A really great experiment on something I've wondered about for a long time - can you squeeze a JRPG experience into just a couple of hours? Felvidek offers incredible art, music, and atmosphere on top of answering that question with an emphatic "yes". The medieval historical setting, humor, and weirdness blend to create a really special game that straddles the line between formulaic and experimental. Only the trappings of its engine truly hold it back, but if RPG Maker is the canvas the creators chose, I have nothing but respect for the awesome work that they made with it.

An extremely crunchy tactics game that doesn't quite stick the landing. The game has all of the gorgeous art and character design you would expect from a Vanillaware project, and the 2D animation and style is incredible. The tactics remain fun for most of the game's runtime, but where the game falls flat is with the story. Despite some decent character writing, the story feels like it was written for about a 5th-grade reading level, which makes this game shrink in comparison to other tactics titles like Tactics Ogre. No character has any conviction that is stronger than losing a fight, and the fact that you can recruit everyone means that there's essentially no reason to ever not spare a vanquished enemy. I started skipping some cutscenes towards the end of the game, and I feel incredibly confident in that decision. Despire the story being a dull mess, programming your units and getting an overpowered party is pretty fun, although the battles become extremely rote in the last quarter of the game. I am glad I played and finished it, but I'm a little disappointed that the game didn't turn out to be quite the banger I thought it would shape up to be.

Bannerlord is ever so slightly more than the sum of its parts - clunky inventory management, Chivalry-adjacent combat, and a dynamic open map combine to make something pretty special. I can't overlook the shortcomings in each element of the whole game, but the potential for emergent storytelling seems there. Almost 40 hrs in and I haven't even completed a campaign, I feel like the core loop of the game wears a little thin after this long. Still, I had fun with the time I spent with it, but I am not sure I want to keep scraping to find more to love.

This is possibly the most ambitious game I have ever played. It drips with excellent writing at every turn, contemplates the philosophy of self, of suffering, and one's effect on the world. It is a shame that the medium of this game often devolves into dreary combat, but that's even more of a sign that this game was ahead of its time. Any points it loses in gameplay it makes up with ambition, care, and introspection. The macabre setting roots and unites all the shades of what the game has to offer, and The Nameless One is one of the most interesting video game protagonists ever created. I am going to be thinking about this one for a long time.

The new high-water mark for roleplaying games. BG3 takes what should be a trilogy of games, in terms of pacing, story moments and revelations, characters and companions, combat and exploration, and releases it as one complete package. This game truly finally achieves the dreams of what Bioware RPGs like Mass Effect could be, and combines them with stellar writing, deep combat, and memorable allies and villains. All of the subtle facial expressions, voice performances, and animations sell the important moments, and connect me to characters in a way that other games could not pull off. But BG3 is more than the sum of its parts, and more than the sum of its influences. It's somehow better than all of the flavors of acclaimed RPGs it's remixing. And the whole thing is playable with co-op! I don't think it's a stretch to simply say that this is the best RPG currently ever made.