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

[hellhamster]

Again, it takes everything else out of a fight. You don't need knowledge, you just have to know when to hit 'e' and there is mostly a clear audio queue when to press it. You don't need any tactics, no builds, no special abilities, priority targets, health or mana management, nothing is important besides parrying every attack.
It's a nice gimmick for one game but it hope it doesn't affect the genre.

Simon says hello lol.

[vian]

Just did another drunk playthrough of BG3 with friends.

Still 10/10

[RyanEX]

Expedition 33 - 10/10. This will be this generations FF7 or FF6/Chrono Trigger.

The music, the characters, the environment and the enemies. As close to perfect as you could get.

It should get GoTY...but I kinda doubt it. It highlights the major issues in the gaming industry...corruption and bloat...that they'd not want pointed out. They'll let it get nominated, but something safe will win.

[hellhamster]

Expedition 33 - 10/10. This will be this generations FF7 or FF6/Chrono Trigger.

The music, the characters, the environment and the enemies. As close to perfect as you could get.

It should get GoTY...but I kinda doubt it. It highlights the major issues in the gaming industry...corruption and bloat...that they'd not want pointed out. They'll let it get nominated, but something safe will win.

I think you overestimate this year's games. So far Kingdom Come 2 and Split Fiction may have something to say but they are not of the same calibre, and there is not much potentially threatening coming out. Only Metroid Prime 4, Donkey Kong and Death Stranding 2 are the ones to really watch I think.

[DarkAmbient]

Finally got round to playing Starfield (£1 deal for two weeks of Gamepass). I was not expecting to hate it but I did. I thought it was awful. A weirdly sterile universe with copy-pasted locations and boring procgen environments, rubbish talent trees and bland writing. I didn't like anything to do with the space ships. Even the menus felt bad. So glad I didn't buy this. Uninstalled, never to be played again.

[Jastall]

Finally got round to playing Starfield (£1 deal for two weeks of Gamepass). I was not expecting to hate it but I did. I thought it was awful. A weirdly sterile universe with copy-pasted locations and boring procgen environments, rubbish talent trees and bland writing. I didn't like anything to do with the space ships. Even the menus felt bad. So glad I didn't buy this. Uninstalled, never to be played again.

Starfield is just boring. Boring combat, boring exploration, boring aesthetics, boring setting, boring characters, boring quests, boring cities, nothing stands out, all of it is some grey sludge that makes the average Ubisoft open world checklist game look like a thrilling joyride. I lasted 6 hours or so myself and that was 4 more than the game ever deserved.

[Zuben]

V Rising - 8/10

It piqued my interest when it first came out to early access, but as I was still deep in Valheim I thought to let it cook some more. Well, it got three major content patches, Oakveil as the latest, till I got to it. Stunlock Studio's patch policy is peculiar: Unlike in Valheim, where each new patch means a new harder area that provides more powerful gear, V Rising does it differently in that content patches re-shape the overall experience. I realized this when the V Blood path led me to Mortium while I was otherwise still active in Dunley Farmlands. Considering that area wasn't added to the game until last year and houses the ultimate end boss, I expected it to be an end-game area, not something you dwell into at half-point. It does have end-game relevant gear upgrades in its periodical events and there is an end-game boss there too besides Dracula. But otherwise it's basically a mid-point area, Dracula's garden really being the only one that permanently houses high level mooks in that area. Other than that, Silverlight, Gloomrot North and Oakveil are the endgame areas of interest.

Anyhow, the gist of the gameplay experience is that you're a vampire, who gets stronger as you defeat V Bloods. They are bosses cursed/blessed by Dracula's blood that rained everywhere when he was defeated 1000 years ago or something. Their defeat also unlocks various technologies you can add to your personal castle. This is a fun gameplay loop imo, and I got really into designing my castle too.

However, I'm now at the end of the game and I have pretty much unlocked everything but Dracula's complete armor set, which I presume is the best in the game. I also have four different weapons in their second best forms. Second, because getting the best version is down to sheer luck, which means a whole lot of farming. I doubt it would make much difference anyhow.

