Play as a blackmailed taxi driver trying to learn the identity of a serial killer in a noir styled visual novel. The mystery of the killer and the mechanics of identifying them are the least interesting elements of the game. The real game is the archetypes of modern life (or unlife), culture, love, politics, existentialism, etc you meet in the back of your cab. Lear their stories, your own, attempting to help them in the moment by being someone to listen to them or just by making a connection.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1163178807911600128?s=20

You play as one of the last few Uber style taxis operated by a real person in a near future somewhat cyberpunk setting. Very well written stories that play out with the game's passengers focusing on the gig economy, the main corporations increasing control of the city/police/traffic laws, and the dependence on and disillusionment with living in the current state of the city and the role a person has in it. A bracelet shows your emotional state changed by your dialogue options can effect conversations but rarely in a major way, though the bracelet itself and technology like it do play a more important role in the plot.

Money/ratings are almost mechanically pointless outside of showing how meager your earners are and how quickly your job can be damaged by impossible to please customers, which really doesn't narratively come up much with the story being so focused on the corporation and their AI operated vehicles risking putting you out of work.

This game does share some similarities with the other recently released Noir mystery taxi driver game Night Call. Different artistically, noir vs a cyberpunk aesthetic, both focused on the lives of the people you pick up. I wouldn't really recommend one over the other as they both have some great short stories from the passengers. The main difference being that this has a more linear style compared to all the random events of Night Call (still had never even seen some in multiple playthroughs of that game), less overall events, this has more impact with side character coming into play in the main story, and this lacks the very poor and repeated mystery segments of Night Call. This will give you a better main narrative, while Night Call will give you more events often with just as high of quality but you will also have to deal with a lot more randomness possibly preventing you from finishing stories you want to finish in a given playthrough or even from seeing them at all.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1180721222490841089

A puzzle game that makes use of documents, applications, and other windows on your computer to solve some of the puzzles. You are initially introduced to a "real" cat like child named Niko as a god that has to help them put a light-bulb representing the world's sun in place to help revive a dying world while trying to send the child back to their home and world. A second playthrough changes the story, introduces new characters, and gives both you and Niko the real story of the world and your interactions with it. Does an excellent job creating the relationship between yourself and Niko.

A well written and presented story focused on self acceptance, societal expectations and gaslighting, early internet culture and interaction, fandom, and the fragility of partly anonymous but meaningful online friendships and relationships. Set in 1999 where you engage with your friends through instant messenger, doing a good job capturing the feel of its use, and an online community focused around a magical girl anime. Story condensed in length with final parental interaction standing in more for dealing with and overcoming a lifetime of masculine societal expectations, rather than something overcome in a day and a out of nowhere group messaging system.

Fallen Order has you taking the role of a former Jedi Padwan coming out of hiding from the Empire to follow the trail of a fallen Jedi Master looking to track down a holocron with information that could revive the Jedi order. Gameplay mostly takes inspiration from Dark Souls style action games and light metroidvanias.

Your passive force power of sensing memories is a nice way to get history and cultural information, combined with your droid scans to tell you about tech or creatures. Fascism of Empire somewhat explored with disinterest in casualties, evictions/deportations, slaves, worker exploitation, stealing cultural artifacts. It's pretty, all the AAA games are pretty, they are always pretty now, we've even made Gears of War pretty. It's typically well acted, even if you do have three pretty boring cliches as main characters. Your hair blows a lot in the wind and when fighting, he knows this, and sometimes fixes it after a fight or action. Planets and locations are varied enough or see enough change as you go through and climbing is never an overly lengthy undertaking making traversing the planets as you go through them the first time mostly enjoyable.

The main character is a somewhat broody boring 20 something human white guy with a blue lightsaber that is more personable after he finds his droid buddy, then he is more broody after he is lied to, then gets over that and is friendlier again. His growth as a character is rushed through. Going from a life of hiding and self doubt, for idiotic reasons, to pretty much ready to take on the Empire all by himself once he meets his droid friend. He goes beyond being the most generic video game protagonist you can make, to also being the most generic Star Wars protagonist you can make. The droid beeps, he is small, he sometimes does amusing things, saves you with his droid tech abilities, you get the feeling he can be a bit of a smart ass, so he's a generic small Star Wars droid that teams up with a Jedi basically, which by default makes him more easy to like than the others. Former Jedi character who is taking you on your journey was a Jedi but then cut herself off from the force to not be bad Jedi, cause the evil darkness and this ain't KOTOR 2, and she now waits in the ship for you to do everything. Short four armed alien character that is there to be a cowardly Han Solo tells me that he used to only care about himself before running into the rest of us changed him, I think we had only spoken about four times before that event where we exchanged no dialogue of any importance. I suppose we've become like a family through our long trips back and forth from planets over and over again, shame I can't see any of that actual development or moments of down time, going back to character development seeming rushed. Any developments that could have lead to interesting content from the supporting cast or antagonists were pushed to the side by the bland protagonist taking center focus even in moments that should have belonged more or entirely to others. He also told the droid to prevent the sexy enemy Jedi with a voice I find soothing from hacking into his comm line to make threatening comments, cementing my dislike of him.

Character development aside the actual plot is that you are all idiots on a quest to do something that is obviously monumentally stupid and driven by their own varied degrees of self loathing. In a galaxy with an order dedicated to hunting Jedi and able to almost immediately be where they are if they feel any use of the force, you all think it's a great idea to gather a hidden nonsensical list of force sensitive children to force them all together under your training to overthrow the Empire. This seems like the worst possible and most immoral thing you could do, which does line up with the Jedi I suppose. An interview said they didn't want to make the main character an alien or woman because they wanted him to be relatable and some of the current movies already have women making up about 1/3 or a 1/4 of the main characters, so naturally the Nightsister who joins you at the end is the only likable one that tells you that your objective seems like a terrible idea and the only one I would ever want to see again in another Star Wars property. I wouldn't think her personality or some of the things she says make sense for her backstory and being a Nightsister, and her character is further damaged by what seems like a sudden crush on your character, but she is adorable and not an idiot so I'll take what I can get.

