Coming to this after playing Ys I and II felt like a breeze of fresh air in many ways. At its core, Ys VI retains many qualities that I grew so fond of in the older titles. Exploration is fun, the music is absolutely stellar, the story is more grounded and character progression feels super meaningful. However, there are quite a few aspects that this game improved in comparison to its predecessors.

For one, the level layout was way less confusing for me this time around. Unfortunately, we still didn’t get a mini-map in this one (only a large world map that is kinda useless but looks nice) to help get our bearings. That being said, the level structure itself is crafted in a way that made it easy for me to find my way and not get lost. That is achieved by chunking the game world into distinct areas that stand on their own and which offer layouts, that are not nearly as confusing as they were in the older titles. That was a huge relief to me. I cannot count how many times I completely lost my way in Ys I and II as they were a million doors on every screen leading to a countless amount of side areas. Here, that was not really the case. Yes, there were still sections of the game that were rather confusing (talking about a specific cave - if you know, you know^^) but it never reached the heights of frustration that I had felt before.

Same goes for the combat system. In my opinion, Ys VI offers a huge step-up from the bump system introduced in Ys I. We can finally hack, slay and drop-attack our way through enemies and it never felt better. I liked how specific items were required to defeat certain enemies or how I could upgrade my swords to increase my damage output massively. That’s another change I really liked. Pretty early on, you get 3 swords, all with their own moveset and special attack that you keep until the end of the game. No more farming gold for new weapons or losing your mind because you didn’t find a specific chest in a dungeon that contained a better sword than what you had. Here, it’s all a bit more simplified. You still have to farm a resource to upgrade your stuff but at least you won’t miss out on anything just because you didn’t check every single room in a dungeon to find new gear.

Unfortunately, not all that glitters is gold and some new features bring new problems with them. For me, that was definitely the case for the jump mechanic. Jumping around for simple platforming stuff and striking enemies from above is cool and all. However, the game introduces some pretty precise platforming challenges that just left me frustrated. There are many areas in the game where you have to perform a pixel-perfect jump and if you fail, you fall down into the area below and have to backtrack the entire way to try again. And it’s the worst. On top of that, the game features a dash move that I would describe as the single most convoluted jump mechanic that I have ever seen in a game. I wasn’t even aware that there was a dash until I found a chest that I couldn’t jump to. So, I looked it up online and couldn’t believe what I read. You have to tap the move button for the direction you wish to jump to, then shortly press attack for some reason and then press jump. Yes, it’s as horrible as it sounds. Fortunately, I only needed this move once ore twice but my god, did it suck.

So, even though the platforming felt like ass in many areas of the game and the backtracking it led to did become quite frustrating at times, I still had a good time with Ys VI. The boss battles were fun with each boss introducing a new challenge that required a specific tactic to beat them. The world and its inhabitants were absolutely beautiful. It was the first time in an Ys game, that I kind of actually cared for the characters and their fate. The writing definitely helped with that. All characters were interesting, charming or funny in a way that I hadn’t seen in an Ys game before. The story is still very much in the background but it kept me motivated and it wasn’t as cliché as in other JRPGs. So far, this has been my favorite Ys game and I can’t wait to play more games of the series in the future.

This is a tough one for me. On the one hand, Ys II clearly improves on some of the core aspects of the first game. I would argue, that the overall flow of battle is heavily enhanced due to the overhauled bump system. In the first game, even if you attacked enemies from behind or came at them at an angle, you could still take damage when bumping into them. This is not really the case anymore in Ys II. Sure, if an enemy started an attack and you bump into them when they perform it, you will still get hit. But if you time your attack appropriately and never attack head-on, you are basically invincible. That felt so much better than in Ys I, where I could still get damaged even if I did everything correctly. Another cool addition to the combat is the magic system. It’s not overwhelmingly complex since you only get one magic attack in the form of a fireball and some neat tricks like stopping time for a while, but it did change the combat significantly. Attacking enemies from a distance, especially when low on health, did feel good and it sometimes got me out of a situation, which would have resulted in my death if not for the fire spell. Another clear improvement over the first game is the fact that you can level up your character above and beyond level 10. At the end of the game, I was like level 50 whereas in Ys I, I had reached max level loooong before the final battle.

