For those who do not know, Deep Rock Galactic is a first-person-shooter that can be played solo or with up to three other players. The main meal is going on 10-40 minute missions that consist of various tasks on a planet called Hoxxes IV. This planet is full of lucrative minerals but is also infested with dangerous creatures; it is a source of income for the Deep Rock company in-game that is supposed to be kept on the down-low. Each mission terrain is procedurally-generated so that missions do not start to feel the same. Players can choose difficulties ranging from Hazard I to Hazard V+ with modifications to make missions even harder.

I started playing in July of 2024 and want to review/discuss this game after seeing a Splatoon 3 review on the sub. Specifically, I saw a comment saying how shooters can be different, they do not all have to keep chasing photo-realism and realistic gun recoils.

Point of Distinction I: The guns are TOOLS to remove bugs. You get access to a frost cannon, a sludge dispenser, a point-and-shoot microwave, grenades that cause the bugs to attack each other, and so on. Yes there are also lead-based guns, laser-based rifles, and even a crossbow, but, in general the game isn't filled with the typical arms that most shooters have.

Point of Distinction II: The developers love their game. You see this in the battle-pass that does not have a purchasable tier. Each season has a unique set of rewards and can be returned to or skipped at any time. The game has been improved since launch based on player feedback from what I've read. Apparently the terrain generation was pretty bad initially; when I joined in 2024 it was great. Every mission felt unique, even if some of the pieces that are used to create each cave are preset. I have had some truly memorable missions where our drop-pod landed on a tiny stalactite and we had to jump down into the abyss.

Point of Distinction III: The tech tree has options but does not span for tens and tens of layers. I have seen so many games that looked interesting, but the tech tree looked like I needed a few hundred hours just to understand what I should spec into. In Deep Rock Galactic, you have 5 possible upgrade levels to any given weapon, and a selection between 3 options per upgrade level. There is also an overclock slot that can be filled as you progress in the game. That's it. AND, it still matters and makes a difference based on what you select. I like that this both satisfies people with analysis paralysis and those who don't want to spend hours in the modification screen.

Point of Distinction IV: The enemies and terrain are generally well balanced. There are times where you feel in control, and other times where you are surrounded by bugs that seem to have a real tactical plan. Tanky enemies in your face, goo-lobbing critters somewhere you can't see, and so on. The reason I think this is a distinction is because a lot of games are just point and click, hack and slash. In Deep Rock Galactic, there is a lot of strategy in ammo management and bringing the right tools to each mission.

I could go on, but let's discuss!

What's everyone elses thoughts? Rock & Stone miners!

So! A buddy of mine gifted me Diablo 4 so we could play together, and we've been having a blast. I had mild experience with Diablo, I played 3 on the PS4 when it was still new and enjoyed it well enough, but i dont know if my mindset changed or what but SOMETHING in my brain was flipped when I was playing 4, and i decided I was gonna play all the other games and at least do a story run through to get a feel for all of them.

I just finished playing 1, doing everything you can on normal difficulty, and... This is actually a near perfect game for me. It was scratching an itch I've needed scratched extremely, but couldn't put my finger on how to describe it. Diablo 1 is that game, and it really saddens me that it was kinda put to the wayside in favor of its sequel (which is an amazing game, dont get me wrong!)

The core gameplay loop of grabbing loot and dungeon crawling is the same, but having it all set in this one town gives it a feeling of intimacy the other games ended up losing with their grander scope. You really come to love the townsfolk as you come back from your runs, hearing what new pieces of dialog they have, hopefully finding a new quest or two, getting your gear in check, and then you're back to it again. Honestly, and forgive me if this is overdone, but the closest comparison i have to this is Demon's Souls. A central hub area with NPCs with updating dialogue so the actual meat and potatoes is as uninterrupted as it can be. I love love LOVE this.

Speaking of the dungeon, this is where the game also shines. Diablo nowadays is a power fantasy simulator where the dungeons are just different backdrops while you see dopamine numbers go up. There's nothing wrong with that. Hell, I love it. But where the other games basically make you a Dynasty Warriors character, 1 has you feeling like a proper expeditioner each time you go into the dungeon. Your inventory is MUCH more limited than in other games, and items don't stack, so its important to take necessities. I'm playing a Warrior, so my immediate gameplan is to have my main weapon set, a back up for ranged attacks if I need it, at least a dozen or so potions, magic traps if I feel i really need em, and lastly a scroll of town portal so I can get back to town in a flash, then back to where I left in the dungeon without needing to backtrack.

There was also a segment near the end where I couldn't just facetank through everything, and I NEEDED some way to up my fire defense, which organically led me to do the Hellfire content and getting a drop for 50% fire resist which made me able to complete the game! Getting a drop I actually needed felt AMAZING.

It's still fast paced, especially for the time it was released, but this more methodical and deliberate approach mixed with the SUBLIME atmosphere really hammers in that you're just the guy most qualified to handle the threats down there than some all powerful turbo god who sneezes lightning. And when you DO come to grips with the mechanics and get a lay of the land, you feel like a hardened veteran able to use the environment and positioning to your advantage. It's scrappy in a way I utterly adore. It helps also that enemies stay dead when you kill them, so previous floors have mounds of corpses as you walk through them. It really adds to the feeling that you're actually helping to save the town of this problem, I can't get enough of it.

And it bums me that as far as I know, there's hardly anything else like this. This loop is intoxicating and I can already tell I'll want more like it, but the flow established in 2 is what the series (and other more direct contemporaries like Torchlight) took going forward. It's a shame, because I think you could really make some jewels with the systems and flow 1 established.

Anyway, I just wanted to share these thoughts because its captivated me so badly. Please give Diablo 1 a shot. I'm playing the fan made port DevilutionX and its been great. There's a learning curve but there's a real gem in here.

I got the platinum recently since it arrived on PS Plus and I really enjoyed the game. I don't get where the hate came from.

When it comes to the open world, I found completing everything more fun and less repetitive/grindy to 100% compared to the other games. The side plot with the flame and wraith was pretty interesting. I completed the game fairly quickly but that's not a bad thing at all it's better to have a focused meaningful experience.

The fast swinging and wingsuiting was super fun and the abilities were pretty satisfying to use. It would be difficult going back to the slower pace of the older games.

I think the narrative and story with both Kraven and Venom worked really well. Some of the dialogue was iffy but I think it was still far better than in Miles Morales. Even the MJ missions this time felt less cumbersome than in the first game though she had even more plot armour this time lol.

It's a shame there are no DLCs because they could've been super cool. I guess Carnage will come into play in the next game. Also the game was fairly easy it would've been nice to see some harder difficulty options.

We’ve all heard about civilization. Surprising absolutely no one, Civ 7 has received mixed reviews over its first 1.5 years of life. I played it recently, here are my thoughts.

A little history: Most people probably know how Civilization works: You pick a civilization with its own unique perks, establish cities on the hexagonal map, and pursue a victory in Science, Warfare, Culture, or Religion.

Every civilization since the first has changed some sort of mechanic to a varying degree. I haven’t been a dedicated player since the early 2000’s like a lot of the fans, but I’ve kept up on the changes since IV. The community is….. interesting in the same way battlefield players are interesting, so every game since IV has been met with “the previous one is way better!” or something of that nature. The players seem to genuinely hate change (you still have people saying unit stacking should’ve never gone away in 5), so I honestly would never look at reviews or community input when considering trying a Civilization game. The developers always shoot to revamp mechanics and that is necessary for the series to move forward.

What’s new: So what changed this time? Well, a lot! And boy did it ruffle some feathers. At the risk of being reductive, the developers focused on each of the three ages feeling distinct by incorporating major shifts. Gone are the days keeping the same civilization throughout all of history (Pre-historic Boston was certainly something); A game begins with selecting a leader (has their own perks, lasts throughout the entire game) and a beginning civilization (has its own perks). When an age ends, you select a new civilization based on what civ you started with or what you did during the age. It can get wacky, where you get stuff like Augustus leading the Han dynasty then shifting into the Shawnee civilization in the Exploration age, but you would be surprised how often it makes sense with just a little bit of imagination.

The other major changes are the distinction in settlements. Now there are cities which work like old civilization cities, and now there are towns, which are limited in the building options and can support cities. When population in town/cities is added, you select the tiles to receive resources from, rather than all tiles automatically being worked. Additionally, you can place a building on a tile instead of working it, which obviously provides its own bonuses that can increase based on what is near it. Finally, Commanders make moving units around so much easier, so combat has significantly improved.

Execution: So, what are my thoughts on the new mechanics? I love them. Yea, that’s right, I think all the complaining is wrong. This is the most engaging civilization I have played, and I think Firaxis attempted to address a lot of the boring parts found in previous civilization games. It’s not just the new mechanics, it’s also the new iterations of mechanics introduced in older games.

One of my issues with the previous titles was that each game felt the same. Yes, there were different victories, but it felt like they all boiled down to “spam this number by spamming the relevant buildings”. While that is still sort of true, the feel of a full game of civilization in Civ 7 has totally changed. Another annoyance was the list of things you wanted to always do was pretty long. More cities was always good. You always were rewarded for having great science or military. So how do things feel differently now?

To begin, making each age feel unique and have its own set of priorities and problems revitalized my passion to continue the file. It feels less like a marathon and more like sequential sprints, which cuts down on the "restart loop". The new towns and cities mechanic might be the best change since unit stacking was eliminated. In civ 5 and 6, there was never really a reason to stop settling cities until you ran out of space. Now, with the settlement limit, you have to think a little more about how many settlements you want. Additionally, each settlement doesn’t spam the same building layout to maximize your victory. You might establish a coastal town to feed food to your capital. You might lay down a smaller town as a fort town and be a military buffer for your aggressive neighbor. The town specializations ensure you don’t have 15 production queues to complete each turn when modern age hits and give each settlement a unique flavor.

