FromSoftware's games are know for their difficulty and Sekiro is taken by most as the hardest. Difficulty is something really subjective and there are games you can say are unfair. Maybe they give you an objective and not enough resources, they may ask for precision in your gameplay but not the best tools for that.

When I played this game for the first time, sometimes I thought things like "I will never get past this". When this happened in other games I would try to find a way to cheese the fight or drop the game altogether. It's a skill issue but most of those times I could not figure out the answer. Maybe my build is bad, maybe I'm underleveled or I just don't know how to respond to something.

But in Sekiro I always knew what I was doing wrong. I never could put the blame on the game so I had to look inwards. Grind for exp can only help for some extent, the game doesn’t have different builds and only one weapon so the only answer is to get good.

“Git gud” is something the soulslike players usually say when they want to troll or they don’t have a answer to your problem, just keep banging your head in the wall until it works. But Sekiro takes this to the purest form, there’s no magic answer, you can exploit some tools but you won’t win using only that. You have your sword and your parry, learn how to use it.

It’s like a drug, the first time you fight a boss it’s a thrill to learn the patterns, figure the timing and even if you have everything memorized, it still feels good. Few games I got the urge to be good at it and really pursuit it. Beating the final boss on NG+3 charmless and with the demon bell was something I will never forget. I beat that same boss 2 times before, but I was sloppy, I stumbled my way through victory. Now one error and I was dead, I had to be perfect.

“Hesitation is defeat” is a mantra that encapsules everything Sekiro is. The game is hard but they gave you the tools and the answer, if you strive to understand your errors and keep pushing forward you can do anything.

It took me a long time to finish this game and it has been more than a week since I finished it. What kept me from writing this review is having a clear image of what I want to write. But I feel like "I need to" so here we are.

Is it the best game in the franchise so far? Probably so. The puzzles are a lot more fun and "easy" than the previous games. More logic based and less math bs and goofy ahh moving blocks. The story is also a lot more interesting than ever and the first minutes really pulls you in.

Almost everything here feels like a upgrade from previous entries and I see why this is a fan favorite. But I feel like I had more fun in the older ones, I had a fire that made me want to solve puzzles every free time I had and I couldn't stop thinking about them even when I was working.

I realized I was getting burnout when I was through 1/3 of the game and slowed my pace, but still forced a little to play every now and then and picked up the pace at the end. I think that I expected too much about this game and while it's really good, it wasn't as good as I expected.

The game feels longer than it should be and more dragged on. The previous one when we hadn't a clear plot and were there just for the adventure it was easier to feel the moment. But here you want to know what happens next, you really want to know the mysteries and when this is being blocked by a lot of walking, talking and puzzles, that should be the most fun part of the game, it gave me a weird feeling.

I think it's the first time that a better plot had a worse effect on me? I don't know how to put this into words.

And while the story is good, the plot twist is dumb, really really dumb. Every Layton game must have a plot twist or the game collapses in itself, I think. Curious Village had a hard to believe twist because the technoloy feels out of place but you can accept it. Diabolical Box pushed the boundary of what is acceptacle by a lot but I still could forgive it. In Unwound Future I really couldn't, I had to throw every logic out of the window in a game where it's kinda the main thing.

I didn't talk about the minigames in previous reviews because almost every one of them are dumb and not fun. But I really love the Toy Car one, it's so good and made me happy to complete it without looking anything up. The same can't be said about the bird minigame. God how I hate parabolas.

Maybe it feels weird that I gave such a high rating on a game that I'm mostly bashing but I still feels it deserves it. Most of my impression is probably because of the burnout and my job taking a lot of my energy recently. But the reason I can end it in a high note is the ending.

Emotional trauma does wonders for someone's perspective. Seeing the stoic Hershel Layton breaking down at the end feels almost out of character but is so good, I feel like I can finally see him as human being and not a robot programmed to solve puzzles and being a gentleman. Luke going to the USA at the end also made me feel things.

But the thing that hits me the most is seeing the trailer for the recently announced New World of Steam. Where it pickups where Unwound Future left off when Luke promised us a great adventure. I'm not a old fan of the series but I can imagine what Layton fans felt. After 15 years finally the series is going forward. In a game about time travel it almost feels ironic.

Maybe I can feel something close to that when Capcom remember the Ace Attorney series was left in a cliffhanger. It has been 7 years, maybe I still have to wait double that.

My next move should be playing the prequel triology but I will give some time to that. I need to find that fire again. For now I will put my top hat down and await what the futures hold for me.

