Can't wait for multiverse narratives to die in a fire.

Bayonetta 3 is a good action game but a huge step down for the Bayonetta franchise and perhaps the biggest disappointment I have ever felt in a game. Not only is the story an incoherent, embarrassing mess (not that the other two had a high bar to overcome), but unfortunately the gameplay is completely bogged down with the new focus on summoning gigantic monsters in every battle, which creates a clusterfuck of visual clutter and takes the fun and speed out of the otherwise flawless combat system with great new weapon additions.

Platinum really had to sign a monkey's paw deal with Nintendo it seems. On the one hand the franchise was saved, but on the other hand it was confined to the shackles of technological jail that are Nintendo's consoles, meaning that Bayonetta 3 might actually look and feel worse than Bayonetta 1 on the 360 did, which is such a bummer.

I am not hopeful at all for the future of Bayonetta, unfortunately. The story and character decisions did its part, certainly, but most importantly it feels like I have lost the confidence in the belief that Platinum has a coherent vision for the franchise and knows what the strengths are, because Bayonetta 3 certainly did not play to them.

Requiem plays it safe as far as sequels go and continues right where the first game left of. Even if it features more sprawling and detailed environments, it is the type of sequel where I won't remember in a years time what was part of the first game and what was the second game. This isn't a bad thing at all, ultimately I also enjoyed it about equally as Innocence, even if it has nice improvements in combat and character variety.

Where I would have wished for more refinement are the puzzles and some of the rat sections. It happened multiple times that a puzzle or general progression hinged on me noticing an interaction circle somewhere or not missing a crucial piece of dialog that is not repeated, leading to me banging my head against the wall in trial-and-error, not seeing the specific solution to a problem the game wants me to see to progress.
The rats are the bread and butter of A Plague Tale and offer a great twist on stealth mechanics. The tech is honestly impressive, but unfortunately not waterproof. The organic nature of the rat system often led to infuriating frustration where some rogue rats would still be on a cleared path, killing Amecia, you being centimeters away from a light source still dying trying to make one step forward or rats being on a path they are not supposed to be due to some mechanics I won't spoil, leading to the need for wasting a fire pot to clear a tiny patch of rats, alerting all the enemies. These were minor frustrations but were what ultimately held me back from enjoying it more than Innocence.

In the end though, A Plague Tale is incredibly easy to recommend, which hasn't changed with Requiem, offering a tight narrative with impressive set-pieces and digestable stealth gameplay, even I, a person with very very limited patience for any stealth in games, could arrange myself with. It's the little AA sibling of Uncharted and The Last of Us and is just as enjoyable, even if obviously not as refined.

Still just as exhilarating as it was when I first played it as a teenager on release. With this replay I could finally remedy a big regret of my gaming career: Actually beating the final boss and finishing the game on hard difficulty, which I just couldn't do in 2013, as the difficulty spike was just too brutal.

In the years after its release Rising became a cult classic and with good reason - the game is not only a phenomenal action game with some of the best uses of music in combat but is also infinitely quotable through the narrative in between that doesn't overstay its welcome.

There are definitely some rough edges where the game pulls you away from what the fun part is by introducing various stealth sections to somehow prove that it is a Metal Gear game, I guess. And the weapons and items you get are really not that interesting at the best and annoyingly clunky and useless at the worst, providing some unnecessary fat in an otherwise remarkably lean experience. At the end I don't feel like faulting the game for anything, though. It is so full of character and charm, that it just gets away with it, cementing itself as one of my favorite games of all time.

I just can't. After ten hours I don't feel enough of a drive to keep playing. For me the Xenoblade games are bad examples of maximalist design at this point. Creating quality not by elegant subtraction but by addition of more and more systems and dimensions of complexity to the point of legitimately feeling like parody of itself to me.

I could stand Xenoblade 3 for longer than the first one due to an interesting story hook and early development, but my god the sheer spam of new systems, menues, and mechanics truly made my head hurt, killing any drive to play further - hearing how much more is to come, hailed as a positive aspect. This made me realize that the series is definitively not for me, despite my best efforts which greatly disappoints me because of the excitement seemingly everyone else has for the franchise and my absolute adoration of Xenogears and the hope of some DNA of that transfering over.

The baseline combat is so clunky and uninteresting to me that I can't stomach pushing through that for 90 more hours, not even starting on the incredibly annoying line repetitions and dull environments fully covered in ever respawning loot and enemies. I read that that this makes the game feel alive and dynamic while it did the complete opposite for me feeling like a wasteland entirely populated by procedurally generated content. As a level designer the terrain navigation truly shocked me with how clunky and unpolished it is. You constantly run into slopes you are expected to awkwardly jump your way up while other ledges are not accessible to you while being only slightly above your jump height, adding to the feeling of procedural generation, lacking the affordances and clean communication of intentional level design.

