This is a very flawed game in most aspects. The combat is a boring slog, and while it's very rewarding once you understand the blade combo/elemental orb/chain attack system it still never feels particularly fun. It has slow movement and attack speed making it feel like a step down compared to XC1 and XCX, with the systems especially being terrible compared to XCX's class, overdrive, and soul arts systems which are a blast whether you have a full grasp on them or not. The downgrade on the combat combined with your blades being obtained through a gacha system just makes the whole combat experience disappointing.

The gameplay isn't any better outside of combat, if anything it's worse. Field skills slow down the pace of the game and make you micromanage your blades to get just what you need, and that's assuming the gacha element has even allowed you to receive the field skills you need or not. I can't think of a single memorable side quest plot or gameplay wise, none of them are particularly fun or rewarding to go through. The different titans and maps don't provide much reason to explore as doing so will almost always lead you to the games boring combat and negligible rewards. Fortunately most combat in the game can be skipped just by running away, but I'd much rather have a game where the combat is fun enough that I chose to engage with it.

The story is... frustrating. It's got some high highs for sure, especially at the end where it almost starts feeling like the final acts of Matrix Reloaded or Neon Genesis Evangelion, but there are a lot of low lows throughout the game, especially in the first half. The high highs, to me, make it worth going through the game, and if you're a fan of XC1 I think it's absolutely worth seeing it through. The story was the reason I kept playing and finished the game, so I think that's worth something in spite of it's problems.

Characters are in a similar lane as the story, with some great ones and plenty of not so good ones. Nia's arc was done pretty well, Morag and most of Torna are enjoyable the whole way through, and other characters have their own nice moments. Tora sucks though, I'm cool with having a nopon party member but they didn't need to make them a creep. Rex and Pyra/Mythra have nice moments together and also really weird and bad moments together. The core characters for the most part are fun, but the scene to scene moments these characters can have is really really wonky and poorly done, especially Pyra and Mythra.

Overall the game is just fine, it's a rollercoaster ride in terms of quality but it's best moments are good enough that I can't personally give it a negative rating. It's hard to say whether I would recommend this game or not to someone, so instead I'll use my final words to shill for Xenobalde Chronicles X instead. It is easily my favorite in the series from the 3 games I've played and I hope more Xenoblade fans give it a shot.

This game goes so fucking hard. An amazing action game with an enjoyable JRPG story that's a blast whether you're engaging in the combat or engaged in the story through cutscenes. I found the side quests pretty enjoyable from a narrative perspective as well, they may not always be the most complex gameplay wise but they really add character to the world and the game as a whole. It has some of the best boss fights of any game I've ever played, really only rivaled by Dark Souls.

Easily my GOTY so far and possibly my favorite action game.

Amazing game, but suffers a lot from how repetitive it is. The depths, while they have a great first impression and are a fantastic idea, get very very same-y the more you explore them. For a map the same size as the surface, it is much emptier and doesn't have any environments, just one for the whole map. Many places in the depths are copy and pasted versions of each other. You have the same Yiga hideouts, the same boss fights and arenas, the same abandoned mines, etc. For such a big map there's really only 3-5 points of interest that are repeated throughout the whole map. The sky map also suffers from this same problem, with each tower basically having the same archipelago next to it and no environment variety at all.

All the negatives out of the way, it's working off of an amazing foundation so it's still an crazy good game regardless. The dungeons are better (though still not up to OoT's standard at all), the enemy variety is better, the abilities are more interesting and engaging. It'll never have that same special feel BotW did, and I think BotW did exploration and shrines much better, but it's still one hell of an entry in the Zelda series.

Great remake of a great game. I'm not the biggest fan of the world tendency system, and I think it's by far the easiest Fromsoft soulsborne game I've played, but I still had a great time playing it. It balances the easier difficulty by being more punishing than usual, you may die less often but when you do die it'll hit you harder, which I'm okay with. I certainly prefer it to getting checkpoints every 5 seconds in Elden Ring.

The game can be a little grindy at times, at least if you care about certain things. Early game you might need to grind for health items since there are only consumables in this game, no estus flasks, you'll need to grind for some upgrade materials, especially if you're like me and wanted to use a sharp weapon without realizing what a nightmare it is to get bladestone chunks, and if you want to see all the game has to offer you will have to grind for both pure black and pure white world tendency.

The visuals are stunning, the gameplay is fun, and the level's are all varied and great. It's just held back by a couple of stupid elements and drop rates that should've been changed in the remake, just a few small changes and this would be an easy 4.5/5 instead.

One of the easier Fromsoft Soulsborne game's I've played, but still really fun and great nonetheless. I wish exploring the open world was more universally rewarding, as a lot of the time I would trek through a cave or fight a hard boss only to get a sorcery I will never use, but I acknowledge that's bound to happen in a massive open world class oriented rpg like this. It's also a bit long for this brutal genre of game, though it gets easier in the late game and much more bearable as it progresses. Despite my gripes it's still an amazing game.

Gameplay perfectly described as "good enough" tied together by an actually very nice story. Plenty of jokes don't land, some character beats feel like they come out of nowhere, and holy shit do these people not stop yelling but it's charming in spite of it's flaws nonetheless. The gameplay isn't too involved, fast-paced, or deep. It gets the job done but I often found myself dreading combat sections near the end of the game.

