The second playthrough fell a bit flat, but the game remains great nontheless.
Triangle Strategy features an intricate story that can be played and enjoyed multiple times, as intended in the games' design. Decisions have consequences and shape the turn of events and players can see up to four different endings yada yada this has been done many times and what's actually setting this game apart: the story is pretty good on a subsequent try and if you enjoy political mysteries this game's gonna be a field trip. It's not the most complicated thing, but many twists can be foreseen just the right amount of time and a few will surprise you like red circles on a clickbait thumbnail.

Story-wise I cannot regret playing this again, but the gameplay elements were not balanced at all. So you really feel like the person responsible for common sense in game design did not show up for work at a certain point. Places visited before will not contain new items, and battles yield the same loot that they did beforehand. So you need high-tier materials and a lot of money and the game gives you three bananas. Leveling up in the second playthrough is more of a nuisance. There are plenty of characters to recruit and even more are playable in later playthroughs, but you cannot equip and pull up their stats fast enough and the game becomes a grind festivity. This is such an oversight in an overall well developed game.
As for positive elements of gameplay the developers outdid themselves on the flow of battles. Even though they can be long, it never feels boring to play them out. Difficulty can be changed anytime and whenever you lose a battle you don't lose the EXP gained by the characters. This is massive and I hope this will be the gold standard mechanic in all future games of this genre. Overall it was a nice experience.

How are game systems like these still a thing nowadays?
They had beautiful visuals, an engaging story and interesting characters to fill their world with. It turned out incredibly bland, boring and actually the game actively pulls every fun out of the experience the further you're in.

It starts out great until you actually have to do something to progress the story. Movement is very slow and every city & dungeon has chests planted all over them with items you don't need 95% of the time. Every side quest in the first hours is a fetch quest combined with a tougher encounter. My passion to play this game skyrocketed when the trailers came out and decreased every hour of my playthrough.
The following points hold this game back tremendously:

〇 The story heavily revolves around the mechanic to change the time period to the past or the future. You can also do this in combat. The design of enemies and most bosses actually discourages the player to use this mechanic. How do you develop this mechanic and then make every bossfight harder when used is beyond me. And then an NPC who is always with you can jump to either times in most cities. First of all this is executed so slowly and secondly it has a max range of about 3m. So you probably sigh harder every time you have to use it.
〇 The enemies in this game are weak to either physical or magical attacks and that is all you need to know about how to approach every encounter. They get more boring the further you go and have no variability. The combat also lacks any momentum to motivate the player about the time travel skill, as it's just faster and more effective to perform standard moves.
〇 Also random encounters as a concept is bad.
〇 To trigger mandatory or optional events the player has to follow the very specific route to do that. Dialogue, collecting items, jumping to another time etc. So if you want to do any quests in this game it has to follow a -> b -> c and cannot be done any other way. There is no real freedom to anything and no playthrough is a meaningful experience. It could have been a visual novel with no combat, though.
〇 The max party size is three and there are more playable characters beyond that. Everyone not in combat doesn't receive EXP and at a certain time a character has to leave the party for a little while and when he comes back he is the same level as before.
〇 There is no way to see all of your items. If equipment cannot be held on to by any character then you don't know it exists. Also equipment is poorly balanced, because you get access to very powerful parts about 1/3 into the story and afterwards you just stomp over every encounter.
〇 It's way too long and dragged out with a carbon copy of quests and cities beyond the first hours. I was eight hours in and realized there was about 24 more to go. At this point I already lost all motivation to continue.
〇 Achievements block each other out so you cannot master this game in one playthough. This isn't that bad, but noteworthy because why should you play this game twice.

Playing this free content provided to the game is astonishing, because the gap in the last part of the story was enriched in such a beautiful way.
In the original game most tasks could become tedious towards the end as you bounce around places too often with only crumbs of content. With new characters and quality of life upgrades (such as Safe Travel which is simply a great idea) I felt like at every other part of the story: at ease. And at the same time it felt like a masterful balance act to include even more to the existing universe. There is a whole new island and just this combined with the background of Stella is a stroke of genius. Satisfying and admirable till the very last moment of Spiritfarer.