She asks you basic questions, that I've been thinking about the whole time, that no one else really has an answer to. Things like, "How will you protect the children?" "Do you know how to train people?" "Would the Empire know about this hidden list of force sensitive children if you didn't start looking for it in the first place?" "So you're going to force children to fight a war for you with the alternative being to be killed when discovered?" Questions that really highlight the problems the prequels caused, in the wider setting outside of any messages Lucas was trying to convey, where the Jedi are incompetent, weak willed, manipulative, basically evil child abducting weirdos and that any story about rebuilding the order is going to be as asinine and unrelatable as games like Homefront or movies like The Postman wanting to bring back America just as corrupt, unequal, and nuclear weapon happy as it was before. Let's tell all the children about being peaceful and how using your powers to kill things will turn you into the dark evilness and then let's get to killing. It's really odd that she took your word for it that the Jedi were peacekeepers and that you weren't the reason all her people were killed, because, you're clearly a bad person hiding behind your creepy religious order's bullshit hypocritical teachings to justify forced conscription and a lot of killing of an organization that she knows nothing about. Also, you kind of threatened to kill her for no real reason while trespassing in her home.

The game is set up somewhat like a metroidvania, while clearly having no real desire to be one. The only thing you will tend to find in out of the way areas is light lore and mostly ugly cosmetic items you will have no use for. This is not anywhere near reason enough to have you traveling back and forth between planets and running back and forth to your ship because they didn't allow for fast travel. This seems like something you would do to say that your, already perfectly acceptably lengthy game, is even longer to appeal to people not wanting to buy single player only games at full price. In general you will see and find nothing of value from backtracking, exploration tends to only be new and interesting as you are progressing through new areas. In wanting to be like Dark Souls they borrowed momentary loss of XP earned after your last checkpoint on death until you do damage to the enemy that killed you, I haven't seen this system so pointlessly and ineffectually implemented since Hollow Knight. Just like that game, this never caused me to lose me XP, and if it did it would have been nothing more than a strangely implemented annoyance you could easily grind to get back. Obvious shortcuts can see you falling through platforms to be told you fell off a cliff, even though the map is loaded and those are platforms you can and will stand on after taking the longer way to them. So don't think that you can use the map in obvious ways or make use of any sensible or tricky platforming skills to make travel quicker.

I saw a lot of people saying to play this on the harder difficulties and other people saying to play it on story mode. I played it on hard, I should have put it on story mode. It's still very easy on hard, it's just boring as you awkwardly kill your enemies after a ridiculous number of hits. Fighting human opponents is passable, probably at its best when you are blocking a lot of enemy blaster fire (though this takes no skill so it's more that it's just visually amusing). Combat in general is at its best when you find openings during or after enemy attacks to get a blow in when they can't block, even on hard some human enemies do die in one or two hits. When you have to wale on enemies to break their guard to get one blow in before their meter fully recharges it's monotonous. The most effective move is to do running (an action Cal doesn't always respond to well) attacks at enemies, it does high damage, has good range, might not be blocked, does decent guard damage if it is blocked, and requires no force to use. You want to take down the fascist empire, deflect blaster shots while running along walls and sliding down steep slopes, toss storm troopers off cliffs, and get into duels with enemies trained to kill you? Well, too bad, the game is unfortunately obsessed with you fighting bugs and small and large animals and doesn't have much in the way of different enemies. Just what you've always wanted to do with a lightsaber, just like how you want to fight robots as Wolverine.

Your lightsaber handles more like a club as you keep smacking these often large creatures 10-15 times to kill them, sometimes before it plays an animation out where you cut off a body part of your enemy. You learn very few combat related skills over the course of the game so the three hit combo, dodge, and roll you start with is pretty much how you will handle all of your battles. You get a double sided lightsaber that is faster and does less damage, I don't really know why you would use it. One of the very few combat moves you can unlock is the ability to do a kick after dodging. A fairly slow kick that makes no sense to do ever but it ends up being really funny because there are so few enemy types and a lot of them are large creations or large droids.

The game has abysmal lock on and target prioritization combined with an awkward camera when anything is above you. It will refuse to lock onto enemies that are high, low, or more than 10 feet away from you, change lock-ons in odd ways, and if you aren't locked on you will often see your force powers automatically targeted at the worst possible enemy choice the game could have made. Eventually they thought it was a good idea to throw three or four of these larger creatures together to fight you, where they will of course conceal your moves as they get in each others way and clip through each other to hit you, you used to run into creatures fighting and damaging each other but now that they all want you dead the laws of physics just don't apply anymore. Luckily in what would be the most boring of these encounters they are only there to guard ugly cosmetics you have no reason to want, so you can usually just jump on a little ledge and ignore them.

You get a small assortment of force powers slow, push, pull, saber throw, and double jump. In combat they are of varied use depending on what you are fighting, some enemies are weak to certain powers while performing certain actions. You would think slowing time would be extremely useful except it is costly to use, stops as soon as you hit an enemy, and for some reason doesn't slow down their ability to turn and reorient themselves while under its effect. Sometimes it just doesn't seem to work, ignore incoming blaster shots (not that using your force to slow those is a practical use of your meter, problem with it being charged by kills is don't waste it on doing cool things) and sometimes it would slow a group of enemies and sometimes it would slow some targets but not all of the ones in the area it should effect. If it created something like an bubble in an arch that effected things that moved into that would have made it much more useful and a good choice of stopping gunshots (could even more easily throw in types of shots you can't block like the charged shots or the disruptor sniper rifles in the Jedi Knight games). The most use you are going to have for that power is to slow down fans you need to climb through or rotating machinery that you need to stand on as a bridge. Your force bar also doesn't recharge, it raises when you kill things, probably the strangest feature in a game where you are a Jedi (but you can just use your powers constantly to interact with navigation or puzzle elements). Your force powers are slow and weak to fit the slow and awkward combat and some of the very few combat abilities you get like swing overhead and running and slashing at an enemy require force to use. I didn't know slowly raising my arms above my head and bringing them down made me a Jedi. I imagine the problem these games have with limited powers after games like Jedi Knight come back to the limited number of buttons on a console controller where every power needs its own button dedicated to it or button combination.

