As a Ratchet fan this is pretty much what I wanted.

Rift Apart carries on from Into the Nexus which came out in 2013, at the start of the game Ratchet even makes reference that he has been in retirement for years which amused me.

The story is pretty good with dimensional travel but what really makes it great is Rivet the new Lombax character. She is adorable and makes a great counter part to Ratchet throughout the story. There are some surprisingly impactful moments though I would have liked a deeper look into some characters and themes.

Presentation wise this game is pretty much the first real next gen experience. The graphics are gorgeous, great particle effects, details, lighting, crispness but what really brings it all together are the animations and loading leading to almost seamless cutscene to gameplay like you're watching a pixar movie at times. Rift Apart also really shows that crazy PS5 SSD. Hitting crystals and swapping between worlds in less then a second, selecting load at the menu and being in the game in less than a second. Just crazy good stuff. The options are great too and playing this at 60fps with ray tracing turned on is crazy for a first year title.

That said it does have a first next gen console game feel to it in some ways. It's pretty short, I got the platinum in two days completing everything and if you've played a Ratchet & Clank game before nothing here will really shock you gameplay or story wise much. Hard to really make that a negative though as it's what I wanted?

+ Amazing visuals and animations.
+ Insane loading showing the power of the SSD.
+ Play mode options (fidelity, Performance, performance RT)
+ Fantastic accessibility options.
+ Rivet is a great new character.

- Feels a little short.

Hidetaka Miyazaki (or JRPG Tolkien as I call him) has probably had the word ‘masterpiece’ thrown at him more times than we’ve had ‘you died’ thrown at us. As a work of art, Dark Souls is his masterpiece. But, as a video game made for the masses but moulded from the same principles, yes, Elden Ring is probably also his masterpiece.

Elden Ring is for Dark Souls what The Lord of the Rings is for The Hobbit. It is a vast expansion of its predecessor not only in scale but in narrative complexity, character depth, innovative worldbuilding and overarching philosophies.

What Elden Ring has more than any Souls game, is a certain accessible warmth. Gone are the days of waking up in a lonely jail cell and wandering into some uncertain prophecy in a hollow and deathly landscape. Instead you are thrust into a thriving world of life, both good and evil, by a range of vibrant allies - all of whom have their own story to tell, many becoming side quests. This, plus improved multiplayer elements and further abilities to summon aid, add to the comfort of its worldliness; it’s a game made for the many, not for the few.

Haha, that’s not to say it’s easy. It’s a bloody Souls game. But now, rather than hitting a brick wall of difficulty, you hit brick columns which you can shimmy around or even try elsewhere to better yourself for the challenges that be. Everybody wins: the game maintains its sadistic aura and the players have unlimited options. That said, I’m sure we all still have plenty of punch-the-seat moments (I'm looking at you, Black Blade Kindred).

As with much of FromSoft’s output, it’s hard not to be wowed by the varied world design: castles, swamps, caves, forests, underground cities and whatever the hell-fuck Caelid is meant to be, rendered with incredible graphic detail. The gruesome inhabitants of these worlds are also just next-level in terms of imagination (shat myself at those hand spider-things).

Of course, there’s always room for criticism of lesser aspects, such as an underwhelming upgrade/crafting system and a few copy-and-paste catacombs levels, but the game is just too grand for those cracks to harm the foundation.

Most important, as with Breath of the Wild or any truly open-world game, is the sense of freedom: that ability to go literally anywhere and be rewarded rather than punished. This very lack of demand from the game, and absence of clear markers or objectives, emphasise its overwhelming scale without actually overwhelming the player. All one has to do is explore; find new and different paths. Therefore, in the spirit of the high fantasy that Elden Ring masters, it is only imagination, or lack thereof, which set the boundaries.

In the distant future, gaming should, in theory, get better. But until then, I pity any game that shares its genre with Elden Ring.

As I found myself circling a zombified grunt at the tutorial area of Elden Ring in order to perform the classic Souls backstab, I subconsciously knew right then and there what game I would be playing for the next 100+ hours, and not even that first sight of the ethereal Erdtree and its expansive surrounding landscape managed to swat away that sinking feeling.

