In many ways this is the best Danganronpa. It's new and shiny and opulent in its spectacle. Characters interact more, everything looks better and there's more heart in this more than the other games. I feel the same way about this game as I feel about Dark Souls 3, I'm glad it exists because it looks and plays better, despite the flaws. The trials and mystery are complex and I enjoyed them, but things kinda get weird. You sometimes need the input of Monokuma or the cubs to advance the trial and the mistakes killers make seem very stupid considering their plans. I have more criticism for this game more than the other 2. I don't know if I hold this game at a higher standard or it's the game that hints and fails at something more complex. It's clear to me they wanted to end Danganronpa with a bang, especially with trial 1 and 5. Trial 6 is the contentious one and, although I hated it at first, I think it's really good. It's one of the few twists in this series that change how you see the events before it, and not in some metaphorical sense. The number of case files in your lab, some fanservice scenes, your experience with the other games, they all start mattering and you start making theories, exploring and engaging with the material. DRV3 is a good game, I'm glad it exists and I'm quite fond of it. Goodbye Danganronpa.

I can't wrap my head around this game, honestly. Starting off with things I am sure about:
The gameplay is okay, it's rather simple and doesn't pretend to be more than what it is. It feels a bit of a chore most of the time and it's a bit all samey.
I really like the setting and the premise, I could feel the sadness and heartache between the dream and irl sections, it was well crafted.
The ending is... somewhat peculiar? There's a twist that changes the story completely and I'm not too much of a fan of it. It's not a bad ending per se, it might just be something I have to mull over. It definitely didn't go with the easiest and straightforward way and, although it's less satisfying to me, it tells a darker and more unique story that makes this game special, which is something that I can't argue with.

A perfect combination of Dark Souls, Elden Ring and Sekiro combat. It feels extremely good to play and it makes Dark Souls/Elden Ring combat feel neutered. You get a lot of customization and change of progression of your basekit. It takes some stuff from Souls games, such as elemental buffs, and makes them part of your kit, without consumables, it takes weapon durability and makes it engaging and dynamic, and it also takes weapon arts and makes them not dependent on having to manage a different type of flask or whatever. The bosses are fun and a good challenge; I've had a lot of fun fighting them switching from a Souls playstyle to a Sekiro playstyle or back depending on how comfortable I was with a certain attack. The maybe most interesting thing I can say about this game is that it's fairer than FromSoft games, meaning that, while the game does expect you to learn and master your kit, it meets you halfway, it's more forgiving. I know it's extremely subjective and honestly a terrible way to put it but the best way I can describe it is that there's very little "artificial" difficulty. One thing I really like about this game is that if you finish your healing, you can earn back one at a time if you do enough damage, it's not a straight up "Well, good luck buddy". The few bad things I can say about this game are: there's too much of a gap between low hp fodder enemies and high hp bigger enemies (not necessarily a bad thing but it didn't feel right); the respawning takes too long; the exploration looting is underwhelming; and the one instance where the game helps you too much: very frequent shortcuts. Ending on a list of bad things doesn't give the right idea so I'll say this last thing: I think in many ways this game is better than the Souls trilogy and Elden Ring, and if you enjoy these games, you'll probably love this one. It's an incredible achievement.

Return of the Obra Dinn is an extremely unique puzzle game that leaves you in awe in the first few hours of the game and has a great ending. It really does feel like a sandwich. I say this because while discovering all the chapters at the start of the game and seeing things happen by rewinding moments in time is extremely damn cool and interesting, actually solving the deaths feels by comparison so so much less exciting, despite being a good puzzle game. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it, it just seemed like the magic was gone, so to speak. The ending is really really cool, I didn't know I could be so attached to a character even when I almost never heard him speak or move, heightened by the fact that everyone else (relevant ones) seem like arrogant idiots. This game is excellently well done and definitely an unique experience that I would recommend people.

The combat isn't that great. I'm just gonna get off that immediately. It's mostly button-smashing, it looks flashy and great but it's pretty bad. The story starts off okay, it's nothing incredible, then it stagnates for a lot of its runtime before picking back up and become fantastic. This game is structured weirdly, because Yoko Taro is just a weird dude, but it wasn't that bad, it kind of fits the theme of the game and the stellar opening monologue. The last third of the game hits like few games do and it really makes this game unique and special. I'm extremely biased because I love almost anything that talk about existence and the human condition, which, in this case, is incredibly heightened by the fact that you don't even play as a human being, strictly speaking anyway. It's one of the few games that made me tear up.

This is a perfect example of a game that isn't meant to be fun and is outright unfair but is still a good experience to go through. Everything in this game fits, so to speak. The artstyle, the sound effects, the humor, the gameplay, the characters. It's wacky, it's serious, it's funny, it's grim, it's unfun, it's an experience. It's also one of the games that truly use its medium to tell a story. Gameplay affects story and story affects gameplay in a way that's interactive. One of the most telling moments of the story is when, after you've been put through hell by one of the characters, the game punishes you for not accepting that this game is unfair. One moment that stuck with me when I replayed the game is when I purposefully didn't finish a character's questline because I knew they would leave the party and he was too useful to leave behind, which ties wonderfully to the playable character's themes. Made me feel so selfish and egocentric.