Switching civs (which isn’t required as of the newest update) means you essentially “start a new game” and gives more energy to a stagnant playthrough. You may also have to pivot your strategy as the game evolves. Each age has its own goals and issues to address, meaning I don’t have the singular goal of “spam science” for 600 turns. The culture and science tech trees both provide great benefits, so you can’t completely ignore one or the other. The mechanics really feed well into each other without making each playthrough too homogenous. I haven’t really felt a “Jesus take the wheel” moment in my games as Civ 7 has managed to keep me engaged much longer than previous titles. The way each age has its own priorities and means to address them leads to a sort of “refocus” from the player.

Recently, an update just dropped that changed a few things. For starters, you CAN stay as the same civilization the entire time now. I don’t know why this is such a big deal for people, but it’s in now. Additionally, some of the goals and related rewards for doing well in an age have changed to make each playthrough feel more unique. The game is on sale and everything points to the update being huge for the game.

To finish this ramble, I have some tips for people who pick this game up. For starters, you HAVE to understand how things work for the game to be fun. If you don’t understand how specialists and urban tiles work, your decisions will lack meaning. You have to understand trade offs for your choices to feel fun. Make sure you keep the difficulty level high (I’d recommend Immortal). If you aren’t threatened (via military or just the pace of the game) then everything will feel easy and you will be able to do everything each game. My last piece of advice would be to avoid restarting too much. Mistakes are part of a run, and if you keep restarting you will only be playing 33% of the game over and over again!

Thanks for reading, I’ll be editing grammar and little tidbits as I have the time!

I got back into playing games on my Switch and picked up Splatoon 3. I've always been interested in Splatoon, between the style and unique-looking gameplay. But I've been without a reasonable internet connection for years so I haven't bothered putting much consideration into multiplayer-focused games. I heard on this sub that Splatoon 3 had a pretty robust amount of single-player content compared to the first two and decided to give it a go.

The single-player content is in two parts, the main campaign and the Side Order expansion. I started with the campaign and definitely recommend it to anyone. Zooming out it's essentially a series of smaller challenges connected by a linking series of islands. It does a great job of teaching the game and pretty much every weapon, ability, and mechanic has at least one dedicated challenge relevant to it. As far as I recall there wasn't a single challenge that felt recycled from a previous one. The difficulty ranged from easy to brutally difficult, especially when a timer or target shooting section got involved. On the bright side, you don't have to do all the challenges to progress through the campaign (I did anyway though). The game culminates in a questionably justified but undeniably epic boss fight and had me laughing and invested all at the same time. All in all I think it did a great job. The way the missions were isolated from each other did make it feel less like a true 'story' but they would have to put in a ton of effort to make a true story mode that let you cover all the mechanics Splatoon has to offer while still being good. Maybe if Nintendo's feeling ambitious they can give that a try later down the line.

After that I gave the Side Order a go. This was a bit of a switch-up by turning the game into a 30-floor rogue-lite, mostly fighting off hordes of various fishy enemies while completing one of a handful of objectives. Each run you unlocking more meta-progression, gaining new weapons and incremental stat boosts that make the next run just a little bit easier, similar to Hades in that respect. It took me about a dozen runs or so to finish off the final boss, but with each run taking 30-45 minutes it was still a pretty significant time investment and I wouldn't have wanted it to be much longer anyway. It was good length for the amount of content available.

Two things really stood out to me as great design choices in Side Order. The first is that you get to choose what you want to do at each floor between three options. Missions can vary by difficulty rating, rewards, bonus challenges, and whether or not there's a 'danger' (an unknown additional hardship that starts getting applied to more and more missions the longer you avoid it). It has you constantly evaluating whether you really want that upgrade on the hard mission you don't like or whether you should do the easier mission and clear out a danger, etc. It allows the game to provide interesting decisions both run-to-run and floor-to-floor.

The second thing I really liked is that the upgrades you can get each floor usually have five or so levels they can be upgraded with the final level providing a MASSIVE boost compared to the rest. This incentivizes the player to create more focused builds and try to get those final bonuses, allowing runs to feel more unique even when using the same weapon. On my winning run I had gotten to the end of the knockback upgrade track, giving my paintbrush 2000% knockback! Hordes of endgame enemies would go flying as I slashed away, often off the map entirely. That allowed me to focus on the task at hand and clutch out the win (culminating in yet another over the top anime-style ending sequence).

Overall I was super impressed with the game's style, design, and mechanics. Being able to tilt the switch to help with aiming was a cool and unique mechanic once you get used to it, and the flow of attacking to put paint down and swimming through it to reload feels great. I'd highly recommend anyone to pick Splatoon 3 up, internet or no internet.

I played The Godfather game on PC a long, long time ago, around the time it was released, but I quit pretty early. I suppose I expected 1940s GTA, but it was very restrictive in comparison. You can't jump, the map is small, less freedom, less chaos simulation...

When I saw minimme's review, in which he described it akin to an empire-building game than GTA, it piqued my interest. I heard Don's Edition on PS3 was the best version of the game, but it was way too expensive that I decided to go for the Blandhand Edition, which is essentially a Wii port of Don's Edition... which might have been a mistake.

Wii accidentally extended the lifespan of the 6th gen games. Because Wii was technologically two Gamecubes taped into one, a lot of PS2 and Xbox were easily ported to the "next gen" Wii, on the cheap and fast method. And because it was so cheap and fast that they didn't bother adapting the gameplay into the new motion control scheme, where the developers were still struggling to figure out what to do with this.

Let's consider the best Wii shooters that utilize the motion control the best. You will realize that the camera is either: first-person, or the third-person where the camera is always at the back of the character or over the shoulder. Basically, you are facing exactly where the character is facing, so that the motion control input is one-to-one with the character. This is why Resident Evil 4 controls phenomenally on Wii. The Godfather's shooting scheme is a slightly advanced version of the console GTA 3--free directional movement, and the lock-on. It's the same control scheme the same studio used on its Bond games.

What happens is that the only real motion control input you do in shooting is when you lock on, you can aim your Wiimote to selectively choose the body part you want to shoot. However, because you don't know where your Wiimote is pointing before the lock-on (the crosshair only pops up in the target lock-on), what will happen is the crosshair will slide off without you knowing it. It is awkward to lock on and shoot enemies. The Wii port of Resident Evil 4 avoids this problem because you always see the pointer on screen. In addition, the entire lock-on system kind of lessens the importance of the motion control, where the strength lies in aiming itself. You can press the + key to enter the free aim mode, but it is so awkward that you rarely use it.

In addition, if you want to shift your target, you have to press the D-pad left and right, which is located on the top of the Wiimote, so you have to constantly shift your hand up during the combat... And the D-pad function goes further than that. Because the Wiimote lacks the second analog stick, which is often used to control camera movement in the normal gamepad controller, the developers decided mapped the camera control to the D-pad. Yes, in order to look up, down, left, and right, you have to constantly fiddle with the Wiimote to reach the D-pad. If you are familiar with Wii, you will realize how awful this is.

And don't make me talk about the melee combat, which is some of the worst I have ever played. It seems that they just mapped certain waving motions to certain punch keys. There is nothing like, let's say, Punch Out, where the entire game is built up to match the precise character actions to the player's actions. So instead, all you do in this game is wiggle your Nunchuk and Wiimote mindlessly, hoping that the game will register your inputs and punch correctly. ...or the character accidentally punches because of the slight motion of your controller. This is a serious problem in this game, which demands careful melee action to *not kill" certain NPCs. I often found myself accidentally killing the shopkeepers because my character registered my inputs wrongly as punching or choking. This happened so many times.

Rather than changing the gameplay to adapt to the motion control, they simply ported the PS2 game over to Wii, without much thinking how it would affect it. And this half-ass porting job goes further because this game looks absolutely ugly and runs horribly. It somehow looks worse than the PS2 version. It seems that they made Don's Edition first for PS3, which overhauled the engine and the graphics to fit the new hardware, and then downgraded that version for Wii. So what happens is that it is essentially a PS3 game downgraded to run on Wii, not a PS2 game upgraded to run on Wii. The lighting and textures are flat as hell, and the game often randomly hovers 10fps for no reason. This console runs Xenoblades Chronicles. Are you telling me that this N64-looking ass shit runs 15fps???

Regardless, let's talk about the game itself. So the empire-building aspect is quite fascinating. You wander around, find a shop, and threaten the rival gang's shopkeepers and racketeers to join your gang. This will regularly generate income. In that process, you might have to kill the rival gang's goons, and you might have to enter a big gunfight, so you have to hire a companion to fight with you. And when it happens often, the rival gangs might see you in the world and automatically attack you in the world, which make the traversal harder. And it also increases the police activities, so you have to bribe the police, so the police will turn against the rival gang, creating a big gunfight between the enemies and police. And when you do hostile activities against the rival gang too often, you will enter a full-blown mob war.

All this is admittedly underdeveloped. You are not playing STALKER or XCOM, but the empire-building and faction system are surprisingly enjoyable. Beating the shit out of merchants, racketeers, and shopkeepers to join your gang is quite addictive and leads to the emergent gameplay scenarios.

Too bad that all this shit matters nothing when it comes to the missions, which are some of the dullest I have ever played in this genre. They created this system with the incredible potential, but this is not the meat of the actual game. That's all optional shit. You can never engage with the empire-building aspect, and that affects shit. The meat of the game is the missions, and they are somehow even more linear and worse than the GTA counterparts? It's literally step-by-step, and drive to this place, and shoot everyone. Throw in some ocassional mandatory stealth sequences or "follow this NPC and do exactly as they tell you, or mission fail".

What's comical is that empire-building and factional dynamics have no impact to the narrative. In the cutscene, Vito is making peace with the head of the rival gang, and they say it's all good... yet the moment that cutscene is over, I can't move anywhere but getting shot at by that gang because I'm engaging in a literal mob war with them. I just hired my companion to fight alongside me, but when the mission begins, he is gone. I singlehandedly turned half of New York into my gang, becoming one of the biggest high-ranking mafioso, yet in the story, I'm just some low-level goon.