The thing is, my typical problem with games has risen its head in V Rising as well—I've gotten to the end-game and therefore lost interest to move on and actually finish the game. Five major end-game bosses in Talzur, Solarus, Megara, Adam and Dracula. Defeat them and you've basically finished the game, unless you want to engage in multiplayer mayhem. I managed to defeat Talzur and Solarus rather easily. I could take my time with them, easily dodging what they were throwing at me and shooting them with magic and bolts when it was safe. But then I took a break, as I anticipated the other three would be harder since they were added in content patches. My experience with DLC and content patches is that they tend to be harder, regardless of the game in question. The break was not a good idea as it only reinforced my lethargy towards finishing the game.

It's been about two weeks since I defeated Solarus and I decided to finally have a go at Megara. I first cleared some local mooks near her to get my bearings on the controls back into my muscle memory. Once I was confident in my gameplay I chugged my usual buffs and went at her.

It was as I expected—Megara was worlds apart from Talzur and Solarus. No matter how much magic and crossbow bolts I launched at her, it didn't feel like I was doing any damage. Dodging her attacks was harder in that bullet hell way and each failure took a good chunk of my life away. I could swear she's also healing herself. Well, the fight was hard and my lethargy hadn't gone anywhere, so I decided to cheat and looked up some strats. Corrupted blood seems to help, so I tried that... no change, she was still hard af. Didn't even get her to second phase. I tried different approaches, but nothing seemed to work.

So ef it. I think I'm good. I can't say I finished V Rising, but I believe I got the intended experience out of it. It's a swell game while it lasts, but when there are only hard af boss fights left, I'm not really interested anymore. Who knows, maybe Adam and Dracula would be easier, considering Megara is a fresh new addition into the game. But I don't care. I shall let this game rest indefinitely and move on to something else.

8/10 feels right, because while I think the game does its thing really well, the fantasy of being a vampire lord is rather surface level. You don't interact with the world in any way but combat and some commerce with merchants. The latter is the only reason for disguising yourself, it's not like you get to observe townsfolk life in some special way. And when they see you as a vampire (a rather hot vampire lady in my case) it's all panic and nothing else. Guards and special enemies will attack you according to their designed kit, civilians run away or cover in fear. The servants you have converted for yourself are just as superficial—they wander aimlessly in your castle until you send them to attack an area on the map for supplies, which is just a "receive these resources once this amount of hours has passed, and this is the percentage of success for it". The castle is cool and I guess you get to show it off to your friends if you play multiplayer, but otherwise the fantasy isn't well-served. The most personality the game can muster is from the V Bloods, as they are quite talkative in combat.

One thing I was also missing was adding a waifu to the castle. Some of the servants I nabbed could be considered hot, but as I said, they lack personality. Keely, one of the lowest V Bloods, would've served well as the (second) lady of the castle. Or Meredith from the Haunted Iron Mine. Get to it, Stunlock!

[KrayZ33]

V Rising - 8/10


One thing I was also missing was adding a waifu to the castle. Some of the servants I nabbed could be considered hot, but as I said, they lack personality. Keely, one of the lowest V Bloods, would've served well as the (second) lady of the castle. Or Meredith from the Haunted Iron Mine. Get to it, Stunlock!

Ya.
The servants are more of a multiplayer thing for PvP, I too would've loved to do more with them.
I would love to have a mob or enemies in general, attack my castle from time to time too and let them help out in defending it.

Game is amazing though. The castle building is so easy and great, too bad the DLCs are so freaking expensive... but I guess getting the gameplay related stuff for free is the better deal in the end.
I played this before Dracula with a friend and then with the latest addition of that new "faction", again, in co-op.

The contextual storytelling in this game is amazing. The world feels truely alive. The Dracula stuff was new to me and I was smitten by it's addition.

I think it's cool that the bosses have hardmodes as well when you play "brutal" (new abilities, new phases etc.)

[Pozz]

Starfield is just boring. Boring combat, boring exploration, boring aesthetics, boring setting, boring characters, boring quests, boring cities, nothing stands out, all of it is some grey sludge that makes the average Ubisoft open world checklist game look like a thrilling joyride. I lasted 6 hours or so myself and that was 4 more than the game ever deserved.

This was my experience in it as well. In terms of my own entertainment value it's probably close to a 3/10, as a product probably more alongside an average 5/10-6/10, I was just personally offended how drab and boring it all was.

[Paperfox]

Baldur's Gate 3
Still playing this masterpiece.
I initially bought this to support an independent developer. But wow is it good. The time people have spent in the character selection screens is greater than some game's \played times.
Until I played BG3 I didn't really think story mattered much in a videogame.

