It's an interesting take on the survival gathering game. Your car is your lifeline and your mobile base. Early on it's interesting but there was a certain lack of variety in the gameplay. And just some friction.

Partly why I stopped playing is that I needed to complete a mission, but you can't just go from your base to the mission, you have to go from map to map. For this one I had to go 3 maps deep and I ultimately end up failing the mission due to something popping out of the ground I couldn't avoid. Ultimately wrecking my car and losing quite a bit of stuff I had spent the last 90 minutes collecting. And the game wasn't grabbing me enough to do it again.

A toolbelt would have also helped, half my inventory was just tools.

The concept is neat but it could use some iteration to keep it interesting after the first few hours. The story has been done before and the concept of voices over the radio explaining everything isn't particularly compelling.

Dragons Dogma 2 is going to be divisive because there's going to be people that are really going to love the game and people that are going to bounce off of it really hard. It's a game that has a lot of flaws but wears them on the sleeve.

For the good in terms of an organic world, I think it does really pulls it off. The world feels like an actual world that you'd expect to find in a low fantasy type setting with NPCs (mostly pawns though) sprinkled throughout. At first it feels linear but as you unlock other classes/abilities like the mage's levitate you find it's actually pretty expansive, it's just matter of getting over gaps and getting enough vertical.

But while some people are going to love that organic feel, it's also a weakness. Caves in DD2 are well.. just caves. They may have a big enemy or a nice piece of treasure but not always. Ruins are just that, just ruined stone masonry. If you want to contrast it against a game like Elden Ring, Elden Ring doesn't feel like a world you'd expect people to actually live in, but it's got a lot of unique and interesting things to see as a trade off since it isn't beholden to 'make sense'.

Enemies are also part of an issue. There just isn't enough variety and they aren't particularly challenging after a point. A Cyclops is one of the first big enemies you fight, and at first it's fun, climbing on them poking them in the eye. But later in the game, the Cyclops is still the same 2 health bar Cyclops, it might have a bit of armor but ultimately it doesn't prove to be a challenge. After a point the enemies become more annoying since they constantly attack you as you travel around but there's no longer much enjoyment for killing a goblin for the 300th time because some variety of Goblin, Lizard, harpy are what you fight 90% of the time.

Combat though can be fine but it's very class dependent. I found the thief and mystic spearhand the most enjoyable. And some classes are either fairly bland like the sorcerer is just casting/charging spells over and over again and then the trickerster I could write a large rant about how bad that class is in both execution and fun. But as above, combat does get kind of easy so once I was sufficient level it was more a chore.

Story wise it's pretty much an afterthought. There's a huge lack of character personality, motivations, or just character. Empress Nadina who is so important to occupy 1/3 of the cover art is in essentially two quests and does absolutely nothing and isn't interesting at all. This is not a game that you play for the story or really for the characters. That being said the actual character creation is robust and you can make quite a few different looking characters.

TLDR is that it's an experience that will appeal to some more than others but it won't be game of the year. Ultimately it's a better Dragons Dogma but doesn't do much to actually patch the flaws of the first game. Maybe if they do a DLC/Expansion that may help with some of the rougher edges but I don't think it will.

Overall this is a nice little SRPG that was pretty enjoyable. It has inspiration of Ogre Battle and Fire Emblem. The artwork is a treat for the eyes, as per Vanillaware. The combat is real time strategy where you can pause, issue commands then unpause and everyone starts moving. Units are constructed with up to 5 characters eventually allowing you to create different builds. You can make flying anti cav units or heavy shield anti infantry builds.

Additionally it has a FF12 like gambit system, you can define what order a character attempts to use abilities and decide what conditions. This adds a ton of depth and unfortunately it can be a bit obtuse on what the eventual outcome is. When you fight a unit you can shuffle things around but sometimes it isn't exactly clear why this change caused your unit from getting heavily damaged to wiping out the enemy by swapping a couple of units.

