I saw some folks comparing Indika to an A24 film and I do agree that that description is probably the quickest way to get consumers to understand the type of vibe this game is going for. I've never quite played a game like this but I also do wonder if this would've been better as a film...

Starting off with the strong points, the art direction, set designs and voice acting are all superb. This was one of the best looking indie games from both technical and artistic point-of-view in some time for me. The atmosphere is also fantastic with good usage of surrealism to make the player go "Did I just see that?" as you play through this game.

The strong art design is also strongly supported by its narrative. I bet a lot of folks, in regards to a video game about a nun that can hear the devil, to be very particular about its point-of-view about religion. I found the themes to be thoughtful but also not stuffing ideologies down your thought. The narrative is pretty bleak for the most part but it does provide a good level of dark humor using the aforementioned surreal elements, music and gameplay.

Unfortunately this where I start to turn a corner on this game. Despite the all previously mentioned positives, the gameplay is just...so dull. While I do appreciate that the game plays with gamification as a way to drive some of its themes home, the majority of this game is spent walking and solving banal puzzles. What also doesn't help is that this game has one of the worst Unreal Engine stutters I've seen. Nothing quite ruins an atmosphere of a game when the game is stuttering so hard you're missing parts of cutscenes and or having trouble navigating the environment.

Overall, despite some technical gripes and dull gameplay, I'm glad I spent my time playing through Indika. I think I'd suggest to wait and see if the stuttering is improved. I genuinely think the narrative is interesting enough to make it worth the 5 hour runtime.

I don't fault anyone for coming into Hellblade saying that they found the gameplay lacking. Coming off of Hollow Knight, I was quite bored with the parry-spam inducing combat. However, Hellblade exceeds in other areas so hard that I found it to be a worthwhile experience.

Lets expand on the combat first. It is very one-note for the lack of a better word. Enemy variety is not great and you're mostly mixing in some different attacks for specific enemies and generally not very difficult (I think I died twice the whole game with combat difficulty set to Hard). However, I do find the bosses to be much better! Using a different set of movesets and designed with strong folk horror twinge, I really loved fighting these larger encounters.

The design and atmosphere goes well into the narrative and art/environment design as well. I really appreciated Hellblade as a very personal story about Senua coming to grips with her trauma during the course of this journey. Yes, the non-combat gameplay is largely dependent on puzzles involving finding runes in the environment but I thought it made sense thematically on Senua as a character. On top of the gritty and frankly horrifying environments is a thick coating of psychological horror that really plays into Senua's mental state.

Ultimately, I think the way that Hellblade talks through its narrative about mental health and stigma around it is the strongest part of it. Most of this is really expanded upon using the binaural audio that they captured to simulate auditory hallucination to be almost overwhelming at times (But thats the point right?). Watching the docs on how the game was made really gave me an additional appreciation of the care that Ninja Theory took to tackle this specific subject matter.

As I played through this game, I came to really appreciated folks like Ninja Theory and Remedy that takes video games as a medium to new interesting directions. While some of the gameplay (both combat and non-combat) can be found lacking, I found the story this game told to be worth the time I spent going on this journey. I hope they knock it out of the park again with the sequel.

Much like Outer Wilds, it took me a few tries for me to really appreciate this game. And, as much as I don't care for how the internet compares every new metroidvania to this game, Hollow Knight is a masterpiece in this genre.

I distinctly recall when I played this game originally, that I didn't particularly care for fumbling around blindly in a new area searching for Cornifer for the map. After this playthrough, I think I still feel this way. I feel that the new Prince of Persia really took a good middle ground between giving the player a base outline for the area and purchasing the map filling in the area. With that being said, the way Hollow Knight approaches exploration did lead to cool discoveries and harrowing moments of stress...I still don't particularly care for how much this game relies on hidden walls though.