[PACOX]

FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time - 8/10

WTF is this game even? I went from Doom to this and this game has consumed it. Normal had I just saw this come across my Steam page I would have kept on scrolling based off looks alone but a friend was obsessed so I checked it it. Its a semi-open world actin JRPG cozy ahh game. Apparently its part of a beloved franchise too? I had no idea. You play a character thats shot throught a portal to a strange world, yadda yadda, anime plot. You are giving 14 Lives to choose from, Lives being classes. You can choose to stick to one or bounce between as many as you like, each has its own skill tree and level. You can play with friends and/or along side a pretty big cast of side characters. The plot is JRPG, the gameplay is what makes this game and why you can see its highly reviewed. Its kind of like an old 2D Zeldra made 3D and everything is as smooth as butter. Its fairly simply but polished and refined. Theres very little friction between swapping classes (which are split between combat, crafting, gathering), very little friction between exploring the various zones or building up your home base. Crossplay, crosssave, play and any modern platform. Just simple fun. I'm 40 hours in, barely touched the main plot, have like 20 something follows just pillaging dungeons and leveling the classes.

[Benggaul]

Pharaoh - A New Era 5/10

As an avid fan of the original Pharaoh + Cleopatra DLC from Impressions games back in the day I was looking forward to this "refresh" with improved graphics and what I thought would be some bug fixes and such. Instead what you get is a graphical "improvement" that looks more akin to mobile games--or those weird non-games that show up as Youtube ads sometimes, a neutering of several game mechanics (war is reduced to an autobattle) and if anything more bugs than were present in the original.

There were perhaps one or two QOL improvements that enhanced the game a little such as the ability to draw from a "global" worker pool instead of relying on walkers from each industry pathing towards housing districts, but ultimately if you're a fan of city builder games and Pharaoh in particular then you are better off playing the original (which is available from Steam or GOG for a ridiculously good value of like 5$ or so).

Fortunately I did not have to pay to try this one out, but if I had I would have refunded if possible. Such a disappointment.

[kranur]

Completed 2 recently ...

Oblivion Remastered - 9/10 Just awesome, spent 110 hours to get 100% achievements. Not 10/10 because funny glitches are one thing but crashes and bugs that lead to not being able to complete a quest anymore are another.

Doom The Dark Ages - 8-9/10 Very fun, very badass, loved it. But the robot/dragon parts were very underwhelming, to the point where I couldn't wait for them to end.

[SavoirFaire]

Blue Prince: 9/10

A bit of roguelite, bit of a puzzle game. I haven’t played a game with a notebook beside me in a really long time, and I’m loving it. I feel like this game is like fighting a hydra: solve one puzzle and discover pieces of two more. For doing what it sets out to do and doing it well, I’d put it up there with Bindings of Issac, Hollow Knight, and Hades. If this doesn’t win Indy GOTY accolades this year, then I can’t wait to see the competition.

[Faldric]

Doom The Dark Ages - 8-9/10 Very fun, very badass, loved it. But the robot/dragon parts were very underwhelming, to the point where I couldn't wait for them to end.

I have played Doom Eternal in preparation for this and in comparison Dark Ages felt sluggish. It's a good game, but I hope they go back to the previous gameplay style.

[kranur]

I have played Doom Eternal in preparation for this and in comparison Dark Ages felt sluggish. It's a good game, but I hope they go back to the previous gameplay style.

Haven't played the other 2, although I have them. Without previous games to compare to, I liked the pace and the shield. Seen quite a few not digging the shield.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

(see my prior reviews of Sakura Wars 1 and 5)





Sakura Wars 2: Thou Shalt Not Die review

Overall a very good game. Like with Trails Through Daybreak 2, I found this more enjoyable to play than a $100,000,000+ FF7 Remake game, pausing my slow slog through Rebirth to consume this.


Story and Characters



The game takes place in an alternate fantasy 1926 Taisho era Japan. In this world, Japan is seemingly not currently involved in any foreign conflicts, nobody mentions the emperor, and steampunk/magitek technology is being researched. A few rare individual are born with spirit powers, and monstrous demons prey upon humanity. You play as naval ensign Ichiro Ogami, a young man blessed with spirit powers, who is assigned to lead a squad of mech pilots called the Flower Division using their spirit powers to fuel the mechs. Apparently young men with spirit powers are in short supply, so the rest of your squad are young ladies with spirit powers, many of whom are foreigners. The Flower Division is based in a theater, and when they are not fighting they are instead rehearsing for their next play. The game is broken into a chapter format, where the first half of each chapter has you walking around the theater during the day and the night seeing various skits and subplots advance. Then half way through, the bad guys start plotting and the second half is about fighting evil. Rinse repeat for a dozen chapters or so.






