A great return for the series, after so many years. Clearly heavily inspired by how Age II operated rather than III, but still with a strong overall production value. The game is quite solid overall; the cutscenes are all very well done with excellent visual clarity and many aesthetically pleasing moments.

The Mongol campaign is clearly the highlight here, where you are incredibly powerful and leave an incredible trail of devastation. One of the best and most enjoyable moments in the entire Age of Empires history is the mission to create a super-trebuchet to destroy the walls of Xiangjiang.

Another incredibly fun mission is defending against the Mongols on the Ugra River.

That said, the pathfinding isn't as good, and the UI options aren't as robust as in previous games, making you struggle quite a bit with the keyboard and mouse. Just for that reason, it possibly ranks as the least enjoyable among the three good games in the series (the first one is easily ignorable), but still something entirely worth playing.

Mega Man ZX annoys me. I desperately wanted to like this game more than I ended up liking it. But I find its map implementation to be one of the worst I've ever seen in a metroidvania. In fact, it's not even a proper metroidvania; its map handles things in a very strange way. And the backtracking is unbearable, the areas have an extremely confusing layout and some of the worst padding I've ever seen in a game.

Something that should last two, maybe three hours, ends up lasting seven because the game developers either hate the players or disregard their free time.

Even the dialogue and the distance you have to travel for mundane things within the ship are a huge time sink. The sub tank in the fire stage is one of the biggest absurdities I've seen in a game of this style. I literally gave up trying to get the last sub tank after that one because it is a even bigger waste of your time.

The game having three different items to collect also makes the rare HP healing items too scarce. The implementation of currency in this game is simply bizarre and very unnecessary. With the amount of useless space this game has, it would have been easier to include armor upgrades there instead of the bizarre system of final strike on bosses.

And I say all this sadly, because I really wanted to like this game. It has a wonderful visual style (better than whatever the fuck they were trying on Megaman Zero), the armors themselves have great designs (although I'm annoyed they baited and switched with X's armor), and the gameplay itself is the enjoyable Megaman X gameplay as always. I honestly hope they've fixed at least some of this in ZX.

Furthermore, if you're going to make a horrendous map like this, it's better to do it like in the classic series and X. You select a stage and that's it. Better than a half-assed attempt of a Metroidvania. Furthermore, this lives system, reminiscent of the old Mega Man system, doesn't even make sense in a game trying to be a faux-metroidvania

Anyway, the formula of selecting a stage and it being just the right size has been repeated for over 20 games for a very simple reason: IT JUST WORKS, DAMMIT!

The original Persona 5 was a somewhat bittersweet experience for me. On one hand, the game had its qualities like the stylish UI, the solid gameplay system, and now you were facing the classic demons of Megami Tensei instead of shadows in battle.Also, its new dungeons had great level design. But on the other hand, the game lacked some of the soulful content that the previous entries had. It was also overly long, especially the first few months felt quite dragged out. The party wasn't as likable as in the previous games, the protagonist's rival was somewhat bland, and the villain fell short compared to the predecessors. There was also a lack of overall cohesion, or at least a theme that tied everything together as well as "memento mori" did in Persona 3 and "bonds of friendship" did in Persona 4.

But Atlus, in another excellent job of improving what was already good, managed to fix almost everything in Royal.

I'm completely amazed by everything new in Royal. Persona 5 went from a game that, despite liking it quite a bit, didn't even come close to Eternal Punishment, Persona 3, and Persona 4 for me. Now, it is for sure something very close, in some cases maybe even surpassing Eternal Punishment and Persona 3 FES in my eyes.

Of course, the game is still excessive and unnecessarily long at over 100 hours. While Reload and Golden shortened the time of their original games, Royal ADDS more hours to what was already the longest Persona to date. The dungeons for example are all excellent but all take too long. And there's another set of a gigantic procedural dungeon to do before the game ends...

That said, a lot of things also improve. The first few months are less of a slog and the two new characters are very special, the new social link and deepening of an old character turned out really well, the game remains quite fun in its dungeons (although all the quality of life additions have made the game even easier), the music and new opening are very good, the new palace is very good...

