suicidahlias
1997
2007
2017
Let's make this clear: it's certainly not what you're expecting. It's a perfectly serviceable collect-athon, that makes 100% feel feasible and mildly exciting to get. If you commit to doing a lot of the dex entries as the story progresses, the game feels much better paced. It is still a checklist at the end of the day however.
2015
2015
Beautifully quirky game that borrows heavily from both western and eastern RPG styles. The bullet hell combat juxtaposed with the humor and empathy of saving monsters ties the game up beautifully. My only complaint is it can feel almost too esoteric, and that I'd like to have gotten a perfect save on my first playthrough, since I qualified. Loading my save to end the game again was painless, but also somehow irritating.
2022
The combat in Elden Ring is high octane, for better and for worse. It really tries to have its cake and eat it too, by making sorcery viable again it's become too powerful. The aggression in enemies feels oppressive without the fine tuning of Bloodborne. It is undeniably fun and addicting, but I would have liked the game to be designed to do all the content with one character/playthrough, or get locked into more discrete paths boss-wise.
2022
An all around excellent concept. The cult aspect is an amazingly fun and light God game, mixed with a very barebones roguelike dungeon crawler. The cult aspects felt too easy to brute force, and the combat was unexciting but got the job done. Regardless, I'm looking forward to a hypothetical Cult of the Lamb 2.