The slice of life skits really make the characters feel real, and the game is able to build drama and suspense via character stories and relationships without having to resort to cheap end of the world plots. Unfortunately, there were a couple of hiccups. Kohran's sudden unearned angsting in chapter 4, and a sudden a rehash of a Sakura centric story connected to the Anti-Kouma Corps from the prior game. SW2 goes to greater lengths to flesh out its world than the prior game did, but it feels odd that the aftermath of large scale events that happen later on is not explored.

Sakura Wars has a heavy emphasis on romance. SW2 to me feels very notable in how not only can you carry your romance over from the prior game (usually in any serialized RPG series, optional romances are either reset or only one of the options are canonized. The 13 game long Trails series is a notorious offender), but you get many scenes with your love woven throughout the entirety of the game (as opposed to just getting a small handful of token scenes, if at all). In the first game I chose Sumire, who I carried over into this game. Though the series is named Sakura Wars and the big girl featured in the center of the promotional material is named Sakura, I have never felt that I was "supposed" to have picked Sakura, and this game made me chosen love Sumire feel like the main heroine. (A common complaint amongst JRPG fans is that if the game allows you to pick different heroines than the poster girl, the main poster girl gets so emphasis that you feel like you were supposed to have picked her from the get go). So SW2 feels pretty exceptional here.

Another thing too is that the romance starts from minute 1, as opposed to most other JRPGs and VNs where it doesn't really start kicking in until the latter portion. So you actually get to see the characters be together rather than in an ending CG. Well, not quite. SW2 takes place over a full year, and by the end of SW2, Ogami and Sumire had been going out for... what? Two years since she began warming up to him half way through SW1? At this point there should be talk about getting married. Maybe that's why SW2 has the conclusion it does, to keep you looking forward to the ending in SW4.


Walking with Sumire in the second half of the first game.


Carrying on my SW1 choice into SW2, I was immediately reunited with Sumire from the very first scene, and she got scenes all throughout. Not sidelined, resetted, or forgotten.


As with the prior game (and the JRPG/VN genre as a whole usually), the characters were very likeable, and most of them feel like they really inhabit the world they exist in. The game not only carries over the characters from the first game, but also introduces several new likeable characters:

• Orihime on paper feels like a rehash of Sumire from early SW1, being a young noble lady showing off her cleavage who is standoffish towards the MC, but Orihime's voice actor does a good job making her sound different, and they ultimately wind up having different stories and feeling like different people. It helps that Sumire in SW2 is pretty patient and caring.
• The stoic tomboy Reni very much helps round up the team, gives Ogami a dependable comrade as well as someone to tutor, and also gives Iris another character to bond with besides Ogami.
• Kayama (who you may know from SW5) is introduced here as a slightly dorky but still dependable ally, though the dangerous and alienating nature of his job as a spy is glossed over.
• Deputy Commander Ayame from the first game gets brought back as her cousin Kaede, a little unfortunate that there was no originality here but at least she is pleasant.
• The trio of flamboyant gays now living in the basement are sometimes funny, but quickly wind up becoming one note. Only a couple times did it feel like they were actually useful.
• The fill-in gift shop attendant of Tsubomi is mostly there to make the world feel larger and introduce us to the offscreen Maidens' Academy.
• Minister of the navy Yamaguchi is introduced and has not done anything yet, so maybe he will wind up being important in SW4.
• You may meet relatives of who you romance. I romanced Sumire, and her family were not particularly fleshed out but given dimension to the world.

While the cast of the prior game are present, fans of Kohran and Maria might be disappointed, as they do not get much focus or get to show off what was unique about them. Kohran still feels a little fake, as if she isn't a person inhabiting the world like the others and is just a funny cartoon engineer/technobabbler. Maria however feels like she doesn't get a chance to shine. In the first game she was the secondary team leader, and also shot a villain and IIRC kicked his body off the roof. But in this game you don't see her lead (even in the two missions where the team splits up), and she doesn't get to shoot anybody.

