Oh hell naw they turned Little Nightmares into Pikmin...

In terms of gameplay, this was a great step in the right direction. The first chapter is rather mediocre but the second and third are excellent and big upgrades in terms of puzzles and platforming from the base game. While Little Nightmares coasts on atmosphere, Secrets of the Maw trades memorable villains (most villains are briefly re-used from base LN, though generally in a less succesful fashion than their appearances in the base game) for genuinely engaging gameplay, some decently complex puzzles and rewarding progression with some genuine scares. The base game never really unsettled me because it was so brightly lit and blatantly linear (half the rooms could be cleared by simply running quickly from left to right, maybe some climbing thrown in. They were also very obviously and repeatedly divided up into different "sub-levels" where enemies just give up chasing despite being right behind you because you made it to the next "level"), but the more restrained use of horror actually made the game more creepy to me, because the scares were so much more unexpected (e.g. turning my flashlight on in a dark room and suddenly being face-to-face with the Blind Man). Arguably only the first chapter only misses the mark in this regard, where the "scares" are obvious and also extremely back-loaded, showing up predominantly in the final 20-ish minutes as you get constantly chased by the old person in the sewers.

All in all, if the sequels take the iconography and penchant for creating iconic monsters and locations from the base game and the gameplay from the DLC, they will easily be modern classics in my eyes.

Don't shoot me for this PLEASE but at the end of the day Wonder shares many of the same issues I have with the majority of the 2D mario games, which is that at some point I go on auto-pilot and just blaze through a bunch of worlds because the main gameplay consists of holding right while jumping or throwing out some attacks if you have a power up. Sometimes there is a collectible to grab that requires a bit more thinking but generally these games just kind of fly by for me and while Wonder's central new mechanic, wonder effects, does help to alleviate this feeling, it feels more like a band-aid fix on a style of games that isn't particularly gripping to me.

This is easily among the best, if not the best, 2D mario, and yet I cannot shake the feeling that many of the changes are rather superficial. Wonder effects start out strong but as the game goes on they start to fall into various categories: Mario turns into enemy, Mario is chased by big enemy, Mario is put into a segment straight out of Mario Galaxy. Sometimes these are accompanied by musical numbers (which are great). This summary is obviously reductive but once you notice how similar many of the wonder effects are in terms of gameplay or aesthetics, that 'wonder' turns more into 'repetition,' especially when levels straight-up re-use wonder effects.

There's some actually bad levels here as well. The treasure hunts are clearly meant for 2-4 players but no effort was made to accomodate solo players because there's some dumb guess work involved in many of them if you don't have a bunch of players randomly jumping around or happening to be the correct character to see the hidden block.

The "break time!" levels are also painfully mediocre and feel like an excuse to give children free seeds so they can continue with the story without having to do many of the actual levels. They are so mindnumbingly easy and there's way too many of them, it never felt rewarding to complete one of these.

But realistically? The "Final-Final" level probably takes the cake for being the worst level in the game. What a middle finger to any solo player trying to 100% the game to put a bullshit invisible balloon fish jumping section at the end of your stupid challenge level, with a checkpoint FOUR entire challenges back. If there had been a checkpoint before the invisibility challenge I probably wouldn't be complaining about it now because you could grind it out, but there isn't so I am complaining. What a stupid fucking design decision man. 1/3rd of my total playtime was probably on this level alone. Additionally, this level rips into your purple coin economy so have fun grinding game over's after you are done with it so you can farm purple coins from those bonus levels to fill out your standee collection.

I think it's a good game, if I could give it a score between a 3.5/5 and a 4/5 I would, but the core on which it is built is rotten. This is a good game, albeit one that I'm not likely to remember particularly strongly, but it hasn't justified to me why 2D mario still deserves to be a flagship series for Nintendo: there simply is not enough meaningful innovation here outside of the aesthetical.

The story, music, world and characters be so good then boom, you have to do ten tedious fetch quests with no real directions half the time to keep up with the main story level jumps just so you can get back to fighting cool bosses with a combat system that is simultaneously quite deep and yet it plays so shallowly. Every encounter is a glorified stat check with a LOT of waiting around, and while Xenoblade 1's combat system can lead to some hype moments, generally it was something I tolerated for the sake of the 10/10 narrative rather than actively enjoyed. Also the AI in this game SUUUUCKS! Play definitive edition instead if you are interested in experiencing kinoblade the way it was meant to. Riki is the best character in fiction.

It's good but I can't say now that I've beaten it that I harbour much love for it or anything. It has a similar flaw to the XCOM games in that it really outstays its welcome by 8-10 hours. A lot of the midgame quests is grinding out the same missions you've been doing up until that point with maybe 1 or 2 new enemies to take into consideration (which became far too familiar far too quickly as well), until you finally unlock a new boss so you can get back to the fun part of the game, all the while hoping RNG doesn't decide to fuck you over on a random run. Furthermore these missions are even worse than XCOM's midgame because a ton of them feel like EXACT replica's of one another, with only slight variation in the layout. Also there's far too much walking through empty hallways and backtracking through dungeons for how monotonous and slow this can be at times. A fast walking option in the settings would've probably cut down my playthroughs length by an hour over the course of the game.

When it comes to game balance I generally think they did a good job class-wise, only the Grave Robber felt to me like it didn't serve that much of a purpose on many teams (it has a little bit of everything, but almost every comp I made i'd rather take someone else with me in their place). Vestal is a little too overcentralizing for my tastes; when the only other good (main) healer is the rng-centric Occultist you are setting up your strategy game to become vestal + 3 others as your comp on every (important) mission. Additionally, I think the bosses are mostly good as long as you know what you are getting into. Unfortunately a TON of them are matchup checks that become nearly impossible with the wrong comp, and a pushover with the right one. The wiki or a friend who knows what they are doing is a lifesaver in this regard. Going in blind can easily be the end of a run.
Enemy design is hard to talk about because generally they are well done but a lot of problems with them come from the structure of the rest of the game: There is too much RNG stacked on top of RNG meaning that any fight can be a complete push-over or spell the end of a run.

