An utterly uneven experience from beginning to end that doesn't just feature two completely irrelevant trials that completely tank the pacing of the story but also dares to have one of them be one of the most boring cases in the franchise which should probably and honestly have been DLC or simple extra cases post game.

That stands in complete contrast to the two trials here that are really good, especially the third one, which may just be one of my favorites in the series. The game also feels a lot more like a proper follow up to AA4 than Dual Destinies did which somewhat makes DD feel all the more irrelevant in retrospect, which is somewhat damning since, for all its supposed faults, DD is at least a much more consistent game than this wildly over the place SoJ. They push Apollo back into the spotlight, which you may not expect because of how the story is told for most of its runtime. They address the whole forged evidence thing in a much grander scale than they did in 5 which makes this feel like a more evolved follow up to the ideas pushed forward in 4, but in the end the game is still undercooked.

The ending also fell flat on its face for me which makes this a genuinely sad ending for the franchise, with no new entry in 8 years. At least not in terms of this specific continuity. Ace Attorney 7 should still be coming according to the now years old Capcom leaks but I feel like its state is in flux. I can't say I need more Apollo but I don't feel like Takumi would want to return to Phoenix either. But considering in which directions they took Apollo he may have no other choice to go back to Phoenix or just soft reboot the franchise all over again, which may feel fans unsatisfied after so many years of waiting. If Takumi is the one helming the next entry in the first place... who knows. I hope it won't be much longer until that game gets revealed, if it still exists, and that it initiates a new trilogy – or at least Duology like The Great Ace Attorney's – that tells a more refined story over multiple games. And while we're at it, please bring back interesting prosecutors.

"The only fantasy here is yours. And we shall be its final witness!"

Spectacle over substance... I hate to describe it that way, but after reaching the conclusion, that was my main takeaway after witnessing the ending. There was still a lot to like here, but after beating the game, all that really sticks with me is missed potential. "A flawed masterpiece" is how I used to always describe Final Fantasy XV preceding this release. The foundational pieces were there to make it a really extraordinary and unique Final Fantasy game, but there was just so much holding it back from true greatness. I feel very similar sentiments with Final Fantasy XVI, but for a myriad of different reasons.

Firstly, I'll start with all the good stuff. The opening 2-3 hours of this game was spectacular set-up. The introduction to the game's world and harsh setting, its characters, the game's combat system, excellent voice acting and localization/dialogue, and Soken's epic musical scores - I felt like I was about to embark upon a 10/10 adventure. First impressions were incredibly positive. The game consisted of this interesting mixture of all of my favorite fantasy stories together - Lord of the Rings, Attack on Titan, Game of Thrones, and, of course, early, "fantasy heavy" FF games. The game felt like it had borrowed a little something from all of them. The political landscape, the encroaching doom of this all-ending Blight, and the inevitable GoT style betrayal experienced in the prologue, had me riveted and immediately hooked in wanting to know what was going to happen next.

As the game's combat opened up, I was loving it. I consider the Devil May Cry franchise (at least the odd numbered entries in the series) to be the greatest action games of all time. And this plays incredibly similar to it. Once you start unlocking more Eikonic abilities and powers, and start switching them in and out, it really opens up the combat and made it a lot of fun to play.

Then there were the epic-in-scope, Eikon battles - some of these hit more than others, but these epic struggles were a fun and slight diversion in gameplay mechanics, as you take control and do battle with these enormous magical summons from previous FF games. Of which, nothing surpassed the Bahamut portion of the game. That was the pinnacle of this game's spectacle in my opinion. I will say though, as a small nitpick, for even how great some of the action sequences were to watch unfold, I did feel that some of them went on for too long (Bahamut and Titan included), and with too little player input and control.

And that about wraps up my list of positives of the game... now onto the unfortunate problems I had with it.

For as great as the combat of this game is, there unfortunately reaches a point a little over halfway through the game where I just got tired of it. The major issue being that the game doesn't really have anything else to offer gameplay-wise outside of it. There are no mini-games like previous Final Fantasy titles to spice up the gameplay variety... it is just combat, cutscene, talking (lots of excessive talking..), and more combat. With little enemy variety here too, it all just starts to become tedious. For what's there, the enemies look fantastic (the game visually is beautiful, albeit more particle effect heavy for my liking), but there are just so many re-used enemies/bosses/hunts. Here are just a handful of other reasons for the combat becoming tiresome to me:
----- The game is far too easy. Final Fantasy (hard) mode should have been unlocked from the start... this lack of any real difficulty prevents the combat from truly being able to shine.
----- There is a huge lack of RPG mechanics here - just base leveling and equipment, of which, the differences feel negligible and arbitrary... only real customization is with Eikonic ability loadout...
----- Lack of reasons to explore - the amount of times I found the same garbage loot or 2-15 gil leads you to just stop exploring off the beaten path and just try to run through the monster filled zones.

