I originally heard about Dark Messiah through a personal recommendation from a buddy of mine, when we were talking about cool wizard games, with complex casting systems that make you really feel like you're mastering a school of magic. The only other games I can think of with magic systems that are actually interesting and have any modicum of depth to them would be Noita and Magicka, and loathe as I am to admit it, that club isn't getting any new members after my playthrough of this game. However, that's not to say the game doesn't have any tricks up it's sleeve.

A joke I heard once about the game that I keep unashamedly regurgitating, mainly due to how it perfectly encapsulates the gameplay loop, is that you DON'T play Dark Messiah like you're trying to larp as Gandalf, blasting giant spiders with fireballs and making orcs feel the wrath of God with a lightning bolt or two. Instead, you play it like you're Macaulay Culkin, using your admittedly limited arsenal of spells, combined with your quick wit and the sacred jank of the source engine, to lure unsuspecting necromancers into physics-based death traps. Crushing them under crates suspended above a flimsy wooden ceiling, freezing the floor by a big drop and watching them slide to their death, spartan kicking a goblin into a spike trap, or even just slamming a chair over their head to throw them to the floor, lining them up for an easy finisher.

As fun as it can be to kill fantasy monsters with unorthodox, slapstick methods, though, the game unfortunately doesn't have a lot going for it besides all that. The combat, especially outside of the magic system, is extremely bare-bones and you'll get tired of trying to win fights fairly really quick. There's also not much to speak of in terms of presentation or plot, other than the typical rpg schlock of "hurr le ancient prophesy durr your dad is the devil lmao durr" and all the funny looks you'll be getting from people that comes with that territory. At least you get a hot demon lady living in your head for the trouble, but I wish she'd stop coming on so strong. I know you want me, Xana, but now is not the time. Everything else, the characters, voice acting, world, music, monster designs, it's all servicable-for-rpg-standards at best and downright comical at worst. Though, I suppose that does compliment the already comical nature of the game.

All in all, however, in spite of it's flaws as a holistic gameplay experience and having quite possibly the least mechanical depth out of any Arkane game pre-Deathloop (most likely due to interference from Ubisoft), the beauty of sourcejank combined with the cartoonish nature of the combat encounters make for a unique gameplay experience I have yet to see repeated or improved upon, especially within the boundaries of a toolset provided to you by a fantasy world. Dark Messiah isn't going to blow you away, but you're sure as hell gonna blow those orcs away. Right off a cliff.

To continue my quest of checking out ancient games in my library, this one was actually added more recently. I really enjoyed the combat and exploration to this game, and how open it felt and nothing seemed like a "wrong answer". Shooting dudes with magic, or an arrow, throwing a box at them, or kicking them off a ledge or into a spike wall, all viable. Where it did feel old was swapping between these things, and melee combat (at least for my build) felt typically impractical with faster enemies near the end who seemed to kill me in a few quick hits. Definitely scratched a fun itch of physics based combat that just isn't explored in the same way anymore, and I recommend playing to this day.

!!! MOVE OVER GAMERS, WE GOTTA GET THIS REVIEW OUT BEFORE CHRISTMAS !!!

You want to know the funniest thing about being a kid? It’s being ignorant to the fact that some things are just horseshit, and boy was kid me quite the ignoramus. Revisiting this game, it’s not like I didn’t know what I was getting myself into but there was some sick part of me that wanted to relive a good moment of my life in the one Spyro game I have the most unblurry memories of.

Well it turns out, those memories end at the 2nd level and nothing beyond it. Even the borderline racist NPCs somehow scrubbed from my mind. There’s no shot I finished this as a kid, and my memories kept the better portion of the game in stasis forever. They’re not good levels per se, just functionally better. After that the game quickly hurtles closer towards dystopia the further you get into it. To put it quite bluntly, this game is just not finished and couldn’t be more of a beacon of developmental hell. Except this was from the PS2/Gamecube era back in 2002 and.. yeah folks, crunch and corporate shenanigans have been happening our entire lives. This shit was made in the same time it takes to grow a human fetus and still somehow ended up being more of a disappointment.

