Impulse bought this during the summer steam sale even though in theory I already have it on CD Rom somewhereᶧ, just for a hit of nostalgia. And it delivered that immediately. The world is beautiful and (more importantly) still feels unique 20 years later, there's a sense of endless possibilities as soon as you're given your release papers (it's mostly a false sense, but that's totally expected), and the soundtrack is one of the goats.

But I'm only level 4 and I'm already realizing why I never got super far into this game back in the day. I feel like if any one of the following problems were addressed this game would be incredible:
• Uninteresting and completely un-tactile combat, which to my memory really doesn't get more interesting as it gets more difficult.
• Glacially slow pacing, figuratively and literally. Boosting my Athletics to 100 might fix the literal pacing issue but not the more fundamental design one.
• Embarassingly lore-heavy writing with nowhere near enough character to spare for all its quest-giving NPCs, making every dialog window feel like a chore.

As it stands, though, the game is definitely not incredible (any historical significance aside). I'm gonna keep poking around in it here and there, because the nostalgia is pure and is still hitting. But that has limits too--as good as that music is, you hear the same tracks a LOT.

ᶧ(Scratch that, I definitely have it on CD Rom because I just found it. 😬 At least now I have all the DLC, I guess, although there's a fat chance I'll actually get to any of that content before the nostalgia fueling my playthrough is exhausted.)

(With Spaced Out, an excellent expansion)

With these kinds of games (by which I mean Factorios, etc) I always follow the same pattern of deep engrossment for several days, where it's one of the primary things I'm thinking about even when I'm not playing it... and then complete burnout somewhere solidly in what turns out to be the mid-game. It's not even that I come across game-ending problems with my base, it's just that my brain has had its fill of thinking about this kind of stuff and demands to move on. Then I may come back later (especially if there have been updates) and follow the same procedure from the beginning, usually burning out just a little further along progression than last time.

I'm having fun, though, and that's what counts!

(Fair warning, despite the number of words below I basically don't actually discuss Tears of the Kingdom)

I played this voraciously for 90+ hours, but I've stalled... I don't feel the pull anymore. By my estimates (trying not to spoil myself), I'm only ~70% of the way to an end screen. I'm not abandoning the game because I've enjoyed my time with it too much to do that—I WILL come back and beat this, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.

But not now, and it's because the game is too big. It's just too big! I don't actually think you could improve the game in a way that keeps it engaging the whole time, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that there's fundamentally too much game here. At some point the opportunity cost of not playing something else, or watching something, being social, doing anything becomes too high to keep playing this stupidly large game.

I started logging games on this website only a few weeks before this game came out, because I found that logging movies on Letterboxd greatly improved my appreciation of movies and my relationship with movie-watching and I hoped to achieve something similar with video games. Part of the plan was: (a) only review games when you've "finished" them (or are abandoning them), and (b) not to pick up too many games at a time, to encourage playing more games through. Well, I still think those guidelines are worthwhile in general, but it's disheartening just how quickly I have to make an exception. Zelda is just too big.

Ending with an aside: I know this isn't a unique problem with Tears of the Kingdom. And there are certainly games I've put many more hours into than I have/project I will here. But I have not, personally, played a game for more than 100 hours without at least one significant hiatus in the middle somewhere. And for this kind of game (a game with a narrative, a game with an explorable world, etc) long breaks are damaging to the experience. It's probably worse with story-dense RPGs, but it's a factor here too.

Anyway. This post mostly functions as permission to myself to play something else, even though this is still here waiting for me to beat it. Absolution.

So like, I get it, I don't actually think it's WRONG that it's like this, but it's so funny that all of these are listed separately on here with completely different sets of reviews:
- Pokemon Black Version 2
- Pokemon White Version 2
- Pokemon Blaze Black 2
- Pokemon Volt White 2
- Pokemon Blaze Black 2 Redux
- Pokemon Volt White 2 Redux
- Every other romhack for every other pokemon game, each of which already has two barely-different official versions which are also already listed separately from each other

Video games are fun and interesting. Anyway, I am playing this.

