I can see the appeal of this. Playing it at all did eventually lead me to the Ace Attorney series which I have been enjoying a ton. The visual presentation is very appealing and memorable, and at first that convinced me that is find something to like here. In the end I can't really tolerate this at all though.

I'm not too familiar with this genre yet, but with my limited knowledge I'm not a fan of this game on a design level. A lot of the trial mechanics seem designed to try and give it "gameplay" and make the trials more tense, but they mostly just annoyed me. I did play the Android version for some reason, so there's a good chance I would've been less bothered if I had tried it on an actual console. Even so, for me the appeal of this genre is the combination of the story and logic, and playing shitty little minigames doesn't really add anything. The tension added doesn't feel earned.

The trial mechanics also invent an incentive for hanging out with different characters during your free time, since you get bonuses after interacting with someone enough. I like the idea of choosing which characters you interact with to learn more about them, but in practice I've never been super engaged by this kind of mechanic. The encounters have to be pretty short, and are very limited since important plot elements or character moments all get reserved for the main story. I suppose you could make the argument that these short, forced interactions are intentional and demonstrate the distrust and unease created by the situation the characters are in. I wouldn't give this game that much credit though.

The story is the hardest part of this whole thing to discuss because I didn't actually finish the game. There were characters and moments that I thought were cool, but there were never any moments were I was shocked or thrilled by any twists or left pondering about the game's deeper meaning. Maybe I was just failing to engage because of my previously mentioned problems with the game, but it didn't leave me feeling satisfied even though I wasn't hating it either.

I was enjoying it all enough to coast to the end even with my gripes until I got to Chihiro's arc. I won't even go into detail because it's genuinely fucking awful and left me pretty upset! You could argue that Chihiro isn't actually supposed to represent a trans identity but I don't think it really matters one way or another what the intent was. I played a bit past that but didn't find anything worth sticking around for, so I dropped it.

Overall, I can see why people like this series and I enjoyed a bit of it myself. However the most memorable thing I was left with here was a reminder that society generally views people like me with pity and disgust and that's not a great takeaway! It might have soured my overall view of it. Either way, I won't be returning to this.

This game has great gunplay, great level design, and an iconic aesthetic and sound design, but by far my favorite aspect of it is the brilliant pacing. Sure, it has a slow start and a somewhat botched finish. Beyond that, the escalation from surviving the aftermath of the resonance cascade, to surviving the military's cover-up, to beating the military's ass, to "saving" the world from an alien invasion is incredible. The escalation is perfect and it makes this the perfect power fantasy for weird nerds or just anyone that likes to shoot shit.

I even liked On a Rail. Sorry I guess?

I actively hate some parts of this game but really loved other parts. I'm glad I played it and I think it was really memorable! I don't think I'd recommend it to most people though.

I've heard some people say that the horrible grindy "open world" helps build a contrast with the exciting and ultraviolent showdowns that you're constantly working towards. I think that's the game's intent, to an extent. I'm not a stranger to praising games for designing in metaphors like this, it's a key aspect of one of my favorite games, Shadow of the Colossus. I just really don't buy it here.

The game seems to have interesting ideas, I just have a hard time taking it seriously when it doesn't seem to be taking itself seriously either. It feels like a joke at the expense of the player, but not one that I find very funny. "Look at this poor bastard! He looooves anime and jerking off. The only thing that brings him joy is horrific violence! He's such a sucker! He's just like you haha. Now run along and do some boring ass work. Just like real life isn't that clever?" Yeah I really do feel like a sucker for slogging through the worst bits of this game while being made fun of the whole time. You really got me. Wow. I get what it was trying to say, I just don't really think it said it in a way that was interesting. I'm all for making fun of gamers, I just don't think you need to make a good chunk of your game shitty in order to do that.

Anyways despite all that, when it's good it's good. It does a great job of being goofy and stylish! I like the combat system, motion controls and all! Probably one of the best examples of a game being designed specifically for the Wii and pulling it off well without feeling dragged down as a result. I'd recommend it for that alone to anyone that cares about that sort of thing. Not much reason to go back to this beyond that though, even if I would say it's good overall.

This game is secretly surrealist. There's just shit floating all over with no reason for it to exist and you just zoom through it all, endlessly collecting little trinkets. The world is endless metal spaghetti and I'm just a blue 'hog, eatin it all up.

It's pretty fun even if it's a nightmare dreamed up by an industry desperately trying to copy Breath of the Wild. I especially like the levels outside the open world, they are genuinely just good sonic.

Why the fuck did Eggman make his AI take the form of a little girl? I will probably never know because this didn't keep my attention long enough for me to finish it.

