Last Game You Played and What You Would Rate It Out of 10

[hellhamster]

Sigh This is my second time writing this out as the page decided to crash as I was posting the original, I will have to rewrite my review so I will update it bit by bit.

Castlevania Advance Collection 8/10
These are Classics what can I say, for the price of these games you get alot of hours of play and its huge value for money.

Circle of the Moon (CotM):
This is a great game, there's only 2 things holding it back which was the lack of modes bar Magician/Thief modes and the Card grinding system which were dropped after this title. The map is not the best designed as there only seems to be 2 ways to cross the map and one of them was through teleports which are very few and far between in this game, The pixel design of the characters and bosses are great as we have to remember the game was designed for a GBA, The music was banging as is all Castlevania music but there were so few tracks and they got extremely repetitive very quickly.

Harmony of Dissonance (HoD):
Coming off the back of CotM this game was a massive step up, better art, more music and no grinding, characters moved better and the Castle design was fun, I thoroughly enjoyed this game particularly due to no grinding of cards and a better overall design layout, Maxim mode was particularly fun.

Aria of Sorrow (AoS):
Ahhh here we are, this game is applauded by many as the pinnacle of GBAvanias, to me not so much, again coming off the back of HoD the art music and game design had improved greatly and this one was special being part 1 of a 2 part vania series, my biggest hate yet love for this game was the Soul system, it was great you could change up your build and play the game many different ways with all the different soul types, the worst part, was grinding for those souls which some had the drop rate of 0.41% which could be doubled to a whopping 0.81% drop rate by buying a ring later on in the game for a stupid amount of gold being the masochist I am I grind out all souls as I met each new enemy, by the time I had finished the base story I had enough of this game and wanted out, but there was Julius mode which was extremely fun as Julius was mad OP just like Maxin before him.



Castlevania Dominus Collection 6/10
These games are a visual spectacle compared to the GBA versions, the music is hugely improved and amazing and the games, sadly these games are brought down specifically on PC by the fact they were touch screen games with a touch screen design.

Dawn of Sorrow (DoS):
Hoooo boy, coming off the back of AoS I was NOT looking forward to this one, again I loved the Soul system but the broken luck stat and abyssmal droprates of the souls really tore this game down for me, The Castle design was fantastic it was the best one yet in my honest opinion but oh my fighting the bosses while their designs were great the flaw came at the cost of sealing the bosses to which you had a few seconds to press a combination of buttons which increased the further you got in the game after fighting them and if you failed the seal they would regain some health and continue fighting to try resealing them again, yeah I hated this a lot especially towards the end as the timer to press the buttons did not increase with the button combinations you had to press. Finally You had Julius mode after finishing the main story but compared to AoS Julius had been greatly nerfed and felt sluggish compared to his previous incarnation.

Portrait of Ruin (PoR):
This game was fun if extremely short and extremely easy compared to the previous installations, this time you controlled 2 characters at the same time which was different, there was Charlotte a mage and Jonathon a whip wielding character but he can equip other weapons, Charlotte made the game feel extremely easy so I switched to playing Jonathon pretty quickly and it was still easy but not as easy, The map design in this one was questionable as you explore a smaller than usual castle to find paintings which you jump into to explore, but these are also extremely small in size, the only grinding if you choose to do so is to do the quests another character you meet during the game gives you, these quests are not needed to be completed to get the best ending. The music and pixel art was great once again, I have always loved the designs of these games be them more anime or extremely gothic looking. Once you have finished the main game you get the bonus Richter mode, who is OP as hell and just blasts through the game, hella fun character.

Order of Ecclesia (OoE):
This game is the absolute worst, while again the music and the pixel art are absolutely some of the best, this one tacks on an extremely story heavy narrative which isnt bad but its extremely predictable, In this game you play as Shanoa who is not a warrior but a mage and one of the biggest complaints I saw was shes too squishy and the games too hard which to this I feel isnt true, shes only squishy if you dont upgrade her equipment and don't learn the boss attack patterns which do become extremely readable the more you fight them, im abit torn on the Glyph system, it was fine you could choose how to play using magic and weapons but you had to find them first, the villagers quests are extremely boring and they dont really add much unless you complete them all and get the mastery ring after finishing them, but the biggest drop in quality of this game was the layout, you have multiple little maps to which some of them are literally straight corridors leading to finally getting to the final castle which is so well designed but so short and disappointing as I love the Castle parts of castlevanias. Finally once you have completed the game if you survive completing it as honestly its the worst you get Albus mode, this mode was fun as heck, Albus is OP and tears through the game.



