My favourite Telltale game behind The Wolf Among Us, and probably objectively better than it. Also absolutely concur with everyone who says this is the best Borderlands game, because by far and away it is.

I have my issues with Episode 5, but they're entirely personal and subjective ones. This game is genuinely funny, full of personality and with a plot that kept me engaged and invested in its characters and outcomes. Rhys is one of my favourite protagonists of all time, and I genuinely love how different he can be as a person depending on your choices (although, and this is one of my aforementioned issues with Ep5, he does end up railroaded into A Good Guy Accepted Into Found Family in the end no matter what because it's clearly the path they Wanted you to go down with him, which sucks, but it is what it is). Generally in Telltale games you have a protagonist who's a set kind of person and you can only lean them a little in other directions (for instance, Lee from The Walking Dead could be angry with people but he was always fundamentally a decent guy who cared about protecting Clementine), whereas here, with Bigby from TWAU as the only other instance that comes to mind, Rhys can genuinely be a sweet, well-meaning dork or an ambitious, backstabbing asshole.

I wholeheartedly encourage people to try the Trust Jack path - I genuinely think that it's more interesting, engaging, and funny than the Trust Fiona/hostile to Jack alternative, and opens up more interesting choices.

I played this before I ever played the main-line Borderlands games, and didn't go into it with a lot of knowledge about series lore. I think it did pretty well keeping things clear and giving me the necessary context, and I didn't struggle to follow along at all, so you can definitely get into this without playing the FPS games first if they're not your kind of thing. The only thing you'll really miss out on are full appreciation of some character cameos and in-jokes.

Ultimately, this is Telltale at their absolute peak, and it's genuinely sad that more people haven't played this and given it a chance.

Favourite Male Character: Rhys
Favourite Female Character: Yvette
First Character I Liked: Handsome Jack
Favourite Character Design: Present day Rhys (the black and gold outfit! The hair! The gold eyes!)
Favourite Soundtrack: To the Top
Least Favourite Character: None

KILL THE LIFE... SAVE THE LIFE... KILL THE PAST... BELIEVE THE NET

Trying to understand this game, is a big messy puzzle inside a bigger puzzle. Not just because the themes it tackles or something more superficial. It's everything undernearth that makes it a really special for me. Kill The Past, and don't let it's darkness to swallow you. Save The Life from the ones that threats it or Believe in the Net and take a glimpse into the future.

If you ever played The Silver Case, the prequel to this game you won't feel that sense of familiarity here since most of the cast is new outside probably Tokio Morisihima from the Placebo chapter. While The Silver Case signature visual style still intact, everything else is brand new. What I'm getting at is you don't need to play The Silver Case to enjoy this game, BUT, it's highly recommended to do so. Some scenes make nods to more than anything, concepts and characters that aren't totally explained throughout the main plot from the main three stories this game presents.

We have three stories with three different protagonists; Correctness, Match Maker and Placebo. Like The Silver Case these three stories are indirectly connected with one another and give form to this big messy puzzle. While Correctness is the surface of the story you'd have to walk blindly if you just have not read both Match Maker and Placebo stories, Placebo mostly. While Match Maker tries to focus it's story in the main characters of that set story, rather than a specific portion of the 25th Ward. Placebo we take control of Tokio Morisihima of the past game. Here is where all the secrets are delivered, while it starts slow and it's somewhat boring in general, it really pays off big on the final bits. You can say Placebo answers most of the questions you'll probably have in Correctness.

The plot is convoluted on purpose, let the game outsmart and surprise you, it's part of the experience. The gameplay believe it or not is more tedius than in The Silver Case, instead of instantly choosing where we want to go, like in Killer7 we're stopped for a few seconds, to then regain control of out actions and then choose where we want to go instead of being a contextual action under the assumption you have a controller. It could work better for a touch screen. Probably because this is a 2005 mobile only game and Suda wanted to be as faithful as possible or as they say in the game "It's part of the job". I'll go with the latter. So investigating isn't really that fun, good thing is those bits aren't as frequent as the game got us to believe from the beginning.

