God of War (2018) is a solid game wrapped up in an unbelievable amount of 8th generation nonsense. There's a relatively compelling emotional narrative here, alongside serviceable combat and some pretty good looking vistas. Unfortunately, it's just dragged down by so much needless filler and so many boring puzzles.

The central narrative is what compelled me to keep playing. Kratos and Atreus make for an interesting pair, and the father-son issues grow and change in interesting ways throughout the game's 20ish hours. It's never really all that shocking, but watching Kratos' icy exterior slowly defrost is fun regardless. The side characters are a mixed bag. Sindri and Brok are mostly annoying, Waititi-esque comedians that left me wishing they would shut up, but Mimir is a welcome addition that really helps break up the silence between Kratos and Atreus. Freya is a little all over the place but her presence is at least warranted and she serves a good purpose. Since netiher Thor nor Odin are actually in this game, Baldur is pretty much the main villain and he does not live up to that title.

Combat is frustrating. This game's difficulty balance is all over the place in the worst of ways. Regular enemies are complete fodder, but bosses have like 2.5x the amount of health they feel like should have and do exponentially more damage. The game's reliance on the over-the-shoulder camera for the cinematic views results in some of the clunkiest camerawork in combat I've seen recently. Compare this to Resident Evil 4, which I just played, and the difference is night and day. In RE4, the camera's perspective is baked into the game design, not the cinematic design. This means that enemy encounters are built in such a way that managing your blind spot while shooting is key part of how the game plays. In God of War, it feels like the opposite, and like the combat designers had to work around the issue instead of integrating it. As a result, you get some extremely irritating enemy placements in your blindspot, and the bright red indicator for an approaching enemy or projectile is lazy and ugly. Bosses, particularly the atrocious Dark Elf Lords, will routinely fall out of combos and runic attacks, and generally just get to do whatever they want, pushing you around and using invincible flying projectiles.

What I mentioned in the intro is the game's biggest failing. What I'm calling "8 generation bullshit" refers to the endless use of levers to raise gates, freezing gears to stop things moving or to move them, waiting on slow elevators, climbing up marked rock faces, and having to get stupid metroidvania upgrades to open places. Furthermore, it heavily features a completely useless gear and stats system, ala Assassin's Creed Odyssey. There's even COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS levels! The XP and money you get are pretty much required, as the game's open world is so narrow as to be essentially linear. If that's the case, why do I even have to craft armor and get weapon upgrades? It's not like there's any large portions of the game where you can miss tons of XP, so the need to "build" your Kratos is completely unnecessary. I reached 100% on the skill chart at like 80% of the way through the game with no side content completed, so why do I have to gather thousands of bits of XP anyway? Why does loot drop on the ground? These decisions are utterly baffling to me as they do nothing but get in the way of the emotional narrative being told. I've seen this game compared to Uncharted 4 several times as a not dissimilar emotional reboot / ending to earlier campier iterations. I feel like the comparison does not act in God of War's favor, as Uncharted 4 completely eschews the numerical, gamey nonsense in order to make its narrative as immersive as possible. Drake doesn't have to level up his weapons perks to fight, and the game is all the better for it.

In that same vein, the pacing is just too slow. I actually quite like how this game's main quest is actually just an errand of sorts, waylaid by the plot, but it just takes way too long to actually happen. Toss in the endless and extremely boring puzzle rooms where you have to do 1 thing with either the axe or chains in 3 different ways, interspersed with combat encounters, and it just adds up to too much. I think there are entire setpieces you could easily cut from this without missing anything. Even the setpieces I did like felt like they went on way too long, like the flying ship or Tyr's vault.

The good stuff: It's quite pretty, especially with the PS5 update option. The cinematic camera, while pretty dumb in combat, does give the game a nice flair that puts Kratos in the center of the action and grounds all the setpieces. The dragon boss is the peak of the game. It's inventive and silly and absurdly over the top, which is a welcome change from fighting recycled elemental trolls that all die the same way. Mimir's a very good addition to the crew. The stuff with Jormungandr is probably the only time it feels like it actually manages to achieve a sense of scale, and I quite like those segments. The leviathan axe itself is a fantastic weapon, and throwing it and having it come back pretty much never gets old - a great use of a kinetic ability that the player is rewarded for constantly using. The first trip to Thamur's corpse to find the shard of the hammer is probably my favorite in the game, and it's the only time where it felt to me like the level design was anything interesting. The final section of the game is pretty strong (even if the boss is recycled), and the final cutscene is nice.

I did end up playing through the whole thing and bought a copy of Ragnarok, so take my criticisms with a grain of salt. It's enjoyable popcorn material that feels uninventive in its use of the played-out systems that defined the PS4 era. If you can get past that, you'll enjoy it. I wavered a bit between a 3 and a 3.5 but the final hours had so much of the "go here, pull this lever, fight this combat encounter, now do it again on the other side" that I had to lower it. Looking forward to Ragnarok regardless.

Played this through Game Pass only to find out it's gotten a lot of attention in the last couple days! I've played enough to be satisfied with it and wanted to give my thoughts on the game as well as my perspective on the discourse.

Vampire Survivors is fun, but it's nearly immediately clear how little depth there is to it. One of the appeals of any roguelite is how it handles its items - how are they found, how do you upgrade them, how do they interact with each other - and VS really disappointed me in this regard. Once you have an understanding of each weapon and its evolution item, it feels pretty hard to make a build that doesn't work, lending a real feeling of samey-ness to every run. This might have been mitigated a bit during the early access period as I believe the weapon evolutions were not listed in-game prior to 1.0, but I'm not sure. Furthermore, the permanent upgrade tree is absurdly generous, giving you extremely powerful upgrades like extra damage, damage reduction, duplication, and even a revive for not very much currency. I haven't tried the curse upgrade yet (think Hades' difficulty modifiers) so this might help a little in that department but hard to say how much of a difference it could make. Few of the unlockable characters really feel necessary to use IMO thanks to a good portion of their individual attributes not leaving a large impact on the run. The more unique ones are fun but still ultimately lack much in the way of truly making the game feel different. TBOI Repentance's Tainted characters these are not. The presentation is obviously minimal, with the light flair of the funny names and bios for items and characters being the only standout bits. I had a good time mowing down hordes of silly monsters with my ridiculous screen-shaking birds and Bibles but there's not enough here to really keep me coming back in a way that something like TBOI or Hades might.

As to the discourse itself, there's been a lot of talk in recent days of VS being predatory with regard to how it's built from a design perspective as well as to how shallow the gameplay is, making it something of a "time waster". I strongly disagree with both of these claims. The dev has gone on record talking about how the game is designed like a slot machine (and he evidently has ties to gambling program devs?), rewarding players with big flashy stuff for little player input. Even in spite of his interview, I still don't think it makes a lick of difference. VS lacks literally any way of getting your money beyond the initial (extremely cheap!) purchase. The idea of it robbing you of your time as opposed to money is maybe worth thinking about in a "Huh, interesting…" sort of way, but there's really no tangible way to back it up. The conversation has been had before, so I'm not going to pretend otherwise, but this claim should really be leveled at something like League of Legends or FIFA, games that do genuinely want to rob you of your money openly - that's where the real criticism should be focused, not miscast at VS.

The whole notion of it "wasting your time" is silly when you consider that A) all games waste your time and B) people will already happily sink 4000+ hours into DotA or CS:GO, so it's hardly something unique to VS.

There's nuance as to what degree every game is wasting your time I suppose, with the more blatant being ever so slightly harder to defend, but once you get into the minutiae of that reasoning it feels like a very slippery slope to viewing every single piece of media with this lens. Not only is it needlessly pedantic, it also seems like a really bleak way to view the things you like. Like at what point do we just start crafting a Rotten Tomatoes + HowLongTo Beat Reddit karma average quotient to determine whether or not a game "will be worth the time"? To put it simply, if we're going to condemn one game for this, we might as well condemn every game for this.

