About once a year I return to Frostpunk to get a handful of playthroughs in, mostly in the main scenario, but this wonderfully weird combination of survival game and city builder always tends to pull me back when I'm lacking in something else to play. It took me a little while to wrap my mind around the intricacies of its systems but it's thankfully a game that's still fun to learn even in failure.

The biggest compliment I can give to Frostpunk is that I originally played this game in the middle of summer, and by the end of my first session, the unyielding oppression of its frozen scenario left me positively freezing in real life. There's a genuine psychological effect to it that makes you absolutely feel like you're cold, even when it's 90 degrees outside. Never experienced anything like that before.

Balatro cracks the code of what a good, simple, and addictive video game should be. I've already lost more hours to this in the span of a few days than I care to admit, and I'm sure to spend many more collecting all 150 Jokers to complete my Jokerdex. That isn't even a joke.

If I could file one minor complaint, it's that Balatro isn't the greatest at explaining the finer nuances of its design; you're bound to lose a few runs in frustrating fashion while learning the ropes. One particular confusing element is that there are three separate facets of the game that all use the term "hand" - the number of hands you can play per round, your current hand of cards, and the hands of poker you score with. So when I came across a blind that said "You can only play one hand" I mistakenly assumed it meant "one type of hand" (ie full house, two pairs, etc.) and not "You get one hand to play, beat the score or lose the whole run." It's a minor frustration to be sure but one that could be mitigated with a little more clarity.

Now someone please make this game but with mahjong instead of poker and I can die a happy man.

The original Dragon’s Dogma is such an endearing yet strange and kind of clumsy open world game. The story is a bit messy, rushed, and has clearly cut content with somewhat unresolved storylines. Balance is out of whack with vocations. The whole romance system is incredibly silly and comes off as shoehorned in. The start of the game until you get to Gran Soren can be a massive filter, especially that ox cart escort mission. The world is small compared to a lot of other open world games, and yet traveling can be a bit of a slog sometimes.

Despite all that, despite all these glaring flaws, it’s still an incredibly fun and awesome game. Its combat may be the best and most satisfying in any open world game. There’s nothing more exhilarating than climbing up a cyclops and downing it by slashing at its eye. There’s nothing more cool than summoning a tornado and wreaking havoc on a group of bandits. It really is excellent, and you can tell Capcom worked hard on making combat rewarding.

There’s a bunch of other little things too that make it unique. How many games have incorporated the concept of a New Game Plus into their actual story? How many games have a fast travel system where you can physically pick up the actual fast travel points and move them to pretty much wherever you want them to be? How many games are brave enough to have important NPCs that can actually permanently die, or quests that fail if you’ve progressed the story too far before completing them? Sure, you can always beat them in NG+, but still, it’s an RPG with genuine consequences for your actions. Dragon’s Dogma, even ignoring the Dark Arisen stuff, is a one-of-a-kind game that truly feels special, warts and all.

Naturally, I was pretty excited for Dragon’s Dogma 2. Itsuno announced it with passionate glee, seeming to imply that this was going to be the game he really wanted to make. Surely, he won’t disappoint. I mean, DMC5 was a massive comeback after the DmC fiasco. Dude is on the top of his game! What could go wrong?

Well, apparently everything.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 doesn’t feel like a sequel to Dragon’s Dogma. It doesn’t seem to improve on anything. Sure it looks prettier, and I guess the character creator is great, but everything else is either on par or worse than the original.

The combat is no longer snappy and satisfying like the first game. Slicing through an enemy with a sword no longer feels like you’re cutting through flesh and bone. It feels much more weightless with much less feedback. Enemies almost never seem to react to most of your attacks, however even the lowliest goblin can stunlock you for days. You really need to rely on your pawns to an annoying degree when there’s big groups of enemies because of how easily they can wombo combo you. Why is it that I can solo a cyclops or an ogre no problem, but a group of saurians with good timing can take turns slapping me around, getting me stuck in endless stun animations I can’t cancel out of?

I’m not a fan of the changes to movement. This is probably due to the switch to RE Engine, but everything you do feels more sluggish and floaty. I can’t say I’m a particularly big fan of the auto-climbing stuff too, because it often led to my character doing things on their own I didn’t intend to do. I’d rather have 100% complete control over my character than have the “convenience” of the character doing unintended actions for me. Other than the Mage/Sorcerer hover ability, there are no new movement abilities either. In fact, they took out a movement ability by getting rid of the double jump. The overall feel I get is that they went for a more realistic focus for movement, which is pretty lame.

