I bought this game just before the turn of the new year, only to sit on it for a month in backlog, but damn, I'm glad I got around it. The Talos Principle was pretty good, had some fun armchair philosophy, good puzzles, generally smooth solving; Talos Principle 2 really elevates the core themes of the first game to something that doesn't just feel like armchair philosophy, while delivering puzzles that have buttery smooth solving paths with some great twists, and upgraded to some immaculate graphical fidelity and art design.

The puzzle design is engaging. Most puzzles have a great time curve, the longest probably took me around 30 minutes (one of the golden door puzzles), I'd say otherwise my average solve time runs somewhere in the 5-10 minute range. A good mix of puzzle solving and ambulatory gameplay, interspersed with interacting with the main cast, reading notes, listening to the logs. It took me just over 30 hours total to finish the game to 100% completion (I only cheated on finding 3 stars, but frankly, I feel justified). This game isn't particularly designed to be too daunting, and while sometimes I found some area's puzzles to be, well, a bit underwhelming in challenge, there is a very solid mix here. Its actually quite impressive how many mechanics they force you to use, and then rethink how each device works. Overall the pacing is fantastic, and I think fits a great middle ground for stubborn puzzle blasters like me and casual solvers alike, there's even a (quite limited) in game puzzle skip system! It's no Stephen's Sausage Roll, but it's really for the best. Its very rare IMO to find a puzzle game this well balanced, and it pushes you to think without overloading your frustration. As an aside, the thought of even trying to playing more Void Stranger is making me ill.

The environments are really well crafted. Some areas are a bit understated, but its a beautiful game, and the design of the buildings, and puzzle rooms, and architecture were a joy to experience. The music is superb too. I was watching my partner play through some of TP1 recently and the switch from Serious Engine to UE really raised the bar on what Croteam could achieve with their art.

All that said, what shines brightest to me is the writing and the voice acting. The characters are so fresh, and real, and engaging, and the choices you make and the things you say to them have weight. The game does lots of little things to show you that the characters actually remember what you say to them in later dialogues, and the castings were so great. I especially love Yaqut. Best boy(?). I really loved the Straton and Lifthrasir audio logs. I mean this game was unironically making me think in new ways about philosophical topics I've tread many times in new and actually nuanced ways. I think so much of it really resonated with me, but I think that it could resonate with anyone that engages with it seriously.

This is a gold standard of what I'd want to see in a well budgeted puzzle game. Here's hoping we get a challenge DLC. Some of the new mechanics deserve some harder puzzles.

Set centuries after the original Talos Principle, its sequel centers on the civilization created by the protagonist of the first game (retroactively named "Athena") after they escaped into the real world. You play as the 1000th android "born" into this civilization, named 1k (everyone else got to pick their names except you I guess). The 1000th android was a targeted milestone in their culture, and your arrival sparks debate of tradition versus progress. Much like the first game, TP2 deals heavily with concepts of philosophy, although I think it's done much better in this game. I found the philosophy in the first game to be a lot of words without much meaning that had little to do with the plot. Here, by creating actual situations and characters, there is some weight behind the concepts they want to convey... even if I'm not sure they quite stuck the landing with the ending. While all this debate about the future of robot-kind goes on, you and a few others explore a series of mysterious structures seemingly created by Athena, now gone missing. These are the puzzles of the game, which I feel are superbly done. I'm a big fan of pure puzzle games which require you to sit back and think for a few moments. These expertly use the concepts and objects to create interesting and unique scenarios. While its predecessor also excelled in this regard, I think the sequel is a tad bit better, although I think some of its backdrops aren't quite as interesting. They add new objects and puzzle types that are interesting, and remove the ones that didn't work in the original (like those proximity bombs). There's a wide gambit of mandatory and optional puzzles, which I enjoyed enough to complete, earning the player a slightly different ending. While androids obsessed with philosophy is a bit of a tired trope, this game does it well, and overall it's one of the best puzzle games I've played in a while.

As someone who feels like they're in a constant game of tug of war with each Yakuza game they play, I was genuinely surprised with how much I ended up enjoying Ishin. As far as ones I've completed go, this very well may be my second favorite in the series.

Yakuza games are often funny and unique, with really entertaining characters. I really think Kiryu is one of the best protagonists of all time. But theres always some things that bring them down for me. Grueling pacing, terrible boss design and lackluster endings are what a lot of this series has left me with. Most of the games make up for this overall (besides Yakuza 4. Sorry I dont usually like to use reviews to insult other games but god I fucking despised playing that). But starting with 0 which does have some of the same issues but is by far the strongest I've beaten yet has made the entire series onwards feel a bit disappointing. Especially with my last two experiences, Yakuza 5 and 6. I never ended up reviewing them but they did so much that I wanted from the series and I really felt the Yakuza love again (much needed after 4), but then both of them completely dropped the ball for me with some of the most unsatisfying endings I've ever experienced.

So yeah, I made sure my expectations were tempered for this one. Which I think in the end made me enjoy it more. Its completely fair to expect the mainline series to be high quality but in most cases its understandable to expect a spinoff to be a little weaker. But damn, not this one.

I'm not really familiar with the history behind what inspired the story, but the small amount I do know tells me they definitely took some liberties. I can't really comment on if thats a good thing or not, but the way they play off of some of the real life events is pretty damn cool. Even without the history aspect, its just a badass story to begin with. And my god, characters are getting murdered every other chapter. I love that shit. And! Half of them aren't ridiculously stupid fake out deaths, hallelujah. I can't really get into too much detail because of spoilers but, for basically every Yakuza game there's a few chapters in the beginning or near the middle where I want to cry myself to sleep, but with Ishin I was hooked the entire time past the end of chapter 1.

