I'll be honest, I bought this for the hype, played for about 10 minutes and thought 'yeah, I'm probably refunding this'. Played a bit more, just to see where would it take me. Suddenly, I was waaaay past the maximum playtime to refund. I didn't want to refund anymore.

One of my favorite things about metroidvanias is never really feeling stuck. Somehow, you just keep going forward. If you hit a wall, you try a different path and continue. Animal Well is so rewarding in this regard, giving you a permanent feeling of progression, with new puzzles all the time. It remixes its mechanics to make every challenge feel like a novelty, and it's SO GOOD at letting you find out its secrets. You're likely to find out how some of the tools you get work by sheer luck or accident, making challenges you skipped thinking you didn't have the tool click. These tools never really work the way you expect. More accurately, they always work in an extra way that you didn't expect.

Everything is framed in a gloomy atmosphere aided by visuals and audio.

This is a very good game!

Yeah, I'm sad to say I'm not finishing this one.

The game, in most aspects, is pure genius. The booklet aspect of it is just an incredible experience to get through. Finding answers to questions you thought the game wouldn't bother to ask, and seeing them work. Recontextualizing the scenarios you've already visited several times with new knowledge. That feeling of "hey, this might work over there!". Often, without the use of any words.

This, however, is one of many games in recent times which have adopted the soulslike trend of revolving around struggle. Your struggle. In this case, I'm referring to its combat. It never felt good for me. Not because it is too difficult, but because it never feels satisfying. Your sword is too short, your dodge not long enough, your enemies' skin is too tough, yours is too feeble. I understand they want to give you a challenge, but I can't agree with the way they doing it. I understand the feeling of overcoming a challenge that other games, namely From Software games, give you. I beat every enemy in this game, except for the last phase of the last enemy, and not once did I find that here.

It just feels like everything the game can throw at you is a notch higher than it should be. I'm stopping at the final boss, I've made improvement and I'm almost there. I simply don't have much interest in replaying this fight until I learn how to defeat this enemy, because the only part that's left of this game for me, is the part I don't want to play.

Add to that a problem with its pacing, giving you a climax far too early in the game. The rest of my playthrough felt like crawling through the desert, hoping it would end soon.

I think most people will still enjoy this game. I enjoyed most of it myself.

Genuinely didn't expect to like this game as much when I was playing it for the first few hours, and was more or less certain that I would either push through it or shelf it. The story is difficult to follow, becuase it's told in a slow way for a very fast-moving game, making it difficult to stop and read. However, the ending felt really worth it, and I overall had fun with it. Visually and musically striking, it's level design is a bit chaotic and hard to read at times, but I recommend giving it a try. It could do without the collectibles, I think.

Play this game for the world, not the story. It demands a lot of you, but gives a lot back. It's incredibly rewarding, being forced to travel from point A to point B with no fast-travel whatsoever, only to be distracted by a rock sliding blocking your path, that you can shoot down with a catapult not too far away; two giant monsters fighting on the distance while you just happened to stumble upon a balista that's aiming in their direction; or the griffin you fought a while ago that fleed, terrorizing a nearby settlement, that you can recognize because his health bar didn't recover.
The world of Dragon's Dogma 2, and how it interacts with you is filled with charisma. Its story and characters, not so much.

Short little game with cleverly constructed puzzles that never feel too challenging, but are designed in such a way that you never break out of that loop of satisfaction every time you solve them. I was also surprised about the story and how the game has something to say, with an ending I found particularly crushing, yet somehow hopeful. I really recommend this game.
Music and visuals are also a highlight, I think the devs had a very clear idea of what the wanted to make, and they made it perfectly.

