If you were to ask me to pick a single game to represent each genre as a pillar of what that genre of game can accomplish, I’d hoist Outer Wilds up as the pillar of exploration games without an ounce of hesitation. Outer Wilds is a passionately made space-exploration game set in a fairly large solar system filled with several planets each with their own sets of secrets and mysteries that you are free to explore at your whim.

Outer Wilds is one of those games that you are best going in with as little knowledge as possible because ultimately this game is about the things that you learn in your journey exploring the solar system. However I think that I can still explain a little about the game's mechanics because as objectively good as this game is: the way it plays simply won’t be for everybody.

Outer Wilds does not contain any combat. It does not contain experience or skill trees. Hell, it doesn’t even have quests. Outer Wilds is entirely about exploration and 99% of your gameplay will be flying around to different planets, exploring on foot, reading logs and piecing together clues from environmental storytelling -all to further understand the mysteries that surround you.

So what even drives you in Outer Wilds? What are your goals? Well it’s simple: curiosity. Given a new spaceship and complete free reign to do whatever you want in the universe, it’s entirely up to you to decide what you want to do. There is no right path to take in Outer Wilds, no perfect guide or direction to follow. Just go wherever looks interesting and let yourself enjoy the journey.

There’s nothing else that I can really say and nothing else that you need to know. Outer Wilds is a love story to the mysteries of space and exploration. It is a love story to human curiosity and determination. It is the best exploration game I have ever played and perhaps ever will play. It is an absolute privilege to be able to experience this game, a privilege that you will only have once. This is an honest to god masterpiece and I couldn’t recommend it more if I tried.

5/5

I rarely ever drop games, but I wasn't having any form of fun with this one after a while. I've beaten Dark Souls about 8 or 9 times, and I adore it's slow deliberate pacing, bits of unique jank that create unique, memorable moments, and it's sometimes antagonistic world and level design that silently leads the player through it. I feel like Demon's Souls has a large handful of these ideas; the steady progression through the worlds was at first giving me the same sense of discovery and learning that I got from the first Dark Souls, but after a while, I felt that antagonistic design genuinely wearing on me, and beating me down to the point where I was wallowing in a really uncomfortable feeling of anger and unfairness. I don't want to be lead through every objective, and receive assistance in every fight, but the cold and mean game that Demon's Souls ended up becoming, is one that I'm fully aware would have sent me down a really bad path for my emotional well being.
I guess I've been beat, this time.

Unicorn Overlord has that gameplay loop which totally absorbs me in and I can't stop. The idea to create an unstoppable team with the variety of items you can purchase, liberate towns, clear tough battles, and get stronger while fighting back against what seems a nigh impossible situation is truly fun. The experience is phenomenal to me and I could yap how much I love the classes and the cool shit you can probably do with it if you dig deep with it, but it'd probably be long. SO why is it a 3.5/5 stars? Simply because the story. The story is pretty generic, and you have to go through a 100+ hours of this. Sure, i love consuming my rpg games like its a king-class meal and some of the characters, but they don't have much depth to them. I do like the character-specific interactions though! Yet, this is not enough. If you're gonna make me sit through a plot like this you might as well should try make it interesting, and it fails at that for me. Well, at least the voice acting performance makes for it; they did an excellent job with it.

Unicorn Overlord is not a bad game, it just has a grasping flaw with the story. It has that classic fantasy rpg spirit and inspiration from a game like Final Fantasy Tactics, but doesn't sell much on it with the story. I seriously would've considered giving this a 4.5/5 stars for how good that gameplay was, but the story kind of nags at me because I wish it was good. I love a good rpg with good gameplay, but somethings can just disappoint you greatly more than others. Still, I'd love to replay again in the future for how enjoyable the gameplay is.

(This is prior to playing the DLC)

I love how this game is practically just a showcase of incredible art, that just so happen to also be an action game. There are many points in the game where you have to run far distances while having to fight enemy encounters, but I honestly took this opportunity to look at the backgrounds and take in the incredible soundtrack that's just rocking traditional Japanese music but with a modern take. The story really works with the type of aesthetic that the game is going for, be that of a journey to achieve enlightenment with a new sword. It's nothing too groundbreaking, but it works in the context of the game's aesthetic and premise.

The was a big surprise to me for a game that's primarily a one button action fighter. Really helps that there are different blades that play differently with their secondary effect to make things refreshing. A lot of quick thinking is involved with this game where a lot of times you're constantly using the air slash or floaty jump to get around some hectic battles.

This game is goddamn awesome and absolutely worth it just with the game's art style on it's own.

As the first of this duology epic, Path of Radiance really gets the job done in terms of establishing its setting, characters, and conflicts that will be played it in both this and Radiant Dawn.

