In the realm of deduction-based mystery games, Botany Manor probably will feel a lot simpler than games like Case of the Golden Idol or Return of the Obra Dinn. What it makes up with is the game's vibes and charm.

Set in a British manor in a different time period, most of what you're going to be doing in this game is reading context clues, deducing facts about plants and attempting to make them bloom. Your main method of achieving this is by attaching clues you find to specific plants. While the level of deduction required for these plants are less demanding, it does ramp up to add complexity as you're attempting to deduce multiple plants towards the end of the game. The "Aha!" moments in this game is decidedly the most satisfying parts of this game.

Combined with this satisfying gameplay loop is a very The Witness-like artstyle and a simple but poignant story. I sincerely was not expecting to find a story about a woman trying to lead her own life (And not being forced to marry) and being subjugated to relentless sexism in the field of botany in this game! The ending in particular really caps off the narrative well and made the runtime of the game worth playing.

Speaking of runtime...I was surprised by how short this game is (Around 4 hours). This might make it a hard pill to swallow considering its 30 ish launch price. In addition, I felt that some of this runtime is being padded out by having to run back to reread clues due to the fact that you cannot review clues you've found in your book.

With all the nitpicks aside, I really enjoyed my time with Botany Manor. If you're in the market for a nice little mystery game that doesn't make so much demand of the player but still uses your brain enough, I think you'd have a good time with this. A perfect game to try out on Game Pass as well!

I was pretty onboard with the vibes of Pacific Drive from the start. While it began and maintained as an oppressive "What the f is going on??" vibe, you slowly begin to piece together some understandings of how the Zone functioned. Combined with satisfying upgrade and crafting mechanics, it kept me quite entertained for its roughly 20 hour run time.

To start things off, I'm not much of a survival game person. I eventually find a lot of these types of games rather aimless or frustrating to the point where it loses me. I was surprised to find myself not in this situation (for the most part) in this game. I always had the next thing I'm looking forward to getting and was able to make decent progress towards that objective. While death is quite punishing, you can definitely alleviate some of these design decisions with generous accessibility options.

Combined with a satisfying upgrade system is a semi-roguelike system where you make "runs" to collect resources and make it further into the Zone. I did notice towards the latter half of the game that running earlier zones just to collect some early-game resources was rather tedious. But, as you begin to understand the anomalies that pepper the Zone and make longer trips, the game turned into quite a satisfying loop.

What accompanies these loops in the Zone is a narrative that features several disembodied voices that supports you as you make your way around the Zone. While you never seem them, I noticed myself getting quite attached to these characters as I went along. While I can totally see why some folks might find their presence annoying, I really enjoyed the light-hearted banter in such an oppressive environment.

Finally, the upgrade system and narrative comes to a head in the final stretch of the game. I did notice towards the end of the game that the amount of endgame resources required to get some of these upgrades became, for the lack of a better word, a tedious chore. Combined with an ending that ends up not really explaining anything and just kind of...ends, I can see why a lot of people were disappointed with the ending. For me, I realized that by the end of the game that I cared more about the characters rather than the Zone itself, and I'm glad the game structured the main mission line to not make some of these late-game upgrades a necessity to finish the game as it probably would've ruined the pacing.

Overall, I'm mildly surprised by the fact that I enjoyed Pacific Drive so much. I found that the game is pretty uncompromising in what it set out to do. I'm sure as soon as players noticed how meticulous Ironwood has built out the player's interactions with the car (For example, you can hurt yourself by dropping the rear door on your end), a lot of players would have bounced off. But for me, the satisfying car upgrade / loot run loop, the familiar and unsettling vibes of the Zone set in my home of Washington and the cast of characters allowed me to enjoy an experience that I haven't quite seen in other games. I look forward to what they do next!

I think Dragon's Dogma 2 is a pretty bold game. From what I've heard, the way the game is designed is pretty similar to how the first game functioned but as someone who only dabbled in Dark Arisen, I was taken aback by how uncompromising they are being with their vision. I just wish I liked this game more.

The thing I really enjoyed with this game that I had nothing negative to say about is the combat. I love how strange and dynamic the combat is especially with the larger monsters in the game. While the fodder enemies (goblins, harpies, and wolves) gets a bit obnoxious with how many of them you run into on the road, every time I encountered one of these huge beasts was a joy to play. I also loved that each vocation was perfectly viable in combat and has a good set of abilities to play around with.

The combat gets super exciting and cool when your skill synergized with your pawns...the unfortunately reality for me is that the pawns worked about 10% of the time. Most of the time I played this game, my pawns often fell off cliffs / into deep water to their death, rarely had meaningful things to say (Mostly yelling about how I pick everything up, pointing out ladders or chests I can't get to) and not provide anything helpful even when the quest is marked with the symbol of that pawn having information. This made it seem like I was constantly fighting the game for those sweet sweet moments where the pawn system works in favor of the game's design to produce the cool moments you see online.

And while I praised the game for being uncompromising in its design, the flaw that I noticed with the pawn system and its AI really exacerbated some of the obtuse and frustrating systems within the game for me. When you have to run back into town on-foot (due to the limited fast travels) because your pawn fell off and died due to no fault of your own, it's really hard to shake the feeling that the game is not exactly being mindful of your time or being able to make meaningful progress. Some people may see no problems with it and engage with the immersive nature of some of Dragon's Dogma 2's systems, I mostly found it frustrating.

Overall, there's a lot of interesting things I found super neat about this game. But when the game is so focused around systems that has issues that may cripple some player's experiences, I began to understand why there's such disparate reactions to this game. I may return to this one day but maybe I'll see if there's some patches first.