I have 150.8 hours logged on my first play-through of Elden Ring, and damn was that time well spent. Being an open world does kind of open the souls formula to some kind of unavoidable issues, but despite that, I think the open world also provides Elden Ring with its biggest strength, that being exploration. The world in Elden Ring is MASSIVE. And it feels like there is almost no wasted space at all, from hour 1 - 150, I was interested in what the world had to offer, I wondered what crazy landscapes or creatures I would encounter next. Although, that does make it easy to get lost in exploration and forget what you're supposed to be doing in the main story, which can be a bit frustrating. The balancing overall feels a little off as well, which I suppose makes since with it being an open world game as big as this. But overall it was an amazing game that I definitely plan on returning to for another play-through some time in the future

Sekiro really doesn't feel like Souls game, and I like that. As much as I love the Dark Souls series and souls-likes, I think it's really cool that Fromsoft decided to branch out and make something more unique with Sekiro. Because Sekiro isn't really an RPG, it allows the combat system to be more tight and focused. The story is also actually comprehensible in Sekiro without having to read a bunch of item descriptions, which is nice. But honestly, something about Sekiro just didn't resonate with me as much as Dark Souls 1 and 3. I think the environments and the soundtrack were the main thing holding Sekiro back from being on the same level as the Souls games. Sekiro's environments and soundtrack weren't bad by any means, but it all just kinda blended together for me. Overall though, Sekiro is an amazing game, and is proof that Fromsoft is more than capable of branching out of the souls-like genre.

Halo CE is a great game, but holy shit some of the levels in the campaign are fucking agony to play through... Honestly, a good chunk of the campaign can be a massive headache. But the combat is still pretty good even today, and at the time of its release, it pretty much set the ground-work for the entire genre of FPS on console. Even though the campaign has some pretty shit missions, overall I look back fondly on my experience with it, and that's not even getting into the multiplayer, which debatably is the biggest draw of almost every Halo game.

It inspired a whole genre (I know Demon's Souls came first, but Dark Souls is really what sent the genre to the mainstream). Even among the now hundreds of "souls-like" games there are today, Dark Souls stands among them as game that feels incredibly unique. The biggest criticism I could give Dark Souls is that it can sometimes feel a bit too cryptic and leave the player with no idea what they're supposed to be doing, especially if it's their first Souls game. But the story, world, characters, enemy designs, combat, and especially the level design is all masterfully done.