Having played most of RE2R and RE3R, with a few hours of REmake behind me and a need to play 7 and Village, I decided to play RE4 for Halloween this month. After my first 15 hour run, I'd say it deserves its reputation as one of the greatest games ever made and stands as a testament to tight gameplay and excellent pacing.

The overall vibe of the game is so well-achieved. Leon wisecracks at the villains, the dialogue has a flair of the 1980's action movie, the overall oppressive vibe of the village gives way to the intimidating castle. The island is maybe a slight step back in some ways, but the laboratory section is one of my favorites in the game. Ashley, Luis, and Ada all have relatively small roles in terms of dialogue and action, but they make themselves iconic despite that. And the merchant. Oh man, the merchant. What a silly idea for your upgrade mechanic to be a funny guy who just shows up.

I think one of the things that this game does so well is its pacing - pretty much every single room is a new idea or a new location being thrown at you and you never really have a good sense of where you are in terms of completion or how far from a group of enemies you are. Opening a new door is always an interesting moment. Will there be Ganados behind this? Will there be a boss fight? Every area feels surprising in what it might throw at you and the game segments the areas so well that never really drags on at all - well, at least until Chapter 5. Bits like the underground catacombs and minecart section feel like unnecessary filler. They can still be interesting at times, but this is a 15 hour game that backloads so many bosses and ideas that the extra areas without true story elements just end up feeling out of place. The upgrade system feeds you a steady set of new guns and gameplay options every chapter, really walking the line of balancing feeling powerful with feeling underequipped quite well. The attache case is an interesting addition to this side of the game, forcing you to make decisions about what you want to keep and what you don't really need so that you can be prepared with all the rest of your equipment. I found the Red9, semi-auto rifle, and riot shotgun to be my personal favorite loadout. The rifle in particular is shockingly powerful and definitely the most important to manage ammo for difficult encounters.

Mechanically the game does a really good job of following up on its excellent pacing - both Leon's movement and shooting style help reinforce the strength of the moment-to-moment gameplay. You know what I said before about the surprise of opening a new door? It's followed up by taking a few seconds upon opening said door to go into your shooting stance and survey the situation before you. Is there something I need to worry about right now or am I relatively safe for the next minute or so? Leon's movement, the evergreen tank controls, also helps to sell this. You can't just run willy-nilly into new areas for fear of finding yourself surrounded - The tank controls make you brutally aware of where your blind spots might be and putting in the effort to analyze the situation and be careful with your movement is paramount. RE4 is a game of peaks and valleys - not in terms of quality but in terms of gameplay. I just talked about the moments where nothing is happening and you need to be careful about your surroundings, but the flip side to that coin is when the game decides that you've relaxed for long enough and throws you headfirst into a situation that genuinely seems overwhelming. Suddenly you're on the backfoot, switching between weapons and ammo types, trying to get a grip on the situation itself. It's this very ebb and flow of manic moments versus exploration that makes the game flow so well. Throwing Ashley into the mix is a great extension of this - You might have gotten comfortable with Leon, but now you have someone else to manage, and she can't defend herself. In this sense, most combat scenarios you find yourself in are really moreso puzzles that you need to figure out as opposed to shooting galleries. Headshot this guy, kick him, stab this other guy, back up, reposition, change gun type, heal, look for environmental hazards, shoot the guys up on top of railings, look for ammo… oh wait, that was the last guy. Phew. To put it simply, t's a constant give and take of mania and relaxation.

The bosses of RE4 are actually one of the few negatives in my book. The Gigante is alright the first time and Del Lago is a spectacle (if sorta clunky), but the rest are mostly just a shooting gallery. They also rely way too heavily on QTEs for dodging. I assume this came out of a need to actually have movement options in these fights since the tank controls offer essentially none. Saddler in particular is somewhat disappointing - especially since I was expecting a stage 2 to the fight. New enemy types are almost always more interesting than the bosses, like the Regenerators. Instead of being bullet sponges, these are genuine additions to the pantheon of enemy puzzle pieces, forcing you to learn their patterns and options and develop a plan of action for when they show their ugly faces.

RE4's story is light, and by design. It wasn't until Leon called Salazar "small time" that it clicked for me how minor an event this is for the RE universe. Leon manages the whole thing in like 48 hours and there's seemingly no risk of further contamination afterwards. Even Wesker seems only tangentially interested since he hardly reacts when contacted. I haven't played Separate Ways yet, but I might.

I'm really glad to have gotten this done with RE4 Remake coming in just a few months. I'm not entirely sure if they're going to be able to replicate some of the things that make this game great but everything we've seen gives me hope they can. This is a very special game, deceivingly complex and difficult to master, with a great aesthetic and overall presentation. It's no wonder why it stands as one of the greats.

Very cool visual style backs up a game that's pretty fun but not exceptional in most of its systems. Combat is alright, if pretty easy. Lacks a lot of the variety to be comparable to many of the roguelite big boys. I'm not a huge fan of this type of management sim gameplay but it's alright here, I guess. I got almost softlocked by lack of trees and I hate that when the game introduces a mechanic (like followers straying from the flock) it has to make an example.

The biggest issue here is how buggy it is. I experienced a full on softlock in a combat run where I couldn't move anymore, tons of visual bugs, and a full crash. Hold off until that stuff gets fixed. Performance on PS5 is pretty mediocre too, lots of framedrops in combat.

Maybe don't have as much time with this as I could but I need to get some stuff logged and move on, so let's do this one.

My first entry in the Gran Turismo series (planning on picking up 4 for sure though), so that colors my experience a bit. There's a few things I've seen people get upset about being included or not included from prior titles, but everything's new to me.

The most obvious place to start is the graphical fidelity. The whopping 100+ gb file on PS5 isn't just for show (or... I guess it is for show?), because this is downright gorgeous. The cars, the tracks, the weather, just absolutely breathtaking. I'll return to them in the future, but Scapes are shockingly real. This game is indistinguishable from reality a solid percentage of the time.

The other most notable thing about this game is presentation. The loving 25 year anniversary celebration video that details the history of the automobile in RIDICULOUS length, the cute little menu options, the little Sims town where all your gamemodes are, it's all just very cute. Yamauchi clearly cares a lot about the aesthetic of the game and of the experience playing it. The real star is stuff like the commentary from car designers and industry veterans at the Cafe, the site of your "story" missions. They're really interesting and if you're not super well versed in car history you'll learn a ton.

As for the gameplay: it's simulation racing. The quality of the nitty-gritty of physics simulation is up for debate here and there and I certainly don't like that practically every single race is a rolling start, but this is a complex racer that takes a lot of work to get good at. It's maybe not the absolute peak of sim racing (Assetto Corsa or others exist) but it's pretty close, and I'm mostly pretty bad at it, lol. You have to put in the work to get good, and it rewards that, for sure, as I'm sure it does playing with a racing setup. I don't really see anyone complaining about the actual gameplay itself much, and I won't either. The AI is perhaps a little too perfect and the damage model is eh, but that's all I can conjure up. Otherwise, this is a tight and rewarding racing experience that can feel downright magical at its best. Putting the time in to do the many different tests and challenges available will improve your racing ability despite the immense frustration you may experience.

Sound - The original music is pretty alright, although the Spotify integration is not native (come on, really?), and even a bit buggy for some reason.

Scapes are probably my favorite thing in the whole game. I've gotten really into photo modes in the last couple years and this one is just staggering. Incredible graphic fidelity is obvious, but the IMMENSE number of landscapes to seamlessly put your cars into and create really cool shots with? Just amazing. Turning photos into 3D spaces you can place digital cars is just the sort of thing that feels like the future. I've had a ton of fun just taking pictures.