The missions being this linear and simple means that they are only reliant on combat and driving, which is all you do, and as I said, combat and driving in this game are terrible. Driving is so simple and awful, with zero depth to it. Like, this is one of the worst in this genre. Even Saints Row 1 feels better to drive than this.

I wonder if the reason for the way these missions are is because of the premise and the setting. You, the player, can't be the leader in the story in the way you are in the empire-building aspect, because the story is supposed to be a side-story where you are supposed to be a no-name extra spectator to the movie's story. The game recreates the scenes from the movie in such hillarious fashion. Remember Abe Vigoda's end in the movie, where he pleads to Tom to let him live, but eventually accepts his death and goes into the car? Well, it turns out that a minute after that, Abe Vigoda runs away, leading to an insane Scarface-like gunfight and chase to kill him. It is so funny that I actually laughed out loud. There are so many hilarious added "backstory" to the movie's plot. The recreated movie's scenes are somber and quiet, but the moment that movie scene is over, it goes full Rambo. All those off-screen stuff in the movie? Apparently, you were the one who was behind all that shit. You do the baptism of fire assassinations in the movie... singlehandedly. Literally every kill shown in the movie.

I think the game should have been set in the 1910s or 20s, so that it stays out of the movie's plot. All this empire-building and gang fights make more sense as a prequel where Corleone's family was on the rise to take over New York. There were a lot of implied violence in Corleone's rise, and that would have made more sense to gamify it than gamify the movie's plot. That also lends creative liberty to build the player character, making him a lot more important in the narrative and missions, not awkwardly put in the movie's plot.

For what the game is, it is only fun when you ignore the missions and do empire-building and fight the rivals on your own, but even then, it is still lackluster. When you get into the missions, it becomes one of the shittiest and clunkiest shooters and racers ever. Why not build around the gang sandbox the game excels at and make that the whole game? Why add these terrible missions? I hope some other game would actually expand on this concept and make a full game, something like the strategy of Omerta but with the gameplay of Hitman.

Crusader Kings 3 is a grand strategy RPG developed by Paradox Development Studio. Released in 2020, CK3 reminds us that murdering your wife is less messy than divorce.

We play as a ruler, vassal or vagabond on a quest to survive, rule the world or maybe even eat the pope.

Gameplay involves spending about half your time trying to figure out what you're even supposed to do, failing to attack your neighbor, then throwing a bunch of parties every time you get depressed.

The Good

I've never been good at "Set your own goals!" games. I have a Minecraft world I've been working on for 13 years now and I've only got two rooms in my castle done. CK3 makes it a easier by giving you a metric fuckton of achievements associated with goals like "unify Ireland" or "Have a lot of babies." That's gameplay I can get behind.

One of the nice things about painting the map not being the goal is it eliminates that late stage 4x problem where you've already won and nobody can challenge you, but to actually get the victory screen you have to slog through 100 more turns. I unified Russia, started my own religion and have 10 wives. I can just be done now or see if I can't get someone mad enough to assassinate me.

The Bad

The random events seem fun at first, until you start hitting the same ones over and over again. The game is semi-realtime so it's easy to look away for a second, then look back and you have 30+ notifications demanding your attention, only one of which actually matters.

I get it, my child likes to sleep around and now has the harlot trait. I don't care. Yes I know I could go on a hunt, but then that's 80 goddamn more notifications I gotta click on. My cousins husband is upset with him? Why would I care?

Just let me plot my wife's murder in peace. For fucks sake.

The Questionable

I feel like grand strategy/4x games really need to unify and figure out a way to on board people into their games. Nearly every other genre figured out how tutorials work ages ago, but CK3 makes you feel like you just got handed a copy of Excel and Visual Studio and now you're supposed to make some macros.

I clicked on "Tutorial mission" because I haven't played a 4x game in awhile and the game happily said, "Here's your king, this is Ireland, unify it. No I won't tell you what any of these 60 buttons do. Good luck." I kept having prisoners die then finally figured out if you go to the courtiers menu (because obviously that's where it would be) you can look at your prison.

Meanwhile in my action-platformer the tutorial starts with, "Hold right to move right you fucking dunce." You can rest assured you'll soon be told which button jump is. I'd love a 4x game that has a tutorial that doesn't assume you took the secret accounting courses in college where they teach you how to play these games.

Final Thoughts

I did enjoy having a ton of micro-goals to achieve and work on. Unfortunately they often required learning a new part of the game which involved watching an hour long YouTube tutorial. After about a week the events got kinda stale and I didn't feel like spending DLC money on being told all the different ways I'd failed my children as a parent, so that's when I called it quits. I felt I got my moneys worth.

Bonus Thought

It being a Paradox game there's more DLC than you can shake a stick at. Fortunately it's a Paradox game so none of the DLC is worth getting.

Thank you for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts. What did you think of the game? Did you have a similar experience or am I off my rocker?

My other reviews on patient gaming

So I recently fell back in love with my 3DS, and am discovering all sorts of games for it. I was playing Fantasy Life when someone mentioned another Level-5 RPG, Yo-Kai Watch 2: Psychic Specters. I'd never heard Yo-Kai Watch, but it looked appealing, so I gave it a try.

Holy cats y'all. This game has me by the short and curlies.

I think it taps into something from my childhood. I loved watches as a child, and would run around the park I lived next to, pretending my watches did magical or fantastical things. It's not just this, on top of that it's an amazing game as well. I'm twenty hours in, which is unusual for me, but it's all I've played over the last several weeks.

So yeah, I love this game. It's got amazing gameplay, a delightful story, punny creature names and is addicting as heck.

AC Odyssey is one of the open-world RPG games within the AC franchise, focused as much on melee combat as stealth and assassination, while also adding in some sailing and naval combat. It's often put in the same bracket as AC Origins and AC Valhalla.

Odyssey is one of the better-rated games in the franchise, but it wasn't for me. This game almost hits the mark. There is a LOT that Ubisoft did right here. But playing in 2026, this game feels very underwhelming and repetitive. After giving this game a proper shake for 20 hours recently (and this is my second attempt), I'm just not prepared to spend another 130 slogging through the rest of the content.

Pros:

• Great graphics and art direction for a 2018 game that absolutely holds up in 2026. From that era, probably only RDR2 is better looking for an open-world game.
• Beautiful and very large open world to explore. (So large it's intimidating.)
• Wonderful history tour of Ancient Greece that also immerses you in their mythology.
• Runs at a smooth and locked 60fps on current-gen consoles. (I played on Xbox Series X.)
• No shortage of content and quests.
• Solid protagonist in Kassandra. (Didn't try Alexios.)
• Solid voice acting, cutscenes, and story (so far).
• Some of your choices seem to actually matter.
• Technically, it's been a mostly bug-free, polished, and smooth experience (at least on console).
• Often available with all DLC on a massive discount for very cheap.

Cons:

• The 'wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle' idiom applies to so much of AC Odyssey. Or perhaps 'jack of all trades, master of none'. This is because AC Odyssey is three okay games in one. The sailing and naval combat is okay but not great. The RPG-based melee combat is okay but not great. The stealth, parkour, and assassination game is okay but not great. The mechanics for each are not as deep as other AAA games (including other AC games) that just focussed on one of these areas.
• Combat has no weight to it, gets repetitive quickly, and isn't helped by spongey enemies with giant health pools. Melee combat here is a bad souls-like.
• The skill tree seems very promising and I don't deny some of the skills are highly satisfying, yet it doesn't seem to add up to something greater than the sum of its parts. There is not the same "dance" to combat as better AC games and other open-world combat games. This is partly because the game interrupts its own flow at times by making you build adrenaline and wait for the cooldowns on skills. (I could see how this might get better at higher levels if I kept playing.)
• Parkour isn't as deep as other AC games. Parkour mostly involves holding "A" and letting the game figure out the rest. The world also doesn't have as much verticality as other AC titles. Other AC games do parkour better, and while many other open-world games that don't do parkour do better traversal of the open world through other means.
• Stealth mostly involves crouching in bushes, whistling, and creeping up behind enemies. This is, again, simpler than other AC titles.
• Assassination is often frustrating as it's stat-based. Getting the drop on an enemy and stabbing them through the heart or cutting their throat means nothing if they're a higher level. (Okay, apparently if you focus exclusively on assassination, this changes at higher levels.)
• The open world is large but also empty and sterile. There is little to interact with outside points of interest.
• Very grindy, very repetitive. This game wants you to spend 200 hours with it. But the towns and points of interest become very repetitive, as does the process of clearing out forts. The levelling system is very padded. This game doesn't respect your time.

A lot of other people seem to love this game, and I can't deny it's well made in many ways. The 2018 critic reviews on Metacritic rated the game 83%. Recent Steam user reviews also put the game at 83%. However, the user reviews on Metacritic are a significantly lower 6.9/10.

I agree with that last rating from a gameplay perspective, even though I rate the production values of the game much higher (again, especially for 2018). Perhaps if I'd played this game in 2018, I would have been blown away. Something about the fundamental gameplay loop in AC Odyssey just leaves me cold--it's a touch too simplistic, repetitive, and with a lack of tactical meta-level to it.

I thought I would love this game given what I'd read from so many other players and my affinity for most open-world RPGs. Oddly, I now feel like one of those AC purists who hates on the AC RPG games because they want to go back to the original stealth/assassination style of gameplay that the franchise was built on. I'm now wondering if I should give AC Unity a try instead.

When I saw the reveal for The Dark Ages, I was skeptical. My memories of Eternal at the time were fuzzy, but I remembered it being too much of a good thing, and adding a shield and Serious-Sam-style hordes made me worry that it would be even more "too much". It also looked weird for Doom.

As we got closer to release, though, I became more cautiously optimistic. It looked like they had reworked the combat to be simpler and, surprisingly, build on elements of 90s Doom that were dropped in Doom 3. It made me interested in this weird-looking take on Doom. As you can guess from the title, I think it worked.

