Return of the Obra Dinn:
One of the most interesting puzzle solving games I've played with a uniquely stylization and a solid environmental narrative implemented in it's core.
With a game mechanic I can only hope to see other puzzle-like games try to imitate or follow in pursuit as a concept in the future, since the execution of a detective game where the perpetrator and victim are both shown, but their identities masked behind unknown motives and an unruly crew which fates you've yet found -- where the only way to concoct an answer is to follow the given, yet diverse, set of clues as in their accent, nationality, clothing, job title, interactions, and even their body language in the freeze frame death scenes, which are executed really well and feels rewarding once you guide yourself case-by-case.
And as for the art direction, while I personally like the aesthetic I find a positive and a negative aspect to it, the monochrome artstyle does compliment the "identity hunting" part of the game well enough where it gives you a great deal of detail on the person to recognize their module while looking at specific deaths.
However it also masks some little details on what exactly was the cause of their death looking at the carcass when it comes down to it's "shading" and light. (i.e "The Calling" and that one corpse in the "Baragain")
Another negative point I would give, which some other reviews have pointed out. Is that in the middle to end sections of the game the body finding and the soul guiding could feel awfully monotonous and slow, as well as if you've presumably already found out identeties of newfound victims via other corpses the fixed 30 second timer to look around the crime scene could kill the game's pace by a lot. But still, I'll say it with a grain of salt since the game being barely 8-10 hours didn't bother me in my playthrough that much.
Solid sound design and OST. By god I hope Lucas Pope actually tries to do a similarly styled game again.

Compared to Super Mario 64 Galaxy is more akin to a series of self-contained fairly engaging platforming challenges rather than having its identity blurred being a borderline collectathon.

One thing this game has going for itself over 64 is its sheer amount of variety in the gameplay and its presentation. Every single level offers new mechanics while staying true to the core gravity gimmick of the game which makes it hard to get bored. The janky camera of 64 is also gone and is replaced with a far wider fov and a mostly static camera in turn giving the players far more agency over what's on the screen. But artificial annoyances such as the game's overreliance on motion controls is there and takes a long time getting used to and the overall variety seems to diminish near the end with reused mechanics, bosses and sometimes entire levels.

Either way this game aged surprisingly well compared to its predecessor.

Brief P review before the year ends

After only two complete playthroughs Lies of P already made it into one of my all time favorites and I don't plan on stopping here given the sheer amount of replayability present with genuine weapon (unlike most souls games) variety and without a shadow of a doubt the most impressive enemy variety I've seen in any game ever and not just in souls.

Though the main draw for me is how the game juggles so much variety while keeping the combat fresh every single encounter even into repeat playthroughs. For example, by simply switching out a weapon will add well needed novelty to an encounter you've already beaten and the the various Legion Arms if correctly implemented during the fight will have you strategizing in a completely different light. The unforgiving difficulty, if you decide to not cheese through the game, is also cathartic to master. And this is exactly what I've been craving in a souls game for the longest time and to my surprise a completely random developer from Korea delivered whereas even Fromsoft failed with Elden Ring.

Even though there are a few hiccups here and there but observing the bigger picture makes it quite apparent that this game is a borderline masterpiece

[[ Note that the game is played on Immortal difficulty with roughly 60 hours of playtime. This review doesn't apply to easier difficulties ]]

I've always seen Metroidvania as that dated sub-genre that indie devs latch onto desperately to put out barrage of middling quality video games with a rare few exceptions. And one of those exceptions turned out to be a Ubisoft title that somehow dethroned Hollow Knight to become my new favorite

Alright so I'll be drawing direct comparisons to Hollow Knight quite a lot in this review just to use it as a point of reference as to how this game is the better Metroidvania in every conceivable way possible while also looking at it through an objective lens

The Lost Crown manages to pull off what every other title in this sub-genre fails and that is having a consistent break-neck pacing throughout the entirety of its playthrough to the point I wasn't bored even once during the 58 hours I spent on the game. That's largely due to the abilities you unlock being tied to the main quest thus reducing the need to backtrack around the map a gazillion times fishing for upgrades integral to the core progression. And then you look at Hollow Knight where it has a botched pacing for pretty much the entirety of its first half where you're just fishing for upgrades while providing barely any content of substance only to hide most of its meaty part after you're done doing all the time-wastey chores