Story/character wise it's pretty vanilla. Most characters don't play any significant part in the story, there really is no growth or characterization. Most of the flavor you get is from the rapport (bonding) system's events. Much like FE it throws a ton of characters with you but since most are optional it does nothing with them.

I also enjoyed that unlike most FE games it feels like a war where you're taking territory on the world map. Which is a nice little element I appreciated instead of just going from a menu stage to another menu stage.

It's a game you play for the gameplay. The difficulty wasn't too high, I played on tactical and really had no issue and there's story and normal mode below it for an easier time. It's a good SRPG to fill in the cracks waiting for the next FE game.

As a remake of OG P3 I think they did alright. They added some QoL stuff that did make the game a lot easier for the most part compared to the OG but I'd say it's comparable to P5R in that sense of difficulty. But even with the QoL going up Tartarus is a rough and relatively dry experience.

I did like the linked events they had for the guys, I guess it was a fair compromise. I think the stories in them overall I might say I liked better than most of the social links, but at the same time they're heavily time gated and limited. This did allow them to actually attach themselves to the story and the emotional impact of the story. However missing one hoses you over, so I can't necessarily advocate for something similar in a future Persona game but I think if they weren't linked to power (getting a fusion at the end) I might be ok with something similar in addition to social links.

Will say that the actual plot is probably the slowest of the modern games so I'm glad they've improved the pacing. The first half of the game nothing much happens or is explained, it's really the back half where things pick up. Where I think something like P5 also didn't really pick up with plot until later, it was more character centric that filled in those gaps.

Theme wise I enjoyed it, it's definitely a bit heavier. But I'm ok with that, really I'm totally fine if the Persona games want to be philosophical and social commentary. Interested what they'll do with P6 on that front.

But the TLDR, still Persona, holds up pretty well, I still think P5R is an overall better experience even if I don't think the ending hits as hard as P3R does. But it's still worth picking up if you generally enjoyed the Persona games.

I think as far as a remake goes, they pretty much did everything right. However I also remembered the plot and characters being better and boy was my memory wrong.

Overall gameplay wise, it's pretty fun, simple action-lite combat where your characters have two skills equipped at first and then you can have access to 4 in total. Magic users can just cast any spell equipped via menu. I found the combat generally easy on the normal difficulty. Though there were times when an enemy would just wipe you easy if you didn't pay attention, very much a game where everyone tends to be glass cannons.

There's also the crafting system which while it's optional is pretty fun (and can be very busted) it's actually cool in that you can control your experience if you want to make the game easier by engaging into it early on. Though it can be RNG dependent which compelled me to save scumy so I can get what I wanted without wasting materials.

Graphics look great, they kept the sprite based look and while I don't know if this qualifies as 2D-HD like Octo, it's got that similar vibe. Overall it was a good decision to keep it like that. Music is also great and I liked the newer arranged tracks.

Which leads to QOL, they added a fast travel system and where you can see the pending personal actions or side quests which is handy. Enemies are now visible on the map so you can avoid/fight easier. And they made it so skill and crafting points are separate and easier to get which means you can break the game easier if you wish. You can also swap back to the older art in the menu of the other releases or the original sound track.

What didn't age well for me though was the plot and characters. While the character's aren't bad, they all have some interesting points, they tend to just fade into the background due to the fact that you can only recruit so many. So once you pass their important plot function they rarely say or do much of anything. And there wasn't any private actions added which means that affinity control has to be artificially done via items if you're going for certain endings.

The plot was kind of all over. It starts out simple enough but then it just kind of jumps the shark without smoothly transitioning from point to point, and the fact that the characters just roll with it just didn't make it believable within the context of the game or make it come together.

Overall though it's a fun JRPG and I mostly played a bit before bed. But it's not one you play for the plot but the gameplay and vibes.

I wasn't planning on picking this up but did. Had a pretty good time overall.

To start with the combat is fairly nice, fluid, and very flashy. There's a lot of characters to play with a lot of different styles. You have quick attacking characters, slow but strong characters, range characters, more support types, etc. You do only start out with a handful of characters and they're relatively slow to unlock more for awhile. Also there's no training/test room to try them out in the game that I found.

