9.5/10
Dark Souls 1 is easily a masterpiece, containing some of, if not the best level design I have ever experienced with beautiful visuals, story with beautiful lore, and of course really amazing combat even if its successors are much smoother than this game. With the near perfect DLC its hard to knock this game, even if its 2nd half starts to trip at points compared to the 1st half.

Story
Dark Souls story, specifically the lore surrounding it will always be one of the best stories to deep dive into, even if while experiencing it can be challenging to consume compared to other games. The basic story revolves you, the chosen undead, attempting to relink the fires by killing Gwyn, who currently sits at the throne himself. Beyond that basic premise, you mainly learn the story by environmental storytelling, character dialogue and of course with classic souls tradition, through item descriptions. Having to through the age of fire after the war against the dragons with the new "and now, pretty dead" lords, with the inevitable of the fires burning out, requiring you to relink the fire and delay the age of darkness. My ending was relinking the fire, but quite honestly I do prefer the "evil" ending of age of darkness where you do not relink the flame, as I feel like even if we have to enter the age of darkness, a new flame will always re-ignite. It is a beautiful story even if it isn't an obvious story compared to other game. This game's constant theme of futility, and the constant push to face the impossible to achieve your goal is an amazing theme. WIth the DLC they further expand the darkness humans have, and the consequences of being fully consumed by their darkest desires, and if our futility for power is a good or bad thing. I didn't even dive into the characters yet, who have their own really interesting lore and story by themselves. Overall I really love Dark Souls Lore, as DS3 and ER lore as well, they were all such a joy to experience, and even a better joy to deeper dive after finishing the game, with the only one (haven't played DS2 or bloodborne yet), that I didn't enjoy deep diving as much was sekiro. I still think I enjoyed DS3 and ER lore a bit more as they seemed much much more fleshed out and more enjoyable to deeper dive, as I felt like apart from the main story, deep diving some characters was cut much shorter than I thought they were, as they are much more ambiguous on who they are, so their story is pretty short for some of them compared to future entries where the most minor character has such insane lore that you have to step back a bit.

Character
Like other souls games, are some of the best characters in any game. For DS1, some of the characters that I personally loved were Artorias and his companion Sif, Gwyn's tragic tale, Logan (might be mage biased but loved his inevitable downfall of his chase of forbidden knowledge), Solaire (duh... although didn't kill the red eye chaos bug first NOOO), and classic patches of course. I haven't even gone through ALL the characters I loved but they were easily the best ones that stuck out to me, even with some others like the lore behind Seath, Gwynevere's false presense and such, I can go on and on. Your character is mainly a pretty vague "chosen undead", whose origins is pretty much up to whatever you want it to be as it doesn't matter, only you ended up in a cell. Fighting your way up from the title of some random undead to the one who relinks the flames is so damn satisfying, and stays a theme throughout the souls game. While like I said before some characters don't get as much fleshing out as I thought they would have compared to future titles, they were still the quality of souls lore that I crave for, and even while typing this review I am watching an hour long lore video on DS1.

Gameplay
Souls gameplay as usual, which is the same loop that I loved even with Elden Ring. Of course being the 2nd one in the series behind demon souls, the gameplay isn't as smooth as future titles, but it still holds a special place in my heart, as the one thing that it is STILL unmatched in is with the level design oh my GOD is it good. Firelink Shrine and how it connects to so many areas in the game was so beautiful to experience. Even apart from that aspect, many areas in this game were such a joy to go through and was easily the best out of any of the souls games I have ever played so far. Now of course the infamous 2nd half does falter a bit in this department, which is a bit of a theme with this game quite honestly. Going back to the souls gameplay, the basics of dodge attack is still here, and while my main build was INT magic focused, I still liked to stick close as range was not the greatest with not only the pitiful range, but also lock in range being pretty short. Magic in this game is pretty good, and while variety in animation is pretty bland as you are just sticking your magic stick in the air, there was still plenty of variety with spells, and it was rare for me to stick to casting just 1 spell, as with the pretty bleh lock-on magic tracking, certain spells worked better in other scenarios. For melee combat it is much slower compared to DS3 and ER, and lack the fleshed out art or additional abilities of other titles, or power stance and such. Even with that it is still immensely satisfying to be rewarded for successful dodges and exploring to find new gear and spells that make your life in the age of fire easier. For boss design, DS1 has a ton of amazing bosses that still stand out in the series. While peak wise future titles achieve much better boss designs, DS1 still has really damn good with Gwyn, Artorias, Manus, and the rare feat of a really good duo boss of Ornstein and Smough. While I love DS1 bosses, there are still some issues I have, primarily with how easy a ton of the bosses felt like. The 2 main reasons are the pretty small health pool that get shredded by how strong you can get in the game. Not only that, bosses almost never have a delayed attack, so reaction is much easier to handle which is a good thing, as less memorization, but with the smaller health pool means bosses end faster than I would had hoped. Lastly I don't think any of the bosses have phase 2, which makes their already short fights REALLY short. Apart from that, these bosses still trump 95% of other boss fights in any other game I have played action wise, and their design alongside lore were such a treat to experience, even if I felt like shit for killing Sif.