While a year has passed and the team are now true comrades with each other, I do miss that it is overall not possible to step on anyone's toes in SW2 (aside from Orihime, who is pissed at you no matter what you do for the first 20 hours). You spent most of the first game with Sumire being a little bitchy, a lot of options could cause Sakura to diss you, and Maria wasn't trusting of you. There was also a part where you could eavesdrop on Kanna talking to Maria, and then Kanna opens the door and sees you there and gets pissed. So you had to consider what you were doing and how people would react. But in SW2, you can do almost anything and never really antagonize anyone. Maria is now the only character left who can step on your toes if you say certain things (pressing Ogami when he lets slip that he was underwater right after the hot springs segment, or Maria catching you reading a pickup artist guide in the library, or if you knock on her door at night).





As for the best characters, I thought Commander Yoneda stuck out a lot. You do you feel he is on your side, but he is also able to put his foot down. He strikes a good balance between joviality, friendliness, and seriousness. Iris, Reni, and Kanna feel well realized. And also Sumire too, but I romanced her so her extra scenes and that added context might have changed my perception of her.




As for the villains, they are a mixed bag. The Demon King and the Five Elements do an okay job as fodder villains for most of the runtime. Mokojiki and Kasha are probably the most unidimensional and boring. The rest of the Five Elements - Kongou, Tsuchigumo, Suiko, and the Demon King - feel more two dimensional and mildly threatening, given that they come up with more subtle plans to defeat the heroes such as trying to deprive them of funding, infiltrating them, or ambushing them while out on vacation. However, as usual the villains overall are never seen operating together, and are each fought separately. We get one scene where Kongou is trying to radio Saki and send her reinforcements. It would be nice to have seen more coordination like this.





Unfortunately, the final villain, Army Minister Kyogoku, was a real disappointment. With him being a human and a military higher up, I expected that he would have much more depth than the cartoonish kill/conquer everyone blah blah characterization that most of the demon villains in this series have. And his motivations are incoherent, which makes him worse than many of the fodder chapter villains. Another issue is not just the writing, but also the voice direction. We have also had several generic "kill/conquer everyone" demon villains in this franchise, but the ones that stand out do so because of their voice actors, either by making them feel passionate and thus threatening (Kasha from this game, Ranmaru from SW5), or by making them feel more like real people (Kongou and Tsuchigumo from this game), or by giving them the idea that there might be depth or charisma to them (Demon King from this game, Oda Nobunaga from SW5).


Army Minister Kyogoku


(Oda Nobunaga from Sakura Wars V)


He also felt like a missed opportunity, because typically military or government characters in fiction tend to be able to be more threatening onscreen than the generic evils, as they can wield their authority to successfully impede, defame, or dispossess the heroes. You often see this in superhero stories and in Korean Dramas. Dolores Umbridge. Etc. Army Minister Kyogoku could have easily been that. His introductory scene created tension because he was a higher up and our heroes were on his shitlist who were afraid to retaliate against him after he mocked Sakura's father.

In spite of the disappointing final villain, the game still manages to have a memorable ending. Ogami is in the springtime of love when he gets sent overseas by the navy, leading into the next game set in Paris, before his return to Japan in SW4. I wonder if the devs had planned that far ahead. I am looking forward to seeing the reunion in SW4... when that gets fan translated.





Gameplay

The highlight of the franchise's gameplay is how it uses interactivity and timed dialogue windows to make the visual novel segments more engaging. Hearing the timer beeping and seeing the gauge run out, and the risk of making a bad choice that lowers myself in the eyes of the characters made me sit up in my chair and pay attention. Letting the timer run out and remaining silent may also be a good or bad option too. Long timers are also sparingly used to great effect to elevate the tension in climatic negotiations, or to heighten the temptation of doing something like reading a person's private diary that was sitting on the table while you heard the beeping noise. (Example)

SW2 introduces a mechanic where the dialogue options available can change if you wait long enough. Early on, the game tutorializes to you that this might be a bad thing to wait and that characters might react negatively if they think you are slow. However, this idea is quickly forgotten, and you almost always want to wait to see if more dialogue options appear. You can almost never wait too long and then have to pick a bad option.

There are other miscellaneous uses of interactivity. You don't just enter someone's room, but instead start outside their door and then have to knock on it and hear if they are there. There might be timed conversations during battle where you need to recall the color of a ribbon a girl heard earlier that day to give her a moral boost (or, if you fail, give her a stat debuff). There is a newly added radio where you have to turn the knob to tune into people's specific number to be able to contact them. Etc. These little details help make the world feel more immersive.