The economy is this game's biggest failing. Cars are insanely expensive and your options to get them all are either shell out tons of real cash or grind a lot. It's pretty unacceptable and Polyphony should really look deep and recognize that just because live service games exist doesn't mean a racing game should adapt their ideas. It feels pretty at odds with the vibe of the game too, this isn't World of Tanks, where you're simulating massive warfare, this is a game where a funny guy in a Cafe tells me about Japanese hot hatchbacks. Maybe this will change in the future, but I doubt it.

It's a game with a lot of charm and character that can feel straight up hypnotic at times, dulled by terrible business practices. Make of that what you will.

Almost exactly a year (give or take a couple weeks…) after finishing Yakuza 0, I’ve finished Yakuza 6: The Song of Life. I’m really happy to have finished the Kiryu saga, alongside the Judgment games, it’s been a great experience that is consistently enjoyable. Yakuza 6 itself is a little all over the place - the first on a new engine, while also being a bookend to a chapter in the series narratively. It can be a bit up and down throughout the story and it fumbles pretty hard at the end, but it has some good stuff and is, overall, a good time. Doesn’t reach the heights of the series for me and definitely fails on delivering a good end to Kiryu’s story but I had fun regardless. Spoilers to follow.

Combat
I’ll get combat out of the way - it’s RGG’s first attempt at the Dragon Engine combat, lacking obviously the improvements from the Judgment games, but even the minor changes that they made in Kiwami 2. Like that game, it can feel really good at times, with a far more fluid system and a lot of animations that link together nicely. When you get the flow going, Yakuza 6’s combat feels untouchable, like you’re choreographing the fight yourself. When it doesn’t, it can be annoying. You have far fewer options than in other games and the upgrade tree doesn’t do much to change this. Like many others have said before me, Y6 has startlingly few heat actions, which is unfortunate as a final chapter in Kiryu’s story. That said, Extreme Heat Mode is a cool inclusion, especially for the aforementioned choreographing options it gives you. Landing a slow-motion punch on the boss you’re fighting is extremely satisfying. This game is not hard, especially if you played Kiwami 2 before this, but even still the combat can be frustrating. Not a major deal though, especially considering just how much is new in this engine. This game’s long fight segments are absolutely incredible though, I want to stress that out of the gate. Probably the best in the series aside from Lost Judgment. The shipyard, the inn, Shangri-La, they all deliver in the best possible ways.

Story
The story is what defines Yakuza 6. This is the end of Kiryu’s tale, and it needs to deliver. It does. Well, for about half of the game, anyway. The start is strong, starting off immediately after the events of Yakuza 5, which was unexpected. They briefly go through a bit of time before Kiryu goes back to prison (alongside the rest of the Tojo brass) and before he returns to Okinawa. This section includes some brief supernatural stuff, with Kiryu seeing his past friends and family on the beach at Morning Glory. It’s a really powerful start to the game, and I wish there had been more of it. There's some good stuff in the first 2 chapters for sure, but it picks up so much in chapters 3 and 4 with the introduction of so many new characters and plot devices.
The introduction of Onomichi is fantastic, and the first chapters there are excellent. I agree with @Pangburn in that it might be the peak of the series in terms of storytelling. It stumbles briefly earlier with Akiyama telling Kiryu not to take Haruto (what the fuck was that about?) but then rapidly kicks it into high gear. Nagumo, Yuta, Hirose, and Kiyomi are really compelling characters and the small-town feel is comparable in quality to Y3. Someya’s introduction isn’t amazing but he rapidly gets better and better until he peaks at the end of the game. The long fight in the Onomichi inn with all of the Hirose family looking for Someya is incredible.

Around chapter 5 or 6, when Kiryu is, obviously, still looking for Haruto’s father, RGG decide to have the player go on this ridiculous wild goose chase for Tatsukawa, a character we haven’t met or seen. It’s essentially 2 straight chapters of filler. As I’ll get into later, this game really needed more time in the oven, especially at the end, and getting 2-3 chapters of no plot progression for an obvious ruse is massively disappointing. The player knows Tatsukawa is a nobody and it feels cheap to pretend otherwise. The introductions of all of these useless characters in and around Little Asia do little other than slow the game down. Ed is boring, as are the rest of the Saio Triad. They don’t have the appeal of the Liumang or the mystique of the Jingweon. Speaking of which, Joon-gi is a bright spot in terms of the tertiary characters. His role is insanely small, however, which makes the decision to revive him in spirit for Y7 way more understandable. His fight with Kiryu is a real high point for the Kamurocho section of the game.

As the game progresses towards the end, however, it takes a downturn in quality. Someya continues to be an excellent inclusion, but everything else gets worse. The Iwamis in particular do little other than dilute the pool of villains. The Secret of Onomichi is an ominous tease, and it ends up being… okay? Politically, Yakuza 6 touches on some really interesting aspects of post-war Japanese history, particularly the intense corruption as a result of the occupation and what followed. The Secret does a good job in that context, but it’s a silly reveal and one that has no impact on Kiryu whatsoever. Given that he’s played by Beat Takeshi, Hirose’s character switch is expected, but still not really earned. The whole final segment isn’t bad, however. The attack on the Millennium Tower and on Someya is fantastic. Someya’s theme is amazing and the fight is as well, with an incredible dynamic intro to boot. Then we get Koshimizu and Sugai on the TV screen and I started groaning audibly. Everything after this is a joke. Iwami is a terrible villain. He doesn’t really relate to Kiryu at all, and he just wants his dad’s role as leader of the Yomei - even though he really has no criminal experience. His fight is bad and the whole final cutscene is cliche after cliche. Essentially, they just fumble into the same old issues that have plagued the series before. In a way, I suppose that’s poetic, and I wasn’t really all that surprised to see Kiryu choking on bullets after someone failed to take Sugai’s gun. It's not surprising they went on to do Judgment and Yakuza 7 after this because it really feels like they were running out of ideas with Kiryu. The epilogue helps a little bit - Haruka and Yuta at Morning Glory is good. The bit with Daigo and Saejima and Majima feels like too little too late.

Presentation
Yakuza 6 is gorgeous. 5 was a good looking game, as is 0, but they were both making the best of an older engine. Moving into the future with the Dragon Engine was a great decision as it catapults the presentation in quality. Seeing the stuff from the end of 5 in full HD was insane. Cutscenes are more fluid than ever and model quality is shocking. Some of these shots of Kiryu look better than games that are coming out in 2022. Ryu Ga Gotoku have always had an eye for the look of their games and it’s most evident here. The karaoke scenes are better than ever. As @Pangburn mentioned in his review, it’s insane that we finally have autosave. Onomichi is jaw-dropping. In terms of vibe and aesthetic they really captured what makes a rural town different from Kamurocho. The breadth and variety of vistas here is astounding, with a ton of housing, construction stuff, restaurants, small vendors, a shrine, multiple smaller locations you can get to from a loading screen (including the vastly under-utilized Senkoji), and tons of pretty views. Getting to know the locals through the story and through the minigames is awesome, the town really comes alive through the story and it’s absolutely the best segment of the game.

