Great set-up, good start! unfortunately, even with a walkthrough at your side, the game quality gets worse as the game goes on.

There being like 1 or 2 major softlock moments per chapter is unacceptable.

If I pick up an item too early or hand in an item too early, boom. Cannot complete the game.
These are bugs that were in the original but they faithfully kept for the remaster, is my understanding.

The most annoying softlock required many game restarts. Every time I'd interact with a story important puzzle, id fall through the map endlessly.

0 idea why or how, as i did the puzzle flawlessly first try, but reloaded a save because i missed an achievement. It was this second attempt to solve the puzzle that slowed everything down to a halt.
Again, this bug is 25 years old.

The most jarring part about the remaster is the load times are practically instant. This makes for pretty uncomfortable pacing. You'll be somewhere completely new, with a new cast of characters, seeing the aftermath of something that was implied to happen off screen. One minute you're black mailing a lawyer to handle a case for you, the next millisecond you're seeing the aftermath of said trial. It's genuinely discombobulating.

Map navigation can be a pain in the ass where you'll click where you want to go, double click to run, and the game is supposed to calculate the best path. Your dude will stop, turn, take weird detours, get stuck- I end up mashing click like an RTS to get around faster. Some rooms are so difficult to find the right area to click on so I switch to walking with arrow keys when close enough.

Inventory is slow to navigate with no indication what item is next in queue. You click inventory, Manny pulls out 1 item from his coat. Click left or right arrow to cycle through. Which should i choose? What will get to the item i want, fastest? Who knows. Hope you picked the right one, else you watch Manny pull out, and put away each trinket you own.

Puzzles and progression are trial and error. Pick up everything you see, hand over every item you have to every NPC to see what they do. This wouldn't be so much of a problem (it sucks) if there weren't so many softlock pitfalls. I'm actively punished for doing things out of order! And not every softlock is obvious, oh no. You could feasibly keep playing a bit longer, not knowing when you'll reach an impasse.

The audio balance is pretty good. Unsure if that's thanks in part of the remaster, but a lot of games like this can struggle with the dialogue being clear or leveled.
The remaster looks nice! The shadows on the main character as I walk around is impressive.

Great set-up, good start! unfortunately, even with a walkthrough at your side, the game quality gets worse as the game goes on.

There being like 1 or 2 major softlock moments per chapter is unacceptable.

If I pick up an item too early or hand in an item too early, boom. Cannot complete the game.
These are bugs that were in the original but they faithfully kept for the remaster, is my understanding.

The most annoying softlock required many game restarts. Every time I'd interact with a story important puzzle, id fall through the map endlessly.

0 idea why or how, as i did the puzzle flawlessly first try, but reloaded a save because i missed an achievement. It was this second attempt to solve the puzzle that slowed everything down to a halt.
Again, this bug is 25 years old.

The most jarring part about the remaster is the load times are practically instant. This makes for pretty uncomfortable pacing. You'll be somewhere completely new, with a new cast of characters, seeing the aftermath of something that was implied to happen off screen. One minute you're black mailing a lawyer to handle a case for you, the next millisecond you're seeing the aftermath of said trial. It's genuinely discombobulating.

Map navigation can be a pain in the ass where you'll click where you want to go, double click to run, and the game is supposed to calculate the best path. Your dude will stop, turn, take weird detours, get stuck- I end up mashing click like an RTS to get around faster. Some rooms are so difficult to find the right area to click on so I switch to walking with arrow keys when close enough.

Inventory is slow to navigate with no indication what item is next in queue. You click inventory, Manny pulls out 1 item from his coat. Click left or right arrow to cycle through. Which should i choose? What will get to the item i want, fastest? Who knows. Hope you picked the right one, else you watch Manny pull out, and put away each trinket you own.

Puzzles and progression are trial and error. Pick up everything you see, hand over every item you have to every NPC to see what they do. This wouldn't be so much of a problem (it sucks) if there weren't so many softlock pitfalls. I'm actively punished for doing things out of order! And not every softlock is obvious, oh no. You could feasibly keep playing a bit longer, not knowing when you'll reach an impasse.

The audio balance is pretty good. Unsure if that's thanks in part of the remaster, but a lot of games like this can struggle with the dialogue being clear or leveled.
The remaster looks nice! The shadows on the main character as I walk around is impressive.

"Guess I coulda done more, been different... maybe."

When I finished Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time back in 2020, I was pissed off. I had received the Sun ending, an ending that I believed to be utterly counterintuitive to the V I was attempting to roleplay, I lamented the lack of roleplay options and agency on the story that my V had. I was upset that I fought through the initial buggy release just to be met with a disappointing ending that I didn't feel was reflective of the choices my V would make after the ending decision came. I thought to myself that Cyberpunk 2077 was a game that sadly just wasn't for me, and didn't think much about revisiting it again.

Then I replayed the game when 2.0 and Phantom Liberty were released. This DLC takes everything that disappointed me about Cyberpunk 2077 and reinvents it. Dogtown is host to the most diverse and unique set of gigs in the game, all with their own host of branching choices and player agency involved. My V quickly became entrenched in the affairs of this broken and militarized place in Night City, and the atmosphere building immediately sucks you in, demanding your respect and immersion almost immediately. The initiating mission on its own is immensely compelling and provides any V with a reason to stay and live in Dogtown - The potential of a cure for Johnny Silverhand in your head. And the writers don't throw away this reason either. It becomes the primary reason to push forward, as the stakes and circumstances grow higher and more threatening with each main mission initiated. More on this later.