Bring on the next collection for me Iga, I eagerly anticipate them.

Man, these are next in my backlog. Is the Dominus collection really that bad? Never had a chance to play the originals, just SOTN and Castlevania 4.

[Kiria]

Man, these are next in my backlog. Is the Dominus collection really that bad? Never had a chance to play the originals, just SOTN and Castlevania 4.

It wasnt terrible, I just found a few nit thinkies I didnt like, like the grinding of souls you could get lucky and get it first kill or you could be grinding 1 enemy for 3 hours plus to get their soul and there's roughly 120 souls in all to collect, but in Dawn of Sorrow I really hated the sealing of bosses especially towards the end as i had changed my buttons slightly and the combinations really threw me off sometimes and took multiple tries, i think the final combination is like 10 inputs and you have 10 seconds to do it, I found it incredibly frustrating, because the bosses also hit like trucks and you could be dead in 3-4 hits if you're unlucky.

PoR even though it was the easiest was possibly my fave due to the non urgency of grinding and it had some great areas but it was relatively a short game, i think i finished that one the fastest out of all the Metroidvanias in these collections.

I definitely say play them, they're great games and they are classics at this point, we all have varying tastes and these were just my thoughts.

[Relapses]

Mouthwashing - 7.5/10

First things first: Man, I fucking love this game's aesthetic. It is very clearly going for PSOne-era Silent Hill and that is such a genuinely unique spin. I've always been a fan of self-contained space station stories, too. Really, the mood is immaculate on this one.

Sadly, the gameplay itself is a bit... uh, non-existent? This isn't a game as much as it is a vehicle to provide you a very on-rails story (told out of order). That isn't a bad thing, but there were a few bits of gameplay which were overly cliche and you can only run down an endless hallway so many fucking times before it kinda gets a bit predictable. Still, it manages to switch things up a few times and it's not an outwardly bad game by any stretch of the imagination. Excellent sound design supports some genuinely disturbing content. This game legitimately scared the everliving fuck out of me a few times. All in all, it's a well-told, well-planned story told in a fairly interesting manner that elevates itself by using an aesthetic that is wholly its own. The game is also very short; I finished it in two sittings and you could easily finish the game in a single sitting if you're diligent. Check a few trailers, see if you vibe with the style and give it a shot. If nothing else, you'll never look at ponies quite the same way again.

It's 10 bucks on Steam, too. Hard to beat that.

Mouthwahsing - 9/10

Revisiting my score on this one. 7.5 is way too low. After sitting down with the game, replaying it from the beginning and examining its themes both on a macro and interpersonal level, I can comfortably say this is one of very few pieces of art that has helped me better understand the human condition and my place in this world. I haven't been able to get this game out of my mind for the last few days. There is so, so much subtext for a game whose run time is barely over 2 hours. What I found particularly profound is that the game almost directly called me out in a very unnerving manner, so much so that I completely fucking missed the glaring red flags his character had despite long sequences of the game being designed, deliberately, to help people understand it. Hell is other people and there are no truly egalitarian leaders. Some problems can't be fixed with S tier people skills. You have to get your hands dirty. You have to take responsibility.

If not for this very short run time and a few of the "action" sequences in this game being very, very annoying to me, I'd likely have this in my GotY slot. Certainly, no other game has caused me to examine my own world view as critically as this one has. Yeesh man, I want off Polle's Wild Ride.

[Soulflayer]

Dragon age: Veilguard - 7/10

I enjoyed all the effort in the game. But in the end it is too diferent from the predecesors. The more I play it, less time I wanted to spent on it.
No ng+ or something like that.

