Why do I try so hard to finish games that I don't enjoy? How many times do I need to restart a game before I realize that I just don't want to play it? There's no fault of my own, the game just isn't fun, and I see zero reason to continue it.

Everything about Sword & Shield is painstakingly dull and empty, not to mention unnecessarily slow. My problems with Sun & Moon are now amplified by an indescribable amount, as its now even more prominent just how many times you are stopped dead in your tracks for quite honestly nothing. Combined with the once again slow moving dialogue boxes and animations, all this to say I give up.

I have tried multiple times to finish Pokemon Shield, not one of those attempts made it past the 4th gym. Maybe I didn't like my starter choice? Maybe I'm just not a fan of my team composition? Maybe it's everything, and nothing I do will get me to have fun playing through the Galar region. I just wish I could realize these things sooner.

wheatie's just gonna have to live with the fact that she's been able to finish every mainline Pokemon game besides gen 8. And that's what really hurts out of this whole ordeal.

Unpacking is an interesting idea. It's essentially fairly freeform puzzle game of 8 levels unpacking boxes of someone moving into different houses. It follows an unnamed woman's life through her first room as a girl, through college house sharing and relationships to a middle aged adult.

The game makes use of environmental story telling to push what is happening along, moving in with their first partner, the lack of space or compatibility etc. Without meeting or hearing about this woman you can piece together the events of her life and interests. It's a really neat idea and I liked seeing the small changes to belongings from location to location or items she has taken with her through most of her life. It does wear out it's welcome after a little bit though as I don't feel it gets quite clever enough with it's items to progress that story as it could. There are only so many piles of the same books and socks I can unbox and put on shelves or in draws without feeling like the idea ran stale. There are also some sections where the simple music just stopped leaving an odd silence as I decided where to put the yoga mat under the bed again in the next bedroom.

Still I really appreciate what a neat idea and unique game this is. I would have preferred more interactive items, close up's of photos to show things our nameless protagonist had done, new hobbies or even problems in her life to flesh it out more. What I really took from this though is if someone unpacked my things for me if I moved house what sort of person would they think I am? So much of what we own, decide to keep and how we keep them at home speaks so much about us as people. For that alone I am grateful to this short and cute little game.

+ Interesting use of environmental story telling.
+ Unique game idea.
+ Nice pixel art style.

- Runs out of steam a bit in the last couple of levels.

It’s very important as a human being to engage with things that are not about you and you cannot relate with. I know this, and try to do this. However, I have always struggled with stories about religious trauma, as someone who hasn’t had religion in either a positive or negative sense play much of a role in their life. I can understand what it’s saying, but there’s a barrier that prevents me from being hit as hard as some people.

We Know the Devil is one of those games. It hits for the right person, but that person is unfortunately not me and I don’t think the rest of the game is good enough to compensate. Not bad by any stretch, but not the best. The writing ranges from poignant to stilted and ham-fisted. I played through all the endings, and the writing was by far the strongest in Venus’. The ostracization of a closeted trans woman who struggles to connect with male peers and can’t relate to the “real girls” as well as they can with each other is painfully believable. The other routes aren’t as strong.

The visual design is good, and contributes to the atmosphere. The audio is also mostly good, but sometimes poorly mixed, with certain tracks being much louder than others. The tracks themselves are good though.

I think this is just a game that isn’t for me, but I can see the merit in it. I do quite like the three girls and wish they all had a bit more depth and organic writing.

This game has a lot of things going on for it. The visuals are GORGEOUS as well as the OST. The story is not the greatest and kind of generic, but in the way that going to school everyday is generic, it feels correct. The characters and their relationships are very good and I connected to most of them. That said, the gameplay loop can be quite boring sometimes, with the dates feeling kind of repetitive. Side quests are also kind of boring, and the managing of the school is ok at best. Combat was a bit hard to get used to for me, coming mostly from traditional turn based rpgs, but it got easier with time and quite enjoyable. Sometimes it's a bit difficult to know where to go so a bit of clarity would be much appreciated. I was going to rate it lower but the final boss battle felt very epic and I kind of loved it. The worst thing in this game is, without a doubt, the stealth side quests which I felt were rather hard to control and tedious. Overall I would recommend this game, and I'm looking forward to playing its prequel.

For the most part, this game is junk food. It's not the most fulfilling, but it's fairly low-effort way to experience an appealing if trashy flavour. The combat is never particularly challenging, but it still demands just enough input from the player - and shoves enough flashy nonsense into your eyeballs - that it remains engaging without being stressful, so you can pass the time well enough while you sit back and enjoy girls being gay.

It's worth noting that I skipped straight to this game, not playing the first - it seemed to be reviewed quite a bit more poorly, with reports of fanservice that might've bordered on outright uncomfortable. I was already taking a gamble, with very little idea if this would actually be any good, so it made sense to shoot for the best chances.

One really standout aspect of this game is the way Rena and Yuki's relationship is handled - undeniably explicit, a core part of their arcs, and a consistent factor the game still pays mind to once it's established. It had me grinning from ear to ear. That said, it does make all of the other casual intimacy in the game kind of weird - like, in almost any other context, I'd be saying "yeah these girls are gay as hell", but since the game has proven it's willing to actually come out and say it... what does it mean when it doesn't? I dunno. Nonetheless, seeing the girls walk around holding hands and go on "dates" where they lie in bed together is good for the soul.

The game does have a number of rough edges that add up to a janky experience, like, I could seriously nitpick all day. So I will.
- The camera in fights is all over the place.
- Enemy designs are just kind of weirdly abstract without any connection to what's going on in the game.
- The skill names all being in different languages for ~aesthetic~ makes them very difficult to memorise and assign meaning to.
- The crafting system demands a tedious excess of material grinding if you care about upgrading everything.
- The fragment system has a lot of niche or redundant effects, rather than encouraging interesting builds.
- The stealth segments are godawful and contribute little.
- There's a lot of asset reuse and padding - even if that one time it was totally justified and really cool.
- Having to wait for skill animations to play out makes timing awkward when blocking big attacks or in the whole one-on-one mode.
- Asking a whole second playthrough for the true ending in a game that is neither short nor deep is very questionable.
I definitely wouldn't go so far as to call this an outright bad game, it's just, I dunno - making good art is really hard, actually, and when you focus on the standout masterpieces that's easy to lose track of. Sometimes you need a little mid in your life.

That's a lot of complaining, but the game's pleasures are comparatively simple, as already described - flashy spectacle, hella yuri, and a relaxed pace. Ultimately, I did enjoy my time, and the game was exactly what I needed right now.

i absolutely love animal well. i was expecting to enjoy it, but really i wasn't prepared for just how magical it feels. the map is incredibly dense, the puzzles are intuitively designed and have a great sense of accomplishment, the boss fights (which i wasn't expecting at all) are actually really creative puzzle fights, which i usually dislike.

my only MAJOR complaint is that it does feel a bit railroaded at times, a lot of areas deliberately prevent you from sequence breaking, which is something i find annoying. but other than that, just a ridiculously good game.