Final Fantasy XVI is a very conflicting game for me. As a massive fan of the Final Fantasy franchise, a lot of the decisions when it comes to the direction of this franchise does not interest me all that much. Final Fantasy XVI features a lot of the extremes of those negatives for me. Especially in the combat department.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake, to me, is this action based combat style at its best. Final Fantasy 16 is this style at its worst.

Combat is so not fun. It's so tedious with battles oftentimes feels way too dragged out. You do get some powers that help make things move a bit quicker, with a lot of these powers having their own pros and cons for enemies.

The biggest problem with these powers though is your limitations in equipping them. You're only able to equip three at a time. Unfortunately, I found myself oftentimes being in a big boss battle or sub boss battle where one of my powers was just not the best for the enemies' patterns. This is a problem because during combat you aren't able to swap these out with others. It just feels like a silly restriction that would free up combat and make experimenting with combos and power up sets a lot easier.

The end result for me was just a ridiculous amount of button mashing and controller stress testing. Even when you're leveling up, this is a constant feeling and issue. Near the end I was having less issues with this but it wasn't enough.

The action heavy focus and negative shift compared to the previous attempts at this just make the game overall feel like an RPG in name only.

The game story wise though is still very much Final Fantasy with a whole bunch of crystal talk and massive summons.

The game is gorgeous which helps with some of the normal Final Fantasy summons. The scale and scope may be the biggest its ever been here in Final Fantasy with action moments consistently being way over the top. The final boss in particular is one of the most insane battles I've maybe ever had given some of the cutscenes and action moments.

The soundtrack does a lot of the heavy lifting in this as well. The music in Final Fantasy 16 is some of the best the series has ever had. It adds so much and fits so perfectly with the world and visual style.

The story is pretty good. It feels convoluted at times and character development is very hit or miss. Thanks to some great VO performances, Starr being one of them, the overall game does enough for me to be pretty pleased and make up for some of the story and character issues.

The world map and setting in general are also not good. The setup and functionality of the world map just aren't very good and the towns and locations aren't all that interesting.

The highs are really high but the lows are also pretty low. It makes for a frustrating at times experience but the end game stuff was enough to get it up to a 3.5. Unfortunately, combat being what it is though, that is enough to hold it back from anything higher than that. It's a head scratching end result.

A pretty decent return to the RPG fold for some of the devs of the classic Suikoden series. Though it is very basic from a story, game play, and RPG perspective, there are glimmers of the Suikoden influence in this game and gives me optimism for the next Eiyuden Chronicle game next year.

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a prologue to the game releasing next year or not but it very much feels like a beginning introduction of a world and a few characters that will eventually appear down the line. There aren't a ton of playable characters, something the Suikoden series was famous for (around 90 or so playable characters in each of those Suikoden games give or take) but the characters that are around all do a good job of looking unique and standing out.

You can only play as three characters with a good amount of NPCs that will make consistent appearances but the artwork is pretty great and the designs are all quite nice. Setting design is a bit more basic and cliche, you get your snow level, your mine area, your forest area, etc. All very basic stuff that doesn't really stand out.

Combat is also fairly basic. You'll start the game with one character but you'll eventually get a second and a third. How combat in Rising works is each button controls one of the characters with the A button being the universal jump button for all.

If you want to attack with the main hero, you can hit X (played on the Series X so this will obviously be different depending on system) but if I want to attack with the eye-patched kangaroo mercenary I get, I can do so with the Y button and my character will seamlessly swap out. I can swap out during combat (Eiyuden Rising is an action based combat game) or just on the fly when I'm walking through part of an area and it's a pretty flawless swap out.

Combat tries to take advantage of this swap system by allowing you to chain attacks together with your team but that chain attack has a limit. That limit can be improved as you progress through the game and if you decide to take care of the various side quests that are in this game. The more quests you do, the better the town gets, and as a reward, the more chain attacks you are able to do.

That's really the only unique thing about combat though. Each character has a unique skill, each of which is fairly basic, one gets a block, another a dash, etc. Combat is very basic and not all that interesting to be honest. Boss battles are a bit more strategic and changes up the generic battles you'll have throughout the various levels of the game but there isn't enough of a shift to really say it's great. Nothing offensive or bad, just nothing all that interesting.

The side quests are also quite basic. Your generic fetch quests or "find this person" type stuff that is more time filler than all that interesting. Again though, nothing offensive or bad, just nothing that really stands out.

