As an adolescent who grew up with the NES and Genesis, I at times enjoyed this homage to Castlevania III, but I eventually tired of it. I think I got it and started it when it released in 2018, but it took me 5 years to get around to beating it (and I had to revert to "casual mode"). It became quite a chore to be honest. One thing that probably hampered my enjoyment was my feeling that I had to have perfect play-throughs with each stage, with all characters alive and not having lost any "lives". That was probably not a great way to play the game.

Although I appreciated the care that went into the narrative and the voice-acting, overall I found the "action" elements very disappointing and a chore to get through. Everything is so chaotic, and I struggled to be able to carry my special moves and the special moves of my teammates. Because everything was chaotic and confusing, I found myself pushing the wrong button constantly in combat, such as the visor and the "photo mode" which was especially frustrating. I also did not like the cutscenes where the player has to push a specific button at a particular time or else to have to playthrough the cut-scene over and over until they get it right. Maybe I came of age in the two-button-NES and three-button-Genesis eras and so I struggle with modern video game controllers.

In Christmas 2021, I got Age of Wonders III. I kind of loved it at first, as Michiel van den Bos's musical score was lovely and I was having fun with its 4x-lite aspects. Unfortunately, I quickly got frustrated as my turtling-instincts ran up hard against the second or third scenario.

So I thought I should start over at the beginning and make my way through the franchise and try to train myself to play the game the "correct way". I force myself to get through the first scenario. I find thinking of the game less as a 4x and more as a tactical RPG, and aiming to level up my hero, really helps.

So I succeed on the first scenario for the Halflings and I am onto the second scenario. I have a choice between two scenarios--"Subterranean Path" vs "Northern Trade Route". I go for the subterranean path, where your hero and any armies he's assembled have a 20-day limit to make their way through caverns. I know I have this limit but I really try to hustle.

Today (20230110) I make my way through the caverns and I miss the exit and the time runs out. No sweat, I revert to a previous save state and don't take that detour and I make it to the surface. Only...there's a town I have to reach, it has been conquered by orcs, and apparently I cannot even take the town because it is fortified and I do not have a catapult.

So basically, if I wanted to win this scenario, I would have to replay it from the start and either make my way more quickly (presumably before the Orcs capture it and I can enter it) OR try to get a catapult somehow.

AOW was not playing fair with me. It set up the player to fail the scenario the first time they played it, so they could replay it with the knowledge of the quickest path to get through the caverns. The scenario is not terribly long, but here's the thing: the tactical combat has its charms, and I am getting more into it, but there is a lot of drudgery involved. A lot of the time, the tactical combat involves having to move one's units around, covering vast swathes of space to get your guys into position to attack the enemy. So I am not excited about replaying this scenario.

This experience calls to mind Jimmy Maher's essay on the "14 Deadly Sins of Graphic-Adventure Design." Now, AoW is not an "adventure game" but some of the sins he identified--"locking the player out of victory without her knowledge" and "actively misleading the player about what she needs to do" applies here. And I get that in the 1980s (and presumably 1990s) there was a culture of game design where this kind of stuff was acceptable.

Reading around, I see some AoW veterans advising newbies like myself to not choose Subterranean Path but the alternative second scenario, "Northern Trade Route". But the game has broken my trust in its ability to treat the gamer fairly, and on the second scenario to boot. What the hell is it going to do later on?!? My OCD sometimes compels me to be a completionist, but here I think I can overcome it. I think I will try AoW2 and hope the designers grew out of 1980s game design culture.

The user interface is fairly non-intuitive; I think I got the hang of it, but combat is cumbersome (it is real-time and I felt I opened myself to getting hit by enemies as I fumbled trying to cast spells). The story is not great, hampered by the really lousy voice acting. I think the game is successful in terms of making me feel my characters' progression as they leveled up and grew more powerful. I used the cluebook extensively; I don't see how I could have gotten through the game without it.

