This makes major changes to Pokemon that creates a game that feels fresh and original. It's unlike anything I've played before. I love the new catching mechanics. It turns Pokemon into a stealth game where I have to sneak around, hide in grass, lure Pokemon with fruit, and toss a Pokeball at their back to catch them by surprise for the best possible chance to nab them. The world is surprisingly gorgeous at times. I don't understand the criticisms about how the game looks because there are times where I'm blown away and have to just stop and look around. There are fewer battles with trainers in this, but it still managed to hold my attention with the focus on collecting Pokemon and filling in the Pokedex. The boss battles are fun. There are some surprise twists and turns and dark story material in this in ways I don't think I've seen in other Pokemon games. I was impressed by the entire experience.

Sifu

LCSnoogs
LCSnoogs


Sifu
This was disappointing. The game feels inconsistent. Controls aren't as responsive as they should be. Parrying way too often doesn't work when it should and sometimes works when it shouldn't. It's unreliable to the point where I stopped trying. Movement is sometimes sticky like my character is walking through mud all of a sudden. It created an experience where so much of my frustration was coming from the game not working as it should instead of any challenge the game was presenting me. I was even getting pissed off when I was doing well because of moments where I press the punch button and my character doesn't punch or some other moment of slow response to my inputs. I made it three levels in, and I don't want to bother any more. It's a shame. There's a lot of cool style here, and when it works, combat feels bad ass.

Stranger of Paradise is an all-timer because it has the best action RPG combat system I have ever seen. This is what action RPGs should've always been. It's a shame it took so long for this genre to get here, but I'm so happy it finally made it. This is what I pictured when I first heard the words "action RPG".

I played this game coming off of Bravely Default II last year which is the JRPG from Square Enix that brought back the job system from earlier Final Fantasy games along with more traditional turn-based combat. This combat system was so smartly translated to an action game in Stranger of Paradise. I am doing attacks similar to the ones in Bravely Default II in real-time, and it feels powerful and satisfying. There's no stamina bar like in Soulslikes, and there is no pausing/slowing down the game to select attacks from a menu like in Final Fantasy VII Remake and past action RPGs. Basic attacks cost nothing and dodging costs nothing. All action happens in real time with combat leaning more into the fast-paced, combo-tree-driven style of the character action genre (my favorite genre) similar to games like Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden, and Devil May Cry, but since it's an RPG, the combo tree is customizable. Leveling up different jobs unlocks new attack abilities for weapon types the job can use. This provides a list of abilities to assign to different combo tree paths on a weapon. I could create my own combo tree to play the way I want to play weighing the pros and cons of each attack ability to find ones that fit my needs.

There is a limitation to attack abilities in that they cost mana as expected for a game based on Final Fantasy. There are no items for regaining mana though. Instead, mana is refilled through combat by landing hits on enemies, parrying enemies with the soul shield, and executing enemies with the soul burst allowing me to play aggressively instead of having to back off and wait like in a soulslike. Also, the way they handle parrying with a sould shield is so smart. The player has a break gauge. Getting hit while blocking takes a chunk out of the gauge. If I don't block, the gauge fills back up again. If the gauge gets depleted, a hit will stagger me leaving me open for attacks. The soul shield allows me to drain the gauge in order to hold up a magic shield. If I get hit while this magic shield is up, it acts as a parry knocking an enemy back and leaving them open for attack. A successful soul shield parry will also restore some mana too. After playing a game like Sifu where parrying timing didn't make sense based on what I was seeing on screen, I'm happy to get this more forgiving version of a parry especially since the game relies so heavily on it.

The story is weird and ridiculous in how it's told, but it's also hilarious and endearing. The ways in which this is strange is something that shouldn't be in a big game like this, but it's better for it. It was an unexpected highlight of the game. I was excited to get to the next cut scene.

The loot system is disappointedly cumbersome. I get way too much of it leading to me spending too much time in menus. Dismantling them also takes too long as there is no filter based on equipment level to help me easily dismantle low level equipment that is useless to me. Then using materials to upgrade equipment also takes too long. I didn't bother with it much. The game won't tell me which equipment piece is upgradeable and each equipment piece has three different effects to upgrade on them. It's very tedious to go through each item and each effect on each item to see if it's upgradeable. They could've have made this a much smoother experience. The equipment doesn't even have as many effects as Nioh in a way the makes me want to manage it all. The one good feature they added was the optimize equipment button which equips my party with the highest level of equipment available. From there I can make adjustments based on job affinity bonuses that match the jobs my party has equipped. It's the one part of this game that bugged me.

