Only finished the first scenario and it took me about ten hours and four attempts to pull through. This game is hard! I don't know the other scenarios yet but the first one was a blast, very bleak in its desolate atmosphere and highly immersive (the first city builder I recommend playing with headphones). You will have to make tough choices and sacrifices; people will die but with clever resource management and planning ahead you'll pull through. It's quite stressful even with active pause mode, so keep that in mind if you expect something like Anno only in a different setting.

It's a bit linear structured and feels at times more like a puzzle or board game than a city builder with highly complex systems underlying. Balancing hope, discontent, injuries, coldness and hunger is far from being a binary system but it lacks depth you typically find in grand strategy games. This does work well for a scenario-based game like this, though, which offers cutscenes and an intense atmosphere. It's not as systemic as the most complex strategy games and city builders. That's part of the reason why I like this game so much so far and its approach.

One of the most brilliant games I've played in many recent years. Ori managed to evoke that kind of joy and wonder and fascination I had had as a kid. It's pace is impeccable and you get new abilities and visit new locations before it gets repetitive and possibly boring. The visuals are among the best a video game can display, accompanied by a beautiful soundtrack and super smooth animations and forgiving controls. The story, although without humans and with few dialogues only is highly emotional and affects us in way only very few games probably do.

Patched and balanced to death because the developers cater for the 0,01% of the player base that is active in esports and overly emphasize the competitive character of the game. This also leads to a over-ambitious community that takes the game even on lower skill levels way too serious and create a toxic environment. If you ever thought the CoD community was bad, you haven't seen Overwatch's. That being said, the underlying gameplay pillars are fun as hell and it's actually an amazing game that really took on Team Fortess's foundations and elevated it to highly polished and high-budget, fun hero-shooter. Clear visuals and precise controls and fun hero abilities make it a joy to play. Just don't go down the rabbit hole and invest too much emotionally and time-wise.