For better or worse it's a pretty faithful remake, nothing too immense and nothing too boring, but just right. Helps massively that the writing isn't abysmal and shows a coming of age story for everybody's fave Hero King with the same gameplay that you would come to expect of a FE title.

My only major gripe is that this remake started one of the worst trends that still plagues modern FE to this day and that is the choice to completely homogenise your units via infinite reclassing. I will never understand why IntSys came up with this idea, it totally devalues a character's strengths and weaknesses with their base class and promoted class. Wendy in FE6 is funny and challenging to use because she's dogshit. There is nothing fun and challenging about turning half your army into Dracoknights and sweeping through the game, it's so boring. Player freedom isn't always a good thing, engage that smooth brain and use tictacs, you are playing a strategy game.

Anyway, infinite warp range is always funny. Rant over, a very middle of the road Fire Emblem game and it's not such a bad thing.

Somehow Edward ended up coming 1st in my rankings, which completely shocked me because it's always Ike, Haar or Jill lol

Greatest Fire Emblem game of all time, there is actually no contest

I also gave the boots to base level Meg and never fed her a single point of experience because funny

From Software’s most recent title is my favorite game this year and I don’t see that changing. In some ways, it feels too big to talk about. I can give the overused shorthand, “Breath of the Wild but Dark Souls” but that feels like both an inaccurate and insufficient description of this monstrous game. It feels less like a more fully realized Dark Souls and instead positions the Dark Souls games as more linear attempts at Elden Ring. It’s… a lot. And I’m doing a bad job describing it. Just needed to get some of this bloviating out of the way to have a coherent thought. Elden Ring is great. So what is it?

First, it is a From game. Elden Ring feels less like a new IP for the developer and more like a similar formula placed in a rich open world and allowed the space and time to breathe. As a player, you are continually rewarded for exploration by beautiful vistas, branching quests, and tons of visually varied loot. Whereas Dark Souls would reward a player for choosing the less obvious hallway in a castle, Elden Ring rewards a player for traveling hours off the critical path to fight a weird lichen guarded by floating beach jellyfish.

Controls feel familiar yet just new enough to make even the most recent Souls games feel sluggish and constrained. It’s also wonderful to see the influence of Sekiro on the new title. Elden Ring calls on the traversal and stealth mechanics of its shinobi-themed pseudo-predecessor often to great effect.

It is important to note that Elden Ring is not some one-size-fits-all jumping on point for the franchise. Fans of other action RPGs may find some of the game’s quirks troubling to parse such as a total lack of a quest log, a somewhat subtle shove to the game’s tutorial, and the sheer volume of skippable areas. I make no excuses for the game and remember when such quirks would have bothered me but it’s an absolute treat for fans of the franchise and those willing to give it a chance despite some momentary confusion. All-in-all, Elden Ring is an undertaking for better and worse. It’s a great game to get lost in, a tough game to marathon, and as satisfying as it is frustrating from time to time. It’s exactly what fans of the game hoped for from the trailers. It just makes me want a Sekiro 2.

"oh no, he's playing classical music"

Never cared about the first one, both back when it came out and now, but this one? Perfect game. Not sure if I realized it then, though I HIGHLY enjoyed it when it came out, but I certainly do now. The experiment/test-run that was the first game (as much as I admire it's bare bones/simplicity) constructed and paced to the highest degree. Never realized how hard I associate this game with 2011/my mid-teenage years. Definitely felt my body being transported back to those horribly awkward/demented years. So glad it's over. So glad to finally revisit this and see it even more for what it truly is.