With vast levels that are emptier than corn fields and enemies with zero life put into them. There’s no variety to be seen, just small ranged dinosaur and big dinosaur who make this sound when you murder them. If this game has achieved anything, it’s that it is at the very least sometimes funny. But you won’t be laughing when the camera 360 no scopes itself into the wall of the level design, launching you off the platform that you’re currently standing on. On normal hardware this game runs like it’s being squeezed through a tube, but even while playing it through unscrupulous means there still feels like there’s some sort of wind resistance pushing against Spyro as he charges. He feels like he weighs a metric ton, which makes platforming a goddamn nightmare. If that’s not enough for you, throw in some magic floors that clip through your body, and mini-games made by Satan himself. The draw distance is abysmal. You want to go on your cozy little gem collectathon, but they removed Sparx’s little hint clues which means you’ll be scouring all of these gigantic levels for much longer than you want just for that one last gem to appear out of thin air because it glitched out the first time. It's actually a marvel of achievement that speedrunners were able to figure out how to beat this game in 1 minute, the amount of time it takes for the veil of nostalgia to be sucked from your eyes.

What’s it all for, you may ask? Well, some of the most weirdly named Dragonflies I could have ever imagined. They really just pulled from anywhere with these guys. “Hey, it’s Karen!!” Spyro says, but the subtitle says “Rhett.” I can’t believe my childhood hero Spyro just deadnamed that dragonfly. And like I said, these issues get more prevalent as the game keeps going. With each level, the more unfinished it feels. The worlds get emptier with more nonsensical tasks that barely function. Assets aren’t re-used, but still uninspiringly pulled from previous titles in an effort to save time. Unlockable powers that get used less and less, voice lines completely missing in some instances, etc., etc. It all culminates into a final boss fight that not even I could foresee. A baffling affront to God himself, just a gauntlet of atrocities deep fried through the Christmas deadline conveyor belt. Spyro died and we killed him.

Keep this game dead, do not “reignite” it. There is no redemption to be had. Lock this one in the vault and treat it like a lesson. One day you too could make your own Enter The Dragonfly, and you don’t want to be that guy. Sometimes things should be left as memories in our heads, never to be revisited. This is a ghost for a reason, so fear it.

Now for the end of this review, I feel like it’d be only fitting to just stop talking in the middle of my

Finished my replay of this game on hard mode. There wasn't much of a difference with normal except that obviously you take fewer hits before you go down. Perhaps one day I'll play on realistic but something tells me that will cross the line into being annoying for my playstyle.

If you've followed me for a while or even if you've been in the same room as me for more than 15 minutes you might now that I despise stealth games. I've tried, but I genuinely hate them all. MGS, Thief, Dishonored, even stealth sections in games I like (shenmue, max payne, disaster report 4). I've had bad luck with so called Immersive Sims because of it, as most of them are essentially stealth arpg hybrids like Deus Ex, but so far its basically only the OG (and consortium by virtue of not having stealth) that I mess with. Its not exactly a mystery why, and consider this a plea for other games to follow suit : let me murder everyone. Give me an actual choice between stealth and combat and not just stealth and "you fucked up the stealth you idiot! you might as well reload a save"

Importantly, Deus Ex's combat is deceptively fun to get to grips with. Its so simple but really effective the way that you start out as someone who takes 2 business days to line up a pistol shot to being able to run around with the gep gun blowing people up like nothing. I'm surprised no one else has tried emulating the system, with your RPG esque weapon stats determining how fast your crosshair takes to narrow and become fully accurate, presumably imitating how it takes someone to aim down the sights and prepare to fire a shot.

Now, obviously for this kind of game there has to be push back, and even with a combat build your ass is not going to last if you're trying to play the game like half life, which is precisely why its satisfying to completely forgo stealth and murder everyone through traps, ambushes etc. This playthrough I discovered how useful the non lethal gas grenades are for murder runs (ironically) cause it makes enemies freeze up to rub their eyes, lining up to get headshot with the pistol for maximum murder efficiency.