So, with pretty much all of the good stuff out of the way, let’s talk about some changes, that somewhat soured the experience for me. First off, yes, the magic system itself is pretty neat. However, what I found really disappointing was that the majority of boss fights revolve around using magic. Most boss battles have to be approached by dodging a bunch of projectiles or other attacks, waiting for an attack window and then releasing a barrage of fireballs into the enemy’s mouth, eye or whatever weak spot they have. Having some fights like this would be fine as it makes the player use the new magic system more but I felt like they overused this mechanic way too much. Another thing that really bugged me during boss fights was the fact that I could just leave the boss room at any time, resetting the entire fight. I don’t know if this was a thing in the first game (pretty sure it wasn’t), but here, there were so many times when I unintentionally left the room and had to start all over. On the other hand though, the boss fights in general felt more thought-out than in the first game where RNG played a major role. In this game, I had to be more tactical and boss fights didn’t quite feel like battles of attrition as they did in Ys I most of the time. So, all in all it’s a double-edged sword for me. Boss battles are generally more fun but I just wish they hadn’t relied on the magic system so much.

While I was uncertain about how to rate the boss battles, my mind is totally set on how to assess another aspect of the game which is navigation. Navigation in Ys II is way worse than in the first game. In Ys I, I would get lost every now and again but areas were usually small enough for me to internalize the map layout and find my way through. In Ys II, this is no longer the case. Dungeons are generally so friggin huge, I was constantly confused and lost my way all the time. Add to that the necessity to backtrack so much in this game (especially in the last section) and you have the recipe for frustration. On top of that, Ys II sometimes feels like the devs wanted to stretch out the relatively short game as much as possible by adding some pretty obtuse puzzles and an escort mission that’s straight outta hell (Tarf, please go and throw yourself in a lava pit or something, I hate your guts so much). Also, while it’s cool that I can level up beyond level 10, I felt the necessity to grind way more than in Ys I. Before attempting certain boss fights, I had to grind 2-3 levels most of the time to stand a chance. Again, grinding was also a part of Ys I but since you could only get to level 10, it wasn’t really necessary after you hit max level which happens in the middle of the game.

So, how do I feel about Ys II overall? In general, I feel like I am one of the few people who actually slightly prefer the first game. Ys I was more concise and just felt like the better package overall. Ys II introduced some changes that make the game flow better than the first by revising the bump system and implementing a rudimentary magic system. However, it also stretched the game with confusing dungeon design, obtuse puzzles and even worse backtracking than in Ys I. In terms of story and music, both games are on the same level of quality. I would say that if you enjoyed Ys I, you should definitely give the sequel a shot too. Just be prepared to get lost quite often and don’t feel ashamed to use a walkthrough if needed.

Sometimes there is beauty in simplicity and that definitely holds true for this game. Ys I took me back to a time when games were all about the simple joy of exploring and adventuring. Going out into the wilds with barely so much as a vague direction while fighting your way through hordes of goblins, wolfs and evil knights clad in dark armor. It is a game that doesn't really follow a well-defined linear narrative thread but lets you go and seek out your own adventure in the wilds until you hit a road block. It is only then when you have to retrace your steps and ask yourself what you might have missed. It's a game that doesn't guide you. You will have to visit towns, ask around for information and talk to specific NPCs multiple times to learn where you have to go next. Sometimes, an item-description might have some clue that will help you find the solution to some puzzle that kept you from progressing. It's old school and I'm all here for it.

Once you're out in the open, you'll start bumping into enemies to fight them. Yeah, the combat system doesn't require you to swing your sword or block manually, you just bump into stuff and hope that the enemy takes more damage than you. At first, I didn't quite get it :D I was dying constantly and I was sure that I hadn't fully understood the combat mechanics. But no, I was just underleveled and had to upgrade my gear. So I started grinding for a few minutes, gathered some gold and experience, bought new equipment and tried again. And it made a huge difference. Gear and levels really matter in this game. At fixed intervals, I would have to take some time to grind. It wasn't unbearable but since the combat is so simplistic in nature, it got old really fast. All in all though, the bump system was pretty fun. It's just satisfying as hell to bump into enemies and trap them in corners where they are squashed to bloody bits :D

Graphically, the game has its charme. As with many other aspects of the game, the visuals are rather simplistic but the art direction and love for detail that the devs poured into it, really make Ys shine. Even though the game offers only simple sprites for enemies, they were so distinct, that I could easily tell them apart. I felt that each design had personality and character. Same goes for the environmental design. Seeing the shadows of clouds that are passing by overhead may just be a small detail but it shows that the developers cared. I love stuff like this. The character portraits of special NPCs you talk to are absolutely gorgeous just as the cutscenes that are composed of beautiful hand-drawn images.

