I saw a woman on youtube describe Silent Hill 3 as ‘feminine horror’ and I cannot get out of my head how accurate that is— I think this is the biggest reason why a lot of people claim the story isn’t deep or scary, many of the themes centered around the growing up as a teenage girl are not going to be relatable to a certain audience. Another game that hit me so much harder replaying it as an adult than it did when I was younger. Anyway, Heather is a queen and I love this game. The combat here was also a nice break from playing SH2 so much: I feel like SH2’s combat is a lot easier and as many times as I played it this year it wound up getting a bit tedious.

«Mika, how was your mental health this year?» In the last half of 2021 I replayed SH2 nine times. My therapist could probably recite the plot to you from how much I talked about it. It honestly felt much more unsettling playing it now than when I first beat it as a kid, but it was also.. comforting? I somehow reawakened my obsession with Silent Hill so bad that I started having dreams about it. On a serious note, I think SH2 is still one of the best examples of video games as an artform and storytelling medium. If you only ever play a single horror game in your entire life it should be this one.

I’ve treated MHST2 really casually since I haven’t been the biggest fan of turn-based games for awhile. My biggest complaint playing the first MHST a few years ago is that I would end up getting one hit KO’d so often by RNG, so I’m really glad they completely took that out in favor of a system that actually employs strategy. The difficulty feels dumbed down a bit which I don’t think was needed with the combat changes, but for games like this I don’t go in searching for a huge challenge anyway. I’m not sure when I’ll finish this game but it’s fun to pick up and play a bit whenever the mood strikes me and as far as turn-based goes I do enjoy it more than usual.

Revisiting Nier was completely heartbreaking and depressing, but that’s par for the course in Taroverse games. I connected a lot more to the story and characters this time around; when I first played it years ago admittedly I felt a bit disconnected, I think I was missing Drakengard too much and wasn’t ready to move onto another game despite it technically being a sequel. I really enjoyed it this time around! I’m looking forward to eventually playing the Replicant remaster and replaying Automata.

The first time I beat CV was in 2020 on PS4 but I made the switch from console to PC this year and decided to revisit this game during a Steam sale— I’m around halfway through my current playthrough. The combat is so, so addicting. I’m someone who nearly always focuses on story over gameplay but in Code Vein I find myself skipping so many cutscenes so I can get back to fighting enemies, which is a bit funny to me because I’ve seen a lot of people say they thought the combat was clunky? Personally I’ve never felt that at all. My biggest complaint was and still is that the difficulty balance is just.. weird as hell. I think I find most games that are considered soulslike in any form often have issues achieving that perfect ‘Dark Souls difficulty’ balance that it’s known for. The overworld for example never felt particularly challenging aside from maybe one or two specific areas while the bosses are either pushovers or absolutely nuts. That being said, I find a lot of the boss fights are pretty fun and even being cranked up to 100 they felt infinitely easier to fight on later playthroughs. I am.. still not looking forward to fighting the Bladebearer and Cannoneer again, though. Based on the core gameplay of travelling between spawn locations and fighting major bosses in each area I would consider this a soulslike, but because the combat is so fast and animated it doesn’t really feel like you’re playing a soulslike if that makes sense? I also think the multiplayer system is my favourite out of any souls & soulslike games I’ve played. I hope a sequel is in store at some point but for now Code Vein is still really, really enjoyable for me, though I never did have much fun with the DLC when I played on PS4 so I probably won’t end up buying it again.

Every Supergiant game is completely different in both gameplay and plot concept and somehow they manage to knock it out of the park every single time. Logan Cunningham is my absolute favourite voice actor but his performance as Rucks specifically has me falling in love every single time he talks. I could honestly write pages and pages analyzing this game and why I love it so much. Side note: without disclosing spoilers, I do think it’s best to play through restoration first and then NG+ to get the evacuation ending. Just trust me on this one.

DISCLAIMER: I hated World and I’m pretty sure my disdain for it and the fact it made me lose all interest in the series for a few years made me really biased towards Rise. I used to go hard with this series and I think I’m definitely more of a casual player now, but Monster Hunter has definitely taken back its place as my favourite multiplayer game. I’m so thankful for Rise. The series feels fun again and I love the minor QOL changes they continued from World while still keeping the ‘classic’ Monster Hunter feel. I hope they continue adding more new monsters in updates when Sunbreak releases, because I’ve honestly hunted everything a few times at this point. (Written in 2021)

My VN experience is really small so I wouldn’t really know what to comment on length or any of that stuff that VN’s are usually judged on. I’m planning to eventually play through every SciADV game so maybe at some point I’ll understand more about the genre. This was.. good? I think? I really enjoyed the mystery and psychological aspects, though I absolutely could not stand Taku (the protagonist.) I do think he was meant to be an unlikeable character, in which case he was actually written very well. I also tried watching the anime adaptation afterwards but it was mainly a huge clusterfuck of suckage and honestly I feel like you’re better off watching gameplay on youtube or just playing the game itself instead if you have the time.
Y'all are going to jail for that ending.

I am a masochist replaying the Taroverse series in chronological order. Zero’s character is absolutely tragic and I’m obsessed with stories that have depressing, bitter endings. The (sometimes dark) humor does balance out a lot of the angst. In my opinion DLC should only be there to compliment an already complete game, but unfortunately I do think the DLC is very much required which kind of sucks— skipping over it reverts many of the major villains and even the protagonist to being very flat, borderline unlikeable characters. Honestly, the framerate drops are horrendous and it’s made even worse by intoner mode which should in theory be really cool, but just makes the game nearly unplayable at times. That being said, Zero and Mikhail are everything to me and I love this series despite its flaws, of which there are a lot. Like a lot.