For an open world game, Dragon’s Dogma 2 feels strangely constricted. There’s barely anywhere to truly explore other than caves, which aren’t worth the effort of going through due to the lack of any interesting loot. Very rarely did I ever find anything of note. Even if I did find a decent weapon or armor, it got outclassed by something I could just buy off a merchant soon after.

You can’t really go off the beaten path either because so much of the game has either massive cliffs or large bodies of water preventing you from going anywhere else. A lot of the game feels like going down glorified hallways. It didn’t take long for me to realize how little of the world was actually explorable. With that being said, I guess this was a blessing in disguise because of how much of a chore exploration turned out to be. Until you’re able to access more portcrystals and ferrystones, you’re going to be going down the same paths over and over again with no shortcuts, fighting the same enemies over and over again. It gets immensely tedious and boring pretty quickly. DD1 could sometimes feel like this too, but the much smaller world along with your much faster movement and less frequent enemy encounters made it less of a hassle.

Oxcarts are an option to quickly get places too, but they’re limited to only a few locations and can get destroyed by enemy ambushes, leaving you stranded to walk the rest of the way. You already have to pay to use the oxcarts, so why they needed to have some weird risk attached to it is beyond me. There’s a point where immersion goes too far, and you really need to just allow for there to be some convenience for the player so that the experience isn’t completely miserable.

Vocations are a mixed bag, but ultimately are significantly less interesting than they were in the original. All of them are limited to one weapon. Primary and secondary weapons are no longer a thing, and experimenting with different builds with classes like the Assassin are gone. I’m assuming this was one way to counter balancing issues, yet the balance might be worse than the first game. Thief destroys everything with its Skull Splitter move, which might be the highest damaging attack in the game. As a Thief, you can also steal extremely useful items like wakestone shards and ferrystones from enemies. It’s also the only vocation in the game with an actual dodge move.

The other two classes that seem insanely powerful compared to the rest are Mystic Spearhand and Magic Archer. The former has a skill that straight up makes you temporarily invincible, has a fast cast rate, and costs barely any stamina to use. Magic Archer generally has pretty damn good DPS, but on top of that has a skill that can kill the final boss in one hit. Meanwhile, the normal Archer has to rely on consumables for damage even slightly comparable. Warrior is somewhat of an improvement over the first game due to having 4 instead of 3 active skills and being borderline impossible to knock down, but you’re so damn slow that it doesn’t really matter. Fighter is okay I guess, even if you no longer have 3 skills on both your sword and shield. Mage and Sorcerer feel like they got nerfed to oblivion. Mage was never necessarily great in the first game, but it still felt more powerful than it does here. Cast times for both classes feel insanely long for the relatively pitiful damage they often produce. Not to mention the fact that having only 4 skills instead of 6 really limits their potential.

Then there's Wayfarer and Trickster which don’t feel worth playing at all. Wayfarer only has 3 skills to choose from, since you’re always going to want to have Rearmament selected. The only real benefit you get with Wayfarer is that you can use any armor you want. I have no idea what the fuck you’re supposed to do with Trickster. Apparently, you can do some silly and fun stuff with it, but ultimately why bother with a class that can’t directly damage enemies when you could just go Thief and kill everything in seconds?

The game's story is strange. The first Dragon's Dogma isn't exactly a narrative masterpiece or anything, but it at least put enough effort into its cinematics and presentation to keep you invested. There are memorable moments like the opening where your fishing village gets attacked by the dragon, fending off the hydra at the encampment, first meeting the Dragonforged, sneaking into the castle and seeing the king go schizo and trying to kill the princess, and more. NPCs were a lot more memorable and unique, and despite not always being super fleshed out I still cared about what happened to them to a certain extent.

2 on the other hand is a whole lot of nothing. It starts off okay, but there’s a notable lack of presentation or even comprehensible plot throughout. Important details like the fact that you’re the true heir to the throne are just nonchalantly told to you in the generic NPC conversation. You’d think they’d try to make something like that a bit more of a big deal by dedicating a cutscene to it. I don’t even remember what really happens in the story. It feels like you sneak into the castle a few times for some reason, go to desert land for some reason, rebuild the Godsbane for some reason, fight a giant rock golem thing that you apparently don’t even need to fight because the NPCs kill it for you, then suddenly it’s time for the final boss. It’s like stuff is happening around you, but the game never really bothers to elaborate on what’s going on or why you should care. It’s just things happening.