Overall, this game is sort of that outside of the art design. It's a great building block for whatever this new team is doing and I can feel the bones of the Suikdoden series in Rising to some degree, it's just very basic so it's hard to recommend this game. Even for the RPG hardcore fans, this might feel pretty barren. It is relatively short by RPG standards though and on Game Pass (as of writing this review) so maybe give it a shot if you're looking for an action based RPG that won't take a ton of effort or brain power to get through.

Overall, a really fun experience. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has its flaws but a solid story with some interesting developments, some fun combat (albeit a bit repetitive at times), and some fun areas to explore make up for some of these issues.

The combat I kinda love? It's pretty simple but the satisfying lightsaber mechanics mixed with the force powers you get at full strength make mixing and matching force + lightsaber combos that can make group killing so damn satisfying. I never quite gelled with the dual lightsaber style you eventually unlock but even that had its moments of fun.

The unfortunate counter to the combat mechanics are the general platforming and exploring aspects to this game. There are platforming sections that are just abysmal to get through. Jumping across some areas, I just would overshoot or undershoot the distance and fall. Luckily you just lose health and can restart right where you started, but it sorta feels like an addition that was added to make up for how shitty the traversing can be at times.

Since you can't fast travel in this game AT ALL and you are constantly having to trek back to your ship in order to leave and travel, you are just hitting these bad sections a bit too consistently.

The game has some secrets and collectibles that are interesting and helpful on every planet. You can unlock skins for your ship, for BD-1 (who is amazing sidekick and has his own unique skills that are great), your costumes, and lightsaber parts. You can also find locations for more stimpacks for healing so searching all parts of a planet and returning to them once you start getting new powers and upgrades is a pretty worthwhile venture.

These changes are not necessary but in a world filled with paid skins and DLC for these kinds of things, the free options in this game are very satisfying to manage and go through.

The cast of characters that go along with you through this journey are all really interesting and without giving much away, the story is not half bad. The final location in particular is just so damn crazy across the board that it probably raises this game to the four stars I've given it. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order certainly has its frustrations but the ride is overall a good time, ending at one hell of a setup for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

A decent beat-em-up that attempts to add rogue-like elements to mixed results.

The game definitely features a lot of Double Dragon feelings. It's definitely got similar attacks, bad guys, pick ups, and frustrations that you'd find in the original games.

Most of the negative frustrations only start to pop up as the game progresses and the difficulty scaling begins.

You have four bosses to take on in this game and as you defeat them, the other gangs/bosses will grow stronger as they hear about the demise of their counterparts.

The levels get longer, featuring more stages in order to get to the final boss. So if you play one level the first time verses the fourth time, the levels will be longer, with new sub locations and mid bosses added.

Enemies will get stronger, they will take more damage to kill, there will be more things that can hurt you scattered throughout the stages as well. Even the bosses will be joined by more and more additional enemies as you defeat others.

It's a pretty interesting concept and it does help make the game harder and make you take advantage of the skills and strategies found within the gameplay.

Unfortunately, the gameplay isn't all that interesting. It's standard beat em up mechanics and all of it never feels all that satisfying.

The game does feature multiple characters to choose from to start, all with their own pros and cons. All differences are pretty standard, you've got an all around, you've got a character that can only use a gun, you've got bigger, stronger (but slower) characters, etc. etc.

There are additional characters you can unlock as well that also feature pros and cons.

It helps a bit with strategy, especially since you can swap your characters out if both of your selected characters die.

The difficulty scaling though is a bit frustrating. Since a lot of the levels get longer with new areas needing to be cleared in order to get to the actual end boss, these newer areas are usually chock full of easy traps and ways to get knocked off the stage and die and take damage.

A lot of the issues found in the older designed beat em ups are here in this modern version in order to make the game feel retro. These mechanics though are all pretty frustrating. Floor traps can juggle you, as can enemies if they are nearby, you can fly off the ends of stages by simply using a special attack that carries you too far. These things can easily take you down a good amount of health out of nowhere.

While there are ways to earn health items (you have to combo kill multiple enemies and depending on how many you KO, the bigger the health increase will be on the item you earn). Actually trying to pick and use (they don't get automatically added to your health bar upon earning it) these up can be difficult if you're in the heat of an enemy wave.

If you do have both of your characters die, you can revive so long as you have the money to do it. You earn money by picking it up and defeating enemies throughout the levels so you'll usually have some but that money is also used at the end of stages to upgrade your characters so you have to plan accordingly.

These upgrades are your standard rogue-like affair, you'll have the ability to purchase max health upgrades, certain attacks dealing more damage, perks depending on health, etc. etc.

