I've been a big fan of this genre since Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and BG3 executes the hallmarks of the genre (memorable companions, good dialogue, and interesting story choices) excellently.

The game is not without its faults. My biggest gripe is that it is very easy to sequence break quests and the game doesn't always provide good context for those breaks, which feels antithetical to the way the game encourages you to explore everything at your own direction.

That said, the game is so sprawling that it's difficult to hold this fault against the game too hard. It's still an incredible experience that will hopefully induct a new audience into the genre.

NNKII should be catnip to me. It's a game that takes place across three modes [ARPG, RTS, Kingdom management] to tell a story about a young ruler attempting to define their political goals and establish a kingdom. This type of game design is so rare that it was enough to make play through the whole thing even as my interest waned towards the latter third. While no mode of the gameplay is particularly strong, each one interacts well and adds to the thematic goals of the story.

The story itself is very simple and doesn't have any of the political complexities I would want with this type of story, but it's positioned as a kid's tale and fulfills that goal.

Also, you get to play as an issekai'd president who keep's their modern 9mm, which is extremely funny.

Had absolutely zero idea that this game was about being a ghostbuster with super powers.

Imagine Hexen in Japan, wielding arcane powers and tools in a first-person to defeat demons. The promise of this is unfortunately cooler than the actual execution. Shooting feels just a touch too muddled even though the enemy variety is done well. There's some really neat movement mechanics that were really the thing that pushed me to go through the game and keep playing. The unique twist of doing this all in modern-day Japan is also very unique and part of my enjoyment.

Overall though, there's nothing particularly compelling here.

I found it incredible how much I liked this game despite how uninteresting it is. While the territories of Tsushima are extremely pretty, its open world design feels conservative and uninspiring; like a 2016 Assassin's Creed clone. You go to a mission-giver, go to the mission location, complete the mission, return to them. The map is dotted with lots of various, mostly pointless icons, though the task bloat isn't as terrible as what I've seen in Ubisoft's recent games. The world doesn't feel dynamic at all. The tools you're given to interact with the world are extremely limited and pale in comparison with Breath of the Wild, which will always loom large in my mind when playing open world games.

My biggest gripe with the story is that I don't really know who Jin Sakai is until about the middle of the second act. While I think the game does a great job of identifying the tensions that Jin is facing, I don't have a clear idea of how he himself feels about it. His interiority and motivations don't really start to express themselves until much later.

All that said, I still really enjoyed my time with the game. The combat is incredibly simple, but even after hours playing I looked forward the rhythm of doing a standoff and managing my stances as I juggled multiple enemies. The sword combat by itself was enough that I rarely used the ghost tools the game gives me.

While I'm not fond of Jin Sakai, I liked all the side stories and appreciated how each were an interesting story in themselves while simultaneously speaking to the conflicts Jin himself was tackling with.

Also, the world truly is lovely to travel around in. While I didn't like the act 3 terrain as it was dull (and in fact I think act 3 as a whole is dull and should have been rolled into previous acts), I still loved the areas of the first 2 acts.

Overall, a neat experience.

When I found out the TR reboot would be attempting to mix 'Uncharted' style set pieces with open world, crafting elements in 2013, I was skeptical. I was then surprised how much I enjoyed the first of this reboot trilogy. This entry though feels like the strains of those goals are tearing.

The world isn't particularly interesting, the combat isn't particularly fun, and while a couple of the set pieces are enjoyable, they're mostly forgettable. Lastly, and most sadly, the thing the PS1 TR made its focus (Tomb puzzles) are low in quality.

In short, this is the game I feared was being made back in 2013, which is a sour note to end this trilogy. Rise of the Tomb Raider is probably the best of the three and is the one you'll want to play if you're only playing one.

Thematically, the storyline of playing kingmaker and investigating leadership was really appealing. Things quickly fall apart though as Eivor is easily the least memorable of main characters of the recent AC games. Consequently, the story really fell apart even if I liked individual moments and arcs.

While I appreciate the game has moved away from what feels like infinite gear and instead gave you the chance to improve a narrow range of it, the system still didn't feel great. The new raiding system wasn't particularly fun, though I really liked the theme of growing a settlement and recruiting inhabitants. Additionally, it still contains my biggest criticism from Odyssey: bloat. 5 years on and folks still haven't learned The Witcher's 3 best lesson: depth of quests is better than span.

In short, a big miss all around. Hoping Ubisoft looks back at AC 2 and Odyssey to find what made those sing and carry it forward to the next entries.