I think we can all agree that the lesson for Nintendo here is to give Pikachu an AK-47 in the next installment.

"The Expansion is going to be Fucking OK" Pawel Sasko

This Spy-Thriller exceeded my expectations, with the 2.0 Update Phantom Liberty delivers one of the greatest expansions i have ever played.
Outstanding presentation, fun gameplay, improved gigs, great characters, engaging storyline and dialogue, intense choices to make, jaw dropping visual design, fantastic soundtrack and level design.
Phantom Liberty is an expansion that follows the blueprint of Blood and Wine and its one that i will be thinking about for a long time.

I also just realized my account got 4 years badge, how time flies by..wow.

Todd Howard has found the ultimate space travel tool: LOADING SCREEN

She Armored on my Core till i Fire from Rubicon.

Larian has just rolled a 20 with this game!

Amnesia The Bunker is a nice change of the usual format by Frictional horror games, the game takes its design clues from Alien Isolation by making the game and its levels designed in an all in one format with a stalker that roams the whole map.
Fans of atmospheric and tense horror games will feel right at home with Amnesia as Frictional style is still apparent through hide and seek mechanic, dizzy look at the monster visuals, use of darkness and light and story told through notes or audiologs.

The bunker however makes things interesting by adding light immersive sim elements where you can tackle the situation in more than a single way, which offers a decent replay value.

While i enjoyed my playthrough with the game i still think that The Dark Descent is the pinnacle of the series, mainly because in TDD i was more immersed in the lovecraftian nature of the gothic Prussian castle, i liked the story more and Daniel voice despite the criticism was good for me, i liked the physics based puzzles and the sound and music design.

In this game they added a nice spin so that you can defend yourself, some resource management and more focus on exploration, i liked all of those things but i think with the inclusion of them it had more weight on the game, so it kinda makes it harder to nail the experience.
I dont have many complaints about the game, i think the story was meh like whatever i didnt care for it, the gameplay was decent, i liked the atmosphere but it wasn't as impressive as TDD simply because the music wasn't hard hitting enough, in TDD the soundtrack played a huge part in scaring me, here it was barely there, the monster design is also less frightening, the lore and the nature of the bunker wasn't as scary either. I think it could've been less tedious with 1 or 2 more inventory slots too, and the finale was underwhelming.

Some extra notes on how i think the game can improve.
- The Stalker A.I and behavior pattern can be expanded and made smarter with more behavior patterns that can make how it moves and reacts more interesting, as of now its basic and too easy to maneuver.
- The music was forgettable, TDD OST is excellent and plays with your fears, here it was barely there and as a result the atmosphere suffered (still good)
- The inventory slots are too low, which can be challenging and encourages decision making, but because of the fuel and key items taking space it also makes things tedious with backtracking that was just more annoying due to one save spot this one is less important.
- The story wasn't engaging enough, perhaps its the voice overs, perhaps its the themes, perhaps this type of horror stories works better with lovecraftian themes since its unknown and creepy, but here i feel it was needed to make things more clear and create a coherent and tight timeline for me to follow.
Both SOMA and TDD have better stories so Frictional is capable.
- The threat on the player isn't very big, its just the rats and the stalker, perhaps some addition of monster type can make things better.
- There is a lack of puzzles, TDD managed to make interesting physics-based puzzles which makes the player think and sets up a nice change of tone and pace, here it was mostly explore or get the objective items and move on.


Overall, its a good horror game and a worthy play for fans of the series, but it has a lot more potential for the future.

As i'm playing this game more and more im liking it less and less.
I dont know what happened, maybe its the generic world and the story that i wasn't able to find myself engaged with it, maybe its the characters who i cannot relate to, but its a Diablo game so the gameplay and making builds and looting is the reason we play it, right?
Even with that im finding myself getting bored quickly, i'll sit with my friends for like 2 hours before i give up and make excuses and leave, its just boring, the skills and the enemies are not really interesting for me, maybe i outgrew this genre and this game, i really dont know, because i used to love playing Diablo 2.
I wish i could enjoy this game more, but modern Blizzard games feel soulless to me, they lack that spark that i used to like about them in the late 90's early 00s, where i could sit for hours playing them, now i just launch Diablo IV, play some dungeons, get extremely bored quickly and leave, i even started skipping side quests, i guess i just dont care anymore about this game.
Maybe its the fact that im playing better games alongside it, i really enjoyed TotK, maybe that has something to do with it, maybe its me growing up, maybe the game is really mediocre, i just dont know right now, but i can't keep my previous positive review, i enjoyed my first days with it, but now near the midgame, i just lost the interest, i feel robbed i wish i had waited for sale, but friends and hype got me, lol.