Music
Bangers after Bangers oh my GOD. Gwyn's theme, Firelink Shrine theme, Seathe's theme, the Ornstein and Smough theme, so many songs in this game were just amazing especially with Gwyn's plin plin plon. Souls has always had really strong songs, and DS1 does not disappoint or hold back at all. While some areas were pretty quiet to soak in the environment, some areas could had used some songs to enhance the environment I felt, even if they did I would had probably complained either way.

Last positives/Nitpicks
- Gwyn's low health bar (common theme) made me feel a bit bad so used mainly sword as a mage even if it meant dying over and over, as I really loved his boss fight, not only mechanic wise but design, lore and music wise.
- Magic's lock on was trash in this game, it seems to aim for the enemies head instead of body, so it was very easy for the spells to miss early on.
- Entrance to DLC felt a bit too ambiguous, and if I didn't have a guide I would have 0 clue how I would figure out to go to a cave, leave the game, come back to kill a golem that contains a women who tells me to find a magical being, KILL some ranodm golem to get the key, go back to finally enter the dlc like huh?
- Plin Plin Plon

Conclusion
Dark Souls 1 is easily a masterpiece, and even if it stumbles a bit 2nd half, is still peak gaming in my eyes. The Souls series is seriously unbelievably good and its crazy to see that the first dark souls game still holds up unbelievably well, with unmatched level design especially with the interconnected firelink shrine areas.
9.5/10

9.5/10
Alan Wake 2 is what happens if you take the premise of Alan Wake 1 (duh), and actually put it into a good game with today's, and even tomorrow's technology which is amazing. Everything from the 1st AW is improved to the point where it feels insane the difference were, which makes sense as this game isn't a direct sequel from AW1 to AW2, but instead a combination of every Remedy title and creating AW2 from those games, and while I haven't played Control, the improved gameplay makes this game actually fun to play instead of fun to watch like in AW1

