Disco Elysium is one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played and for sure one of the most important. I think that it should be required playing in the same way some books are required reading: it might not be for everyone, but everyone should play it and take notes. The world and the characters are so, so alive with so much effort and love behind them. Revachol and its residents are as horrible as they are fascinating and beautiful. Harry Du Bois himself is a man who’s equal parts terrible, pitiable, and lovable. There’s an art to making protagonists like him, I believe- protagonists who aren’t inherently likable or good people- and I think that art is perfected here. The dialogue and prose of the game is well-written, and the atmosphere is unmatched and perfectly fit for a miserable world in the fallout of a failed revolution. There’s a lot of reading to do, but so much you can do as well, and a sort of dice-rolling system impacted by the different sorts of builds you can make that’s engaging. Honestly, I could go on and on and on, but nothing I could say could do this game justice.

There are sooo many monsters in this game and that rocks. It doesn’t feel great to play but it doesn’t feel horrible either once you understand the mechanics. There appears to be a lot of fanservice that won’t mean anything to you if you haven’t played the games before it but that doesn’t mean what’s there isn’t cool. Story and characters are nonexistent, practically, but that isn’t what you should be expecting from a Monster Hunter game anyhow. It’s a good game! It has a lot of content. Alas, this also means that you have a lot of grinding to do.

This game has so much life and charm poured into it and I love it very, very much. The protagonists all have excellent chemistry and work off of each other really, really well, and they’re easily the highlight of the game. The gameplay itself, however, is also very good; the combat is well-designed and the bosses especially feel good to fight against and that’s ESPECIALLY if you’re playing on hard mode (which you should if you can, by the way). The game looks and feels great and has so, so much to interact with and so much to do and I really can’t recommend it enough.

A very quaint and sweet game about memory and loneliness. Ashley is a very good protagonist, and her relationship with D as well as his own struggles are very nice and authentic. They really do just feel like two lonely kids finding solidarity in one another, becoming fast friends as children tend to do. The gameplay and puzzles are fun, and the atmosphere is off the charts. The ending is sort of insane in a way that I really, really appreciate, as are the two mysteries regarding each kid respectively that slowly unravel throughout the course of the story. Here’s your warning to be VERY thorough in your investigating or else you’ll miss out on the true ending and feel horrible about it.

Weird. I’m aware that I’m not the first Kirby fan to say this- nor will I be the last- but it’s an entry in the franchise that feels so out of place that I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s not bad, by any means- it IS a Kirby game, after all- but it doesn’t really introduce anything new, nor does it have anything that really stands out besides the whole stolen cake bit that people are annoying about. It’s fine. It really is. I would recommend it if you asked, because why not? But it’s fine.

Indivisible is a messy, beautiful game that had so much wrong with it and so much right. It is so unfortunate that it got fucked over so badly because you really can feel all of the passion and love behind it. The arcs of characters like Dhar and especially Ajna are genuinely really, really good. The art direction is a little all over the place, but it’s weirdly charming. The music is good, and so, conceptually, is the gameplay (and in execution too, mostly, except that it can be a slog sometimes). I don’t know if I can call the game good or not, but I really do want to encourage people to play it! At the very least, I want others to agree with me that Indivisible deserved so, so much better.