Rift Apart was a pretty good game and such a fun entry in the series after being gone for so long. This game is graphically incredible and surprisingly ran so consistently well minus a few glitches. The combat is pretty engaging with a good variety of weapons available, though I did want a little more and miss some past staples like the flamethrower. I loved the added movement abilities made here such as the dash and wall running in making both ratchet and rivet so mobile and smooth in traversal and combat.

The story was pretty good overall and I enjoyed the new additions of Rivet and Kit to the series as they bring a different feel compared to Ratchet and Clank, especially when they are swapped and explore some interesting areas such as Ratchet’s conflicting feelings with potentially meeting other lombax and what that would mean for him. That said, this game is criminally short, especially for a full price current gen game that I thankfully did not pay for because it’s on ps plus. I would have loved to get more areas or have the story or other elements like the rifts be tackled even further than the super short and linear portions they ended up being. Not too mad about it because at the end of the day I really enjoyed playing through this and will definitely be returning on harder difficulties and collecting everything. Hopefully the next entry won’t take another console generation but I guess that’s the nature of games nowadays.

Excellent game but damn is this a great example as to how the controls on the original platform far exceed any other means of control now. While I didn't play much of it on the gba, playing it on the switch felt hella cumbersome and awkward at times, especially in the boss fights that required a ton of precision with their hitboxes or you just end up wasting ammo and just die lol.

I didn't mind the linear nature of fusion as it sets up probably the best narrative in the series but it does contribute to the game feeling slightly boring in its runtime and desperately missing the more explorative and interconnective aspects of the other 2D games like Dread and Super that make the first time and later runs a ton of fun. The levels weren't super memorable but the music and encounters with SA-X, albeit too few, were incredible. The sound design of the SA-X’s footsteps always manage to send a chill down my body

Boss fights were kinda meh and actively infuriated me with the switch controls and Samus being weak as hell by taking multiple bars of health from like one hit and not dealing much back. This game was way harder than I thought, but not in the real fun way like Dread was for me.

Art style wise, this game is incredible and stands as my favorite in the series next to Zero Mission. The pixel art direction is dripping in so much charm and flare in combination with the always strong animations of Samus and the enemies, and the art style overall strikes such a great balance of darkness and vibrancy.

Even with the complaints I have with the game, I really enjoyed fully completing fusion and appreciate how unique it stands in the Metroid series with a more horror-esque approach that lights my little horror heart on fire. Definitely shouldn’t skip this cool entry.

A pretty good game, hella early 2000s vibes coursing through its veins. I wasn’t too into the mission design and how tasks started to feel same-y after awhile, but the world and carefree B-movie mall atmosphere and characters kept things from getting too boring. The time limit is a cool feature too that’s adds more dimensions and difficulty to this game. I’d probably like this way more at the time than playing it now since the survivors constantly have a death wish and the controls are a bit dated yet still very playable. Shooting is awful but running around the mall chainsawing zombies and chomping down a baguette is fun. I might come back and finish this at some point even though I wasn’t super into it.

Also hate that I think of the game grumps whenever I turn this game on lol

The resident evil and pre-devil may cry samurai game is very fun with terrible, over dramatic voice acting adding so much cheese to it, in addition to combat that is surprisingly fun but a little awkward and clunky in some spots. That said, this remaster kinda blows. The puzzles nearly broke me with the awful manual save system and the lack of cutscene skips that all add up to watching these characters painfully get through dialogue that was unintentionally goofy at first but starting to frustrate me heavy. The death arena put me through it for more than an hour, but I eventually got it and saved before moving to the final area, only to remember about the sword you can get right after completing the arena. Restarted to get to that new save I made only to see that the save after the arena wasn’t even there, and I dropped the game and watched the ending on YouTube because my brain broke at that moment lol

Also who puts the map button on the left joystick in a very heavy combat game and then not giving options to rebind the controls so they wouldn’t be uncomfortable ?????

Breath of the Wild? You’ve sure grown a lot since I last seen you.