The playthrough did however highlight Deus Ex's biggest flaw : the save system. Its one of those systems which is simultaneously too annoying and too forgiving. Its annoying because I am forgetful, and losing 15 mins of progress because I forgot to save is just... frustrating. On the other hand, there is basically nothing stopping you from hardcore save scumming every 5 seconds. Ironically, there is nothing more appropriately "mean" for a choice based rpg than an aggressive auto save, as it is, you can basically game most of the big decisions and encounters. Maybe even a save room system like RE4 might be appropriate? Could even lock them behind doors with an interesting weighing up of resources if its worth risking a loss of progress for a lockpick or multitool? Idk now Im playing armchair designer but either way.

Area 51 is still kinda annoying, I didnt use console commands to noclip through it this time but I still fused with Helios because it was the fastest way to complete the level, the later bits of the game are kind of a downgrade from the initial half of the game.

All games are products of their time, even ones which "bucked trends" or "were ahead of their time" are only so in comparison with their contemporaries. RE5 is interesting historically because it definitely screams 7th gen : the color grading pejoratively described as the "piss filter" of brown environments assaulted with bloom, the co-op multiplayer focus of the days where such things were starting to become mainstream in the console market, the mowing down of hundreds of racist caricatures by a buff white guy, the fact that Albert Wesker's tailor discovered normal maps and is really excited to absolutely plaster them on his jacket etc.

Its hard to avoid noticing the main two things which jump at you when playing re5, namely that its RE4 but not as good and more racist. Asset reuse is fine, honestly, even mechanics recycled from re4 arent unwelcome but its the rehashing of re4 set pieces whilst doing them worse that lets re5 down. Similarly, the ingenious inventory management mechanic of the RE4 attache case : equal parts survival horror resource management and tetris space allocation is replaced by a dull 3×3 grid whose ultimate depth involves exchanging shit to your ai partner to reload a weapon before exchanging it right back.

The multiplayer aspect makes re5 have kind of an absurd difficulty curve based on your luck in finding partners. Some sections with the Ai partner were a bit patience testing, given their passive nature and limited commands, but then Id get randomly paired up with a god on their fifth playthrough who'd hand me 300 bullets for the machine gun and absolutely tear mfers up with endgame weapons. Very funny to me as well, how certain doors and weights and stuff require the cooperation of chris and sheva because of course its too heavy for a guy whos built like a brick shithouse, he needs help from a small framed spinning instructor to move it.

That being said, its got its bright moments and thankfully the multiplayer aspect made the use of QTEs for custcenes impossible so it does have that over RE4. In all honesty, its not an AWFUL game gameplay wise. There are a few levels which are quite striking visually, namely the temple areas and the faster arcadey nature of it all makes it not better but different to the pace of RE4. The implementation of a cover system and gun wielding zombies is as stupid and unwelcome as you'd expect, and the smoking gun for me that the island in RE4 is not only the worst part of that game but an incredibly ill omen of things to come for the franchise.

I suppose I should mention the elephant in the room : the game is set in "Africa". Not very specific where in Africa except the locals speak French so theres about 20 countries that could apply to. The spectre of the war on terror looms large as the intro depicts an american leading a counter terrorism operation and soon we see Akihiko from Persona 3 doing an arab accent get executed by frenzied locals riled up by a preacher. And sure, like in re4 the reason for it all is a parasitic infestation but the visual language of the game borrows a lot from contemporary wars that its hard to miss. There are heroic black characters like Sheva and her captain buddy but they seem there more as a pre emptive defense at criticism.
Admittedly, considering the state of AAA games at the time, RE5 is not THAT much more racist that the other shooters about doing imperialism in thr global south; that is until you get to the chapter where the enemies are all black people wearing grass skirts and chucking spears at you. And im sorry but zombie or no zombie, that sequence made me surprised to find out that Rudyard Kipling's ghost didnt have a writing credit in the game.

Smarter and more personally invested people than me have already talked about this aspect so I won't go much deeper into it except to say that its an odd obsession with studios who thrive on schlock and silliness to try to delve into more serious or thorny subjects that they are not equipped to handle.