I remember pre-ordering a PS5 before it came out in 2020; it arrived in mid-November by mail. I couldn't play with it a lot because I had to grade so many papers but I played around and beat Astro's Playroom. I bought this game because the word was that this could tide one over with a cyberpunk fix until Cyberpunk 2077 came out. I played it, found it thoroughly oppressive and put it away. Fast forward 10 months or so and I decide to finish this came off as part of my completionist masochism. I just did today (F 1/14/2022)--I made it through this thoroughly unpleasant, nightmarish game. I guess I am being unfair, as it is in the "horror" genre. I will hand it to the developer--they probably have a more clear-eyed view of how miserable and horrific a cyberpunk future really would be, as opposed to the cool, glamorous, sexy version according to Mike Pondsmith. Game-play wise, I felt like a lot of the time my character was trudging through grimy, colorless corridors and tunnels trying to figure out what exactly the game expected me to do. Sometimes it made me ill, but I was able to futz with a setting that I guess smoothed out the motion but even now, having just played through the ending, I feel a bit queasy.

I got this as part of Playstation Now (or PSPlus or whatever, I belong to both) and it stopped working--I got around 16% into the main campaign--just after they introduced the HARM room) and I could not be happier. This game was drudgery and I felt like I was working at a joyless, unfulfilling job. Now, to be completely honest, I am middle-aged and I don't think I'll ever be good at these console action RPGs and their combo moves. But one thing that really frustrated me was the game switching the character I was supposed to play--I am shown the ropes as Kamala Khan, and then I have to play as the Hulk and then as Iron Man, each of whom have their own mechanics and I resented the game for not allowing me to progress using just one character so I could get the hang of them. While I liked Kamala Khan and the actor voicing her has a bubbly enthusiasm, it was not enough to make me invested in the ho-hum plot, and trashing generic AIM robot after generic AIM robot was not fun.

It is hard for me to evaluate this game. I can confidently say I did not enjoy playing it, but I think I I might just be a lost cause for console action RPGs--I cannot get the hang of the modern controller with all of its buttons. Navigating all of the different powers and "combos" with four face buttons and four should buttons just does not strike me as fun (I am having a similar issue with the Avengers game). Midway through the game I had to resign to playing on "easy" difficulty. But I also think that the designers are culpable for at least a small portion of my difficulty; Starkiller's movement felt clumsy and when he attacks he has dramatic forward movements so it is easy to have him fall over a ledge to his death. I also think I am not alone in having tremendous difficulty with the power to grip objects and move them through a three dimensional space, and I think that I would have been required to use that power more had I remained on normal difficulty. Aesthetically the game is underwhelming; the modal environment seemed to be some ugly junk planet with shades of brown and the shrieks of the Rodian and Jawa enemies was just annoying. I am glad I am done with with this game.

I played as a High Elf sorcerer to take advantage of the broken spellcrafting system to make my character, Hollyemita Starhawk, nearly invincible by way of strong shield spells. I think I beat it; after I got the 8th piece of the Staff of Chaos I did not get any cutscenes from Ria Silmane; I went to the Imperial Palace and grabbed the Jewel of Fire and the endscene started but the game crashed (so I watched it on Youtube).

Overall the game is tedious as hell. All of the retro-reviews point out how the game has this enormous, procedurally-generated world with a ton of NPCs but still is quite empty and devoid of personality. The dungeons are ridiculous, convoluted labyrinths. Even navigating the cities is difficult, they have a ton of buildings but just trying to find an inn or a weapons store is such a chore.

I have never played an Elder Scrolls game before and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I would like to try the sequels which are generally regarded as superior.

I started this game in 2014 as a Jedi Knight and on 3/18 I finally became a "legendary" player by playing through all of the class missions (ending with a Sith Warrior; and yes, I am just a PvE player). I have also gone through the "Onslaught" content with the Jedi Knight and Imperial Agent (when I last played those characters Kira and Scourge approached them about some mission to deal with the after-effects of the emperor; if there were actual missions I believe they were added on after I last played those characters). There are definitely interesting narratives being told here, and the voice acting is great, but I found the gameplay very tedious--namely the endless mobs one has to kill and repeating the same story beats (which I suppose is my fault for wanting to go through all of the class storylines). I also did not like that the game teases certain content that one has to do either co-op (like some Heroic missions or Flashpoints). I have never really played a MMORPG before and I never got into all of the technical aspects of co-op or PvP and I found it all a bit baffling and I am not willing to put in the work to master all of that.