After two weeks of grinding through this game, I’ve officially beat Tears of the Kingdom, the main story. There’s still a shit ton of quests and other exploration to do in the game that I will tackle over the summer but the main game to the sequel of one of my favorite Zelda games is complete. And honestly, it was pretty good and a fundamental improvement over Breath of the Wild, though still carrying on many of its contributions. I greatly enjoyed being back in Hyrule again, sometimes above and rarely below it, and it was a strong sequel that definitely felt like it was over six years in the making. Another Nintendo banger, though I have some gripes with.

The new abilities of this game are decently good though also a little weird in their own right. Ascend and recall are intriguing additions that shake up some of the gameplay, ascend to an even bigger degree in making traversal slightly less tedious where before you had to climb everything with limited stamina and without the full climbing set until later in the game. Recall ends up being a little too situational and underutilized with some puzzles taking advantage of it and sometimes I used it in combat to throw objects and weapons back to enemies, though this was few and far between. Fuse feels a little too on the nose of a response to weapon durability criticism and it feels...fine. Fusing weapons together looks ultra goofy and most times isn’t super effective with the terrible durability that feels even weaker here than in BOTW. Fusing materials with weapons is way more effective but the whole process of fusion is so unnecessarily clunky and awkward with having to select a material, drop it, select fusion, and then select your weapon or shield (unless it is not out which adds even more steps to this process). It’s fine for fusing materials with arrows, but weapons is just awful. Why couldn’t the devs have just utilized an extra menu to cut down on all of these processes? We already are doing a ton of menuing anyways. Also why couldn’t bows be fused with other bows or weapons to slightly offset their durability and experiment with them?

Ultrahand itself feels like a very obvious selling point for this game and I am pretty mixed on it. The almost limitless possibilities and executions this ability can do are downright demonic. I’m not much of a guy that enjoys this aspect of this game and the last, but I do want to acknowledge the ingenuity at play here from seeing so much creativity people have made on the internet so far. Pure kino shit. That said, the controls feel very clunky in rotating and placing objects, and the entire process of putting together a bizarre contraption grows very old very fast. Autobuild, the one ability that is confusingly placed in a series of lesser main missions for some reason, alleviates this a bit but even that is limited with the amount of designs you can save and it is run on resources if the items you need to make your invention are not around. I get that some boundaries needed to be placed on this, but the game is already so vulnerability to being cheesed, that they should have just went all the way with full god mode with these abilities. This game’s heavy emphasis on being open-ended does feel that it is close to reaching some breaking point, but the devs manage to keep things from going completely out of control, for now.

Tears reuses the same map from the last game, but many valuable additions have been made such as the caverns, depths, sky islands, and other changes to the landscapes and sceneries with even more enemies to boast compared to botw’s quickly apparent issue of lack of enemy variety. The caverns were so fun to encounter and added a lot to Hyrule feeling fresh again, along with the more interesting side adventures in the game. While I did not feel much interest in really traversing everywhere this time, Hyrule was still a blast to return to and see some changes and some of the things that didn’t change.

The sky islands at first were very intriguing and honestly hit their peak with the tutorial section of the great sky island because every other island except for a very small few felt very sparse and small in scale with very repetitive challenges of bring the green gem to activate a shrine or sky dive through rings to unlock another shrine . The islands are amazing at a presentation level and the fact that the switch runs this game so well outside of using ultrahand is nuts. Looking down at Hyrule while on the islands and getting to see some of the going-ons like dragons flying in the area felt very serene. Hate that there wasn’t a ton more to these islands. The depths were dead on arrival for me and honestly that was for the best. I don’t care for them much, even if they have some good items hidden within them. The advanced darkness trick to push exploration and present challenge is tired. I prefer Elden Ring’s approach with this with the sprawling and ever unique caverns and undergrounds that weren’t pitch black and had way better enemy variety and overall intrigue in the levels. I feel like less depths and even more caverns in Hyrule would have been a better solution to making the map feel new again. Even thinking of these two sections of the islands and depths as compliments to the overworld helps a little better instead of seeing them as independent aspects that could but mostly could not stand on their own.