It's impossible to talk about this DLC without mentioning the characters. In terms of core cast, there is not a bad one here. Reed, Songbird, and Alex are an incredibly strong trio of core characters each with their own unique ridges and reasons for ending up in Dogtown right alongside you. Reed, in particular, struck me; they always tease this hope of his characterization shifting in a way that won't doom him inevitably, but watching his character in even the first missions, you're able to pretty easily intuit that he'll doom himself in the end. Despite what he says, Reed will always act along his character, and rarely escapes that mold, this makes him such an interesting contrast to So Mi, the Songbird. Songbird provides the initial hook and climax of Cyberpunk 2077, providing the intrigue and thrill of working against the NUSA in Dogtown in order to free her and send her to the moon. That climax provides one of the best missions in first person shooter history - So Mi's own dishonesties and lies slowly peeling back layer by layer until you find out that her promise was a lie. A crushing moment that ends in a choice, where honestly, any option is equally valid. I opted to send Songbird to the moon, as I believed it was the most in character for my V - but it's truly a choice where there is no wrong option, like many in Phantom Liberty. The final choice is reflective of all the writing choices throughout the DLC. No matter what you pick, only Night City wins. This is the kind of writing that I felt was missing from the base 2077 experience, and they finally made the city win against all else.

Finally, it's important to discuss how much I love the characterization of Johnny SIlverhand in this DLC, he's already a highlight of the base game and he's just as good here. Showing glimpses of his past and moments of introspection before the conversation at the Oilfields in the base story is absolutely genius and fills in the gaps that I felt were slightly present in his confrontation with his previous life. You feel a quiet respect from him to V after sending Song to the moon, and the bitter sorrow that the both of you experience in those final moments of the DLC are absolutely brilliant. You're forced to once again confront death, and stare the next day forward after going through hell and back for ultimately nothing. A masterpiece, and likely will never be replicated in a Cyberpunk video game for a long long time.

Taking two philosophy courses forces reconsideration when interfacing with certain media pieces. Soma is a genius game with writing unlike any other horror game I've ever played before. It's impossible to consider where the game is actually going to go from the initial start, but by the end of the game, you can only put your hands up and acknowledge that this was all established throughout the story prior.

The tone established in Pathos-II is utterly striking and the scares come from the atmosphere and tone oppressing you and slowly building to a well earned and daunting game of cat and mouse. You often feel like you are drowning under the atmosphere's weight, and the game rarely lets up. When it does however, you never quite feel safe as the tenuous relationship between Catherine and Simon grows more and more strained, and moments of levity slowly transition into points of introspection where you question the moral consequences of what you've done, and your overall mission as a whole.

The micro annoyances and difficulty finding my way on occasion is a point off the game, sure. But the game is so well structured from a narrative, atmospheric, and tonal perspective that I can't give it anything less than 5 stars in good conscience. The best horror game I've ever played, and it's not even close.

They're not us.

Went into this game expecting jank and instead got a very solid RPG.

Wizardry 1 does not fuck around. The game drops you into town, you make characters and buy equipment, then go right into the dungeon. Then you'll probably die in 20 seconds because you made a poor party comp and the enemies kill you in one hit.

This game is all about risk management. When party members die individually you have to drag them back to town and pay a hefty price to revive them. If the whole party dies, time to make a new one. Enemies are distinct and have varying degrees of power, so your first time facing them you won't know if they're fodder or something that will ruin your life. There are traps all over the place and the map tiles have no visual indications besides doors, so if it's your first time in an area you WILL run into those traps.

This is where mapping comes in. Break out the pencil and paper because drawing the dungeon is part of the gameplay loop. The dungeon is massive and you will get lost easily without a map to find your way. Marking down those traps will ensure you won't have to suffer their consequences again. Getting to the bottom floor to fight the final boss might seem like a grueling, impossible task at first but through mapping I discovered a way to get to there in only a couple minutes.

As competent as the game is, I wasn't able to actually beat it. The perma death is an interesting feature, but ultimately way too punishing as is. If the game were faster it'd be fine, but character creation is a little slow and it takes me about 5-10 minute to create a whole new party. With a dungeon as deadly as Wizardry 1's, this mechanic just felt like padding to me.

Luckily the game only autosaves when you return to town, so I was able to cheat a bit and close the game whenever my party was about to die. I found this to be just the right amount of punishing since it still made me waste time and lose progress.

But even with this I still couldn't push through the end. The last 2 floors are BRUTAL. Half of the enemy types are extremely evil. Mages will cast spells that pretty much instantly kill my squishier party members, the undead will DRAIN LEVELS with their attacks (more punishing than death it's fucking horrible), and demons grant multiple status effects. Floor 10 itself is a gruelling gauntlet of 7 mandatory fights (potentially more) before you fight the final boss, who is also really tough.

At that point you're basically required to grind for a while, but since the enemies down there are so strong it's not worth the risk of dying to grind them. Looking online I saw that most people grind using a repeatable encounter on the first floor, but doing this takes a loooong time. It would've taken me a full day's worth of grinding it to get to where I wanted to be, and at that point I didn't feel like finishing the game was worth my time.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the rest of the game though, and I hope the sequels do away with that brutal endgame grind.