Connected to this, was the game's most egregious issue: its unbelievably poor pacing. If you stick solely to the game's main storyline, I think you'd have a far better time than how I played it... Going through each and every side quest dragged everything out to such a point that it almost defeated my "completionist attitude" towards games. I was very close to skipping some of them, especially when a ton of them get dropped on you in the 11th hour right before the final boss.

And of these side quests, so many of them were boring to complete - there were far too many fetch quests, and too much running from Point A to Point B, and then back to Point A again. And for what exactly? Like I mentioned previously, the rewards/items didn't really do a whole lot, so it just felt like a giant waste of time in many cases. Only a very small number stood out to me that built upon the game's characters or world. My 2 favorite side quests funnily enough happened relatively early on, and back-to-back: Playthings & All Bark. I won't spoil those ones, but they both left me speechless in their own way. Unfortunately, a good side quest in this game is a rarity and not the norm...

I also felt disappointed in the story, its ending, and even many of the characters - only ever really connecting to a small number of them. Emotionally, outside of a few select spots, much of the journey felt hollow.

I won't jump into too many details here for spoiler reasons, but it all just felt like missed potential to me. They had something special here, but it just didn't come together all that well - and with how long the game was, it still felt rushed in spots. Once the sky is darkened by that purple hue, you've pretty much seen all the game has to offer, and I feel it nosedives quite a bit in quality.

Oddly enough though, I actually really liked Ultima as this mysterious threat throughout most of the game... his character design and voice actor shined, but I didn't like certain writing decisions that were made, and how his story wrapped up at the end. I feel it could have been much better.

All in all, I think this game just suffered from a lack of identity and focus - what did it really want to be? An RPG, MMO, action-game? I think if they just made it much shorter, maybe 10-20 hours max, and more in-line with a DMC action-style game, it would have benefited it greatly. It already felt like they wanted to strip out most of the RPG elements anyway, why not just go one step further? I understand that would have potentially alienated FF/RPG fans, but I would have preferred that over what we were given: an ashamed action game that pretends to be an RPG, overstuffed with meandering and useless side content, that is far too long for its own good.

Tears of the Kingdom had me amazed for a good chunk of its playtime. Where I felt that Breath of the Wild pretty much only consistent of padding and alot of middling content at that I came away quite disappointed, not here though.

The open world progression was greatly improved by the mere addition of caves, the sky and slightly more involved feeling sidequests and the fuse system, while not really fun, at least alot better than the annoying weapon breaking from the predecessor.

Sure, there's still alot of shrines, way too many of them, all of them still samey looking and so incredibly easy that I can't help but scratch my head when hearing about friends and people on the internet having difficulties with them.

Then there's the story itself, which is still pretty terrible in terms of its mission structure (defeat different enemies at different locations to trigger a cutscene; find the three stone pillars and loot the chests inside them) but there's some fun content here and there that feels more worthwhile than any of the story missions from BotW (besides the one in the desert, which are also the standout here).

The dungeons are an improvement as well, still nowhere as good as the ones form the previous games but at least closer to being an enjoyable, with the desert dungeon being the standout and the water and wind temples being almost just as bad as the divine beasts from BotW. At least the bosses are cooler and the dungeon themes themselves are catchy. Only four (five) of them though? What a waste.

With how long the game has been in development and them reusing the map it's a bit odd how little effort was put into the design of the story progression – but that's okay, as the story itself is more involved and interesting than whatever they tried with BotW, but still not that special. Telling it via memories still seems like a cop out but I've gotten used to the formula so I can't say that I'm as disappointed as I was all those years ago with BotW.

You can probably already tell that alot of what I like about TotK I only really like because it's better than what BotW had to offer, even though I may still not like what is there entirely. BotW feels like an alpha version to this game in the least flattering way possible, which makes BotW entirely redundant.

The depths suck, the combat is still pretty terrible. There's definitely enough variety for the game to be fun but a little more couldn't have hurt. I don't know. I had fun here, alot more genuine fun than I had with BotW. Does that really make TotK a good game? idk

It's a 7 or an 8, giving it an 8 rn for the fun I had in my first 50 or so hours.

Doesn't hold a candle to the original in terms of tone or character. The cutscenes have nowhere near the same style in their direction and characters like Saddler only suffer from the toned down campiness. Going with a more modern approach to Resident Evil also leads to less intense action sequences since there are not just fewer combat segments but also less enemies overall, though there's still more than plenty action to roundhouse kick during. Really excited for The Mercenaries because the new combat might be the best thing about the remake. That parry mechanic with the knife is a genuine game-changer.

Ada is completely bogged down here compared to 2 Remake and the original fourth game, her new VA doesn't seem to have any kind of fun performing her innuendos with Leon and Leon himself is still cool but not in a as sincere action-hero kinda way because of his trauma. Ashley on the other hand is a total improvement over her original version.