Wayfinder 8.5/10

Really fun and time absorbing game. A lot to farm, now that is more like a borderlands tipe of game.

[Kumorii]

Final Fantasy 16 - 7.5/10

Good foundation and enjoyable combat. Not a very good Final Fantasy game, but a solid game overall. Story and world is well made.
What drags it down is mostly minor stuff not surrounding the main questline. Even if the world building is great, the world feel small. Side quests aren't that great except a few, thankfully there's not many of them.

The ability system and setting them up is fun, problem is that you can't change it when an intro video plays, so to get the most out of it you have to know the upcoming enemy. Minor stuff like that hampers it a bit.

[Edge-]

I think I'm about done with it even if I haven't finished the story, but AC: Valhalla. Kinda hard to give it a proper rating, but 6.5/10 I guess.

Solid if not mostly uninspired Ubi-esque open-world RPG, with the most interesting bits being many of the little "mystery" side quests instead of anything in the main story. It's just too much fucking game for me, which is weird because I sank around twice as many hours into Odyssey and its DLC, and when you buy the full bundle it throws every fucking DLC starter quest at you. I completed just about all of the main zones minus a few bits (mostly alter turn-ins for fish...fuck fishing or shooting fish with a bow) and the main storyline up to near the end, I assume. But between trying to figure out what remaining pre-DLC side-quests are, how to talk to Randvi for the like 3 missions I need to because she only gives me options for taking new territories or flirting, or how to even get back the main mission as I don't even see it in my log anymore - and dumping another like 20 hours into it over the break - I'm about tapped out.

Between the annoying experience with the DLC and quests in general and just how much feels like padding it loses a lot of points. It's a fine "checklist RPG" which is exactly up my alley and the combat is fine enough, though eventually feels pretty trivial with the ability to assassinate most enemies (even big ones) easily and generally stomp around combat. At least I was with my 2h sword/shield warrior setup which was just block-countering for the big damage or dodging for the time slow to get in big hits constantly, even the witches/seers or whatever that were like 100 power over me were pretty easy pushovers as a result.

I'm a bit conflicted because part of me does want to actually finish the game but...I've run out of motivation and I'm eager to free up the like 150GB of space in preparation for PoE2.

Now to load up Suicide Squad because I couldn't say no for a whopping Tree Fiddy.

[This One Time At Bandcamp]

Black Ops 6 - Campaign
Score: 7/10

(Havn't played CoD in a few years, but thought I would give it a shot again)

Main part of the game takes place in 1991, with clips of the Berlin wall falling and other time relevant references.
Was fun seeing real people from the Cold War-era in the game as well - both as Cameos and real politicians on pictures on the walls etc.

They tried a new way of chosing your missions and create a hub for you to solve riddles in and find more hidden lore.
The puzzles and hidden lore was really fun for me to decipher.

The missions often give the player a choice of approach and your choices of dialogue will effect how the mission plays out aswell.
This gives the player a sense of freedom - even though the games overall storyline wont change.
Your choices in the main hub, will help the player on later missions as well.

Some parts of the storyline, I didn't like - the idea was good but badly played out.
Other parts of the storyline i really enjoyed - such as the missions digging deeper into the Black Ops Zombies lore.
As well as some pretty spooky gameplay, that made my toes curl (I'm ashamed to admit).


The good spots in the campaign, definitely helped the game reach 7/10 for me and made it an overall entertaining playthrough.
The achievements and challenges create some fun ways of replying the missions again, if you're a completionist like me.
I found the campaign had around 4 hours of great gameplay, and maybe 2 hours of mediocre gameplay - therefore landing on 7/10

[Malkiah]

I'm a bit conflicted because part of me does want to actually finish the game but...

