To preface, I competed in this game in tournaments and I'm approaching this game as a competitive game. For casuals, you can disregard this and pretend it's a 4-star review.

DLC ruined this game, FP2 specifically. They make the game much more unfun any time they appear on the screen.

Movement was nerfed from Wii U and it feels like I'm moving across lines on a grid instead of fluidly and buttery. Platforms feel sticky and hard to drop through. I'll try to do a drop-through aerial and instead I crouch on the platform and don't get my intended result. Just a clunky game at times and it's frustrating to deal with.

Auto short hop aerials are not good. I understand they remove a barrier to entry, but it should be able to be toggled on or off. I have to move my fingers quickly at times and the auto short hop can mess up what I intend to do and cost me in certain interactions.

All in all, they tried to make the game easier for bad players (not that I'm some world beater in terms of skill) and casual players. This often comes at the cost of making a game less fun overall for experienced players. I can obviously play with friends and have fun, but it is much less fun to play as a whole than previous entries in the series.

I grinded the shit out of this game and liked the world. I'm not one to bitch and moan about the booby designs and weird sex jokes. I'm an adult. The party customization was off the rails with depth and how many different ways you can do combat and form a party.

I'm going to replay this eventually because I finished this in summer 2018 and it's been too long for me to give it proper thoughts. There will be an update to this, but as of now I do like this game for the ARPG elements, the world designs, and music.

Great remake! I never played the original, but I can tell that this was made with a ton of heart and with the originals in mind. I was surprised how short the game was overall until I remembered it's a me, a Mario RPG.

The game was piss easy until the final fight where I actually had a challenge. Problem is, the earlier boss fights don't prep you for Smithy. It's way harder than any other part of the game combined and a bigger spike in difficulty than any other part of the game has. It's a small gripe, but fair.

Still worth playing and I will return for the post game!

It's Minecraft.

I can go from not touching it for a year to updating and doing nothing BUT Minecraft stuff for 10 straight weeks. I always enjoy finding some new thing to do even if I thought I didn't have something else left. It's like being a dad and finding something new to fix in the house or thinking of something else to build to marginally improve your life.

I think everyone should play Minecraft once in their life. Maybe like 10-15 hours of game time and see where you want to go from there. I think it's easy to sink more time because the resource grind and loop is rewarding.

Ughhh...

They should've just remastered Platinum and added new features. I get you want a faithful remake but god damn the OG D/P games were not great mechanically! Platinum fixed the issues with the Sinnoh games and they decided to not remake that game?

The game is sleeper. I guess I'm biased because I prefer Platinum, but it's true. Platinum is a 15 year old game now and has better features and is mechanically more sound than this game is despite better hardware and more reference material available. I basically forced myself to finish this despite shelving it for a few weeks. I grinded it hoping I'd have fun with it, but I was happier to be done with it more than anything.

The only thing this game provides is a new base for ROM Hacking. People mod the SHIT out of these games now and they can use them the way people used Gen 3 games to make ROM Hacks back in the day.

While mainline Pokemon games continue to be devoid of anything resembling soul or fun, PLA is the best modern Pokemon game. It's a great departure from the regular series and has a fun enough gameplay loop. The story is Mystery Dungeon-coded (I guess technically this is an isekai?) but I always say you aren't playing Pokemon games for the plot.

The open world is a great 3D reimagining of the Sinnoh region and will 1000% tap into your nostalgia as the dynamic music changes. From the fields to the forests, you'll recognize the locations in the Hisui regions based on the modern Sinnoh counterparts. It's fan service, but GOOD fan service.

There's a ton to do in terms of catching mons and building a ton of different teams for the few actual battles. The only thing I don't really care about is the slightly different battle mechanics. And FUCK the final trainer battle for this reason. I'll avoid saying who it's against, but it's legit one of the hardest battles in the entire series when you're on even playing ground. Obviously other fights in the series are tough if you're under-leveled, but on even ground you can get blasted if you aren't well equipped.

Overall, this game is great! It's a fun time and anyone who considers themselves a Pokemon fan should play this game. It's WAYYYY better than BDSP.

In my experiences, there are games that if you haven't played them, then you can't call yourself a gamer. Skyrim is easily in that category.

First off, the world of Skyrim is nearly flawless; size-wise, you can get around on foot comfortably, but you never feel overwhelmed by the scope of the mountains, fields, and cities. Not many other open world games nail this scaling where you feel like everything, including the player, is the proper size. The first experience of going through Riverwood and approaching Whiterun is pure cinema. The progression from prison escape to humble river town to the first major Hold of the game needs to be taught in any game design class. Flawless execution of early-game progression. And then the rest of the game opens up to you.

The amount of paths open to you after getting through the main Whiterun path is pretty ridiculous for 2011 standards. You've got: the Civil War and Dragonborn (both MAIN quests), Companions as the first faction, there are side stories in Whiterun you can go through and take you all the way to the Reach out west, you can go southeast to Riften and do the Theives Guild, and upon going to Riften you can also open up Dark Brotherhood, or go to the College of Winterhold if you want to do mage shit.