RE4make, just like the original, excites with a lengthy campaign that is varied to no end, little to no boring down time and a bigger focus on exploration. It fails to hit as much as the original game and yet is just a few more inspired design-decisions short of being a modern masterpiece. What they did with side characters like Luis or the bits of lore scattered around the gameworld are welcome improvements. Don't mind my complaining, because this is still pretty much the GOAT.

And yet, it had me gripped for 90% of its time during my 18h one-sitting-playthrough (as is tradition). Definitely (probably) my favorite of the modern Resident Evil games and therefore on spot #2, right behind the original, on my Resident Evil favorites list.

Dead Space 2 is a bit of a weird game where its pacing is more reminiscent of Resident Evil 4. Alot more linear, more action, more enemies rushing at you at once.

They got rid of the typical Dead Space 1 structure which had you follow two mission objectives in seperate parts of the maps, which is welcome. Now you basically just run from point A to point B to point C to point D until you're at Z - the end. Didn't have a ton of fun with that structure until the midway point, after which this more linear structure finally clicked for me. I can't fully say I prefer this type of game to Dead Space 1, both of them have their strengths and weaknesses, but considering the mindset I was in while playing DS2 I had a bit more fun with this entry.

Something that's definitely alot worse here are the characters. My god. The antagonists are complete and utter disappointments. Isaac finally talking doesn't add much to him or characters either, but at least he's got some fun quips. Ellie is pretty terrible as well, though reading some of the lore and listening to audio logs makes her a bit more interesting. I feel like the one take structure definitely led to the story feeling more constrained than it should have, a trapping the previous game (and the new God of Wars) also fell into.

The set-pieces made me incredibly happy, impactful and bombastic, fuck the quick time sequences though. Gameplay wise barely anything changed, just felt snappier to control, which might just be because they finally got the mouse controls working here.

In the end I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this game. It's good, maybe slightly better than the previous entry though in the end it does not really matter. I just feel like there's something missing in the Dead Space formular. The secret sauce. It just doesn't exist. Might be a more campy tone, might be more bombastic sequences, better level design, more puzzles maybe? These are fun, sometimes maybe even scary games, but not the standouts I kept hearing about.

Lost Judgment is a confusing game. It's all over the place quality-wise but might still be one of my favorite gaming experiences in recent times.

Yagami is a plain as bread character in this game and contrary to a Kiryu doesn't have the personality to carry an entire game's content on his back. While he's great to play and a joy to watch in cutscenes featuring his fighting choreography there's not much more to him than him just being a good guy. Takuya Kimura is a great actor but he's never more than just "cool" in the way Kiryu or Akiyama were.

On the other hand, the side content that is in this game is quite great and perhaps more consistent than most of RGG Studio's games. The school stories are particular standouts with the character tying them together, Amasawa, being one of the most likeable characters in the entire franchise.

Then there's the story that is, as always, competently told and once again continues the streak that has been going on since Yakuza 6: The way these games tie their plot together at the end is nothing short of astounding and managed to soothe many of my gripes with this game's storytelling within a two or three hour timeframe.

Lost Judgment got two of the most impressive villains in the franchise. One of them is more threatening than anyone who's come before and instilled me with a great fear of ice picks, while the other while not as tragically likeable as the game sets them up to be, is still interesting enough for me to shed a tear or two at the conclusion their character received.

They trimmed alot of the more repetitive aspects from the first Judgment down while adding a couple of others which makes the game much more streamlined to play and definitely is an improvement over the first game.

The thing Lost Judgment really lacks though is a gripping story. Interestingly enough, by the end I felt like I got more out of this narrative than I did from the first game's. The plot advances in such a roundabout way and is never complicated enough to really catch me off guard or make me think. I pretty much went through the entire game (which took me 50 hours and 13 minutes to beat, including all of the substories) without ever feeling the urgent desire to continue playing the story.

I don't think I've ever been this disassociated from a RGG story before, even though it is still a very good one. The problems stem from badly paced storytelling and Yagami not being particularly involved in the plot or being interesting by himself.

Yet, by the end, I loved my time with Lost Judgment and I'm definitely holding out for a sequel to this much more than I am for the next Yakuza game. Maybe let the next one be the conclusion to Yagami's story, let him investigate the murder of his parents or something. But if the Judgment series does continue for more than one game, please, try and make Yagami more fun.

Also: Please let Amasawa be an intern at Yagami's detective agency or something. I need her to come back.

Took me about two months to play this game for 30 hours, completing all the main story levels and reaching a completion of about 57%.

My first LEGO game ever since I dropped off the series with the Jurassic World game. Still very fun, very charming. The new direction they went with is pretty solid. Shame about some of the levels being complete ass, but hey, I liked the game overall.

I hope the team switching engines will lead to less junky feeling games in the future.