The combat is already pretty fun. Yakuza needs more guns. Wild Dancer obv is the most entertaining but Swordsman and Gunman are both fun in their own right. Brawler is completely useless, barely touched it lol. The card system is fine, It wasn't implemented all that great and the best cards in the game are free DLC so I just used those the whole time, but It existing is neat. There's also the Another Life farming sim side mode that was cute and fun but for a reason I'm about to get to, I didn't get too far into it.

By 'about to get to', I mean we're going to talk about it right now. The only thing I really disliked about this game is how god damn grindy it is to interact with the side stuff. I usually skip a lot of the side content in this series but I like to do a bit of it when its one of them I particularly like, and it really felt like this one was fighting against me. The battle dungeons are absurdly long, everything in Another Life takes ages (also you can't pay off Haruka's debt with your own money normally for some dumb reason) and trying to upgrade weapons and make the blacksmith actually useful is a nightmare. The light rpg elements and how slow everything is really take away from wanting to interact with much of that.

But that rather large-but-not-really issue aside, this was definitely one of the most surprising games I've played in a minute. Very high contender for the most fun and best written game in the series.

We are now at the blog portion of this review. Skip to the bottom for a TLDR and my final score if you don't care about all that. Things have been going solid, this was one of 5 games I beat in a day (not in their entirety obv) the other day so I'm pretty proud of that. Found a sealed copy of Persona 4 Arena for PS3 so happy to get that. Been playing Breath of the Wild too. Not sure what my next review will be but a MGRR one is quite likely. Also been doing a lot more creative writing which made trying to do write this review harder than usual. I hope this turned out good enough and you enjoyed reading it. If you did, thank you <3

-----TLDR-----
+ Great story
+ Fun gameplay
+ sexy music
- Extremely grindy side content

Nancymeter - 89/100
Trophy Completion - 41%
Time Played - i forgor I'll add this in later
Completion #3 of May
Completion #92 of 2023

Ghostwire Tokyo is a weird game. Its more bloated than some of the ghouls walking its streets, and I didn't really understand much of the story. But I loved basically every second of it. The enemy designs, the setting, the lore, the color palette, the rain, the yokai... all of it is just so damn cool. Living in the world of Ghostwire Tokyo was an absolute dream, even if much of the actual game is busywork.

Storywise I don't have much to say but I did really like the main characters and it had some really cool levels. Where the storytelling really shines is the side quests. Despite its abundance, not all the side content is meaningless. Most of the side missions actually have some effort into them and are really cool and unique. Thanks to the free Spiders Thread update, there's a new quest chain in a haunted school that was absolutely phenomenal. Even if you ignore all the relics and other collectibles, it really is rewarding to at least check out all the quests.

Then there's the combat. Much like the rest of the game it is repetitive but still really fun. My only real complaint is that i never really felt like I needed to use the different elements much. But with how flashy it is and how cool the enemies are, it never really got old for me. Plus with how condensed the map is and how easy it is to grapple and glide around everywhere, the gameplay loop was consistently engaging. All the collectibles were just an excuse for me to spend more time in the world. Despite the downright unnecessary amount of collectibles, I still went for the platinum because I wanted to spend every second playing the game that I could.

I very much love a lot of what Ghostwire has going for it, but it still has a lot of room for improvement. From the leaked Microsoft court documents it has been confirmed that a sequel was at least once considered, but who really knows what the plans are now. I can't say I'm optimistic about its likelihood. But just knowing it was in the talks has given me a little bit of hope. I'm very grateful this game exists, and a Ghostwire 2 would instantly shoot its way up to my top 5 most anticipated games.

Nancymeter - 89/100
Trophy Completion - 100% (Platinum #272)
Time Played: 31 hours 42 minutes
Completion #5 of October
Completion #197 of 2023

Tsukihime is an interesting title all around. It showcases the humble beginnings of which Type-Moon started from and it's both one of the earliest known creations from Kinoko Nasu while also being his first venture into the world of video game/visual novel storytelling. Yes, indeed, before the world was taken over by that of Fate/stay night, there was Tsukihime.

This visual novel is ROUGH and I don't think it takes too much time reading it to realize that. The artstyle, while being charming and, at times, even beautiful (it is, after all, Takeuchi), is very amateur feeling and definitely lacks that "professional" aura that you usually come to expect with a TM title. The OST is very short and, in my opinion, extremely nerve-wracking to hear over and over again after about a route or two. The presentation, all around, is just very amateur but, at the same time, you can tell the people who made this were putting all the love that they could into this project with what little assets they had. You can certainly feel that through the entirety of this work.

The writing is a BIG mixed bag for me. Nasu is still a pretty inexperienced writer at this point in his career and YOU CAN TELL. It's not downright bad, though. There's lots of moments you can see the seeds of what makes him a fascinating writer begin to blossom, as he has a very distinct voice to his work that was there even when he was still learning to become the Nasu that we've all come to know now. It's a lot of good. It's a lot of bad. Depending on which side speaks louder to you will greatly determine how you will probably feel while reading this visual novel.

The best way I could describe my thoughts on Tsukihime is like this: Tsukihime is like a really nice, quality steak. However, it's a steak that is not exactly cooked to my liking. At it's most simple form, it is really something special and unique, but it definitely needed to be cooked more in order for that to shine through. It's not ruined, nor is it not enjoyable, but the potential of it could have been so much more.

Here's to hoping that the remake is everything and more of what I wanted this story to REALLY be.