"Dark Souls but open world" is a fairly justifiable tag line that Elden Ring earns with distinction for many, but it's one I interpret in a less charitable way. Considering how cruficied Bloodborne was over its optional chalice dungeon content, it's a bit surprising now to see a map filled with it deal with such little critical scrutiny by its fanbase, having an overreliance in copy pasted settings, bosses and mysteries that ends up homogenizing the experience of discovery and reward.

These issues are par for the course when dealing with the open world genre, and they would be acceptable had the space inbetween them provided any semblance of evolution on the Souls formula to acommodate the shift in scope. Double jumping horse aside, the unaltered Dark Souls moveset doesn't really offer compelling exploration outside of the small pockets of dungeon content, and when most of the interesting and unique content is relegated to the main story dungeons of the game, it's hard not to question if Elden Ring really needed to be open world in the first place.

The obssession with Dark Souls 3 boss design places you into a strict familiar pattern where stat and weapon experimentation are heavily punished, as most bosses have at least one "fuck you" move that one hit kills you for no reason, and weapon crafting insists on being a time consuming and expensive endeavor that forces you to hold onto the same high damage boring greatsword. It's telling that in a roster of 100+ bosses, Renalla, Radahn and Rykard are the only bosses I fondly remember, as they provide a challenge that goes beyond constant I-frame dodge rolling and memorizing fake out attacks.

And make no mistake, Elden Ring is Dark Souls 4, not just in the way it plays but also in the way it tells its story. Despite taking place in a different universe with new gods and lore to learn of and decipher, it has become evidently clear by now that Miyazaki and his team really have only one story to tell. Sure, it is still a fascinating story, but when I'm once again learning about secret crystal magic, beasts and dragons preceeding humanity, golden orders that are built upon lies, or chaotic forbidden flames that threathen the status quo, through the same obtuse and obfuscated dialogue and storytelling that defines these games, I struggle to find reason to engage with it with the same enthusiasm I once had for it.

Concepts like the Scarlet Rot or Destined Death are interesting enough to have had been the sole creative well to take from, but are forced to share the spotlight with the ever increasing and convoluted list of ideas Elden Ring has to offer that unnecessarily overcomplicate its world with a vast number of uninteresting factions, outer gods and characters that dont have the space to develop and enrich the universe of the game, robbing Elden Ring of the opportunity to create a laser focused experience like Bloodborne. Is Rykard's house of horrors that much different from every other castle you end up in Elden Ring? Or can we agree that the Dark Souls 3 formula has sanitized the world design of theses games to a point that they no longer have the capability to put you inside a world in the same manner Demon's Souls once could?

It's an odd thing to be this critical of Elden Ring, considering it still manages to be one of the most compelling triple A titles of recent years, with amazing creative art direction, original storytelling and engaging challenges to overcome, maintaining the strengths of the series that makes it stand out from everything else in the market, then and now. Conveying how threathening Caelid is by the mere act of the player walking into it represents some of the best environmental storytelling you will see, and the confidence to make so much of Elden Ring's content optional and secret turns the nonchalant reveal of a whole hidden area to explore beneath the overworld map one of the highlights of the series. It contains some of the best tragedy filled NPC questlines that characterizes the franchise, with Ranni's being a standout in the way it presents the most tradicional story arc in a Souls game and Diallos' being a noted highlight that feels like it could have come straight out of a GRRM book.

But at this point in time, 10+ year of Souls games, Elden Ring ironically and unintendely further reinforces metatextually the themes of stagnation and extending the life of something that has long gone past its prime. In his pursuit to perfect the Souls formula into his idealized game, Miyazaki has instead dilluted the small quirks, nuances and idiosyncrasies that made the series so groundbreaking and revolutionary all those years ago, and has fallen into a cycle of redundancy and iteration that has quickly trapped the series into a niche of comfort food. Sadly, Elden Ring is not the game we have all been waiting for that dispels the notion that open world is an inevitable flawed genre with diminishing returns, and it is also not the promise of the evolution the franchise has been desperately in need of. Maybe it is time to extinguish this flame and usher in a new age once and for all.

Were game journalists right about this game all along?! Is it "Persona without the heart"? Well, lets explore shall we because I have a death wish lmfao.