Ico is the type of game I dread to play, critically acclaimed, landmark classic of the medium, influenced various games and designers I love. I dread playing those because of a fear I have, a fear that's come true : I don't like ICO, in fact, I think I might hate ICO. And now I will have to carry that like a millstone around my neck, "that asshole who doesn't like ICO". Its not even really that external disapproval I dread, its the very reputation that causes me to second guess my own sincerely held opinions. I thought I liked minimalism in game design, and cut-scene light storytelling and relationships explored through mechanics but I guess I don't. There's some kinda dissonance, cognitive or otherwise reading reviews by friends and writers I respect and wondering if there's something wrong with me or if I didnt get it or played it wrong or any other similar foolishness that gets bandied around in Internet discussions. "I wish we could have played the same game" I think, reading my mutuals' reviews of ICO. Not in a dismissive asshole way of accusing them of having a warped perception, but moreso in frustration that I didnt have the experience that has clearly touched them and countless others.

But enough feeling sorry for myself/being insecure, what is my problem with ICO exactly? I don't really know. Genuinely. I wasnt even planning on writing a review originally because all it would come down to as my original unfiltered reaction would be "Playing it made me miserable". Thankfully the upside of minimalism in game design is that its easier to identify which elements didnt work for me because there are few in the game. I think the people who got the most out of ICO developed some kind of emotional connection to Yorda, and thats one aspect which absolutely didn't work for me. As nakedly "gamey" and transparently artificial as Fallout New Vegas' NPCs (and Skyrim and F3 etc) locking the camera to have a dialogue tree, they read to me as infinitely more human than the more realistic Yorda; for a few reasons. Chief among them is that despite some hiccups and bugs the game is known for, you are not asked to manage them as a gameplay mechanic beyond your companions and well, my main interaction with Yorda was holding down R1 to repeatedly yell "ONG VA!" so she'd climb down the fucking ladder. She'd climb down, get halfway through and then decide this was a bad idea and ascend again.

ICO has been to me a game of all these little frustrations piling up. Due to the nature of the puzzles and platforming, failing them was aggravating and solving them first try was merely unremarkable. It makes me question again, what is the value of minimalism genuinely? There was a point at which I had to use a chain to jump across a gap and I couldnt quite make it, I thought "well, maybe theres a way to jump farther" and started pressing buttons randomly until the circle button achieved the result of letting me use momentum to swing accross. Now, if instead a non-diegetic diagram of the face buttons had shown up on the HUD instead what would have been lost? To me, very little. Sure, excessive direction can be annoying and take me out of the game, but pressing buttons randomly did the same, personally. Nor did "figuring it out for myself" feel particularly fulfilling. Thats again what I meant, victories are unremarkable and failures are frustrating. The same can be said for the combat which, honestly I liked at first. I liked how clumsy and childish the stick flailing fighting style was, but ultimately it involved hitting the enemies over and over and over and over again until they stopped spawning. Thankfully you can run away at times and rush to the exit to make the enemies blow up but the game's habit of spawning them when you're far from Yorda or maybe when she's on a different platform meant that I had to rely on her stupid pathfinding to quickly respond (which is just not going to happen, she needs like 3 business days to execute the same thing we've done 5k times already, I guess the language barrier applies to pattern recognition as well somehow) and when it inevitably failed I would have to jump down and mash square until they fucked off.

I can see the argument that this is meant to be disempowering somehow but I don't really buy it. Your strikes knock these fuckers down well enough, they just keep getting back up. Ico isnt strong, he shouldnt be able to smite these wizard of oz monkeys with a single swing, but then why can they do no damage to ICO and get knocked down flat with a couple swings? Either they are weak as hell but keep getting remotely CPRd by the antagonist or they're strong but have really poor balance. In the end, all I could really feel from ICO was being miserable. I finished the game in 5 hours but it felt twice that. All I can think of now is that Im glad its done and I can tick it off the bucket list. I am now dreading playing shadow of the colossus even harder, and I don't think I ever want to play The Last Guardian, it just looks like ICO but even more miserable. I'm sure I've outed myself as an uncultured swine who didnt get the genius of the experience and will lose all my followers but I'm too deflated to care. If there is one positive to this experience is that I kept procrastinating on finishing the game that I got back into reading. I read The Name of the Rose and Rumble Fish, pretty good reads. Im going to read Winesburg Ohio next I think.