This is the first Hitman game I've played to completion, and I have mixed feelings. I can get caught up to the buildup of following story threads to assassinate a target, but the actual assassination isn't a satisfying enough payoff for the buildup. Also, sometimes I really feel the time I spend stalking targets, and sometimes directions aren't clear enough which can lead to things taking longer than they should or several failed attempts where I have to reload a save. The costume changes and sneaking around is fun though. For stealth games, I think I prefer Splinter Cell and Dishonored.

This is one of the better retro-style games I've played in a while. It completely delivers what I wanted from a game like this. The combat and platforming is challenging and satisfying. I also feel cool while doing it. Mastering the parry is pretty badass.

The couple of issues I have are that all attacks are on one button. The basic attack is X, throwing a shuriken is Up + X, and throwing fireballs into the air is Down + X. The shuriken and fireball attacks cost SP. I would end up doing them by accident when just trying to do a basic attack wasting my SP. The other issue is the dash which is done by moving the thumbstick left or right twice in quick succession. I never got a handle on how quickly or slowly I needed to move the thumbstick twice leading to some frustration.

It's a story-focused game that doesn't have an interesting hook to start with. Things don't get interesting until the halfway point. There's little interactivity in horror games like these, so there wasn't much to keep me entertained in the meantime. I was even falling a sleep during play sessions.

The puzzles in the game are pretty light. There are some puzzles that are more interesting and intricate in the second half of the game, but they are never challenging. The focus is just to uncover the story which leads to disappointing results. The characters of interest in the story all seem to have similar backstories about childhood trauma, and in one case, childhood trauma isn't enough to explain their behavior. The story feels pretty aimless too as Marianne moves from investigating one person who leads to another and another while I have no idea why any of them matter until the second half. It leads to moments where I forget who is who. I honestly forgot what even started this all off, and the ending is pretty bad.

The coolest part of this game is how they present Marianne's medium ability. She can see the spirit world and the living world at the same time. This is presented in the game with a split screen where one half shows the living world and the other half shows the spirit world. The two worlds look different and there are things to interact with that only appear in one of the worlds. This is cool only in presentation though. There's nothing interesting gameplay-wise they do with this. As I mentioned before, the puzzles are pretty light. The game just has me interact with an object in the spirit world to trigger something in the living world and vice versa.

There is a stealth element to this game because there is a monster that occasionally stalks you. This, thankfully, is kept to a minimum. I think there are only about 5 stealth sections in this game. They aren't that bad. They aren't good, but they aren't that bad. Getting caught is a one-hit kill, but the punishment isn't much as the stealth sections are short.

There just isn't much here to make this a game worth playing.

This is PT meets Gone Home. It's like PT in how you repeatedly go through the same apartment over and over again with little or big changes each time. The apartment even changes while you're still in it sometimes. It's like Gone Home in that you are working to uncover what happened to this family through flyers, tv broadcasts, discarded notes, rejected script pages, diary entries, etc.

The player is the father of this family of three with a mother and daughter. He is also a struggling screenwriter. Early on, it is revealed that the daughter has a severe illness preventing her from attending school, and the mother used to be a famous singer before giving that up to start a family. This is my big issue with the game, and it's the same issue I have with Gone Home: the story isn't strong enough to support the game. I have no reason to care about this family or to want to dig any deeper. I was bored through most of my playthrough. It isn't scary and the puzzles are pretty simple.

The game does manage to end strong. There are twists on what I thought the story was about, and the game breaks from its PT-structure to go to a new, more interesting location. The ending is surprisingly dark. It's still too little too late, but it didn't improve my opinion of the game.

I would've gotten into these games sooner if someone told me they were like Limbo and Inside. This game nails that experience too. It's maintains a tense, creepy atmosphere and has some unsettling boss and enemy designs. There was a moment that actually freaked me out, and I'm hard to scare. The puzzles and platforming are engaging and satisfying. There are stealth sections but the game does provide opportunities for me to fight back which felt good. I prefer my horror games to not be stealth only.

I think I will need to go back and play the first game.

This is the least interactive visual novel I've played. It at least has a good story and fun characters to follow. It's a mystery story. There are several mysteries to resolve over the course of the game most of which are murder mysteries. There are two main characters to play as with separate connected stories that must be completed in one playthrough to progress to the end. The gameplay consists of selecting which location to go to, selecting which person to talk to or object to observe to collect clues, and then interrogating persons of interest using clues gathered to resolve the mystery.

The story is really fun, but it can drag at times. Especially in the final part. The game also has an issue where it won't say exactly where to go leading me to visit every location until some event happens. The number of locations to visit is always small, so this wasn't too big of an issue.

The game is fully voice acted, but it only has Japanese voice overs. I had to read everything anyways, but it's at least good to know the tone in which dialogue is said. There are also many typos throughout which was weird.