The developers really outdid themselves. At times I did not want to do anything else than to see what's next for these characters. I fell more in love with a game that holds a special place within me.
Kudos to Thunder Lotus

Flawed or not, the only thing I could consider Xenogears as would be a masterpiece. Words simply cannot express how immensely deep this game goes as it may very well be the pinnacle of video game depth and lore.

I could go on forever about the MANY reasons why I think this game succeeds so greatly in various ways, but to put it bluntly I truly believe that Xenogears is the most intellectually and brilliantly written story of any video game (or form of media) I have ever experienced. The battle systems are flashy, satisfying, and fun, the music is nostalgic and beautiful (Afterall it was composed by Yasunori Mitsuda), the art direction is beyond impressive for a PS1 title (albeit sometimes the camera can be pretty jank in certain areas); but what really carries this game is it's unmatched narrative paired with not only some great protagonists, but arguably the best handled cast of villians in gaming.

With what the development team had going for the game in terms of an incredibly tight budget, a team composed almost entirely of amateur programmers, a single man working on 99% of the game's English translation (Richard Honeywood is the fucking GOAT), and a 2 year time limit to release the game, Xenogears turned out to be absolutely phenomenal in my eyes, flaws and all. Easily one of the best and most unforgettable experiences I will ever have playing not just a JRPG, but a video game in general.

Have some very mixed feelings about this JRPG, especially in a year of 11/10 JRPGs, but I would be lying to myself if I didn't enjoy my trek with this eccentric anime cast (except for Law, he sucks).

What really bothered me was that the game could not decide what revolution should look like, and who should carry it out. This isn't to say there is a "right answer", but I feel like the game struggled with its themes and could not stand by an idea unless said idea was "I fight for my friends".

The main cast really carries this game for me (especially with their hyper anime combo attacks). Their struggles and dynamics are pretty solid here, which is really what I crave out of a multi-hour long JRPG. Each character being playable and having unique ways of fighting enemies helps push their personalities beyond the story layer of the game.

This is the first Tales game I've ever managed to finish and while it didn't land every shot it tries to make, it honestly makes me consider trying out more of them, so it did something right!

It's easy to take a glance at Cruelty Squad's unpleasant artstyle and dismiss it for being obvious and unsubtle about its intent, when most of critical praise seemingly rests on its ability to create a playable shitpost deep fried meme that bluntly satirizes the sewer corporate modern age we live in and not much else inbetween. That however would be understating the talent and craft that is required to make such effective "heavy handed" art like Cruelty Squad.

Baffling to realize that this was Ville Kallio's first shot at videogames, because he displays such a strong understanding of the medium and utilizes so much of its strengths in ways that no other developers have really tapped into to create what I can only describe as a arthouse masterpiece of counter intuitive art and game design. Our infactuation with cyberpunk dystopia has created such pleasing worlds to look at in all of fiction that the only thing Cruelty Squad had to do was present the existential nightmare we already live in it its true colors. Making a house the most expensive item that gates you from the rest of the game's content might come across as portentous hassle for the player and an easy cheap jab at Capitalism™, but it doesn't make its statement any less truer and effective.

Getting accustomed to Cruelty Squad vomit inducing textures ends up becoming an inevitability, and the game beneath it surprisingly reveals enough enticing complexity and kinesthetic gratification that will distract you from the uglyness of it all. DNA taken straight out of Quake make traversal in Cruelty Squad's industrial purgatory oddly satisfying and addicting to exploit as you discover there is fun in retrying missions to find new secrets in the open ended maze like levels and speedunning CEO and landlord assassinations, raking in the dough to invest and buy more expensive game changing implants that further blur the line between man and biomachine monstrosity. Sooner than expected, you end up forgetting the garish mismatched colors and low poly disorienting textures that assault your senses, and Cruelty Squad ends up becoming just another game to master like all the others that came before it.

Were this any other game, I would be taking down a couple of points for it losing its luster after the initial hours, but Cruelty Squad losing its repulsiveness over time just ends up reinforcing its message that much more. In the same way that Cruelty Squad visualizes what violent videogames must look like to our parents, it displays for a brief moment the reality and future humanity has devised for itself, as if putting on the They Live glasses for the first time. But eventually we get used to it. And we forget, we comply, we find pleasure in it. Luckily we get the chance once in a while to experience something like Cruelty Squad to remind us that we are all just meat sacks ticking up and down on a graph, selling ourselves short to the highest bidder.