Maybe I'm just too attached to the PS2 era of this series, but I was pretty disappointed by this. The early weapon roster is very stock for the series and none of the weapons feel particularly unique, even if they're decent fun to use. There's hardly any platforming. All of the bosses feel very designed around this game's dodge roll equivalent, which I am not a fan of compared to the acrobatic staffing of the past. The writing also grated on me immensely, even more than the Future games, although it's admittedly been a while since I played those.

Maybe some of my complaints would've smoothed out over time, but I was only able to put around 3 hours into this before I had to tap out. It's missing too much of what defined the series to me, in favor of "next gen" features that leave it feeling more generic. Maybe I'll come back when I'm feeling less cynical. It doesn't really seem bad, but it's certainly not what I wanted out of a modern entry, and nothing I saw sold me on the modernizations.

I am so very conflicted about this game, maybe more than any other game I've ever played. I love the music, the dungeon gameplay, the combat, the art style, and the fusion system. I'm even a fan of the social link system in concept.

In practice I can barely stand playing this game because the writing is dull and that writing takes up most of the game. A game that's nearly 100 hours long! That's far too long for any game in my opinion, I start losing interest around 40-50 hours even in games I adore.

I don't even really hate the writing (usually). It's fun enough and tries its best to approach heavy topics. Characters develop over the course of their introductions, but unfortunately become effectively static afterwards. Even if I enjoyed welcoming a new character to the party and seeing their development leading there, it loses weight when they immediately morph into a caricature right after. The main character is treated as a key component of the story despite his silence and lack of personality or agency, which always came off as awkward to me. I was not engaged by the overall story and wasn't surprised by any of the twists. Overall it was fine when it wasn't being actively offensive, (which did happen a few times!) but was not nearly good enough to justify the game's length.

I wanted to love this game and in a way I really do! It ultimately feels like two games mashed together, one that I love and one that I tolerate. Together they're less than the sum of their parts. I got through the final buildup to the last dungeon, 90 hours into this monster of a game, and I stood at the entrance to the final area. I looked back on everything that had happened and felt nothing but indifference. I saved and closed the game and haven't returned to it since.

A very difficult game to evaluate. An easy target for the "it gets good after 1000 hours" joke, but I don't think it really deserves that. You can just play through the main campaign and it's pretty fun! I'm not too familiar with this genre so my opinion on it all might not be very nuanced in comparison to others, but I really enjoyed everything it had to offer. It's fun to play, has an engaging world and story, and a nice dark fantasy aesthetic. Taken on its own I'd probably rate it around a 3.5/5? It's not without problems but it has a lot of cool things to offer.

With that all out of the way, we can get to the rest. Most people approaching this game aren't doing it for the "campaign", but for everything that comes after. The reality of Path of Exile is the result of a decade of mutation as a "games as a service" product. I can't even say that the story portion is separate from that, considering how it has expanded over the years and changes constantly with each new expansion.

The constant drive to expand and grow comes at the cost of the casual experience of this game, and the knowledge of the post-game content that is designed to drive constant engagement sours the preceding experience. This game is one of the worst examples of complexity creep in a video game ever, and it poisons every step of your experience with it.

If you want to just experience the campaign like I suggested at the beginning of my review, you're still inevitably burdened with trying to understand all the systems designed to support the late game. Leveling up for the first time and looking at the skill tree makes you feel like the protagonist of a Lovecraftian horror story, viewing unknowable geometries and going insane on the spot.

That all being said, the complexity is not an accident, it's a core part of the forces driving this game's success. If you buy into it, the mechanical absurdity is practically the point.It all comes together to support the true nature of Path of Exile, a game designed to be endlessly playable. Grind to progress the late game, grind to level up, grind to buy or craft new gear, grind to simply get richer and richer. No matter what it is you want, there's always at least 3 or more ways to do it so that you never have to get bored of any one mechanic. It reminds me of a casino, all lights, noise, and promise of rewards.

As a side note, a strange aspect of Path of Exile compared to other games that fill a similar niche is that it does seem to be a little self aware of its nature. The post game story continues to explore the destruction the player character brings about in their perpetual pursuit of wealth and power. The characters that join to help you all inevitably end up worse off for it. There's no true consequences or payoff to it all, but I could be convinced it all stands as a metaphor for the game's constant expansion or the player's own descent into eternal pointless scaling. I don't think it excuses the game but I do find it interesting.

I got really pulled into this loop around when I started college, and while I "enjoyed" it in the moment but after the smoke cleared I didn't really get anything from it other than a lingering feeling that I had been taken advantage of. Then again, I'm a much different person than I was in those days, and my perspective on gaming as a hobby has changed immensely. I'm a pretentious asshole that likes art games, instead of the repressed and awkward Gamer looking for empty distractions. For that purpose I'd rate it higher than other alternatives like competitive shooters or hard drugs. I still appreciate it for its over the top complexity and depth, even though I now resent it for what those systems support.