The core mechanics are good and I appreciate the sound and light systems but for every good mission (stealing the sword, looting the mansion and getting the talisman from the opera) there's 3 overly convoluted and tedious maze-like missions. The Thief's Guild in particular is one of the worst video game levels I've had to endure up there with the lair of the blind ones from Turok 2. Too many of the missions are filled with same-y looking hallways and rooms so it's too easy to just get stuck wandering around hoping to find an area you haven't visited yet. Alongside the tedious missions, the mechanics are often inconsistent. Sometimes a guard will instantly detect me across a hallway or anywhere within a 10 meter radius, other times I can chase after a guard and miss a couple times before knocking him out somehow in total silence. The music sucks and can get obnoxiously loud at times and the story is average. Garret has good voice acting and his quips can be fun but they are few and far between. The ending was also very weak with having to wait for Constantine to finish his very slow ritual after swapping the eye in after the first statue thing is activated.

Cool game. Aesthetic out the ears and a smooth soundtrack. Strong sense of speed, satisfying to dive into the SLIPSTREAM and dash ahead of your opponents. There's a sufficient amount of good-looking tracks to race on though they don't vary much gameplay-wise. There's also a good amount of different modes to play on, though I preferred just doing the grand prixs. One problem with the game is the rival characters which were very clearly submitted by kickstarter backers considering their utter lack of charisma in every possible way. I physically cringed when the neckbeard character popped up and said "teleports behind you" like i had jumped back to 2015. I also dislike how every race is 5 laps because my fingers always hurt by the end of them and the first 2 laps are generally rigged so that you always fall behind and only catch up by lap 3 which is just annoying. Also while it's not really a flaw, I would've liked for each stage to have music specific to it to make them stand apart from eachother more but the music is good enough that it's not so bad.

Surprisingly great game. Had a very good sense of progression where I felt every neuromod I installed was useful and deciding which one to get was always tough. The space station had a nice dark atmosphere and exploring felt very rewarding. Combat was fun, albeit a bit repetitive. The guns felt powerful when upgraded and the Typhon powers were fun to use as well. I did feel some enemies like the telepaths and poltergeists were kind of a pain to fight but there aren't too many of them compared to mimics and phantoms. Didn't find the story too compelling, felt like a large portion of the audio logs and emails were either there to just reveal key locations or complain about messy relationships. The twist was very cool and well-done however, so it left me with a positive impression.

About as good as every other battle network since the gameplay and plot structure remains mostly the same. I appreciate that they largely cut down on the amount of backtracking you need to do and the liberation missions are pretty fun. Colonel is cool and getting to play as other Navis like shadowman and toadman was really nice for a change of pace. I think the story was somewhat weaker this time around and the problems to solve didn't feel as dire as in prior games so that balances out with the gameplay improvements.

Very fun throwback to old shooters. Satisfying weapons, decent variety, mostly good level design, cool enemies and tight atmosphere. I didn't really find it spooky like they were trying to convey and the bosses were lame. The voice acting of the narrator also sounded awkwardly like a guy putting on a deep voice. Was also not a fan of small things like areas where you can only see with your flashlight and that weird tumble you do sometimes when you fall and makes you lose your direction. Moment-to-moment gameplay was fun enough to make up for the flaws though.

Very fun and intense action game. It's pushed me harder than any action game I've played before, mostly in a good way. Killing is very satisfying and the parry mechanic is cool. Really feels like it recaptures some of that feeling of playing Demon's Souls for the first time with how rewarding it is to explore and beat areas while being clearly distinct from the souls series which was getting pretty tired out. The game has lots of great moments despite the story itself not being spectacular. Nearly every boss fight is good but a fair bit of them can get unnecessarily frustrating at times. Highlights include Owl, Genichiro, Lady Butterfly, the Divine Dragon, and Isshin being one of the best final bosses of all time. While the mechanics are mostly solid, hitboxes (particularly grabs) can get too wonky which is a big problem in a game where you often die in a few hits to most bosses. Other faults would be the generally lackluster soundtrack, nearly every prosthetic besides firecrackers being useless outside of 1 or 2 specific situations, dragonrot not actually mattering, and enemies that require rare consumable items to defeat. It's certainly not a perfect game, but the ambition and step away from the souls formula combined with the style and intensity of the combat make it great.

Decent game that satiated my musou thirst. The roster is impressive, of course, and the magic system is a nice addition to the musou formula. The story is uninteresting and the interactions between the characters are fairly weak aside from a few of the goofy side stories. The game is also lacking the fun guest characters like ryu hayabusa and ayane. In the last chapter I had to turn the game down to easy, not because it was difficult but because the enemies become absurd damage sponges which defeats the entire purpose of musou. Another large problem was that every character joins at level 1 regardless of your progress in the story which means even around the halfway point of the game you can't use the characters you get without sticking them in training for a whole chapter or dumping the growth points you've saved up for several battles. This basically wastes a large portion of the cast for the sake of an uninteresting level system. While I did enjoy the game overall, it definitely feels like a rushed work to take the heat off of dynasty warriors 9 and is comparatively weaker than warriors orochi 2 and 3.