judging kingmaker is so terribly difficult for me. i can see the charm and earnestness through the bars of the jank jail it's thrown me in. but i utterly despise its structure and what an awful blow its pacing takes from that. the amount of time i spent just hitting "skip day" was frankly ridiculous. i wish it didn't impact my enjoyment of the game as much as it did, but god, there were moments i hated the game.

i definitely don't hate it! but its particular flaws are ones i really struggle with. this is an insanely scrappy first attempt at a crpg this huge, and nothing in me could ever hate that.

the ways wrath of the righteous improved on the structure and storytelling is really impressive to me now that i've played both. no regrets in playing kingmaker, but hooo boy, if i replay, i'll be much less reluctant to use various mod features.

normally AAA open-world games with that tried-and-tested formula as their skeleton don't do much for me. the open world is usually a chore that i blitz through only if i'm intrigued enough by the story. ghost of tsushima had me inmersed in the story, but it also had me having fun with the open world. i didn't do everything, but i still did a LOT more than i normally would have because the mechanics and structure were well-balanced and tight. i want to gush about the visuals even! presentations that lean on realism don't do anything for me on their own, but tsushima has a very firm sense of itself in direction and in color. it's a beautiful game that left me just staring dumbly at the screen at points.

it is insane to me that ghost of tsushima is as impressive as it is, yet it's so goddamn good. not even AAA bullshit can drag it down.