It's hard to recommend this game. On the surface, it's nice, beutiful. It systems however leave a bit to be desired; particularly, combat isn't the best. Fights aren't too fun, and everything new that's added to it gets old quickly due to relentless repetition. There is basically no difference between mobs. The most basic of trashmobs doesn't feel like it demands a different playstyle from the actual final boss of the game. There are tiny hints of strategy with each character's specia move, that don't really serve a lot, and only seem to be useful for enemies specifically designed to make use of them. They create a problem and a solution at the same time.
There are charming bits here and there, mainly fun interactions between the cast of characters that make up your party; a found family so endearing that almost justifies 40 hours of an overarching story that doesn't quite hit the spot. Almost.

Seriously, now, I've come to really appreciate this group of misfits. At first, they always look like they're not gonna fit together, but they do. They are your best reason to play this.

I've played most of the Assassin's Creed games, except for Rogue and some other minor ones like Lineages. This is undoubtedly the worst of them all.
It has a cool intriguing story, but the storytelling is simply awful, all over the place and convoluted with a ton of main quests that are only decent, when they are not forgettable. It seems like it's purposedly avoiding a climactic ending, instead having like three of four moments that could be considered the end for the many branches it insists on having. I can only imagine this is done so you will pay for a DLC that will actually give any semblance of closure. This story which was genuinely cool at first, was what kept me pushing through 67 hours of what I can only label as content
The game itself is not even fun most of the time. I spent an excruciating amount of time trying to find my way into places where I could find treasure. The path is always unnecessarily difficult to find, either because it is underground, because you need to find an equally difficult to reach key, or because you have to shoot at a door from behind a window. There's an awful ton of idling too. Getting on your horse and making it automatically run towards your destination while you stare at the screen. Same with the boat. I don't get why Assassin's Creed keeps insisting on putting boats in the games. They're just boring, most of the time you don't even have tod o anything.
The world is just as boring, when it isn't annoying. I refused to do any of the secondary content; the game is littered by it in true Ubisoft fashion. The reward for completing them is always disappointing. The map gets boring soon, cities being the worst part of it since they are so frustrating to navigate. Parkour isn't any good in this game, compared to previous titles.
Secondary systems like crafting, fishing, hunting, or building your settlement barely have any significant presence, and are tiresome to engage with. The only one I found amusing was orlog, the must-have boardgame of all Assassin's Creed titles.
I liked Eivor, it's an interesting character. But sometimes, the story takes turns that makes no sense with either her or anything thats happening, just so it can give you the impression of conflict. Lame.
Another thing that I hate about this game is how hard it tries to dissuade you from a stealthy playstyle. It's incredibly hard to play stealthy, not because it's challening but because the game doesn't seem to be designed so you can clean a fortress without alerting anyone. Combat does its job, although some enemies are just tiring to kill. You can kill them with not much effort, but you will get super long kill cams that are always the same for each type of enemy, which you can't skip. It gets old after the third time.
To top it all, it performed terribly on a PC that otherwise never gives me any trouble with demanding games.
I've been a longtime fan of the Assassins' Creed franchise and, after being disappointed with it for some years, I think it's time to finally let it go. This game, is simply awful.

Rayman Legends is great, but sometimes its strongest point is also its weakest. Level seem to be designed to be precise and satisfying to complete, often simply by following your guts. However, when the game wants to actually challenge you that precision becomes painfully restrictive, almost taking away any chance at creativity to complete the level. This is specially notable in the timed levels.

Amazing artstyle, amazing gameplay, a but dragged by concepts born during the era it was released. Like too. Many. Pop ups.

I get why people may like this. It's a beautiful game, both visually and narratively, with an unique core mechanic. Unfortunately for me, said mechanic wasn't very enjoyable. The climb felt hard not because it was challenging, but more often than not it felt kind of unpolished. It was never as fluid as I feel it needed to be. Too often my character failed to reach a ledge, and everytime I felt it was not because I didn't plan my jump, but because the climbing system is not precise. Sometimes it grabbed it, sometimes it didn't. I think this is backed up by the numerous times my character got stuck with, apparently, nothing while standing on the ground. I dragged myself through the last chapter because of the world the game was building as I progressed, managing to get me invested in it's simple story. It's a game I'd recommend trying, see if it clicks.