The other thing Sakura Wars does is have timed adventure segments where you can wander around the theater (or in SW5's case, different streets in New York), and time will advance by 10 minutes for each room you visit, characters move around if enough time passes, and you only have so much time per night. There is no icon labelling who is in what room before you enter it, so you have to be paying attention to what is going on in the story and use some predictive thinking to find the people you are looking for. If it is day time and a play is coming up, then characters might be practicing on stage or be in the dressing room. If it is night time then people might be in their rooms. Kohran loves engineering and is often down in the hangar. Sometimes people are in the courtyard or on the balcony. Etc.




However, there are a lot of rooms in the theater, and many of them go unused for most if not the entire game. For example, the theater's underground infirmary, storeroom, and swimming pool, or the VIP entrance, or the 1st floor and 2nd floor seating. Orhihime visits the attic often at the start of the game but then stops going there. I guess these places exist to help build out the theater and make it feel more like a real place, but it is strange that you can waste time each day and night checking out these places and never finding anyone there. I think SW5 wound up having the better idea of moving most the explorable areas out of the theater and into various NYC streets, so there is almost always something happening in each area and you didn't waste time checking it out.

Lastly, there are the SRPG missions where you control a squad of mechs, starting with 4 people and then gradually reaching a full size of 9 characters on the field at once by the half way point. The scenarios usually have you do something in addition to fighting enemies, such as destroying pillars before time runs out or defending something. As with SW1, the lack of difficulty is my biggest disappointment. I ran through the whole game with the team set to the wind strategy for maximum movement speed and the fire strategy which lowered defense to raise attack power. I would get greedy and not use the defense command and endanger my people, and yet never once was I ever punished and lost anyone. Sakura Wars V was by no means a hardcore game, but at least there you could not be reckless, and I did lose people in one mission.







Aesthetics

The game looks great, from the UI wallpapers, to the scene backgrounds, to the character portraits, to the CG inserts be they illustrations or CGI renders of cool mechs. As for mech designs, I particularly liked Reni's Eisenkleid and the Demon King's Dark Kamui. If there is anything lacking, it might be that most of the character's ultimate ability cutscenes aren't that exciting compared to modern ultimate ability cutscenes, but they are still novel. The SRPG environment backgrounds aren't on the same level as contemporary JRPGs on the PS1 that had pre-rendered backgrounds.






(Sumire + Ogami ultimate combo)




I think it is a shame that most of the villains' mechs aside from the Demon King's did not get shown off well in 3D CGI cutscenes or prerendered still. The in-engine cutscene models used for ultimate abilities paled in comparison to their CGI renders. What is baffling is that when looking through the artbook for SW2, Kasha's unique mech Goko was not used ingame, even though it had a high poly 3D CGI render! Ingame, he gets a red red recolor of Mokujiki's green Chiken. Why would the devs create a unique CGI model for Kasha, only to then not take pictures of it and implement it as sprites and implement a low poly version of his model?


Kasha was ROBBED


It was a little underwhelming that the heroes did not get any new Thunderbirds vehicles. It's the same Thunderstrike train, Flying Whale airship, and supersized airship Mikasa from the prior game.

Kohei Tanaka (who you may know as a composer for One Piece) provided great music that still holds up. Often a thing you see with these older JRPG/VN tracks is that a lot of tracks were - or have since become - rather "stereotypical". But SW's songs are still refreshing almost thirty years later and don't sound samey. The songs also have variety within themselves, and do not get boring to listen to over and over. However, there was not enough different cutscene music. I would often find myself humming the song that I predicted would play next, and was usually right.







Overall a very good game. Recommended. Play SW1 first, though. Or play SW5, which is a standalone story, and has more challenging missions.

[hellhamster]

Haven't played the other 2, although I have them. Without previous games to compare to, I liked the pace and the shield. Seen quite a few not digging the shield.

Definitely play the other 2. Haven't completed it yet, but so far this is absolutely the worst of the trilogy, it's still good though.