The puzzle are not good and you are, obviously, prevented from using your lightsaber and force powers in logical ways that would get you through them. I might have glitched my way through two of them, one from them I think they put button to close to me on the other side of a wall and let me push it through a crack in the wall (you should just be able to do this with the force but the lack of an animation and a 10 second freeze made me think it didn't want me to do what I did) and one from outsmarting the game by doing an obvious thing it tried to stop me from doing by awkwardly spawning your droid in different places just before reaching the spot you need to get to. Puzzles might have you throwing fire into vines to burn them away so you can get to the climbable vines that look less climbable than what you just burned, or rolling large balls with force push and air currents onto platforms that they will give power to (how else would you design your mystical temples).

The game also feels fairly rushed with a lot of animation issues, characters seem to miss their cues in scripted events (in one case leading to one of the most unintentionally hilarious scenes I've ever seen from a glitch), and you can fall through or get stuck in a lot of objects.

Fallen Order has locations that can be enjoyable to travel through but combat that can't come close to the better games in the genre and rushed plot and character development. You are not going to be using the force in either powerful or interesting ways, it clearly does not want to be a metroidvania while trying to be one, and the most interesting thing you will find in the entire second half of the game is some gloves that make you climb faster. It is at least nice that it doesn't rely on generic Star Wars iconography or character throughout its run-time (until Vader shows up leading to some ridiculous moments but they probably had to throw that in the advertising for sales).

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1198148422164856832

Children of Morta is hack and slash game with that takes places throughout eight main stages and three smaller story focused areas with the central family of character attempting to fight back the corruption of the land stemming from an angry god. Beautiful artwork that can quickly go from horrific and eerie to warm and inviting. Six characters that are unique to play with runes to be found in dungeons that effect how their attacks perform, further separating them. Outside of story events the house/hub areas has a lot of character building moments from seeing what each member of the family is thinking, seeing them live their lives, and seeing the houses filled with the souvenirs of their adventures. They might gather to eat a meal or play a board game, train together, the largest son carries around the youngest on his shoulders, oldest daughter has her hair brushed by her mom or might be sitting on her bed playing her violin, character will comment on the side events that you can run into in the dungeons, etc. The base gameplay is enjoyable and fast paced with the different characters likely stopping you from replaying similar areas to gather more money and experience. Side events can be found in the randomly generated dungeons that have you meeting new characters, fighting with another family member, collecting scrolls to learn more of the games world, or possibly an events that will gain you future members of the households. While it is primarily going to be a single player game (two player local co-op is available, with no one to try that with I have no idea how that would be balanced) each character eventually unlocks an ability where they can briefly spawn in to help the controlled family member during certain situations (block fatal damage, knock back enemies when surrounded, etc) which was a nice way to feel like they are fighting together.

There is a fairly limited number of enemy types. Each of the eight main areas of the game has four floors to them, three larger sections followed by a boss room. The eight stages are broken up into three different areas of the world with some unique enemies and hazards but some are still reused, some are never present in the earlier stages, and even with all of them their just isn't much variety. Even the powered up enemies you occasionally run into just have the same bonuses of having more health, spawning enemies, or dropping AoE attacks from the sky to stun you. Each character has what will end up being an extremely linear skill tree, by the time I beat the fairly short game I hadn't even gotten any of the six characters to reach their final two abilities by hitting level 20. The game makes for a poor roguelike even though it in many ways seems to be set up to be one and is descried as a roguelite. It prevents you from going any further than three floors and a boss, there is no penalty for death, you will find randomized buffs, runes, and abilities but some of these are so uninteresting or so poor for certain characters that you are able to do little more than hope you get what fits your character and playstyle with your run being over so quickly or you finding so many of them that it won't mean much, and the layout of the floors is randomized but will be populated by the same enemy and hazard types.

While the story and character moments in the game is often on the stronger side, the finale of the game gives you terrible reasoning for your antagonist's actions followed by a poor and very easy boss fight. The endgame is made worse by your character likely just being too powerful for any of the dungeons to really pose any challenge, and seeing as I had only hit level 17 with my strongest characters it could only get easier.

A fun and beautiful looking game while it lasts that ends on a fairly dull note and doesn't have much to get you to come back to it when a lot of similar styled games would give you reason to keep playing. Maybe this will be improved with future updates or if new content is added as the game seems to be selling quite well.

Edit: Has had some updates and free content since I last played, should only have gotten better.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1175627370620809218

Great looking environments with locations that give a good feel for the world, people, and creatures. Well written likable cast of characters that you get to know from seeing them bond at your base, with some possible events altering the moods of characters. World feels alive in way other games apocalyptic games don't with a mix of hope and despair (much less bleak than the previous Metro games). Some nice customization options for weapons and difficulty and some good accessibility options for subtitles and QTEs when grabbed by enemies. I liked that you can get certain enemy groups to surrender if you have knocked out enough of them or that some of the mutants and animals might back off from attacking you if you kill some of their pack or if they are wounded. Some enemies will make use of hiding spots or try to blend in with corpses to surprise you.

