(Difficulty: Give Me Deus Ex)
As my first Deus Ex game, it took some time for me to get into it. It just felt a bit slow and clunky, and I thought our protagonist was a bit rigid and cheesy. After spending a bit more time with Adam, that might still be the case to be fair, but it all comes together really well after I got my bearings a bit.
Stealth and take-downs are really fun. Upgrading and leveling up is well paced and is very impactful.
The cutscenes are well done and some of the villains are really awesome. The story was pretty gripping especially towards the later chapters.
So many different dialog options and ways to play the game. This is a great rpg because it does allow so many ways to approach combat, dialog, and leveling.
Worth a playthrough absolutely! I would not recommend the hardest difficulty unless you want a real challenge.

There are a number of long-running media series out there that inevitably have that entry that sets a new bar. The big blockbuster that is so earth-shattering, you have to wonder how the creators could possibly follow it up. Putting my own feelings of FFVII aside, no one could possibly deny that FFVIII had a herculean task to follow that up. The new shift in focus and mechanics featured in FFVIII would not be for everybody, but boy were they for me.

FF8 focuses on a group of teenage soldiers who are being raised and trained to become "SeeD"s, highly elite soldiers for their respective "Garden"s to go off and fight in whatever contracts their Garden chooses to take. They make use of Guardian Forces (GFs) which serve as their summons, and slowly over time learn more about the world around them. There are a lot of parallels here to another more recent game I care very dearly for, and fans of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 should probably be giving this game a go.

As you may have guessed, FF8 does lay out the anti-war sentiment as many of their games do, but here it serves as more of a backdrop for a much more personal message. More so than (most) other FF games, FF8 is highly centred around its main character. Squall is a distant, awkward kid who ends up having a lot of trust and responsibility thrust upon him. Over the course of the game, he learns more and more about himself and how he handles a lot of difficult situations. It is not an exaggeration for me to say that Squall's whole story arc is a big driving factor behind my 5-star rating here. He is very much a love-him-or-hate-him type of MC, but he REALLY hit that note for me.

As for locations, the game has a ton of really varied and expansive towns and cities to explore. The dungeons are all really unique and varied (you go into a cave like once), and the final dungeon in particular is one of the coolest I have ever played through in an RPG.

Another big divisive part of FF8 and its core identifying feature is the Junctioning system. To equip skills, you "Junction" a GF to that party member, and that allows them to not only choose if they can use items, magic, summon, etc. but also attach magic to their stats to buff them up. There's quite a few little nuances to this that can easily turn someone off if they don't fully understand it, but I thought it was VERY satisfying once it clicks and you're able to do all sorts of broken shit to your liking. Enemy weak to ice? Then junction blizzaga to your elemental attack and go to town. Enemy deals a ton of AOE physical damage? Then junction Blind to your status attack and make it so just hitting them will apply the debuff. There really is a lot you can do with it, and there's no shortage of items and optional content you can go crazy with. In particular, FF8 also introduced my beloved Triple Triad card game which allows you to collect (or lose) cards of all the monsters and bosses in the game. It's pretty addicting, and there are a ton of rule modifiers to mix it up. The cards can even be refined into items, so they are worth collecting from a gameplay standpoint too.

FF8 also just might be the best looking game to come out for the PS1. The gorgeous hand-painted backgrounds (like in FF7) are now populated with realistic-looking character models, and the detail is staggering. There are a number of moments where the game transitions into pre-rendered cutscenes while you are playing some of the more cinematic moments, and it's really really impressive the amount of detail and animation quality they were able to get out of PS1 hardware.

One last thing I would like to mention, in a series of amazing OSTs, FF8 is one of the best. The mix of chill, strange, and hype themes for different locations and moments makes for the perfect atmosphere to drive home the messages of the game. I really can't speak highly enough of Final Fantasy VIII here, and it definitely sits among my favourites.