So far the review has mainly touched on positive aspects of the game and if you've read up until this point, you're probably wondering why I've given the game such a mediocre rating. Well, I did have some issues with the game. First of, navigation in dungeons, especially in the final dungeon of the game, can be a real pain. You have no map and no idea of where to go most of the time. Sometimes you are even surrounded by darkness which makes it extra hard to get your bearings. There are sections in the game where you have to traverse through multiple levels of a dungeon back and forth which confused the living hell out of me.
On top of that there's the boss battles. Some are ok, they mostly feel like wars of attrition. However, for most of them, there is a great deal of luck and randomness involved. I'm not going to spoil anything but there were 2 bosses that made me almost drop the game for they committed mutliple cardinal sins of bad boss design :D The final boss in particular was a disaster design-wise.

Nonetheless, I had a good time with Ys I. It's a charming, simplistic and short Action RPG which is still very playable today. I loved the character art, music and level of detail. For me, it was my first Ys experience and I'm looking forward to playing more games of the series in the future.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

I remember reading parts of this poem when I first played Kentucky Route Zero. There was a section in the game simply called “Xanadu” where this poem was referenced and it was one of the most intriguing and weird levels in the already very weird game. A couple of years later, the very same poem was referenced again in season 4 of the Fargo TV show of all places. Though only the first line of the poem was read aloud here (and though it felt somewhat out of place), I immediately recognized the words.

And I remembered.

I remembered that, a couple of years prior I had played a game that had the word “Xanadu” in its title. I remembered that it was part of a series of games that were kind of a big deal in the JRPG genre. The Xanadu game series is a relatively small collection of RPGs that were conceived as a sub-series of “Dragon Slayer”, Nihon Falcom’s groundbreaking and genre-defining franchise. Before the Trails-series, there was Dragon Slayer, going back as far as the 1980s and thus, being one of the very first JRPGs in general. Xanadu spawned as a sequel to the main series in 1985 with “Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu” and became a beast of its own shortly after. Since then, there have been a number of releases in this spin-off series, the most popular of which is probably “Faxanadu” for the NES.

Let me preface this review by saying that I played none of these games. I’m familiar with various games developed by Falcom like Trails and Ys. However, as most Dragon Slayer and Xanadu games very released quite some time before I was born, I never managed to catch up on them so far. For some reason though, I did play Xanadu Next. I cannot explain how this game caught my attention. When you go to the game’s store pages on Steam or GOG, you will find a pretty generic trailer and some screenshots that look like they were taken from a mobile game with super blocky graphics, outdated and washed-out textures and clunky controls. And you wouldn’t be too far off from the truth with that assessment. You see, Xanadu Next has a strange history. Originally released for the Nokia N-Gage in 2005, the game was ported to PC the same year with some major adjustments. Yes, you read correctly, this game originally came out on the N-Gage, Nokia’s weird phone/handheld gaming device from the early 2000s which was probably one of the most bizarre pieces of gaming hardware that ever saw the light of day. The version I played was the 2016 re-release available on modern platforms. This review is a collection of thoughts I have on the game after playing it many years ago for the first time and replaying it just recently.