Yakuza Kiwami 3
Yakuza 6 is, in a startling number of ways, a remake of Yakuza 3. It was a shorter game, showcasing a completely new engine that required a condensed dev cycle. Obviously, aesthetically it carries the same rural Japanese town vibe. But further than that - Kiryu is forced into the countryside to investigate the attack on someone close to him who's still unconscious, dealing with absurd minutiae from locals before going on to meet the small, local yakuza family who initially dislike his appearance but grow to love him and treat him as one of their own. Someya is a pretty obvious sendup to Mine - a businessman with a background like Kiryu’s who has a strong sense of morals and honor but is also quite capable physically. There’s a huge plot dump 75% of the way through the game when they realize they need to finally get on with it. Perhaps most blatantly, Yuta is a total Rikiya clone, the younger yakuza who looks up to and forms a brotherly / parent-child bond with Kiryu. Oh, and he’s literally voiced by Rikiya’s VA. In the same vein of returning cast, Miyasako returns to Yakuza as Nagumo, having previously been Kanda in Y3. As mentioned before, even emotionally this is basically just a retread of every theme from Yakuza 3: family, honor, giving up your life’s pursuits, sacrifice for someone else’s future, etc.

Kiryu’s Character
This game really starts to play with Kiryu's established character in interesting ways. For example, when Kiryu tells Haruka he's going to remain in prison so that she won't be embarrassed (para) to call him family, it's readily apparent that she didn't even think of that - Kiryu's little show of faith by falling on his sword doesn't mean much to her. In fact, she would much rather he just stay with her and the rest of the kids the whole time than make these honorable gestures that he built his character on in his years in the Tojo Clan. Similarly, despite his efforts to stay out of trouble, Kiryu can't help himself when Nagumo is in trouble, so much so that he'll give up Haruto to Kiyomi in order to lean back on his natural instinct to solve problems with his fists. He spends all this time telling the world that he's done with the yakuza life, but in reality he can't help but see every situation through those exact eyes. ​​It's pretty funny how Someya actually calls out Kiryu for this type of naivete. Kiryu goes on and on about ideals and dreams while usually forgetting to mention the violence at the heart of a crime family. Someya is a businessman like Mine, and he prefers to just raise money in legally-adjacent ways, specifically not shaking down people or whatever. It's a neat way to confront the central contradiction of the series - Kiryu is a good guy who propped up decades worth of horrible, horrible people.

How It Fails As a Finale to the Yakuza Series
@Blitz on Backloggd put it best when he said that there’s "So much left unsaid." Yakuza 6 makes the extremely questionable decision to cut nearly every single important character from the series out of its narrative: Haruka is out of commission, negatively impacting the whole message of family that it's trying to sell. Daigo, Majima, and Saejima are just completely absent, causing it to fail to capitalize on their importance to Kiryu and the series itself. I kept waiting for them to be brought back into the narrative after the beginning and it just never happens. The only characters that get any attention are Akiyama (deservedly) and Yuta. The finale really needed more to get across the weight of the end of Kiryu’s story. I would've liked to have seen past characters and events in montage form, a reflection of what made the series and what made Kiryu. Even just a simple 2 minute thing with a couple clips from each game - Nishiki, Ryuji / Kaoru, Mine / Morning Glory, Saejima / Akiyama, Shinada. Instead, the final cutscenes are just…there. Even the whole "twist" of killing off Kiryu is abandoned immediately, and in a very anticlimactic way, no less. Just a shot of Kiryu in a hospital with an extended cutscene with a nobody. If they wanted to do the whole "Kiryu is faking his death" thing, they should've had the Date & Akiyama conversation and nothing else until a brief shot of his shoes or suit appears in the frame as he watches Haruto walk. The direction they went with just really doesn't have any impact whatsoever. If anything, 0 ends up being more of a celebration of the series than 6 is, which is bizarre.

Miscellaneous
>The substories, when given attention, are pretty fun. Y6’s variation on substories takes a lot from 0, upping the quantity of “bizarre / paranormal situation” ones and significantly cutting down on “scamming / character biography” ones. Stuff like parodying The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, or doing a ghost fight. The most notable is Ono Michio’s story, which this game became famous for. Ono Michio has, from my perspective, transcended this game in popularity, since making appearances in the other non-Kiryu games and having a metric shitload of fanart. For good reason, it’s an inspired choice of substory for Kiryu and it lends further growth to Onomichi as a believable location. Some of the substories are just introductions to the minigames and minigame related stuff, which is a shame. More than a few are references to ones from 0 (and I think specifically 0, not as much in the way of references to 1-5, which is odd) - the cult, Pocket Circuit Fighter, etc. My runthrough of this game was pretty short since I have other stuff to play and it wasn’t necessarily hitting for me all the time, so I missed a bunch of substories. I’ll be back to finish them and the minigames though, for sure.
>The soundtrack is pretty darn good. The combat themes don’t hit quite as hard as some of the series’ best, but themes like Someya’s are in the running for the gold. The karaoke selection isn’t incredible (especially with only one character to play…) but Today is A Diamond is an instant classic.
>The baby bit is really funny. Glad it only lasted a little bit but it’s a great annoyance.
>Like in Kiwami 2, I couldn’t stand Clan Creator. It’s different from that game’s version, more of a light action attack thing than the RTS style of K2, but I didn’t enjoy it regardless. Even worse is that it does what K2 would do, pulling the player aside with cutscenes in the middle of the story that seem like they’re going somewhere only to transition into explaining Clan Creator. Once I saw it happening I knew what was coming. Like its successor, it’s not bad but still not my thing.
>The live-chat minigame is incredible. Like in previous entries, they’ve managed to include something so BLATANTLY horny that I’m amazed the ESRB didn’t dock it a full point just out of spite. This is a fun and novel idea of course, but the real appeal is how incredibly funny it is. The localization here is absolutely perfect, replicating a ton of insane chatroom usernames and comments across the many many minutes of video content. These are probably the single most popular AV actresses they’ve gotten in the games yet, other than Asuka from K2, which only makes it funnier. Kiryu replying BOOOOOOOBS to Anri Okita is without a doubt a peak in the series.

Conclusion
The story gives me a fair amount of pause, especially in how it fumbles on delivering a satisfying retrospective on Kiryu’s ten year journey. That said, this is still another fun entry in the series. Even if the other characters don’t get attention, Haruka and Kiryu together is a treat. The ending is a little hamfisted in places and really should’ve just concluded at Someya instead of “little baby Iwami”, but there’s good stuff in there and it’s a poetic end to Kiryu’s mainline story - fading out into the background, letting the younger generation take the reins. This game’s vibe is very similar to Yakuza 3, which is a great compliment. Onomichi is one of the best locations in the series and its cast is equally good. Nagumo and Yuta are memorable as hell. Miyasako’s performance as Nagumo is honestly up there as one of the best in the whole series, especially in the facial capture. Someya makes for one of the series’ best villains. It has some fun minigames and some great comedy in its substories. It’s damn gorgeous and performance is surprisingly good. While it maybe needed to balance the time differently, the pacing is pretty good and it’s nowhere near as huge an undertaking as Yakuza 5. This is a quieter and more personal iteration in Kiryu’s story, tying up only a couple loose ends but ultimately giving Kiryu the ending he needed. Well worth playing, despite its issues.

Worth logging separately because of how different no-build is, and for the better. The annoyance of build mode is gone, along with having to keep up with people who've mastered building a giant tower of stairs once there are 10 players left.

Instead, you get to play around with the variety of vehicles like the tank and the cannons, plus mechanics that have been added over time, like vending machines and upgrades. Movement has actually been tuned pretty well, running around and sliding feels really natural. This might actually be the best performing BR too, with absolutely no lag and no performance issues on my end. The massive playerbase means matches queue instantly too.

Gotten to play some of both solos and 2-4 player with friends and I'm having a great time. The vast amount of content I've missed since I first tried the game back in 2017 or 2018 is pretty cool too, this is an impressively big crossover game.

I was by no means a fan of Fortnite before this but no-build really changed my mind on it. For a f2p BR, it's pretty content rich. I'd recommend giving it a second try if you haven't come back to it in a number of years.

(Hey, it's my 400th log!)

