In 2003, off the heels of Wind Waker, Satoru Iwata approached Eiji Aonuma regarding the next Zelda game. He requested that the next Zelda game be "120% Zelda". And that's exactly what they did; they created the most "Zelda" Zelda game ever made.

It's the goat man, it's simply the goat. One of the great mysteries in life to me is why Twilight Princess is not usually in the conversation for the best Zelda game. I legitimately can not comprehend how anybody who loves Zelda could not love this game.

Twilight Princess has the greatest collection of dungeons in the entire series. You have traditional dungeons with unique spins on them like: Forest Temple, Goron Mines, and Lakebed Temple. Then they get insanely creative and unique with dungeons like: Arbiter's Grounds, Snowpeak Ruins, and City in the Sky. The puzzles are challenging, the items are very fun to use, and the bosses are all memorable, if a little too easy.

Something you would not expect to be good about a Zelda game is combat. However, this is the only Zelda game that makes fighting regular enemies fun with the hidden skills. It's really confusing to me why this was never brought back in future games.

The story is interesting enough and Midna is by far the best companion character in the series; even people who don't like this game admit that. This game features easily the best designs for Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf. The artstyle perfectly fits the more serious and grandiose tone of this game.

The music does a great job at accompanying scenarios and invoking feelings in the player. The hopeless, yet beautiful feeling of Midna's Lament, The grandeur and epic feeling of the Hyrule Field theme, and the foreboding and alienating feeling of City in the Sky.

This game also features the greatest version of Link in the series. My favorite thing about Link in this game is he feels like a hero, even before he gets the Master Sword. In every other game, Link is kind of just a normal kid until he gets the Master Sword and is suddenly the chosen hero. We are shown in this game that Link is looked up to in his community, and has people that depend on him. This is exemplified in one of the best segments in the game where Link saves one of the kids from the group of Orcs on horseback. This version of Link is someone I can actually take seriously as the hero of Hyrule, as opposed to other versions of Link.

I want to talk about the final boss of this game, as I think it is the best in the series. For some inexplicable reason, this is the only final boss in the series that is just a 1v1 with Link and Ganondorf. Every other game, the very last fight was either Ganon, Demise, or Link and Zelda teaming up on Ganondorf. In Twilight Princess though, it is just a 1 on 1 sword duel and it is fucking awesome in ways I can not properly illustrate.

Twilight Princess just does so many little things right, and it is the perfect storm for what I look for in a Zelda game, and what the Zelda franchise represents to me. Some may see it as a very standard and boring Zelda game, but I see it as Zelda embracing what it is; an epic adventure. It's the greatest Zelda game ever made in my eyes, and it is truly 120% Zelda.

This remake takes everything that made the original game special and throws it all in the trash. Not only is the soundtrack worse (color your night and its going down now are the only better ones), but Tartarus, which was the only part that needed to get better (although I didn't find it boring in the original game), feels and plays worse because the floors are bigger and slower to go through and the enemies are too easy to fight and avoid, so, unlike in the original, I didn't feel the need to fight at all.

The overworld doesn't look interesting anymore, and all the atmosphere of the original is gone. I just feel like there are too many people, and that the isolated and lonely look that the city had in the original was better because it set the perfect tone for the story and its themes. The voice acting is worse, with Akihiko's voice sounding too deep (and in general, the whole cast sounding a bit worse, imo); the new in-engine cutscenes that replace the animated ones are executed badly and lack emotion, for example, the intro scene, which was, at least in my opinion, one of the best ones, gets ruined because of Yukari talking and ruining all the tension that was created in the old one.

I don't think I'll ever understand the hype for this remake since almost everything that it tries to improve was done better in the original game. 

I have normally less than zero interest in H games, but when articles like this cropped up:

https://www.pcgamer.com/im-glad-i-looked-past-the-name-because-memoirs-of-a-battle-brothel-is-exactly-what-i-want-in-an-rpg/

I couldn't help but be curious.

