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.

I won't say it's bad, but it's also not really grabbing my attention from the characters or world and I'm just not super invested after about 6 hours in. While I appreciate the idea of the card combat it just feels a bit sloggy and isn't interesting enough for me. You can build a deck but that interaction is kind of small and you have to actively time the card uses in the middle of battle and draw them so is different than say MTG or Hearthstone type games.

As a remaster I think it's mostly good, you have options to increase the speed up to 3x for in combat and out of combat separately and if you really want to just play for the story you can turn on 1 hit KO or turn off encounters as you do a bunch of back tracking for side quests. My only real complaint is that these options can only be toggled out of combat via pause menu, I wish the speed up was like Trails where you can hold down a trigger and speed up as you want.

While it's a Monolith Soft game it doesn't appear Tetsuya Takahashi has any credits on the game (writer/director/producer) so if you were going in there expecting to have a somewhat similar vibe to the Xeno games (any of them) then I don't think you'll find it.

I finally dug this out after having bought it when they were going to be delisting it due to the music license.

Overall, it's a product of it's time. I can see where maybe back in 2010 it would have gotten more praise. The narrative is enjoyable and is written well but it was also relatively predictable and by the end of episode 3/start of episode 4 you have all the pieces of what happened and basically what will be happening. It ends up making the last couple of episodes feel a bit more like a slog.

Which is partially due to the gameplay which never really evolves past shine flashlight on enemy to break their shield and then shot them and by Episode 2 you've seen the entire arsenal that the game gives you and every enemy type. By the end the game is mostly just throwing more enemies at you in various combinations. I found myself just dropping flares or flashbangs mostly to get to the next checkpoint and skip all the enemies.

I'm not sure how the remaster was changed but I'd say if you're interested in Control or Alan Wake 2.. go find a summary of this game and save yourself 10-12 hours. It's not necessarily a bad experience but it's not entirely enjoyable.

I enjoyed this game overall but it's not flawless and while it attempts to reach the heights of classic JRPGs, namely invoking Chrono Trigger, it falls short.

Graphically this game is top tier and it's wonderful to look at from it's characters to varied environments. It's a feast for the eyes.

Music is overall good, it fits the game and you can tell they were trying to make it feel like a 16 bit inspired soundtrack which they did but at times I wonder if that actually held them back.

Gameplay and combat was ok. There's a lot of pressing A to get around the environments like the devs felt your thumb needed the additional workout outside of combat. Overall the areas are relatively linear and filled with light puzzles, nothing particularly exciting from a design perspective (graphically look great)

Combat is inspired by Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG with timed button presses that become relatively key to navigate bosses and enemies at time to interrupt their casting. It also helps keep you engaged but at times feels more like another puzzle that needs to be solved without much variety. Also later bosses become HP sponges with little move variety which makes them become stale as the combat basically never evolves past the 6 hour mark.

Story and characters is overall poor. The actual bullet points of the story and characters are fine but the actual writing and expansion of those ideas is incredibly poor. Most of the characters have very little personality which automatically turns Garl into the main characters most of the game having the only personality it seems and is the face. As the game goes on too the writing makes less sense, lacks explanation and feels ham-fisted in a lot of areas.

If you're a fan of old school JRPG's Sea of Stars is worth checking out but it's probably not a game you'll return to again like you would Final Fantasy 4/6 or Chrono Trigger.

For the actual DLC content, overall it's a lot of what the base game should have been but wasn't. The gigs in the DLC area almost all have some sort of roleplaying element to them that gives them some substance. Even though the gameplay is still largely the same having a bit of actual interactive narrative goes a long way in making them feel better.

The DLC story is fairly good overall with a decent cast of characters. The main quest tries to add some different gameplay elements to change up the pace and some are better executed than others but the main quests felt longer than most of the base game's main story quests.

The way the DLC story content was handled along with the 2.0 update is really what the base game should have been more inline with at launch, but at least it gives hope for the eventual follow up to Cyberpunk.

Overall a well done indie game with great art style and put together well. Part of the reason it's getting shelved (maybe abandoned) is that it's essentially a bunch of mini and micro games strung together; it just gets a bit repetitive with the main game of diving/gathering fish not being compelling enough. I also wish there was some way to better identify fish or items you need for collections when swimming around. Overall pretty fun for the short term and don't regret trying it out but not something that is able to compete against other games out right now.

This game will appeal to a certain type of person who loves the NASA inspired space setting and will want to explore every desolate rocky moon and planet. They'll want to build up big mighty bases up that span the galaxy.