If I need to talk about a game that "was a big part of your collection but nobody even kmows about it", Mini Ninjas is that title for me. I replayed this little gem over and over again and really enjoyed everything that this title got to offer.
It a mostly standard linear platformer with some actions put into it, but its also the combination of many fun things: the ability to get multiple characters, all with different playstyles; the wide collectibles and spells that enlarges your techniques in really creative way, the artstyle that creates both incredibly charming scenery but it's also able to create more stunning and sometimes creepy moments (the cemetery levels took me by surprise at the time). Not to mention that you can approach some sections as you want, either by going full on attack or trying to sneak through the enemy lines.... "it's like in metal gear or smt I dunno"

I remember spending ours on the cooler levels at midnight, trying to sneak on enemies either by taking control of the animals and turning into a rabbit, or just following the troops before backstabbing them.

Honestly it doesn't do anything stunning: it's just a simple idea with a simple but charming and solid execution. But honestly I respected that simplicity at the time, and still made me enjoy it.
It's not like the most revolutionary adventure around and it won't change your life, but it still a fun, overlooked little gem from the time it came out.

*Played as part of the Master Chief Collection

So the original Combat Evolved was one of the two Halo games I played, as it was the only one I knew of that was on PC at the time. I was just never an Xbox kid, so I completely skipped this series back during its heyday. Thankfully most of the series is on PC via the Collection (which I have definitely taken way too long to get around to as well), so are now more easily accessible (Halo 5 PC port though? When is that happening? I would like to eventually complete the series).

As a game, this is a pretty fun FPS experience, but it definitely feels dated now. The lack of accessibility options such as sprinting and weapon iron sights makes it feel like more of a slog to get through than it actually is, especially when redoing checkpoints. The level design is interesting though, with many large sections and maps that you circle around completely. This is something that I don't think I've really seen before in a linear game such as this. The vehicles are also fun to play with, although I hated driving the Warthog. For some reason, the Banshee handles like a dream, but the Warthog is this unwieldy thing that flips over every time you hit even a slight pothole or elevation change.

Overall, the story is enjoyable enough, but is still pretty bland and by-the-numbers. You also don't get much lore at all during the course of the game, with a lot of questions just left up in the air - I suppose for the later games to answer. Who are the Covenant? Why are we at war with them? Why is Master Chief such a unique badass? Why is Cortana so sassy? Who the fuck are the Forerunners and the Monitor? Anyway, I'm sure I'll get more answers as I go through the series, so I'm not too worried about these questions.
We continue onwards to Halo 2, which will be the first completely new game in the franchise I'll have played, so I'm looking forward to that.

Stray is a cute little adventure/puzzle game, I had a good time with it.

Stray is definitely carried by its world -- an evocative, post-apocalyptic city-scape populated by robots. There aren't a ton of environments (the game isn't super long) but they are varied and convey the world extremely well, from nearly abandoned slums and lively urban centers to overgrown waterways and corrupted industrial districts. Structurally, there are a few large, open, explorable areas connected by more linear areas with simple navigational puzzles. In the open areas, you play as the titular stray, meeting the robots that live there and doing simple quests to help them.
Stray is helped on their quest by a small flying robot that translates for you, carries items, and manipulates doors. This robot, B-12, is also your link to what the world was like previously. They provide commentary on how things are and have memories of how things were in the past and how they got this way. It is an effective narrative device that believably uncovers aspects to the world as you progress, even though the functionality of the robot itself is a bit convenient.
The world is surprisingly colorful and the characters are varied and well animated. There are a huge number of robots that feel unique and the environments all feel bespoke and lovingly crafted. The robot characters are reactive and the stray has a lot of environmental and character interactions that really feel like things a cat would do. There is a bit of animation jank with the cat, unfortunately -- popping and sliding happens fairly regularly, but it doesn't take much away from the game.

The narrative is carried more by the characters than the broader story. It is satisfying to reach the end, but I found the stories I explored along the way to be more compelling. This extends even to the cat itself since, strangely, there isn't anything about this story or anything that happens that seems to be connected to Stray. Even your initial motivation for your journey (reuniting with your cat-pack) never really reaches a conclusion. The game is more about B-12 and the robots, despite its title and main character.