This game was quite the journey. A lot of ups, but so many downs that it made reaching the end such a bitter note for myself.
In terms of combat gameplay, this game is one of the better entries for Bethesda. Weapon control feels much heavier and interesting, much more potential moments where VATS feels like an extra thing and the focus is absolutely on your aim. The guns, be them normal or laser ones, feel so distinct one from another and the fact that the game constantly gives you new and different (but not necessarily stronger) versions of a weapon with benefits (and sometimes detriments) makes the weapon rotation a lot more interesting.
Also, weapon/armor customizations are so cool. I absolutely digged how this game wants you to focus on DIY stuff. "Want a more potent pistol but with less recoil? Try changing these parts!" or "Do you want to carry more stuff with your armor? Put some extra pockets in it!" Simple stuff that can fit your general behavior during a playthrough.
Also, how can I not mention the absolute coolness that are the power armors in this? The fact that they have their own HUD, mixed with the sturdier movement and noises truly make you feel like a behemoth walking around the wasteland.
Naturally, the atmospheric soundtrack that this game has is maybe my favorite of the entire series so far. Some tracks feel barren and whistful, while others just exhale the technology that survived the 200 year nuclear blast.
Now.... how come I wrote an obscene amount of paragraphs praising the hell out of this game, and yet it's just a 3/5 for me?
Well... they really screwed up on making this the role-playing game of the 2010s by streamlining it to almost a fault. And I just don't mean the 4 option type of dialogue, oh no. While those are bad enough as they are, since it's generally a positive, a negative, a "push further" and a sarcastic comment, I also felt that the main character, "The Lone Survivor", isn't.... great. It's really funny how Fallout 3 almost nails how to build your character's personality from the very beginning of it all, and New Vegas just gives you total and full freedom from the get go (arguably my favorite of the two), and this one.... welp, if you pick the Man, he's always going to have the former job of a soldier, while the Woman has the job of a lawyer. And considering how the plot in this works, you can't make me believe for a second that either of them would just nail how to use a Power Armor from the get go, and even crazier, fight one of the strongest enemies in the series on like the second quest.
Also, the skill tree from the previous games is long gone. No more skill point allocation for you! Now they're pretty much streamlined into the perks. There's no way I'll screw up my point allocations and miss some key mechanics because of this, right???
Welp, as much as I praise the DIY element, I'm not too fond of building the houses and security stuff in this. It's... just not my thing? But at some point I gave it a shot and found it was pretty alright.... until I noticed I couldn't do everything with it, like say, build some stuff that can help you create better armor and upgrades, since that is stuck on a Charisma Level 7 perk.
The game wants you to use such mechanics so badly, and yet it locks out some key elements that makes them a lot easier for the player behind the SPECIAL points.
It's not that terrible of a deal, since leveling up goes pretty much ad infinitum here, so you will get there. But having such elements locked out don't feel interesting enough. Maybe locking out stuff like people selling stuff at settlements and higher quality defenses behind the perks wouldn't be such a bad idea, but in the long run it just made me less interested in investing such time.
Now... for me, Fallout is about exploring the barren wasteland, and Commonwealth has so many cool stuff around it! I was just walking around and found a building where people were locked inside trying to figure out how to build a better chest piece for a power armor. And I did manage to get it and it was really cool!
Cut about 60 hours later, and the game takes me there. The main character never ever mentions being there beforehand, nor the game seems to care. This happened way more than I'm happy to say. I pretty much killed one boss type enemy, just so a lot of hours later the game told me to "capture" him, and I was like "oh god. I killed him, though." so I went back there and voila, he's alive and well once again.
I barely even talked about the main plot here, and.... what's there to say. Like, really. I feel like I've seen Fallout use this "Can X be considered human, too?" with Ghouls, Super Mutants, and whatever it's not a normal walking human on the past games, so making this the main focus really got me the wrong way. Doesn't really help how I didn't like the "plot twist" here. It's somewhat well done, yes, but I kinda wish there was more to it.... oh well.
While I didn't find Fallout 4 an atrocious experience, I do feel some resistance coming back to it and finishing the DLCs. Although I do hear some good stuff about Far Harbor.... I'll leave that one for next month, maybe.
Overall, if you're playing this, expect a more streamlined experience altogether. Wouldn't say it was a waste of time, just..... expected a little more from the biggest game in the series. (I'm ignoring 76)

Everynow and then I stumble across a game so great that I'm at a loss for what to write as a review, so this won't exactly be a traditional review. I’m writing this about 10 or so minutes after finally beating Halo 3 and completing the original halo trilogy. I won't go into too much of an in-depth review for this game because I feel there is not much more praise I can give to it gameplay-wise that I didn't already give to Halo 2.

Wow this is the perfect ending to this amazing trilogy. It's incredible that with every subsequent game the story just kept on getting better and better. It was amazing to see the technology and design behind every aspect of these games just keep on advancing through every release. Every step of the way this game’s universe just kept on expanding more and more, until ultimately culminating in this incredible final battle for the fate of everything within it. I absolutely loved the feeling of unity felt in Halo 3. Teaming up with all of your former enemies at one point or another to aid a greater cause was incredible, and I especially loved that the covenant never ended up being a 100% evil, brainwashed, or crazy race of villains. There's overall a strong sense of hopefulness found within this game. It’s a very refreshing difference from many other edgy and cruel first person shooter games, even from the first two Halo games at times. Ultimately I believe this not only to be one of the best FPS games ever made, but probably one of the best video games of all time.

So I just wanna say... any game that has dinosaurs in it is automatically cool. But uh, this one just aint It i think. It is another boring survival game that runs abhorrently on consoles. Its pretty much impossible to figure out what you're supposed to even do without watching 10 youtube tutorials by people who have been indoctrinated to enjoy this game. The character creator is also just... what the fuck? The default male character is like dollar store M.Bison and even just the textures on their characters arms when you first start up a new island is terrifying, the female character particularly seems to have her fingernails grown into claws and its just awful all around. BUT this game does have a setting called "poop interval" which made me laugh so all is forgiven.

Oh, the platinum is pretty easy too. Doubt I would of given this a shot otherwise.

Trophy Completion - 100% (33/33 Platinum #195)
Time Played - 2 hours 50 minutes
Nancymeter - 40/100