You have the ability to buy these separately for your character but you also have the ability to pass on one and instead earn additional money, so if you're running low and can't buy anything you will still be rewarded, or if you are worried about not having enough money for a revive, you can hold onto the money strategically.

These upgrades are noticeable to a degree, though the final stage usually features enemies strong enough where you might not notice these as the game progresses.

Overall, Double Dragon Gaiden is a decent beat em up. The gameplay frustrations and bland gameplay though will deter some, which is fine because there are better modern beat em ups out there. It's rather short on top of it unless you want to be a completionist or mess around with the characters you can unlock. If you've played those better games though, this isn't a terrible pickup on a discount.

There is so much potential here. The setting, the general style, the level design, it's all so damn good. Then, you play the game, and it all goes to shit.

Atomic Heart is a super frustrating experience from top to bottom, for many reasons. The game starts off so damn good and interesting, transporting you into this super gorgeous, super interesting world, showing things off at first like Bioshock games would do in the past where you're just kinda touring the setting and soaking all the coolness in before things go haywire and things need to be shot.

There are a lot of similarities to me between this game and Bioshock, at least in what this game is attempting to do. Atomic Heart is just a discount version of this in most aspects.

You have weapons to shoot, melee weapons, and weird superpowers at your inventory disposal. You can upgrade both the weapons and the powerups, mixing and matching various equipped items and abilities.

None of the shooting mechanics and abilities feel all that particularly good to use. In order to unlock more weapons you'll have to stumble across blueprints which unlock these weapons in the store. You will then need to get enough random gear in order to build these weapons.

On top of making you work to get these weapons, you also have a limited inventory, so you have limited space to hold these weapons. The inventory system is in the same setup as a Resident Evil 4 style, where you have a certain space limit and certain items take up more space depending on their size so you'll have to balance which weapons to use vs items you'll want to carry. Ammo takes up space on top of it all, just like in RE4 so you're constantly having to balance all of these things.

The similarities actually don't stop there between Atomic Heart and RE4 (yes, I know I just got done comparing it to Bioshock) because in Atomic Heart, you will need to be ultra conservative with ammo because you will go through it constantly.

Melee weapons are your best friend in this game. They don't break or anything so they are very necessary to use in this game. Unfortunately, this drags out a ton of fights since melee weapons do take more time (least this feels the case).

The biggest problem with the guns in the game really isn't the lack of ammo, it's the fact that every enemy in this game is a bullet sponge. These are some of the worst bullet sponge enemies I've seen in a game in quite sometime, it's bad.

Every single gun takes so much ammo to kill something. Boss battles in particular are egregious since every one of them has a health bar so you can see how little your guns do damage wise.

It stretches this game out so much because every battle takes so much time.

On top of that, the game features an open world style setup eventually. But because combat is so bad and takes so long and everything takes so much ammo to kill, trying to explore for secrets is basically a nonstarter. Which means you're missing out on potential blueprints and weapon upgrades.

The last boss of the game literally took every single bullet I had in my inventory, even after I had tried to focus a good amount on my melee attacks and an energy gun, and I still had to finish it off with more melee at the end. It's brutal and not fun since the mechanics aren't fun using.

There are other issues with this game too that I could go into, collecting random items is a pain since they are hiding in every closed shelf, drawer, desk, etc and you have to search them all manually. These bits and pieces are what you use to upgrade weapons too so you need to do it to make things a little easier. There's also the dialogue being cringey, the story not being easy to follow but bonkers from the bits and pieces I could follow, the stealth elements (there's stealth!) being weeeeeak and annoying and so on and so forth.

If this game was just a by the book shooter, with ammo aplenty for you to mow down enemies with, with this setting, the character design, the music, the various levels, this game could've been spectacularly fun. Instead, it's just a massive disappointment.

Not at all what I was expecting but I'm somehow both satisfied and somewhat disappointed with the end result. Carried heavily by its style and art design, Ghostwire Tokyo is somehow an open world first person action......shooter? I guess?

Not scary by any means but the crazy enemy designs and overall feel/setting are still really effective and really good.

The rest? Is kinda just okay. The combat is hit or miss, sometimes I found it really satisfying and good, other times I found it tedious and bland. The controls are solid, though it took some getting used to for me with the button layout. It looks and sounds quite nice as well of course.

The story is also pretty rubbish. There might be something there but with the open world/side quest/collectible style format for this game, the core story gets stretched thin and is often times forgettable and nonsensical.