The strangeness in the narrative also extends to the mechanics of the game. There are very few problems that are answered in a uniquely catlike way, usually you are depending on B-12 to do something for you. The mechanics still work for what they are, but there is just a distinct theming miss here.
Most of the quests and navigation challenges in Stray are very obvious and straightforward. There are a couple of multi-step fetch quests you do for robots in the open levels, but most often you are presented with a path to follow and switches, climbing/jumping obstacles, or light stealth or chase sequences. Difficulty in Stray is tuned to keep you occupied and fill space more than to be a real challenge, which makes the game relaxing, but rarely satisfying.

I had a good time with Stray. It is a very well-made game with cool environments and characters. Worth trying out if you like adventure games with light puzzling!

Plague Tale: Requiem is a step up from the first game in the series in almost every way. I had a really good time playing through this one!

The most obvious upgrade is the visuals. Textures, models and animations are all miles better than in the first game, rivaling most similarly styled AAA games. The environments remain a standout, with a lot of evocative, interesting areas that are very well realized and horrifying. Asobo Studio has cranked up the scope of these environments with a couple of really great set pieces that sell how overwhelming and horrifying this rat plague (can we even call it that anymore?) truly is. Standouts were the whole island of La Cuna (including the infested underground catacombs), The Red City (especially during the lockdown), and the final area, which looks like it would be at home in a Dark Souls game.
Character animations are more believable and the acting and writing remains solid. The rat swarms have gotten a huge upgrade. The swarms themselves are much more horrifying, flowing over the terrain like water in a way that somehow avoids being comical in the least. The individual rats are more believable and higher fidelity as well animating in a more realistic way.

Requiem sticks mostly to the gameplay formula established in Innocence, with traversal challenges and combat challenges that are all overcome with the various tools you collect. The more open nature of a lot of the areas take this farther towards an immersive sim-like experience, with a lot more freedom in how you navigate and engage with enemies. This is an interesting shift but didn't work as well for me as I expected it to.
The ability setup seems somewhat streamlined at first, with different concoctions combined with delivery mechanisms, but the exact effect of each of these combinations isn't super clear. I never had a really good idea of what my options were or in what situations I would want to use each of them. Enemies also no longer really have hard counters (like the fire powder from the first game, to remove helmets), which muddies the combat use case for each of your abilities even further.
All of this is exacerbated by the fact that there are quite a few sections with enemies attacking you in waves that are very hectic. The complexity of the system curtails a lot of the creativity you might otherwise be able to display, which doesn't feel that great.
The rat swarms in these areas don't quite work as well, since things aren't as tightly controlled. It feels more chaotic, but there are times where the rats' movements are unclear, and it is pretty easy to die without realizing you were in danger.

Narratively Requiem takes some swings but initially doesn't stray too far from expectations established in the first game. The individual characters aren't quite as well realized and some of their motivations for helping Amicia and Hugo aren't super believable or clear, unfortunately. It all comes together by the end, but the group that is assembled just didn't resonate as well as in the first game. The ending, however, is well done and surprisingly heartfelt, honest, and by the time you get there, has a certain inevitability that matches the tone and themes of the rest of the game. The sadness here is earned and works -- it is especially impressive how the theme and ending tie seamlessly into the game's mechanics of lighting and extinguishing fires.
Some of the individual set pieces are truly incredible -- stuff I haven't seen in any other game. Tidal waves of rats crashing over a city, filling a massive cistern as you race ahead of it trying to escape to the surface, and destroying a fortress town are all really epic, awe-inspiring events that really help nail the stakes here.

Requiem is a really great game with a solid, straightforward story to tell and interesting mechanics with which to tell it. I had a really good time playing through this -- the team at Asobo Studio has created a game that compares favorably to other games in the genre with a fraction of the resources.

Shadow of the Colossus is an amazingly streamlined game that delivers a particular experience very well. It is utterly fantastic.

