I sincerely believe there is more room out there for games like Mafia or LA Noire that use an open world as set dressing moreso than a sandbox/sidequest hub, so as not to distract from the narrative and the main, polished content designed to out the games best foot forward. The best thing to say about Mafia is that it establishes its vibe very well without wasting your time.

A game that understands all of its influences on a deep level yet manages to not feel derivative of any of them.

Actually one of the worst games I've ever bothered to see the end of.

Nothing works, it is never fun. This is what a real one-star game looks like. I tried to see the best in this, but there is just nothing good here.

Fucking amazing how this game manages to literally be Super Mario World

It would be a shame to get hung up on the lack of plot, when I honestly consider the games de-emphasized story to be one of its core strengths since it allows all of the focus to be on direct player engagement. SMTV is a JRPG determimed to give the player agency to poke around its exploration and combat at their own pace, and is content to just drop you into the middle of the world and soak in the vibes...and what vibes they are.

Extremely self-assured visual style, one of the best soundtracks in recent memory, a gradually unfolding combat system with a consistently satisfying difficulty curve, and some of the best sightline-based treasure hunting and exploration in a JRPG this side of Xenoblade; I had a wonderful time slowly chewing on this in the months since its release, and was continuously challenged and delighted throughout the whole experience.

It's not as obtuse as I had been lead to believe, and I was able to get through all of the mansions without a guide just fine, but I just didn't find any of it fun.

It is however, leagues better than the original Metroid when it comes to originators of the Metroidvania genre

If not for the egregious slowdown this would easily be one of the top five games on the NES

I'll have to play that 3DS port some day.

Sets a new standard for JRPGs on the PS2

I would play the shit out of any classic JRPG remade exactly like this.

Hire a better writing team, expand combat mechanics slightly, offer more open environments, and you're a couple iterations away from making my ideal video game.

More rhythm RPGs!!!

Always knew I would love this but importing the drum was intimidating.

Finally bit the bullet and ordered the thing, and have spent the last two weeks since absolutely obsessed with Taiko no Tatsujin; As of now, I have cleared every song on Hard, started working through the Extreme difficulty. I even made it into the top 500 players in the Hard difficulty online ranked league.

I missed having a good plastic instrument game, and this offers a great tactile percussion feel while taking up significantly less space than a Rock Band drumset or even a Guitar Hero controller.

This is a rabbit hole I see myself falling down for a good while. Already looking at sensitivity mods for the Hori drum kit.

Every Yakuza game is like ten hours too long and the last quarter is mostly cutscenes of people recounting everything that has already happened over and over and over again.

Also, there's no karaoke in this one.

This is my least favorite game in the modern Fromverse but they are all five star games and you can only compare them against each-other.

Fromsoft is one of the best things life has to offer tbh.

You know back in 1997 when consumers first felt the rumble pack included in Star Fox 64, they ran screaming out of their homes because they thought the ships were really coming at them.

Shockingly worse than the base game; a story that takes the only chapter in Fata Morgana one might describe as "a little too long" and then retells it from the beginning with even MORE repetition and unnecessary detail.

Also the game attempts to justify a romance between a 13 year old and a 30 year old on at least 5 separate occasions, and not just one character. This isn't like the parts of the base game where characters occasionally have horrible moral lapses and commit taboos; the most relatable characters will often voice their approval in their most lucid states. The game goes absurdly far out of its way to tell you this age gap is okay, actually.

About as bad as a sequel can be in that it makes the original look worse in comparison.


Sometimes a sequel is so good that it makes the things that came before look worse by comparison and Metroid Dread absolutely does this.