Story
Easily, Easily, EASILY the best part of this game... again. While previous AW1 had ONLY story, this game boasts a really interesting story inside a game that is actually good. The main premise of AW2 is that Alan's book that he has been attempting to write for the last 13 years has formed into a horror story thanks to the dark presence. It is mainly split into 2 stories with Saga Anderson's side Initiation and Alan Wake's side Return. The game mainly focuses on Saga's side first, then Alan's side first, then allows you to pick and choose the order you want to play, which depending on the order you take, can give context for the other's chapter which can be really intriguing. Now, that is the simple part of this story, as AW2's story is... really damn confusing at times while still making a ton of sense once you step back and take the story as a whole. This story is easily not the type of story you can breeze past, as you need to take some time to understand plot points and such... or just wave your hands around saying "so alan wake killed a character written by alan wake who is played by the actor of alan wake who tried to kill alan wake...". Throughout the game it is pretty common to have your mind just fucked, especially when it came to Alan's story and nearing the endings for Saga. Both of their sections had really great story beats, which was a surprise as I fully went in expecting me to love alan's story and dislike Saga's story, but instead they both had really great segments, even if they play a bit different, as while Saga plays more as a detective story as she tries to piece clues together in her mind place, Alan plays more like a survival horror that focuses more on Alan's struggle to find his way out of the dark place, while struggling to accept the fate of Alice. A major theme throughout this game is easily what lengths people will go through just to save their loved ones, even if it means going to hell and back. Another theme I noticed is how much we can beat ourselves in the head, with even the simplest goals can be thrown into a overthinking spiral as we try to solve for solutions that didn't need solving in the first place, complicating the pretty simple conclusion. Explaining AW2's story can be a bit simple in premise, Dark vs Light, but my god take that shallow surface level analysis out and trying to explain the story of AW2's story is too much, even if I were to do a 30 to 1 hour long video essay. Time loops is a common theme in the remedy titles specifically with alan and what happened with american nightmares, but the realization of Alan's "its not a loop, its a spiral", which is the cousin of AW1's "its not a lake, its an ocean", but actually makes sense this time, as while Alan goes through the same events again and again, a spiral at least leads to a conclusion even if it looks the same. If I had ANY critique, some pacing issues specifically with Saga can happen as with the puzzle focus nature, there are times where I can be stuck for a bit longer than I would had liked, and near the end the usual Remedy cliffhanger happens, and the only way to get the TRUE ending would be to complete ng+, which I didn't and just watched the ending video of it, which is easily pretty satisfying and makes the wait for an AW3 pretty easy to wait for compared to what I would imagine the AW1 to AW2 was, as AW1's ending was just SO DAMN CONFUSING. There is So much to this game that even with just brushing past a TON of the story beats, like Alice's struggles in the dark place, Saga's story of her child being rewritten as the game goes on, Alan's true reality with Scratch, I have written too much that at some point I HAVE to stop or this entire review would just be a ramble of me flaring my arms around talking about this super dense and pretty convoluted story. At LEAST we have good writers behind the story cause if not, this story would had easily collapsed onto itself.

Characters
AW2 has WAY better written characters compared to AW1, which had 2 characters that were good of Alan (duh), and Barry. AW2 has Alan (duh), Saga Anderson who is the 2nd main character and is a really well written character, Alex Casey who is split between Alan's version of Casey, actual Casey, and Casey voiced by Sam Lake. There is also Thomas Zane, Mr. Door, and so many characters who were just a treat to talk to in this game. Even Alice in this game is WAY better of a character compared to her in AW1, who was pretty bland, as she talks about her struggles as of losing Alan Wake, wanting to push her passion only to realize it doesn't make enough money to be viable, and being pushed by Alan's celebrity status. Alan and Saga's struggles were easily the best character developments throughout the entire game, but Alice's development was a surprise as well. The written characters by Alan like Thomas Zane, Scratch, Alex Casey were also really well done. Some characters from AW1 were either killed off early on, or were written as important, but don't show up in the game like Barry, who mainly shows up in the emails and scripts. With how much happens with the game, some character's developement stopped a bit early than I would had hoped, which I assume is for a DLC in this game and a future title, maybe control 2. Other than that, the side characters like the cult members were very interesting of a twist, and other side characters like the old poops from AW1 were a huge joy in this game as they play as Saga's Grandparents thanks to the story changes as the game goes on.

Gameplay
Now that I have written Essays on just the character and story itself, I can FINALLY talk about the gameplay in this game, which were GREATLY IMMENSELY made better... as well, it copies Resident Evil 2 Remake basically. They still made pretty great changes with the RE2 combat formula, as dodging returns from AW1 and is no longer a slow motion fest thank god. The whole burn enemies shoot loop were made WAY more fun in this game, as while you still need to burn the enemies do to the big damage, it is no longer an infinite but slow resource, but now a limited but much quicker process. This game's gore and stagger mechanic makes the combat actually really fun to play through, and the more unique gameplay differences between Alan and Saga with their different guns and enemy types, which thank god it makes the game actually fun to play through. Apart from the gun mechanic, the mind place of saga as you piece everything together, and Alan's light mechanic where you have to write specific key points into rituals to change the environment, which is a really impressive mechanic with the seamless change between environment. While some issues arise particularly with the resource management, as the game LOVES to throw a ton of healing supplies at you, a bit too much at times as I had a chest full of medkits at the end of the game, and realizing that the game's obvious ammo scaling, as when you have a ton of ammo, finding a chest with just 1 bullet was hilarious.

