Probably the best gacha game out there, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, the game itself isn't being hard on the player for not having enough units: a lot of newer players tend to invest in 5 or 6 stars operators despite not having enough resources to make them grow, while most 4 stars in half the resources do the same job. The difficulty of the game lies in solving the tower defense sections and applying different strategies, some stages can be solved with your usual team, but sometimes one has to be creative and try different classes.

Secondly, the game is a blast to play. Its UI is crisp, clear, the player has a lot of content to get through and nothing is paywalled: you get to it when you get to it. With the best pity rate and recurring events you can easily get the operators you want for your team. Not only that, but the lore bits and writing are top notch, with some tone deaf examples here and there of overexposing. There are websites where one can read the story bits, and I recommend it for a simple reason: sometimes our brains have a symptom called mucho texto, and Arknights can be guilty of causing it at times.

I vividly remember falling asleep while I was "playing" Arknights. But the music is great, the gameplay is getting more and more polished with the years, the characters are loveable and the story is getting somewhere soonish. I simply cannot play too much of it or it'll cut time I have for other games and God forbid I play Arknights and FFXIV together.

I have two wolves inside me, one loves New Mystery, the other hates it. They both kiss each other goodnight.

New Mystery was never released outside Japan, has a new character in Kris the avatar and all other characters that never played a role in Book 2 of the SNES original, making the game a sort of Mortal Kombat Armageddon: everyone is here, everyone fights. There has never been so many characters (77!) in a Fire Emblem game and all are recruitable in a single playthrough. Together with base conversations, we have a semblance of Support, too. There has never been so much content.

Yet it's bland. Some characters shine in their portrayal (I will always love Palla and Catria with all of my heart), yet the worst offender is weirdly enough the protagonist(s), Kris and Marth. In the original game, Marth had a new role as Akaneia's peace keeper, everybody knew him and respected him. Kris steals the show in the remake, always having something to say and to add, yet his\her characterization is ... loyalty to Marth and Altea. That's it. To make things worse, all the new cavaliers and knights feel now like lackeys of Kris, rather than his\her companions. It's fun to make some wacky builds for Kris, I won't lie: I had a female mage reclassed into Cavalier\Pegasus Knight until her Str\Spd were good enough. Then I reclassed to Swordmaster to use a Levin Sword with her good magic bases. If you were to play the harder difficulties you won't have such luck: if you don't play Knight\Berserker, you're playing to lose. Lunatic + is a devious little scoundrel and I won't ever finish it, thank you.

Map design on the other hand is vexing. Some maps are incredible, most are immense. I can feel some sort of map design, like the Ogma & Sirius map or the original content. Others are straight from the 90s, in a bad way. To this day, I would like to know what sort of zaza the person who made the desert chapter smoked. He gave wyverns the 1-2 range! Normal doesn't have it, but still.

As you can see, as an Akaneia fanboy I am torn. Book 2 originally was the cherry on top of the franchise, a little bow to present you the perfect duology of Marth and his friends' fight. The story and the important moments are still there, but they feel less important, less impactful, because a hero that was never there now has to take the spotlight, just to canonically disappear at the end. He was never there ...

The special chapters are fun, challenging and offer a different perspective on characters. They made me appreciate Midia! The audacity! Who even likes Midia?! I would recommend playing this game just for that one aspect, yet the game is still fun, it can be enjoyable and it has its moments. Just ... please, let's not talk about Kris. Let's talk about Robin instead. They learned their lesson and decided that maybe a bit of cognitive dissonance is better compared to a protagonist with no redeeming qualities.

What a trip to memory lane! Hawken, which I played with all my friends back in highschool, had a lot going on: the aesthethics were phenomenal, the combat felt truly unique and every arena had their own feeling. I played a lot with the early game tv-box, but I was good at it. Flying over the enemies and zip-zapping around them, hiding behind corners and shooting rockets to destroy felt incredible -checks time- TEN years ago? It's been some time.

The game was yet sort of predatory with its monetization, right when the business model "cash in as much as possible and give nothing" was taking foot in the market, until it was no more. It couldn't take from the community it had created any longer so it disappeared. Just for Hawken Reborn to spit on its legacy.

When history witnesses a great change,
Hawken reveals itself...
first, as a great hero.

As a hero, it uses its power
to cash money upon the land,
and then it dies.

However, after a period of microtransactions,
Hawken returns, this time,
as an AI project.

Janky, messy and sometimes ugly, it was a great mmo to play with a lot of minute details, many builds and a simple but deep fighting style - they used to call it mount & blade lite. The scale of battles felt incredible, realistic and one player could truly tip the scales with a broadsword (or a farmer's tool, as did many).

Fatshark dropping all work on the game to sell War of the Vikings just to jump ship to Vermintide a year later is one of the tragedies of modern gaming I will never recover from. Right now they're making bank with Warhammer and I respect the hustle, but nothing triumphed in soul like War of the Roses.

I don't feel bad for playing this game for three solid reasons: firstly, it doesn't take much time to complete, it can be completed in less than half an hour; secondly, this is a passion project and I respect anyone able to express oneself through this medium. If one wants to treat videogames as art, they have to be critiqued as such and nothing says art more than a passion project. Lastly, it's free, so beggars can't be choosers.

Yet I felt nothing. Despite touching some somber tones, it appears like they're just shortly brought up for shock value. There is no horror - just a bit of frustration and a restart from a failed state. Last note, I do think the game is a bit morbid, considering it's supposed to be a retelling of real events, but since its themes are all over the place I don't know how to feel about it.

My first Fire Emblem! I'm an avid Shadow Dragon fan, as you can tell from the score, and in my local Fire Emblem aficionados community I'm known as the "Akaneia guy". What gives?

Put simply, the ease of play and replayability give this game a lot of mileage. There's a lot of characters, lots of maps and lots of difficulty settings to talk about and personally I just really like Marth's role in this game, where he is a strong character in his own, suffering because of loss but still having to be the role model for everyone else. It's a weirdly personal tale, something I really like (something the sequel will ruin but that's another story). I wholeheartedly recommend this game even just for how easy to play and fast it is, compared to other slower games in the same franchise.

Played for over 250 hours back when I first got it, I had a lot of bad things to say on this game but in retrospective it accomplished what it wanted to do - being a swan song for a game series which could've been ended here and there. Combat is fun and quick, replayability is high with how much you can mix and match the cast. The only big cons I can think of are the very bland map design and story, both having no real rhyme or reason to do what they do half the time. Lunatic + to this day is one of the most challenging modes of all the franchise - for very wrong reasons. It's fine for what it does.