What has four legs in the morning and two legs in the afternoon?

That's right! It's the Layton games! The Curious Village crawled so that the Diabolical Box could run.

Almost every aspect of the prequel is improved on. The primary for me was the puzzles being more intertwined with the game progression and the mystery. It's less "this reminds me of a puzzle" or "prove me you are the real Layton" and more like you are solving problems to discover something or find a new lead. It's hard to explain but in the last game it almost feels like you are watching a movie but every 5 minutes a sudoku appears in the screen and you must solve it if you wanna keep watching.

It's a minor thing but I also like that the sprites aren't looking directly at my soul and face each other like they would in a conversation. The scenario are also a upgrade because you explore more scenarios than just a village. The Molentary Express is really elegant and gives me more of the London atmosphere, Dropstone is a charming bucolic village but where you spend the most time and is the most interesting location is the town of Folsense. The lights and the sense of decadence really sells it for me.

The mystery of the Elysian Box is also more intriguing than the Golden Apple and the narrative flows better. I still can't decide if I like or not the resolution but it works in the theme and the message. The Diabolical Box is a lot about greed, decadence and letting the past go.

The puzzles I feel that are also more fun this time, maybe because it seems to have less math and sliding boxes. For the chess puzzle, The Knight's Tour was a lot harder and more unfun than Too Many Queens and I couldn't solve Disappearing Act 6 by myself, but it was still nice.

I also want to talk a bit about Layton and Luke. They have a dinamic like Sherlock and Watson in a sense. Layton always seems to be two steps ahead of everyone but keep it to himself and it's almost like a hero in old stories, where he is a perfect being able to do everything. Luke is more naive and sometimes is almost like the voice of reason not buying some bs or being like "it's really the time for a puzzle now?". They are really good at being those archetypes but I wonder if there are more to them than this. In two games they have basically no character development and we don't see that many facets other than the regular one. I'm not saying that this is bad and it must change, it's just something that I would like to see being worked on in a interesting way.

I have high hopes for the next game because it seems to be a fan favourite and is the last main series game chronogically. Trials and Tribulation is the game that elevates Ace Attorney to a masterpiece level and it would be nice if the Unwound Future does the same for this franchise.

It's 2023 and it has been like 5 years since I completed the latest entry on the Ace Attorney main game series. We are nearing what can be the final years of the Switch and I still don't know if Capcom is gonna follow on the cliffhanger they let us on.

Direct after Direct I watch with the mentality "no new Ace Attorney right?" and the Direct ends with me being right and more frustrated. But in this February something that I also thought was dead came from the ashes.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is something I played a long time ago just because I wanted to get a bit of context for the crossover with Phoenix Wright. I finished it but I remember not liking it that much. So seeing Layton coming back and not my blue attorney kinda pissed me off. But after a week I decided to give this series another chance.

Layton surprised me for having animated cutscenes and voice acting on the DS, something that was not that common on the console. The artstyle is gorgeous and reminds me of an european animation. The soundtrack is also beautiful and really sells the mood of the game.

Curious Village is a chill, but sometimes eerie, adventure where you try to solve a mystery solving puzzles. The mystery although intriguing, it's not that mindblowing and that's ok. The main selling point of the game is the puzzles.

The puzzles feels kinda disconnected from the main mystery with you solving them because something reminded someone of a puzzle or you have to solve someone's puzzle if you want to progress. You don't have to solve every puzzle but there are some chokepoints where you have to solve a minimum number to continue the game.

Do I like the puzzles? Most of them are fine, I love the ones where you have to think outside of the box or pay more attention to the problem. The ones where it seems difficult but then you realize it's a lot simpler. The ones I really don't like are the math ones and the moving blocks one. The "Princess in a Box" ones are my stuff of nightmares. Something I thought I wouldn't like but end up loving was the "Too Many Queens" ones, I felt like was playing sudoku, really fun.

The game has 135 puzzles and there are somes that kinda overlap with each other but it didn't bother me that much. The number seems a lot but playing the game it feels just right.

I started loving the game but by the end I remembered why I didn't like it, the kinda of puzzles I don't like started to be more prominent and they get really hard. Some of them I cheated because even with the hints I couldn't solve it. You can spend "hint coins" to get hints and it's another aspect I don't like that much because It's just pixel hunting find them in the world. I just used a guide to get all hint coints because I'm a completionist fag.