Music
So damn good, especially with the songs from old gods of Asgard with herald of darkness especially, and of course Dark Ocean Summoning. Even outside of their songs with banged again, the chapter songs seemed to be actual original songs this time around compared to the AW1 chapter ending songs which were mainly licensed songs. I don't even have to mention if I would listen to this song outside the game, as herald of darkness was so damn good they played it at the game awards, which should say enough on the quality of that song and the ost as a whole.

Last Positives/ Nitpicks
- Performance issues were common even with a RTX 4070 super, which maybe due to playing on everything maxed, and performance did improve by lowering Path tracing so makes sense. Even so this game's high demand and some frame drops in specific sections of the game is easily noticeable.
- I do wish some of the characters got more development, as their short screentime made me desire them more, especially with Mr. Door who has great scenes, but is not put into this game enough.
- Obvious cliffhanger for DLC and Sequel for another game.
- Game's graphics are so damn pretty holy, even if it takes a titan of a computer to run.
-The game's horror aspect worked so well in its favor, making the gameplay 10x better. However the jumpscares worked at some points, but some other points they overused it the point where it would happen and I would just want them to stop spamming them so often in certain chapters.

Conclusion
Alan Wake 2 is the type of game that you can not describe in a simple sentence or 2. Hell, I spent an essay's worth and I still can't explain what is going on. While at some points it is way too big for the story it wants to describe, I appreciate how well done this story and game as a whole was done. The story is top notch with how convoluted and loose threads it has, the characters were done 10000x better compared to AW1, the gameplay's obvious RE2 style is done pretty well in this game with the new mechanics, and of course the obvious tongue twisters of killing an alan wake character that alan wake wrote who is acted by alan wake... will never not be funny to me.

9.5/10

8/10
Asura's Wrath is the type of game that should in theory be a terrible game. Gameplay? meh its fine. QTE? Shit ton of it! Music on par with the action? Well its good but not godtier. Story? Its good. You would think with all of these aspects the game would be terrible, and quite honestly its very flawed... But man I love this game still even knowing that it barely scrapes by being called game.

Story
As this game is described as more of an "Interactive anime" than an actual game, of course the main focus of the game is the story. For a simple that has a simple premise, it has a surprising amount of complexity, not with the themes of course or morals, but mainly beliefs between each of the characters, rights and wrongs (yes I know I said no morals, but it isn't crazy grey themes), and of course just how pissed Asura is with the idea of killing people to raise themselves up as gods... and making his daughter cry. The REAL treat of this game however is easily the cinematics and watching Asura battle each one of those who betrayed him 12,000 years ago, even if he has no idea why he is acting revenge in the first place. If there is any real theme to this game, it is easily humanity's hopeless cry to a God who will quickly squash them, and earning their self determination through Asura (not them nah they kinda blow). Overall the story's simple story of Asura wanting revenge for the torment they gave to his daughter with conflicting characters works best in what is basically a shonen anime happening in this game, and it is so damn amazing for that. Will I remember any of the story apart from cool ass cutscenes? Or any message from the game from the story? no, but I do not care cause this game and the style it tells its story through amazing scenes is a bit too uncommon in the industry, and while the production for a ton of this game was easily put off for the animations, story was at least covered even if you had to pay for a shit ton of the DLC just to see the final conclusion. Overall pacing was good, but what broke it was the game's weakest aspect, gameplay.

Characters
Asura, Yasha, and the other Deities were interesting, albeit stereotypical which makes sense for how they represent I think 9 stages of hell? I could be wrong of course but the main point is they represented aspects like greed, wrath, etc, but I could be wrong with those names. Asura, Yasha and Augus were the ones who got the best development character wise, and while the main focus was saving Mithra, her development revolved around Asura's development. While Asura 90% of the game was just grunting, yelling, and punching first question later, he does have some genuine development mainly revolving around Yasha and of course, Mithra, who are able to calm Asura down and have actual conversations with him. The other deities have no clue how to talk to Asura and just piss him off to the point of exploding and being their downfall. Other than those 3, the other deities weren't the most interesting, and while there were some twists with their true motives and goals, overall they never took me by surprise apart from 1 big twist near the end of the game, which was mainly just forgetting that character existed till they appeared again.