Characters are basically nonexistent, lacking any and all personality. There were several characters in DD1 with their own quest lines that at least tried to develop them a little bit. I can’t recall a single notable thing about the DD2 characters, other than the fact that once I maxed out their affinity they kept asking me to escort them 2000 miles away to Bumfuck, New Mexico on foot.

Then there’s the post-game, where you’re timed and are supposed to evacuate a bunch of towns. Problem is that I couldn’t give a fuck. The NPCs themselves didn’t seem to care either because all of their dialog was no different than usual, other than the handful of quest giving NPCs. Oh yeah, the game just ends with an interactive cutscene as well. Sure I supposed the real final boss is the Dragon in the normal ending, but it’s pretty lame compared to the much more bombastic and cinematic finale of DD1.

The funny thing is, as negative as I sound, much of my disappointment comes less from me thinking the game is bad, and simply thinking it’s less good. There’s genuinely a lot of potential in this. You have the foundation for really interesting storylines and quests with there being prejudice about different races now that we have elves, dwarves, and the weird cat people that still have human ears for some reason. Yet they did nothing with it. Combat does have some interesting changes and could have been better if they didn’t change the feel of it. Could have helped having better enemy variety as well. Exploration could have been made better if the world design was more interesting and you had more maneuverability, but it just became more tedious. Ultimately, the game feels like a half-assed clone of the original that misunderstands what worked and what didn’t.

People were joking about Dragon’s Dogma 2 just being Dragon’s Dogma 1.5, but really it feels even less than that to me. I tried to enjoy it, I really did, but it left me feeling hollow. This was allegedly Itsuno’s vision, what Dragon’s Dogma was supposed to be. I come away from it feeling lied to, swindled even, especially considering the $70 price tag. What’s more frustrating is that I keep seeing people talk about, “oh don’t worry, Capcom will release a Dark Arisen-esque expansion that’ll really give us what we want!” Sorry, but I’m not shelling out another $20-$40 on an expansion to a $70 game for the unfounded belief that they’ll actually finish the game this time.

Well damn, didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did, but for once Game Freak did something right.

I think what made this game work so well for me and made it so addicting is just the fact that the actual act of catching Pokemon is way more fun. Something that I never went out of my way to do in any past Pokemon game is, oddly enough, catching them all. It generally feels like a chore, and the RNG aspect of it can be frustrating. Having more direct control over the process of catching Pokemon makes it a lot more fun and interesting. I also enjoyed the different objectives to fill out the Pokedex entries too. Made you feel much more like an actual researcher.

I'm normally not into survival crafting games, but they make it work here. All the crafting is pretty much focused on creating items that make the Pokemon catching process easier and more efficient (especially for Alpha Pokemon). It's simple enough to never get annoying, and it constantly incentivizes you to keep exploring for materials.

The battles are a little weird with the Agile/Strong mechanics, and I spent most of the game barely utilizing it. I mainly used Agile moves so that my moves would be weak enough to not defeat wild Pokemon so I could catch them. Turn priority is also strange and I felt like I never completely understood it. They're definitely on to something with these new mechanics, but they come off as a bit undercooked.

I'm mixed on the trainer battles because while I appreciate that this game isn't afraid to kick your ass a bit, some of them just turn into trading one-hit KOs with each other. It often felt like wild and trainer Pokemon were significantly stronger than yours, regardless of level. Thankfully, this is far from the focus of the game, and trainer battles barely happen. Pokemon's general battle mechanics are so strong, that it's difficult to make it not work.

I really enjoyed exploring the world and completing side quests. The side quests are simple, but add a lot of flavor to the game, really making you feel like you're helping a community understand these strange creatures more. Ride Pokemon are also awesome in this, especially with how seamlessly you can switch between them. If there's anything that modern Game Freak should be applauded for, it's getting rid of HMs and replacing them with something much more interesting.

If there's anything I'm not so keen on, it's the boss battles. I appreciate the attempt at making Pokemon more action oriented, but this clunky dodge-roll-to-win shit is not what I want from a Pokemon game. Most of the battles really aren't that bad, but the Arcanine and Avalugg ones felt like you could get easily screwed over by RNG due to the small and awkwardly shaped arenas. At least you can basically brute force your way through these eventually with the continue option if you really suck at them.

What can I say, Game Freak did good here. I'm pleasantly surprised. Maybe this is a sign that there still is some talent left at Game Freak. Maybe they'll listen to the criticisms of Violet/Scarlet and improve on the next iteration. I'm not completely convinced, but at least there's still a small smidgen of hope.

