The game presents you with a very interesting way of linking together information in order to progress and find new links to continue cracking the mystery, and I would gladly play more games in this style. However, the game ends pretty abruptly; just when you think you're about to stumble upon a huge goldmine leading to the big twist, the game ends. Also, exploration mode was advertised as allowing you to view all the documents freely to see what you missed, but to me there was no discernible difference between original game mode and exploration mode to make these documents accessible. Overall, good concept, but really really short and the mechanism to backtrack and see what you missed doesn't seem to be working.

Brink had so much potential - Brink had style, Brink had slick movement, Brink had a gorgeous art direction and ambient score, Brink had interesting characters and cool weapons, Brink had everything...so what happened?

Brink is tragic tale of a game that was supposed to be everything we wanted and more, yet completely failed as the sum of its parts. From the dreadful launch, the lack of content, the absence of a story, and the limited scope of delivery for each of the promises culminated in one of the biggest disappointments in gaming I have ever had to swallow. I didn't just lose $60 that day...a little piece of me died inside.

This game has the worst balancing and level design ever.
You basically have to grind Job Points all the time to have good enough abilities, to finish the fights (on top of that most enemies regularly out-level you, if you don't do excessive grinding in-between story missions)

But is has soooo much going for it. The Job System ist unparalleled to any other FF game, to only one to rival it maybe is the Bravely series.
The story - while with a much darker time than most other ffs - is really interestingly told, the conflict complex... A lot of places, organizations etc are only mentioned briefly so it can get pretty confusing though. And the world seems a little boring - fantasywise- compared to other FF games
The gameplay variety is also not so deep...
Talking about this...
Confusing terminology, pretty linear gameplay consisting only of run and fight... That's exactly the kind of criticism usually reserved for FFXIII, but somehow this one is hailed as a classic, the other as one of the worst FF games... Even though this one necessitates you to grind all the god-damn time

Prey Mooncrash is a surprisingly ambitious DLC. While it would have been easy to just make a new area with some new items and enemies Arkane went the extra mile to craft a whole new gameplay style.

The focus is shifted from building an arensal to tackling any problem to instead a class system where the player has to work within their limitations to overcome randomly mixed obstacles. The kasma orders give the game a far more approachable scope compared to the hundreds of items and playthroughs needed to complete other rouglites.

Storywise its far less ambitious then the base game simply filling in details about the typhon outbreak, but the hacker frame narrative does provide a nice grounding of the gameplay concept in the world.

The major flaw with this game ends up being the permeant progress elements which have become a staple of the rougelite genre to help lessen the sting of loss. The game already had minor progress elements with the kasma orders but goes a step further by also making neuro mods permeant and also letting the player craft items before each run. This makes the late game very easy to break as key items can be made before starting a run to cut back on the exploration time where the tension really comes out. The permanent drone storage between characters also makes it too easy to simply carry op items between characters.

This was a game I heard about for a long time, but really never decided to pick up until a couple of my friends really pushed it on me. I'm a huge fan of One Piece, so the concept of pirates (albeit in the sky instead of the sea) exploring a ton of islands was really interesting. Though this game has a lot of really awesome stuff to it outside of it's theme.

The gameplay at first I was worried would become quite stale due to the fact all spells cost only 1 MP, but the game has a spirit point system which is used for spells and abilities (called S. Moves) which brings a fantastic about of tactics to how you manage your SP and use skills, conserving for big attacks later on, preparing for buffs, etc etc.

It would've been nice if this game had a more active approach (1 character after the other) so you could focus into super moves, but for what it is, this combat is great and extremely tactical. The only downside IMO is how overpowered items can feel because they cost 0 SP, but I would love to try a run without using items some day.

There's also ship combat, which is a cool and novel concept but imo is way too slow, it did have some fun tactics in the last few though so it's enjoyable enough!

Storywise the game is very traditional, rebelling against an evil empire and restoring the mcguffins, but this game wins on characters and areas, the main cast is all extremely lovable and filled with great character interactions. Despite being traditional the story did throw me for a few loops and I was constantly invested in it from start to finish, and I fell in love with your cast.

Exploration and side content is great, Discoveries are a fun system to incentivize exploring the map, and the moonfish and bounties attached to the Gamecube version are a great way to add some extra boss fights and items to explore and look for (the bounty fights being some of the best and most challenging fights in Skies of Arcadia). Overall it gave me a ton of reasons to explore the map and even go back to older areas is search of new moonfish, bounties, and crew members, just a great time all around.

The music is a complete banger, that is all.

All in all, Skies of Arcadia is a damn fun RPG and one of the best I've played in this era. I'd reccomend it to anyone looking for an RPG with a lot of cool and memorable side content and fun characters. Some minor flaws here and there which bring my rating down a bit, but overall amazing.

9.5 Cutlass Dances/10

There's no game that challenged my empathy, compassion, and will to keep pressing buttons like The Last of Us II did. It took me to the breaking point of my ethics, played with my perspective and biases, and ultimately took me to the extremes of the emotions video games can evoke.

TLOU's gameplay has never been my favourite, but its cinematic storytelling is a cut above the rest. While the length of the game could've been shorter, it's undeniable that the game made good use of it.

In a game that is centered around cyclical violence, I finished its story without the stomach for it anymore. It evolved into something so human and so resonant that the very foundations I started the game on started to crumble.

If you like to have your expectations subverted, and enjoy moral conundrums, there's really no better game to sink into this year.