Sekiro was not as similar to the average souls-like experience from From Software as I initially expected but I still had a lot of fun with it.

First of all, I want to say that the game is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. It was even more striking to me since I recently went through Dark Souls III and even if it's a beautiful game in its own right, it was a bit lacking in colour. So coming from this game to Sekiro was a real shock. The game is full of pretty and vivid colours and, as always with From Software, the environments were really well designed and had some breath-taking views. My favorite zone, in term of visuals, was Fountainhead Palace with its beautiful sakura trees and huge waterfalls all around the map. From Software never fails to deliver huge and gorgeous environment and it's especially true with this game.

Even though the game is beautiful, the real meat of the game comes from its gameplay. It took me a little while to get used to parrying instead of dodging like I usually do in Souls games, but after that it became really satisfying deflecting enemy attacks with almost perfect timing. Our main character has a moveset that I found just fast enough for me and more varied than I anticipated with all the prosthetic arm upgrades and combat arts you can unlock. Altough, I have to say that, since I missed one or two prosthetic arm during my playthrough, I was locked out of almost all of the upgrades in the prosthetic arm upgrade tree, which I found really annoying since I did not get to fully interact with the system. Other than that, gameplay was really solid and fun for the most part.

In terms of Bosses, the game has a pretty solid cast of main bosses, and a lot of mini bosses, with some of the latter being more annoying to fight than most. The last boss, Isshin, is easily the highlight of the game with how good and especially how difficult it is for the average player like me. Having to beat another boss right before him was really annoying for me though, because I was trying to learn Isshin's pattern and it felt like I was taken out of it when I had to fight Ganechiro before him every time. Ganechiro by himself and Owl were also some really fun and pretty challenging bosses that I enjoyed fighting. One boss that I ended up skipping was the Demon of hatred, even if I liked how it reminded me of Dark Souls, fighting him was a pain, he had way too much HP for my liking and he had 3 whole phases, thankfully he was optional. Almost every boss fight felt really fair and I really liked how it played a bit like a "dance" or even a rhythm game.

Story-wise, I was surprised by the fact that I could understand, at least a little, what was going on, unlike my average experience with Elden Ring and DS3. Story felt like it was a bit more at the forefront in this game and I quite liked it, the little pieces of lore I found were interesting and I enjoyed going through the main story.

Overall, Sekiro was a great experience and I'm glad I played through it.

It's almost mind blowing to see that Ubisoft actually made a good game in 2024.
Jokes aside, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a well made and pretty fun Metroidvania.

Strongest aspect of the game for me was the gameplay, and more specifically the general feel of the character. Sargon just feels so smooth, for lack of a better term, I really had full control on his movement, even in the air. The general feeling of gameplay is also enhanced by the really well made animations for the protagonist. I also thought that the combat was a lot of fun. Being able to, and also encouraged by the game, to combo enemies in the air, and even being able to extend the aerial combos by shooting with a bow, was amazing and reminded me of Devil May Cry in a way.

The abilities we unlock while progress through the game were fun and sometimes pretty original. Some of these were a bit more standard, like an aerial dash and graplin hook, but they were still fun to use ! Other abilities like setting up a point where you can teleport back to and a bow that could turn into a chakram were really original, well at least to me, and spiced things up a bit for someone who played a fair amount of metroidvanias like me. The only ability I found underwhelming, was the ability to switch dimensions, which sounds cool but is actually just a way to make platforms and obstacles appear and disappear.

Exploration was fun, but I have to admit that towards the end, I was getting a bit tired of finding a hidden area only for it to have crystals, which were of almost no use to me at that point. There was a lot of variety in environment and the art direction was pretty solid so it was always fun to discover a new area.

I didn't care much for the story, but it might be important to add that this is my first prince of persia game so it might have to do with that. Other than that, the acting was pretty nice, although there were some moments were the line delivery wasn't as impactful as it could've been, but, in the end, it's not really what I played this game for.

One thing that I found odd was the overall lack of music throughout the game. Don't get me wrong, there's some really good tracks in there, but a lot of the time the game was weirdly quiet, which feels really weird since metroidvanias are generally full of iconic and nice OSTs.

In conclusion, I had a great time with this Prince of Persia game. I really hope Ubisoft will continue making smaller and more focused gaming experiences like this one !

Dark Souls III was an absolute blast !

For context, I did play this years ago, but I was really bad, got stuck at Abyss Watchers and gave up. Since then, I played through Elden Ring and absolutely loved it. I recently went back to ER to beat Malenia since I was really hyped for the DLC. I still had a From soft/souls-like craving so I decided to try Dark Souls III once more.

Dark Souls III feels really good to play. It's very similar to Elden Ring, missing some features like jump attacks, but it's still really good. The character movement is butter smooth and every attack feels really satisfying to hit. The sheer variety of weapons and builds you can use is also really impressive. I ended up going with twin blades and it felt really fast and strong.

The art direction of the game is also nothing short of amazing. The biggest highlight in term of art direction and scenery is easily Irithyll of the boreal valley, the architecture and grandeur of everything in the city is just jaw dropping and I also like the abundance of blue in the zone being a nice change of pace. The other best looking zone for me was the Ringed City from the DLC, simply beautiful, and looks absolutely huge. Some places were not as good looking though, like all the swamps in the game and the catacombs of Carthus that were my least favorite areas of the game.

The game's level design is also really good, unlocking shortcuts is satisfying and the run back to every boss is usually not too bad, even though I prefer Elden ring's placement of respawn points. Exploration was also a big highlight for me. It felt so rewarding exploring every areas of the game and sometime finding cool weapons, armors and sometimes whole different secret and optional area. Finding a dark and twisted version of the shrine by randomly exploring was a big highlight for me, especially since it allowed me to unlock another ending !

Speaking of bosses, the first few bosses of the game felt pretty underwhelming and were not the most fun to fight, but the game quicky picks up. Dark Souls III has a some really great bosses, especially towards the end. Lothric, dancer of the boreal valley, Pontiff and the souls of cinder were probably my favorite bosses from the main game. They were not that hard, but still challenging, for me at least maybe because of my recent experience with Elden Ring or my build, but they were really fun. they felt like a dance and were for the most part really fair.

The part of the game I have way more mixed feelings towards is DLC. Both DLCs have absolutely beautiful and stunning areas for the player to explore, the problem being that exploring them were, for the most part, straight up not fun to explore and traverse. Indeed, each areas were filled with enemies that were really annoying to deal with, they had either to much HPs, too much damage or an annoying move set, and they often had all 3 of these problems. So all of this eventually made me run past everything in search of bonefires, a key item, or a boss which is a shame because I think exploration is one of the best aspect of the game and usually feels really rewarding. Running past everything and picking items so fast that I'm not even sure of what I picked up felt really unrewarding. The biggest redeeming quality of these DLCs are the amazing bosses they hold. Sister Frieder can be a bit annoying with her 3 phases, but the fight was probably the most challenging for me and I found it pretty fun. The demon prince was also pretty cool, starting up as a duo boss and then fighting a giant demon was pretty awesome. The best boss, though, is hands down Gael, and he's not only the best boss of the DLCs but probably of the whole game. The fight against him felt so epic and his moveset was so fun to fight against. His 3 different phases were all really fair and the most fun "dance" of the game.

In the end, even though the DLC left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, I really loved Dark Souls III. When I first played it years ago, I just assumed that the game wasn't for me, but now I think I understand why people love these games so much. I might not like it more than Elden Ring, but i'm really glad I finished it and I'm now really interested to try From Software's other gems.