So Final Fantasy is now mature because they added sex, but where is the blood? Blood and Sex go hand in hand, not mature yet..

Tears of the Kingdom takes everything good about Breath of the Wild and cranks it up to eleven.
This reminds me of the same experience i had going from Portal to Portal 2.
Masterclass in open world physics, traversal and sandbox mechanics makes Tears of the Kingdom arguably one of the best open world games on the market.

I can't wait to go back and play more.

You can't pet the dog? Refunded

Sorry Arkane but you done fucked it up.

Xenogears is one of my favorite Jrpgs of all time, its script is excellent and mindblowing at times and the scope of its world was insane at the time, having played it, i was not a fan of the modernized Xenoblade formula, i enjoyed Xenoblade 1 but i was very disappointed in Xenoblade 2 to the point where i was on the verge of giving up on any feature titles from this franchise, however after Xenoblade 3 successful release i decided to give the series another go and ultimately i didn't regret it, the game overall was worthwhile.

To go straight to my verdict on the game elements i will skip indepth details and write a summary-like quick thoughts.

Tech:
- From a technical point i had close to no issues on the game, it runs well and performance is good.
- Sound design and OST: excellent, there's a little issue here which was that certain tacks got repetitive like the combat and chain attack one, but otherwise the music was nice.
- Visuals: low on graphics power due to hardware limitation, gorgeous world and landscape design, good art-style, character design is a bit generic and bland.

The Writing:
a) Story: grand, epic, adventurous, a bit messy, doesnt know what it wants to be, pacing too slow, moments that contradict gameplay, bloated with filler content that goes nowhere, falls off hard from chapter 5 finale and towards the end due to inconsistencies in the plot and failure to keep up with the interesting themes after the mystery reveal.
b) Characters: mostly okay, few uninteresting faces, few underdeveloped ones but mostly good, the villains on the other hand are so bad. (Note: Time-travel stories with reset button more often than not damages character development heavily)
c) World-Building: okay for the most part, develops upon prior world knowledge and lore that tracks back the the older titles. I would've appreciated a more multilayered dive on its world themes rather than total reliance on previous established ones.
d) Dialogue: juvenile and very teenage focused, writing makes nonsense statements, like how ethel is strong when she doesnt deal damage - situations like this, dialogue tries hard to shove meaningful statements at points where it feels unnatural. Overall; not bad but full of padded text and could be cut by a significant margin.

// Story relies too much on cutscenes to convey its storytelling which is not a good sign, could use a bit of storytelling in form of a game //

One another side-point is that i heard so much praise for Chapter 5 and i was very excited to reach it, as supposedly it was the peak of the game. While its truly a wonderfully executed cutscene that did deliver on the emotional and presentation level, the writing felt cheesy, too many plotholes, the time reset, the lucky seven sudden reveal at the right time, the stakes that could only be described as fake tension, and the conclusion of the chapter all were disappointing and didn't live up to their hype. The peak of the game i would say is Chapter 3 to 5. After it reaches the finale of Chapter 5 the story goes downhill and never really recovers.
Chapter 5 also contains a lot of filler and boring quests where i was running doing prison tasks that felt incredibly padded and waste of time, which is another point why its not really as peak fiction lol as its reputation suggests.

The Gameplay:
a) Combat: meat of the game, enemies lack mechanical variety, limitation of different attacks patterns, they feel similar, mostly change color and level and sometimes shape, hp bloat, however interesting design concepts, a lot of enemies to defeat, chain attacks is the best part of the combat by the end i was dishing out insane amount of damage. overall, a decent battle system
b) Level/World Design: mostly alright, a bit bloated (mobs) and empty(content), a lot of handholding, but other than that gives meaningful tools to traverse, good backtracking and so-so rewarding system. Gives a good sense of scale with its vast
and varied landscape, chapter 5 sea region is a highlight.
c) RPG mechanics: most of the loot is not useful, crafting feels meaningless, too much collectable bloat, no use for money, few uses for the good loot you get, overall weak on the exploration side. Good amount of class customization but has one annoying aspect which is the skill mastery that you get, the customization of accessories and gems are alright, could use more depth but mostly is ok.
d) Quest Design: a mixed bag of great side quests and poor fetch quests, the ones with the tag Hero Quests are often very good and deserve your time, they offer a hero to use entire new class with good rewards and explore the world and the characters even more, the collectable and standard quests are just boring fetch quests that should be skipped and are more or less an excuse to just fight more monsters.
e) Interactive systems: outside of combat, barely anything to do, you just walk and talk, craft and collect, no other system than the battle system.

