I randomly came across this game during a sale and the art style and animation were the thing that first jumped out at me.
I downloaded the demo first to see what I thought of it and less than 10 minutes and the sheer fact that this game has full voice acting and interactions for you clicking 90% of what you can see made me plunge into the full version instead.
I wasn't disappointed at all, I played it in one long whole day session.
First things first is that the story has a really good starting pitch, with it being a murder mystery with seemingly impossible circumstances and very quickly the exploration of the crime scene and the characters you meet shortly after that are just lovely, also really well voice acted, the casting of every character felt perfect with all of them adding to how the characters pull you further into the story, all the while the visuals, animations and music stay consistently phenomenal too, each character has different ways they'll address you, from stuff like how a grandiose character who likes to inflate his background changing his entire background to a star filled space scene until getting rudely cut off and that makes the background change back as if he'd been brought down to earth, to another character offering her opinion about the other family's members via poems that cut off the music and make the background black while she recites them.
The main mystery solving and puzzles also have a good amount of variety while never feeling like you forgot something along the way or get overwhelmed, but the main appeal is I think being able to keep track of who has and hasn't been lying, with the main twists staying refreshing and pretty hard to guess all the way through, genuinely phenomenal gem of a game that put the devs into my radar.

It's an IP I love, amazing character designs and OST and this fighting game lives up to those two as well
A place I think this game excels is one where I think a lot of other fighting games fall short, which is in the Single Player department. GBVS has a really fun, easy to sink hours into RPG Mode, it has a fair amount of basic RPG functions and lets you learn and play any character you want, even DLC characters you might not own, another thing a lot of other fighting games fail to do.

But acting as a skeleton to all of those amazing things is the fighting game itself, which sadly is where GBVS falls short.
It doesn't do anything exceptionally wrong, more that what it does have doesn't have a lot of depth or variety, things feel good, just you feel like you fall back to the same combos really easily with most characters and there aren't a lot of options available for mix-ups, regardless of this I enjoyed my time enough to revisit it recently and wrap up it's platinum game purely in anticipation for it's sequel that shows tons more promise and a lot more fun systems and variety.
Here's to GBVR, I can't wait to sink more time into that!

A very lovely short story game.
It's a very slow walking sim, which isn't great but the game never forces you to walk for unbearably long before making you solve some puzzle or giving you a good story bit

The puzzle quality is genuinely good, puzzles that are decent headscratchers but not too ambiguous or abstaract that you need to look them up, same with the story, genuinely well placed and keeps you guessing until the end without outstaying it's welcome.
It's a good game for 1 sitting but achievement clean up is a bit messy, with the game offering no skip options for on rail sections and ladders in this game being either buggy or dreadfully slow.

Google tells me I'm past halfway through Final Fantasy XVI and I keep finding weak excuses to not finish it. I just don't find this game fun.

Frustrating combat, weak story and lifeless semi-open worlds... all working against the beautiful score, truly next gen presentation, and the epic but infrequent Eikon battles.

I could probably push my way through if the combat was fun, however it is so dull to smash through. There is no challenge to it, just spongey enemies and repetition. The game often throws waves of enemies at you, yet rarely offers anything new. There is a mission about 10 hours in where you are working your way to a boss through these puzzle rooms, and you fight the same enemy dozens of times for about an hour. I was bored out of my mind.

I consider myself a mediocre gamer (Souls-likes terrify me) and haven't died once, not even in the optional side boss battles. That isn't what you want from a game like this.

Sounds like I hate it, so why the rating? The Eikon battles are incredible. The spectacle of them is unparalleled. Trim the game down by 10 hours so these battles become more frequent, and you've got a game I'd finish.

I also loved the performances, even if I didn't care for a lot of the characters or what was happening. There was a lot of heavy lifting done by the talented cast, and they deserve all the praise I think they'll receive this awards season.