This is definitely better than Resident Evil 7. RE7 was good, but I was disappointed in the lack of enemy variety, and that brought the experience down in multiple ways. Resident Evil Village doesn't make that mistake. They do a good job of mixing things up in both enemies and environments throughout the game.

The map system from Resident Evil 2 Remake returns in this game, and it's was the game's biggest hook for a while. I was obsessed with scouring every building for all the items within until the building on the map turned blue. It hits the appeal of Metroidvanias.

The game is split up into distinct areas with its own boss that runs the place. The devs are still committed to doing the RE1-like puzzles and exploration, and I love that they stuck with this. They also do something special in each area to give the game a good amount of variety which I love, but I have my own likes and dislikes for each area. The thing about the current team working on Resident Evil is they wear their influences on their sleeve, and it's clear they are influenced by games I don't like. These new RE games work to recapture the magic of the old games (RE1 to RE4) while mixing in some of the current horror game trends. My problem is with the current horror game trends. I don't like games like Outlast and Amnesia, so when they put in sections of this game that feel ripped straight from titles like those, it brings down the experience for me. RE Village also reuses some ideas from previous games that aren't as well executed here. There were also some disappointedly uninspired choices made when they could have done something cool and new. None of this makes any area in the game bad, but they definitely could have been much better. Except for the factory level. They 100% nailed what they did there. The level was so good that it made me forget about all the issues I had with the game before then.

Outside of the ending, the story left a lot to be desired. Ethan wasn't never a good character and they didn't do anything to fix that here. He's mostly one-note and surprisingly stupid in this game. The new bosses are also pretty one-note and boring (people excited for Lady Dimitrescu might be disappointed). Heisenberg was a standout though. He had a little more going on than the others. He's not necessarily a good character, but he was at least somewhat interesting. The new merchant character is pretty good though.

This game introduces new Lycan enemies. I was excited for this because Resident Evil has done nothing like that before. I was disappointed to see they attack me just like Las Plagas enemies from Resident Evil 4. They run up to me and then stop when they are a certain distance away. Then they start moving slowly towards move to the left or right before lunging. I just don't think Lycans would fight like this. I can see and hear them moving running around jumping from rooftop to rooftop, but then they get to the ground in front of me all that quick movement and aggression stops. It's a missed opportunity to do something new and cool. There is one underground ruins area where I fought against a group of them. Here, they acted more like Lycans. The area had three levels. Lycans would jump from ground level to the second level to attack me (they also used ladders sometimes which is odd). If I was standing near a platform a level above me, they would jump down right on top of me. The second and third levels had gaps between platforms that I could see them running and jumping over. They felt more threatening in this area.

I have so many mixed feelings on this game, but overall, it's still a really good, satisfying experience that I will play again. Because it's a game that likes to blend the old RE with modern horror games, I just couldn't help but think about how great Jill Valentine is in RE3 Remake compared to Ethan (Leon in RE4 is better than him too), how much more interesting enemy AI is in Resident Evil 4 compared to here (enemies don't even throw their weapons at you in this game), and how much I don't like a lot of modern horror games. It feels like this game is in some ways a step backwards from the games it's trying to modernize.

Side Note: They brought back the RE4 inventory management, and I never had to engage with it. I always had enough space. I did not rotate or move one item in my case through my entire playthrough.

Revisited one of my all time favorite games in preparation for No More Heroes 3. I haven't played it since the Wii days. I admire how well this game handles self-aware humor because I've played a lot of indie games since this games release that fuck that up horribly. It's a constantly fun, bizarre games that throws things at you out of left field. The combat is simple but never gets old. The finisher moves are forever satisfying especially when you cut a whole group of dudes in half. The bosses are funny, memorable, and have striking character designs, and the fights themselves have fun gimmicks. I was always excited to meet the next assassin, and the story setup to defeat the top 10 assassins creates a clear progression that kept me on the hook. This game holds up well, and there's nothing like it.

I remember finding No More Heroes 2 disappointing, and now I remember why. The game is mean, perverted, and not funny. The bosses which were a standout in the first game are mostly forgettable here. Most don't seem meaningful to the story at all. The plot is something I don't care about at all. I often forgot the reason Travis is fighting to be the number 1 assassin again. The game is easier than the last game with combat not feeling as good. The first game had fun, silly gimmicks around stages and bosses, and this game doesn't do much of that. There were some surprise, great ideas here that are executed poorly. The minigames are retro style arcade games now. They are more difficult and complicated than the original games. I prefer how the first game handled its minigames, but there are some decent ones here. The presentation is cool at least. It's pretty much worse in every area except that it has more detailed animations than the first game and some good uses of shadows. I like most of the character redesigns. It's still a solid, playable game, but like I said before, a disappointment compared to the first game which is one of my all time favorite games.