Terrible save system, you get one save slot and a checkpoint system with a continue option that only loads the latest before giving you an option to load the other, so if anything goes wrong with a save or the game crashes while saving you're probably out of luck (it does offer a chapter select option on the main menu if you wanted to replay things though). Metro's systems aren't at their best in the more open environments, you will be sneaking by people, animals, and mutated creatures looking right at you in the day and most of the open area is really just a few more important places and some areas to just pick up some extra gear or supplies. Though really only two of the areas are more open, with the starting area, a later area, and the two ending areas being closer to the previous games. The moral system Metro has always used makes this game much easier to get the good ending but it really limits your options to almost never fighting to kill or shooting guns at people, which can make the weapon upgrades and scavenging for crafting materials not that important. A few bugs with the animations not working right, getting stuck on things, or bullets/knives going through enemies when they are doing certain animations.

Loses a bit of what made Metro stand out with you being away from the Metro, the factions of the Metro, and a lot of the more mystical or horror focused elements until the very last section but also shows an apocalyptic world with moments and characters the feel more hopeful than the usual poorly written video game fare.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1096997419298873347

Good setting and entertaining writing and characters. Good ability synergy for stealth allows many abilities to help kill enemies quietly, a stun or knockout attack can give you more time to attack solo or multiple enemies while remaining in stealth, and being able to use multi shot attacks with silenced weapons. Combat is similar to the newer XCOM games and is enjoyable. Nice to have a shorter and more linear character focused tactical game.

Overlap between character abilities and abilities that can require you to go into menus to switch between them for the right scenario or when some are in cooldown instead of being able to equip them all together or have quick switch options. Switching out characters for your active party of three out of five possible characters will also likely need to to keep changing out weapons and armors each time. Only lead character talks or comments on the area, investigation options, and found artifacts most of the time so unless you keep saving and reloading to see what other characters can say you miss out on a lot of the personality of the characters. Upgrading weapons isn't very interesting as all upgrades do is add one to the damage and the way the game is set up makes it a much better option to upgrade your silenced weapons all the way throughout most of the game, not doing that will waste very limited materials for the better weapons.

Great potential hampered by a propagandized childish view of morality.

Really nice notebook, like in the original game, with photographs replaced by sketches containing notes with each one detailing the events that have happened in between episodes and additional character details. Though, your artwork has less overall meaning and story significance than Max's photos from the original game. A lot of good small character moments with the supporting cast, their lives, what they have dealt with, finding their place in the world. Your mom and a guy you meet on the road in the first episode (Brody) are both great characters with more to find out about them by looking at your mom's letters or Brody's website and articles. It runs the gamut of different types of racism in that almost everyone you meet may be blatantly violently or verbally racist, they can hold up racist power structures through their jobs or actions, show more subtle displays of racism towards you, racists aid or work directly with state laws and police to hinder or threaten you, and you often find even people that seem nice and willing to help you are likely the exact kind of people that created the kind of world that lead to the situation you are in in the first place. Most of the people you meet behave and speak much more like normal people compared to the first Life Is Strange. Although this is typically all the exception to dealing with your idiot brother and his pointless superpowers.

Daniel's powers just make everything awkward and take the focus off what is more interesting like police violence, subtle and aggressive distrust of nonwhite/poor/outsiders by the more ideal white trash American citizens while playing as two half Mexican brothers, sexuality (unfortunately only when starting a relationship with the girl and not the guy, for some reason), religious cults, dealing with death of and reconnecting with your lost family, etc. The police shooting at the start was made odd enough to begin with by including a lot of pointless events around it and the dead cop take a much stranger turn when that entire area of the neighborhood took massive damage and cop cars are flipped over and all that just becomes the afterthought. You being told you killed a cop because an entire area was hit by magical massive blunt force trauma over a period of about 15 seconds just makes everyone look stupid. Your grandpa just saying, "noticed some strange things about your brother being able to move things with his mind, don't tell Grandma." Max's powers in the first game work well since the story is based around them and they can't just be used however you want and aggressively to get out of situations, but here the powers tends to make the other parts of the game worse, create plotholes, and worse you can remove any powers from this game completely and have the same plot with very few changes. Not wasting time to instead focusing on more meaningful personal, political, and thematic plot points. The game shows you all the things your brother can do but then a guy has a gun and now he's just useless and can't even hold a skinny guy in place because if he could we couldn't have a cliffhanger before the getting to the next contrived plot point that this will create.

Powers aside, Daniel is probably one of the worst character I have ever seen in a game. The 10 year old bases his entire mortality system on the generic black and white style responses you can give and the actions you perform. "Sean, you stole from a white supremacist that hit us both and chained you to a wall during a difficult situation, so I'll just steal from a guy that saved us, helped us, gave us money and presents, and his friendship, stealing is fun." "You let me use my powers, I guess hurting anyone I want is fine." At one point you are basically asked if your dad is in heaven with another of the game's characters that died and you get to choose, yeah or nah. And if you say nah you tell him heaven isn't real and all we have is here and in our memories. And he just goes, oh ok, and a few scenes later is like, "Heaven isn't real Grandma, Sean told me." Next episode tells a guy sharing a story about losing his faith that that seems dumb. Runs into a cult leader an episodes later, "This is my home now I'd I'll just watch them beat you to death because they said you were a sinner." Because like all games that do things like this, Daniel had no previous existence until the day the game started. Was he going to call home one day after moving out, "Dad we never talked about this, is it cool to kill people like we used to do in video games?" You even get the generic, "You'll never lie to me ever again about anything right," choice in the first episode. Though him not wanting anyone to lie doesn't stop him from immediately lying about things in the next episode with no way for your character to say anything connecting those two things.