This game is really unique, not in any big way or anything, but in rather small things that add up into an experience that's hard to match. The exploration and normal enemy design is a bit simple and not that engaging, I can hardly call this game a metroidvania, if that name means anything anyway; game's pretty linear. The bosses is where the game gets interesting: bosses in this game are mostly puzzles and gimmicks, which makes each of them fun to fight in different ways. By that I mean that the game doesn't really test you on your ability in mastering your kit, which is very simple, but tests you on each boss individually. The puzzle-like approach is also reinforced by the fact that most bosses have very little HP, which is something that doesn't change with difficulty options (I think). I'm not to say all bosses need to be hard and that you need to die to them often in order for a game to be good, but I'm not kidding when I say that almost every boss (at least in harder difficulties) could really use an HP boost: some bosses would be completely fine even with a 2x boost. Bosses near the end of the game act much more like bosses in normal action games, and they are the most enjoyable ones (the 2 secret bosses are very engaging and fun to fight against). The story and characters were good! I didn't expect it but I really liked them and getting to know them. The only exception is... you. Being a silent protagonist restricts you from developing a personality. You do have one, at least the other characters say so, but when the game speaks of your past it's hard to know how you, the character, feels about it because you, the player, just don't know. Great game though, looks very good too.

Going around this small yet dense part of a destroyed city, all you see is misery and how people cope with it. You, who should be one of the people that bring order into this mess, are yourself a broken man. You were broken and as soon as you wake up the world demands you to stand up and recover and do your fucking job. There are awful people in this world but none of them are like that without reason, not even you. Every character has depth, some try to hide it in order to keep up a facade, and they all try to take advantage of you, not because they hate you, but because they have to. All this chaos is also represented by the staggering amount of quests you get that often need a long time to complete. But one by one you solve each loose thread, slowly you start to understand why people are the way they are, and one thought at a time you start piecing together who you were and why you are. The end of the game, despite all this, is the most hopeful message I've seen in media, all the more powerful thanks to everything that came before it. Life in Martinaise is about failure, but success, despite how low the chances may be, is always possible.

Hyper light drifter. Where do I even begin? When I think of a game that had a big potential but failed to meet it this game comes to mind. At first I really liked this game. I went up from the main area and explored a really cool area with an incredible boss at the end. The best boss fights in gaming are the ones that let you be as aggressive and risky as you can and be rewarded for it. This boss was it and set the standards really high for the rest of the game... which was just okay. The bosses are few, around 9, and except 2 of them they are kind of easy and bland; none of them ever reached the high of the first boss I fought. The exploration is a two sided coin. It's mostly good and I really enjoyed it seeing how the areas were constructed. What I hate the most are the small little squares that you have to look for on the ground, which signify a secret. They are a very "gamey" way to signal something to look out for, but it would be better if you had to look for details in the environment and not just look at the ground to see if there's a weird square. Invisible platforms also feel the same. The dashing mechanic is... weird? If you keep dashing following a rhythm the game lets you chain dashes, but if you chain too many in a row you lose all the stamina and are forced to stop. I don't get why they made it this way; why is the game punishing me for getting the rhythm right too many times? It seems backwards to me. Some might argue that it would make people look less at their surroundings but I don't think that's fair because new players will still look around and at most get the chain dashing wrong. It might make speedrunning monotonous and bland maybe?? I don't think it should work that way. But the biggest thing I don't like about the game is the reward system of secrets or in general how the "pink triangles" are given to the player. Some of them require a small dungeon to get, some of them require enemy arenas, and these are great and I really like them. But sometimes, out of nowhere, if you spot one of the squares, you are rewarded one. This makes them feel almost worthless at times; they are required for progressing through the game and additional challenges and making them as easy to get as looking at the ground, which can also give you something much less important like the game's currency, makes them feel unrewarding. The game has 8 of them each area and since there's that many of them there are bound to have some of them be easier to get, but at the same time they could have had less of them or just, not as easy as some of them currently are. When I go back and fight the boss that got me hyped for the rest of the game, it just feels like I'm playing a totally different one.

The first 3/4 of the game are immaculate. It's a beautiful world with lots of stuff to do and see and explore. The combat is an even more fleshed out version of Dark Souls 3. Walking around this game felt like magic... the first time around. As Joseph Anderson said, this game's world loses its charm and awe after you've finished the game, it doesn't have replayability because of the scope of this game. Elden Ring's goal was so high they had to sacrifice some crucial part of the game. Reusing enemies and bosses, samey dungeons, too much padding. The game outlasts its welcome with the last 1/4 of the game: by then I had already explored almost everything of the previous areas and it really felt like the game was about to end. Then it kept going with a barebone area with bad bosses. Though the worst bone I have to pick with this game is how hard they are trying to make the bosses. Most of the bosses are fine, I'd say almost all of them, except maybe the minibosses or wandering bosses, which are just boring. The biggest issue I have is that boss and more specifically that attack. It seems like FromSoft is trying so hard to keep up with the increasing skill of gamers nowadays that they had to make something UNFAIR to top it. It's hard to judge this boss or even this single attack because it's so jarring that it ends up defining the game. I do think that is a good thing. However, the Souls format has been a thing for like a decade now and it's no surprise that they thought they had to come up with something even harder. I believe it's time to either make drastic changes to the basekit or retire it and try something new. Sekiro shows this very well: they tried something different and it was a stellar achievement. Elden Ring is an amazing game, it deserved the GOTY award, but I hope they try something else next time.