So, for whatever reason, I picked up Xanadu Next for a couple of bucks when it was on sale quite some time ago and just felt like giving it a shot. It was one of these games that I approached with low to zero expectations. I knew it was a dungeon crawler with Zelda-like puzzle design and exploration, featuring an ARPG combat system. So, on one of these lazy Saturday mornings, I started playing. Right after the intro I felt that the game was special in some way. The intro itself felt strangely subtle, melancholic and simply beautiful. It was mysterious and intriguing and made me want to know more about the characters and places shown in the cinematic. But it wasn’t only the intro video that hooked me. Right from the start, the story of Xanadu Next is presented in the form of a report written by one of the characters relevant to the events that happen in the course of the game. In a way, this approach reminded me of the beginning of Final Fantasy Tactics, one of my favorite games of all time in which Arazlam Durai depicts the events of the game that were recorded in the Durai papers. And the similarities to FFT don’t stop there. The setup of the story presents a similar conflict as in Square’s masterpiece. I’m not going to spoil anything here but there is a level of political intrigue and scheming that strongly reminded me of the more politically motivated plots of the Ivalice games. I really liked how the different aspects of the story of Xanadu Next were presented. You hear about the more high-level political stuff from the locals of the town that functions as the Hub-area of the game. You walk into stores, talk to people and every now and again, they will tell you what’s going on in the capital, and how these events may impact the local people and the area of Lyndale – the princedom in which this quaint little town is situated. I also really liked how the big-scale political events are mirrored in the personal story of the protagonist and the events that are depicted in the game. Again, I’m not going to give away too much here but I definitely had the feeling that the writers knew what they were doing in the story-department.

Once you leave the town, you’re directly thrown into the action. Xanadu Next plays like a traditional Action RPG that reminded me of the older Diablo titles in some ways. You have a top-down view with an angled, rotatable camera and hack-and-slash your way through hordes of enemies in the hopes of finding gold and loot. Controlling the main character can be done in two ways – via controller or mouse. I have to say that no matter which input device you choose, controls never feel great. If you play via mouse controls, you’ll be pretty slow in most situations. Sometimes, when enemies group up on you, you’ll have a hard time getting around and avoiding them. They’ll probably surround you and there’s nothing you can do. On top of that, you’ll be clicking a lot, and I mean a lot. For every attack, you click, same goes for special attacks, spells and so on. That can get old very fast. Using a controller for movement and combat generally feels better, more fluid and easier to control. However, there’s another aspect to consider which is menu navigation. You’ll spend some time in menus and doing so with a mouse works great but poorly with a controller. What worked best for me was using the mouse for movement and combat, using left click for attack, right click for special abilities/spells and the mouse wheel for rotating the camera. It wasn’t perfect but it worked. Overall, I would say that camera and controls are flawed but work fine for the most part. There are sections of the game where the camera is fixed and sometimes that is a real pain. Enemies hiding behind pillars attacking you while you can’t do anything about it because you can’t see anything is super frustrating. Thankfully, these situations are far and few between and don’t take away from the overall experience.

So, how does Xanadu Next keep you motivated to play besides rewarding you with loot and gold? Well, for me it was all about exploration. There’s always stuff to find like new equipment, special key items or so-called guardian cards that give special bonuses and which can be leveled up as well. The game has a Metroidvania-like approach to exploration. You will constantly find places where you cannot proceed unless you have the right item. So, you better start taking notes of things to check out later because the game won’t mark these places on your map. The map, that is displayed in the left corner of the screen, shows you a very basic outline of the current level which can guide you to new places you haven’t been before. However, it has no markings and becomes completely useless in multi-level dungeons (looking at you Castle Strangerock) since it only has a flat 2D design. Exploration is still very fun and rewarding but be aware that you will probably have to backtrack every now and again. There are maps online that can help you with that and especially in the later sections of the game, I was not ashamed to use them.

In addition to exploration, one of the core motivators for me was how the game handles skills and equipment. As in many JRPGs like Final Fantasy IX, Xanadu Next binds abilities to weapons, that you find and buy throughout the game. By using those for a time and raising your proficiency level, you learn the skill innately and can use it with any other weapon henceforth. I love this system. It pushed me to experiment with different weapons and skill. I’m usually one who sticks to one strategy or set of equipment if it works. Often times, that leads to me missing out on some good gear, that would make a game easier or more fun for me. In this game however, I was constantly swapping out weapons, checking new abilities and trying out different combinations. One little anecdote here: It took me about 8 hours to realize that “passive skills” had to be dragged into the skill bar on the top of the HUD just like active skills. Naively, I thought any passive skill learned would be applied automatically at all times. But, when I learned “One-handed”, a skill that lets you one-hand any two-handed weapon, my character kept using both hands. That’s when I knew I hadn’t used any of my passive skills at all up until this point :D Another thing that kind of bugged me was that, for using special items (e.g. rings that can poison the enemy), you have to drag them into the item bar which only has 4 slots. The thing is, there are some key items that you only need in special situations like activating a portal or breaking a wall. I found it somewhat annoying to always having to swap items as you need to use them quite often. So yeah, menu navigation and item selection aren’t the smoothest or self-explanatory at all or maybe I’m just a doofus :D