The world of Telius is so dense and tightly written that it's hard for me to put it all into words to how grand the world feels. A lot of care was put into the relationships between the different continents, species, and the relationships between the people that inhabit the world of Telius. You can feel how much history that the setting of Telius has through the dialogue in the game that you can see through the story, info cutscenes, supports, and many other times when you're not doing battles. It feels so carefully crafted in a way where you can really tell why there's a lot of conflict occurring in this continent which really helps give the story a lot more weight to it.

Supports in this game do such a fantastic job at giving so much depth to the Greil Mercenaries and crew, as well as giving such fantastic character arcs and revelations with a few examples coming from Jill and Soren. Like the worldbuilding in this game, the character supports are so tightly written in a way that make these characters seriously stand out from the rest of the FE casts that have come before and after. Also helps that these characters are also very attached to Telius so they bring even more weight to the world that they inhabit. Just seriously some amazing stuff for the world of these games.

My review for these games continue with my review for Radiant Dawn, as that game really continues a lot of what I said here but way more.
https://backloggd.com/u/Kanan/review/1375387/

As a follow up to Path of Radiance, this is honest to god the best way that Intelligent Systems could've done it.

I'll get my one gripe out of the way. This game not having traditional supports really hurts a lot of the new cast for me but I personally already have such a deep attachment to the Greil Mercenaries and Ike that it doesn't bother me too much. Still if this game had supports like other games this would've been a perfect game. But alas we don't live in such a world.

Now onto everything else, and hooboy do I love everything about this game the moment I started it.

The way the game goes around with its units and strategy aspects is honestly kind of genius. You barely get any money in the game, abilities are expensive, you switch around units a lot, bonus exp level ups now only increase 3 stats instead of how level ups normally go. All of your choices in how you want to build your party really matter, and this game doesn't push around in terms of difficulty even on easy. You have to really decide if you want to invest in certain units and how much money you're willing to spend on weapons and other items so that you can actually proceed with the game. Even when playing as the Greil mercenaries the game doesn't pull any punches despite you basically having all pre promoted units from the start. It feels like a natural next part to what players experienced from Path of Radiance as it ups the difficulty from that game. You feel so powerless when you're playing as the Dawn Brigade because of what happened to Daein in the last game, which really goes on to my next point.

The story is so tightly written in a way that feels like a natural next part to Path of Radiance. All the events that happen in this game makes a lot of sense in creating such a complicated world that Telius presents. No country is truly in the right even if the choices that the new rulers like Elincia make are going to make a perfect world that they envision. It plays onto the themes and messages of humans being imperfect so well that I seriously got to applaud the writers for really committing to said themes. I don't want to go more into the story since I feel many need to experience how this game plays out, especially the buildup to the game's incredible endgame where all the loose ends that this duology set up have such a satisfying end to it.

One other aspect I want to talk about before I end is the music, and man do I think the music is a massive step up from Path of Radiance. Don't get me wrong, the music in Path of Radiance is really fucking good despite it being Midi, but Intelligent Systems really went all out by having the game being fully orchestrated for its soundtrack. It really helps give such a grand scope of the conflict that the world of Telius has fallen to, especially after what Ike's crew did to Daein in Path of Radiance. There's a bigger sense in the war because of the booming orchestral soundtrack. The battle themes themselves don't start from the beginning once you engage another fight, it continues off from where the last battle ended off so that you can truly embrace how amazing this score is.

I cannot give anymore praises to how much this game truly delivered in what Path of Radiance set up. I don't think one game is better than the other, since I truly believe these games tell a grand epic that cannot truly exist without the other. The Telius games aren't perfect, but just like humans no one is perfect. I can embrace the strengths that these games have and they delivered everything that I was hoping for. It's hard for me to not give these games a perfect score for me.

On an aesthetic and tonal standpoint, this game completely oozes of style and does a very unique take on Noir style with its pencil drawn art style. The music also compliments the tone and aesthetic of the game perfectly, really giving off that 60s era America vibe. Everything about the presentation of this game is super experimental, even the way you hold the DS to play is fitting for a detective game. Cing really nailed it here.

I also really liked how every plotline in this is connected and have a very strong theme of betrayal and dreams. Makes the story feel surprisingly cohesive despite the game basically having a "victim of the week" formula with its chapters.

I kinda wish there was a thing that told you where to go half of the time. I was kind of stumbling on where to go a lot of time and committed to a lot of trial and error unless the game outright told me where to go. Puzzles can also be very brutal at times, but the puzzles that really utilized the DS's capabilities were genuinely really cool.

So yeah really cool and experimental DS game that has me super curious in checking out Last Window next.