Despite these complaints, I still had a lot of fun running and gliding around this utopian Tokyo setting. It has just enough personality and style to carry it above your super average open world action/adventure style games. I just wish this game wasn't all style and had a bit more substance to it.

There is just enough off with the game play of this game that makes it a pain to play through. A part puzzle game, part rouge-like, Loot River's two ideas are interesting in concept but the execution is not good.

The rogue-like action is alright, with just two issues that stood out. First, the controls feeling just slightly off. Parrying feels off in a way that didn't feel like missed parrying opportunities are a skill issue but just a problem with the detection. As if I have to adjust things on my end to make up for technical issues and not having to adjust to patterns or just missing the window in a obvious and natural manner. Combat is okay but just nowhere near as satisfying as you'd like for a game like this. These two combinations, along with the difficulty, just makes it not worth pushing through since again, it's just not very satisfying.

The puzzle factor too is just there and at times, more tedious than its worth.

Overall, I could see Loot River be a game people really do enjoy. For me though, the lack of interesting puzzles out the gate along with combat that's just not satisfying or tight enough makes the difficulty to push through simply not worth the time and effort.

If you love to play a game where you will be spending more time on Google or looking up strategy guides vs actually exploring the game you're playing, Chinatown Detective Agency is a game made for you.

A futuristic Singapore is the setting and it starts off pretty good, but quickly the game loop is uncovered and the game's charming look and interesting location go right out the window.

The game is largely puzzle solving and trying to figure out where to go next. The only problem is that the actual game only provides you with hints and clues and there's no real way to uncover some of these puzzles without being really knowledgeable on a lot of various things or to constantly be Googling quotes, flags, languages, capitals, and a few other topics.

The game doesn't provide you any way of discovering these in game. You either look them up or pay someone in the game to give you the answer. There's the option to get a hint, which also costs money, but it's a waste of time to do.

You can't really just fly/look around until you come up to the place/solution too since some clues have to be manually types out and traveling costs money. The game also features a fun rent system where, at the start of every month, you have to pay your bills. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

If you run out of money or get trapped/arrested/fail the puzzle, you get a game over and you will restart from the beginning of the case more times than not. The game features an auto save feature that almost always only works at the beginning of the case. You can't save yourself at any time, so if you're worried about running out of money flying around and discovering the next location and want to save so you don't have to go through all the dialogue you've already read, too bad.

Flying around and seeing the various dystopian locations is neat but they are completely empty with nothing to explore besides the screen you will load up when you "land". Most areas that are not necessary to the story are empty husks. Some times new areas will open up if they are story related but I rarely visited most of the locations in the one storyline path I took.

The game provides you with three different clients to work with. At the start, you can work with all three to help get an idea for the case and the story. Eventually though, you will have to pick one to work full time which will ignore the rest of the cases. I only played through one path, so it's possible that these other areas are explored more in other pathways but it just feels like a lot of wasted space.

I played the XBox version of this game as well and there are issues with the console version of this compared to the PC version. Since you have no mouse, you aren't able to just click on the thing you want to interact with, so you'll have to rely on the game automatically hovering over the correct item/person, which this game struggles to do.

So many times I was standing right of front of something but the game instead was focusing on me interacting with something behind me or nearby. There was also a very frustrating puzzle involving getting out of a trap by solving constellations (another Google focused puzzle for me). Getting through the puzzle wasn't too bad, except for the auto focusing. Since two of the puzzles were right next to each other (one was above, the other below it), I was unable to easily click on the final part of the puzzle. After dying twice and having to get back there, I got lucky finally by just pressing A until it recognized the bottom puzzle. I almost quit then and there.

There are other bugs as well, characters just not appearing, or not being able to talk to them, or other various in game issues that just make the whole experience worse. Things where it wasn't as simple as leaving and coming back. Things where I had to literally shut the game down and start from the beginning of the case.

This game has an interesting location, mainly taking place in a futuristic Singapore and the idea could have been good but Chinatown Detective Agency falls well short of being worth your time unless the idea of Google searching your way into progress sounds like a great time

There's very little going on from a gameplay standard, but Stray does a great job of world building and makes for a place that I never really got tired of getting lost in.

The story is decent at best but it does a good job of telling it and with the wonderful soundtrack and, again, world building, by the end of this game had me pretty invested in everything. Though it was definitely a simmering effect that eventually boiled over by the end.

Definitely won't be for everyone given the very light gameplay of it all, but Stray does a lot of good vibey things to make up for that, if vibey-type games are usually your thing.