We help out the physically and verbally abusive dad from Captain Spirit, and the game even brings back the other abusive dad from the first game in a positive light. The main issue I have from these games and a lot of other games with kids is that these kids need to be half their age, they need to be five at most. These games give meaningful choices in the subtly actions of your character and how they view the world, but they do not grant you any ability to create meaningful major plot changes. Which means that a game where you are trying to influence how your brother views the world can have no meaningful choices until the very end of the game because we can only take one path through this story. You have no nuance or ability to explain anything like don't hurt people for no reason, don't hurt animals, and that cops, cult leaders, and white supremacists (who literally just shot you for fun) aren't people so kill as many as you can and have fun doing it.

Some problems with certain events loading properly or continuing correctly without freezing. Some conversations get cut off or don't start properly. Pretty much always involving something that your brother is supposed to find in the location or someone he is supposed to try to talk to. Some of the end chapter results don't even match what happens (about one every chapter for me, though always something minor), some of the visuals don't properly match what happens (having bruises from a fight that in my playthrough never took place, etc). I had no idea what quite a few of the dialogue choices were even implying when it came to what he would actually say. Couldn't understand a single word to any song in the game, God forbid with all their accessibility options they should bother to add subtitles for them.

Your character's mother is both the best character in the game and the most refreshing and meaningful use of a mother character I have ever seen in a game. It's rare enough in video games to get a living mother character, having one whose entire character is based around defying the societal expectations of motherhood was amazing to see even before she became the character in the game to most heavily support your fight against the racist systems and policing of the US government, even understanding and using her own position as a white woman to help you.

It's pretty screwed up seeing a lot of the talk on forums, guides, let's plays most people seem to have a very disturbing propagandized view of morality that's been forced on people from a young age with bad TV, games, and cartoons. Where doing things like surrendering to the police and letting the abusive justice system jail you for 15 years is seen as the "good" and "high morality" ending, whereas hurting the poor police trying to kill you and then hurting the armed gang members threatening you in Mexico means you are actually a big meanie who doesn't care about "morality" instead caring about dumb things like not dying or being jailed by a white supremacist justice system or the life of your family. Even framing the other choice as being taught to put himself and you first over society is so limiting and unfortunate. Even your brother ends up being raised by your blatantly racist and heavily Christian indoctrinated Grandparents. Worse that through some of the subtle visuals during these endings the game seems to be saying that good person and bad person end is the way they view them, in the same series where they seem frequently happy to redeem or make heroes out of abusive fathers. Visuals aside by never actually allowing you to teach your brother anything about the world, don't kill animals or advertise your powers should not mean to obey an exploitative and racist society, you are forced into terrible end game decisions by trying to be a decent person and crossing the border immediately tying you into gang violence is also unfortunate. If the game does one thing very well it is its portrayal of how deeply racism is ingrained in the country, it's people, and those who face it and that so many people would finish the game taking the worse possible choice as the good and high morality "redemption" ending when you have nothing to redeem is extremely unfortunate.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1265191052052295680

New friendly fire element really changes how you and enemies move, though pilot types effecting their willingness to automatically just shove a gun into an allies back and open fire to try to hit an enemy through the game's link attacks does get a bit ridiculous (I imagine even more so if I had ever actually tried to use AoE weapons). Enemies even take advantage of this system by attacking you through your allies so they hit one or both of you, while making your counterattack choice significantly more likely to hit your own pilots. A more cinematic focus on cutscenes and character models is a nice change for the series. Hard mode offers good enemy AI changes and the new game+ modes allow you to carry over things that give you more options early.

You can recruit almost every pilot in your squad through characters you meet in each base. This would be a good idea except that they are basically all the same, whoever you had early will probably be higher leveled and with the skill sets you want. Even though they might have very different personalities when you talk to them in the base or by their character description they will all be given the same lines depending on what roster spot you give them in the main or back up roster. There is also no real need to even have more than six main pilots unless you want to bring multiple units of the same types, because you are never allowed to use more and even if you want pilots of a certain type you can't even save more than six wanzer configurations (though it is fast to rebuilt and money is basically pointless). One of the worst thing is having many of the pilot options show up 18+ missions into the game where, other than simulator battles, you only have about nine stages left.

Story covers time periods from before and after the earliest and latest points of the series tying up plot elements of about seven other games while telling its own story, the main issue being that the story it tells really isn't very good (even ignoring that the fan translation is pretty bad, often verging on nonsensical or just getting things completely wrong, going off what one of the people that worked on it said in a let's play). Even when showing negative aspects it takes a more positive view of war than past games, many of the older games had you betrayed, fighting with guerrilla forces to overthrow a US puppet government, involved in more direct political affairs, in this so much time is spent in just more random battles against nobodies until you start fighting one of the guys behind the larger series enemy groups near the very end.

You have a very small supporting cast with the pilots that fight with you only showing personality in the section of the game they were first recruited, or never really showing any personality. Most of the main cast is actually really annoying cliches. Traveling constantly from military and special ops military bases and from battle to battle removes a lot of the world travel and interactions with city and civilian lives of the past games. Many of the female soldiers (main and random supporting characters) are instantly in love with your character for no reason. With even one scene having three women complaining about one of the men saying they should make their tests easier because the women are weaker completely change tone when they realize you are a sexy hero and start thinking about you saving them and how hot you are and another scene where you main love interests starts shooting at another character for telling you things about her obsession with you. Frequent weird stupid/comedic moments with some, at times nonsensical (even outside of the joking scenes), dialogue. I can't imagine it all being the fault of the translation as I don't remember these issues with other titles they translated and some of what is clearly going on in the cutscenes would suggest that that is just often the tone of the game (though the translation is a mess).

Multiple lines and even many times your own conversation choice options you get as a response would leave me having no idea what just happened or what anyone was talking about, these being mixed in with perfectly serious and understandable moments the rest of the time. A larger issue with this game referencing and tying plot points together and seemingly having some characters act very differently is that a lot of things were changed, removed, or toned down in the English release of Front Mission 1 (DS), Front Mission 3, and Front Mission 4 (even references between each other in those games) so you lose out on some of the moments that would likely be one of the main reasons to find Front Mission 5 more interesting. So it's a game with a story heavily based around understanding elements from games that were intentionally translated poorly or with characters given completely different personalities and motivations to appeal more to the perception of American children/young teens combined with a fan translations that both may not have known about original plot points but that also due to the limited time and resources just makes a lot compiling minor and major mistakes and compromises.