The game is best played like Layton would play it, like an afternoon tea where you pick up the game, solve some puzzles and when you start to get tired or hit a wall in a puzzle you put it off, think about it and then come back to try to solve it again. But by the end of the game I was so fixated in finishing it asap that I kinda put it aside and got a little stressed out.

The game kinda lack a catarthic ending, like when you finally break through an culprit in a Ace Attorney ending or a final emotional puzzle like Zero Escape 999. Everything is kinda solved in a cutscene and the final puzzle is not special, just a weird "find squares" one. But the final message and cutscenes are heartwarming and will make you look back fondly of this weird village.

I began playing the Diabolical Box and the beginning is already more interesting. I just hope Don Paolo or whatever was his name doesn't appear anymore. I will try to play it with more leisure, relaxing like a warm bath after a long day of work... That reminds me of a puzzle, have you seen this one?

A genius restricted by time and budget.

In a world full of medieval fantasy jrpgs, Nier doesn't stood out by the time it was released. At first glance it's just a generic game with a weird prologue. The game doesn't stand out in any aspect until you finish the game for the first time. And most of times you stop there, right?

But the Drakenier series have a custom of having mutiple endings that complement each other, enrich the lore and messages and is the playground for 4th wall breaking shenanigans. But if no one told you this and you are not a resilient gamer, you will probably drop sooner than when the good parts start.

In Nier Replicant you can see the seed of what Automata will become. Everything in this game feels constricted, the enemy variations, the areas you can explore, the gameplay and even things to do. If you don't care for "word" farming (a mechanic that enhances your atributes and isn't necessary to beat the game) or weapon levelling up (the game is too easy, you can beat with a lvl 1 easy) you don't have much to do other than do all the side quests (which envolve rage inducing fishing and a lot, a lot of backtracking).

The sidequest are mostly good, making you feel things like melachonly at most parts and a bit of comedy and funny in some rare cases. Nier is a series to make you feel kinda bad and sad and that's good. The problem is that this game is packed with fetching quests and your only way of fast travel is available only late game and is not even that good.

The gameplay is kinda the same from Automata but lacking a lot in the combo variation departament and having serious problem with weapons power ballance. It feels good, but can get boring quickly. And the magic you will mostly use blast and lance for most of the game with some wall, hand and whirlwind sprinkled in there.

If you played this game and didn't like it, that's ok. But if that makes you apprehensive to picking Automata I will only say that the weaker points in this game is for the most part absent in the sequel. Reading a litte about the development I see that the game suffered from a lack of solid vision, they were mostly experimenting a lot of things to see what works and it seems a lot of things were cut-off due to restraings. In Automata they had most of those things figured out and worked on making it even better. Automata is my favourite game and there you can see what is a genius not restricted by time and budget.

This game made me appreciate the original DMC more. The game has style and a smooth gameplay (at first sight) but fails in all the other areas.
Dante is too cool to smile, the history and new characters are ass, the new enemies are ass and the gameplay is the stinkiest ass. You have this fluid and fun movement and attacks but no reason to use it, the guns are OP, the scenario is so vast that you can ignore the enemies or just blast them from a distance. The bosses are either cannon fodder or rage inducing, but they share the similarities of being forgettables, uninspired and bad designed.
The devil trigger is fun to mess around and find upgrades and I like the urban scenario and the "taking down a demon CEO" that seems redudant when I put demon and CEO together. But that's all I can say about good points in this game.
And the game is a Mr. Bones' Wild Ride because after finishing with Dante the game wants you to finish with Lucia, the other character. I think that had more fun playing with Lucia for some reason, her weapons and gameplay feels worse, she has less charisma than Dante who has no charisma in this game and she has some of the worse voice actings I heard in a while. But playing with her instead of Dante made me feels less like I was playing a Devil May Cry entry and that made me less depressed. And she has less missions and a non-bullshit final boss.
Play this only if you really want to play all DMC or wants to know how bad it is. The characters don't appear in future games, the story has nothing to do with Vergil or the Sparda lineage and Itsuno wants everyone to forget this game exists and maybe we should.

If you want to resolve puzzles in a mansion go play RE, if you want a nice action game go play DMC 3 onwards. DMC 1 falls in between and I feel like it's not really good in either aspects. But besides this, it's still fun and worth playing. It has a historic value and I don't have to say anything about it's influence. It's corny and beautiful, frustrating but not totally unfair.
For a father of a genre this game hit more than miss and it has a memorable cast of characters, bosses and corny quotes. But you still have to play with the mindset that "it's a game from the 2000's and they weren't really sure what they're doing".
And to hell with that sewer scissor boss.