Since we’re talking about things that “bugged” me, let’s briefly address the issue of bugs. There were a few and although there wasn’t any major game-breaking stuff, I did have to restart the game every now and again to get rid of them. Basically, there were 3 distinct bugs that kept happening:
1. Text keeps hanging in the air – This happened only a few times when leaving the weapons shop for instance and the dialogue text would simply not go away.
2. Character spinning like crazy :D – This was funny as hell. Some kid in the town kept rotating like it was on drugs. Also, in one of the later dramatic cutscenes, one of the main characters did the same thing which had me burst out laughing :D
3. My favorite one – Sometimes the game would start displaying collision boxes as wireframes over certain objects. I even had that happen in a boss battle which let me predict some of their attacks.

So, I hope I could illustrate why I like Xanadu Next so much. It’s definitely a janky game which has its flaws like outdated and blocky graphics, janky camera and clunky controls, bugs, tedious menu navigation and a map that could use some additional features. On top of that, the game requires you to do some grinding every now and again which can become quite tiresome. But Xanadu Next just oozes charm. I just loved exploring this world and finding pieces of lore in the form of stone tablets and memoirs. I loved how the protagonist’s sister would then translate these tablets and reward you with little lunch packages she made for you. I loved the town’s people like the dancers in front of the shop or the guy in the weapons store commenting the events of the game. I loved the fact that I always felt like I was unravelling a mystery that lay dormant for hundreds of years. Some characters quite literally slept for centuries after being cast into stone and I loved how, one by one they were awakened and offered more bits of lore and backstory. All in all, this is one of the few, if not the only game, that kind of remind me of Vagrant Story. It just has a very similar vibe when it comes to story progression, exploration, skill progression and so on. It even has similar box puzzles and they are just as annoying as they were in Vagrant Story :D I haven’t talked much about the music but, as you can expect from a Falcolm game, it is absolutely stellar. If you’re looking for a special kind of dungeon crawler full of mystery, wonder and subtle storytelling and can keep up with the jankiness of it all, Xanadu Next is for you. It’s a hidden gem if I’ve ever seen one.

It's definitely a unique experience in that I never played a "horror" game in the form of a text-parser adventure game that's messing with the 4th. wall the way Stories Untold does. There are some spooky scenes that really got to me and I did appreciate the underlying creepyness in everything. However, the story, although presented in an interesting way, doesn't really do anything too special or original.

Also, the gameplay is rather simplistic and even tedious at times (Episode 3 was a slog to get through). I can't be too mad or disappointed as the game definitely tries to do something different on a gameplay level but I did expect something more engaging in terms of story. As for how I feel about Silent Hill Townfall at this point? Hhhmm.... I'm not so sure the devs know how to handle the Silent Hill license but at this point, who does? :D

This is one of those games that remind me why indie games are so cool and why we need more of them. In no AAA or even AA game could I imagine the basic gameplay being to collect plants, identify them correctly and then sell them to various quirky characters in a gritty English town. That's basically what Strange Horticulture is all about. You take over a plant store full of strange plant varieties whose significance is only revealed as the game progresses. Day after day you are visited by the inhabitants of Undermere, the town in which the store is located, and have to deal with their personal problems by helping them with the right plant (and later elixirs). This may mean finding and offering a cure for a headache. But it can also mean that you are given the task of brewing a remedy to defend against demonic influences. Because, and this becomes clear rather quickly, there is an underlying mystical darkness that terrifies the inhabitants of Undermere. There are rumors of a shadow roaming the woods and wreaking havoc. A murder case, signs of a bloody ritual and a whole series of inexplicable incidents. The story remains quite linear. However, at certain key points in the game, you have an influence on the course of the story and the fate of individual characters. After all, as a horticulturist you have access to one or two poisons and the rude capitalist who wants to close down the store is rather unpleasant ;)