Melee feels massively overpowered when combined with its potential for very high damage, multiple hit skills, low AP cost link attacks, combined with the high move speed and armor/avoid the melee focused builds tend to get. Arena AI sim battles are broken, even with the AI being ok on normal and much better on hard, when it comes to having two AI pilots fight the game has no idea what to do and will frequently just take random movement actions without doing anything, this doesn't really matter as it is only the main way to earn money and you can just reload if you lose. Poor shop, a lot of parts end up either being locked more behind fairly hidden events, knowing how to upgrade low level parts down a certain path with parts that quickly become completely unavailable, and the way you do upgrade to more unique equipment is limited and only going to be earned by finding people to talk to or by performing well enough on missions (which isn't very difficult at all on normal to be fair). This can make the first play-through fairly dull near the end as it just doesn't offer enough challenge and you just don't have a lot of part options for customization (practically none if you don't bother with the dull survival sim mode that unlocks new equipment).

Mechanically and visually I think this would be the best of the series if it didn't hold itself back on a first play-through, character, world building, and narrative wise I found this to easily be the worst (going off of what I remember from other games from anywhere from 1 to 15 years ago). If the fan translation was touched up (which I believe includes issues like not even having the room to fit text that is closer to what was said) it would make some spots more understandable but really wouldn't effect the overall story since most of those confusing scenes don't feature anything important or are side conversations anyway.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1240217580893130752

First person domestic horror game about a Taiwanese family from 1980-1987 that has you exploring their increasingly disturbing apartment as both the father and daughter while you piece together what happened to their seemingly happy life. Extremely well made environments and scenes that tell a story focused around traditional societal expectations of family and children, effects of ignoring and stigma towards mental health, and the effects of cults and their appeal to vulnerable people.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1153097040915603456

Set during the White Terror period of Taiwan focusing on both the damage done to society living under martial law, powerlessness of your character's personal circumstance, and coming to terms with the damage you inflicted on others stemming from the abuses you've suffered. Physical manifestations of horror draw on Taiwanese mythology. An effective artstyle made to represent looking at old photos. Succeeds at telling a story of tragedy and horror both personal and socially.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1148797905324482560

Makes the good decision to not directly continue from the other games/anime, which would have likely made them much more convoluted as well likely undoing any kind of ending offered by the other games/anime. Has the amusing moments and some good character and trial twists the series is known for. With a theme focused on the real antagonists being the world/players wanting to feel the hope theme of past games through watching character struggles and perseverance through death and pain, and likely the developers wanting to do something new after constant requests for more sequels. If they never make another Danganronpa game, this was the best way to end it, and I always enjoy seeing lines that mock your own entitled fan base.

More characters that are just dull or unlikable compared to past games, with me being happy to see about five of them in a row die, mechanically nothing has improved investigation or character interaction wise and every new type of trial segment is awful, either just being awkward, long and boring, or so easy it requires no real thought. The new feature of being able to turn clues into lies works thematically but is almost never used and when it is you are pretty much directly told to do it, stopping it from really adding anything to all but the final trial proceeding.

The story of a Syrian woman attempting to seek asylum in certain parts of Europe and her husband still in their homeland texting back to her ideas and guidance, with paths and characters met based on accounts developers have heard from real refugees or on what was going on at the time in the locations you visit. The framing of the story showing both the journey and the loved ones left behind still in a war torn environment.

The interface uses a phone with text, pictures, emoji, as well as voice messages accompanying each of the 19 endings. The way it is sent up and with that feels like a real conversation. You can choose options that will lead your wife down different paths, to different countries, and to meeting different people but she also is treated as her own person and is very likable and will make her own decisions at times ignoring your advice or not telling you about more dangerous actions until they are over. Well written during the serious and grim moments of injured protesters, harassment, theft, scams, and less then welcoming locals but also in the more lighthearted times where humor or love between the couple is the focus or being used to help get through a tough situation, such as when an in joke develops between the two over their phone's overzealous auto-correct.

From what I've heard from other's playthroughs and saw on my own your path can make for a fairly easy trip, you might have to help your wife amputate the leg of a injured woman, your travels could lead to a protest at a closed border, walk over a former minefield, followed by a theft from a supposed friend and sneaking on top of an RV to make it into Italy, or could involve putting your trust in a cheap boat crossing run by mafia leading to more tragic results.

The only real negative is that it can make itself needlessly difficult or tedious to replay if you want to see the many alternate paths. You have no indication of what paths you took in the past nor do you have a way to quickly skip through slow conversations you'be already seen on subsequent playthrough. This can make the slower nature of the text and time skips that formerly worked very well to build tension or a feeling of realism now just take up a lot of time needlessly until you reach that new content. Remembering old paths and finding different routes could be made even more difficult by not even knowing what your message or sometimes possible emoji responses can lead to, with some not even looking like they might alter her path or knowing how she will react to it.

I am in a near dreamlike state where a mocking voice warns me of the condition I have left my body in. Ignoring the warnings and sudden intense pain, I awake to a terrible hangover with no memory of the past night or of any aspect of my life. After I slowly drag myself to the bathroom mirror and attempt to wipe the grime away I am again warned, this time hearing that I won't like the sight that will look back at me. "It can't be that bad," I think as I wipe the mirror, only become horrified at the sight of the swollen and ballooned face of a late stage alcoholic that I have no memory of, just staring back at me with a ridiculous grin. I fail to try to remember what events in my life would cause me to want to have my face frozen in such a ridiculous way, again I fail when I try try to stop it from happening, failure starting to seem a common theme in my life. After collecting my scattered clothes and leaving my room, with the sound of my jingling keys helping me to find them in my jacket pocket, a woman tells me that I'm a police officer that was supposed to be investigating a recent murder and describes the events she heard from my room last night that lead to my sorry state.

