If there's one thing creator Jonathan Blow is good at, it's rubbing gamers up the wrong way. It's quite evident he's an intellectual, and boy does he want you to know it.
At the heart of his games are some impeccably crafted puzzles - a simple mechanic that builds and builds to baffling, but logical, levels of complexity.
His previous title, Braid, made inventive use of time manipulation and platforming. It had at least the pretense of a comprehensible narrative, as well as a 'fun' painterly art style.
Years in the making, The Witness feels colder in every way. Between bouts of walking around an island reminiscent of Proteus or something made in Dreams, you spend most of your time on grid sheets, connecting the dots - although only in the literal sense, as any notion of a story is deeply muddled.
The puzzles soon become vastly complex, often to the point of alienating the player with a lack of guidance. No one would blame you for digging up the walkthrough every now and then, but it seems to be a game designed to leave for a while and then revisit over several months.
Vague and frustrating as it is, all the way to the end, the game keeps you coming back. The most intriguing feature is arguably the way the island's strange geography and shape reveal new puzzles, alongside some thought provoking imagery found in reflections, shadows and pathways - there's the sense that Blow has meticulously crafted the island with similar precision to Kubrick's Overlook Hotel in The Shining, to almost the same subliminal effect.
Overall, The Witness seems to walk a thin line between a decent puzzle game and a confrontational piece of interactive art. I would say that Braid is more successful as the former; and while I'm not in a rush to declare this game the latter, some of its puzzles have had a lasting effect. I sometimes lay in my bed, still trying to draw those lines in my head.

In spite of this game's many flaws with balancing, (which, as a filthy fighting game casual, doesn't affect me much,) I've come to absolutely adore nearly everything about this game.

PvP shmups are very few and far between, I believe only 6 games exist (of 4 franchises,) in which this was #4 (#2,) though it's predecessor was #2 - point being, is that this is a very unique type of game, and boy oh boy does it land. It's beyond fun, with others or by yourself (for the most part, some story mode mashups are fucker motherfuckers,) and it keeps you on your toes through and through. The only thing withholding this from a higher score is due to aforementioned complaints - every pro at this game will tell you how bad some mashups are, and story mode is absolutely brutal for those with an unfavorable matchup with the final boss.

Bit of a word salad review, i'm aware (might revisit it later,) but point is, I'd recommend this to just about everyone.

edit 2022-12-15: i don't think i'll be revisiting this review--game is lovably jank and unique, as i've said, and it's a blast. maybe an 8 is a tad high but i think it's deserved, though that could be the orange_juice soft spot talking. still good in any case

Persona 5 Royal improves on Persona 5 in every way, unfortunately this way is so disconnected storywise that it almost acts as an entirely seperate experience to the main game, being thematically an almost condemnation of the main game's storyline due to how disjointed the two narratives are. However, it is a superior storyline in almost every way, discarding many of the awful villains employed before in favour of one that had some pathos and connection to the themes of the Persona series as a whole of the exploration of the self, rather than the exploration of society the original Persona 5 opted for.

Gameplay takes a simultaneous leap in interesting ideas and a large stumble in difficulty due to said ideas, the new systems at play all make an easy experience absolutely trivial, an example being Persona traits add a lot more customisation to personalising a Persona's playstyle and ability usage but it becomes apparent this system isn't balanced at all, like giving Alice the ability to make instant death spells cost no SP, resulting in Alice killing every encounter that doesn't have an immunity to death instantly and cancelling out most late game random encounters. Ultimately, Persona 5 Royal shines in what it doesn't share with it's predecessor, and what it does share looks even worse in comparison.