I had a rough experience with Kiwami 1, particularly in how the characters hinted at in Yakuza 0 were wasted by a plot that seemed to be uninterested in doing anything with the massive time jump between games or expanding on these less-explored characters.

Fortunately, Kiwami 2 is a big improvement in nearly every way and I’m surprised how mixed the reception seems to be in these reviews. Several twists caught me off-guard, though, unlike Kiwami, actually made sense and was correctly foreshadowed. The new characters introduced were solid and had satisfying arcs, while providing necessary backstory for Kazama that I felt was absent in Kiwami 1. The camerawork in the last game was a big step down from Yakuza 0. Thankfully, that bar of quality has been restored here, with a far more cinematic presentation, where the camera placement and movement is so much more creative and deliberate.

Combat is good, but it’s the one area that feels like a sidegrade rather than an outright improvement. Game feel is slightly worse than the last 2 games, and the overall difficulty is extremely low, even on Hard mode. On the other hand, the weapons are far better implemented this go around because of the ability to have multiple equipped. The progression was also streamlined in a positive way, with way more options being unlockable at once.

The side activities had better overall mechanics, with the Clan creator being surprisingly addictive and funny, in how it tries to parallel the setup of Yakuza 0. Some other small improvements include the addition of Golf and the selection of Karaoke being much wider this time. The substories were decent, though I doubt I’ll remember any of them a year from now, aside from… well you know the one.

I really loved this game and it’s restored my faith in the series.

Yakuza 0 is the first stop on my journey towards (eventually) playing Infinite Wealth, and what an introduction it is. RGG really knows how to present a compelling premise and follow through with its execution. The way key events are set up and staged is so well-done that I just couldn't stop playing until I completed the story.

Unfortunately, it struggles to find the perfect balance between both of its protagonists, particularly with giving them distinctive traits and contrasting their journeys in interesting ways. I was more invested in Majima overall, which feels like the wrong takeaway given that Kiryu is the series protagonist. While very likeable in his own right, he often came off as wooden and one-note during cutscenes. All the villains are centred around Kiryu, yet many are fought by Majima despite having little direct connection to them. Still, the game's supporting cast is fantastic, particularly Kuze and Makoto.

Perhaps it's larger number of styles & weapons to play with, or the more inventive encounter design, but the combat worked for me here in a way that Judgement's didn't. The diversity of heat actions and moves to play with was a lot of fun.

Aside from this, there is a laundry list of frustrations with the game's systems.
- There's a slowness to everything that halts the pace of the game. Saving taking 15 seconds on PlayStation, even on PS5, styles having a delay between switching, unskippable cinematics.
- The abilities are way too expensive.
- Shifting between the dialogue cutscenes and pre-rendered stuff is jarring.
- Saving takes like 15 seconds, even on PS5.

Overall, the game was a total blast and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series. Now onto Kiwami...

Guacamelee! 2 is one of the best action-platformers out there, with some of the most creative encounter design & platforming in the genre. I was lukewarm on the first Guacamelee!, but Drinkbox Studios really dialled up the variety, pacing and combat.

The movement feels very smooth, and they do a great job with the control mapping, though sometimes it can feel like you're doing finger gymnastics with how much of the controller is being used at once. Every combat encounter had a unique concept to it, rather than combat for combat's sake. I love how they can layer in dimension swapping, form swapping and move-specific shields, but the game does such a good job of teaching you mechanics, that you never feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff to manage. Every enemy is smartly designed and synergizes well with the other enemies to create unique situations that force players out of their comfort zone, rather than combat for combat's sake. The difficulty is well-tuned on either Normal or Hard and has a very smooth difficulty curve throughout, though a small handful of combat rooms went too far with the enemy spam on Hard. The abundant meta-humour has definitely gotten old at this point, but it's not enough to kill the experience overall. What really elevates Guacamelee! 2 among its contemporaries is its electric pacing. The rate at which it introduces new abilities, new moves and new enemies creates an addicting "one more room" mentality that permeates the entire experience. The game takes roughly 8 hours to beat, and that time absolutely evaporates.

Overall, the Guacamelee! 2 reminds me more of Celeste more than Metroid.

A very solid sequel to Blasphemous. I just couldn't put it down once I reached the Upper City. The level design, bossfights, ability unlocks & new enemies are all perfectly tuned in the backhalf of the game. It loses points for the overall lack of ambition & having only modestly better combat than the first game (which was a huge drawback of that game, personally). If DLC for this game ever gets made, then I'm hoping there are combat encounters that do a better job of encouraging you to switch weapons, because there was a lot of missed potential there. I also miss the insta-death spikes from the first game, as they added a great sense of tension to the exploration that feels absent from the Blasphemous II. The Game Kitchen need to do something very different for their next project, as the formula is getting a little stale, but I'm overall quite happy with what we got.

Grime is abundant with rough edges but the core design is well done. There are great bossfights here (the Final Performance!) that are worth enduring some odd difficulty spikes and jank. The exploration rewards are fantastic, with tons of cool weapons to play around with. The amount of content here, paired with the surprisingly high level of graphical fidelity, make it bargain and a must play for fans of Soulslikes and Metroidvanias. The biggest shortcoming is the animation work which makes some of the movement & attacks feel floaty.

The moment I first met "It" will stick with me for the rest of my life. I felt truly haunted by it in a manner that I've been chasing in horror films for a long time. The brilliance of this game is that the way you find hidden scenes feels unintentional when you first do it, so it completely catches you off-guard when it happens. The performances are something else, since most of the actors here are playing both the film characters and the fictional movie stars behind them. I do wish they polished up the searching mechanics, as finding the last 20% of hidden clips was tedious. Nonetheless, the game is an utterly mesmerising experience that every arthouse film lover should play.

A really well-made though somewhat generic 2D platformer, elevated by a beautiful & impressive art style. The visuals are absolutely timeless, just like the original Yoshi's Island. Good Feel brilliantly weaved the game's unique theming into gameplay mechanics, such as converting Yoshi's eggs into balls of yarn. The controls are very responsive and the level designs are of a very high standard across the board.

The game's biggest flaw is that it wears out its welcome around World 5. I've tried to beat this game many times over the years, and it was only in 2023 that I finally buckled down and beat it. The main culprit for this is overabundance of collectables, as is the case with Yoshi games before and since Woolly World, leaving me burnt out well before rolling credits.