Having now finished it this is a developer with a lot of ambitious ideas without quite the ability to realise them properly. Normally I have a lot of time for that, but couldn't look past the flaws in this case. There's a lot of ideas here and the world chosen to set those ideas in did feel like it deserves better exploration than what it got.

First, the porn stuff. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but I didn't think too much of the designs.There's nothing in the way these characters are drawn that's particularly interesting or novel. But more importantly, this game puts a shocking amount of work in front of you to actually access the lewd bits. You need to build up trust with your party members, which is 10% picking dialogue options they like and 90% giving them expensive, non-individualised gifts. There's little sense of building a connection, and getting the required income to do this is a slog.

The RPG elements very much feel like someone who has played a bunch of classics and is trying to implement those same features without much rhyme or reason. Characters have skill trees but is overly generous with points so there's no reason to "build" a particular way, nor does combat warrant much use of a lot of the abilities. Attributes offer nothing more than bypassing a couple combats. You can build reputation with factions but the outcome on the story is minimal.

Managing the titular brothel could have been something that made this game unique, but this too is underealised. Mostly these just give you an increased salary which you can then spend on...buying more upgrades, because the selection of combat gear and items is pretty limited. This is the kind of game that's begging for a host of cosmetic options and those aren't there at all!

My overall feeling? If this game piques your interest go play Shadowrun: Dragonfall and look up fanart of any characters that make you horny instead.

About the only reason I'm not giving this 5 stars is that I really feel like this was a game you needed to experience when it was fresh and new. Playing this as an adult in the Year of our Luigi 2024 I think "wow, it's easy to see why this was so formative for many people". Playing it in 1995 as a young person must have been absolutely mind blowing.

What sins this game has are hardly unique to it, mainly that only the boss fights are allowed to be interesting and the final dungeon is way too long. All the other fundamental aspects are incredibly solid. The boss fights are good and the art direction and music are wonderful.

What I think was refreshing was how straightforward the story was. JRPGs have this reputation for being sprawling and convoluted, but you can finish this one in under 20 hours. Despite being a time travel narrative all the events flow in an understandable fashion. And yet despite this there's still room for decision making, sidequests and secrets to explore and even a whole wealth of extra endings to try for.

This review is going to be very much "Guy who has only played Elden Ring" themed, so apologies for that in advance.

On a mechanical level this was overall far easier than Elden Ring, but only dickheads focus on the challenge over the experience. Rather than a sprawling, dying fantasy world, Bloodborne focuses on one terrifying, hungry night in a single city. Everything is tuned to this and it's all done well.

A lot has been said about how the mechanics push you towards playing aggressively and even reading and watching all of that didn't quite prepare me. Creatures lunge at you from behind smoke, corner you in cramped allies and the only way to survive is savagery.

The atmosphere is masterful and the sound design team deserve all possible accolades. I can't remember the last time sound has felt this good in a game, from the bloody and visceral attacks to the delightful "click-clack" of your trick weapons.

Possibly my favourite aspect overall is the way the story and its scope build. Starting with the beast plague, as the night moves on things become stranger, slowly building into full-blown cosmic horror.

A big mea culpa to all my loved ones who told me to play this over the years. You were right, it owns.

I may not be the only person for whom Pyre is their favourite Supergiant game, but I don't suspect there are many of us.

As with any game from this studio the gorgeous visuals and Korb soundtrack are worth the price of admission. But I also love everything else. The cast are a joy. I love that winning or losing the basketball holy rites doesn't matter for progress but simply what it means for the characters. And a fantasy world with strange fantasy species and elaborate fantasy religions is the peak of my bullshit.

I ended up playing this not too long after Hollow Knight in my quest to find a metroidvania that would scratch the same itch. Ori is not trying to be the same game, it is far more linear and it would be unfair to be angry at failing to be something it wasn't trying to be. So let's be angry at what it is instead.

This game is "beautiful" in the same way as one of those obnoxious instagram desserts is tasty, oversaturated colours and too much bloom everywhere. The enemies are bullet sponge globs. The character is floaty and tedious to control. I realised I wasn't having any fun at all when I got to the volcano area.

Perhaps Will of the Wisps has improved on these issues, but I have no reason to try.