this game is fun? but why is it so horny?
there's:
vore
inflation fetish
weight gain kink
waterworks
scat

this is the Salo of the Mario universe

Cult of the Lamb is very shallow and devoid of content, but the devs perfected the art of the streamerbait.

The game looks and sounds amazing, and presents the whole gameplay loop within the first hour, so if you catch a glimpse of the game on someone's stream, you will probably think "oh damn, this is really cool" and go to buy it.
If you haven't played any games in either the roguelite genre (The Binding of Isaac, Hades, Enter the Gungeon, etc) or the colony management sim genre (Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, Oxygen not Included, etc) you might even have some fun playing it. Otherwise though you'll quickly notice there's nothing more to what you already saw on stream, and that the game doesn't live up to the level of an average game in either of those genres.

I've beaten the entirety of it in about 10 hours; the colony management is primitive and about 5-6 hours into the game my cult started playing itself with the only remaining duties being cooking and preaching, and after that I just rushed through the dungeons, of which there are only 4, all of them functionally identical. It's possible to repeat those dungeons after defeating the corresponding big boss, but outside of a tat one of the NPCs dispenses for completing the repeat dungeon for the first time, there is no point to it - they play exactly the same except you can loop 3 times through them to collect more rewards in one go (the rewards are completely meaningless by that point, because the cult will already be developed enough to maintain itself).
The combat itself is completely broken - rolling towards the enemy, striking once and rolling away by far outperforms any other tactic you can come up with, and there is pressure to avoid fooling around too much with suboptimal tactics because of the global timer which means that the cult's stats will diminish even during the dungeon time.
The enemies are copypasted from TBoI, and the bosses are just the same enemies, but bigger and with the ability to spawn smaller enemies. The only boss with the actual patterns is the final boss, and he's laughably easy, some bosses from the early floors of the aforementioned TBoI are more difficult to beat than the final boss in this game.
There are curses which act like the active items, but there's no interesting utility to them, just outputting a bit more damage.
There are tarot cards which act like the passive items, but they can be roughly divided into the two categories: minor buff to health/damage and an extremely circumstantional benefit you will never fulfill the conditions for.

I wrote a lot about the dungeon part of the game even though I think it's meant to be secondary for the colony management part.
This is because there's not much to say about the colony management part.
Followers have basic needs: hunger and hygiene, and they generate devotion. You build structures to satisfy those two needs, and structures to farm materials to build structures to satisfy those two needs. You use devotion to unlock more structures to... you get the idea. You can also preach once a day to make your followers generate cooler devotion which you use to unlock completely unsubstantial upgrades for the dungeon part. The followers level up which does pretty much nothing other than eventually allowing you to unlock perks for the cult none of which are particularly transformative.
It's all functional and completely boring, the only paradigm shift that happens in this part of the game is that eventually it loops onto itself and the cult generates enough materials which the followers use to satisfy their needs without any input on the part of the player (with the exception of cooking, and apparently the chef was on one of the promo screenshots, so I'm guessing they either removed this to put in a DLC later, it was too buggy to put in the game, or they realised that the player will literally have nothing to do at the cult anymore except preaching if the chef is present)

This shallowness, however, makes the game very approachable, and the target audience for the game, I think, is pretty clear. There is a lot of effort put into the visuals, the sound, and the Twitch integration, and seemingly a lot of money put into sponsoring the streamers to play it. The game allows you to pet a dog to tick off that meme "can you pet a dog in this game" twitter account box. The game has a fishing minigame to tick off that meme "does this game have a fishing minigame" twitter account box. When you finish the game, before the credits roll the game makes sure to plead you to recommend the game to the others.

At the end of this review I will instead recommend playing Oxygen not Included for the better colony management sim experience, and Hades for the better roguelite experience. They're just as polished as Cult of the Lamb visually and acoustically, but also are much better designed games.

Legends: Arceus is incredibly fortunate that it's a Pokémon game, as there's a lot here that would be nearly unforgivable in any other context.

The story has some nice moments, and a handful of enjoyable characters, but is achingly plodding, tedious in its repetitions, and ultimately overstays its welcome. The core gameplay loop often feels like it amounts to little more than making numbers go up and ticking boxes. The boss fights were actually pretty enjoyable to me just because they broke up the core gameplay loop, but they do amount to an E-Grade Souls rip-off with some pretty bad game-feel. In general I think game-feel is something Legends: Arceus really struggles with, especially when this aspect collides headlong into some of the ways where the game feels unfinished (attempting to traverse hills and edges of terrain makes this really obvious).

The game also feels like it is suffering a bit of an identity crisis at times; a common occurrence for the first half of the runtime is that you'll end up in a battle with some story character, you'll have six monsters to their one or two meaning you can never really lose no matter what happens, and then as soon as you win your party is healed for you. It's like they didn't want the trainer battles to define the game, but were too scared to move away from them to a more dramatic extent in case the lack of them might disappoint long-time fans.

Easily the most damning problem though, and the one I really can't shake, is the world design. These environments are just so lifeless, so lacking in intrigue. Big, bland, bumpy, and ultimately distractingly ugly, expanses that exist solely to plonk down critters upon. If you removed the Pokémon themselves from the equation it's hard to imagine people actually wanting to exist in these spaces, or having any real desire to explore them.

Legends Arceus has a lot wrong with it, and yet despite this it is still a Pokémon game and this does some serious heavy lifting in its favour. Despite all my many complaints, sometimes you just see the most perfect, adorable little critter wandering around in the wild, you crouch down in the grass to try and sneak up on it, and in that moment it's hard to harbour any ill-will against what's going on here. Pokémon has always been a franchise that carries with it an incredible amount of charm and the best moments in Legends Arceus are the ones where that charm shines through, and for all the game's faults I was left smiling more than this review might suggest just because it's hard to feel too bad when you get to spend your time vibing around all these lovely monster-friends.

absolutely hates women and denies them any personhood at all but simultaneously tries to be a critique of impotent men who hate women and deny them their personhood

IT FAILS REAL BAD!!!

A real shame because some of the satoshi kon-esque psychological imagery can be fun and the puzzle gamplay is devious and interesting.

The transphobic stuff is just repulsive and sad. The fact that this game was branded as some dark and cerebral adult drama that analyzes relationship dynamics is a pathetic joke. There's less nuance here than a Two and a Half Men episode.