Shadow of the Colossus had some of the most striking visuals when it was released, and they still hold up simply because of the art direction and style. Everything feels textured and real, with the sun, fog, and weather in the various biomes making this feel like an expansive, abandoned world that you are alone in.
The Colossi are all unique and seeing what the next one will even look like is a large part of what draws me through this game. Some of them are giant, lumbering beasts, others are surprisingly lithe and acutely dangerous. Though the gameplay on some of them misses, the visual design never does.

The soundtrack is incredible.

The game knows what it is trying to do with its gameplay, and focuses on that. The protagonist, Wander, is a capable rider, climber, and bowman, but most other actions can feel clunky. Even raising your sword to deliver a killing blow to a colossus once you have clambered up its body feels like a dicey move you are hardly in control of. The somewhat awkward controls can take some getting used to, but I only rarely felt like they got in my way.
When you are riding, climbing, or shooting, the game feels great, with a perfect mix of tension and resistance (from your horse, your grip bar, or the colossus itself) that promotes mastery of the controls and timing that you come to over the course of your play. Steady upgrades to your health and grip as you play serve to make you feel measurably stronger, without ever really feeling overpowered.
Each of the colossi require you to examine their patterns and anatomy in order to figure out how to best approach and defeat them. At their best, these are exhilarating climbing and navigation puzzles you contend with while hanging a hundred feet off the ground, soaring through the sky, or being dragged through the depths of a lake. These moments of excitement and triumph heavily outweigh the few colossi that have unclear mechanics and strange solutions.

Shadow of the Colossus is light on narrative, but tells a very minimalistic story of love and sacrifice. Wander's relationship to the girl he is saving is never quite clear, though his willingness to sacrifice everything for her is. Shadow of the Colossus has some of the most genuinely heart-wrenching and surprising moments I have experience in video games, delivered almost entirely through gameplay. Additionally the personal narrative you form as you make your way in solitude through these deserts, plains, and forests is filled with moments of confusion and realization, awe and wonder that make it feel incredibly personal and real.

Shadow of the Colossus is really fantastic. Its few minor stumbles do little to mar the cohesion of the narrative and gameplay or the mystery, excitement, and grandeur of Wander's quest.

Blasphemous is one of the most focused artistic executions I have ever seen. What this team has achieved is really amazing, though it is unfortunately undercut by some awkward design and imperfect implementation.

Blasphemous is a world ripped directly out of the most horrifying of Christian mythology, with an intense amount of attention paid to sin, penitence, and eternal torment. This is a brutal world where everyone in it is suffering in some way, usually because they believe their suffering will bring them absolution from The Miracle, a godhead inflicting punishment and horror upon this world. I don't think I really understand anything about the story, but I loved going through it.
The art is amazingly well done, though a lot of it can be tough to look at. Blasphemous presents beautifully rendered scenes of intense, biblical torture in a way that isn't voyeuristic or crass, but vividly flesh out this world and the people within it. This specific flavor of religious fanaticism is a perfect choice for this game and the use of intense Medieval European style and Latin phrasing bring it all together.
One minor issue (that leads to the navigational problems below) is that item descriptions are often more thematic than useful, with misleading or unhelpful information preventing you from really understanding what some of the things you are collecting do or can be used for.
The sound, music and voice acting are very effective as well. The music is melodic and haunting, driven by organs and bells, complimented by extremely violent sound effects as you stab and slash your way through this world. The voice acting is very overwrought, which fits perfectly. Everyone in this world delivers information with the utmost gravitas and loquaciousness.