As a final note I want to say that capping your accuracy at 95% is one of the stupidest game mechanics I've seen in a while. Forcing RNG like that is fucking lame and it creates some really fucked situations where I set everything up perfectly but two of my guys decide to miss their 95% accuracy moves on their backline Madmen who promptly fears two of my guys and now the whole party is losing it right before I was about to camp etc. etc. It's just not fun, you are getting punished for the basic act of playing the game.

I understand if all of this comes of as supremely negative, but I swear I do think this is a good game over all. The core gameplay loop (in the early/mid game), the strategy, the art direction, the sound effects, the music, the atmosphere are all really great. It just falls apart bit by bit the longer this game goes on, and unfortunately this game goes on for a WHILE.

So, to conclude: This is a good game that I would not recommend to anybody. Or if you do play it, don't feel pressured to beat it. Play as long as its fun, and don't feel ashamed if you have to drop it because it is too hard or feels too unfair, because it really can be on many occasions. There is a reason that only 6.5% of players have even beaten the game on any difficulty.

Shoutout to Dismas and Reynauld the GOATS for being with me until the end and getting me that achievement o7

My favourite cast, story and protagonist in videogame history. Usually Fire Emblem protagonists are good but not great for me, but Ike is a top 5 character of all time easily. If this ever gets remade however, the only thing that needs to change is add in Radiant Dawn gameplay/mechanics like the much improved bonus exp from RD, Knives as a fleshed out weapon type, detailed combat information during enemy phase and staves as equipment (but let them hit using magic!) and add in Laguz weapon rank (but keep their exp gain as it is now, thats one element RD kind of missed the mark on bc most laguz in that game get like 1xp per round of combat lol). Additionally, they should add the ability to skip animations completely like in Radiant Dawn, because if I had to point out one flaw in this game is that enemy phase can be pretty slow even with animations off. Otherwise this is a 10/10 through and through, and I cannot believe I enjoy it's sequel even better.

Thronebreaker is a fantastic addition to the Witcher games, its characters and story hitting the mark once more, but it has some rather large flaws that I cannot ignore. Many of the decisions found in this game (seem like they) are almost 50/50 coinflips whether they will backfire as you are given quite little background information on which you can base your decision. While this is fine occasionally, when the dominant form of "choices" are these kinds of coinflips the (thought given to a) decision can start to feel rather superfluous. However, my main criticism is unfortunately in regards to the core gameplay. A card game should have many different builds you'd want to experiment with or swap between but here I found myself using the same Blitz spam that was effective in the early game for all 27 hours that I played as it remained easily the best strategy the whole way through (this might be less of an issue on the highest difficulty, or perhaps it is even more of a necessity?). I think the main culprit is the insane power levels for the average card. People tend to think that when everything is overpowered, nothing is; but, it really just means that whichever strategy is easiest to set up is the clear best: That strategy is spamming Blitz cards.

The jank ass gameplay means this is essentially a 20 hour interactive narrative, but that story is really interesting and fun so it (mostly) gets away with it. But man, can the poorly designed combat really make this a frustrating game to get through at points. Also the lack of autosaving was really hard to get used to after Witcher 3 and let to a lot of lost progress: At times I was sent back several side quests simply because it did not autosave after their completion like it does in its sequel. Despite being much shorter than it's sequel, I have little desire to replay this while every now and then I get the desire to replay Witcher 3 despite it's ridiculous length.

A very beautifully drawn game with some pacing issues. The first story is solid, but the second is a little too slow paced for my liking. However, the third story and especially the epilogue are really great and took this game from around a 3 star to a 3.5 easily.

Emma Recniczek's story not only confronting the inequality many women faced (and still face) in the field of science and higher education, while also doubling as a trans allegory was so wonderfully written, I found myself deeply engrossed in their character while only spending about ~1 hour with them. I also enjoyed the subtle inclusion of a gay character in their mathematician friend (or atleast that is how I read him), as I felt it fit in well with the idea of 'hidden identities,' and it further signalled how ridiculous the prejudice was because here is a character who is completely accepted by-- and ingrained itno the group (on the basis of being a male theorist) but who would probably just as soon be kicked out as Emma if they knew he was gay. It highlights the complete irrelevance of sexuality and gender identity when it comes to your scientific ability.

The Epilogue is a fantastic example of simple, but poignantly effective writing. Showing how each of the previous three characters have impacted these soon-to-be-soldiers in one way or another was already a pleasant bow on the various stories, but the revelation that these men are going off to war (facing a high likelihood of death) for various reasons and the conflicting points-of-views from these characters (that all make sense) was very engaging writing. I especially found the snide remarks from the art thief at Wilma's patriotic brother very interesting, as the thief has spent his entire life struggling to stay alive and here he is faced with a young lad eager to throw his life away for his country. It seems to me that he is angry someone is so careless with their life and ignorant to what pain is (especially the attempted desertion by him not much later was very striking to me).

While this game wasn't always the most engaging work of art, I am very glad I stuck with it. The third and fourth chapter are really wonderful short stories, and the way the various stories interconnect in small ways is strangely rewarding (especially the epilogue). I hope the team behind this continues to create wonderful stories like these, though admittedly I do hope the gameplay itself will be a little more varied and engaging next time around.