[Malkiah]

final fantasy 16: 2/10

since a nearly 3 year old game finally stopped being 70 dollars, i finally got around to playing this and it's a pile of shit on a level that is frankly slightly awe inspiring.
despite the fact that FF15 was a notoriously troubled production that went through at least two complete restarts and took 10 years to make, 16 feels like the half-baked precursor to 15 - every idea in 15 was better executed, and 15 also kinda sucked.

the combat in 16 is just atrocious, and really feels like exactly what it is: a dev on loan from DMC5 giving creative tips to a team that isn't confident in their own abilities.
it's insanely boring because it's tediously spammy, there's no depth or nuance because they removed the concept of elements or weakness/resistance, and removed all spells and buffs.
i'm severely not a fan of the "do fuck-all damage until stagger and then do a chunk of damage in 6 second window then go back to doing fuck-all damage until stagger" combat style, and IMO too much of the encounter design came down to either enormous HP sponges, or shit that constantly teleported out of melee range.
also, every eikon battle sucked complete donkey balls, it was just visual noise and brief periods of button mashing in between extended recreations of power rangers boss fights.

the story is interesting, but only insofar as how badly they fucked it up.
there were at least 3 narrative elements that were introduced that had fantastic potential but they did nothing with it, always opting for the most boring version of a straight up mustache-twirling villain.
while FF games always follow a pretty standardized formula for the macro story, the little details are what are important, and this game just had none.

the world design was also atrocious, and felt like a real step backwards from FF15.
going from a decently implemented open world in 15 to a "fast travel to the start of a hallway, go down the hallway, fast travel to another hallway, repeat" world made everything feel incredibly shallow.

apparently a lot of 16 was designed around criticism of 15, and i can only assume that either they willfully took the worst possible lesson from feedback or else everyone they listened to was an idiot.

[Zuben]

Days Gone - 8/10

In every way what you'd expect from a typical modern open world game, but still a decently good one.

Plot is Walking Dead if it was all about Daryl with a way more aggressive demeanor. That's the protagonist, Deacon St. John, a biker who's always pissed and antagonistic, bUt WiTh A hEaRt Of GoLd. I wrote that like I'm mocking his depiction, and I kind of am, though his vibes make sense at the same time, since he's lost so much and dealt with so much shit over the two years the zombie apocalypse has been going on. Not one of my favorite protagonists by any measure, but fits this game well.

I liked the bike and how you feel the upgrades making it run better. The thing with me is that I don't really like horses in video games—I would much rather ride a motorcycle. This game gave me that I loved it, though there are few caveats. 1) the ground is largely annoying to traverse in the first two areas, 2) you need to refuel ALL THE TIME (until the final tank upgrade that makes the bike far more fuel efficient) and God help you if you run out in the middle of nowhere, 3) the bike is not a living thing so you don't have a whistle functionality to call it to you like you would a horse in games like this. But yeah, overall it was a lovely experience to ride around, so I used uncharacteristically little fast traveling in this game.

Shooting works well enough. You have three slots, one for primary (assault rifles or shotguns), sidearm (pistols, sawnoff shotguns, SMGs), and special (sniper riffles, machine guns). You'll zero in on your favorite pieces soon enough, mostly swapping only the special gun between sniper rifle and machine gun depending on if you're going for a Horde or human opponents. A lot of selection regardless, though it's a bit lame that some cool ones are unlocked only by the very end part of the game.

Enemies are either "freakers" (=zombies) or humans, like you'd expect, but this game's specialty is the Horde: A large swarm of freakers. Their size varies depending on the area they're in or plot relevance. The smallest is 25 I think, and the largest 500, though that's one of a kind. Most large Hordes are 125 or so. There are about three occasions where you must take on a Horde to advance the plot, but otherwise they're largely optional. I killed all of them for the rewards, which are some of the best guns in the game. Hordes only consist of "swarmers", but there are other freaker types as well that are unlocked into the world as the plot goes on.

Anyhow, when you're not doing missions, you have an open world with checklists of busywork anyone who's played an Assassin's Creed or a Far Cry is familiar with. They don't include towers, thankfully, though there are literal towers in the game you can climb to if you want.

I did everything listed in the 'Progression' tab, which I think is enough. There are collectible pamflets and such that serve world building, but they are largely irrelevant. I collected some, then proceeded to ignore them.

When the game didn't do as well as Sony hoped, plans for a sequel were scrapped and the dev team was transferred to do other stuff. Now that I've finished the game myself, I think it was fine, but in so many ways an experience I have already experienced before. Therefore, I don't need a sequel. I wouldn't have cared to play this game at all if I hadn't received it for free as a PS+ monthly.