This game while staying consistent to its time focused theme delivers some of the most fun and creative abilities I've seen, deviating from the sub-genre's oversaturation of the usual double jump, dash and different projectiles that function the same way and absolutely nothing else. The abilities you gain access to aren't simply a means to get access to newer areas, the game goes out of its way to design bosses, mobs, encounters and even large chunk of the map. For example, the last area is designed entirely around the grapple hook and it has some of the most seamless traversal I've seen in any games of this kind. There's also no need to upgrade your abilities once you get them, that is it, you're done, now you can go and try them out on enemies in the overworld and bosses and some abilities even has unique interactions with specific enemies. Then there's Hollow Knight that even ties something basic as a downward slash/dive/whatever as an unlockable ability (which you get from the get go in this game) that also needs to be upgraded to deal any substantial amount of damage, if this isn't the most shameless example of padding I don't know what is. HK repeatedly pulls this with other rudimentary abilities such as the dash, the projectile and the upward slash where upgrading them gives the abilities a change of color and a slight increase in DPS and AoE. Then again this isn't even my main gripe with these barebones nothing power ups you get for playing through the game, it's just how unsubstantial they are to the core combat, you can basically ignore them and waltz through every encounter just fine. On the other hand in The Lost Crown, the abilities are INTEGRAL to every major boss fights, you simply can not beat a boss without properly utilizing every single ability at your disposal.

The combat here is surprisingly really good despite the limitations set by the sub-genre. It has some obvious hack and slash genes to its DNA but not the yucky kind where you basically ignore the enemy's moves and juggle them to death, there's a massive emphasis on parrying which sets it apart from the likes of DMC. Here you're forced to pay attention to most enemies' moves to earn the opportunity to do your typical hack and slash combos but as you gradually progress through the game (especially near the end game) you can trivialize every encounter if you're skilled enough in hack and slashes. There are also flashy supers you can do for dealing a good amount of damage but they're not just flashy for the sake of being flashy, you have to play well to earn those supers. They're like your rewards for playing the game well and it's because of how the meter works. It's called Athra meter and the way it works is quite simple but effective, the more you land parries the more your meter fills up and the more you get hit the more your meter decreases. And the athra supers can also be used to iframe some tricky to time boss attacks. The abilities are also put on a cooldown so that you can't mindlessly spam them, which is a good thing.
Complimentary to the combat system is the game's absurd variety in enemies that aren't just visual differences it's also how they interact with the core combat and the arsenal of different abilities at your disposal. A huge amount of effort went into designing the enemies and the further you progress the more obvious it becomes. Throughout the playthrough as you unlock more power ups there will be several different enemies and minibosses designed around the ability you've just unlocked, which helps the combat from growing stale. Then there's Hollow Knight where the enemy variety basically boils down to visual differences since the same approach works for quite literally everything in the game, there's no real enemy variety except for the bosses in that game is what I'm trying to say.

I could've thrown in the bosses (major ones) in the same paragraph as the enemy variety but the bosses are way too good and deserves a separate section. These are the key milestones of your progress in the game and they're all very well designed providing a consistent curve of difficulty. Throughout my time with the game I was at legit disbelief at how consistent also the quality of these bosses are, I was expecting the game to drop the ball at one point when it comes down to the bosses but the game never did, in fact it kept getting better and better with each major encounter. Definitely the cream of the crop and the best part of the game

The story is there. There are a ton of funny plot-twists but the narrative can largely be ignored since the focus of this game is on the gameplay for the most part, which is how video games should be.

The presentation of this game is phenomenal, the game both looks and sounds amazing. The visual direction makes up for the lack of any fancy graphics with some amazing usage of colors and vfx I've seen that makes everything pop. And the sound effects for mundane things like grappling, parrying or even your slashes making contact with the enemies just adds to the already fantastic gameplay. The major boss fights also has some incredible tracks accompanying them but the fact that the music is synced with the bosses' different phases is what elevates the presentation to god-tier level

Some grievances include:
-Some platforming segments can go on for way too long with barely any mobs to fight. I wouldn't bring this up at all if the combat wasn't amazing but it is so that makes it feel a bit underutilized at some points
-Backtracking. Too much unnecessary backtracking is why I'll forever dislike this sub-genre. The fast travel point being separated from the checkpoints only adds more insult to injury.
-The checkpoints aka bench aka bonfire aka whatever are spaced out way too far away from one another which makes the runbacks to enemies or platforming segments UNBEARABLY long
-Charms/Amulets needing upgrades is plain out stupid and only exists to pad out playtime
-Some optional minibosses are painfully limited in their moveset pool but the combat is so good that it's a non-issue

Overall it's undoubtedly clear that this game is a full on masterpiece but I'm still hesitant to call it one of my all time favorites because of how much I dislike this sub-genre that loves to waste your time for no reason. But if you do, then this is THE best game you'll ever play, period.