The battles are typically pretty short if your AI companions are all leveled up equally or you play with actual people. Most battles are only ~5 minutes so you can get through them pretty quickly.

Of course that can sometimes make battles not feel super satisfying since they're not typically very hard. It's not like Monster Hunter where you may spend 20+ minutes killing a new monster and after awhile you get it down to under 10 minutes. The environments in Granblue are pretty much just bland circle arenas so it's quick get in, fight, get out, without anything else to see or do.

There's also not a lot of complexity for both good and bad, some characters are more complex than others but they all have a relatively short ~8 skills and then a basic attack/combo button and a finisher/special button.

Storywise it's fine, it doesn't require you to have played the gacha or watched the anime but it can help. But overall the story is pretty generic anime/power of friendship which some people will enjoy more than others. For me I could take it or leave it.

Overall I think this was a pretty fun action game. There's some Monster Hunter DNA but with a lot of reduced grind and far more casual. But I also found that once I had my preferred character maxed that was about it. You can grind sigils to 'perfect' your build but it doesn't matter much or you can do other characters. So it didn't have the staying power of Monster Hunter for me.

Still I look forward to see what they do in the future or sequel.

Bit of a rough one to revisit. It held up a lot better in my nostalgia fueled memory than it did to replay it. I think the concept is still pretty solid between playing the MMO but still interacting with the forums and the 'real world' all while trying to solve the mystery of the game.

But it's a pretty slow start and Haseo can be a bit annoying the way he acts given his history, but him and the rest of the characters have pretty good arcs. Music is good overall, it has some great opening tracks.

Gameplay is kind of where it falls apart, it's pretty grindy and repetitive visiting randomly generated dungeons with similar environments and enemies over and over again. It's also very very easy with you mostly using skills/mashing attack. The cutscenes of the game still hold up well but the actual in game assets are pretty bland now a days.

It's an interesting experience but honestly after replaying the games it would be kind of hard for me to recommend vs many other RPG titles. I think it would be a good candidate for a real remake though, smooth out some of the plot points. Fix and improve the gameplay so it feels fresher and more dynamic and tone down the grind. Then you may have something pretty serviceable.

As far as my enjoyment of this game, giving it a five even though there's some elements of it that aren't perfect.

I think the gameplay is improved from the previous game. They fixed a lot of the pathing issues so character's aren't getting caught on guard rails. They also added the ability to move your character around on their turn and AoE indicators which is a much needed QoL. They also made cars not run you over outside of combat so you're not constantly getting knocked about.

Overall this had some strong character moments in it but the plot itself was much weaker, some good ideas but executed in a way that it wasn't particularly engaging or really connected to our heroes.

Certainly a game to pick up if you liked the previous game. It did make me look forward to what they have in store in the next entry.

Overall I thought the game was just ok. It was a short experience that serves as a bridge between Yakuza 6 and Like a Dragon. There's quite a bit of side content that the game really wants you to do because the main story is very short and they needed the padding to justify the price but most of it's optional in the end.

The combat was eh, after Yakuza 0 and Lost Judgement it's ultimately a step back. But it's a little fun to rag doll enemies after the JRPG system.

The story is just mostly ok, though the final chapter is pretty good particularly if you played Like a Dragon.

It's a little hard to justify paying full price for this, I don't think it really brings anything new to the table for the series that you haven't already done or seen before and the story while it fills in some blanks on what Kiryu is up to after 6 going into 7 (and sets up 8 at the end) it isn't particularly critical for the overall story.

I think this game had a lot of potential but there's an incompleteness to the last couple of acts and the large amount of visual, ui and quest killing bugs that holds it back.

On the positive the game really captures the WH40K feeling with the way the characters and environments look and with the writing you can tell that they researched it.

The combat can be fun but there's a lack of choices, particularly near the end, when it comes to builds. For instance you only have 4 starting classes to choose from and once you've chosen one, you're locked in. Compared to Pathfinder where you have a large amount of flexibility to mix and match. But the game does allow you to respec freely so once you find something you like you can change things around as needed.