It wasn't the most polished of experiences, I'm fine with bugs that are silly without hurting the actual gameplay but I had to load the previous checkpoint multiple times after getting stuck on a piece of geometry, getting frozen after interacting with an item, or the game not registering I had killed all the enemies and being stuck in a never ending battle with zero enemies (and a whole lot of that trademark yelling). Those types of bugs are going to make me dock some points from the overall experience.

It makes up some of those points for the variety and creativity the game shows in the middle of its experience, having lots of one time gameplay elements and mechanics, and it does them pretty well

This game has a lot of problems and is clearly rushed and unpolished in certain aspects, but it entertained me enough to have me play it 3.5 times so that's gotta be worth something. A lot of the problems this game has stems from it being too ambitious for, presumably, it's budget and dev time which is really unfortunate. Crimson Flower is easily my favorite route, but it's also the main victim of being rushed and unfinished unfortunately, with it clocking in 3-4 chapters shorter and only having one animated cutscene. Silver Snow and Verdant Wind have no reason to be as similar as they are, it just feels like they ran out of time to flesh out a unique route for Claude, or perhaps the other way around. Azure Moon is a very interesting concept, but executed very sloppily. It does have some of the best moments in the game but it doesn't handle Dimitri very well, he shifts back to being a nice respectable guy way too suddenly and it really is the most surface level plot of the bunch, with no looking behind the curtain so to speak of the people who hold power in this universe.

It has problems but also a lot of great stuff, it crafted 3 distinct classes of students, created a really interesting world with so much lore to uncover throughout all 4 routes, and really hit the mark (for the most part) with the main 3 lords. I love how crafty and charming Claude is while also being quite the schemer, though I wish the game pushed him into tougher scenarios to really see how far he'd be willing to go. Dimitri is an interesting idea for a lord, with his whole persona in the first part of the game being a mask to cover all the emotions and trauma he is still going through, I just wish the second half really dived into and treated that trauma rather than giving him a sudden redemption arc. And Edlegard is just phenomenal, she is possibly my favorite character in any Fire Emblem game. She is the story of the game, more so than any other character, she is the driving force. Whether she's a protagonist or an antagonist, she's complex, interesting, and well written the whole time.

This is definitely a step in the right direction for the series after Fates and (hot take) Shadows of Valentia, both of which I feel like where pretty lackluster. Hopefully the more complex story and universe become staples of the series, I love me some morally grey characters that conflict the player. I guess we'll see after Engage where the series goes, at the very least I hope the team that made this game gets a chance to make another mainline Fire Emblem game with a larger budget and more dev time, I think they could really make something cool.

It certainly is still The Last Of Us (Part 1). To focus on the positive first, this game looks amazing, it's a massive improvement over the original and remaster, the new models and facial animations add so much to certain moments, especially ones involving Tess and Ellie I noticed. The new accessibility options are great as well! It also has fun new gameplay modifiers and skins included! It is simply the best version of The Last Of Us, with every change and addition being a positive one.

Now on the more negative side of things, did this remake need to happen? Absolutely not. The improved visuals and facial animations are great, but it still looks a little weird at times. Most body animations seem the exact same and they just look kinda stiff sometimes. Joel's still got his same dorky and clunky looking crouch walk which you'll have seen enough of if you've played the original, and you'll see it just as much in this remake. Besides visuals, every other positive thing really should've just been added to the remaster, a game that's already playable on PS5. Accessibility options, while fantastic, aren't enough of a reason to remake a game when they should've just been added to the previous version.

This remake still plays almost identically to the original, which I enjoyed gameplay wise and still do, but it's a game that came out almost a decade ago and before Part 2 vastly improved the gameplay. It's disappointing they didn't use this remake as an opportunity to rework the gameplay and make it as smooth of an experience as Part 2. The AI also doesn't seem that much better than the original game but I can't decide if it's due to the level design constricting the AI more than it does in Part 2, or if it's actually just hardly an improvement compared to the original. They really had the chance to make the best possible version of this game, and instead they just made a version that's the best by comparison.

Even though it's disappointing they didn't push this remake as far as it could've gone, it is still The Last Of Us and it's still one of the best games I've ever played, but improved. Is the game going to be worth it for most people who've already played the game? Nah, but if you're someone who really loves this game and replays it from time to time it might be worth it for you. For me at least I know I'll have no reason to go back to the original over this remake. Is the game worth it if you've never played the original before? I would say yes, and if the price is a a concern I would recommend waiting for a discount on the remake, over purchasing the remaster or original as I consider it a big enough improvement.

I just want to add that giving this game a low score since it's a "lazy remake" is dumb. It was a great game when it came out, and it still is now. It's like giving a collection a low score since they're all old games that have been released, that doesn't change the quality of the actual product. This remake is strictly a better version than the original, so I'll give it the same score I gave the original, 5/5 stars.

I've played this game 3 times now. Once when it first came out, a second time shortly after to get 100%, and now a third time this year (after replaying the first game of course). This might be my personal favorite game. I could go on and on about how I love the characters, the world, the gameplay, the music, the presentation, the story, etc. I have nothing bad to say about it, just make sure you play the first game (also fantastic) before playing this game. They're both an experience you will not forget or regret.