Downstairs I meet my new partner, telling him that it isn't time for names yet when I realize I can't even remember mine. Trying to remember causes me to consider the colors gold and orange for some reason. We go on to question the manager, the conversation leads me to declare my feminist agenda, the one that I suddenly remembered after becoming upset at his attempt to ask out one of employees and seeing it as a misuse of his power. This gives me a new idea that I choose to consider for the next few hours, my desire to undermine the tyrannical gender roles of society gives me a better understanding of the existing power structures of the society, of which I am still trying to fully remember. The manager is unimpressed and demands payment for my room stay, as well as payment for the window I smashed when I threw one of my shoes through it. A voice speaks up, a voice coming from the ugly tie around my neck, a voice that is both making a lot of sense at the moment and one I am willing to listen to, it tells me to sneak away to avoid paying my bill. Unfortunately, my gaudy shoes and pants have caused me to stand out a bit to much and I fail to make a clean escape. Realizing I have no chance of sneaking away I begin a mad dash, followed by a dive through the air while flipping the manager off with both hands. The voices in my head tell me to just savor the moment before the crash and enjoy that I showed the manger who was boss. Just look at the shock on his face, no idea how to react to my rejection of his authority. These thoughts come to me right before I crash into a woman in wheelchair. The resulting injury leads to a sudden pain in my left arm, followed by my chest, followed by all enveloping blackness as death takes me. Maybe I shouldn't have listened to my tie, maybe I should have taken better care of my body in my past life. The paper reports on a cop that suffered a fatal heart attack, I'm described as having been a heavy drinker that suffered from a broken heart long before a heart attack.

Existential, depressing, hilarious, political, cynical, hopeful, bleak, ugly, beautiful, and a police games that understands the role of the police. Disco Elysium does things that have been missing from the majority of RPGs. Set in a realistic setting that combines elements of different time periods and places to create a fairly grounded cast of characters and a story focused on the human condition and politics of the setting that mirrors real world elements, without a focus on being a chosen hero, forces of darkness, evil monster races, and what little combat there is governed through your skill checks. A focus on understanding, accepting, and letting go of the past to hopefully better yourself while finding hope in a depressing and cynical world. You are staying in a now destroyed room in the city of Revachol, a broken down city that experienced both a plague and a communist revolution before it was brutally put down by capitalists and then colonized by a neoliberal council in charge of much of the world. You have drank so much and taken so many drugs that you have effectively destroyed your personality and have no recollection of your past, you are told you are a cop and that there has been a body hanging outside for the last week likely connected to the current labor strike.

When starting the game you are given four stats to raise intellect, psyche, physique, and motorics with each governing six sub skills ranging from your ability to identify with the people you meet and their feelings, your reaction speed for physical reactions as well as witty comebacks, your attunement with the city around you, your ability to picture a crime scene, your ability to have informed hunches and gut feelings, etc. Every skill you have talks to you when you are dealing with people or noticing things in the environment, they can help you make informed decisions, clue you into hidden details, or cause you to make poor and ridiculous decisions. Your Physical Instrument skill might give you impressive muscles and the ability to use them but it also demands that you showcase your masculinity and to let nothing threaten it, Inland Empire might help you correctly see what isn't visible to the naked eye but as shown above it can be less than helpful when your clothing starts offering strange advice to you. Saying certain things or finding out information about people can lead you to having new thoughts, choosing to focus on a thought will give you temporary bonuses and/or penalties and when you have mulled it over long enough the thought will be locked into place with a new description and bonuses and/or penalties fitting your new understanding of the idea and what concepts you want to be important to your character as you rebuild his forgotten personality.

In most games you are rewarded for playing a certain way or for playing in completely different ways as the situation calls for it, giving your character no personality as you game the system. Disco Elyrium's frequently lore expanding or amusing skill anecdotes, the different options for playing your character different ways, and probably most importantly, your skills giving you an actual reason to want or understand the desire to do something you normally wouldn't do makes you want to play the game again as a character with an entirely different stat and skill focus. It is one of the rare games that can make your failure as interesting as your success. Some of the most amusing moments come from failure, some failure just leads to new logical paths to your goal, some failures might change a goal, seemingly minor choices or clothing items might lead to unexpected tasks or responses. Failing to find the cause of death during an autopsy can lead to a side activity to find a freezer big enough to store the body, succeeding in a Suggestion role might give you a task but play into the hands of the person that was hoping you would come up with such a suggestion, failing a Conceptualization role might lead someone to lend you her art supplies out of pity while succeeding causes her to think that you don't have the talent to create your masterpiece and that if you did you would be competition for her, failing to make a cool catch with your Hand Eye Coordination skill might lead to a loss of health buy an apology in the form of pity money. Unlike almost any other RPG, be it just because of how much combat there is or because some skills just have little or no real use, in Disco Elysium there is no right or wrong way to build your character because there is no push to succeed at everything, to do everything, to fix everything, or to help and save everyone, yourself included.

Disco Elyrium is a game that made finding my lost shoe a meaningful character moment. Multiple events make up some of the most memorable moments I've seen in a game. Your success or failure at singing karaoke leading to two entirely different styles of performance, a success gives you some applause and the satisfaction of the telling the manager that you knew you had it in you, a failure leads to a depressed wailing cover of the song drawing nothing but laughter and boos from the crowd, except for your partner who could genuinely understand the pain in your voice. One of the only instances of combat in the game having no positive outcome with a large amount of the text focusing on the fear you and your partner have towards being in a gunfight and the possibility of losing your new and possibly only friend. Helping to start a dance club and becoming completely lost in the moment while dancing brought on a vision where I spoke with the city itself. A dream of a lost love discusses the challenge of living with a man who sees the world in the way you know that your character does, arguing with himself and seeing a list of A, B, C, D questions that he wants to ask people at all times, a dream where a success at a skill check won't give you what you want but only inform you more clearly about what you no longer have.