Combined with the exploration is a combat / traversal system that really expands that further you get into the game. With the combined efforts of a wealth of permanent upgrades and now-very-famous charm system, the complexity of the combat really shines in the late-game and optional high difficulty content. Hollow Knight also contain a variety of bosses that are often thrilling to fight against. You can expect some duds in there with the number that they have (Relying on throwing-garbage-all-over-the-screen attacks or periods where you cannot damage the boss)...but the quality of the majority of the bosses, especially the story-related ones, are second to none.

Speaking of the narrative, it is very opaque and obtuse. Much like the way the narrative in Dark Souls is told, it relies heavily on context clues and descriptions of abilities and items to provide flavor to the world. However, I found the world to be endlessly engrossing and the narrative cap, especially with the original true ending, to be a strong finish to this tale.

I think the thing I appreciated the most about this playthrough of Hollow Knight is how high the quality the content was for the 30 ish hours I played to get > 100%. I found it wildly refreshing in today's gaming landscape where games are getting longer and longer where you really begin to see the point of diminishing return. With a launch title of $15 supported by multiple free content updates, I don't know if I will encounter a game that is this high quality for the time and money spent. Consider me a fan and very much looking forward to Silksong (whenever that day is).

In the realm of deduction-based mystery games, Botany Manor probably will feel a lot simpler than games like Case of the Golden Idol or Return of the Obra Dinn. What it makes up with is the game's vibes and charm.

Set in a British manor in a different time period, most of what you're going to be doing in this game is reading context clues, deducing facts about plants and attempting to make them bloom. Your main method of achieving this is by attaching clues you find to specific plants. While the level of deduction required for these plants are less demanding, it does ramp up to add complexity as you're attempting to deduce multiple plants towards the end of the game. The "Aha!" moments in this game is decidedly the most satisfying parts of this game.

Combined with this satisfying gameplay loop is a very The Witness-like artstyle and a simple but poignant story. I sincerely was not expecting to find a story about a woman trying to lead her own life (And not being forced to marry) and being subjugated to relentless sexism in the field of botany in this game! The ending in particular really caps off the narrative well and made the runtime of the game worth playing.

Speaking of runtime...I was surprised by how short this game is (Around 4 hours). This might make it a hard pill to swallow considering its 30 ish launch price. In addition, I felt that some of this runtime is being padded out by having to run back to reread clues due to the fact that you cannot review clues you've found in your book.

With all the nitpicks aside, I really enjoyed my time with Botany Manor. If you're in the market for a nice little mystery game that doesn't make so much demand of the player but still uses your brain enough, I think you'd have a good time with this. A perfect game to try out on Game Pass as well!

I was pretty onboard with the vibes of Pacific Drive from the start. While it began and maintained as an oppressive "What the f is going on??" vibe, you slowly begin to piece together some understandings of how the Zone functioned. Combined with satisfying upgrade and crafting mechanics, it kept me quite entertained for its roughly 20 hour run time.

To start things off, I'm not much of a survival game person. I eventually find a lot of these types of games rather aimless or frustrating to the point where it loses me. I was surprised to find myself not in this situation (for the most part) in this game. I always had the next thing I'm looking forward to getting and was able to make decent progress towards that objective. While death is quite punishing, you can definitely alleviate some of these design decisions with generous accessibility options.

Combined with a satisfying upgrade system is a semi-roguelike system where you make "runs" to collect resources and make it further into the Zone. I did notice towards the latter half of the game that running earlier zones just to collect some early-game resources was rather tedious. But, as you begin to understand the anomalies that pepper the Zone and make longer trips, the game turned into quite a satisfying loop.

What accompanies these loops in the Zone is a narrative that features several disembodied voices that supports you as you make your way around the Zone. While you never seem them, I noticed myself getting quite attached to these characters as I went along. While I can totally see why some folks might find their presence annoying, I really enjoyed the light-hearted banter in such an oppressive environment.

Finally, the upgrade system and narrative comes to a head in the final stretch of the game. I did notice towards the end of the game that the amount of endgame resources required to get some of these upgrades became, for the lack of a better word, a tedious chore. Combined with an ending that ends up not really explaining anything and just kind of...ends, I can see why a lot of people were disappointed with the ending. For me, I realized that by the end of the game that I cared more about the characters rather than the Zone itself, and I'm glad the game structured the main mission line to not make some of these late-game upgrades a necessity to finish the game as it probably would've ruined the pacing.