For context: I've played this game on both the Ultra-Violence and Nightmare presets, and I had the threat detector turned to parry-only. I found both to offer a good challenge, but if you really want to be tested in every possible way, you'll need to play around with difficulty sliders, especially for the parry window and resource amounts.

Puny god!

Despite taking place before the events of Doom (2016), The Dark Ages is a mostly self-contained story. An ambitious demonic prince named Azhrak has teamed up with a mysterious "outsider" called The Witch, and the two are searching for a powerful artifact that would give Azhrak the power of a god. Resisting him are the Sentinels of Argent D'Nur and their Maykr gods. The latter are currently wielding the Slayer as a mindless weapon, but it's clear he's breaking free of their control. Regardless, he's going to be slaying a lot of demons, and while the Sentinels are divided on whether he's a threat or messiah, he's their only hope of stopping the wannabe god.

For the most part, this story is very simple, even old-school. Cutscenes almost only play between levels, and unless you want to read the completely optional Codex (I did), the story won't interrupt gameplay. This means that there isn't much time for character or narrative development, but it is an entertaining, over-the-top popcorn flick that does its job of contextualizing why you're killing demons across multiple dimensions.

More interesting is the world itself. It's still simple, so don't expect any complex lore or a fully fleshed-out society, but the locations are interesting and varied. Argent D'Nur, the techno-fantasy world featured briefly in previous games, is now the main focus. Compared to some other fantasy-themed shooters like Quake or Amid Evil, there is a clear attempt to make Argent D'Nur feel like it was once a normal place with bustling cities, rural farmlands, resource-rich mines and sacred holy cities. It's all now fallen or falling to the chaos of Hell, but it still gives us a more complete picture of the world than past games. Even similarly-themed levels are very distinct from each other, like how it has both a typical mining village along with a much more fantastical abandoned mine.

In contrast, Hell is still mostly the familiar volcanic wastelands and industrial fortresses we've seen from past games, but there are a couple late-game areas that give us a much more surreal glimpse of the soul-processing realm. The Witch's realm, for its part, is nothing short of breathtaking, where even the marshlands offer bizarre and unforgettable moments. For me, her realm is actually the most captivating in the game.

As you can expect, all of these locations look fantastic, and I regularly paused to gaze at the gorgeous vistas or investigate some little detail that caught my attention. Even the familiar lava pits of Hell regularly got me to stop and appreciate the artistry. There's also far more moving and dynamic elements than in past Doom games. You'll regularly see ships and creatures flying overhead. Sentinels may run past you or be found hiding somewhere to tend to the wounded, and titans will regularly be seen in combat or writhing in agony on crosses. Even the playing space features breakable props and subtle particle effects, and they finally brought back keeping bits of blood and gore around as a testament to your violent handiwork. It all comes together to make a world that not only looks remarkable but feels surprisingly alive at times.

Come fly with me! Let's fly, let's fly away!

Along with this interesting world comes a few more open levels that offer the strongest sense of exploration in the series since the 90s. While the majority of levels are still the linear ones that have been dominating Doom since Doom 3, the more open levels still give us a chance to feel like we're exploring the world rather than just taking a guided tour of it, and as a fan of 90s Doom's more open levels, I enjoyed that occasional change of pace, especially since the more annoyingly confusing elements weren't retained.

The majority of these more open levels are Slayer-only ones. You're dumped into an open area with some mandatory arenas and optional side challenges, and while resources may act as breadcrumbs to guide you to points of interest, you're largely free to tackle everything in any order you like. To me, these levels felt a bit like an ultra-violent collectathon, just with arenas instead of moons or jiggies. Even the gold and gems you collect for upgrades and these levels' wolf statue hunting add to the overall collectathon feel. Like most good collectathons, the levels are packed with so many challenges that a fight or puzzle is never too far away, and that sense of freedom mixed with all the attention-grabbing activities perfectly captures the feeling of any Banjo Kazooie or Super Mario Odyssey level. It's still a distinctly Doom take, but as a fan of collectathons, I adored these levels and think they're the overall strongest level type in the game.

A few other levels feature a dragon, where you're often switching between typical Slayer gameplay and taking flight on a dragon. As the Slayer, you're mostly tackling self-contained arenas or shorter linear sections, and while flying the dragon, you're often getting dragged into dogfights or taking out titans and enemy carriers. These levels don't have the collectathon feel, but they still have a liberating sense of freedom as you survey the level from the dragon and decide which target or landing spot to go to next. It's actually one of these levels that serves as the first truly open-ended one, and after thinking that Eternal had taken linearity to a repetitive extreme, that initial moment of looking down on a Sentinel holy city and realizing that I could go anywhere I wanted felt transcendent.

My only real complaint about these levels is that the game continues modern Doom's insistence on auto saving only, and the more open structure means it can be harder to gauge when the last save was. Something as simple as a "save and quit" option or "last saved at" message on the pause screen would really alleviate concerns about losing too much progress for those of us with lives outside gaming. At the very least, the autosaves did seem generous enough, but assurances would have been nice.

Guns and shields and flails, oh my!

While exploration is nice and a traditional part of the series, the real focus of Doom is, of course, the combat, and The Dark Ages is no exception. As mentioned in the intro, the combat system has been reworked from Eternal. Instead of focusing on staying constantly mobile and utilizing a myriad of single-purpose tools, this game focuses on getting into a rhythm of offense and defense with fewer but more versatile tools.

Guns still serve as the foundation of offense. For the most part, the standard arsenal returns, though the Skullcrusher guns are an experimental replacement to the Chaingun, and the Grenade Launcher replaces separate frag grenades. New guns include the energy-based Cycler and the very unique Chainshot. Unlike the last couple games, guns don't feature alt-fire modes through mods, instead falling into groups of 1-2 weapons based on ammo type. This was no doubt done to accommodate the shield, but I did make more use of both weapons in a group than I did of both mods for any weapon in Eternal, so I consider it a minor improvement. I also found the expanded arsenal to be very dynamic over the course of the game, with new guns and upgrades often changing how I approached the weapon sandbox. For instance, the Accelerator (Plasma Rifle) is a very versatile early weapon that soon gets overshadowed by other options, but with its own upgrades, it became my preferred weapon against some of the tougher close-ranged enemies due to its high rate of fire and crowd-controlling heat burst.

On the other side of the combat rhythm is the shield, which is the foundation of defense and crowd control. Along with a standard block/parry system, the shield can also be used to dash into enemies or thrown to kill or stun enemies. Throwing the shield obviously leaves you vulnerable, but you can call it back whenever you want. Blocking too many attacks will cause a shield break that leaves you similarly vulnerable, but in that case, you're forced to wait it out. More beneficially, parrying often stuns and damages enemies, and around a third of the way in, you start getting shield runes that add even more devastating effects when you parry a projectile. While there's nowhere near as many runes as guns, they all have clear purposes that make them useful at different times, though I tended to stick to the highly-damaging and crowd-controlling Holy Swarm.

The third and final component to all this is the melee, which feels comparatively tacked on. It has its uses, but it's more there to support the guns and shield. It also has a much more linear power progression than the guns or shield runes, and outside of cheesing a weapon mastery challenge, I never swapped to an older melee weapon.

All three of these options make the Slayer feel like a force of nature. Guns are as punchy as ever and still visibly tear the flesh from enemies. Parries and melee strikes come with a short slowdown as an audible crack and visible shockwave emanate from the point of impact. Every step sounds like a behemoth's stomp, and falling through the air causes a loud rush of wind ending in a thunderous landing whose shockwave tears weaker enemies apart. Even simply brushing against some environmental props causes them to shatter. It's all a pure power fantasy that is so delightfully Doom.

On a deeper level, there's the aforementioned combat rhythm. Along with the new defensive dimension, enemies have considerably expanded attack patterns. The typical attacks of modern Doom return, but they've also brought back hitscan and shmup-inspired attack patterns from 90s Doom. The shmup-inspired ones are also far more fully realized than they ever were in the 90s, with some enemies able to fill the screen on their own, forcing you to weave through their projectiles looking for the parryable one. Essentially, every heavy demon has a "dance" you have to master similar to the Shambler Dance in Quake, and getting comfortable with each was a lot of fun and made this easily the most interesting take on Doom's iconic bestiary.

More akin to Eternal, you still need to remain incredibly offensive and make full use of your toolset, taking as few breaks as possible and only using defense when the combat rhythm demands it. Chaining shield moves and keeping the fire button held down between parries is critical, and much like waiting on cooldowns in Eternal, if you're waiting around for a parry opportunity, you likely have room to improve. (I say this as someone who still struggles with that against certain enemies.) Once it starts clicking, the combat feels incredibly fast-paced and much closer to the Eternal style of fast, varied inputs than the more traditional run-and-gun approach of most other shooters.

A really big difference from Eternal, though, is the weapon-swapping speed. It's slower, so weapon-swapping combos are no more. However, this slower swap leaves you vulnerable, and tougher enemies can punish you severely for careless weapon swapping. This is perhaps the hardest thing to get used to coming from Eternal, but I still really enjoyed it. Just like fast-swapping combos, it forces you to be smarter with weapon changes than most shooters demand, and it fits the offensive/defensive rhythm very well.

Argent D'Nur is Burning

Like the past couple games, the main place where all these combat characteristics come into focus is the arenas. Following Eternal, the emphasis is on taking out heavy demons while fodder infinitely spawn to support them. An occasional twist on this is Moral Encounters, which require killing demons to break their leader's shield, and after it breaks, the leader is often supported by respawning heavies. Once all the heavies or leader are killed, every other enemy immediately despawns, avoiding the anticlimactic cleanup problem many of Eternal's arenas faced.

