i owe you an apology miyazaki, i wasnt really familiar with your game

i have learned to love dark souls. the atmosphere is great, the way the world is connected is amazing, and i love the combat system. almost everything is amazing, except lost izalith which is the worst shit ever.

o&s and gwyn are awesome. pretty much every boss is. excellent game.

Competent in establishing a ghostly east coast Americana (as one would hope), but falls apart when attempting to zoom in on any stronger narrative strand. Bethesda comes off as apathetic towards truly establishing a macroscale narrative to grasp on to in regard to empowering the self-insert protagonist's autonomy and motivation to reshape the Capitol Wasteland. Heritability looms over the main story with much of what drives the player's exploration being hints towards answers as to the nature of your existence--where you were actually born, how much you truly are in the shadow of another, why you were kept miles away from the truth, etc.--but you never walk away as a character that grew up with a father who cared for you over decades, with James's dialogue being largely restricted to small passages over his technological goals for the Capitol Wasteland and grief for a love whose face is left a mystery (at least up until New Vegas).

So much of the main story being apathetically built on heritability is perhaps what dooms it: the past, where James heavily looms over as a parental figure motivating much of your decision-making, is collapsed into three sections built solely of character creation and tutorials to their name while being broken up by title cards as the only gesture towards a longer temporal span with little of who you were or are now to be gleaned from these elliptical interludes. Meanwhile, the future denies your narrative footprints to be truly weightful enough in comparison to your father's shadow that you continue to live under. The ending cards more clearly outline the flaws of the "future" here: those who walk the Capitol Wasteland cannot express their future in their own words, and their faces can only be deployed as the stinger to the list of good deeds or sins, respectively, honoring or tainting your family tree that the narrator speaks from. You don't truly "influence" the Wasteland; your legacy is built off of how much you truly respected the forces who helped bring you into the Wasteland.

Much more can be said about the heavily flawed DLC, especially when weighed in comparison to New Vegas. Operation Anchorage displays Bethesda's worst instincts in comedy with none of post-apocalyptic America to act as the contrast to jingoistic military propaganda, while Mothership Zeta only desires to make a mockery out of sci-fi with little punchlines to draw from outside of alien gibberish. The Pitt and Point Lookout fare better in emphasizing the Capitol's relative optimism in comparison to what's outside of its boundaries for those unluckier, but finding anything to establish the political structures that led to the outcomes within these add-on cities is a stretch (the latter being somewhat more successful here). Broken Steel is a half-written apology for those disappointed by the base game preventing them from seeing their footprints in their brought upon Wasteland, with its goal only serving to act as a rushed drive towards final domination via energy weaponry. None of what's found here, even in the best case of Point Lookout, can match up to New Vegas's engaging explorations of the wider west coast, whether in Dead Money with its paranormal holograms haunting the skeletons of the Sierra Madre or in Honest Hearts drawing the persistent threat of colonization into a post-apocalyptic America.

I can't fully bring myself to work against what exists here. Fallout, as a concept, rarely fails to allure the player into exploring the gestures towards another America that lived full lives in your footsteps before disappearing in a flash, whether in the emptied out diners or dormant Metro robots waiting to be awoken from their mechanical slumber again. However, it would be hard to deny the disappointment brought upon by Bethesda's narrative failures, with Obsidian's future work in the series existing at the edges as the force that only truly realizes what could compose a 3D Fallout. Before that, though, is work left unfinished and only a sandbox for you to click on heads in V.A.T.S with.

The steam page of "Disco Elysium" flashes on your screen. You've heard things. Good things. Buying it doesn't support the developers though. You consider getting a key instead.

you scrape your fingernail on the cheap white plastic of your mouse. It's rough, scraping it is only slightly more pleasant than doing the same to a blackboard.

Its thirty four dollars. thirty four bennies. dollary doos. moolah. You run out of synonyms for money.

That's like five hamburgers. Maybe. You haven't eaten them in a while.

A sepentine voice whispers in your ear. "clickkk your mousssse"

The pointer on your screen hovers over the glowing Smaragdine "Add to Cart".

You've finally lost it. The voices in your inky black conscious have come out to play.

You feel the flesh on your index flatten, a short drop, then it stops.
"click"

The mouse slides across smooth fabric, and the feeling repeats.
"click"
"click"
"click"

You've opened it.
The screen is filled with watercolor paint, the rough strokes of a brush, a grungy city/town/place/area/thing , its layers moving, the blue sky, clouds lapping like waves in an ocean.
On its left, a black box with "NEW GAME" in it.

"click"
You have a feeling that you wont regret it.

Welcome to Revachol.

A game that has absolutely no reason to be as addictive as it was, Sakuna is a fun hybrid between farm simulator and an action-RPG.

The combat is good if a little finicky and confusing at the start, as some elements are not clearly explained.

But is the leveling up system that can be a little frustrating as you are forced to complete your harvest to level up. So you can get stuck in a level forced to wait until you level up when you reap your harvest.

The story on the other hand is simple, but the characters are very charismatic. You can't really help but like them, and some of their back stories can get into very dark territory

Overall Sakuna hybrid still is not for everyone, but I had a great time with it and I hope we can get a sequel at some point.