The systems hold up better than the pathfinder games. The colonies are optional but do give you rewards. Ship battles while not fantastic are better done than Wrath's crusade system.

I think where the game falls apart though is that the last couple of acts were not fleshed out and tested enough. I went heretical and it didn't seem to really impact anything from the story, I was walking around with a Chaos Marine and no one cared at the end, no one commented. It was very disappointing. Also the story wasn't written tight enough at the end and lost a lot of the initial steam in the game, not fitting well together.

And the bugs, as of this review on 12/25 there are so many bugs that hopefully they fix that really effects the enjoyment and I'll have to ding my rating for it.

Overall I feel like this game needs to go back into the oven for another year, do a lot of bug squashing and do some revision/expansion on the story and the paths. It has a lot of potential but the execution at the end of the day is subpar.

A story that's all about the emotional connection with the main character and his companions. It's overall done pretty well and you go on a lot of ups, downs, happy and sad moments that all work well together to form the narrative.

The actual gameplay itself is where it suffers. The concept is a loop and exploring the same things gets a bit annoying since some of it feels like just padding. Up to the third floor then welp back to the first floor then got to go back to the third floor but then back to the 2nd. This wouldn't be so bad except to move quickly between floors requires a currency that you get by killing enemies, so you're forced to kill enemies unless you want to walk your way back to where you want each loop.

Plus the combat itself isn't really engaging to begin with but just gets easier as the game goes on and ultimately serves little purpose after a certain point, the game does eventually give you a way to cause enemies to run though.

But the character writing is very good and the way each character feels unique but exaggerated is nice and it has a nice emotional punch if you can handle the more sloggy portions of the game. Game takes about 20ish hours to get through but can vary a bit depending on how much combat you end up doing.

Really great game from a narrative front with some great artistic moments. It really takes some of the themes from Alan Wake 1 and executes them a lot better and in more interesting ways. I think where the game gets a ding is that the gameplay can be a bit too much RE Lite that isn't particularly compelling but they do a better job with the survival horror style shooting by limiting your supplies and the enemies making it more important to conserve.

Another ding is that the game as of 11/23/2023 has some audio glitches and sync issue with the subtitles which hopefully they patch up. And I was not a fan of the ending itself without going into details.

There's a lot of artistry in this game and it's done well and helps make the game stand out with using real life acting and utilizing musical elements to great effect.

Overall very good, takes about 15-25 hours depending on how much you want to run about doing collectable stuff and explore around. Looking forward to Remedy's next game.

It's been a pretty fun game with friends I'd like to see where the devs take it. It's rough in some elements like I'd like to see more diversity in the environments and maybe some more in game tips that actually tell you what the heck the things you buy actually do.

Also not sure if the game has any real staying power but at the price point if you can get a good couple of days with your buddies then it's worth it but it starts to get a bit stale like Phasmaphobia as you start to understand how the system works and it starts to get repetitive.

This was made during version 40.

I enjoyed Control quite a bit. The lore of the game is very interesting if you take the time to read/listen/watch all the things you can find. Very SCP meets 1960's Government Bureaucracy.

Gameplay wise the combat is relatively enjoyable as you gain powers to levitate in the air, dash around and throw just about everything at enemies. The environment is great with all the physics work they did. There's enough mods that you can build your arsenal and character in a style you enjoy.

Storywise it's mostly just ok, it's actually fairly basic and really doesn't explore the characters at all within it. You learn more about some of the bigger players by reading the lore scattered around. It's much more mundane than the lore it's wrapped in.

The main drawback is that the end of the game is pretty abrupt and anti-climatic considering what came before. The other issue is the combat, while it is fun at a certain point you're just fighting the same enemies over and over again along with the fact that bosses are just the same enemies with more HP. The game doesn't really design itself to use it's more fantastical lore/powers to make interesting set pieces for bosses.

It's enjoyable and I look forward to a Control 2 one day where maybe they can fix some of the shortcomings of this one. But worth grabbing on a sale.