All of that aesthetic impressiveness is let down by the gameplay and structure, unfortunately.
This is a metroidvania, and does a competent job of it, but many of the side quests and things you unlock in the game give no information on how to achieve them or what to do. There are a ridiculous number of items with unintuitive Latin names that you have to take to a specific NPC who doesn't ask for them in order to complete quests or advance the plot. Characters move from area to area with vague or no direction on how to proceed or help them, with your only option to search the whole map continuously or look up a guide. I found it to be mostly tedious and unintuitive, even with a fairly well featured mapping system in place. The frustration is compounded by the presence of an initial fast travel option that is more annoying than useful and a more reliable one that is unlocked by an arbitrary quest that isn't signposted.
Combat is simple, with a single combo (extendible through upgrades) and a selectable magic spell you can use. It didn't really get boring, but I didn't feel like there was much here to master. The difficulty in boss fights comes from learning patterns, parrying, and getting attacks in when you can. Most of these are fun and feel good to learn, but a few just feel cheap or like they simply require Tiento to your Thorned Hairs (spell granting ten-ish seconds of invulnerability).
Unfortunately, the controls can be very awkward, with unnecessarily overloaded inputs, long animations, and windups on things that make everything besides your basic combo just feel unresponsive. The parry feels good when you land it but felt a bit too ambiguous for me to enjoy it much overall.
A couple of choices like instant death from spikes and pits and extreme knock back push things into frustrating territory more often than I liked. Additionally, I ran into quite a few input bugs. I would frequently get stuck in a state where I couldn't jump or use spells, making the game functionally impossible until death.

Blasphemous is an artistic tour-de-force that is unlike any other game I have played. It knows exactly what it wants to convey and how to convey it, but it unfortunately doesn't know how to make the gameplay live up to the standard set by its art and world design.
I liked it quite a bit and am glad I spent the time to play through it, despite how rough the mechanical execution and other design elements are.

Sekiro has such a clear vision and style and is trying new things for From Software in a couple of different vectors. This game plays much differently than Dark Souls and the world building and storytelling are also much removed from From's typical approach. I enjoyed my time with it, but it doesn't work for me quite as well overall.

Sekiro is about parrying in a way that no other souls game is. You will have to rewire your Souls habits to succeed here, but a couple of smart decisions make the onramp manageable. Parry windows are extremely generous and failing usually just means you block (which has other negatives). It is a super interesting combat system that I had a good time learning, despite some of the cracks showing by midgame.
Enemies have poise that you parry, deflect, and clash your way through, whereupon you can score an execution, killing them immediately. Bosses take 2 or 3, usually marking specific delineations for their phases. This is a cool reward moment that makes these fights feel like balletic swords duels when it works, clashing back and forth as you learn their attacks and exploit them. Fights like Jinsuke Saze and O'Rin of the Water feel incredible as you learn their attacks and execute them perfectly. Your first attempt will be 5 minutes of healing, defending, and looking for opportunities while your winning attempt will be 30 seconds of attacks, parries, and executions. I haven't gotten quite this feeling of complete mastery from any other Souls game.
This is unfortunately undercut in many fights by the fact that poise regenerates very quickly when an enemy is at full health, so you will spend much of the battle trying to deal vitality damage to them so that you can finally parry them into an execution. It becomes a tedious and rote exploitation of their positioning and movement that simply doesn't work.
Some unclear UX around perilous attacks makes things a bit more frustrating and fiddly than it probably should be which is exacerbated by the camera and lockon system not playing that nicely with multiple enemies (each of which is doing a perilous attack on you, good luck!).
The lack of any particular ability to customize your build gives the game a very intentional feel, but also made me feel locked into playing a particular way that could sometimes be more frustrating than fun.
The negatives weren't quite enough to ruin the game for me. I did cheat my way through the final boss and don't feel bad about it.

Narrative in Sekiro is trying to be more linear and straightforward than other From games and they don't quite deliver. There is a coherent throughline, but a lot of what happens and why is either unclear or based in some lore or actual Japanese history I don't understand. There are side areas, but the progression here feels very linear, with basically one way to go to proceed and a lot of story-based area gating. It is fine for what it is, but trades From's strength (narrative through world-building and inference) for their weakness (narrative through direct linear plotting).

I love the style and look of this game. It has muted visuals punctuated by bold colors and environments that are grounded but extremely surreal. Enemies are all based in Japanese history and myth which gives things an authentic and compelling edge while allowing giant serpents, apes, and monkeys firing rifles to exist believably along with spear wielding samurai and agents of the unexplained "Interior Ministry."
Along with Bloodborne, this probably has the most striking and impressive look of any From game.

I like Sekiro quite a bit, but some of the uneven difficulty, combat system weirdness, and narrative stumbles do mar the experience for me. It is worth playing to see how different this sort of combat can be, but don't feel bad about cheating if things get a bit too frustrating.