One major change compared to Eternal is focusing less on verticality and tight spaces and more on open arenas of varying sizes. Arenas can range from smaller beds of pure chaos to massive battlefields that practically contain their own mini-arenas of short, partially self-contained fights. The larger arenas often feature fodder in the dozens while heavies still manage to keep you under constant pressure. It's not quite Serious Sam, but it's on a much bigger scale than we've seen from previous arena-focused Doom games while still keeping Doom's more interesting enemy compositions.

An even bigger but perhaps more subtle change is in how arenas flow. As mentioned before, it's not just about staying constantly mobile. It's about tearing through literal armies of fodder to seek out the more interesting heavies to engage with their "dance". In this sense, arenas are about quickly switching from "dance" to "dance", and as more and tougher heavies get clumped together, the offense/defense rhythm becomes more dynamic and difficult. It's more stand-and-fight than the typical circle-strafe-and-win approach that most other arena shooters use. It's maybe hard to really get until you've experienced it, but I do think this will push some hardcore arena shooter fans out of their comfort zone. Personally, I found it very refreshing and remember most of the arenas very fondly.

This more stand-and-fight emphasis also carries over well to bosses. While I think the four unique bosses are too close together, I still found them to be incredibly fun, and even the weakest one was one of the most hilariously over-the-top bosses I've ever seen. All of them do a fantastic job of pushing the different combat mechanics further than any standard enemy, so each feels less like a break from usual gameplay and more like mastering an extra complex "dance". Even as someone who has liked most of the modern Doom bosses, I think this is easily the overall strongest set in the series.

Rip and tear, until it is done!

Obviously, I love The Dark Ages. After my first playthrough, I immediately began a second and third, and I don't think I've done that with a shooter since Half-Life 2. I even got all the achievements on Steam, which I also rarely do. The world is captivating, and the combat system is perhaps the most fun I've had with one in a shooter despite (or maybe because of) how unusual it is for the genre.

I will at least acknowledge that if you just want a standard run-and-gun shooter, it's not what you're looking for right now. It's clearly influenced by 90s Doom and Eternal, but it's its own thing as opposed to a new collection of levels sticking to a battle-tested formula.

But if you want something a bit different and can get on board with what The Dark Ages is doing, it is an absolutely great time. I've really enjoyed every playthrough of its campaign, and I'm sure I'll enjoy plenty more in the future.

Welcome to the Bi-Weekly Thread!

Here you can share anything that might not warrant a post of its own or might otherwise be against posting rules. Tell us what you're playing this week. Feel free to ask for recommendations, talk about your backlog, commiserate about your lost passion for games. Vent about bad games, gush about good games. You can even mention newer games if you like!

The no advertising rule is still in effect here.

A reminder to please be kind to others. It's okay to disagree with people or have even have a bad hot take. It's not okay to be mean about it.

I’ve been revisiting a lot of Mario after really liking Mario galaxy movie(long story).
I tried finding the purest distillation of Mario - and while I love odyssey, love galaxy, liked sunshine, adored new super Mario at the time, and pretend like wonder is not canon. Mario 3D world - like Mario world before it - feels like a game aiming to distill the formula into a pure representation of what Mario IS.

It’s not just the level design or the mechanics or the fact it feels so easy to read or the fact speedrunning it is a delight. It’s about the way it feels confident in what Mario is. It’s a plumber who jumps and wears a cat suit. Sure, the game gets inventive and does a lot of unique things. But that confidence on who Mario is as a character, what Mario is as a game, is something I genuinely miss.

Donkey kong country returns HD is another Goldilocks game for me - it’s what I pick out to remember who donkey Kong actually IS. What he feels like. Mario is in dire need of another new Mario game that’s just Mario, but I’m happy replaying 3D world in the meantime.

I waited for a while to play it. A couple of months ago it was heavily discounted on Steam, so I finally got around to it. Despite what the title says, I didn't hate Death Stranding, but I didn't love it either. It was ok. I held off on it because I have never been a huge fan of japanese games. There is just something about the sense of humour over there I am not a fan of. I find it often very childish and sexual in a weird way. There is certainly some of that in this game, but it wasn't as bad as I feared. Trying to keep this spoiler free, but for example being able to make pee and poo granades and the very male gaze-y way women are portrayed was a bit cringe sometimes.

The much talked about delivery man game is certainly high production. It looks beautiful and it features a cast full of famous actors. The music is amazing, and some of the writing is pretty good and discusses some interesting ideas. I didn't find the gameplay elements of it very good. Which is why my question at the end was "OK, but why isn't this just a movie?*

I know the experience would have been very different if I played it right after it came out. The game is about a delivery man with a traumatic past who has to reconnect society in the aftermath of an apocalyptic event. Humanity is concentrated in settlements and a few loners in bunkers, but they are not connected. Your job is to connect all these sparse settlements, so humanity can have another go at society while avoiding bandits, terrorists and the ghosts of dead people searching to connect with the living. Playing this in the months after it came out as society shut down in fear of the pandemic must have been an intense experience. Playing it in 2026, when covid is barely a vague memory didn't hit as hard.

Part of the problem for me is that the game really lays it on thick. You are constantly non-stop being told by the NPCs that you are connecting a disconnected world and how profound it is. It lessens the impact of the themes when you are constantly being described the themes and having them shoved in your face. To lay it on extra thick, the MC is afraid of physical touch, which is really on the nose.

You carry out your job by carrying packages people need from A to B. Navigating the open world is dangerous. There are bandits addicted to stealing cargo, terrorists who want the world to burn, dead people still stuck roaming the world and the rain. Rain accelerates time and makes everyone it touches older rapidly. In that world, delivery people, mostly ignored in our world, are suddenly heroes. Literally life savers. This is literally what you do. You deliver stuff from A to B, navigating all these dangers along the way, in addition to uneven terrain and the logistics of having to physically carry it all. Along the way you also carry BB (Bridge Baby). These babies can see the ghosts of the dead floating around, and notify them. If you fall over or get into a lot of danger, BB starts crying and might go into shock if it goes too far. This is an interesting, if sometimes annoying mechanic. The constant loud baby crying got old fast.

There is a progression system to it, so that as you go and connect more places, you gain new gear and also vehicles. This will allow you to carry more stuff easier. There is also a collaborative element to it. Online players who played through what you played might put down a rope to climp down, a ladder that allows you to cross a river, or maybe even put resources into constructing a road that makes travel much easier. You can contribute to this too. Whether this is a cool addition to the themes of collaboration and society, or breaks the immersion when crossing a ladder put down by SkibidiBiden69 with an anime profile pic? This might be subjective and I lean towards the latter.

The gameplay is reliant on immersion and loving the journey. If the player ever becomes aware that they're actually just walking back and forth between A and B, the magic is lost. There is undeniably a satisfaction that comes with completing a long and ardous trip to finally make the delivery, however the game didn't succeed in creating a lot of those experiences for me, and there was instead a certain amount of tedium to going back and forth over the same route over and over. There is certainly a type of gamer/completionist that would get a kick out of completing all the optional objectives, all the additional contracts, reconstructing all the roads, etc. It just wasn't me. I was more driven by the story, so I left regions before they were fully completed. There are a lot of combat scenarios, but the combat in this game is extremely simple. Shoot and punch. There is very little to it.

The map is big, but not huge. This was actually somewhat of a problem for me. The game starts on the east coast of the US, and your end destionation is all the way in the west of the US. In no way did I actually believe that. The game completely fails in creating a sense of scale that makes the player believe they are traversing the entire American continent. You can travel from one end of the map to the other in like 20 mins.

The story has a lot of elements to it. A lot of themes and ideas. Through the game, Hideo Kojima is constantly parading a whole row of Hollywood blockbuster actors out in front of you. To the point that they are actually introduced with "Mads Mikkelsen as...". The star value of the actors feels more important than the actual actors they are portraying. Especially as the realistic art style makes them way more than voice actors. This was the first time I thought that this should just be a movie. The story is interesting, but most of the story is backloaded into massive amounts of cutscenes at the end of the game. It is hard to describe how poor this makes the pacing of the game. When almost the entire story of the game is left in massive cutscenes at the very end of a game, I again thought:

OK, but this should have been a movie.

I can list a good number of real problems with Expedition 33 and I still think it's one of the most memorable RPGs I've played in years. Some games are 10/10 because they barely misstep. E33 isn't that. It's more like a 9/10 where the highs are so sincere and alive that the flaws just stop mattering as much they typically would.

The other title I wanted to use for this review was "Expedition 33 is the Final Fantasy that Squenix stopped making, yet still also the best Final Fantasy in years," which is reductive, yeah, but is another angle that I feel captures what's magical about E33. This has that PS1/PS2-era RPG energy: melodrama played straight, an overworld map, party trauma, big beautiful doomed places, emotions, boss fights, and an iconic sountrack. The game fully leans into the overly stylized, campy, theatrical bombast of it all. It's extremely French, but also extremely JRPG (or, "Je'RPG", if you will). I guess the best thing about the game for me is that it has a pulse. You can feel that people made choices in the making of this game. Not franchise-roadmap choices. Not “our research says players like this” choices. Actual authored choices.

The score is huge. Sometimes maybe too huge. Lorien Testard throws piano, orchestra, vocals, jazz, electronic bits, guitar, and full anime-opening emotional detonation into the same pot. Some people will find it tacky. Fair. There are moments where the music is trying to blow the roof off and I'm sitting there like, okay, I'm trying to play a game here? But the score is just so good you can't help but pause for a moment and actively listen.

The voice acting is excellent, but what matters more is that the writing gives the cast actual material. The best scenes aren't always the giant tragic moments. Sometimes it's just the optional interactions at camp where damaged adults are trying to comfort each other and not knowing how. The dialogue has more restraint than I expected from a game this melodramatic. People aren't constantly explaining their feelings into the camera. A lot is carried by tone, silence, and implication.