Gameplay
Here is where the troubles of Asura's Wrath occur. There is 3 main gameplay segments (4 if you play the sf4 lost episodes dlc), QTE, which were the better parts of the game sometimes as they usually occur during the really cinematic cutscenes. The other gameplay segment is a shooter that plays like Panzer Dragoon, and the last gameplay was the action brawler gameplay that plays a tiny bit like DMC but not really? Like I said, QTE were annoying yeah, but they were usually during really cool cutscenes, and while some of them it felt like "wow, that LOOKS fun" instead of being fun since you can only have so much fun mashing B. The Scenes that ARE cinematic makes the QTE really damn good, but it isn't the worst gameplay aspect of the game even though obviously its the most hated by those who haven't play the game. The Shooter segments were quite honestly, the better part of the game as they are usually short, and while not the most interesting mechanic wise, are again, pretty cinematic as so many particles are on the screen that you can barely see what tf is going on. The worst part however was the action brawler, which you would hope would be the best part of the game. The problem with the brawler segments were the very shallow gameplay which revolves around fighting either multiple enemies, one big ass enemy type, or a deity. The multiple enemies had the pleasure of having the camera freak out whenever you fight enemies around you, and of course after awhile does get a bit stale. The big enemies are a bit too simple on the pattern, and don't really innovate much once you figure out their mechanic. The deity fights were the most interesting, but can sometimes turn into waiting game as you are forced to wait for their laggy move to finally kick in, and as the game goes on, their windows to combo them get smaller and smaller to the point where you have to wait what it feels like half a minute to even have a chance to damage them, and failing to do so will cause you to get hit for half your health for DARING to attack them before you were supposed to. The Action segments could had been really good, they could had either gone the DMC route and made their combat system really complex so you are learning the system still by the time you are near the end, or just add new abilities as the game goes on. Of course you get new forms that have new fight animations and combos, but by new combos I mean you launch them a bit sooner then before as they all feel the damn same. Quite honestly I wish the game just focused on the QTE more than the brawler sections which make no sense as while they are really damn fun for half the game, by the other half you are just waiting for the cutscenes to start as they are the best part of the game, but those brawl segments are just too damn shallow to be interesting, as you will always do the same thing. Jab Jab Jab Launch, air jab air jab air jab dive kick into hit Y till you fill the burst then watch cool ass cutscene. Its basic, and not the best part of the game, serviceable, but not the reason to play this game at all, but forced to play anyways. It may sound like I HATE these sections, and while I don't HATE them, I find them the most disappointing parts of the game as you can tell they put all of their budget into the cutscenes, so the QTE segments are good cause the cutscenes are good, and the shooter sections are good cause they are also really damn pretty to watch. The brawls are good when the cutscenes and QTE sections due to cinematic clashes occur. The DLC is when they start to change the mechanics a tiny bit, mainly with the fights being really damn good, but whenever I had to fight those damn monkeys I just got really damn annoyed my GOD they blow... yet I still really love this game for some reason god DAMN it why are the QTE segments the best part???

Music
Quite honestly Its pretty good. Augus' fight theme, Yasha's Theme, Main theme, and some other songs were really good. The only problem I felt with the music were the REALLY intense moments, which I feel like the game lacked intense music. It had really good sad music, epic music, but whenever the action got intense it didn't really match what was happening on screen I feel like.

Last Positives/Nitpicks
- locked to 30 fps kinda sucks, these animations being locked to 30 fps is a crime.
- Shonen. As. HELL... and I love it for that
- the DLC were all damn amazing. Only ones that were meh were the anime .5 episodes, which apart from voice acting not being the craziest, the animation was just pretty inconsistent with quality specifically 11.5. 15.5 was better and I just wish this game was as a whole an anime instead of a game.
- Asura's "shut them up" button was hilarious asf

Conclusion
This is the type of game that critically, kinda blows. TLDR is that the game is just QTE events with meh gameplay. However even knowing those issues with the game, what this game achieves with the interesting story and characters while also having some of the craziest cutscenes I have seen makes this game really damn good. Its so damn exciting of a game, even if in reality you are just mashing B the entire time I DO. NOT. CARE.
8/10