This is all pretty much rambling about how this game just isn't for me in the end, recognizing that it's obviously not a bad game, it's just rare that a game in a genre I usually really enjoy so completely goes against anything I value in games and I am envious of everyone able to fall in love with the games in this series, I wish I was one of them.

When you fall in love so strongly with something, sometimes it's hard to find a way to relive that experience again. I have felt this way about jrpgs for a while. I have played some excellent ones, but the childlike wonder of my all-time favorites has felt like it was something I wouldn't achieve again.

Suikoden 2 (and 1, but different story) showed me I was wrong and captured that feeling all over again. This game has everything that I could ever want out of a JRPG. Its world is so big, immersive, and developed. It has a simple but beautifully fun combat system. It has a ton of variety- whether fighting, doing army battles, duels, and recruiting the massive lineup of characters. It has wonderful music and beautiful presentation that enhances its atmosphere. It's not too long but has plenty of meat to dig into. It's replayable, with lots of role-playing in this role-playing game. Above all else though, it tells such a great story too. I refuse to spoil anything, but the way that it tells such a small, personal, and investing story with its characters on such a large scale that adds as much weight as it does memorable moments is fantastic. I love this game. I think the fact that I'm already itching to revisit it just a couple of months later is a sign of something special. wonderful

Well, there went my weekend. Cult of the Lamb has one of the most addictive gameplay loops I have encountered in a while and this could have been devastating if presented in an endless time sink common in the genres blended here. Instead, this game feels perfectly trimmed and polished to respect the player's time. The game oozes style in the whole presentation, from all the brilliant UI work to a banging soundtrack. And the gameplay is there to back it up, nailing pretty much everything it is going for. Honestly, I can't find many faults with this game, it is an incredible achievement only minorly weighed down by some of the tedium around the base building aspect and even that is stretching it.

Here's my impression after playing Graveyard Keeper for over 15 hours.

The developer or publisher refers to this as an 'inaccurate medieval cemetery management sim', but I think that's a bit misleading. The focus isn't necessarily on managing a cemetery like you would a hospital in a game like Two Point Hospital. Graveyard Keeper is more of a crafting game first and management game second, or at least crafting is central to being good at managing, which some might find disappointing.

With that out of the way as a crafting game, Graveyard Keeper has a sound gameplay loop. There's never a day spent in a game where you won't have some soft objective in your mind, like; chopping down trees, to craft planks, which you'll to craft a fence, and build the said fence. Maybe, that's me dumbing it down a little too much, but it's the general gist. The claims of inaccuracy might spice things up a little. Another daily loop might involve doing an autopsy, then cooking the flesh your retrieve and selling it in the town. I imagine people looking at this are familiar with other titles like Harvest Moon, Rune Factory, or maybe, the most popular of these titles on PC Stardew Valley will have a concrete idea of how this plays.

My biggest complaint about this game is that it can be incredibly vague. It isn't limited to a single area either; crafting can be that way, progressing or even starting quests feels random, it's hard to figure efficient layouts for all the crafting tables, etc. You'll constantly want to look at another screen with a Wiki, a guide, Reddit, or YouTube video open. Not necessarily the worst complaint, but one that might be a deal breaker for people looking for a game 'chill/farm to' since there is a bit of a learning curve that's hard to overcome in-game outside of trial and error.

Overall, Graveyard Keeper is a fun way to pass a few hours here and there, but time investment and repetitive loops might grow old fast. BYO soundtrack if you're in for the long haul.

I originally posted this review on Fanatical.

By far the best digital MTG game. Offering a rare slice of MTG history, you can play with lots of old sets in a randomly generated world, acquiring new cards to keep evolving your deck as you do quests for villagers to get a chance at more cards! It's very addictive and highly replayable, and doesn't try to empty your wallet. The AI in this game can be a bit schizo sometimes and some of the old rules might throw some people off, like not being able to mulligan unless you meet certain requirements, mana burn, damage going on the stack, etc. Still absolutely hilarious that you can build actual stax decks and horrendously broken stuff in this though, even if it is not always advisable considering you probably don't wanna spend 30 minutes on every single encounter.

The only caveat is that it is kind of tricky to find a version of the game that runs well on modern PCs nowadays, I remember having quite a bit of trouble with it. I much prefer this over modern day MTG offerings and would like them to make more stuff like this that isn't a games-as-a-service money milking machine.

