There's 70% of a cool game in here. People got pissy about the writing, but it's not that bad. Makes a worse first impression than last.

Where it really stumbles is narrative content. There's just so little! There's an explanation for why the world is so devoid of other characters outside the capital city, but that doesn't justify the capital city itself being so lifeless.

Outside of the main quest, there's practically no story guiding you to the side objectives. It's pure Ubisoft map icon world design without even the thinnest plot directing you to those icons.

This burdens the final chapter with basically telling the entire story of the game in a manner that feels rushed and threadbare.

As for the combat, which is most of what you do in the game, it's very flashy and generally feels good. Dodging, blocking and countering never quite feel right, though. The flashiness extends to enemy attacks and design, so they look cool but aren't very readable. I frequently felt like I was getting hit by stuff that I had dodged, or didn't dodge because an animation wasn't obviously an attack.

It's not a game I'd die for, but a solid C+/B- game shouldn't have killed Luminous Productions, either.

Having all those bad reviews at launch, I was expecting a complete disaster. Started with zero expectations but at the end it was an OK open-world game. It is just too ambitious for its own good. The world is wayyyy to big for what it is with nothing interesting going on in it. Repetitive locations for the sake of the collectable or stat increase just gets boring after awhile. The story itself does not need that much space and useless side content. There are a lot of good ideas underneath all of this but most are not developed fully. The battle system is also quite engaging with various different abilities and play styles, just, again, too bloated and filled with huge number of them, confusing the player more than engaging him into variety. If they made it on a smaller scale, focused more on the story and less on the huge open world, this could have been so much better.

I really wanted to like this one, I really did, but it's at best a very basic Sonic game.

I do appreciate some of the levels and the music can be quite good, but I found myself very annoyed at level gimmicks. Gimmicks can be fun, but there are so many of them. And they waste your time. Wait for this, wait here, don't move, spin slowly in a circle. Older Sonic games have the same types of gimmicks but they flow so much better than they do here.

Boss fights also suffer from this problem. My classic Sonic brain tells me I can exploit bosses if I am fast enough to do so, but here, nope. Wait, hit boss, wait, hit boss. It's slow. I did not come to Sonic games to be slow. Mania had a couple bosses like this, but this game, every boss is like this. And it sucks. At least Mania didn't waste as much of my time with waiting.

Trip is pretty neat as a new character. Love their design, maybe they'll come back in another game who knows.

It's not a bad game, trust me. It's not a great game either. It's right down the middle where Sonic games usually sit.

Probably one of my least favorite Megami Tensei games I've played, if not my least favorite. I'm kind of almost suprised at how medicore and more than occasionally bad this was? Atlus' lower tier releases (non-Persona/SMT) the past few years haven't been amazing but they're certainly way better than this.

The sabbath system is neat and the gameplay in general is fun but everything else across the board is puzzlingly mediocre. The characters are fine but the story falls flat, the visuals and music are servicable at best and the dungeon design ranges from boring to atrocious (the soul matrix being mostly optional isn't an excuse).

I don't know what else to say, honestly. I'm just shocked.

It's not Silent Hill 2, it's not PT, therefore it is worthless I guess. Sure, the writing can be a little clunky but I think it is trying to explore horrific themes in a way that is not at all out of place for the series. The atmosphere, sound design, and score are pretty great and the story loop is legitimately enticing. Even for how short it is, it does lack some focus but it definitely lands on its feet and is ultimately a game with a positive message that's actually about something. I think it is fine to not like this for its execution, but to criticize it for daring to tackle difficult topics is kind of ridiculous.

There's really no other way to put it. This game (and possibly franchise) is morally and creatively bankrupt. Between the shallow depictions of mental health whether there's dramatic zooms of the protagonist self harming or even going as far to have chapters end with you jumping off a building and the following interludes flash a suicide hotline message until the level loads or the awkward anime dub tier voice acting berate you with insults or commentary on your surroundings because Konami needs to remind you this is in a fact a serious game and they're afraid of leaving things to interpretation, I fail to see how the 2 hours I spent with this tech demo can leave me anticipation of the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake or "missing the point".

This whole experience ends up feeling like a parody of the thing it's trying to comment and I don't think that's the takeaway someone with diagnosed BPD should be feeling.

Secret levels cleared, 390 flowers collected.

Yoshi's Crafted World is a delightful collectathon platformer that emphasizes environmental context clues and secret finding. There's a real joy in poring over the gorgeous levels to find hidden secrets, but it is completely optional if you want to just platform your way to the credits. Completion times posted online vary from 8-40 hours, which shows just how much extra content there is for completionists.

My main gripe is with the difficulty. For most of the main game the platforming is borderline trivial for an experienced gamer. Then the secret levels spike considerably, but there's only a few of them and there's no gradual introduction of difficulty. Also the music is mostly inane, borderline irritating, unlike the funky bass hooks from Wooly World.

For young gamers and "Where's Waldo" fans, this game will be an absolute treasure. For the experienced Nintendo fan, it's a fun 8-10 hours. For deep platforming or higher difficulty cellings, look elsewhere.