Another thing that bothered me about the exploration is how the memories of this game are handled similarly to last game’s. I did not mind the nonlinear discovery of the memories in Breath of the wild since they are Link’s memories and acted as more abstract entries that could be put together in a certain linear organization but watching them out of order was never a huge issue. Here in Tears, the tears fit in more of an actual timeline of events and going out of order has the potential of spoiling certain things and making other parts very awkward to watch afterwards. The devs obviously knew about this since Impa always mentions to Link if he visited a certain spot after completing a region, but like you could still end up finding these memories out of order anyways if you are focused on exploring rather than brute forcing the main story, which I feel like most people are doing the former rather than the latter. When I noticed this with the first memory, I just pulled up a guide so this didn't happen and the entire memories together were all great and even surprising in a good way with the last one, if only they weren’t forced into this open-ended structure of discovering them and instead limiting them based on progression in the game. This also fed into another issue I had with this game, its narrative and its structure.

Tears’ story is better, I think, than botw. Ganondorf feels like a real menacing threat with actual screentime versus his calamity shenanigans last game, not to mention he’s pretty hot when not in need of moisturizer. The final battle against him in Hyrule castle and his final transformation and the battle there is all exceptional and stomps all over Breath of the wild. I legitimately loved this last part of the game and story and some of the beginning too, up till we reach the ground and… do the same structure from the last game. Every region is in peril from the upheaval and all of the leaders need Link’s help to solve it as they work together to scale “dungeons” and defeat the regional bosses for the reward of a heart container, story sequence, and the power related to your partner of that region. I got no problem with the structure, but the open-ended approach makes each of them feel very samey, even more so than breath of the wild with the same story exposition sequence with sages happening every single visit with little to no difference. Not much time is really spent at each region either. It was all pretty disappointing coming from botw that had similar issues but somehow was slightly better given Link’s lost memories and getting to know those spaces more for the first time. Speaking of, let me spend a minute on the “dungeons”. (And a slight nitpick since I couldn’t find elsewhere to put this, how come Teba was not the sage for the Rito? Tulin was fine, but annoying and he felt somewhat undeserved to be the sage for them. Weird since everyone else that becomes the sage was the same person we helped in the last game, giving a cool little reunion vibe, except for Tulin since he’s new here.)

The alleged “dungeons” in this game, I will say they are better than the divine beasts, at least two or three of them are. Overall though, these are still far from the dungeon name that is associated with this series except for Lightning temple in the Gerudo region which was great all things considered with pretty good puzzles involving light and introducing unique enemies to the region that made it a very memorable visit. . The wind temple had a decent set up with the trek up to it, but the actual dungeon itself once inside is still very simplistic and not very interconnected with each of the puzzles in meaningful ways. The water temple feels like a very on brand joke given this series’ complicated relationship with this kind of dungeon and is pathetically simplistic and short with a boss battle that feels oddly like a Super Mario Sunshine homage, the entire Zora region in general this game. The death mountain section at first was intriguing with the pothead goron thing, but the dungeon itself still felt only alright despite really liking the mine cart gimmick this time as a way to travel and activate the locks, if only they turned off climbing in this section. The less I talk about the spirit temple, the better because this was far and away one of the low points of the game for me because of the tedious trek to retrieve construct parts and then becoming a very slow and insufferable mech section. Easily one of the worst “dungeons” I’ve played in a Zelda game and made me even miss the divine beasts. I feel like strong dungeons are very capable with this formula of Zelda, but like it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe next time or the time after that.

On the plus side, I feel like the presentation in this game got a big upgrade. Not to say botw didn’t have strong presentation at points, but this game feels like it flexes more often than before. Key instances were the ascent up to the wind temple and the boss battle, the trek up the water temple with the waterfalls and Sidon summoning a fucking whirlpool, summoning the lightning temple, the fight at the top of Death Mountain, pretty much all of the final battle against Ganondorf, getting the master sword, and the sage cutscenes and some of the memories. The switch is still a toaster oven and has its moments of performance and visual drag, but this game looked so beautiful frequently, even more than many other AAA releases this year and upcoming. Hyrule is still beautiful as ever six years later and this game definitely feels like it has been six years in the making with a ton of polish put in it besides some aspects. The Zelda team are some wizards.