I guess while so much of the production values are so polished that it's hard to believe this isn't a AAA game, combat is where the game becomes divisive. This isn't a pure turn-based RPG. It's turn-based until the enemy moves, then suddenly you're playing a timing game. It's not that hard. The problem is that a lot of parrying feels predictive, not reactive. You aren't reading attacks, you're memorizing set patterns. It essentially shares more DNA with Hatsune Miku than it does with Sekiro.

Having said that, landing a long parry chain after getting cooked by it three times feels as incredible as beating a soulslike boss. But the criticism is fair: the parry system can swallow the rest of the combat. If you become a parry god in this game, the rest of it is basically trivialized. So like I said, it's a 9/10 but it's a messy 9/10.

The RPG layer underneath is better than I expected. Pictos and Lumina let you do some deeply stupid and fun build nonsense. You can spec around death triggers, AP loops, basic attack abuse, glass cannon setups, all kinds of “wait, the game actually lets me do this?” garbage. It's incredibly creative and I love that. Every party member also has their own gimmick, so they don't all melt into the same endgame character with different hair. If you're a theorycrafting geek, this game might surprise you with how much it can scratch that itch. Though I just wish the game forced more adaptation. Once you find something busted, you can ride it hard. Do enough side content and the endgame balance gets cooked. That's not just a difficulty issue. It flattens tension the story spent hours building. So again, something that can possibly trivialize the combat despite how fun it can be.

Exploration is probably the weakest major piece. The areas look incredible, but moving through them isn't always fun. No minimap would be fine if the spaces were easier to read, but they often aren't. You can miss whole paths, backtracking gets old, and rewards start feeling samey: upgrade item, currency, lumina point, maybe a picto. The world is beautiful, but it doesn't always reward curiosity.

Also, the platforming is bad. Just plain horrible. 0/10 platforming, no notes.

Story-wise, while some parts of it can be divisive, I feel like the studio lands it for the most part. Not the most perfect pacing. Some people will question some narrative decisions. A few will outright reject it as BS. But I feel like for most people, it landed, as it did for me.

There's probably a 10/10 version of E33 where some of the wrinkles I mentioned above are ironed out (except the platforming, which is a lost cause). This version is messier. But maybe that's why I keep thinking about it?

Expedition 33 is not flawless enough to be an easy masterpiece, and it's too alive to dismiss as hype. It's a messy 9/10. The kind where you can point to several or more real problems and still remember it more clearly than a dozen other cleaner games.

Witchspring R is the console remake of a mobile game. I assume with this sentence I already lost half the people here. The original was already a pay to play game but somehow isn’t compatible with modern devices. I like the smell of unplayable media early on my review. Thankfully,  we are here to talk about the remake, not the original game. 

It is not the first game in the series I played as I played Witchspring 3 Refine some time ago. Story wise the third game takes place at the same time but on another continent, so while I have grasp of some concepts and the general direction, I didn’t really know the story of Pieberry. 

tl;dr : Surprisingly good game that I’ll recommend. 

Setting and Story

You play as Pieberry, a young witch living alone in her magical forest. She named herself after her two favorite things, pie and strawberries. Warriors sometimes come to try to kill her, but she uses her magical power to beat them and steal their pie. She dreams of a legendary pie she may have eaten long ago and wants to go to the outside world to find it. 

With this synopsis you should already get a feel about the game atmosphere. A sort of cute girl doing cute things with a child protagonist, but in a dark setting. In a sense it reminds me of one of those dark magical girl shows. Pieberry being a child normalizes how dire and horrible the world she lives in is toward her, but us the audience know it. It got an e rating so nothing too graphic either, which probably makes it perfect to explain to your child things like state persecution or why sending masked goons to kidnap children is not a good guy move. 

(I didn't know where to say this but the game is Korean and as such children using make-up to change their skin colour, both to whiten or darken their skins, doesn’t carry the same connotation as it would in the US.)

The story can be pretty dull at times. You encounter multiple times where your character is reckless and has to be saved by circumstances (often an ally). Once I can understand, but when it is the third time it happens you just want to roll your eyes. And while the story is short for the genre (around 20 hours to complete the main story), the reuse of the same trick over and over can give it a sense of repetitiveness. While the fantasy it depicts may look cliché at first glance, witch against holy warriors led by the pope, it managed to distinguish itself and create a charming world. The setting is interesting and the ambiance is good. By its side quests, some being miserable, the game is able to give substance to npc. You see the care and attention to detail that the dev put into the game and that gives it a charming feeling. And even Pieberry, which seems a little naive at first, demonstrates a healthy amount of depth while reminding a child. 

The game consistently paints dark things happening. If they aren’t done to Pieberry, it is happening to another friendly NPC that you may find sympathetic. As such, and despite being targeted to children, the game manages a consistent dark fantasy experience, unlike some work where dark things stop happening as the story progresses. I think it is important as it makes the settings feel coherent and the good thing happening more worthwhile and satisfying.

The gameplay

It is an rpg but you only have one party member. Most people would fear that it won't make for a very mechanical interesting game. Well the game has some systems to make battles interesting nonetheless. 

Several effects only activate after a regular amount of turns. From the all attacks are critical effects every 4 turns to a special attack that activates with another turn timer or skill that necessitates recoil time to be used again. If you alternate magic and physical attack you are able to imbue magical power into physical strike, making them more powerful, and you gain back small amount of hp by defending. If you kill with a physical attack, you can act again. 

Your bird will allow you to use item without wasting a turn every other turn, but you can also summon pets. They aren’t party members per say, they don’t have HP, but will attack and use skill at regular intervals. You gain them by subduing specific enemies by killing them with a specific spell. There are quite a few pets to collect, some of them necessitating you to go out of your way to craft a specific item. It isn’t as deep as some other monster collectors but it is enjoyable side content. 

In the main quest you’ll also get blessings, powerful skills you’ll only be able to use one time by battle. Then you add a crafting system that lets you get consumables or improve weapons or armor in exchange for specific loot. 

All this to say, despite its apparent simplicity the system has a satisfying degree of layer that prevents it from becoming stale too quickly. The game isn’t very hard so I’ll advise people to try out the hardest difficulty first, with bosses hitting you like a truck it’ll force you to explore to upgrade your gear and use the different system to stay alive and beat your foe. You have to find a good rhythm between your different options, know when to use your guard and when to go all out on the offensive as you are often at a numerical disadvantage.

There will likely come a time when you’ll become close to unstoppable with four powerful pets that may be enough to kill your enemies alone. And as this version of the game doesn’t have a time limit you could always farm stat items to negate any difficulty, but if you’re this desperate you could also just lower the difficulty. 

You also have supporting magic sigil that appear on the screen to add magic, I totally missed the item necessary to unlock this sub-system. Oops. 

The exploration

As time goes on you’ll unlock different areas, with mandatory places to go and optional ones. I already mentioned the craft and pet system. Some drops necessary to unlock the next level of your magic will only happen in a specific place or by battling a specific optional boss. Some pets are hidden behind a small lake that you can only traverse with another pet that you get from using an item that necessitates exploring the village. This not only rewards exploration but gives the game an impression of mystery with little secrets hidden here and there, especially if you don’t use a guide. 

This is why I think playing in super hard feels important, because if the game is too easy you may just beeline to the next objective. Without forcing you to do everything, this difficulty makes you ask yourself : what I have access to at a given point, what I need to improve my current build and what is easiest to procure. 

The game is also rather generous in content with plenty of optional challenges and bosses for who looks for them. 

Conclusion

Witchspring R is a good game that punches above its weight. It is not a must play and not without flaws, but you can feel the care put into it by its dev team to create a great experience that I can only encourage you to try for yourself. 

I have an abusive relationship with Dark Souls II. I think about playing the game, I glorify it, I boot it up, and then misery. I love the game, but I also hate it. It makes me happy, but it makes me want to throw my controller. I want to recommend it, but I can’t stop complaining about it. Dark Souls is probably one of my favorite games, its only Dark Souls II I have this issue with. 

Author’s Note: I know the lore and correct terms for everything. I will be writing this review so that anyone who has no Souls knowledge can follow along. 

Background

After the release and success of Dark Souls in 2011, Dark Souls II was announced shortly thereafter in 2012 and released in 2014. The game was directed by Tomohiro Shibuya, rather than Hidetaka Miyazaki, due to Miyazaki moving on to direct Bloodborne. The game largely expands the gameplay of the original Dark Souls while attempting to maintain the same challenge as the first offered. The game was released to astounding success. Although critics have stated that it falls short of Dark Souls’ achievements.  

Dark Souls II received a remaster in the form of Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin. This remaster combined Dark Souls II and its DLC’s into one package. In addition to this, the remaster changed the game itself. Enemy positions and behaviors were changed, performance improved, and the addition of a new character and boss. This is the only version of Dark Souls II I have played. So, I’m not here to compare Vanilla and Scholar versions. Maybe that’s for another post when I actually play Vanilla. 

Story

The First Flame fades again, causing the undead curse to reappear. Seeking a cure to their undeath, the Bearer of the Curse seeks a passage to the far-off kingdom of Drangleic. Finding a vortex, the Bearer jumps in and arrives at the home of the Fire Keepers, women responsible for tending the bonfires that channel the First Flame. The Fire Keepers help the Bearer to remember some of their past and temporarily cure them of their undeath through the use of a human effigy. The Bearer is then directed to Majula, to seek stronger souls, and seek the King, lest they let the curse swallow them whole. 

Gameplay

Dark Souls II plays almost exactly like Dark Souls. For those in the audience who have never played a Souls game, let me elucidate. It’s an RPG, you start the game by selecting your class and working towards a specific build. Instead of experience points, you gain souls from defeating enemies. You use these souls to level up your character. However, if you die with these souls, you lose them. Don’t worry, there is a chance for retrieval if you return to where you died. But if you die before retrieving them, they’re gone for good. Combat consists of using melee weapons, magic, pyromancy, and more. A weapon can be equipped with either your left or right hand or even both. To defend yourself, there are shields that are equippable or the trusty dodge roll. While fighting, you can switch to two-hand either your left or right-handed weapon, as well. A notable change in combat from Dark Souls II is power stance. Using the right weapons, when you try to two-hand your left weapon, the Bearer will instead use both weapons and do almost twice the damage. Pretty cool, huh? 