Had a really great time with this. It's pretty incredible how much this game improves over the first. Story spoilers in the story section.

DR1 is cool, but the cast and especially the location leave something to be desired, only really kicking into gear in the final chapter and having some relatively tame trials. DR2 fixes the faults and improves on everything. The new setting is really interesting (not having to walk around is a plus) and has a great vibe as well as tons of variety, and the cast is PHENOMENAL. Seriously, Komaeda, Chiaki, Ibuki, Mikan, Gundham, Kazuichi, Sonia, all heavy hitters. There's only really one or two I didn't at least like. And Hajime makes for a much stronger character than Makoto did. Komaeda is the star of the show though, stealing every single scene he's in. Monomi and Monokuma are excellent as well though, made me laugh nearly every time they were on screen. The soundtrack is stellar too, Monomi's theme especially.

The only place this game doesn't improve is the minigames / trial games. They're all terrible. I hate hangman's gambit, I hate logic dive, I hate the sword one. The worst part with all of them is how they go out of their way to obstruct the actual narrative content. Logic dive is active so you can't think things through, the sword one actively punishes you for not mindlessly swiping the whole time, and the hangman's gambit just sucks. The logic of the trials is annoying as per usual - I know WHAT the problem with this statement is but not HOW you want me to challenge it - but that's fine, I expect it.

Story-wise, it managed to stay interesting the whole time. It balances two halves the whole way through, the evolution of the group dynamic and the character relationships, and then the overarching Danganronpa plot. The former is what holds up the first half of the game with fun interactions and interesting dialogue, etc, and then the latter takes over in the second half when the cast has dwindled and the player wants to know more about the meta stuff. I think it might take slightly too long to kick in, but it does its job well. The final chapter is excellent, weaving everything you want, both thematically and structurally, into one big explosive finale. I'm really interested to see where v3 picks up - DR2 itself doesn't exactly do too much, there's a lot of stuff here that's essentially just filling in gaps as opposed to really giving new information.

I will briefly say that this game has a pretty good trial 1 & 2, a solid 4 and a fantastic 5, but holy shit that trial 3 is downright awful. It kills multiple of my favorite characters all on the basis of a really dumb setup and features the worst explained and worst thought-out murder in the series so far. Previously I might've not solved the cases ahead of the trial finishing, but I generally followed the logic and had no issues when things were said and done. With DR2-3, I had questions the whole way through that the game just doesn't answer. The logic just doesn't work and the game skates over important elements. Some brief reactions below:

[SPECIFIC SPOILERS]
A) I don't think M is strong enough to strangle I with a rope, B) what was the murder weapon for H, C) how did she move H's body without there being blood everywhere, D) why was she capable of walking and moving and stuff with the high fever, all three of the patients were like fucked up but she's killing people and moving bodies?
[END OF SPECIFIC SPOILERS]

Putting that trial aside though, DR2 manages to be a lot of fun at almost all points and the sheer variety of locations and ideas makes it feel fresh the whole way through. Looking forward to either UDG or v3.

It's actually kind of insane how good this is despite its position as a post-launch DLC. RGG took Kaito, a fan favorite character who deserved more time in the spotlight, and wrote an immensely compelling personal story for him. I wouldn't call any of the mainline Yakuza games bloated (maybe 5, but personally I don't feel like it's a bad thing), but trimming the usual fat and instead writing a no-nonsense 7 hour campaign was genius.

Purely by chance, I replayed the ending to the Majima Saga last week, and it's night and day when comparing the quality of these two releases. MS was lacking in unique content with only a couple fights, no real side objectives, and no fighting styles, making it feel pretty blatantly like reused content. Kaito Files, on the other hand, gives Kaito two unique styles with a large skill tree to upgrade through, some pretty funny side content in the form of his primal senses, and an absolute BOATLOAD of fights. In fact, the Kenmochi fight is maybe one of the best in the series.

The story itself is paced to perfection, jumping from beat to beat at a solid chop. For only 4 chapters and about 6-7.5 hours, it covered way more than I expected. The antagonist's motives aren't that shocking if you're familiar with the series, but the lengths he goes to end up being way darker than I expected, resulting in a pretty original tonal structure for the series. The finale is quite good. The epilogue after it, however, is hilarious. The mix of current and past Kaito is really interesting, Mikiko is a strong contender for best female in the series, and Jun's storyline is grounded and hits the mark 9 times out of 10. Special points for all the fanservice, like the constant Higashi gags and funny interactions with other series regulars. Yagami's texts explaining his absence are a treat.

On the gameplay side, Kaito's moveset is fantastically fun, adapting parts of Kiryu (some literally canonically taken from what Kaito has heard of Kiryu) but adding unique animations and new options to make it feel very fresh and fun. There are actually a few DMC-esque button + stick motion input moves, which are pretty rare for this series. I think 0 has a few? There are some pretty funny QoL things too, like Kaito getting an upgrade to wear his disguises freely around Kamurocho, something Yagami couldn't do in either game. The boss fights are fantastic, with some really good choreography and setpieces. The overall presentation here is slick as hell. Also, KF might actually make better use of the detective sequences than the main game does, there's some cool stuff in here.

I wasn't really sure what to expect with Kaito Files, especially for the $30 price point, but it delivered way more than I expected. This is essentially a mini Yakuza game with a surprisingly tight and impactful storyline, fantastic character moments, and the usual addictive gameplay. Highly recommended.

I got my copy of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 sometime in 2017, which is around when I started it. If you follow me, this should be no surprise, I take a long time to play lengthy jrpgs. Well, with XC3 imminent, I decided to beat out the last few hours of this game in preparation. To make my thoughts short, it’s a wonderful jrpg that is characterized by a whole lot of jank and some extremely strange decision-making on the part of the developers. Despite this, it succeeds in a whole bunch of ways and feels like a pretty unique experience. Spoilers ahead.

Story and characters are the thing that defines the Xenoblade series, IMO, so I’ll start with my thoughts on those things. Character-wise, XC2 is a little off-kilter - this will be a running theme for my thoughts. The main cast is strong -
Pyra and Mythra are a wonderful focal point for the game, their differing personalities making their whole character feel fresh and interesting, and introducing so many opportunities for fun character writing. I led with them because Rex is… not as good. He has the hallmarks of your standard jrpg protag: he’s kind, naive, very forgiving, a bit of a dumbass in some ways, and endlessly loyal to his friends. This is nothing new, and unfortunately he doesn’t get a ton of development beyond this point. His background as a salvager is sorta his most interesting facet, but it’s not too important to the story beyond the first chapter and his relatively common quips about the salvager’s code (which is vastly inferior to Deep Space 9’s Rules of Acquisition). His best facet to me is his age - Rex is genuinely a kid, and being immature sometimes comes into play. The best sequence he gets is right at the end of the game, arguably far too late, when the Architect tests him with the dinner scene with Pyra and Mythra. He cries, and it honestly hit pretty hard. This is a kid in the middle of a terribly difficult trial, having to act more mature than he is. There’s not enough of this kind of writing for him, unfortunately. I defended him early in my playthrough, but by the time I reached the end he really hadn’t left more of an impression on me.
Nia and Dromarch are excellent, with the caveat that Dromarch gets left behind by the story hard. Nia stays in the limelight for pretty much the entire runtime, and she just keeps improving. Her background is not overtly shocking considering how much the game uses that particular trick with all the main characters, but it’s effective nonetheless. Rex leaves a real impression on her, and it’s nice to see her grow and change.
Morag and Brighid are a strong duo as well, with Brighid being one of the most story-relevant characters in the whole experience. She acts as the grounding agent, constantly reminding the immature cast of the harder things in life. For my mind, she also has the most consistently strong performance in the game (more on that later). Morag has less overtly powerful moments, but she’s a charming character that often gets to act the straight man in the group.
Zeke and Pandoria are the goofballs of the group and it lands perfectly. Their shtick might strike some as overly quirky and “reddit”, perhaps, but I think it works. Their first appearances as random encounters along the way are hilarious. Zeke himself mostly serves the same purpose on the character front as Morag, he gives advice and tells facts about the past of Alrest, he just does it in a less serious manner.
Tora himself is forgettable, I’m sorry. The nopon shit just does not land at all, and the only one that left an impression on me was Chairman Bana. Tora’s story is sort of a tearjerker, I guess, but I didn’t really care too much either. Poppi is his better half, with some impactful moments at the end of the game. Overall, I’d say my favorites were Pyra / Mythra (with a preference to Mythra), Morag & Brighid, and Nia.
As for the antagonists, I think both Jin and Malos are fantastic. They start strong and only get stronger. Malos’ personality is so wonderfully comically evil, and Jin is a good Sephiroth analogue (kinda but not really). The rest of Torna are… good and bad. Patroka and Mikhail don’t get a ton of screentime, and Akhos is a goofy character. I won’t name the other antagonist for fear of unnecessary spoilers, but he’s developed well enough that he lands as a villain, even if I never personally hated him as the game maybe wanted me to. Malos’ infectiously wicked sense of humor stayed the highlight of the villain side for me.