I was not that person. Overall I didn't enjoy the setting, everything felt too samey to me. And where something like Fallout is interesting because it takes the known and perverts it, Starfield doesn't have that with it's humancentric setting.

The exploration is a bunch of loading screens with a majority of planets being uninhabitable rocks with cookie cutter space habs full of cookie cutter guys in suits mostly and the occasional cave area.

While I enjoyed the aspect of building your ship, the reality is the only time you're really in your ship is when you're in orbit around a planet, and you either shoot enemies or fly to a base. A NMS system would have benefited a lot.

The game shines with faction quests being generally interesting and more engaging. And the smaller multi part quests tended to be enjoyable. But there's plenty of fetch/kill quests with basically no story to hold it up.

While I don't consider Starfield a bad game, it was one of the more polished Bethesda games to come out, but the setting, quests, exploration, and general vibe was overall a miss for me and I'd rather replay Fallout 4 or Skyrim again than do another run in Starfield.

I'd call this more of an art piece than an actual game. I think they did a wonderful job capturing the feeling of playing a cat, abet a very intelligent one. And the actual environmental work was fantastic. The actual story is simple but a bit depressing when you think about it.

But there's not much game here and is mostly exploration based. There's a few fetch type quests, example: find this, to give to this person to get this key item to go to the next area. And some light puzzle and avoid the beams sections. But generally it's fairly light.

But at 6 hours it doesn't manage to overstay its welcome and is well done but not exactly mind blowing in any regard.

I can understand the general praise the game gets. It's very fresh feeling both in terms of it's vibe and presentation. The mechanic feels unique too where combat is on a beat.

Story wise it's pretty silly, power of friendship thing but it's entertaining for what the game is. Combat is ok, you don't have to follow the beat with your presses but if you do you get bonus damage.

Music is overall good, I think though that it's hard to feel that it's good since a lot of the game is platforming, and during those sections they dial the music down to basically being a metronome so there's no excitement or build up. Music was best during boss fights or when they generally used a licensed track.

Overall for a 10-12 hour game it's pretty enjoyable but more iteration/licensed music budget (amazing how much lyrics help hype up a track) would be great.

Trails into Reverie acts as a closure to both the CS and Crossbell games in many ways while incorporating elements from Sky the 3rd.

The story overall is fine, its mostly self contained but uses elements from Cold Steel 4 so it's certainly not something I'd recommend for anyone getting into the series. It had some good moments overall, not as great as some in CS4 but also no where near as low. General criticism might be that some of the elements the series has been there done that. But the pacing is so much better than previous games.

Part of this is due to a semi optional dungeon area that you are relatively free to go to whenever you want. This also acts as a farewell to the engine before Kuro as they throw every character under the sun at you to use along with all the DLC outfits from the previous games which is delightful. Additionally it shares elements from 3rd where you can watch optional side stories that are this games version of doors.

Music is generally good, very much if you like Trails music there's no real reason you wouldn't like it here.

Characters are all the old ones you love. Most of them have their small part to play but generally fade into the background afterwards, though by breaking up the story into three branches it gives the story and characters in them room to breath and feel a bit more impactful than CS4.

The new ones for me there was one character I really enjoyed and the other two I would be fine if they don't return, I don't feel like they brought anything really new and one of their personalities was as exciting as wet cardboard.

At the end Reverie is a good way to wrap everything up going into Kuro and makes me look forward to what the series has in the future.

Never played the original Gamecube game so I don't have any attachment to this. Overall it's a product of it's time. It's very much a Metroid game, collecting upgrade to access new areas and power up and it's fun to explore.

But there's a lot of clunkiness in the movement, camera angles, and general design. For the time it showed that Metroid was able to make the leap from 2D to 3D successfully.

But without the nostalgia glasses the game is just ok, it's a good remaster, faithful to the original for better or for worse with nicer graphics.

Probably one of the best 2D platformers to come out in a long while. Inspired by the Wario Land series the style and wackiness seems to be based on 90's cartoons and the animation is very fluid. Music is top notch and fits the game well.

Tight game design on most levels really allows you to fly through the levels once you understand the layout and why things are placed where they're placed. Most levels have some new element/gimmick and while some work better than others, in general it manages to keep every level feeling fresh enough to make you want to keep going.

If you're just trying to get through the game it's roughly a 6 hour experience. But there's plenty of additional enjoyment in unlocking all the achievements/collectables along with getting P rankings on every level that will add hours to your playtime if you want.

If you've ever enjoyed platformers in your life, it's worth checking out this indie gem.