Overall, I'm mildly surprised by the fact that I enjoyed Pacific Drive so much. I found that the game is pretty uncompromising in what it set out to do. I'm sure as soon as players noticed how meticulous Ironwood has built out the player's interactions with the car (For example, you can hurt yourself by dropping the rear door on your end), a lot of players would have bounced off. But for me, the satisfying car upgrade / loot run loop, the familiar and unsettling vibes of the Zone set in my home of Washington and the cast of characters allowed me to enjoy an experience that I haven't quite seen in other games. I look forward to what they do next!

I think Dragon's Dogma 2 is a pretty bold game. From what I've heard, the way the game is designed is pretty similar to how the first game functioned but as someone who only dabbled in Dark Arisen, I was taken aback by how uncompromising they are being with their vision. I just wish I liked this game more.

The thing I really enjoyed with this game that I had nothing negative to say about is the combat. I love how strange and dynamic the combat is especially with the larger monsters in the game. While the fodder enemies (goblins, harpies, and wolves) gets a bit obnoxious with how many of them you run into on the road, every time I encountered one of these huge beasts was a joy to play. I also loved that each vocation was perfectly viable in combat and has a good set of abilities to play around with.

The combat gets super exciting and cool when your skill synergized with your pawns...the unfortunately reality for me is that the pawns worked about 10% of the time. Most of the time I played this game, my pawns often fell off cliffs / into deep water to their death, rarely had meaningful things to say (Mostly yelling about how I pick everything up, pointing out ladders or chests I can't get to) and not provide anything helpful even when the quest is marked with the symbol of that pawn having information. This made it seem like I was constantly fighting the game for those sweet sweet moments where the pawn system works in favor of the game's design to produce the cool moments you see online.

And while I praised the game for being uncompromising in its design, the flaw that I noticed with the pawn system and its AI really exacerbated some of the obtuse and frustrating systems within the game for me. When you have to run back into town on-foot (due to the limited fast travels) because your pawn fell off and died due to no fault of your own, it's really hard to shake the feeling that the game is not exactly being mindful of your time or being able to make meaningful progress. Some people may see no problems with it and engage with the immersive nature of some of Dragon's Dogma 2's systems, I mostly found it frustrating.

Overall, there's a lot of interesting things I found super neat about this game. But when the game is so focused around systems that has issues that may cripple some player's experiences, I began to understand why there's such disparate reactions to this game. I may return to this one day but maybe I'll see if there's some patches first.

To start things off, I do think this game is better than FF7 Remake. There is way more to do, the game is full of visual splendor and the character interactions in the party as well as expanded lore and character backgrounds are splendid for the most part. The combat has been expanded too with additional ways to build out your party too.

But I also think that the game has some super lows and largely share the same problems I have with FF7 Remake. I genuinely think your enjoyment with FF7 Rebirth (and this remake series as a whole) depends on how much you can deal with the weird stuff it's doing to the story. While I was intrigued in the beginning, the more it went on with cryptic scenes and Sephiroth showing up saying nonsense that I began to realize I genuinely didn't care. In my eyes, it felt like it was elongating a story that could be told in a much more concise manner in the most confusing way.

Speaking of elongating, while the open areas are a wonderful addition to the corridor-centric design of FF7 Remake, it sure does feel like typical open-world design with towers to unlock icons and activity icon spread about the map. It's fun at the beginning but when you notice the same set of activities in each area you visit, you may begin to feel the fatigue. The game also doubles down on my main gripe with the OG FF7...minigames. There are SO many of them. Yes, some of them are fun (Queen's Blood is the most I've gotten sucked into an optional card game than I ever have) but this also may feel unnecessary to some.