PS: The easiest method I found out to make quick money in Cruelty Squad was to kill Elon Musk's personification over and over again and betting on the stock market right after. Something very poignant and cathartic about that. Don't tank my crypto next time, asshole.

I'll be honest in admitting that the mental damage I endured over the years from purposefuly subjecting myself to the clutches of the internet had made me apprehensive and cynical of Disco Elysium's preceeding reputation, but having gone through its rollercoaster of drugs, alcohol and communism, I am truly glad to be able to add this one to the list of all time great CRPGs that continue to be undisputed as the smartest videogame experiences you can have.

Having the confidence that even Planescape: Torment lacked, Disco Elysium ditches the combat completely and takes the biggest strength of the genre to immerse the player in his own perceived virtuousity and egotistic idealization, dice rolling from a caricature of extreme ideology to the next, only to have such deified facade shattered and mocked as the cracks start to reveal what is behind the constructed mask. Dystopic and endlessly ravaged, Revachol opens up its angry chasm to reveal an unflincing sad mirror in its politically charged inhabitants that reflects back to us a vast ocean filled with boats blindly passing by each other in the mist blasting Sad FM.

Immensely thought provocking, always hilarious, and with some of the best interconnected writing I have seen in the genre, Disco Elysium has definitely cemented itself as a modern age classic that will make even the biggest game bro go "yes, please, keep politics in my game!". An unabashedly leftist game that manages to avoid falling into the usual misgivings of being obnoxious, obvious and self centered as its contemporaries often do, and that beautifully exposes our innate ability to project our deepest grudges and hangups into unreachable dreams and expectations that further disconnect us from the acceptance and understanding we so demand from others. In the end, everything is escapism. But we can never truly escape, can we? Whatever I end up saying about Disco Elysium says more about my view of the world than the game itself, but I think that's what makes it such a great piece of art.

You did look fucking cool smoking that cigarette, Kim. And you knew it.

Yes, I am indeed one of those shmucks to whom the unique online experience provided by Journey not only worked for but deeply had an effect on that still resonates to this day, so the prospects of a new TGC game acting as a spiritual sequel to it and iterating upon the design philosophy that defined that game and its artistic recognition was all game for me.

Sky's biggest issue is its familiarity. The new coat of paint does not do enough to disguise how big of a shadow Journey casts over it. Not only conveying its aesthetic and narrative through the same devices and mechanics as its predecessor, it also ends up repeating many of Journey's most recognizable and memorable setpieces. What worked in Journey's more linear focused and intimate co-op design, now constantly disrupts the communial premise of Sky, frustratingly funneling you into a rollercoaster towards the finish line with obtrusive cutscenes that undercut whatever human connection you manage to build. The result: a very impressive looking game that in its attempt to outmatch Journey's holistic expression, ends up falling into the same trap so many of its copycats do.

Getting past that first impression is not an easy pill to swallow, but once Sky is no longer rushing you, a new game presents itself. Brimming with nooks and crannies and secret optional areas to find, Sky is a co-operative BOTW like experience of discovery unlike anything out there. The simple act of offering a candle to another player to be allowed to see their appearance and communicate with them alone invites interaction and dialogue, and with Journey's two player limit now gone, Sky is filled with players flying past and around you, ocasionally allowing for the small bit of limited interaction before parting ways never to be seen again. Finding myself holding hands with newbies to show them where to go, having the rare occasional small chat with people from different nationalities who speak in broken english, and demonstrating my gratitude towards a helpful hand by shooting fireworks around them, it becomes hard not to feel some speck of humanity twinge inside this decrepid jaded body.

It's a shame Sky feels the need to worship Journey so much, when its minimalist MMO design is more than enough to stand on its own, removing much of the excess I have so much trouble getting past in the genre. Spending hours with a group of strangers trying to open a door, filling up the time with whatever ways we could come up with to be entertained, only to be rewarded by one of the most underwhelming and yet hilarious secrets in the game, had me feeling a special sense of masochistic comradery, and as I watched each one of them say their goodbyes and part ways, knowing I would never see them again, I felt the same way I did when I missed the chance to reach out to that one stranger who died alongide me in Journey all those years ago. I made up my mind about Sky then.

Plus, hey, it's free.