What else did I not cover? Well, shrines are back with a better outside aesthetic, but the inside feels a little generic. The puzzles in them feel way better than the constant battle challenges, unwieldy motion-controlled puzzles and other tedious repeats in botw. They still are immensely simplistic in quite a chunk of them, and they are all pretty vulnerable to being cheesed by the new abilities, which isn’t the worst thing but feels a little too criminal at times. Apparently there are even more of them this time, which is a choice that is very baffling coming off the issues with them last game.

The koroks are still here and they do try to make them a little less annoying, but I ended up ignoring most of them anyways. The sign holding instances were fun at first but got tired too quickly. The music here feels better but still is a little too ambient at times, not to say there aren’t any favorites like Last Catch, Dragon Head Island, the Ganondorf Castle theme. I’m glad the champion tunic is back as armor, though the way you get it is kinda lame compared to botw. Getting the master sword though is a little more impactful, though it was resonant in botw too. The monster hunts in the side adventures were surprisingly so much fun and whenever I came across it randomly while exploring, I lit up with a lot of joy. The voice acting is still… the voice acting; I really couldn’t stand Tulin, and Zelda and Yunobo were weird sometimes to me.

I think that’s it though in terms of everything else I could add. I’ve done some side adventures and side quests and they were cool, a little better than last time but there are still some stinkers in the mix. Oh also, everything is so expensive now in the game and getting a lot of rupees and upgrades are harder. Also fuck enemies one shotting, that’s stupid as fuck.

Anyways, yeah that was Tears of the Kingdom. A great sequel to Breath of the Wild and improves quite a lot on it. That said, I wasn’t fully impressed with it in some parts and the direction they decided to take with the game overall as a sequel. Still, it is worth a buy, definitely not a $70 buy just like every other game that is charging this ridiculous price. I’m hoping the next Zelda game scales back on the open-endedness of these past two games unless the third one ends up being a follow-up to this game. The openness is still good and shouldn’t be thrown out but rein it in a bit and work out aspects like dungeons and weapons and the story. Hell, I’ll even take a 2D game that doesn’t retread or follow from A Link to the Past as the next Zelda game. I have fun with this style but, like the older style by the time of Skyward Sword, it is starting to show its diminishing returns unless some more revamps are taken. Still at the end of the day, Tears of the Kingdom is pretty good. Not my favorite game of the year though, but definitely top 5 or 10 of the year if I wanna be nitpicky.

Also holy shit I did not expect to write a whole essay on this game but I suppose it left some impact on me despite the gripes. If you made it this far, thanks for reading!

Easily the best of the original trilogy. No terrible spaceship battles, the strafing and combat is great, levels are way more streamlined with less frustrating issues, the pacing is better, it feels all pretty good overall. Story is still just fine but I don’t play these for an interesting story. Will say I hate the yellow design for the menus and the writing does have a little less bite than the last two, but they were only minor nuisances to the game. Pretty good game, though I hate that this was made when Insomniac were probably at one of many peaks of them being crunched when making this game.


(Also forgot to post this four months ago after I finished playing the original trilogy around then).

While I do find this game to be a bit overhated, Soul Hackers 2 is just okay and it never goes above that besides being pretty good in a very few moments.

To start off, the cast here is amazing. Ringo is such a great main protagonist and the rest of the supporting characters (Saizo, Milady, and Arrow) are written pretty well with cool character moments within the story and between each other in conversations at the bar or over meals at the hideout. It feels good to have an adult group to move through the world here as it provides a nice change in perspective after being inundated with a cast of high schoolers for much of the other games to a ridiculous degree. Hoping this ain't the last time I see them, but I wouldn't be surprised given the reception of this entry.

The atmosphere in the cities and Aion were great and oozed with cool nightlife techno-futurism in the midst of ongoing capitalist corruption and waring violence with the incoming "apocalypse". While I did wish the cities were more open and has things to do in them besides get and progress sidequest objective and go back to dungeons, they were still solid. The music adds a lot of personality too and the music alone in this game was excellent.