The thing I noticed from playing this game is that FF7 is bigger than ever now. Everything seemed to be built around the overarching metaseries of games, media projects and products that must tie into each other (Some of the nods and winks in this game went right over my head). And for me, I think I just like the original game and that's it. I'm super happy for all the folks that are super engaged and loving being in this world but perhaps I won't see myself playing Part 3 in four years.

I was genuinely impressed, having seen this game as a kid, how much they use the PS1's limited processing power to create a world that is so dripping with atmosphere and dread. Yes the camera, controls and combat feels dated but I got surprisingly used to it pretty quickly. I also genuinely enjoyed seeing what this demented game was going to throw my way next as I played through this game.

I also miss this era of games with little hand-holding and trusting that the player is smart enough to figure out what's next. Yes, some of them are super obtuse (and might require looking it up) but I genuinely think its part of the charm.

I think some of the sequels does more interesting stuff with the narrative with this one but I was very satisfied with the ending I got. The OG Silent Hill made me appreciate seeing the background on how we have the horror games we have today and I love games like Signalis and Crow Country is giving homage while providing its own twists / modernizing some elements. Loved it!

I think most gamers nowadays that they find Ubisoft games to be very formulaic. However, every once in a while, we have titles like Immortal: Fenyx Rising and this title coming out that feels like a smaller budget title that someone made with passion. The thing I've noticed about these titles is that they tend to wear the game that influenced the design pretty prominently. In the case of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, that game seems to be Hollow Knight and Dark Souls.

The strengths of this comes from its satisfying traversal and rewarding exploration. Sargon is a joy to control from the start of the game and it becomes even more so as you unlock new powers. In addition, the game allows you to save locations you know you need a power for using memory shards which I found to be game-changing mechanic for metroidvania. I found the joy of exploring and finding little nooks and crannies to be an element I enjoyed from start to end.

Accompanying this traversal system is a frankly pretty brutal combat system. I honestly underestimated how difficult this game was going to be when I started it. Especially early on, a couple fodder enemies can quickly kill you. Once you get into the rhythm of combining attacks / dodges and parries, it becomes a very satisfying combat system. However, you always have to be on your toes and have the right amulets equipped (Another influence from Hollow Knight) or you will meet your demise pretty quickly.

The game truly tests your combat prowess with challenging boss battles. I found these, especially the ones early on, to be the highlights of the game with satisfying mechanics and a good level of challenge. I found the later bosses, to start bordering onto being a bit of a chore which is worsened by the fact that the bosses strong attacks trigger an unskippable over-the-top flashy attack scene that not take the control away from the player, but also stops the pacing of the battle dead in its track. I found these interruptions insufferably annoying towards the end of the game with how much later bosses do these ON TOP of phase change cutscenes. One boss in particular mixes these interruptions with time-based mechanics that had the player helplessly watch as the boss kills Sargon with zero ability to provide input.

Finally, the biggest gripe I have with this game is the story and characters. I'm rarely the type of person that skip cutscenes or dialogues in this game but I seriously could not have cared less about any of these characters. Sargon in particular is just so bland and half the conversations doesn't even sound like the characters are talking to each other. Combining these with aesthetics and dialogue that is ripped straight out of anime that its so clearly influenced from and it had me skipping full dialogue sequences.

All in all, I think I enjoyed my time with this game but was pretty soured on the annoyances that the game presented by the time I reached credits. However, I also quite appreciate that Ubisoft is willing to fund these "smaller" titles that is doing something different from their very comfortable formula. I didn't love everything about Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, but I can certainly see the talent and passion behind it.

Endwalker, being the conclusion of the first major arc in FFXIV, has a pretty lofty set of things to conclude during its runtime. And despite it having such a large mountain to climb, I think it succeeds pretty well.

With Endwalker, being the first expansion I "caught up" on, I spent more time engaging in content outside of the MSQ and I found the experience really wonderful. Engaging in stuff like the new alt jobs, FATEs and interesting little side quests, I felt the grind of the MSQ way less than some of the other expansions. I also found the beginning area to be pretty cozy and also found the initial mystery to be pretty engaging as well.