Dark Souls II aims to keep the same challenge that people loved from Dark Souls; and while I feel like it does that well in some areas, it does it very poorly in others. For instance, a lot of the bosses in the game are well designed to give you a tough time. Looking-Glass Knight, Smelter Demon, Fume Knight. All great fights that capture the challenge and make you feel accomplished for overcoming. But the levels themselves... ugh. Why am I fighting two Alonne knights, while two others shoot at me with bows? This is why Dark Souls II is infamous, its extraordinary number of enemy groups. Now this isn’t a new concept, Dark Souls often had you fight groups of enemies. In Dark Souls II though, it feels like it’s everywhere. Most times when you enter a new area, at least two enemies will aggro. While you’re fighting these two, you’ll trigger another aggro. And while you have three enemies on you, there will be another one shooting you with arrows. The number of times where you just fight a single enemy is so seldom, it's unbelievable. It’s difficult not because it’s challenging, but because it’s frustrating. 

Now one thing I’ll give Dark Souls II over all the other games in the series. It actually makes New Game Plus worth it. In most other Souls games, New Game Plus is there to go through the journey again, but with your current stats and tougher enemies, minimal other changes. Dark Souls II actually adds new enemies, changes some bosses up, and even adds new items. These changes make the second journey feel more worth it than it does in the other Souls games. It’s cool to see what new weapons or spells you’ll be able to find. Plus, it's the only way to get my one true love, the Moonlight Greatsword. 

As with the rest of the series, multiplayer is a feature in Dark Souls II as well. For cooperative play, the player can summon other players (or NPCs) for help with a boss or navigating an area. Or if you’re feeling devilish, the player can invade other people’s games and give them a hard time. Some people complain about the “Soul Memory” mechanic in this game, but I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. It helped for better matchmaking and preventing twinks. My biggest complaint is, and I’m not even sure if it’s valid because of internet connections, that the hit detection feels completely jank. I’ll be taking damage from hits that missed me by three feet. Someone will get a backstab on me from the front. Don’t even get me started on parrying; it isn’t even worth it because the timing will always be off. 

Gamefeel

Despite all my grievances with Dark Souls II’s gameplay, I must say that its atmosphere is unmatched. I love the land of Drangleic so much and the story that it tells. I care for maybe two or three NPC storylines in the rest of the series combined. But in Dark Souls II, all the NPCs are so charming and dedicated to their missions. I can’t help but get invested in their stories and grow fond of the characters. Each playthrough, I’ve failed in not wearing Lucatiel’s armor >!in her memory!< after finishing her storyline. Dark Souls II probably has the best NPC quests in the series. 

All the Dark Souls games are known for their impressive views that will secretly foreshadow the coming areas. Dark Souls II is no exception to this. I love worldbuilding like this. You’ll come across a view of a large castle in the distance and think to yourself, “Huh, neat.” Then later in the game, you’ll arrive at a castle, look down over a cliffside, and realize, “Holy shit, that’s the whole path I took here. This is that same castle I saw earlier.” This is probably my favorite thing about all the Dark Souls games. The game world feels so interconnected and almost believable (cough Earthen Peak to Iron Keep cough). 

I can’t write this review without bringing up my love for the small details put into this game. Things like >!assembling the Loyce Knights for the battle against the Burnt Ivory King!<. >!Fume Knight entering his second phase immediately if you wear Velstadt’s armor!<. >!Sir Alonne committing seppuku if you manage to defeat him without taking damage!<. >!An NPC summon hints for you to burn the windmill in Earthen Peak!<. >!Secret rings for not dying or using a bonfire!<. There was so much love and care put into this game. It really shines through some of the frustrating elements. 

Conclusion

People like to rag on Dark Souls II a lot. I can’t necessarily blame them. There are good reasons to rag on this game, but also bad reasons. Despite everything though, I do really like Dark Souls II. It has a charm to it that can’t be found, in my opinion, in the rest of the franchise. I really wish that some of the gameplay designs were better. This would probably be my favorite Dark Souls game if it had the level design philosophy found in the other games.  

I could never recommend this game to be anyone’s first Souls-like. Dark Souls or Dark Souls III (or even Elden Ring now) are much better introductions to the genre. But once you have played any of these games, I could not encourage a playthrough of Dark Souls II enough.  

My Other Reviews

Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock

WHAT THE GOLF?

Tormented Souls

Pseudoregalia

DREDGE

So apparently, Tears of the Kingdom came out 3 years ago this week! This is as good a time as any to post about my thoughts on the social-media reactions to it that I've waded into, intentionally and accidentally, since I played it back in 2024. Short version: I was, and still am, shocked at how much some people hate this game.

Best I can tell, The Hatred comes primarily from people who both a) loved BOTW to death and b) felt that TOTK betrayed BOTW via some combination of many shortcomings, one being a disjointed and retconning story. Another criticism centers on how TOTK is set in the same game world, using the same map and mostly the same monuments/points of interest; and that the ways in which TOTK differed from BOTW were not enough to justify the price tag of an entire game that should've been a DLC or expansion. Another beef is the wasted potential of both the Sky and the Depths, which were selling points in Nintendo's marketing push but fell well short of what a good chunk of the fandom was hoping they'd be. There are accusations of bait-and-switch/false advertising that revolve around this.

There are other unflattering observations people have made about TOTK, but those three are the ones I encountered the most. And those three were what prompted the biggest haters to leap right past the "I don't like this game" frame of mind and land squarely on "this game is objectively bad."

My initial response to The Hatred was, okay, glad to see that so many people on the Internet have still never bothered to learn what the word "objectively" means. My second thought was that these people played a completely different game than I did, because I had an absolute blast on my playthrough.

In a roundabout way, I really DID play a different game, because I had forgotten virtually everything about BOTW by the time I played TOTK. I also didn't enjoy BOTW when I played it, which prompted me to rip through it as fast as I could, kill Ganon, and sell my copy on eBay without hesitation. My lack of mental and emotional attachment to BOTW was a major factor in how much I loved TOTK, I think. I didn't even notice all the retconning/hand-waving that happened in the plot. I discovered so much stuff and visited so many landmarks that I never touched before. Everything was fresh.

Now, I do have issues with TOTK and I do agree with The Hatred here and there. Menuing was bad, especially when employing Fuse. The post-dungeon Demon King 😲 Secret Stone 😲 cutscenes were dumb and lazily-implemented. Enemies were repetitive. The dragon tear expositions should have been linearized. The subtitle should've been "Tears of the DRAGON (not Kingdom)" for obvious reasons. The rewards for sidequests should've been more impactful. The ghost companions should've been either more useful or less distracting (ideally both). The Sky and the Depths should've had more "holy shit, that's rad" moments.

But hell if I didn't have a great time for the 200+ hours I put into that save file. And I don't think TOTK "tricked" me into having a great time, as The Hatred has sometimes accused it of doing. And hell if I'm not VERY glad I stayed away from social media before I bought it and while I played it.

I'm glad I didn't know about Hoverbikes until after I beat the game. I'm glad I didn't know that Recall could singlehandedly (har har) trivialize many shrine and dungeon puzzles. I'm glad I never tried to break the game, either on my own or by looking things up online, because I think TOTK has the potential to be a very boring game for minmaxers. And, of course, I'm glad I didn't know about The Hatred until I'd finished all the shrines, found all the root things in the Depths, finished every sidequest that interested me, ignored all the sidequests that didn't, gone everywhere I wanted to go, seen all I wanted to see, done all I wanted to do.

I encourage anyone who's avoided TOTK, because of a frothing fraction of social media, to forget what you've read and give it a shot, going in as blind as you can manage. It's not perfect, but you might have a DAMN good time with it, same as I did!

RELEASE: 2024

TIME PLAYED: 12 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★★★★

The Breakdown

+Absolutely masterful writing, with distinct characters, a compelling plot, and gut-busting humor

+Entertainingly tactical but accessible blend of XCOM tactics and puzzle gameplay

+Immaculate pacing that doesn't outstay its welcome with optional challenges for those wanting more difficulty

-Can't think of a single negative on this one, to be quite honest

Tactical Breach Wizards is everything I love about indie gaming: A clever concept immaculately executed that doesn't outstay its welcome or dilute its own charms with feature bloat. In an era of bloated budgets, creeping scope and extraneous features, this turn-based tactics/puzzle hybrid used humor and charm to strike a chord with me and made for one of my favorite games of all time.

As insane as the name 'Tactical Breach Wizards' sounds, it's about as accurate a title as you can get. The story follows Zan, a retired special ops wizard in a mystical modern world where automatic assault staves and traffic control warlocks are very real things; while the ability to use magic is rare, it has shaped the culture and nations of this setting considerably. With the ability to see exactly one second into the future, Zan is a capable specialist - but not as capable as his former partner, Liv, whose mastery over time makes her possibly the strongest woman alive, unstoppable even by entire teams of other sorcerers.

Yeah, she goes rogue. Of course she does.

Desperate to find out what went wrong in the two years since she disappeared but woefully outmatched, Zan recruits luckless storm witch Jen, necro-medic Dessa, and other allies to track Liv down and stop her from committing increasingly alarming and confusing acts of terror. It's a solid plot, but where it really shines is as a vehicle to deliver the characters from setpiece to setpiece both for elaborate tactical puzzles and to display their dazzling chemistry.