The presentation in this game really is simple, but effective in every way possible. From the angles the characters are drawn, the grey color palette itself making a slight assumption it was inspired by the "Parade" chapter from The Silver Case and giving this game themes it goes perfectly with it. And the music, the songs are as stylish as this game is and set the mood perfectly for each scene. Whenever is intense action, investigating, exploring, or even just for goofs the music will always be on spot. On cases it's not, it feels eerie but still on point weirdly enough. As different persons write the different scenarios of each story, every artist had their own vision on how it's meant to look. Correctness with it's grey color pallete is my personal favorite. It uses a lot of techniques regarding to the angle view where it's meant to be looked at. Even referencing some movies. Tokio Morishima and Placebo uses a specific color to represent a character. Since Tokio's Placebo isn't focused on the city, or specific cases, it's focused on him and the angles where the images are drawn reflect that. Match Maker goes for a more comic-like artstyle, giving the action shots a lot of movement and life others chapters simply don't have. All of them lovely crafted and makes each act feel unique and stand out on it's own.

The 25th Ward: The Silver Case is bigger and has a more ambitious scope than The Silver Case was at the time. Expanding on the themes of Kill the Past and giving new perspectives on all of the presented stories. Personally, I went on a big catharsis after finishing it. "What just happenned?" were thoughts that I couldn't get out of my mind right after finishing Correctness and the credits rolled, so I started going deep in this rabbit hole of a story. And when a story does that, it's a good game in my eyes.

Castlevania Rejuvenated

The Metroidvania genre was something that it didn't conviced me at first. Had played some games that end up leaving a bad taste in my mouth, had to drop them after a few hours since I thought they weren't really worth my time. This game though? Made me change my perspective on the genre for the better.

SOTN was made to rejuvunate the Castlevania series after a long period of stagnation during the 16-bit era of consoles. Not to discredit those games, but even the public eye was starting to get sick of them. The idea of navigating an interconnected world wasn't new, not even for the series: Castlevania II: Simon's Quest somewhat had this realisation at hand 10 years before this game even existed. You can say anything about Simon's Quest but it dare to try something different for a sequel even if didn't really worked that well. Akumojou Dracula on the MSX, an indirect port of sorts of the first Castlevania game exclusively for japan and the MSX line of computers also had it's focus on exploration rather than linear action. So the idea of traveling into a huge world for you to explore was there almost since the beginning.

It's basically a Castlevania game with RPG elements with exploration in mind. It changed so much from the old titles you can't even compare them. While still retaining key elements such as a secondary weapon, characters and location, outside of it, it's totally different. For instance, this time we don't take the role of a member of the Belmont lineage, let alone a vampire hunter. Instead we get Alucard, the son of Dracula. Though this isn't his real first appereance, he shows as Trevor's companion in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. But here, he's fully fledge out to be it's own character.

What sets it appart is exploration, and it totally nails it. As I said before, I've had my share of problems with the "Metroidvania" genre in the past. It's not that I despise or hate it by any means but the idea of exploring itself felt tiring to me. Why? Movement, if movement doesn't feel right in one of these games it totally ruins it to me. Luckly SOTN doesn't have that problem, both the RPG elements in conjuction with exploration and a very smooth movement makes it very fun to travel around Dracula's Castle.

I'm actually quite impressed the amount of content this game has. Enemy variety never fell repetitive, the map is huge and detailed, not to mention the other half of it it's totally hidden unless we complete certain requirements. Plus the addition of RPG elements such as weapon types, elemental damage, armor and so much more. It is a really complete package in all regards in terms of content and this is the one made me fall in love with the genre seeing how much it can offer.