The biggest surprise I had with Endwalker that was also engaging for me was that I felt like for the first time in a while, that I had no idea where the story was going. I felt like I was doing what is typically the end-of-expansion Trial at a Level 83 quest and going "Wait, that can't be it. How the hell is this going to continue?" which made the twists and turns every more exciting.

It's not all rainbows and unicorns though. Endwalker has been somewhat criticized for its pacing which is not as tight as Shadowbringers. But while I found the MSQ for Shadowbringers to be tighter, it ended up with a pretty noticeable peaks and falls that became formulaic at the end. I also found the peaks in Endwalker, which even came during dull sequence of quests, to really hit the high notes as a culmination nearly 10 years of this game running.

While the expansion did kind of flub things toward the end with what I found to be an uninteresting (but BEAUTIFUL) zone and boss, it's undeniable how much they expanded the narrative of FFXIV with this expansion and how many narrative threads they were able to conclude within this expansion. I'm pretty stoked for Dawntrail and being able to experience a new expansion with everyone else. I totally see why this game means so much for so many people.

In my "series" of playing through an entire series of games (that began with Final Fantasy last year), I decided to revisit an old favorite. I have a ton of fond memories playing this game in high school whether it be single-player, co-op or multiplayer.

First thing first, this gameplay really does holds up. Playing through the campaign again, I realized why so many games copied the formula from this game for their own third-person cover shooters and I found the core mechanics to be satisfying as ever. While the campaign does provide a decent amount of variety, it does not stray far from the core shooting mechanics.

Other elements...hold up less gracefully. The story is pretty barebones (fleshed out in sequels), and the characters and writing is grade S "video game ass video game". A good dose of macho-ness AND cringey one liners. Also, it's wild thinking back to 2006 where the graphics in this game was considered top-of-the-line where now it's the pretty noticeable 360 era "brown and grey with a lot of bloom lighting" artstyle.

Another thing that took me aback was how challenging the campaign is! I'm pretty certain this campaign is much more fun in co-op where you don't have to restart large encounter sequences due to being one-shotted by a Boomshot or a Torque Bow. Similarly, this game extended usage of the "walk and talk" segments that people loathe now but you could tell it was something new as every death involved going through that segment AND their accompanying dialogue.

Overall, I still quite enjoy this game. It's a decent dose of nostalgia talking but I still think the gameplay is solid especially with the FPS boost on Series X. I'm curious what the sequels add in terms of core gameplay.

Continuing my journey through FFXIV with the expansion everyone is lauding! I did notice that Shadowbringers is one of the Top 5 highest rated games on this site so I was curious to see how it goes.

And it went...pretty fantastically for the most part! This is by far my favorite bit from FFXIV so far. Filled to the brim with amazing characters, music, dungeons and trials (My favorite batch of them so far) and probably one of the best villains in recent memory, there isn't a ton for me to complain about in this expansion.

With all that being said...it's certainly not perfect. The pacing, while probably better than anything else that has come by for FFXIV, still has areas in the story where the MC is doing what's essentially chores which really breaks up the urgency of the story. In addition, much like Heavensward, the way the community hypes up the story with words like "Best FF story since FF whatever" or "It will change your life" is probably not setting it up for success.

And ultimately I can't help to notice the fact that I had to play this game 200+ hours to get to these shining moments. Yes, there are plenty of high points along the way (Despite not enjoying Stormblood a whole ton, I still think back to parts of the patches for that expansion), it is a lot to ask of players especially when parts of the MSQ is so time-consuming or simply drab. You're also spending a lot of your time just watching cutscenes...which I feel like for those that have a problem with that wouldn't have stuck around this long

I'm curious how this arc concludes with Endwalker but perhaps it will be better to let this game breathe a little. Perhaps this is not a surprise when I've been cramming 10 years of content into a few months! But I enjoyed my time with Shadowbringers and curious how they wrap this all up.