In terms of gameplay, there is hardly anything more to say. When you are not attending to the needs of your customers, you have to solve more puzzles in the vicinity of Undermere. To do this, you are given a new puzzle every day, which you must solve to identify a specific location on the world map. There you will then find more puzzles, more plants or new entries for the herbarium. I should mention here that the game's protagonist never actually leaves the store. The game only shows you the new locations as 2D drawings. However, the entire action of the game takes place exclusively in the plant store. This makes it clear that this is a small indie game with a tight budget. I have to say though that this didn't bother me in any way. The drawings of the scenes are very well done and are absolutely sufficient to give me the feeling of actually visiting those places. Otherwise, as I said, it's all about finding, labeling and watering plants and occasionally stroking the store's cat :)

Overall, I had a very relaxed and good time with this game. The story was quite exciting and sometimes even spooky, but it didn't blow me away. It remains too traditional for that and doesn't really offer anything that I haven't already experienced countless times in other games, films or books. What also bothered me a little was the fact that the basic game loop becomes quite monotonous. Looking up plants based on the descriptions in the herbarium, selecting them and then labeling them accordingly is not necessarily exciting. But it's not supposed to be. It's more of a game to sit back and relax. It's not quite my kind of game, but I can definitely see the appeal.

Oh man, Square Enix, why have you forsaken this IP and won't give us a port, a remaster or even a remake of this amazing game :D Xenogears, even if it's obviously unfinished, is a fucking masterpiece. The themes addressed here are simply not found in current JRPGs which is super unfortunate. Among other things, it deals with the abuse of religion and power, human experimentation, racism, metaphysics and much more. The soundtrack is one of the best I've ever heard (Mitsuda at his best), the combat system (or rather combat systemS) is innovative and fun, the characters are almost all very well written and the story is the big highlight of this game. Unfortunately disc 2 really isn't finished but also not as bad as its reputation and yes, the story is completed and finished, only some passages aren't playable and are presented as a slide show.

The game is phenomenal, it's amazing that Square was capable of producing something like this in the past.

A great reimagining of the series that kept me well entertained from the first to the last second. In addition to the action and the wild story filled with a fair amount of WTF moments, the game also has its quieter scenes that really got to me. I didn't expect a Wolfenstein game to manage to make me emotional, but this game did. On top of that, the absolutely buttery smooth gameplay was so much fun. One of the best single-player action games. And as I said in my Wolfenstein 3D review already: Killing Nazis is always fun :D

I give up. I tried to like this game as I thought it would be right up my alley but no, I've wasted enough time in Cyberspace already, I'm done.

Sometimes life ain't fair :D I was looking forward to playing this, I really was. For years now, decades at this point, this game (well, technically the 1994 original), was on my backlog as one of the greats. You know these kinds of games everyone keeps gushing about when you bring up the "good ol' days". For me, it's in the same bracket as Deus Ex or Thief - old and somewhat clunky immersive sims that have a lot of jank and a lot of charm. I love these games...well I usually do.

Let me say that the game starts off really strong. You're thrust into this dark cyberpunk world that has a really distinct visual style. Within the first seconds of the game, I was hooked by the aesthetic. It's kinda hard to explain how the game looks, at least it is to me. System Shock looks like a modern game, it has very detailed models for enemies, weapons, and environments. Same goes for the visual effects - lightnings, explosions, fire, everything looks very elaborate and just as you would expect in a modern, AA game made with Unreal Engine 4.
However, and I know this sounds like it doesn't make any sense at all, System Shock also looks like a retro game at the same time. How did they achieve that? Well, it's mostly due to brilliant texture work. Textures in this game have this very particular pixel-style quality to them. By that, I don't mean that there is some PSX filter laid on top with the intention to evoke some retro CRT vibes as some Indie horror games like to do these days. No, the devs behind the System Shock remake somehow figured out how to design textures, that fit into a modern looking game while still keeping true to the visual style of the 1994 original. It's hard to put into words for me but it really works well. To me, System Shock looks like a mix between Blade Runner and Alien - retrofuturism the way I like it. You got your neon lights, your shitty explotative conglomerates that couldn't care less about ethics as long as they can squeeze every last buck out of their corporation, hacking, cyborgs, and of course, a sentient AI with a god complex.