you're not missing anything.
open world rpgs are currently my favorite genre so this is coming from a fan of that type of game, i also sank tons of hours into odyssey and origins, and really didn't care for valhalla at all even though i did finish it.
the story ends on a real "okay well i guess it's over now" kind of vibe, with the final chapters being horribly derailed by a bunch of BS dealing with franchise breadcrumbs.
(side note: man, i wish the open world rpg trilogy was just "fantasy historical epic" games instead of being AC games. i found all the "AC" franchise and lore shit the most tedious parts of all 3 games and plowed through it as quickly as possible)

to share some of my own thoughts on valhalla: it felt surprisingly bleak, but not in a way that had any narrative purpose. it didn't feel like it had any of the levity that origins or odyssey had, nor any of the hokey schlocky fun. the overall vibe was just kinda like... well this is a downer.
i also thoroughly disliked the combat and the way that they decided to try and go 'soulslike-lite' with it compared to the other two games, which felt especially jarring to me after odyssey because that one has an almost god of war original trilogy fun button-mashy feel to it i got a real kick out of.

anyways, i guess here's to hoping that shadow tries to rip off ghost of sashimi instead of continuing down the soulsclone road for the combat.

[Edge-]

(side note: man, i wish the open world rpg trilogy was just "fantasy historical epic" games instead of being AC games. i found all the "AC" franchise and lore shit the most tedious parts of all 3 games and plowed through it as quickly as possible)

I didn't get far in Odyssey, but yeah...the AC stuff often feels sorta out of place even if they generally do a good job of weaving it into the storyline. Stuff like the little glitch puzzles in Valhalla just made me groan at the end of the day. Valhalla, gameplay/design wise at least, did a better job of merging the action combat and AC/assassination shit compared to Odyssey, but at some point it becomes pretty trivial to just ignore the stealth aspects and just walk into castles and casually get the wealth/whatever else is there while either ignoring enemies or literally just taking out the few dozen big guys fairly quickly in straight up fights - at least in Odyssey/Valhalla.

It reminds me that I still need to try Immortals Fenyx Rising since that seems a bit more like what you describe. But I'd be curious what the AC team could do with a proper open world RPG without needing to shackle themselves to the AC franchise.

[Malkiah]

It reminds me that I still need to try Immortals Fenyx Rising since that seems a bit more like what you describe.

i don't say this to dissuade you but merely to provide info so you can make an informed decision about a video game purchase:
fenyx rising is like... wow how would i describe this... a YA version of an open world RPG.
it's a real "fun for ages 12-14" kind of vibe to it i guess? the atmosphere and humor and all the voice acting and the writing is very low key to the point of being kinda stupid to a 40-something gamer, and the game play matches the tone.
it was entertaining and i didn't regret the purchase, but go into it knowing it's not the 'god of war lite' that it kind of markets itself as, it's much more 'what if spyro the dragon were an open world RPG'.

it's a nice little 'play it and forget about it' game, so if you buy it do so knowing that.

[Eapoe]

Dragon Quest 3 2D HD-Remake (what a mouthful) 6.5/10
The updated graphics were nice, and a fun experience for those that like traditional JRPGs. I enjoyed my time with it, but it definitely hits a few slog parts where you absolutely need to grind out some XP.

[Captain N]

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous: 9/10

Wanted to try more CRPGs after BG3 and this scratched the itch nicely. I'm only in Chapter 3 but I feel like the characters and story are well-written and the combat is fluid and fair.

NHL 25: 4/10 Ive bought every version of this game since 2009 (Yes I throw money at EA despite knowing better) and this has to be by far the worst experience I have ever had. The game prides itself on the "new ICE-Q AI teammates" but they're the worst Ive ever seen. They don't play the puck when its right in front of them -- they'll throw a puck back towards the goalie even when the forwards are exhausted instead of clearing the zone -- and my personal favorite the goaltender will occasionally throw the puck into his own net. Maybe after tweaking some sliders I'll change my score -- but for right now every difficulty from Rookie all the way up to Superstar has no difference. The AI is stupid across the board.

[Yriel]

i don't say this to dissuade you but merely to provide info so you can make an informed decision about a video game purchase:
fenyx rising is like... wow how would i describe this... a YA version of an open world RPG.
it's a real "fun for ages 12-14" kind of vibe to it i guess? the atmosphere and humor and all the voice acting and the writing is very low key to the point of being kinda stupid to a 40-something gamer, and the game play matches the tone.
it was entertaining and i didn't regret the purchase, but go into it knowing it's not the 'god of war lite' that it kind of markets itself as, it's much more 'what if spyro the dragon were an open world RPG'.

it's a nice little 'play it and forget about it' game, so if you buy it do so knowing that.