The story takes some pretty big swings between good and bad. Chapters 1 and 2 are great. The game throws so much at you and does a great job introducing a ton of characters and ideas while building the world of Alrest and its rules. There are some fantastically strong character moments for Nia and Pyra, and the “twist” of assisting Torna at the beginning is well delivered. Chairman Bana manages to be a pretty fun introductory villain, especially contextualized well against Rex. The introduction of Gormott and Morag and Brighid is really well done. It’s been a while since I played this section myself (nearly… 4 years?) but I have been watching Chuggaaconroy’s LP, and it’s a great start to the game. In general, I would say XC2 is bookended well, with an amazing intro and a strong ending but some lull in the middle. Chapter 3 (“Our Own War”) is the strongest chapter in the whole game, IMO, with the absolutely incredible Vandham arc. In fact, I would go so far as to say the game peaks emotionally here, never really surpassing what it does. The style of Xenoblade 2 is, as many have pointed out, more ““anime”” than the first, and whether or not you agree with this assessment, I would say it succeeds in that regard here, tying some very “anime” tropes with a series of really well-directed cutscenes. The introduction of Mythra alongside the whole Malos / Akhos fight is sublime, and this is where the faintest inklings of what happened in the past and the underlying “real” story start to form for real, and it’s excellent. Chapter 4 is all over the place, introducing this whole arc with more Nopon and another artificial blade (or two), yadda yadda yadda. It sucks. The dungeon is pretty good, however.
Chapters 5 and 6 are both good, with the admission that the story drags a bit starting here and into Chapter 7. The introduction of Zeke into the main party as well as the deeper dive into Jin’s past both make for solid centerpieces of this section of the game. I didn’t really like Leftheria, but the trip to Fonsett village makes it almost worthwhile. Tantal is a great location, though, one of the most impressive in the game. Chapter 7 is awful. The Spirit Crucible Elpys dungeon is not only the worst in the game, it’s practically insulting how unfun it is as a player. Even the story stuff is less relevant here, since the trip for the third Aegis sword ends up being… fruitless. At least there was a bad boss fight too? In fairness, the Nia stuff in this chapter is strong, and her reveal is well done. The Cliffs of Morytha part also kinda stinks, with some notable jumps in difficulty and some absolutely awful exploration, but it leads into the finale of Chapter 7 and the reveal of Coffee With Milk, which is great. It carries directly into the beginning of Chapter 8, which is phenomenal. The whole section in the Morytha ruins, especially that first cutscene, are really excellent. The team-up with Jin is unexpected and quite good.
Chapters 8-10 are where the game really kicks into gear. Again, I won’t spoil anything, but this is where the Xeno elements all start to come together and we get the major reveals for the antagonist and his plans. I quite like this whole section and I think it goes a long way in making him feel like a believable villain. Jin and Malos’ pasts come to light and deepen their character arcs, with Jin getting a huge final showcase. The introduction of Klaus and the connection of this game to Xenoblade Chronicles 1 is more than satisfying, and the ending fights are a ton of fun. The ending is great, and that final cutscene (delivered to me at ~4 AM) and credits sequence is fantastic. I did a pretty quick summary of my thoughts just then because this game is unbelievably massive and going over every chapter in detail would be ludicrous, but I hope it accurately reflects my feelings.
TL;DR: Chapters 1-4: amazing. Chapters 5-7: mixed bag with some genuinely bad moments. Chapters 8-10: amazing. It’s pretty interesting having played this game before finishing the first, as it doesn’t answer all of the questions I have. Very much looking forward to seeing where the story ends up going in 3.

Despite its quirks, I really like the combat in XC2. It’s badly explained, yes, but once you have a grasp of the mechanics (which are maybe sometimes more complicated than they need to be), it’s a fulfilling and engaging system. I will say, I think that the bosses can sometimes be more of a pain than they need to be. Even your best tanks can be hammered pretty hard, and once even one party member is downed, I felt like I was mostly screwed. Being able to play every blade and every character yourself is something I wasn’t expecting going in, and it gives you so much freedom. So many blades have completely different playstyles, with some of the DLC blades even having unique mechanics and styles. I spent a large chunk of the game playing as Nia with Crossette, who plays very differently to any other blade. The gacha system rubs a lot of people the wrong way, and while I get that, I felt it was relatively well done. The game gives you the opportunity to succeed with literally any single blade, so there’s never any difficulty gatekeeping. On the other hand, the rates are probably a bit too low, and god help you if you’re trying for 100%. I got a solid chunk of the rare blades, Kos-Mos included, but not everyone. It’s enjoyable to get new blades with new mechanics and whatnot at a decent pace throughout the game, but it’s also frustrating to not get what you want, all the while being inundated with common blades.

Presentation is, again, an area in which XC2 bounces between high and low at speed. This is a launch Switch game, so it has a pretty bad resolution, but given the size of the locales, I think it manages in docked mode. I actually played the majority of the game in handheld mode just because that’s how I prefer to play most Switch games, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as people make out online. Compared to any number of previous generation handhelds with jrpgs, I think XC2 looks significantly better, even handicapped by handi-mode. Load times are pretty good, and cutscenes look really good. I did play the final chapters in docked mode for /the experience/, but I wouldn’t have had much issue doing handheld for them as well. The cutscenes themselves vary pretty wildly in quality. Like the Yakuza games, there’s a couple levels of complexity. The highest being voiced, pre-rendered cutscenes that play as video, and the lowest being unspoken, in-engine scenes. The former is amazing, some of the best sequences in the game rely on these and they really deliver. The latter is awful. Genuinely atrocious. The engine that Monolith use seems to absolutely crack at the seams in these moments, with janky ass animations and terrible timing. You can tell when these pop up that there was an internal sort of recognition at Monolith that this or that section wasn’t as important, that they could just use the unrendered cutscenes to deliver the information and it would be fine. There’s other things I feel fall under “presentation”, and it’s usually not good. For instance, why does the game not give you information on the Level 4 Blade specials? The information online was dug out through scraping the game’s code, of all things. At least put it in a game guide or something, christ. The maps are terrible. I hate the skip travel map for how clunky it is and how badly it delivers the information to you. Why does the game drop that ridiculous boss fight with all the spike damage on you for no reason? Why do anti-fun mechanics like blade shackle even exist? I can’t even think of all of them right now but there are probably dozens of bizarre decisions like this that feel like they go out of their way to hurt the player for no reason. Sure, some of these were just new console growing pains, as shown pretty clearly by how many QoL improvements are in both Torna and XC Definitive. Finally, the dub. I don't hate the dub, in fact I think it was sorta brilliant to use different accents for the different Titans of Alrest, I'm not sure it's ever been done before and it adds a nice layer of worldbuilding. That said, it's undeniable that the dub has some noticeable issues. Rex is the biggest offender, with some truly bizarre line reads at the worst possible times. Morag and Pyra / Mythra are probably the most consistently good, with very few flubs at all. The rest of the cast is somewhere in between, and even the better performances have some very odd lines scattered throughout, either feeling entirely out of tone with the rest of the conversation or bizarrely paced with weird staccato thrownin. The latter is the most common complaint. I can only assume it was somehow a result of production speed or a weird communication between Monolith and the teams in charge of the dub itself, because these little quibbles are everywhere. Again, I don't think this ruins the game - far from it - but it's an issue that pretty much everyone will recognize. Pyra and Mythra are the standout performance and they don't have much of this issue.