That brings us to another aspect of the game I really liked - Shodan. The omniscient AI in charge of the space station where System Shock takes place is still a great antagonist, even 30 years after the orginal released. Shodan creeped me out. You interact with her in two ways. Shodan either shows up on various screens scattered around the space station. Here, she teases, challenges, and insults you and tries to discourage you from progressing further. After all, resistance is futile when facing a god, isn't it? You learn more about how Shodan perceives herself by picking up and listening to her audio logs. Here, she explains how she came into contact with various religious concepts by scanning the earth's databases and realizing that she fits the description of a god rather well. I'm not going to go into detail too much about what Shodan has planned to do in her new role as a divine being. Just know that she is scary af which is further emphasized by the brilliant voice acting.

So far, everything I said sounds pretty awesome. And it is - the premise of the game, the setting and the atmosphere are impeccable. The first few hours of the game were amazing. I was exploring the devastated space station, looking for items, weapons and, well...my objective really. See, that's something I have never seen done like this in any other game. System Shock doesn't really have a main quest. Sure, you know that there's an AI that has gone rogue and needs to be stopped - by you. But how you're going to achieve this is not clearly stated in some kind of quest log or whatever. There's no marker on the map for the next step or a text on your HUD telling you what to do next. Instead, you collect a bunch of audio logs left behind by the crew members of the station where they lay out what one could do in the super unlikely case that Shodan would have to be stopped. Pretty early in the game, you can basically access every level of the station. It's now up to you to figure out where to go and what to do. I know this sounds frustrating and it kinda is but somehow, deep down, I can't express enough how much I respect the devs for doing that. That's the kind of stuff I play janky retro PC games for as nowadays, no one would dare to do something like that.

But, and this really is one of the major reasons why I decided to put this game down for now, the level design can be really awful at times. So, as I said, you have to make your way through the station without really having any clear direction. This inevitably leads to backtracking. You may find yourself finding an audio log explaining how to find a specific code in a location you've already been before that you need to enter in another location that you've also been before. That stuff happens all the time. And, frankly, that would be alright if traversing the levels was fun. However, to me, it got old really fast. For some reason, the devs decided to let enemies respawn again and again and again. You'll fight the same guys over and over again. You never truly feel like you have completed anything. I'm sure this is intentional. The game doesn't want you to feel safe, it wants you to always be on the edge, always looking out for enemies or one of Shodan's schemes. I think that could work if the level design wasn't as confusing as it is which makes traversing it an incomprehensible, chaotic mess. To quote one of the OGs of video game reviews: "What were they THINKING????" The game even makes fun of this. There's an audio log that explains why the structure of the space station is such a complete mess. Again, I'm not going to give too much away but when I found out about this reason, I chuckled but it was an angry chuckle...the angriest chuckle :D See, it's the kinda thing were a piece of media wants to make fun of something by replicating that very thing. Sure, you made your point but you also contributed towards that problem by reproducing it yourself. Not a fan of that.

So, frustrating level design is one thing, and one I could probably come to terms with but unfortunately, there is another gameplay element that killed the game for me. If you played System Shock, you probably know what I'm talking about. Yeah, the god damn cyberspace levels. Every now and again, the game requires you to enter cyberspace - a completely separated part of the game where you take control of a digital space ship shooting your way through a Matrix-like 3D space where everything tries to kill you. At first I thought this was a nice distraction from the main game - a fun little challenge that helps keeping things fresh when you got tired of exploring the space station.

I was wrong. Cyperspace sucks.

First of all, I got physically sick moving around in that open 3D space. Upon entering any room in cyberspace, I immediately lost track of any direction. Often times, there are multiple ways leading to multiple sections of the level that you can take. More than once did I get lost and kept flying to the same locations over and over again. There was one level where my dumbass brain would make me fly straight out of the entrance again just because I couldn't compute where the hell I was and where I was supposed to be going :D Now, maybe that's a me-problem. But man, just look at any screenshot from cyberspace and tell me that it doesn't look super samey to you.
On top of that, once you die in Cyberspace, you're thrown out and have to redo the entire thing again. There are no checkpoints (at least I didn't figure out how to enable them if there were any) which means that sometimes, minutes of hard-earned progress is just lost. As I said, that really killed the game for me in the end. I was at a Cyberspace station in the reactor level and after like 5 tries I gave up. Shodan - you win. Congratulations, destroy earth or whatever, be my guest. I'm out.