// The gameplay is decent for what it is but it also could use a lot of improvements, its a stronger highlight than its writing counterpart and its the best in the whole Xenoblade Chronicles series but is still far from its true potential. //


Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a decent back to form by Monolith, and is a game that offers as much interesting and great stuff as it also offers flawed and poorly executed stuff, in my opinion the series has yet to reach its true potential and is still a long way from reaching the peak of its original in terms of scope and script power.

6/10


I never played the original NieR but i heard good things about it, after finishing NieR Automata and liking it, i decided to give this one a shot. Having not 100% it i cannot certainly give accurate verdict on it but generally i expected a lot better from it.

After waking up at the village i can immediately tell that the soundtrack is fantastic, as usual with NieR series its soundtrack themes are just top of the line, filled with emotions and good relaxing tones. I loved it there and kept wandering through the village while listening to it.

The story starts rough, i found the pacing to be very off when a lot of time from the first hours was about taking on missions from Popola which to me felt irrelevant and kind of fetchy in a way, i never found a reason to care about any of those main quests because why would i? the game barely bothers to explain and introduce them to me that it felt really pointless, it's like a daily job and im just working there.

Eventually i would stumble across some side quests, which i found to be abundantly boring, they all seemed to lack any meaningful context or development to either the characters or the story or to flesh out the world in a way. It's your typical go there and collect boar tusk for me but with slight variations. To me this is one of the most upsetting aspect of implementing side quests, if you dont have the context to back them up, dont do them in the first place.
After i tried few of them i decided to skip them and focus on the main plot because i wasn't having any fun being errand boy.

Later through the story, it starts to get interesting thankfully, it picks up the pacing and more characters gets introduced, more plot twists show and reveal itself, i liked the Mansion segment in particular, it felt like a love-letter to Resident Evil which i love.
Another section i loved was the wrecked ship.
I also felt sad for the technicians kids, their story was tragic.
After the turning point, i was more interested in the story and how to resolve it so i was having more fun, that all the way to the ending.

Characters are the best part of the game, i found Emil, Kaine, Grimore Weiss all to be good characters with some complex layers and meaningful development later on which is probably the most memorable part about the game. Weiss in particular is my favorite character in the game, his comments, the voice acting and how his traits are conveyed were all fantastic.

From the tutorial it was obvious that the combat itself was floaty and unsatisfying to execute, despite the flashy combos and the pretty colors, i never found myself having such a blast fighting shades, they all felt soulless and uninteresting to me, it's like hitting water, or cutting paper. This unfortunately continues through-out the whole game, because the game barely bothers to throw new enemies at you, you will fight more of the same enemies with few variations, the shades will change and some of them will have a shield and a weapon, some will be bigger and taller and some will be smaller and quicker, but that's it mostly.
You don't get much different weapons either its a choice between few weapons, spells and that's it.
Which is fine but not something very impressive, i found it weird because people dont bother to mention it while at the same it when it comes to other games you will never hear the end of it and its hyperbole.
Anyway i found the combat to be quite average. (which is fine, i dont put much emphasize on combat quality in rpgs)
Most of my time was button mashing on the spell from Wiess and a mix of jump attacks and light/strong attacks. Until i got bored of the same enemies over and over and decided to start parrying them to knock them off and finish them with a one shot critical hit.
If i felt the combat was more satisfying i would go for more fighting but to me the combat felt like an annoyance more than a fun thing to do so i decided to go the easiest most repetitive route.

Aside from that, i felt the open world to be needlessly big and empty, there was nothing interesting to explore or find there, it was just a vast land of empty spaces and few monsters scattered in between, the world also doesnt look good either, the art direction is subpar and graphics are below average, i understand its a remaster but visually the world didnt offer anything either.

Which brings me to one of the my most hated aspects of the game, The Level Design. it was awful, a sections of linear paths with no clues or interesting details, all look samey and they barely add anything to the experience, only making it dull and tedious. The underground sections are full of respawning robots that got very boring the first time, having lost my way through it, not because its complicated or anything, no but because it's a mess of lazy design, no level design clues or distinct features to vary the level and give it good layout. From the open world segments to the dungeons its extremely lazy and painfully dull.

Another very annoying aspect was the grind for materials to obtain new upgrades or to unlock lore. Like..Why? why would you lock lore behind a grindy tedious mechanics with extremely low drop rate, i dont get it, after i tried for few hours i eventually gave up and continue the game, because it was just not worth the time sink, i was able to defeat all the enemies with little effort using main weapons so this side activity felt nothing more than time waste and grind.

I enjoyed my time with it overall, but i dont want to go back to it, it's a one and done for me, i eventually watched the other endings on youtube because fuck doing them again, in Automata i did them because i enjoyed the game more, but here i wasn't ready for yet another playthrough.