But it's not perfect. One of the weaker aspects of it in my opinion it's the story. Don't get me wrong, I'm not here to play Castlevania games for their story but what is presented here feels sort of hollow? Little happens while traviling Dracula's Castle and only we get a proper explanation of what is going on at the very end of the first half of the game. You do get bits of the story shared around rooms were a girl Maria tell us to find his brother and an encounter with him a some point but honestly it doesn't add much of what we already know from the start. The other aspect I want to talk about is the second half of it, while I liked the concept I can't but say it's really unbalanced and a huge spike in difficulty. Can't really talk about much about since it's an important moment in the game, and I don't want to ruin you the surprise in case you haven't played it yet. I'll only say it gets difficult, so be prepared.

It's still worth playing after all these years? Yes, absolutely. I've never been so adicted to one game in a single day. Lasting about 10 hours it never felt boring, you always felt that you were getting better either by getting better equipment or leveling up and planning your own strategies for combat. As any Metroidvania is, the better you know the map, the better objects you find, the better and faster you get at it. There's a lot of replay value here and that is always appreciated. But I do think a fair share of aspects could've been improved or expanded upon what we already have here.

It seems a bit silly to complain about readability when talking about a bullet hell shmup, a subgenre known for overstimulating maximalism, but it's one of the things that keeps Crimzon Clover from reaching the highs of top tier shmups like Ketsui and Mushi. With Cave's best stuff, while the patterns may be intimidating, they've always felt fair to me - on the other hand Crimzon Clover adds collecting stars that cover the screen and multiplier numbers popping up, muddying up the screen and making things seem unfair at times. Sure it's probably partially a skill issue, but the overload makes it hard to convince me to 1cc, even on Novice.

This blew me away. The amount of “game” this has is honestly very surprising. They chose an interesting but overlooked character from the books and developed an epic tale that you play… with cards. Like, what? But it works! And then, somehow, successfully recreated the open world RPG feel of the Witcher games with an isometric view and a very limited amount of interactions. It’s a great accomplishment.

It’s weird to feel like an AAA game is a work of passion, not because there aren’t passionate devs working on those but because of the scope and financial pressure those projects have. Thronebreaker is absolutely a passion project with great writing, amazing art and a lot of attention to detail. Loved it!

Persona 4 Golden for Steam was my first approach to the Persona series. Started in 2021, exactly a year later after it released. After completing all the modern Persona games, I can safely say this is the worst and best Persona game of the bunch.

It has every system from 3, but amplified. It sadly suffers because some annoying characters like Teddy, I don't like the guy to this day. The only ones that I liked were the male cast, excluding Teddy of course.

The game focuses on murders, no, not actually killing people. But investigating murders through Inaba, the town we're you are currently staying. It's not a mystery game by any means though, it just tackles mystery themes rather than you being directly involved. It's still and JRPG with mazes and such.

I'd say this game was a steping-stone for Persona 5 premise, which is much more realised. But this game, doesn't try you to focus much on the main story, rather the feels having an adventure with your friends. Like a fun summer trip.

So you won't be saving the world from a big evil monster. Instead, the scale stays small in the little town. It was hard to get at first, since I was very used to save the whole human existence every single time from Super Mega God of Destruction 3000.

It was hard to get at first, but if you don't connect with all the cast members it's hard to enjoy it so. Again, I only liked the male cast, it was the most realised of the bunch, specially Kanji. The rest is lame in my opinion.

There is extra content since this the "Golden" edition. Or the final revision of Persona 4. Content is solid and very good social features carried from the PSP Vita edition, the OG one.

Like this game, but don't love it. Damn, I though I would like, love it. But it was ok.

Rockstar Magnum Opus.

Red Dead Redemption is the best story told by the studio, just followed by Red Dead Redemption 2 and probably GTA IV. It feels like a big adventure through America.
My favorite bit were the missions that took place in Mexico.

Rockstar sadly still has problems regarding structure and pacing. Gameplay is basic for the most part too, shoot until everyone is dead. It hasn't evolved that much since GTA 3. But I have to say, this game delivers so good storywise.

The few Rockstar games that I actually like.