Now this is a game I'm entirely on the fence about. On one hand I think how the game is structured in tandem with the unique interactive mechanics and its overall non-linearity is downright brilliant (with a few hiccups, of course) And on the other hand I absolutely despise the unsatisfying and rushed finale that literally renders most of what you do in the game completely pointless.

Alright, so the beginning stretch of this game can be tad bit confusing and overwhelming but after sinking in a few hours and getting accustomed to all the mechanics and skills it's very easy to get hooked in and fast. The different skills aka the various parts of your psyche that affects the dialogues and how you interact with the world is unarguably the best part of this game. Depending on what part of your psyche you put the most points in you will get VASTLY different outcomes of little tasks like getting a hanged body down from a tree, while also affecting your abilities to pick up on certain leads. Which ultimately ends up giving the game a lot more variety and replay value than it'd initially have if it stuck to the more linear and rigid story telling formula of most other CRPGs. Also the way all the seemingly pointless and insignificant side quests loop back into main quests in the most unexpected way imaginable is done competently and can lead to a lot of "ah ha" moments. I also appreciate the fact that despite the game being entirely reliant on texts the dialogues are delivered in a digestible manner with everything fully voice acted and the voice acting is surprisingly top notch. At first when I was trying to read through every single line of text I thought the dialogues felt dense but that's objectively the wrong way to go about playing the game as you're punished for picking too many options. Once you start playing the game as it is intended you start to appreciate how well written the character interactions are with a lot of genuinely funny banters that don't feel forced. But there is something else entirely that can actually interfere the with the game's pacing and it's the constant DnD skill checks which forces you to do a lot of backtracking and chore-ish tasks just to have a higher chance of succeeding and even then you can fail. Which I can see being the main contributor behind putting off a lot of people and rightfully so and it's objectively a bad game design approach when most people playing the game save scum repeatedly to get past them.

Now onto my main gripe with the game and it's the ending. The finale is flat out terrible with absolutely zero thought put behind and it contradicts the whole investigation this game revolves around. Without delving too deep into spoiler territory, it's the whodunnit. It's entirely detached from everything you do throughout most of the game, from every lead you gather throughout your entire investigation. And to address all the idiotic copium takes I see defending this god awful ending like "oh no but it's supposed to be meta! it fits the themes! it was never about the murder mystery", The game quite literally frames itself as a murder mystery that is LITERALLY your entire objective throughout the whole thing and the game failing to deliver a proper satisfying conclusion shouldn't be above criticism, it's objectively bad and if you can't see that you lack critical thinking skills. Also if there ever was a game that would benefit from having several different endings that vary vastly from one another it'd be THIS but what the game delivered was the exact opposite an extremely linear final segment which contradicts the rest of the game's open-ended nature.

Disco Elysium is a game that has a lot of never-before-seen unique mechanics in a narrative game with a lot of entertainment value but all of it is bogged down by a HORRIBLY botched ending.

This game is absolute trash even for its measly 3 hours playtime

First off metal plus rhythm game is inherently such an awful match since the genre itself is extremely syncopated in nature which leads to the actual rhythm getting muddied by the loud instruments. Even though the game did try to rectify the issue by throwing in a crap ton of visual cues but it only adds to unnecessary visual clutter and in turn making the gameplay far less intuitive. But that's not the only issue the game has it also suffers from contradictory mechanics, cheap vfx and the environment/enemies around you barely reacting to the overall rhythm and yes that includes the bosses as well

Ultimately if you strip down the rhythmic nature (which it barely capitalizes on) of the game it just feels like a clunky clone of Doom Eternal