It's not a bad game but i wouldn't say its good either. It does have very interesting setting and story but the setting is not properly explored and fleshed out.
And it has way too many flaws to account for unconditional praise it receives.


Summary:

+ Interesting setting.
+ Amazing Soundtrack.
+ Good story.
+ Great Characters.
- Dull/Bland Empty Open world.
- Terrible Level Design.
~ Average floaty Combat.
- Boring Enemies.
~ Pacing: Takes a while to pick up its story.
- Side Quests are awful.
- Subpar visuals.
- Upgrade system and Grind.

Reasons why League of Legends suck

1- Unbalanced gameplay
The game is always in unbalanced state which damages the competitive gameplay, there's always some kind of OP champion that needs to be "toned down".
Riot will nerf the champion only to buff it again later, just because?? There's clearly favoritism towards certain flashy champions, like Lee Sin for example.
Lee player: Clicks F+jump+R (for the 999th time)
Crowd: Wooooooohooo so amazing
The unbalance also stems from champion kits, some champions are designed to turn your lane into unplayable state and without outside help you can't do much about it (assuming player skill is equal)
From true damage to infinite dashes, balance has become all over the place.
Riot are desperate to make changes that it will negatively affect gameplay.

2- Client is shit
The client is buggy and breaks down every once in a while, it has tons of weird issues, like for example when you get DCed and you get reconnected in a party of 4, you may find yourself disconnected from the party while it displays you part of it. Many other bugs too, still not fixed after all the years. (lets make anime skins instead)

3- Requires a lot of time investment
It's a game that you need to invest more than 1k hours at the very least to start grasping what's going on about it, there's too many people playing the game since the early days and its going hard to matchmake with them, you will need to understand every kit and how the map works and that takes a lot of time to sink in.
Another thing is if you play ranked, it will take alot of your time to just go back to where you were last season, they intentionally bring your rank down so you will have to grind again and again and lose time on the game.

4- Toxic environment
Everyone is rude to each other, everyone likes to blame each other and focus on condescending passive aggressive insults, it brings out the worst in you.
Even if you play with your friends which can be far less toxic, is still going to create a toxic atmosphere in the long run.

5- Game keeps changing
It's a game that keeps adding new champions with overloaded kits, the old champions like Annie has a passive (every 4th spell stuns) and nowadays new champions passive is a wall of text with formulas and many different effect depending on other spells, it gets complicated and overloaded which is fine if you are one of those people that want to spend all their life playing this one game, but if you leave the game for 2 months and come back you will find yourself lost in this sea on new kits and changes.

6- Fun modes are NOT fun
This is going to be subjective here but Riot decides to add new fun modes like Nexus Blitz and ARAM to help casual players find something less stressful to play, but they imo dropped the ball with it.
Those fun modes are even more UNBALANCED than the main game, essentially making the games snowbally and prone to trolling which ruins the fun, what's the fun in game mode where if you get 5 ranged champions the opponent team doesnt get to play the game? thats not fun mode.

7- Creativity is Gone
New champions are all rehashes of previous ideas, there's a clear lack of creative game design, every new champ is more or less the same, dashes left and right, every 3 auto does X, execute if less than 30% hp, do true damage if X, and etc etc.
Also design wise, visually it has gotten stale, its the same Anime protagonists design.

8- Stolen Ideas
Riot is no stranger to stealing ideas, Valorant is the most recent obvious example a blatant bad ripoff of games like Overwatch, CSGO and Team Fortress 2.
And League is just the same, from the early RTS days with Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne to Dota to this, not to mention the clear champion design influence, from DmC to Final Fantasy and the like.

9- It's just Not Fun
Calculating a ratio of time investment needed to master a champion to get few fun games out of it, its just not worth, you will go through toxicity, getting stomped, stressful games until you eventually find yourself having fun in few games scattered in between. The reward seems underwhelming, was it worth it? imo no.
It gets boring playing the same map and buying the items, farming until a team fight and win/lose game.

I spent good amount of hours on the game and i would say it keeps getting worse and worse with each year, it was a bit better back in the early days but i eventually grew tied of it.

If my rank matters for some its Platinum 2.
It's hard to progress with this game if you have stable job, in relationship and need to play other games and live a social life, it will just come in the way of you doing any of that, and if you leave it for a period of time you come back as a Noob until you re-learn all the unnecessary shitty changes Riot keeps doing.

Riot just doesnt know when to slow down, they want to make sure you keep playing their games every day every week for your whole life, they will suck your soul out of your body, so if you are not making money from this, i suggest dropping it, or dont bother to begin with.

While the game has some depth in its gameplay systems, it's just overshadowed by bad game design choices and awful support.