This game is vastly superior to the first.

There is much more meat to the story. I enjoyed it. It looks absolutely beautiful. The much is soooooooooo good! It's a much bigger game. Feels more like a metroidvania than the first game did. The first game you most dig down. This game you have several paths the interconnect. It still is mostly digging down, but much more variety. There are also so many secrets. You are rewarded for exploring.

Above ground is even more fleshed out. There is more than just a town. You have more above ground exploration to the left and right of town.

Gameplay loop is the same, dig, get resources, upgrade. Repeat. But now there are way more challenge rooms and secrets to find. More upgrades are found in the mines too. Traversal is much less jank. Harder to screw yourself over to where you have to die. It really is just a better game in every single way.

The final boss is a bit frustrating though. It still can get tedious. It didn't happen to me, but yet again, I can see if you are bad enough, you might screw yourself out of resources in a way to hardlock. Some of the late game challenges are frankly insane. Demands a mastery of things that to be fair are not fun to do.

It's a chill brain off game mostly. Think before you dig, you will enjoy this game. I was absolutely shocked by how much of an improvement this was over the first and how much I enjoyed it. The first game is a resource gathering game with light metroidvania elements. This game is a fully fledged out metroidvania. I highly recommend it. But you need to know the basic story from the first game to appreciate the story in the sequel.

I finally decided to play this after having it in my collection for 3 years, and out of the two Zelda games I've actually bothered to finish, this is probably my favorite. Granted it's not perfect, the image is a little blurry; the game drops frames a lot, and the new dungeon maker they added is kinda lame, but besides those little dumps this game was an absolute joy to play.

I love the new art style they gave for this game, it stands out among the other handheld Zelda games and Windwakers cartoony style; it stands alone as its own thing which fits really well for this Zelda game in particular because it's such a strange experience (for a Zelda game I mean).

I love the residents of Koholint Island, each character is so eccentric and bizarre in their own ways; but it makes each character stand out even though you barely spend that much time with most of them.

The gameplay is solid, and the music is OOOOOHHHH SO GOOOOOOOOOD, I loved the exploratory of this game, the map is somewhat big, but everything is recognizable and memorable; even if I didn't have a map I'm pretty sure I could still remember where everything was just from memory alone, map design like that is amazing.

I could probably keep going but I think you get the idea, this game is super good and I love it very much.

this was definitely the best one in the anthology so far! i kind of lost hope for this anthology as the previous games were very meh, but this was really good (except the weird control issues and visual bugs)
it started off slow but in time i started really caring for the characters, especially salim! i just wish clarice or merwin was a playable character as well, we have 6 playable characters but 1 of them you only play with at the start of the game for 10 minutes, so my partner had way less playtime than me because he basically played with 2 characters while i did 3.

𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑 𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐲 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐨𝐧
#𝟖 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐧𝐞𝐝: 𝐂𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐬

Kinda crazy that Monolith was able to release two banger games in 1 year alone.

I feel conflicted with this game, not in the sense where I’m conflicted with the game’s overall quality. That's not the case at all; it’s a pretty solid game with great look investments and a surprisingly good first person melee system, but what I’m more confused about is what this game what to be.
What I mean is the game is obviously influenced by movies like Seven and Saw. Everything from the game going out of it’s way to have the player hunt down serial killers with a heavy emphasis on the detective side of the game, where you use almost science fiction level tools to uncover the string of on going serial killers and the murder of said serial killers; while also having the setting and gameplay rely heavily on that grungy grotesque hyper violent look and feel that was everywhere in post 9/11 horror movies like Saw or Hostel, and when the game tries going for those influences it succeed with flying colors. Everything from the dilapidated buildings you explore to the cracked out violent denizens that live in these forgotten places really add to a sense of “you don’t belong here, and if you wanna get out alive your going to need to fight for your life”, the melee combat for as simple as it is it does a tremendous job reincorporated the visual themes of the game into the gameplay. It’s not a pretty or stylish system, it's very simple and animalistic; all you do is hit the enemy and block his attacks until he dies and depending on the weapon you grabbed around the environment that might take awhile; resulting in you sometimes beating someone to a point where it’ll feel overkill. Yeah sure you can use guns to shoot your enemies but once a gun runs out of ammo that’s it for it; so what are you just gonna throw it away, fuck that your gonna take the butt of the gun and then beat the shit out of your enemies with the gun itself. The combat is loud, it’s violent, it’s gratuitous, and it perfectly captures the sense of this city going to hell and everything around it decaying in the process.