Does it have an amazing combat system that has a heavy focus on monster collecting, customisation, weakness targeting and buffing strategies? Yes, this makes it a lot like Persona's combat but it does have differences like how all your party is customisable demons instead of only just having the wild card which is just one in your party, or the Magatsuhi gauge which gives you free crits for a turn. The game also has some other quirks like how you missing an attack is more punishing. But to it's core, it's very similar to Persona's combat at least to me because it felt like I was using the same strategies here as I did in other Persona games. I would say I prefer Persona's a bit more but I do think this game has better boss fights overall. They were extremely fun to me.

What about story? LMFAO because it doesn't have one amirate fellas?! Jokes aside, it does have one, but it's extremely limited in scope and execution. The themes it tackles isn't even unique to this game, it's in Persona 5 too but admittedly it's not the spotlight of Persona 5 (Order vs Chaos yadda yadda). Characters were forgettable, I don't even know their names besides Aogami, Persona games are the opposite in comparison, which I feel is obvious so I won't elaborate further.

What about other gameplay like dungeon traversal, exploration and puzzles? Well this game does have a total of TWO dungeons, but they are freaking terrible, P4Gs dungeons somehow feel more well designed. But comparing this game's dungeons is unfair since the main bulk of the game is overworld exploration. And it still doesn't stack up, because to me, the locales looked very repetitive, weren't particularly challenging to explore and lacked puzzles or anything to spice it up. It doesn't help they somehow messed up the sprinting controls for some reason (how do you do that).

Performance was pretty bad, framerate wasn't very good and the resolution wasn't great and I also don't particularly like the art style because of this. Maybe if the game was a solid 30fps at 1080p I could appreciate the art style more but everything just seems too blurry to me combined with motion blur.

Music was FANTASTIC, stunning music, very comparable to Persona's tracks in quality, a different vibe for sure but a lot of bangers here.

Reading this review, it makes it seem like I hate this game, I do not! I think it is a great game, it's just that I only like two things about it while the rest of the game I can take or leave. But the two things it does have (battling and music) are fantastic, so it carries the experience, I'm not hard to please in that regard.

So to answer my question, were game journalists right? In my opinion, the answer is no..? But I see where they are coming from, I see how you can just say "Oh it's like P5 without the story", I get that, and I think y'all should see from that view too and be a bit understanding. This game could've been more, but as it stands, the battling is just so fun I'd recommend it if you can manage without expecting a breathtaking story or whatever lol.

Appreciate y'all if you made it this far into the review

Pretty fun RPG, that's the best description I can give. Fun and sometimes challenging combat, incredibly beautiful animations and solid character progression. Whether you want to become a god or struggle with hard battles, this game's got you covered (although there's level scaling, so you can't really do low level runs that easily, for example). A pretty big annoyance I have is that, once you unlock the perk that grants you the ability to stack up demons' EXP, negotiating with demons on the overworld becomes an afterthought. You can still talk to them for the lulz and such, but there's no real reason why you should recruit them if you have the option to make a stronger version in the World of Shadows (place where you can create demons on your own).

Story feels tiny and a mere afterthought. The supposed dramatic and climatic moments don't really hit because the game never really builds up to them. There are also a few exposition showers here and there, so yeah, it's all over the place. If you're a SMT fan, though, well, it's got stuff that can probably wow you.

I played through this with my girlfriend so it gets points for letting you fully play through the game in co-op mode.
That being said, hoo boy. Hoooooooo boy.
This is a full departure from survival horror, it's a full on oorah rooty tooty shooty mtn dew action game. And for the most part i liked it, it was super fun to work together, blasting through the infected and completing the scant few "puzzles" there are.
The elephant in the room of course is that the game is even more in love with the annoying unnecessary QTEs, even more than 4. In between the fun action there are constantly some insta-kill gotchas that i guess you could get used to if you were very forgiving, but i ain't!
Well i guess i can forgive them during Wesker parts because he's cool and epic and a fully realized cartoon character, and the devs had the tough choice of attempting to make the fights somehow more engaging even if it took a bad game mechanic, or just letting you pew pew at him like how it is with bosses in Deus Ex or Fallout.
Anyhow other than that you could remove 90% of the quick time events and surprise insta-kills and the game would be much much better for it.
Gameplay gripes aside it was a fun action movie about human vs cartoon.