But when I stop to think, almost all the profound improvements of Royal pass through one character: Maruki Takuto.

Ah, Maruki... How to explain what this character was during part of those 107 hours of gameplay. How this character fascinated me, moved me, made me wander through my thoughts. The last time I remember such a great impact from a fictional character in my life were probably with Gon Freecs, in my formative years, and with Fei Fong Wong, over ten years ago. I probably never wanted to give a fictional character a hug and tell them everything would be okay as much as I did with him.

He retroactively improves the entire cast of characters, gives Kasumi one of the most interesting and intense plot twists I've ever seen in a work, and gives a new meaning to the themes addressed in Persona 5. The original 5 failed quite a bit in dealing with serious themes since it wanted to address them as 3 did at the same time it wanted to have the light and laid-back atmosphere of Persona 4. And these things didn't match. Maruki and the Royal move away from this and from these themes and deal with something new, and the outcome as a whole is something more sentimental, more human, a soulful content that makes this game something special for me just like the other Personas.

That January, which begins shortly after the end of the original game, is and will always be for me one of the most brilliant arcs of a video game. The only time in my life I played such a good extra content/DLC was with Artorias of the Abyss. And much of this because this incredible character finally shows what he came for.

Paraphrasing him: His existence and Persona 5 Royal's are an amazing miracle.

"I'll keep on rooting for all of you to have the best lives possible"

A bit more complex and slightly better performance than the previous game. Just for that, it deserves half a point more. Few things are more satisfying than assembling a team almost entirely made up of players from your own academy. The ability of this type of game to suck me in is incredible. And a danger for someone with insomnia (and who works the afternoon shift). Before I know it, it's already six in the morning.

Regarding considering the game completed: I've won everything there was to win with my favorite team multiple times and became the greatest national and continental champion.

It's a shame I didn't play this game when I was much younger and addicted to RTS games. Nonetheless, it was a good journey, a quite enjoyable campaign with very diverse missions. The wall of fire level and the final stage are good highlights, with a nice level of difficulty. Others have good setpieces, like the mission where you have to transport your troops by ships and release invisible specters to pre-emptively kill enemies.

Many good moments on this one. That said, the upgrade system is kind of dull, and I couldn't get used to the camera using arrow keys instead of WASD. Probably a problem from a casual gamer of RTS games but as someone who never played much RTS competitively, things are as they are. Oh, interesting lore too. Eventually, I should play both expansions.

Am I the only one who thinks that the selling point of the game does more harm than good to the series' gameplay flow? Besides that, it follows the Ratchet formula, so it's enjoyable, but I found it inferior to the other games in the series. The game's hook isn't as enjoyable as the main focus, and the previous games seemed like more complete products with more interesting aspects overall.

There are some of the worst planets in the series, especially the one where the focus is constantly shifting between universes, making it particularly bad and difficult to navigate. On the other hand, the planet in Ratchet where you get the racing boots is very pleasant to explore and navigate. I hope that ability returns; it's somewhat like 3D Sonic done right.

I liked the new characters, the spider-hacker minigame is cool, and Kit and Rivet are very good additions. It's a shame that Rivet's gameplay doesn't change at all, with the same weapons and gameplay as Ratchet. It should be something different since they added a new character, or at least have the minimum to differentiate both. The Clank minigame is dull, but at least you can skip it.

I hope the next game focuses more on having an interesting set of planets and weapons (not that the weapons in this one are bad) rather than focusing on just one gimmick and neglecting the rest.

Also, the PC port, in particular, doesn't seem as well-optimized as Returnal. Should run better, probably.

A considerable drop in quality after the slam dunk of the previous 3. The decision to change the visuals of the environments to something 3D makes this game uglier than the previous ones even though it came out later. The lack of auto-fire is also a strange decision (it's the only game without auto-fire in the PS2 compilation), and finally, there are too many enemies that take too long to die, making the pacing very slow, which is a crime for a series that is great in that regard. The boss selection is also noticeably more annoying to face than in the previous games. The saving grace is that it adds another slot for new weapons, but still, it might be the worst Metal Slug.