Now all of that is great and I love it when my video games have intertwined themes that work for both the narrative and gameplay; but once I got to the halfway point of the game stuff starts happening that honestly really bothered me.
So around the point where I hunting the mysterious Serial Killer X I started noticing these weird anorexic pseudo-cenobites looking creatures that scuttle on all fours, at first they seemed really out of place in this somewhat grounded setting but I just kind of assumed it was the game’s addition of a new enemy type of violent crackheads and after that I didn’t really question them. Then the main character started having these strange visions of future events or visions of possible events which I also stupidly didn’t give much thought to. Then the visions of this weird metal jawed ghost…thing started showing up and an underlying supernatural side of the game started showing its ugly head and after that the game just kinda lost me. It’s not that I don’t have a problem with a crime horror game taking a paranormal route but the thing that bothers me so much is that the game never really builds to it. The game is so forced on delivering this gritty setting with this violent combat system and then out of nowhere the game drops this in with no subtle hints that something other than an uprise in crime is going on in this city, that maybe something supernatural is causing this disturbance in people; and honestly I’d like to know that info too because the game never fucking tell you anything about it. I don’t know if I missed an autolog explain it or theres a 100% ending that explains more that I didn’t get but the game just drops all this supernatural ghost crap really half heartedly and expects me to just go along with it even thought it fits into the game’s pre-existing motifs about as well as round peg in a square hole. Nothing about these supernatural visions or the metal chin ghost that follows the main character around really hit into the game’s thematic elements and they fit into the story of the game even less. I don’t think I’d be as harsh towards the supernatural elements of the game if the game didn’t already do a tremendous job locking in this grounded gritty setting and tone all for this supernatural to bum rush in to ruin the suspense, tone, and especially the ending, which after finishing the game and sitting on my overall thoughts I still don’t understand the ending???? Was the finale boss the spirit that was causing the whole city to go crazy? Why did the ending suggest that a cult was behind this demotic entity even though no cults were referenced in the game’s story? How is Ethan connected to this cult and why does he have all these visions and high strength? They bring up his highly classified medical records during the game’s story but they never elaborate on it and it’s just kinda dropped from the story as soon as it’s brought up so what was the point of it’s inclusion?
All of the supernatural story elements the game throws in not only does not fit within the game’s thematic elements it's worked in but it also doesn't work for the sake of the game’s overall plot. You learn through one sentence of dialogue during the last 10 minutes of the game that this metal jaw ghost guy is the cause of the city’s meteoric rise of violence and serial killers and after that it’s straight to the final boss and then it’s never brought up ever again. There is no build up to it’s supernatural elements and there's no clear answer to why it’s even happening, it turns what could’ve been a fun and suspenseful crime horror game, into a disjointed mess of a story held together by great gameplay and a solid execution of the developer’s inspirations.

I know that whole rant seemed like I don’t like the game because it’s story was a fucking mess but I still enjoyed what I played in retrospect. I don’t think I’ve seen a game before that has such an effortlessly simple yet fun first person melee system, and the environments are still amazingly haunting since it’s on the same engine FEAR was made on and my god it’s lighting is almost as good as Id tech 4’s lighting. Again the whole story might just be me not fully understanding what the game was going for or maybe there was something I missed but at the end of the day I still wanna recommend the game because I still don’t think you’ll find any other game like Condemned out there.

Simplicity is the thing that can strum a chord, but it's up to you to add to the harmony.

There are many games out there that stun the player with amazing graphics, astute gameplay, and top-of-the-line stories. But yet as man stands as one of the most complex creatures Mother Earth graced, man finds itself immersed into the most… simple. There is nothing that caps the human mind, there is nothing our conscience cannot conceive; yet we do not paint the statues that stood time and history, we do not add color to the Mona Lisa. These pieces of historical art stood time because they refused to be complex, instead embracing simplicity. Gato Roboto is of course no Metroid Dread, it is no The Last of Us or Majora’s Mask. It is, in some sense, a grace of beauty in simplicity.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” - Da Vinci

Gato Roboto can be summed up in a simple sentence: You are a cat in a robot suit in a fun metroidvania. That’s it. There is no special gimmick, there is no incredible jaw-dropping story, there is only Kiki and the Robot Suit. As Kiki, I felt safe, I felt okay. This game is not a masterpiece, but it is to me. I am diagnosed with a multitude of mental illnesses. I, like many others, find a feeling of solidarity in things that make us happy, to distract us from the outside world. The year is 2021, Summer. I just got done with another year of high school. This was, in all regards, the worst summer, the worst 3 months of my life. I remembered, in those moments, I had a cute little game called Gato Roboto in my Steam library. Sure, I had already played it prior, yet I felt as though I should play through it again, just one short playthrough. That, of course, was not “one” short playthrough

“Nature is pleased with simplicity” - Isaac Newton

It became two, then three, then ten, then 15. I, right now, have most likely over 50 playthroughs not including speedruns of Gato Roboto. I have speedrunned, 100%’d, and randomized the game so many times that it would be a lie to say it is not the game most ingrained into my soul.

“Gato Roboto is the best game of all time” - Me :)