This is sort of a tangent, but with a game as long and complex as this, you end up doing a lot of menuing, so I wanted to talk menuing. You have to spend a lot of time managing your characters and blades in XC2, from their affinity charts to their accessories or their pouch items, movesets, weapon upgrades, aux cores, etc. etc. While this system is arguably not perfect, there’s a genuine sort of rhythmic meditative quality to doing it. Swapping between blades to check stats, checking affinity charts, I feel like on more than one occasion I ended up spending the bulk of a play session, usually late at night, doing just menuing.

This is the miscellaneous section, I guess, so I’ll bounce between different things here. This is an absurdly massive game, and some of its faults stem just from that alone. The number of quests, the number of blades, the number of stats and weapons and items and pouch items… ugh. It’s just too much. I’m not a guy that goes for 100% in anything, and I can’t imagine I would ever go near this game with that in mind. The platforming is awful - the game gives you no real idea of what you should be pressing or doing in some of these moments, and the level geometry and physics seem to vary wildly, resulting in some of the grossest movement I’ve ever seen.

Okay, I feel like I’ve complained enough. I love the soundtrack. Drifting Soul is a fantastic piece and so many of the exploration and battle themes are incredible and seriously memorable. I love the heart-to-hearts. Character moments are where this game shines, and a whole freaking boatload of them are just scattered around for you to find. I love the unique battle lines and unique blade lines. They feel like you’re commanding a party of friends. I spent a ton of nights in my dorm room, sitting in bed, smashing through blade gacha and through this game, exploring the massive and incredible world that is Alrest. I played this game at the nearby Starbucks, right when I started playing, getting the whole Chapter 2 introductory cutscenes while I waited for my next class to start. I have a lot of great memories with this game. There are so many baffling moments, but they’re offset by dozens of hours of charming characters, enjoyable exploration, fantastic music, challenging bosses, and a captivating story. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a terrible game. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a wonderful game.

I'm only about 30 hours into Elden Ring but there are some other games coming up that I'd like to put time into and I'm ready to take a break, so I'm going to log it now. By all means a quality FromSoft title that definitely grabbed me but one I feel has a few issues holding it back.

I'll start with the positives: I've had a ton of fun talking about bosses and secret areas with friends and the whole rollout has been a blast. Overall, I think that's actually the strongest suit of this game and what I'll end up looking back fondly on the most. The NPCs are colorful and funny and lend a ton of character to the world. Ranni, Blaidd, Roderika, Rogier, all very cool. I wish From had taken a step out of their comfort zone and made the narrative more character driven, but oh well. Combat is as good as ever, which is to say, very very good. Adding jumping was a great idea by itself, but the game just gives you so many options at all times. Even if I play boring ass melee builds and have no interest in doing more than one run of a From title, I can appreciate how deep the pool of options is. The "legacy dungeons" are extremely cool, Raya Lucaria and Stormveil are excellent locations that are a ton of fun to explore. I know there are more to come and I'm interested in seeing what they are. The QoL improvements are very nice, like Stakes of Marika and overall tuning to the menus and out of combat movement. Gone are the days of running and jumping jank, now we've got immediate boss respawns and teleports to anywhere on the map. The exploration isn't my favorite thing (more on that next) but it's still impossible to not be grabbed by it a little bit, running from point of interest to point of interest. It doesn't touch, say, Breath of the Wild or Ghost of Tsushima for me, but it's solid. It definitely helps give the whole game that "ah I'll just play another 15-20 minutes" feeling.

Okay, the negatives: I can't help but think the game would've been improved by decreasing the size of the map. I don't necessarily think the open world should be cut entirely, but if the whole thing was scaled to… 75% of its current size I think it would help the pacing and overall quality. Running around in the open world just isn't as engaging as it could be and repetitive use of enemy types and the mini-dungeons wears after a while. The map itself, while obviously aesthetically cool (and more than we ever got in other Soulsborne titles), can be a little obtuse at times. Like, there's a spot in the east of Liurnia that just doesn't show a giant-ass rock wall separating two areas. It's weird how the game handles some things, like fall damage. They made such a point of showing it off in previews and building these huge places that tower over stuff but still have fall damage? Why? On a more personal note, I feel like the return to dark medieval as the core theme was a step back from the imaginative worlds of Bloodborne and Sekiro (the latter I admittedly have not played), resulting in what is certainly more Dark Souls than it isn't.

To be REALLY negative for a second, it's absolutely absurd that From shipped this game in its current state on PS5 / XSX. Texture pop-in is rampant (some of the worst I've ever seen on PS4 or 5) and the game struggles to maintain ~50 fps with little on the screen. I'm by no means a total obsessive when it comes to performance and it's more than playable but the hardware is not being utilized well at all and it's pretty sad to see. ER has a cool aesthetic in places but on a technical level it's really not pushing the bar - honestly the PS5 not hitting constant 60 by sheer beef of CPU / GPU baffles me.

Despite it maybe being the draw of the game, I'm not really going to touch on bosses, because A) I've only seen but so many of them, and B) they all tilt me anyway so talking about balance or variety is out of my arena. I've enjoyed who I've fought so far, though. Rennala is probably my favorite. Questlines and endings, too, are not something I overly care about in my FromSoft games so I'll pass on judging those too. I will say when that guy had me clear his fort of monsters for him and gave me a shitty dagger as payment that I drove my sword through him like he was microwaved butter.

So, yeah. I guess this came off pretty negative, and I admit that taking a break from it was partially caused by the criticisms I kept thinking of, but overall I have enjoyed my time with Elden Ring more than a little bit. At its core, this is another mechanically tight FromSoft joint with a shitload to do and kill. There's things I would change if I were Miyazaki, but I can't disagree with anyone loving it a whole lot. I'm sure I'll be coming back to it in time.

Roughly 2/3rds done with the story, meant to finish but I've got too many other things on my plate right now to do so. Did not enjoy my time with this as much as I expected.

To start positively, it is absolutely gorgeous. The sheer density of things and effects is mind-boggling. It looks incredible in motion and the cutscenes are movie quality. It runs like a treat on PS5, which is good because I couldn't play much of the previous reboot game on PS4 because it was the only game that's ever made me motion sick.

Everything else? Eh. The combat is sorta the central mechanic and I found it mostly just adequate at best and pretty boring at worst. Arena fights just don't offer much in the way of excitement. The gun variety is sort of neat but rarely did I feel like they did much to incentivize actual varied play or strategy, just that you have a bunch of weapons to cycle between when you run out of ammo. The dimensional portals were one of the big "ooh look what the PS5 can do" elements they talked a lot about, but they're just effectively grapple points. You can zip around during fights but only to specific locations, which limits the actual movement a bit. The enemy variety was a little lacking and the bosses were not exciting. Their setpieces aren't bad but actually fighting them was unengaging.

