I love this > I like this > I hate this > I kill this > I like this

That's how it went. A weird beast for sure. In regards to the first game which was great but very much felt like they were finding their feet, this one does little to change that feeling. For every step forward, it often took two back. Systems which were once instantaneous now have a timer attached. Moments of unskippable text on screen that stay there for easily 30 seconds as if you can't read a sentence. Enemy attacks on towns feel much more frequent, and trying to get anything done during this is exhausting.

While streaming the game, the word I kept coming out with was "Relentless". It feels relentless. Like it doesn't want you to breathe. Always be moving and building and cooking and smelting and crafting and defending your base. It can be overwhelming, and The Power of Friendship can only assuage that so much.

Despite all this, I can't say I hated it. Streaming likely helped, as the game must be a good double the length it needed to be. Having live chat there kept the patter flowing, and everybody leaning into the dogshit segments made it all more comedic than actually annoying. Getting waylaid several times during big moments because chat demanded I build another pub was always a good laugh.

We built that bitch. Bigger than before.

I'm assuming this became a beloved series due to the sequels because there is some jank on display here. Some of the most floaty controls I've had the displeasure of wrestling with. Loose platforming combines with rotten checkpointing to create an exercise in pure frustration.

The characters were ok, if a little shallow. Ratchet seems to just become a prick around the halfway point, and stays that way until the last 20 minutes. Game tries to do a cute wee ending but it's so school play and has such a jarring cut that it feels like a bug.

Beneath the jank, there's a lovely wee game here, but it feels like there was too much ambition for the devs' skill level and budget to make what they imagined a reality. Also didn't help that the usual public hype caused expectations to go out of control. Folk see an open-world and a glider and suddenly turn off their years of experience with seeing through the bullshit of game trailers, reverting back to "It breath of wild?!".

There's an air of separation between you and the world. You don't feel a part of it, so much as just moving around it pressing interact prompts. Combat is pretty shallow, and lacks impact. You slam a big metal gauntlet into enemies and it sounds like a child hitting a metal fence with a stick. Bizarrely the UI and popups are extremely Fortnite, which feels jarring against the game's aesthetic.

The narrator doesn't help. It would be fine if he only chimed in every now and then, and there are options to reduce the frequency of that, but he reads every conversion to you, meaning you hear the animal voice talking gibberish, and then him doing storybook shit over the top of it, making it feel overwhelming and verbose.

All in all I don't hate this, or think it's terrible. I'm sure folk with more patience will get a lot out of it. But for me it's got too much of the Early Access vibe goin' on to stick with. You can do an izuna drop though, so that's nice.

A strange wee thing. Plays like Myst, has FMV cutscenes, and was only released in Japan despite most of it being in English.

There's something cosy about it that's hard to put my finger on. Warm cutscenes with a kind auld man describing these tomes, and puzzles that aren't really difficult make it not feel like a slog to navigate the island. Also helps that you could get through it in a few hours easily. I feel like the presentation does a lot of the lifting, which was enough to keep me interested throughout.

"Once upon a time, a blue eyed boy from the old West learned one of life's cruelest lessons... That evil was bigger than his gun"

Slaps harder than it has any right to. A sort of proto God Hand. Controls a bit like you're telling a pal which buttons to press, but it just oozes so much character that you can forgive it. A cowboy gets clowned so hard he travels to ZIPANG and becomes a big weeb, returning home as a samurai gunman to search for the dude who gooned his ass.

It's another one of those PSX titles you've never heard anyone mention, and just wonder why. Maybe people are fools, dear reader. But not us.

Never us.