The good news is that Persona 3 Reload is a faithful remake of a fairly landmark game, retaining what's great about the original while adding smart quality-of-life features that streamline the experience, making it much more enjoyable to play. The bad news is that Persona 3 Reload is a faithful remake of Persona 3 original, meaning much of the later P3 content has been largely ignored, and aspects of the game's design feel trapped in the era in which it was conceived.

To the credit of Atlus, they've done an admirable job of trying to fill in some gaps created by the dissonance of what Persona games were in 2006 and what they are now. Combat, in particular, is where most of the QOL features can be found, with full party control and baton passing now standard, along with the addition of super attacks called Theurgy (which can kinda trivialize battles at times but at least they're fun). Pulling up your item menu in battle also defaults to the item you most likely need in that situation, which blew my mind; if your ally is poisoned, the curing item goes to the top of the list, or if the enemy is weak to fire, then here's the fire gem. Why don't more games do this?

P3 was also very limited in scope in terms of its world and activities, but there are some new ones here sprinkled in, and engaging in them with your party members can also unlock new passive abilities in combat. Anything that reinforces the core theme of these games that the bonds you form with people are your strength goes a long way with me. Still, much like the originals, you'll probably find yourself lacking in things to do toward the end of the game, defaulting to a lot of the same activities and locations over and over.

That feeling carries over into the core gameplay loop of Tartarus, which has also seen changes - but ones I don't think go far enough. Sometimes random little events would spawn on a floor to keep things interesting, and they've spliced in new ones like giant rare hands to chase down or side paths you wander in to fight harder enemies for shiny loot. They even gave every block of Tartarus a facelift, and your party regularly engages in conversations to help distract from what is largely the same tedious grind of the original P3. It's not that I don't enjoy a good dungeon crawler, and Persona's excellent combat system goes a long way in mitigating the monotony, but Tartarus still comes up well short of the standard set in Persona 5 with its bespoke, handcrafted dungeons. And there are still too many damn floors.

I know perhaps it was unrealistic to expect a full overhaul to bring Persona 3 closer in line with what Persona 5 offered, as their goal was rather to present the experience largely as-is, just with a modern coat of paint. There's value in that, but it's frustrating to think that even with Reload, you still cannot say with absolute certainty this is the definitive version of Persona 3. You're always going to have to qualify that with "Yeah, you should play this one, but..." I know it would have been a lot of effort but the Portable campaign with the female protagonist should have been here. Hell, that arguably has the better social links, and while Reload does offer a replacement in terms of its Linked Episodes (featuring new storylines for the party members who don't have social links), it's still absolutely baffling that half your party is missing from what is the core conceit of these games.

All this is to say that yes, Persona 3 is still a great game, with a strong story featuring an extremely well-developed cast and the continued gold standard for turn-based combat. Reload does an excellent job of capturing what you enjoyed about the original and presenting it in a more accessible form. However, it's still a shame this era of Persona remains as convoluted as ever, and if someone ever asks me what version of 3 they should play, I'm likely to throw my hands up in the air and walk away.

Was not expecting an indie 3D metroidvania starring a caked up goat girl to end up as one of my favorite games of last year, yet here we are.

This game does start off a bit slow, but once you unlock more movement abilities, you can really fly across the world. The amount of freedom this game gives you is pretty insane, and there are multiple points where you can very easily sequence break if you know what you're doing. It can be a bit clunky at times, especially the way this game's equivalent to a wall jump is, but it never gets too obnoxious. The game is very forgiving with checkpoints and never feels unfair.

I wish the game had an in-game map, as it's pretty easy to get lost. The game has a very clearly N64/PS1 inspired art style, so the environments are simple looking and can look a bit samey. With that being said, moving around in this game is so fun, that it doesn't even really matter. I'd put this in the same category of something like Mario 64 where just the sheer act of moving around and experimenting with your various abilities is fun on its own.

I can also appreciate the lack of any real story to the game. It's very vague and mysterious and doesn't really bother to explain anything. You're just thrown into this weird world and expected to learn things as you go.

There's a bit of combat in the game, which is simple but never focused on enough to take away from the platforming. There are only 2 bosses, one at the beginning and one at the end, with a small variety of very easily dispatched enemies in-between.

Honestly, I'm incredibly surprised by this game. This may be one of the best attempts at a retro 3D platformer I've seen. It captures the look and feel of the 5th gen era of video games extremely well, doesn't overstay its welcome, and it's only $6 too. Definitely gonna keep an eye on this developer's games from now on. Please keep making great games with thick thighed protagonists.