COGEN: Sword of Rewind can be summed up in two words: "skill issue". It's an absolute blast once you learn how to exploit the Ouroboros System, which lets you rewind whenever you'd like, but getting there isn't easy! The tutorial covers only basic concepts; later stages are mercilessly difficult, even if you're doing everything right. The most frustrating aspect is its difficulty curve - while there's a gradual increase in challenge as the game goes on, you'll still get thrown straight into extremely difficult segments without any prior warning.

That said, COGEN's combat feels fast and fluid enough that even a beginner could grasp the basics within minutes, provided they have patience for experimentation (and lots of free time). Unfortunately, it doesn't take long until things start feeling unfair after you master the core mechanics, thanks to some unintuitive design decisions. There's just not much variety when it comes to enemy types, meaning your skills aren't really being tested beyond learning how to deal damage efficiently. Most enemies die easily, which is "solved" by forcing the player to deal with a shitton of them at once, the optimal way to deal with these encounters simply being camping one side of the screen and using their own attacks against themselves. Boss fights don't pose much of a threat unless you screw up repeatedly - though the few difficult bosses present absolutely require memorizing attack patterns. This might seem nitpicky, but I couldn't help but feel that this game had the potential for something special, especially given its beautiful graphics and interesting concept, but falls short because of poor pacing with an excuse plot and forgettable enemies.

It has all the trappings of a classic retro-style action game: good music, cute sprite artwork, catchy stage themes. But while those aspects do add to the fun factor, the experience is marred by uneven difficulty spikes and other frustrating design choices, making it hard to recommend.

If you've got nothing else on your plate and enjoy 2D action with slashin' and dashin', give COGEN a try.

...Also the DLC is stupidly overpriced. 3 character DLCs, each at $7.99. At the very least, they massively differ in playstyle from Kohaku with some interesting mechanics.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

Void Stranger is a 2D sokoban-style puzzle game. But maybe it isn't? But it is, right? Maybe the real puzzle all along is the puzzle of the game itself? Only the Void can answer that...

This game does a lot of things that I've only seen a few other games attempt, and it pulls them off dangerously well. It's an almost euphoric feeling to solve the seemingly unsolvable after hours of theory-crafting and coming to a greater mechanical understanding. Which isn't for everyone, but it IS for me - wow.

Absolutely play blind, and reach for the limits of your faith.

IMO, not nearly as bad as some people would like to tell you it is but almost certainly the definition of "Early Access". I enjoy the Blegends Blarceus-esque gameplay, I like the Pal designs I've encountered, some much more than comparable creatures from That other series, and Zoe is an absolute baddie...

...but it's very technically shaky and clearly missing a lot of the meat on the bones, so I have to put it on pause for now 'til release, since I'm not the biggest fan of Ark and its' ilk, even if I enjoy how Palworld specifically handles it. For the people that LOVE those kinds of games and can work through their technical issues and set their own crazy goals I see them getting hooked on this shit.

All that said, isn't it kind of crazy this is the only Blokemon game that actually has natures and personality traits that make each individual Pal a little more unique like the original series???

Long-winded shitty tutorial for non-gamers makes the game sound more complicated than it actually is while simultaneously not teaching you mechanics you will interact with in your very first race, creating a dangerously fake skill filter and leaving a disastrous first impression.

As an example - the tutorial spends like 10 minutes teaching you about your backup emergency attack that you can use while out of rings, while spending 5 seconds to tell you rings are a boost/health meter akin to F-Zero that you should be spending constantly. Another example - the closest thing to a race track you drive on in the entire tutorial is a drifting track that requires you to hit maximum level drift boosts, when the actual race tracks in the game are designed around drifting for short periods of time outside of extremely wide turns.

Anyways there's a THE iDOLM@STER stage that doubles as Honey the Cat's home stage

Who are you to say what makes a game good?
Drakengard 3 is the best game of all time.
Drakengard 3 is the worst game of all time.

These are not one opinion, but two opinions from two people with opposite tastes and different experiences. The gamer's mind is capable of such feats because there is no universal truth when it comes to art or entertainment: There can be only individual truths. One person's great work might seem like utter trash in another's hands; the very same piece could satisfy both. Art has no rules for its creation nor does it follow any instructions about how to appreciate it. This applies especially to video games, where anyone can create anything they want at any given moment and players can play however they wish whenever they choose (barring regional censorship). Games can thus never fail on principle – they will always be fun if you let them.

But is Drakengard 3 supposed to be fun? Yes! It absolutely is meant to be fun! However…

It's just too much fun! And I mean that literally. Playing through this monstrosity was as physically taxing an experience as I've ever had, which isn't saying a lot since my list of hobbies includes doing hard drugs and drinking radioactive cleaning solutions straight from the bottle. That's right: Drakengard 3 is a real-life endurance test. The constant flow of intentionally bad game design and juvenile humor conspired against me in ways that few games have ever managed. Just the other day I woke up thinking about this game and immediately passed out again. That said, if you enjoy challenge then you'll find plenty here in one way or another, and if you don't know what kind of game Drakengard 3 really is then this review may be confusing.