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The above is what I wrote after finishing 5.0. After finishing the patches, I totally see why people love this expansion so much. After being worried by a couple pretty slow patches narrative-wise, it really blew up in the middle with a thrilling patch with all the spectacles, development and closure I was looking for when I finished Shadowbringers. I admit that reviewing these expansions are hard due to all the expanded narrative that comes with the patches and the more I play through, the more I realize how strong they are.

After playing through Heavensward and this, my enjoyment with this game is starting to wane a little...

To start off with the good things, I ADORE the music in this expansion (especially the militaristic drum beat version of the Crystal Prelude in the title screen). Also, the aesthetics of Doma was quite delightful for me and a breath of fresh air in this game.

In addition, the quality of the group content keeps getting better and better. I've really started to enjoy that the reason the WoL is going to these dungeons is part of the core narrative and not just "Oh just go to this random place because" from earlier in the experience. Oh and the trials...THESE are probably some of my favorites so far and I'm enjoying how mechanically complex they're getting.

And the negative is...pretty much everything else. The narrative is pretty poorly paced with it split between several regions (and a corresponding cast of characters) and one is significantly more interesting than the other. On top of that, Stormblood seems to be continuing the trend of sections of the MSQ being filled with characters demanding the WoL to do some unrelated obnoxious chores and I'm just like "Why is my character listening to this?". It's been such a consistent pattern with the way these expansions that are set up that I'm worried long-winded uninteresting detours in MSQ in Shadowbringers and Endwalker now.

Speaking of uninteresting...I was already a bit concerned from the fact that this expansion focused on the Empire as I find them to be one of the least interesting part of this world. And surely enough, this resulted in a very predictable and boring arc with a very one-note main villain. I did think some of the secondary and tertiary villains were somewhat interesting in their motivations though.

I'm mildly curious where the story goes in the patches but maybe I should give myself a break... 😅

My initial attempt at giving Cocoon a try didn't last long (I think it came out around all the fall blockbuster games) but MAN am I glad I did eventually. The core mechanics of the puzzles in this game, manipulating and nesting worlds inside orbs is seriously one of the most creative mechanics I've encountered in a game this year. The mechanic builds upon this core with denser and unique abilities thrown in as you get further into the game which I found endlessly refreshing. While the mechanic becomes perhaps a little too mind-bendy towards the end, that is a small critique.

The game is also accentuated with incredible art direction, fantastic music, clean graphics and fantastic boss fights (It was honestly so cool to have some form of combat in these indie puzzler games). I personally never quite bonded with titles like Limbo and Inside but decided to play this due to word-of-mouth and I'm so glad I did. This is my favorite indie game of the year by far and I will certainly keep an eye out for this studio in the future. So so highly recommended!

I agree with the general assumptions that Heavensward is better than the base A Realm Reborn experience. However, I also think that a lot of people are overselling it a bit.

I noticed playing through Heavenward's MSQ (Main Story Quest) that a lot of the things that bugged me in ARR, such as pointless "talk to X" quests, pointless "humorous" sidetracks and the fact that narrative is rather disjointed with so many players at play (The new characters in Ishgard, the empire, the Ascians). This can definitely result in pacing problems with the progression of the MSQ.

With all that being said, the things I enjoyed about ARR, such as the great characters, music, locations and dungeons (The dungeons in this so much more interesting mechanically) is still here if not better! I also worried about if the dreary mountainside of Ishgard is the only place this story will take place in and was surprised and delighted by the wealth of biomes.

And the story...the story is pretty good. I definitely don't think it's "the best FF story in the last decade" or whatever some people are saying on the internet but when it picks up, it really picks up and makes you want to continue blasting through the MSQ.

I'm curious where the story goes in the 3.0 patches next!

EDIT: Above is what I wrote after finishing the 3.0 patch and now that I've completed the Heavensward storyline, I think I saw why people liked this story so much. The patch storyline really expands on the fallout of the ending of the main Heavensward MSQ and takes the story to some interesting places with strong emotional highs and a satisfying payoff.