It can often end up being one the darker games I've played, as well as one of the funniest, partly because it seems to understand that finding humor in the terrible situations that we find ourselves in or about the state of the world in general is how many people are able to survive. You are forced into choosing political stances as they are a major part of what people talk about, how you naturally react to them or things you see, and the game can't very well mock you for your mewling centrism if you weren't constantly choosing to refuse to endorse solutions or to take a stand on anything. No matter what you choose your positions will be questioned or outright mocked as absurdity or cowardice. How do you defend liberal capitalism and your foreign occupiers who put the city in the poor position it is in while getting rich off of its people hoping magical tech investors and the rich will generously create jobs for the people, how many lives would have been worth the victory of the communities and if they had won would you have just ended up with more corrupt unions like the one that seems to be protecting your main suspect, will you promote nationalistic ideas and fascism/patriotism/nationalism where your brethren are old miserable men rarely trusted by their peers or each other all longing for the good old days before radio signals corrupted the youths mind and destabilized traditional gender roles, or do you take the path of the centrist/moralist never standing up for anything and hoping things will slowly work themselves out? Well, it doesn't really make a huge difference anyway. Neoliberalism/moralism already won, they shelled the city, killed all the communists, and left the people you meet with little more than the crumbling ruins around them. The time for revolution has long past, and there's no money to be had in fascism and bringing back the king. Even the groups that would seem to be against or that actively dislike the powers that be know that they will be overthrowing nothing. The only people sharing your ideas are pathetic losers yelling at you from street corners, a couple college kids, and long since broken and dying old men and most of these people would never believe a cop working under the moralists who own the world would truly be on their side anyway.

The ruined city of Revachol is stitched together with tech, cultures, ideologies, and aesthetic choices taken from a variety of different times but managing to feel more real than areas in games directly created from real world places. A setting that can feel and become more magical than a typical fantasy setting as you attempt to explain how a glitch of an old recording playing long after its time seemed to be talking directly to you. You consider the history of the city's landmarks and notice the pronounced bullet holes and shelling damage still covering many of the buildings and walls, dried blood and bullet holes remain but no trace to mark the old bloodstains as being from the fascists killed by the communists or the communists killed by the liberals, residents watch you out of closed windows in buildings covered by weather worn peeling signs with slogans promising a better tomorrow. Revachol is one of the greatest fictional cities I've experienced in media, a city with a history told through its appearance and further told through one of the greatest skills ever put into a game, Shivers. An ability that allows you to hear the voice and see visions from the city itself. "Shivers come when the temperature drops and you become more keenly aware of your surroundings. It enables you to hear the city itself, to truly belong to the streets. It is a supra-natural ability; old wrongs play out in present time, scenes across the city happens in front of you. But who is speaking to you?"

Characters often feel real with nuance given to every character you meet, most of all to your assigned partner, Kim Kitsuragi, who has almost as much to add to the situations you find yourselves in as you will. Your moral compass, possibly your only friend. Kim characterization shows him to be a good man, but still a cop, still a man dedicated to the moralist of the game, though maybe getting too old and jaded to believe in the way he used to. Kim can grow to hate you if you play as a fascist, if you punch kids, steal, say racist and misogynic things, try to start fights, etc. But he is a cop first and as your partner he may voice objections but he will never stop you from doing anything, with the game only ending if you manage to choose a string of options that have you shooting a child. Only voicing his displeasure after the fact when asked by other cops. At one point in the game you can acquire paint and use it to graffiti a wall, one of your options is to write "FUCK THE POLICE." Kim is shocked asking why you would write that when they have a job where they work long hours and get shot at, only meeting you with a silent home if you point at that you only work towards making sure that everything stays as it is.

In place of the party of NPCs following you around you have your own skills talking to you and giving you visions into the lives of others, instead of learning about the past of your party members you learn about your own through your conversations with yourself. The voice acting is typically well done and the music and unique oil painting style of art helps bring the city to life, successfully capturing the world and characters in either vibrant detail or by having a more grimy look fitting of your mental state, the city's history, present, and seeming lack of a future. A police game where finding a body won't lead to any autopsy or fight with the responsible criminals but instead just ends with you and your partner trying to find the right words to inform the deceased's wife and the question of what happens to her and her kids now. Ample attention is paid to the small details of the world and characters, even making one of best moments of the game near the end being when a check tells me that Kim trusts me, followed by a second telling me that after all of our often dark, often ridiculous, misadventures, a gunfight, and putting up with my amnesia that he does truly trust me even beyond surface level appearances and beyond his desire to trust you as just another cop.

One of the few complaints I can make that has a larger effect on the game is that your skills talking to you is based on events or the successful hidden roles relevant ones make causing them to chime in, but there is no difference in which is more meaningful to you based on how high or low each skill is. None are louder or pushing away the other thoughts, though they might naturally argue or point things out about one another, but having a high ranking in something doesn't mean that it will take control of you. It is also extremely difficult to actually run out of health or morale and almost any health loss tends to come from kicking random objects or failing to kick them well enough. I don't know if its because I didn't raise some of them high enough to get additional options or many passives but Endurance, Pain Threshold, Electrochemistry, Hand Eye Coordination, and Savoir Faire seemed to have much less use than the other skills. Even with those not doing much (or at least not seeming to in my playthrough) you still end up with a game that makes better use of a large number of skills than almost any other.

This is not only my game of the decade but is easily one of my favorites ever.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1184282384205697024?s=20