The biggest sticking point for me was the story and its writing. Ratchet is downright dull, the jokes don't land, and the central idea of the dimensionator allowing access to new realities isn't as interesting as I'd hoped. Most scenes just felt a bit lifeless, which is disappointing. The only character that got consistent chuckles from me was Gary. Rivet is cool but, again, just fell flat for me.

Since R&C is one of the old pillars of platformer / collectathons, I was expecting better platforming, too. Most levels are relatively devoid of that sort of challenge and I was stunned at how often I would clip through / into things and go places the game clearly didn't want me to go.

Some positives though: there are more than a few cool worlds to explore and having optional side quests in unique locations is a good touch. This is one of the most option-heavy games I've ever played. You can essentially tailor the game to however you want to play, which is cool. Collectables are fun to get and I like the golden bolt fun options as well as the gear effects not being tied to actually equipping them. The thing I probably liked the most were the pocket dimension rooms. They always felt unique and different, which is cool. Gave a very Mario Sunshine Fludd-less levels vibe.

All in all, Rift Apart was kinda neat at times and relatively middle of the road other times. It's a tight romp in a short package, but I don't think it's really for me.

Solid. Has some improvements over Odyssey, has some negatives that game doesn't. Probably not going to finish this but I've had fun with what I played. Combat is relatively good, feels meaty and you have lots of options. I was glad they included a setting for lethal assassinations. Eivor is a pretty fun personify protagonist, especially female. Her meeting Kassandra is probably quite fun, haven't played that DLC though. As usual, the "real world" story is boring as sin. Why they can't come up with new contexts other than "a person in 20XX is using an animus" is beyond me. Parkour is good, if pretty underused due to the rarity of towns. While I didn't get more than 30 hours in, the story is actually pretty good. The writing on the individual areas and the characters in each is above what I expected and the central plot seems appealing. The game's focus on the supernatural aspects of Norse culture is pretty cool and Eivor's visions are fun. The missions that actually play with reality are some of the best in the game, like the white horse hallucination. Raiding towns is fun.

There's not really anything that's reinventing the wheel that Origins and Odyssey built but Eivor is an enjoyable central figure in a story that's more engaging than I expected with the same quality of pseudo-RPG combat in this trilogy of games. Recommended for a straightforward good time.

I've been playing GoT off and on since it released, with the intent of getting close to 100% before finishing the main story. I did that a few nights ago, so I feel comfortable actually reviewing it now. I love this game. Sucker Punch have essentially made my comfort game, Japanese backdrop and playstyle included.

I suppose the first thing to say is that this game is absolutely gorgeous. Without a doubt the prettiest and most consistently pretty game I have ever played. After literally 80+ hours I was still getting shocked by the vistas every few minutes. The step away from photorealism to near-fantasy instead was genius. Colors pop everywhere, the lighting is sublime regardless of it being day or night, the trees and grass and flowers all paint the landscape in a way I've never seen before. Part of the reason I waited so long to log this game is because I have spent many hours just wandering the countryside doing nothing remotely story related, just soaking in the landscape and the ambience and getting into minor fights. I was skeptical of it at first but the Kurosawa mode is genuinely pretty neat. Stuff like the fox dens, shrines, onsen, and bamboo cuts are littered throughout the world in just enough quantity that there's always something begging you to check out nearby. I will say, while there are some cool random events that can happen, there definitely could have been more variety. The mythic tales are a special highlight of the game too, not only giving you super cool moves and techniques to play with, but wrapping them up in little mini storylines with their own setpieces and ANIMATED INTROS! How cool is that?

Combat is smooth and buttery, with enough complexity to be constantly engaging but simple enough that you can get into a flow state and just chop dudes up. You've got a variety of styles to play with, too. you can go full stealth mode, you can go archer, you can go pure stagger or pure damage, and that's not even touching on the armor and tool options. I do plan on going back for NG+ and when I do I'll probably play on one of the higher difficulties where you do more damage and take more damage.

That's not to say it's not without faults though. Combat can sometimes be a little frustrating if you're on a back foot and constantly making mistakes, and it's undeniable that there is a certain degree of repetition with the side content. Furthermore, some of the story missions can require you to do things (like tracking) which aren't always well explained. It's a personal gripe, but I really hate how there's a Legends storyteller every 20 feet.

If you'll allow me to flex my degree for a moment, I have some gripes with the haiku system in the game. I've read a significant chunk of the canonical works of Japanese poetry (the Manyoshu, The Tale of Genji, Tosa Diary, The Kokinshu, etc) and unfortunately I feel like the haiku in this game sort of misrepresent the form in a traditional sense. A lot of Jin's haiku options are WAY too specific and introspective (in a modern sense), and they often ignore the form for the sake of an inflexible metaphor. If you put in the effort, you can definitely make some solid pieces with the options given to you, but some of them do not flow in the way that they should, to my mind. It's a minor complaint but it was one I couldn't ignore.

The story is something of a mixed bag. The central themes of war and inter-family and intergenerational conflict are strong, but the writing isn't always interesting enough to really sell it. There's some good parts for sure, especially the ending to Act 2, but outside of Jin's characterization there aren't really many plot beats that I'd say are all that interesting. The Tales of Tsushima (character sidequests) are pretty good. Masako's story is probably the weakest but still solid, Norio's is cool, and Ishikawa's was my favorite. (Spoilers ahead) I did end up feeling like the final act was a little anticlimactic, especially killing the khan, but I suppose the intention was to focus on Shimura more. Still, the final mission could've included a bigger setpiece with more npcs and perhaps a final scene with all your allies gathered, but I might be being overly critical. As for the final decision, I spared Shimura. To me, letting him live is both the kindest and meanest choice you can pick. It's mean because it's a slap in the face to his pride and his honor, as well as a burning indictment of how he failed the people of Tsushima - a reminder that he will have to live the rest of his life reckoning with the lives he failed to protect just because of his moral code. It's kind because Jin has spent the whole game slaying hordes of people, sinking further and further into the pool of blood - but finds the strength to spare Shimura, even in spite of his actions and his own wish for a warrior's death.

Finally, I'd also just like to touch on how much Sucker Punch did for the quality of life in this game. the most obvious thing is that this game runs fantastically on any console, non-pro PS4 included, and it looks and runs even better on PS5. The loading times were mind bogglingly short on the previous gen and they're essentially non-existent on current gen hardware. The menus and UI are spectacular, giving you so much control in so few button presses, and giving you all the info you need super easily. The guiding wind is a miracle of open world design that adds a ton of immersion. But there's so much more than just that - there's the touchpad sheath sword shortcut, the bow, being able to remove your quiver, having gear sets you can change out on the fly, etc etc etc. While I do like the modern rpg-style Assassin's Creed games, they need to take a page out of SP's book when it comes to the "user experience", for lack of a better term. All the little annoyances that exist in those games and others are absent from this, instead replaced by things that make you go "wow, they really actually did want me to have a good time." That's not even to mention the free Legends content and all the other updates they did for the community. It's also just really really nice to have tons and tons of cosmetic options for gear, and it's rare that a game actually manages to get me hunting for armor colors and sword designs, but I totally fall for it here.

So… I guess those are my thoughts. It's a phenomenal game with one of the strongest open worlds I've ever played. The combat loop is downright addictive, the visuals are unparalleled, the ambiance is incredible, and everything comes together to make a truly fantastic package. I really hope that we get a "Tsushima 2" with new areas and cities in a few years because I'm really just fiending for more. I'm planning on starting Iki Island soon, which I do plan on reviewing as well.

Note: Logging this one in addition to the base game since my playtime was split across both.