Don't think I've ever seen a bigger jump in quality between series entires. No more weird stealth mechanics, hub world backtracking, or boilerplate RPG grinding. Instead, level-after-level of sweaty mech action. Every level has some new gimmick, which means there's an occasional miss, but that's just what happens when you commit so hard to taking an already-promising combat system, juicing it up, and placing it into as many varied situations as you can think of. The localization is still terrible - which is a bit of a shame because you can tell the bones of a decent anime OVA style story would be here - but the action is so good that it doesn't matter anymore.

The pitch is fantastic, but it didn't fully work for me in the details. The character writing is solid and there's some good gags but it's too simple overall and wraps up too neatly. The low budget gets in the way too - the ska soundtrack is an inspired choice and executed well (shout-outs to Jer!) but the way it just loops throughout the game without stopping or switching to something else makes dramatic moments fall flat, and the (repetitive) barks frequently get in the way of the storytelling unless you completely stop playing the game to let the sequence play out. Also this isn't really Strange Scaffold's fault, but the nature of a single-player poker videogame is that there's no way to mind-game your opponents which takes away the fun of it - I think characters do have some semblance of individual AI that drives how willing they are to risk playing out a bad hand, but not advanced enough to feel like playing against real people.

Anyways, it's pretty chill and I had a good enough time.

When I play a roguelike deckbuilder, the question I always ask myself is "would I rather just play Slay the Spire?". Usually the answer after a couple runs is yes, but Cobalt Core is a rare exception. It helps that it's clearly not a forever game, instead more of a Hades, where it is a straightforward story with an ending in the guise of a roguelike. It helps even more that it's extremely capable as a deckbuilder, using a lot of the fundamentals of StS but twisting it with a positioning system that actually works for once in this genre, and some really unique ways to switch up your runs. And then it's wrapped in the same charming character design, legitimately funny writing, and banger OST as its predecessor Sunshine Heavy Industries. Between that and this, I'm a forever fan of Rocket Rat, and will check out anything new they put out sight-unseen.

I really like these games but I always feel like a tourist in them rather than someone who truly loves them. Still, this is another banger! Level design splits the difference between the big contiguous space of DS1 and the pocket zones of DS2, the changes to combat and magic make it a lot easier to experiment with your build (even though I ended up getting choice paralysis and going with a relatively conservative sword-and-shield deal once again) and it's got some of the coolest bosses in the series. Loses some novelty by being made up largely of explicit callbacks to old games rather than new stuff, but they're fun callbacks that still maintain some semblance of mystery and ambiguity, and it's cool to see FromSoft making a clear attempt to wrap this whole thing up.

Honestly felt like I could go for more Souls by the time I finished, I'm not gonna roll right into another playthrough or anything but I definitely want to play the original version of DS2 at some point soonish.

Wildly good driving model - the drift stick is a revelation and all the cars feel noticeably different from each other to the point where it's almost like picking a character in a fighting game. That plus the course variations and a very good DLC pack gives it a lot of mileage (lol) out of not all that much content. This would be an easy 5-star with just a bit more polish around the edges - super-flat writing, a couple severe difficulty spikes, generic music, and there really should be a story mode or at least a tutorial for all the cars, not just 4 of them. Still, if you have any love at all for figuring out how a car handles in a videogame, it's well worth checking out.

UPDATE 2024/01/30 - As I play other racing games I keep comparing them to this one and realizing that it beats them all. Despite any misgivings I have about its relative lack of polish, the unique control scheme and the way it gets expressed from car-to-car is just beautiful and I don't know if any other driving game is gonna hit in the same way. It's simply a banger and I think about going back to it all the time. Fuck it, 5 stars.