Nioh 2 + All 3 DLCs

Before I say anything even remotely positive, let me preface this by saying that the first 60% of this game is irredeemably bad with contrived artificial difficulty that mostly stems from the fact that you're deprived off rudimentary abilities of your overall kit while simultaneously put up against incompetently designed boss encounters that don't take all the handicaps into account and can often lead to a one/two shot. But once you're past the pit of garbage that is the early to mid game you'll find one of the best souls-likes ever made with a quite solid boss roster (except for the deluge of NPC fights) that rivals even DS3

- Combat -

Compared to other Team Ninja titles (FF Origins and Wo Long) I've played combat here is far more polished and balanced out which is tied to the fact that the enemies were designed with the stamina/ki depleting system in mind unlike in the other games where they just slapped Nioh enemies in a deflection based combat
Also for the longest time I held quite the negative preconceived notion about this game's combat system because of the stance mechanic but after finally playing through the entirety of the game the stance switching aspect of it sold the combat to me since the weapon of choice for me was the Switch Glaive. I've messed around with the other weapons a bit at the start but stance switching feels gimmicky at best unless you're using the weapon the mechanic was intended for. Switching between stances here is quite seamless and there's a practicality to the whole thing instead of just being meant for meaningless style points like in DMC
But there's a massive caveat to ALL of this. That is, by the point you get to the actual meaty part of the game's combat system you'll quite literally be done with the game. By the time the combat clicked with me (I unlocked the mystic arts for my main weapon) I was well into the DLCs. And that is all because of the gazillion different skill trees that take FOREVER to progress

- Skill Trees -

The skill trees are one of the major contributors as to why early to mid game feels like absolute torture to sit through. So you get 4 different main skill trees and each for the 11 different weapon types which houses significant gameplay and QoL improvements. So, without those you're handicapped to the point most of the early content becomes exasperated to sit through. To make things even worse the more useful upgrades are intentionally hidden behind dozens of utterly useless ones. So basically without prior knowledge about the skill trees it can take a huge chunk of your playtime to the point you'd unlock the ones that are actually useful.

- Levels -

The areas are all extremely one note to the point all of them look and play out exactly the same. It's always either a forest or a city ruins that loops back to the checkpoints through ladders or doors. Visually and Mechanically the level designs are as repetitive as they come. Definitely one of the worst aspects of the game

- Bosses -

If there's ever an incentive to come back to this game or play through the NG+ cycles it's because of the boss fights. Even though a huge chunk of the bosses are human-type punching bags that you can stunlock into oblivion the boss roster houses some extremely fun fights such as Otakemaru, Shibata Katsuie, Ushiwakamaru, Raikou and Tate Eboshi. And Tate Eboshi single handedly being one of the best bosses ever made, genuinely had the time of my life mastering the fight

- Music -

The music in this game is surprisingly strong. It's consistently good and keeps getting progressively better and better. Some tracks like Raikou/Ushiwakamaru, Otakemaru, Azai Nagamasa and Tate Eboshi's themes are consistently on loop for me these days. The metric I use to judge video game music is that if I listen to the tracks outside of the game they're good if I don't they're garbage and Nioh 2 definitely falls into the former category

Closing thoughts:

If you're into soulslikes Nioh 2 is a game that will give you the highest of highs while simultaneously giving you lowest of lows leaving you conflicted on whether you even like the game or not

2/5

Alright I'll keep the review brief but one thing's for sure this is hands down one of the better games I've played this year

For me this game is split into two halves, first half being consistently good like every stage introducing new enemies that need to be countered in unique ways with intelligent enemy placement that actually makes you use your brain plus lots of variety in the presentation to keep things fresh. But as soon as you move past the 6th stage which is the halfway point of the game all of that gets thrown out of the window as it becomes more and more apparent that the devs ran out of creative juices, pinning you up against reskinned mobs and reused bosses turned gank from earlier stages and artificially inflating the difficulty by randomly throwing in more tougher enemies that can easily interrupt your combos in hordes. Basically, the game takes a nose dive in overall quality in the latter half compared to the first half

Despite the lackluster second half I still think this game has tons of replay value because of the competently designed plus satisfying combat with a surprising amount of depth and the roster of 8 different playable characters that each have substantially different playstyle which can make every playthrough after the initial one feel like a completely new campaign. I can vouch for the replayability as I've beaten the game 4 times (once on hardest and three times on mania)
And my god the music in this game can be REALLY good at times