The real reason Bloodborne owns is that there are a truly absurd number of wives in this game, including;
- Lesbian Wife (Lady Maria)
- Other Lesbian Wife (Eileen)
- Likes-Biting Wife (Thiccer Amelia)
- Eldritch Monstrosity Wife (Ebrietas)
- Dollification Wife (The Doll)
- Medfet Wife (Iosefka)
- Breeding Kink Wife (Rom)

Anyone who was shocked by Miyazaki admitting he's a masochist really wasn't paying any attention

As majestic, thoroughly horrifying, & rewarding in its brutal, relentless gameplay that's complemented by a Victorian era premise of a world on the verge of death as its brilliant in its use of that premise as a backdrop for heart-wrenching, tragic stories that all tie to the endgame boss through meticulous & intricate lore that flips the world upside down & shows different sides to the spectrum, revealing how the blood crazed beasts we once thought of as merciless, wretched animals, are nothing but victims of an upper system ruled by The Great Ones & a disease that plagued the streets of Yharnam. What makes this gem of a game special is how it slowly, but subtly peels off layers of its core, & turns from a game of beast hunting to replacing God himself to end the Nightmare. That change in storytelling feels so sudden and jarring on paper, but Miyazaki made it work and it resulted in what's one of the best, most well crafted games ever made that'll leave an everlasting impact on its players

Still largely unmatched in terms of receptive feedback to player action. It's genuinely a novel sensation to play a game where I set out before hand to play in a specific way, and actually be accommodated accordingly for that play style, even among other Immersive Sims I've played thus far, none have really successfully integrated that level of freedom. I think this is largely due to the game prioritizing being a good RPG first and being an action game second.

Warren Spector's game design roots go back primarily to table top RPGs. He's said on multiple occasions his whole career has been him attempting to capture the feeling he had when playing Dungeons and Dragons for the first time in the 70s, and you can tell, especially on Deus Ex. There exists a specific relation between player, to DM, to systemic gameplay that is, as of now, still entirely unique to table top games. It is currently literally physically impossible to create this relationship in a video game directly, and any attempts at actually creating it are very much in their infancy, look at AI Dungeon for the most direct attempt, a great game/tool to use if you wanna have a laugh and partake in a dreamlike nonsense space, and completely useless if you want to play an actual coherent narrative gaming experience. That being said, people have been trying to approximate this relationship in video games for decades. You could argue that Immersive Sims, as a genre, are an attempt to synthesize the player freedom allotted by this kind of system, with the goal oriented mission based structure of action games. This is a game seeking to combine the role of DM and game system into one entity, and let you the player interface with it, and it feels so fucking good, I'm not sure literally anyone has done it better. The sensation of in real time working out how you want to go about solving problems, being forced to carefully consider your approach and being rewarded for that forethought, every combat encounter feeling like a puzzle where you need to consider the unique enemy placement, environmental shape, abilities and equipment on hand in order to solve, it's just such a good texture of interactivity. The game is balanced around making your character slow and bad at everything by default, until you put skill puts or use augmentations to become Not Terrible at those things, gradually. This makes even simple things, like shooting one enemy, into things you need to carefully consider and plan ahead at first, and put a lot of time and skill points into if you want to be able to do them effectively and more intuitively later on. This makes both the early game, where you need to be very careful and intentional about every move you make, and the late game, where you've built a character entirely unique to your play-style and can efficiently utilize your unique set of abilities, extremely interesting in distinctive ways. It makes progress and exploration much more rewarding than it would be otherwise, it makes solving problems that can't be solved by your specific skill-sets more challenging and interesting, while making problems that can all the more satisfying. It's a dynamic feedback loop of carefully crafted systems that are more effective the more you put time and thought into them.

It's hard to overstate how immaculately crafted this game is, even though its such an over discussed game already. But it's so easy to keep talking about I think cause Deus Ex is literally a different video game for everyone who plays it. Hell, it's gonna be a different video game every time You play it. It's a game that feels almost, collaborative with the player in its construction, in a way open-world or sandbox games are kinda incapable of being. So until I get to fulfill my newfound dream of playing a D&D campaign led by Warren Spector as DM, it is probably the best RPG ever made.

The motto of gamefreak - For every 1 step forward, make 2 grand leaps backwards.

Though truthfully, at this point I can't blame them anymore. I have to wonder if gamefreak has any control over the game at all. Pokemon games are essentially mandated to come out at a certain time to follow along with the anime schedule, and will NEVER be delayed, so any internal conflicts and problems are never allowed to be polished. Not only that, gamefreak only has what, 130 employees? Incredibly small for a game studio. You have to start wondering if the suits at the top of the pokemon chain see the games as anything more than a formality.

Okay, with that bit aside, hows the game? Mid. Very, very mid. It's a significant increase from gen 8's absolute disaster that was the wild area, but it's overall a mixed bag. A bunch of interesting ideas on paper with the most basic execution possible on every front.

The open world of Pokemon Scarlet/Violet essentially amounts to a large square of tall grass, with lots of pokeballs strewn about, and some palette swaps every now and then. There's nothing really to do except hunt trainers, which are nice loot baskets of EXP for your team, and go from story progress to story progress, and catch pokemon, and do raid battles. You know, same ol same ol, except much wider distances.

There was one thing I was interested in initially - the towers that gold the Gimmighoul chests and coins. Imagine my surprise! A reward for exploring! A small reward, sure, but it was working towards an evolution for a... weirdly designed but strong as hell pokemon! And... you need 999 coins. And theres nothing else like it in the game. Shame on me.

As far as the paths go, all of them are... okay. Maybe a hot take though, but I think the totem pokemon and ultra necrozma from gen 7 absolutely windmill dunk over this games attempt at big 'boss' pokemon. The titans as they are... have nothing that differentiate them from being just a large grass pokemon. No gimmick, no field, no stat changes, nothing. At the very least I thought the story strong of Arven, while cliche and obvious, was at least... nice to see conclude? It's decent relative to pokemon, I guess.

Likewise same for the team star path, which are a combination of gym + titan, where you fight a big car. These fights are decently fun, but preluded by 2 minutes of time wasting and making you comprehend your life choices as you stand around and mash the R button without paying attention. I'm not at all sure what the design intent of this part of the game is. It's like a mario party minigame.

The gyms themselves are your usual affair, but maybe more depressing of the game is the sad state of the towns. They have themes and personality, but it's truly sad how there is NOTHING to do in any of them. You can't even go inside most of the houses, there's barely any npcs to talk to... you just buy the few pieces of costume customization you can (because gamefreak decided to axe a thing people liked which is their usual) you just show up, beat a gym, and then leave, without ever doing anything. ANYTHING.

What we're left with is essentially a standard pokemon game gaining some, and losing other, features and ideas from others. There's some original ideas but nothing in the game tries to use it in any interesting way. This isn't even going into the massive performance problems the game suffers from.

Honestly, the main reason I'm not rating this game lower is because I think competitively this gen has some potential to be pretty fun in both singles and doubles, and it IS better than gen 8. But overall, this is not a good path for pokemon to take.

I'll also repeat myself from my other pokemon reviews: Gen 5 and 7 for life.