This had two jobs:
1) Be a good brand ambassador to Dungeons & Dragons, a brand more mainstream than ever with both nostalgic older fans and eager young new ones
2) Be a good AAA CRPG

I'm "only" 20 hours in (why do I keep picking up huge-ass games?) but it's really damn impressive how successful BG3 seems to be at those two things. Larian have constructed a better video game adaptation of DnD combat than I personally would have thought possible—and they did it by being including tons of granular, edge-casey, smart-alec-player bullshit (as well as a few smart exclusions, I'm sure). It's also pretty difficult by default, which I think it needs to be to show off the system's complexity and the fun tricks it allows for.

Skill checks out of combat are a mixed bag. Thinking cynically about the game as a Dungeons & Dragons (TM) product I think they're a smart inclusion (they clearly relish putting a big icosahedron on the screen as much as possible) and if you gotta have them I think they're implemented well enough here. But I suspect they're going to be the biggest cause of save-scumming because they're mechanically completely uninteresting. Both tabletop and computer RPGs have, for a really long time at this point, embraced the idea of "failing forward" on random skill checks—the idea that failing a roll may not be ideal but it will still be interesting, and potentially more interesting (Disco Elysium is probably the current king of this concept in the CRPG space). Baldur's Gate doesn't, and basically can't do this. The scope of the game is already way too big to allow for it. The most mechanically beneficial AND most narratively interesting result for any given roll is succeeding it, so a failure (which is always possible at no fault of the player's when they roll a 1) just feels bad every time. Still, their existence allows for different player character builds to feel truly distinct from each other outside of combat as well as in it, and that's worth something.

Last thing I'll comment on is the narrative style and writing. Putting on my cynical Wizards of the Coast hat again, I think they nailed the assignment. They're CLEARLY influenced by the style of banter in actual play podcasts, which is a "for better or worse" situation but exactly the audience I'd expect them to try to expand to. I read a review on here complaining about how all the party members are too special boy/girl, destiny lightening rod-types and that's a perfectly reasonable thing to dislike... but also, if you've ever played DnD, you know everyone wants to play that character. You always end up with four different unrelated chosen ones. You couldn't be more true to the source material by replicating that.

That all having been said I got something like 70 more hours of this to go so who knows if I'll still have any of these opinions by the time I'm done.

Another "early access" game I dip in and out of.

When I was a kid playing Sid's Civ 4 I used to liken that game to a board game, albeit one that would be too complicated and fiddly to be fun without a computer simulating it.

I get a similar feeling from Against the Storm—only this time instead of a bloated world conquest-themed Ameritrash game I'm getting vibes of a bloated Eurogame-inspired nominally-multiplayer effectively-solitaire game (if you play many board games you know this is basically a genre). Very easy to imagine a prototype of this design using physical components: card decks for all the random buildings/perks/orders/etc... little wooden "worker placement" figures in all the little animal shapes... lots and lots of tiny plastic currency tokens...

Qualitative assessment paragraph goes here. It's fun.

First time playthrough, and my first Castlevania game. I beat it... which means I liked it! It's also the first game played on my old PSP since I dug it out and revived it recently.

Frankly, it's not as beautiful-looking as Rondo of Blood—not a controvertial statement, I think. The music is a side-grade too. So when I unlocked the original (and SotN) early on in my playthrough I did have to decide if I was gonna keep playing the remake or start over in OG Rondo... I chose to keep playing Dracula X Chronicles because I wanted a PSP-native experience and also because even though it isn't better I still find the new presentation charming in its own way. Plus I already know what most of Rondo of Blood looks like via GameCenter CX, etc.

When I've dipped my toes into Castlevania in the past I've been scared away by how slow and deliberate you have to be to succeed. It's the anti-Sonic, basically. In my increased age I am a much more patient person and much more receptive to at least this specific game's charms. Also, fuck that guy Dracula he sucks.

Top-tier GBC game. Compulsively playable, rarely frustrating but not completely fricitonless, bite-sized, interestingly put-together, and quirky. And, for me at least, a surprisingly relaxing game.

Some of the platforming puzzles toward the end are, for lack of more descriptive words, dumb and bad. But at least they aren't difficult too, which would be a real bummer.

The other mild criticism I have is how hard it is to keep track of what stages have unlocked paths. Little post-level cutscenes point them out, but you can only rewatch the latest one. This is the main reason (I'm telling myself) I haven't yet pushed myself to 100%, although I think I will go on and do that at some point.