To say that this game delivered would be an understatement. It's rare to see a developer go all out like Grasshopper did with this game. It's wild, hilarious, subversive, and really fun. At times, it feels like the best Adult Swim game ever made. Every piece of this game oozes with style, humor, and personality.

Combat has gotten much deeper this time. The combat system has carried over some elements from Travis strikes again giving Travis more attacks to combat a wider enemy variety than previous games. The original game was simple and satisfying. It never got old. This new system takes more thought and work to get good at it with enemies that are pushing you in different ways to keep the pressure down on me. The sound design is fantastic too. The crashing of the beam katana hitting an enemy and Travis doing a powerful dropkick feel so good. Also, the "KILL!" screen and music that plays when you defeat all enemies in a level is amazing.

The open world is technically nothing special based on modern standards. It also doesn't run well. There are clear framerate drops when travelling around. Luckily, none of the action happens in the open world, so it's not a big deal. What the open world has going for it is that I enjoy doing all the activities in it: returning minigames like lawnmowing, new minigames like the surprisingly fun takedown driving game where you smash into the cars of reckless drivers with your motorcycle to stop them, fun visual novel scenes similar to the ones in Travis Strikes Again, and silly collectibles. I spent a lot of time running around the world, and it didn't get old.

The music is all around fantastic. This is definitely the game to own the soundtrack to. There's a dope rap song that plays when you go to the sushi stand where you can buy health items and temporary buffs. When I first heard it, I had to stop and just groove to it.

There are so many things I don't want to even mention because it would ruin the surprise. This is a must play game, and my current game of the year.

Wow, did this game not live up to the hype. It's still good, but all those 10s made me expect something better. The game is mostly like Dishonored if it leaned more into being a first-person shooter which sadly means that this is a lesser version of Dishonored.

Arkane is not good at making shooters. The movement and aiming is awkward. It feels like the hit-detection is off. I mainly stuck to using a shotgun because that was my best chance of action hitting my target. It worked nicely for me though as I could modify it for accuracy, range, and faster reload speed. Towards the end of the game, I got a silenced pistol that was good for stealth headshots. That's all the weapons I needed. I also stuck to the same two abilities of shift (teleportation like in Dishonored) and nexus (linking nearby enemies together so killing one kills them all). These were the first two abilities I got, and I didn't need to bother with any of the others which is a bit disappointing.

The whole loop concept didn't do much for me. It's just adding a time of day requirement on the standard type of objectives you would get in a game like this. "Visit this building in the morning to set something up, and return to it later at a different time of day" type of stuff. If I screw up, I have to reset the day and start all over again. I mostly didn't have trouble completing objectives, so I didn't have to reset the day to try again too often. There is one objective that required me to restart the day multiple times to complete not because I screwed anything up but because it was written that way. That was actually annoying because I required me to kill the same enemies over and over again to power up some generators to flip a switch on a control panel.

Thankfully, the whole experience is guided. I'm not a fan of being left to my own devices to figure out where to go and what to do in video games. The game seemed like it was going to be aimless and a roguelike at first, but it's not that. I always had an objective to complete which set a waypoint on my map clearly marking where I needed to go. That's probably going to be a turnoff for some people, but that made this experience bearable for me.

This is just as good as the first one with some improvements. I think the detective gameplay outside of the combat still isn't great though. Tailing, parkour, and photography are simple enough to not be frustrating, but they aren't fun to do either. I hope they figure out a way to make something interesting with future installments that make me feel like a detective, but doesn't come with some hard fail states. Right now, it's just fine. Tailing has been improved from the previous game to make it less frustrating at least. Combat-wise, they add a new fighting style that is really useful. It might even be a little OP. It was created for fighting enemies with weapons as it has moves for disarming them, but it was a good go-to style in any situation as I could easily deflect enemy attacks creating an opening to get in some free hits.

The story is so good here. It's the exact type of crime-thriller stories I enjoy in movies and TV. A man is found guilty of groping a woman on a train, and after his sentencing, he announces to the court the location of the corpse of a man that bullied his son until his son committed suicide. The thing is, the time of death of this corpse is when the groper was harassing a woman on the train. How would the groper know about this corpse, and is it possible that he could've killed this man. As the groper was represented by Takayuki Yagami's old law firm, he helps in discovering the truth behind both the murder and groping crimes. The story gets into school bullying, vigilantism, and the flaws of the criminal justice system. It handles all of this really well.

The other part of this game is the School Stories. In this part, Yagami helps young, aspiring detective Amasawa to learn the identity of The Professor, a mysterious figure behind the corrupt activities in and around Seiryo High School. Yagami investigates different clubs and rumors to solve this mystery which involves playing several different minigames. This part of the game is great too, and it's almost as long as the main game. There are some impressive minigames here and they are all very different from each other. The standout is the boxing minigame that is surprisingly deep and fun.