You play as a huge customizable machine in mission-based gameplay with an anime storyline.

I didn't know Fromsoft made Ace Combat games!

For real tho, this game rules. Big recommend.

With the exception of a couple side quests and one or two mild twists, the plot is only slightly more than sufficient to justify fighting more and more monsters. Which is honestly all it needed to do because fighting big monsters is so great in this game.

Shoutout to David Lodge for carrying Grigori and making him appropriately awe inspiring.

The vocations are varied, interesting, and fun to build. Climbing monsters to stab specific weak points sounds mundane, but the implementation here is inspired.

The pawn system is simultaneously hilarious and awesome. Thought I would hate it, but they're just so endearing.
Also in case you didn't know, goblins are weak to fire.

All in all, a decent fantasy world with wonderful monster slashing.

Haven't done Bitterblack yet, will update.

I think in a way I played this game at the perfect moment in my life. As I tried to become a better DM in our weekly tabletop RPG campaign I was thinking about fictional worlds, the structure of stories, and how characters interact with each other and the player a lot lately.
Then I played Roadwarden. A game that would best be described as a chimaera with the head of a visual novel, the body of an RPG, and the legs of a text adventure. In the beginning, the game lulled me with its beautifully atmospheric pixel art and its equally fitting melancholic music. But it wasn't long before I was fascinated by its world. A rough world, where survival isn't a given and death lurks around every corner. Where every little hamlet, every path through this land had to be painfully carved out of the wilderness and relentlessly protected against the wild beasts (one of which is humanity itself).
But the aspect that really made me fall in love with this game was how it handled the player's involvement in this world and the web of relationships the player has to navigate. I never felt railroaded, always in control. There was no clear direction to take, not even a clear goal. And so it felt more like a real world, like a real life I was living. I was trying to improve things, yes. But ultimately I was just a small cog in this machine that will keep on running long after I finished the game. Every decision I made was mine. Every path I took belonged to me. Every friendship I made along the way was personal. In the end, there isn't the best way to play this game. Not the right decision to make. Not the correct path to take. Every player's story will differ, no outcome will be the same. It was my story and my story alone. Never has a story in a game felt so personal to me.