I'd disagree. Or at least partly because, yes, the story is a bit like a disney movie. But the gameplay and the world/puzzles are superb. The best ubisoft open world game by far. I'd unironically would give it a 9.5/10.

[Donald Hellscream]

X-com: Chimera Squad, I bought this years ago and for some reason never got around to playing it.
I have yet to complete it, I am about 6-7 hours in so far, but I will say that I like this game a lot, it does in some rather large ways depart from the other X-com games, but I do like that each character isn't just a randomly generated one and somewhat have their own personality, and I also like how the missions play on a breach and clear room by room basis, which I suppose makes sense since you are pretty much like a SWAT team. Its not the X-com I am used to, but it seems solid enough.

7/10 so far.

[Redwyrm]

Dragon Quest 3 2D HD-Remake (what a mouthful) 6.5/10
The updated graphics were nice, and a fun experience for those that like traditional JRPGs. I enjoyed my time with it, but it definitely hits a few slog parts where you absolutely need to grind out some XP.

Well, that is kind of Dragon Quest's thing. Pretty much all the DQ games hit a difficulty spike where you need to grind to get past. Oh, and be prepared to use buffs and debuffs not just on bosses but regular encounters as well.


Visions of Mana (so far) 8/10

Really enjoying this game. Lot of hidden things to find. A little platforming. Game is a little easy even on the harder difficulties (especially with one broken character/class). The only annoying thing is getting stun locked in battle from enemy attacks. Story is light hearted but has a little bit of depth to it (free will vs sacrifice). I am not usually one to go for action fighting (more of a turn based player) but this isn't too complicated and gives you lots of options for build diversity and your team companions aren't completely useless. Although they could be a little more liberal with healing.

[DarkAmbient]

Currently playing Hogwarts Legacy, still in early game. Pretty nice so far. Hogwarts and Hogsmeade look amazing. Gameplay and voice acting are fine. Feels a little shallow and superficial though.

[Kathandira]

Half Sword Play Test 8/10

Medieval Combat fighting game. 3rd Person Perspective. Physics based combat. WSAD to Move, Mouse to attack. Additional keys for Stances and Modes.

As someone who dabbled in learning swordsmanship, This game is soooo good! Designed with historical european martial arts (HEMA) in mind.

I'd give it a 10/10, but there is so little to the game right now that the last two points are reserved for when new maps, and and essential features are added.



Sorry for this being a video about an update to the game. But the poster, Heart Over Death, always impresses with his clips. And this video has quite a few good ones.

[Fuddruckers]

Total War: Warhammer 3

[Eapoe]

Well, that is kind of Dragon Quest's thing. Pretty much all the DQ games hit a difficulty spike where you need to grind to get past. Oh, and be prepared to use buffs and debuffs not just on bosses but regular encounters as well.


Visions of Mana (so far) 8/10

Really enjoying this game. Lot of hidden things to find. A little platforming. Game is a little easy even on the harder difficulties (especially with one broken character/class). The only annoying thing is getting stun locked in battle from enemy attacks. Story is light hearted but has a little bit of depth to it (free will vs sacrifice). I am not usually one to go for action fighting (more of a turn based player) but this isn't too complicated and gives you lots of options for build diversity and your team companions aren't completely useless. Although they could be a little more liberal with healing.

Yes, I know. Been playing these types of games since I around 1986 . The grind aspect is fun for me (at least for a while), but I always get to a point where I just want to play the game straight thru.
Some games, the grind doesn’t hit me as hard. This one did for some reason.
Like I originally posted, I did enjoy the game overall, but it just got dragged down a bit by this aspect. The rest of the drop in score is simply because it is very much a product of its time, regardless of the HD update.

[tehealadin]

Ys X Nordics - 8.5/10

Another solid Ys game. Didn't grab me quite as much as VIII did, but still really good. Enjoyed the relationship with Karja, felt the ARPG combat was fairly solid.