With that said, this game got some issues and the gameplay/dungeon design is one of the most glaring. SH2 plays similarly to other SMT games and it does well in that department while adding its own twist with the Sabbath system to encourage and reward striking weaknesses. It still feels a little more forgiving than the regular system in other shin megami tensei games such as with the sabbath not breaking or decreasing if you mess up on striking elemental attacks to the wrong demon like it acted similarly to the mainline games. The demons themselves aren't too punishing either in the game and honestly gravitated towards being more annoying to where I avoided most battles unless I needed to level up to make a more powerful demon. Battling is still solid though but there isn't a huge ton of strategy here which was a little disappointing.

I'm not sure why they did this but demons act as RNG companions in this game while in the dungeons and I lowkey hated that. No more getting demons through negotiating with them in hilarious fashion during battles, but you just have to hope that the right one is found by your own demon and that your level is high enough to even get it. Items are also based around RNG rather than solely being placed or spawned in certain sectors or levels, which made upgrading a slight pain. These decisions are honestly very bizarre considering that they weren't really any problems with the approach all other SMT games use, so I'm guessing this is a weird one-off that is vastly inferior to how it is usually done.

I haven't spoke about the dungeons yet either lol. They were pretty boring, and some were even awful. The final dungeon was far and away the best of the group with an actual unique theme and connection to the game's whole vibe. All of the other main story ones were so forgettable. The Soul Matrix levels were as well, but became absolutely atrocious in floors 3 and 4 of each character's sector because of the aforementioned teleport design that wasted my time more than anything and made me want to pull my hair out without using a guide. This shit wasn't fun in SMT 3 and it still ain't fun here either.

The story was pretty decent and kept me intrigued for most of the runtime. The pacing felt off though since it felt like not much was happening or suddenly a lot was happening all at once. The final chapter "twist" felt really bizarre as the change happened so abruptly and felt like it was missing at least two or three more chapters of development for it to even click. Final battle was great and climatic, but it really did feel like the writers were scrambling to create some sort of big finale to revolve around the games' themes and ultimately wrap them up very nicely.

It's really weird how this game has the exact opposite problems that I took with SMT 3 and 5 where I found the central story/conflict and all the characters to be very flat while the gameplay and dungeon design pulled a lot of weight by being just amazing. Soul Hackers 2 has a great cast and the story exists, but aspects of the gameplay and level design are so watered down or frustrating. Atlus lowkey sabotaged this game by not letting have some more time to cook because it could have been a great game to hold off until whenever next SMT entries come out. Giving this 4 stars feels a little contentious.

Remember when one of the devs of this tried dunking on Elden Ring when the similarly mediocre follow-up to this game came out and tried to say Elden Ring was shit? That was wild.

Anyways this game blows and many other people have went in detail as to why it does. There's an audience for this series so I can't say it's the worst thing. Game looks pretty nice, Forbidden west even more, but that's about it I can say positively about it. The concept of exploring a postapocalyptic world filled with robotic creatures sounds fun though, maybe they'll get the execution there at some point.

Very surprised this turned out a lot better than I expected since most licensed musou games are kinda ehhh lol. The story's really good, albeit with some weak spots like the twist villain and their redemption, and the pacing taking a minute to get good. It was easy to overlook this since the game does so much right, especially with a lot more interesting character interactions with the p5 cast in their downtime with the road trip angle here, which was sorely lacking in p5/p5r since they were always fighting palace rulers with barely time to just sit with the group and each character. The "villains" felt a little too similar to one another for me, but it was good to see one of the main cast have their moment with the first few of them. Sophie and Zenkichi are excellent new characters and very well written.

The gameplay is where I'm a little conflicted. While it is in the vein of a dynasty warriors game, something felt off about the execution of it. I really like how much they meshed p5's elements so well with the different style, though battles themselves felt either too short with regular enemies or too long with mini bosses and bosses with a shit ton of health and defense. The jails were decent but half felt too short and the other half too long, Okinawa especially should have got more time since it was the most intriguing and unique of the bunch, with the best music on top of that. Each character felt very distinct and viable in different combat sequences, which added to making the general feel of the combat feel engaging, though the tedium of it was still a thing for most of the runtime. Strikers at least felt unique in its take on the warriors style, so there's that at least. Could have had co-op or some multiplayer functions with this game since it would have been fun to defeat demons with other people in control of the thieves.