Cris Tales is an indie darling that seemed to pop up out of no where full of ambition and heart that it kinda just captures the minds of gamers that see it at a glance. Being an indie game however means that a lot of the ambitious stuff it can do, and the limitations of a budget tend to stop it from pulling off exactly what it wants to tell or do, but for what this game set out to do, Cris Tales at least gets it done.

While I personally still don't understand why the game was named Cris Tales aside from two of the characters having Cris in the name, the whole plot follows a young time mage girl trying to stop world ending events to the best of her abilities. Through her mishaps and ventures with friends she learns to grow and mature into someone that is capable of defending the world she tries to protect. While we do make stops to lively places and cities, overall the world itself feels far more barren than it probably out to and the choices made along the way feel very limiting and feel at times meaningless. While the whole idea of a time mage being able to see the past/present/future is a neat idea; Cristales simple doesn't utilize it to the best of it's abilities. Thankfully the actual structure and heart of the story are fleshed out well enough that it does carry a lot of foibles of it's story telling with hints of charm rather than a mix of rushed story telling and running out of money.

The characters in Cris Tales are all fairly fleshed out to the degree that you can feel the charm and history behind their companionship, and the voice acting is pretty stellar to boot. Sadly, I don't think the same can be said for a lot of the sound design and animations that are used throughout the battle system. While there is certainly hints of where to use certain action commands or press certain buttons, the actual process just doesn't feel as natural as the likes of Paper Mario's combat system, which is a shame because a lot of the combat really helps bring about more of the personality to these characters. And it's to this degree that we can kinda see hints of how the game wanted to play out, but some how they just couldn't work it out.

As mentioned before Cris Tales has a combat system similar to Paper Mario, where you use interact through the combat phase to deal more damage or mitigated the amount you take. Again because of how awkward the sound and animations are, learning to master your commands takes a while to get used to, and with the way Cris Tales kinda sets itself up, leaves little room for error in the beginning of the game, but then drastically lowers itself the more options you get. It's an oddity for sure, and one that I don't think was suppose to be the initial difficulty curve for the game, but adding that on top of the way certain characters play can really leave players wanting for more in the beginning, and may be a turn off before you really start getting into the meat of the game.

I probably sound really harsh when it comes to this game, but I assure you that any criticism I give is one filled with love. I see how the art style is, the way the backgrounds are given attention, and even the way they are able to show you times flow throughout the cities. Cris Tales is honestly such a fancy title to first look at that it really makes you hopeful for what's to come. My only suggest is to hold out an expectations in finding that game it first shows you. This is a solid first outing for the game's aspect, there is a lot of work that needs to be done with the combat system, time mechanics, and even the world building, but all of these issues feel to me more like time constraints, limits on budgets, and just figuring out how to flesh out the world itself. Cris Tales is an absolute gem of a game, and one that I think makes for a great foundation for a sequel and possible franchise.

Despite the average score, the game is truly a remarkable experience that I do recommend for anyone interested by the premise

The highlight of the game is definetly the presentation, I've seen nothing like it in recent years. The wonderfully vibrant environments and charming character design gave life to the world of Cris Tales in a way that very few RPG are able to replicate.

Unfortunately, the rest of the game isn't as consistent. The main gameplay loop feels somewhat archaic. The comination of Crisbell slow walk speed, and random battles with long loading screens results in me often prefering to not explore the gourgeous environments and just rush to wherever I need to go. Also, since party members don't earn exp when they don't participate in battle, meaning that I had very little incentive to actively switch my party members and ended up just sticking with my go to team. Lastly a lack of auto-saves made me lose quite a lot of progress a couple of times, including having to redo a very long boss fight during the end of the game due to a softlock.

The core mechanic of manipulating the past and present does feel underused. I very rarely had the correct party members with the right spells to abuse this mechanic and losing a turn to initiate time travel means that most of the time I prefered to just do damage. However, I do have to stress that in the moments where it did work it felt very satisfying.

Lastly, the narrative did have a lot of captivating moments and I can say I enjoyed the main cast quite a lot. Some plot point do feel a bit rushed and/or unexplained, but that is a staple of the genre. My biggest gripe with the story is that the latter end of the game has a lot of padding, making us revisit old areas in a very repetitive and unintuitive manner. The padding definetly soured the really cool concepts that the game was presenting to me.

Again, not a perfect experience by any standart, but it is a very charming game. When the gears click and you feel yourself in Crisbell's shoes there truly is nothing like it, even if that happens only few and far between.