for a game studio. You have to start wondering if the suits at the top of the pokemon chain see the games as anything more than a formality.

Okay, with that bit aside, hows the game? Mid. Very, very mid. It's a significant increase from gen 8's absolute disaster that was the wild area, but it's overall a mixed bag. A bunch of interesting ideas on paper with the most basic execution possible on every front.

The open world of Pokemon Scarlet/Violet essentially amounts to a large square of tall grass, with lots of pokeballs strewn about, and some palette swaps every now and then. There's nothing really to do except hunt trainers, which are nice loot baskets of EXP for your team, and go from story progress to story progress, and catch pokemon, and do raid battles. You know, same ol same ol, except much wider distances.

There was one thing I was interested in initially - the towers that gold the Gimmighoul chests and coins. Imagine my surprise! A reward for exploring! A small reward, sure, but it was working towards an evolution for a... weirdly designed but strong as hell pokemon! And... you need 999 coins. And theres nothing else like it in the game. Shame on me.

As far as the paths go, all of them are... okay. Maybe a hot take though, but I think the totem pokemon and ultra necrozma from gen 7 absolutely windmill dunk over this games attempt at big 'boss' pokemon. The titans as they are... have nothing that differentiate them from being just a large grass pokemon. No gimmick, no field, no stat changes, nothing. At the very least I thought the story strong of Arven, while cliche and obvious, was at least... nice to see conclude? It's decent relative to pokemon, I guess.

Likewise same for the team star path, which are a combination of gym + titan, where you fight a big car. These fights are decently fun, but preluded by 2 minutes of time wasting and making you comprehend your life choices as you stand around and mash the R button without paying attention. I'm not at all sure what the design intent of this part of the game is. It's like a mario party minigame.

The gyms themselves are your usual affair, but maybe more depressing of the game is the sad state of the towns. They have themes and personality, but it's truly sad how there is NOTHING to do in any of them. You can't even go inside most of the houses, there's barely any npcs to talk to... you just buy the few pieces of costume customization you can (because gamefreak decided to axe a thing people liked which is their usual) you just show up, beat a gym, and then leave, without ever doing anything. ANYTHING.

What we're left with is essentially a standard pokemon game gaining some, and losing other, features and ideas from others. There's some original ideas but nothing in the game tries to use it in any interesting way. This isn't even going into the massive performance problems the game suffers from.

Honestly, the main reason I'm not rating this game lower is because I think competitively this gen has some potential to be pretty fun in both singles and doubles, and it IS better than gen 8. But overall, this is not a good path for pokemon to take.

I'll also repeat myself from my other pokemon reviews: Gen 5 and 7 for life.

Unfortunately, the best way I can describe Ghost Song is 'aggressively average."

The game has some very nice ambiance and atmosphere to it, thanks to some top notch sound design. Satisfying clanks of metal hitting the floor as Deadsuit walks, the churning life in the backgrounds of the more biological areas, etc. From quiet to noisy to everything inbetween, the soundscape sells each area rather well.

But alas, the gameplay of Ghost Song isn't anything particularly special. There are plenty of secrets to find, behind breakable walls and all the usual affair, but the map is... shockingly uninspired. It's not bad per say, but it's everything you've seen before and more, with nothing especially notable about the execution.

I'm not against limited fast travel, as I think making things too convenient for the player in regards to speeding across the map in a metroidvania can break the players relationship with the world, but in Ghost Song, not only is fast travel limited to an incredible extreme, there are parts where it straight up turns off. Every time you accomplish one of the main goals of the game, you have to laboriously crawl back to the surface in a death stranding esque delivery job, without much or anything having changed to make the journey any more interesting. It's a strange addition of extra busywork that the game didn't feel like it needed.

Storywise... it's one of those games you have to go digging through lore notes and finding obscure flags and then have to piece together things yourself. It's not bad, and it lends to the sombering atmosphere of the game and has a few interesting ideas, but not worth staying for.

Overall, it's a nice looking game with some solid atmosphere throughout, accompanied by the most average metroidvania loop of all time. I couldn't finish it, but maybe I'll get the urge one day.