Music is amazing. The original music and most of the remixes of the original p5 themes were great, not sure about River in the Desert. Definitely felt like a continuation of the main game's vibes but also unique to this entry with the various locations and other detail.

Overall, persona 5 strikers was pretty good. Glad I decided to give it another try after dropping it last year. It was a great reunion of the p5 cast and added more cool moments and interactions that the main game lacked. There was definitely more to the gameplay than when I first played it, but it did suffer from being repetitive at times Despite this, p5s was a great spinoff and sequel to p5.

So much has been said about this game, that I probably can't add a single original thought or notion to it, either positive or negative. Still, I'll throw my two cents out there.

What I will say is that, just like Breath of the wild, this game had me so entranced, but only for like the first 100 hours of in my playthrough. I know people love to rag on that zelda game because journalists, youtubers, and all other sorts tout it as the best game ever made (which that alone is pretty eye rolling lol), but the feeling I got from playing and completing botw for the first time as an entering college student with my newly purchased switch is a feeling I think I'll never feel again with that game or for awhile with any game, until Elden ring did that and then some. Not even a huge Fromsoft fan, and this game got me into bloodborne and sekiro, which I prefer way more than this game.

Let me talk about the actual game now though briefly. The starting zone of Limgrave was revelatory in introducing and refamiliarizing the souls formula within this "new" context of the open world. And the game escalated further with Liurnia, some of Caelid, and the numerous underground locations and much more expansive dungeons with beautiful designs and layouts, except for the typical platforming parts. The fights from regular enemies to the big bosses felt so epic and climatic and fun, even when I wanted to throw my controller into the tv. Exploration unfolds so naturally and retains its grandiosity and sheer dominance as the game continues on with more secrets to find and surprise me.

All of this and I did not get tired at all until the point where I reached the mountaintop of the giants. Maybe I could blame this on not being too into the story or lore of the game happening, or not having any real ambition in completing the game. Still I feel I got so much from this game and, just like botw, I'll most likely never experience that feeling again with this game or any other, and have to sit with this in this monotonous, violent ass time until another game pulls me hard and shows me again how to fall so immersed in a game's setting and all encompassing mechanics and aspects.

Maybe I'll finish that game whenever it comes. And maybe I'll have Elden ring finished for the first time or second time by the time that happens. Tears of the Kingdom is around the corner yet I don't think that will fulfill that feeling I'm craving for again.

The God of War high I was on earlier this year led me to this game and the series and I was pleasantly surprised with how it played and the characters involved in it, especially the main character. The comparisons to old GoW and Zelda def didn't help since it feels too painfully close to them in level design and puzzles and the short arena combat sequences, and they really didn't click with me or I found it generally to be very lacking and missing that one striking element for me. I'll probably return to this once grad school calms down during the summer, but I heard the sequel is a little better.

So this was pretty mediocre. Gameplay was legitimately great, but the story, (most of) the characters, and everything else ranged from aggressively alright to absurdly bad. Might have worked better if this game leaned into a super campy and absurdist angle rather than trying to mix light fantasy fun with drama and seriousness that hit like a wet noodle. For what people describe as like a Saturday morning cartoon affair, this game felt weirdly corporatized with its writing and tone.

Also the somniel feels like a huge overcorrection from the monastery, felt like I was playing a mobile game with these Pokémon scarlet and violet ass minigames. The supports here weren’t too bad but I don’t think it would have hurt to cut the roster down by half or 75%, and actually have an interesting or at least non repetitive villain squad.

Still got another character I'll be obsessed with for awhile, so the 100 hours weren't all that bad I guess. Mauvier, my beloved.

(The 3D modeling in this game terrifies me. Please just go back to the portraits or give more budget to the 3D modeling)