Zan is a bit of a sad sack, but beneath that is a well of experience, dry humor, self-awareness, and a desperate need to fix problems. This makes him a perfect mesh with Jen and her happy-go-lucky nature, knack for sniffing out mysteries, and occasional startling observations towards everyone else's inner workings while remaining almost willfully oblivious of her own. Their personalities, and those of the other eventual three playable pary members, not only make for incredible banter - seriously, this game rivals Disco Elysium in having my favorite dialogue ever - but summarize their playstyles as well. Honestly, I could write an entire second review just about the game's character dynamics and writing - they're that good, and despite the cutting throughline of humor, each feels distinct and complex, avoiding the flattening of their depth that often accompanies such a tone.

Each level of Tactical Breach Wizards is effectively a series of rooms full of enemies with either one or multiple breaching points. On first glance, it might seem similar to XCOM: Chimera Squad, the spinoff notable for removing the strategic layer from the long-running franchise and focusing entirely on SWAT Team-style encounters. But while Chimera Squad was still a tactics game at its core, Tactical Breach Wizards hews closer to solving puzzles than anything. You CAN play it like XCOM, and you'll probably get through it fine, but it somewhat begs for taking more liberties than the safest and low-risk shots possible.

For one thing, there's no hit percentages or ambiguity; thanks to Zan's power, you can see exactly how each turn will go before you do it, and even rewind repeatedly to experiment without any risk. Enemy actions are similarly foreshadowed; if a foe is going to target Jen for moving into cover near them, it's made immediately and abundantly clear. As a result, the challenge comes not from beating levels - doing so is honestly pretty easy - but from finding the most efficient and fun ways to do so. Sure, you COULD just take that guy out with a basic attack, but wouldn't it be hilarious to knock him into a generator to weaken him, line him up with his ally, and knock them off the wall until they're unconscious like a pair of bowling pins? Optional challenges direct the player to experiment along these lines, but only reward cosmetics to ensure those not interested don't feel left out, and respeccing each character is free and easy.

If you're familiar with the window-busting love of defenestration that developer Suspicious Developments has a long-standing obsession with in previous titles Gunpoint and Heat Signature, it's likely little surprise that the emphasis is ultimately on physics and how to exploit it not just offensively but defensively. Even the writing gets in on this, with the characters having spirited discussions about the safest and most non-lethal way to ward the windows to slowfall anyone they chuck out of them. This feedback loop of charming prose, encouraging creativity, and engaging the player is what makes it all click despite the lack of forced challenge, and some later levels throw curveballs that have as much narrative weight as gameplay impact. I can't even playfully accuse Tactical Breach Wizards of leaving me wanting more; the optional content is exactly the right epilogue, letting the player engage with its mechanics even after the well-told story ends.

It's extremely rare that I call a game perfect, but Tactical Breach Wizards is lean and focused in all the right ways to be exactly that, at least for me. Some people might crave a bit more mandatory difficulty in the core path, but it's so fun to replay levels and spice things up with different playstyles that I couldn't complain, and the writing is pitch-perfect. While the gameplay kept me interested, what really won my heart was how much I wound up invested in every single character and how emotional I found certain moments despite the otherwise frequently comedic tone. For these reasons, I put Tactical Breach Wizards very high on my must-play list.

After having A Plague Tale: Innocence sit in my library for a while, and honestly kinda being done with new games for a while, I decided to give this a shot. It's really good, and I wish I had purchased the second game together with it on sale - but even standalone it's a good experience. It does crib a lot from The Last of Us, but overall it does feel like it is its own thing even if it has very overt inspiration. Can't wait for Requiem to go on sale so I can finish the story!

#Technical Performance The game isn't really problematic technically per se, but a couple of things:

• Lock your framerate using external software (I use AMD Chill, apparently RivaTuner is better). The game doesn't offer an in-game option to lock your framerate, and honestly locked 100 looks way better than unlocked 210-245.

• If playing at 1440p or above, turn down the anti-aliasing. Turning it up makes the character models (and only the character models, strangely) look blurry and hazy, like they were fully covered in petroleum jelly.

#Story and Gameplay It's 1349, during the Black Death and the Hundred Years War, and Amicia de Rune is a 15-year-old minor noble in Aquitane. Her 5-year-old brother Hugo has been ill basically since his infancy, and has spent most of that time being cared for, which is why she doesn't know him much. One day, she and her father discover some sinister goings-on on their estate; soon after they return home, the Inquisition arrives searching for Hugo. Amicia and Hugo subsequently have to escape and find a way to survive while helping Hugo with his illness.

My Thoughts

A lot of these points were mentioned in BWTs, but I will try to expand on them.

• So much of this game feels like it took the challenge of being "budget Last of Us", and the gaps between Sony money and Focus Entertainment money really show - mouth movements occasionally don't match up, and they obviously couldn't make a combat sandbox in the same way, but it's remarkable what they did achieve - the tone, the world (this time built based on a sort of dark fantasy alternate history rather than LOU's decayed modern day), the development of Amicia and Hugo's relationship, the level of tension (magnified by Amicia dying in one hit compared to Joel being fairly hardy), and especially several scenes of horror majesty - seeing a guy being chewed to death by rats is never not unnerving even if the guy deserved it, and the way rats often erupt from the ground like oil is always terrifying.
• Hugo, in many ways, reminds me of Daniel Diaz from Life is Strange 2: he's annoying in a very realistic way, being somewhat capricious and moody (not being helped by him being extremely sheltered in his upbringing), but it's easy to forgive him - he's five, and going through terrible circumstances. Amicia doesn't really fit the Sean mold - they're obviously very different games - but she does feel like she has it together quite a bit for a 15 year old living through a world where large sections of the ground are swarming in man-eating rats. >!The bit where Amicia insists on not telling Hugo that Beatrice is still alive, leading to him literally submitting himself to the villains, is very dumb, but again - 5 years old, and his trust in Amicia, which is already pretty recently formed, has kinda gone.!<
• The supporting cast are decent. Nobody is really extraordinary, but nobody is really bad, either. Lucas is probably the most consistently enjoyable characters to watch, and Melie has her moments (like in the "Amicia the Amazon and Melie the Fury" bit), but overall they don't have a ton of screen time. Nicholas works pretty well as a lumbering, menacing presence in his scenes, and Vitalis is hilariously evil - like he's a monster, but the fun-to-watch kind, you know?
• I like how, unlike LOU, the game is functionally a stealth/puzzle game with the occasional action set piece - it makes sense that traversing the world is a challenge to finesse past rather than something to take on head-on. Some puzzles feel a little shoehorned in to add gameplay, but overall it was fairly fun.
• I do like the mechanic where one of the collectibles is Hugo finding random thematically-appropriate flowers and placing them in Amicia's hair. I do wish it carried over between levels as a sign of their budding relationship.
• I like the moments where we remember that all of the major characters are literally children - Amicia, at 15, is either the oldest or among the oldest - like during the hide and seek section, or the aforementioned Amicia the Amazon section.
• There's a couple sections which do make you feel like you don't have choices - there's a bit in Chapter 6 where Amicia and Hugo have to sneak out of a camp and the only real way to get out is to kill about half-a-dozen soldiers (with even dialogue provided) - which makes it even more meaningful where there are actual, if not clearly demarcated, choices, such as when >!Amicia and Lucas sneak into the de Rune estate and Amicia has the option to spare or kill a couple of injured Inquisition soldiers.!<
• >!Amicia and Hugo's reconciliation feels a little rushed - Hugo had been been with Vitalis for three months training his power, hated Amicia enough to bring Nicholas to Chateau d'Ombrage, and one conversation is enough for him to forgive her? I did expect him to forgive her at some point - the rest of the plot won't work otherwise - but it did feel like there was something missing, like a chapter cut for budget.!<
• There's a couple of sections where the plot feels weird: >!It's clear that the rats clearly recognize Hugo as a Macula carrier, as shown by them not touching his room and even sparing the bodies of the people close to him, like his father and the estate servants, in the de Rune estate. But they will still happily chow down on his sister or even HIMSELF, even after he awakens as a Macula carrier and gains the ability to control rats. I get that there's a part where Hugo learns how to control his power with Vitalis, which is why the rats make way for Amicia, Hugo, and company in the final mission, but it's still... strange - how do the rats recognize Hugo in some ways and not in others?!<
• Part of playing a game patiently means that you have access to information a new player couldn't, such as the knowledge before you even begin that this game has a sequel that continues the same story. I wonder how conclusive the ending felt - and it did feel at least a little conclusive: >!Hugo is still a Macula carrier, but the plague rats are gone, and now everyone has to rebuild their life elsewhere!<, if possibly open to expansion.
• The game has a crafting system, which was fine (it even has you upgrade at workbenches, similar to LOU), but the resource economy feels strange - I felt like I was pretty thorough in exploration and didn't use many resources for get-out-of-death-free cards like Somnium and Luminosa, but I could barely upgrade my sling to max, and the other equipment was completely out of my reach. It's fine, but I wonder why there were so many upgrade kits if you won't provide upgrade materials.

#Visuals and Presentation

• Game composers are not often big names by themselves - there's guys like Lorne Balfe, Inon Zur and Jesper Kyd who most people wouldn't be able to name but whose work has been heard and remembered by tons of people. One of those underrated creators is Olivier Deriviere, whose work I first heard in Don't Nod's Remember Me, and who scores a lot of the work here. The main menu theme in particular really works well here, and the sound design is just immaculate - the rats in particular feel like a marvel both technically and presentationally.
• Apart from the issue mentioned above in the technical stuff, the game looks gorgeous. It obviously does show its age a bit as a 2019 game made for the PS4/XONE generation, but the landscapes look spectacular, and the more nightmarish stuff works really well due to the game's use of light - I wonder how raytracing would affect how this game looks, particularly given its use of fire lighting up several areas.
• Charlotte McBurney and Logan Hannan are great, and everyone else ranges from decent to good. I do wish that the mouth movements matched the dialogue in any language - English or French - given how often the camera zooms in onto characters' faces.

#Conclusion It's good! I like the story, the vibes, the presentation. This game probably wouldn't exist without LOU, but lots of good media is derivative, and this game definitely has enough to stand on its own. Can't wait till Requiem goes on sale!