Played through this in pretty well one sitting with a couple of friends over couch co-op. It's a solid "monster movie" narrative adventure as a group of twenty-something(?) camp counsellors try to survive a spooky night. Quite a lot of room for variation both in terms of choices and from failing or passing QTEs, with I imagine no small number of outcomes. Some of the dialogue and animations are a little stilted, and the FOV for the segments where you get to walk around as a character is WAY too zoomed in, but otherwise it's paced well for the most part and is an engaging enough story. I dunno if I would want to play through it again solo, but definitely worth going through if you like watching horror movies with friends.

Incredibly fun gameplay with some of the best combat I've experienced in any game, great story and characters, top notch voice acting, plenty of side activities and collectibles in the open world that you can occupy yourself with, a shit ton of suits you can unlock from across the Spider-Man series, this game has it all. It's not quite perfect, not all of the side activities hit (fuck you Screwball) but everything else about this game is super solid and I had a great time with it. I can't wait for Spider-Man 2.

A very solid arcade racing game for the PS1 that still looks pretty damn good. Great soundtrack, and even a little bit of a story for the different teams you can join in Grand Prix mode that seemingly adapts to your performance. As an example, in the second heat I got first place and then second place, and afterwards the manager commented on how "it wasn't as good as last time" which was a very neat detail.

Only reason I am docking a star here is because while the tracks themselves are pretty challenging, the fight is actually more with the ridiculous turning that the cars do so it's hard to focus on good apex's. Still, definitely a blast regardless of that.

The tale of the 1000-year old witch. A stunningly woven story featuring a great cast of characters and a mystery that keeps you thinking. There are a number of themes that really came across strongly here, but I certainly believe it would be better for those interested to take this journey and reason them out for themselves. It is not a short endeavor by any stretch of the imagination - my overall play time combining both Question and Answer Arcs summed up to be just shy of 130 hours but I can assure you every moment was well worth it.

Like Question Arcs, Answer Arcs undoubtedly has its moments where the pacing slows down, however this time around I was significantly more enthralled with the plot points to really feel like it was a detractor. It is a roller coaster ride from start to finish and wrapped up as well as I had hoped, but I still believe Chapter 5 to be my favourite overall.

I did not imagine that I would have made more handwritten notes for a VN this year than I did for Tears of the Kingdom - and I started far, far too late. For fans of the mystery genre, you absolutely owe it to yourself to read this to completion. I genuinely hope more people continue to do so as I have, and I can think of no more fitting game to mark as my 1000th played game tracked on this website.

Despite being a remake on the same engine, it's hard to imagine that Ishin is a 9 year old game with some new polish, features, and QoL. For all my love of the Dragon Engine, it's almost nostalgic playing another RGG game on Unreal engine.

Ishin follows the story of Ryoma Sakamoto through 1860's Japan following the appearance of the "black ships". As you go through the story, you are introduced to a number of historical figures who are played/modeled after characters that span the main Yakuza/LaD series. Part of this new remake is recasting to include some new characters, and it was great to see newer faces (particularly from 0 and LaD). This also means great new battle remixes for the relevant characters as well. While I'm not overly familiar with the history surrounding the game, I assume quite a number of liberties/interpretations are made to adapt it into a RGG studio story, but it's definitely one of the better ones they have put out.

Gameplay-wise, Ryoma fights with 4 styles. Fists, Sword, Gun, and Wild Dancer (Sword+Gun). I had my doubts, but all 4 of them maintain relevancy in different situations throughout the game and are all fun to use. The trooper system that lets you equip cards to activate different abilities is really fun to use too. You can even set the abilities to auto-activate so you can set-it-and-forget-it, should you choose. While the game is back on the previous engine, some QoL from the Dragon Engine did get backported as well - namely, auto-saving and saving anywhere, and expanded inventory. I miss the lack of loading screens and more dynamic animations/environments, but it still looks and feels tremendous.

At the time of writing this, Like a Dragon Ishin is easily a top 3 RGG Studios game for me (along with LaD and 0) and I'm really glad the work was finally put in to localize it. Definitely looking forward to doing more of the side content and looking up some of the real history!