Whiterun being the first Hold you're directed to (but not forced to go to) is perfect for setting up an unofficial HQ thanks to its central location and accessibility to every other Hold. All roads lead to Whiterun and Whiterun is the heart of Skyrim. When I think of Skyrim, I think of Whiterun. I could go on and on about Whiterun alone but I'd end up digressing.

I know a main gripe a lot of people have is the repetitive dungeons, and I agree. This was a starting point in Bethesda game design where there were more dungeons (something like 100+ maybe more) focused on pillaging and collecting loot at the end after defeating a boss. It's a classic open world game design philosophy in modern gaming but Skyrim does it better than most just because I find the method of exploring them interesting. The enemy variance is lacking since most of them are Draugr or Bandit variants and it does get tiring fighting the same guys over and over, but just stronger over time. The dungeon art style is over used and the only time they're different is if you're in a different environment (tundra, plains, mountain, etc). Same rocky interiors with wooden structures or underground tombs. Some may have traps which keep you on your toes and can be annoying, but once you have enough armor or health they barely leave a scratch and you can just run through haphazardly. I'd hope that story dungeons would be more fleshed out, and they are bigger and have better rewards since they're plot reliant, but they still follow the same core design as sidequest dungeons. Overall, it does get tiring being underground all the time, but the overworld is so diverse that it is almost nullified. You've got the vast mountain ranges surrounding Solitude, the open plains around Whiterun, the industrial depths of Markarth, the riverside towns and villages, the tundras leading to the ice floes of Winterhold and Dawnstar, the marshlands of Hjaalmarch, the forests of Falkreath and the mists surrounding it, all in one region of Tamriel. Every Hold is distinct and teeming with life, whether human, plant, or animal.

The stories (both Civil War and Dragonborn) are honestly pretty surface level and you can tell more time went into the overall lore of the world over a general narrative. The various mini-stories that put Skyrim together via sidequests and books and dialogue do a better job of making the world feel alive than following the main quest. The rawest part of the main plot is going to Sovngarde to kill Alduin because imagine having to go to literal Valhalla to stop incarnate evil from destroying your afterlife. Sick shit for real. When I play Skyrim, though, I care more about learning about the world rather than the "chosen one's hero journey" trope. Skyrim would still be goated even without the main plot, that's how engaging it is interacting with everything.

Combat over time goes from tense CQC battles to "how can I kill as many people without being caught?" as soon as you reach the Thieves Guild. The meme of sneaky archer build is so real because it blows everything else out of the water. This where the main design flaws of the game come back; dungeons are very linear in structure and you will often take out enemies in groups of 2-4, so you pick off two of them and fight the rest. As a result, you get a ton of Sneak and Archery experience with barely anything else. And the Thieves Guild gives you some of the best early to mid-game armor which boosts your Sneak and Archery skills even further so at that point, there's no point in doing anything else. With the way the enemies scale, you can't restart and invest in another skill tree because you'll be severely weaker than every enemy again and make dungeon crawling a serious chore. The game pretty much guides you into Sneak/Archer, but playing other roles can be fun if you actually want to challenge yourself a little bit. And honestly, it does feel more rewarding to kill enemies unconventionally.

Those are my thoughts/retrospective on Skyrim. A game I fucking love despite its odd flaws and design choices. The things they do right far FAR outweigh some of the nitpicky negatives about the it. Skyrim is a gamer's game, it's timeless, and the fact that it has dedicated haters is a little fucked up honestly. There's something in Skyrim for everyone and there's a reason it's been released on 7 million different platforms. It's one of the most accessible and easy to learn open world adventure games ever released. There's something in it for everyone.

Been playing this game since the first 2 boxes of the game way back in January 2017, so I probably have like 10k hours in this across daily playing on my phone and on PC at home. I high key thing that this is a good way to get back into Yu-Gi-Oh for people who want to just play casually. It is a gacha and will bombard you with the event and new box shit but it really isn't that bad if you just log in once a day and play for 30-60 minutes passively. If you want to hit the ladder, then it becomes a major grind for gems and cards. Otherwise it's possible to enjoy this game casually for the events and PvE since it's a pretty good gameplay loop. If you want to play "real" Yu-Gi-Oh with less severe gacha elements you can play Master Duel, but this is nice to have on the go like at work or while traveling. Mobile optimization is fuego and doesn't turn your phone or tablet into lava like mobile MD. BANGER OST as well, best in any YGO game.

This game isn't for everyone, but I personally enjoyed the challenge DESPITE how bullshit it is. I played this before Sacred Cards and realized that they made this harder after seeing how easy Sacred Cards is. But instead of making it a slight challenge and balancing CPU decks to be better scaled, they gave opponent's ALL the bullshit power staples and left you to grind your ass off to even have a shot at winning. I do wish they stuck with the video game formula of type weaknesses for cards. It made the game much more playable because without it you would only be able to use removal spells/traps. Once you reach the ability to get Ra Phoenix Mode the game becomes a joke. Ra overpowers everything else the game throws at you so long as you can draw into it with Skelengel, Pot of Greed, or other draw cards. While I enjoy the strategy aspect, I'm aware how lucky you have to get to play this game. 3 for me, but I can see why other people despise this game. I wouldn't be opposed to this and Sacred Cards getting some sort of remaster where the games are more balanced.