So, being so frustrated in the end, why would I give this game a somewhat high rating? Well, I mean ... bro ... it's basically still a game from 1994 at its core. The remake is super faithful to the original. And, for the time, this game must have been mind-blowing. Yes, it's as obtuse as they come. The game doesn't hold your hand and it doesn't care if you wander around aimlessly for hours. It wants you to be sucked into this cyberpunk horror atmosphere and it succeeds at that. However, for me, I would have preferred some hand-holding. I wouldn't mind not having to face the same waves of enemies again and again. I would have loved to have a feeling of accomplishment, of having "conquered" a section of the station, of really making tangible progress. This game doesn't make me feel that, but that's ok. Definitely give System Shock a shot if you're at all interested in old immersive sims with a sci-fi twist to them. It might not be the game for me, but it might give you a unique experience that is pretty much impossible to find in modern games.

Man, I feel like an idiot :D Before picking up this game, I had no idea this was a roguelite. Yeah I know, how can you not know but I usually refrain from reading up too much on a game I'm even slightly interested in. I knew this was a grid-based tactical game with mechs including stellar pixel-art, great music and interesting worldbuilding.

Well, I was right.

What I didn't know was that Subset Games have created one of the most addicting and fun roguelites out there. They basically developed a game as complex as Chess (yeah yeah, let me exaggerate a little^^), put a post-apocalyptic, hyper-capitalist mecha spin on it and put everything into a super addicting game loop. If you're like me, you're gonna spend hours customizing your team, planning moves and figuring out the best strategies to reach your mission goals. The game is dangerous that way, it's a real time-sinker :D

It's a bit of a pity that the game has so little to offer in terms of story. Don't get me wrong, the writing is good when it comes to worldbuilding. It can be very on the nose but also has its subtle moments that I came to appreciate. However, the "plot" is barely existent and you don't really form any relationships to characters...which is probably for the better since they are all going to die anyway :D But anyway, I can't help but feel that there was potential for more in this regard. I see this game in my mind that uses the gameplay, art, and worldbuilding of Into the Breach but in a linear, more story-oriented game. This is not that game. It's still a banger though.

Tried to like it but had to put it down within the first hour of playing the game. The setting definitely makes me want more, but the story was rather uninteresting for me. I liked the artstyle and aesthetics in general but on a narrative level, this game was quite a mess. Uninspired dialogue, cliché-ridden tropes around every corner and a protagonist, I just couldn't relate to. Puzzle-wise, the game was fine I guess but didn't have anything interesting or out of the ordinary to motivate me to keep playing. A typical case of style over substance, I fear.
Maybe I'll have another look at it in the future, as I actually really like dark cyberpunk, but I kinda doubt it.

It's been a while since I played Jotun. However, there are still a few things I remember quite well. Firstly, as anyone who has seen a single screenshot of the game will have noticed, Jotun is really beautiful. The painterly style of the game really impressed me at the time. The aesthetics of the game also reflect the Nordic mythological setting very well. Typical figures and creatures of the Viking world are presented very vividly and really come to life thanks to the elaborate animations. The same applies to the music, which is convincing with both melancholic sounds and more intense combat music.

In terms of gameplay, I had an all-round fun time for the short duration of Jotun (approx. 5.5 hours). I remember that the combat system was quite simple and not really complex or deep. Anyone expecting to delve deep into combat tactics will probably be disappointed. This didn't bother me much at the time, although a certain monotony did set in towards the end of the game. Another point of criticism I would add is that some of the boss battles use quite unfair mechanics, which you can only counter to a limited extent thanks to the rather clumsy controls. So it did happen to me that one boss kept shooting lightning bolts at me like crazy with me barely being able to move my sluggish character out of the way. That was pretty frustrating.

Apart from that, however, I have no regrets about playing Jotun. The narrative gripped me from start to finish, the setting was (at least at the time) still quite fresh, and the music and art style were first class. All in all I would recommend to give Jotun a try :)