Omori is a game which stands out a lot on many aspects, with a combat system turned around the emotions theme, and a story portraying anxiety, depression and so much more. It's a game which sadly, tries so hard to be psychological, deep, and horrific, it does lesser the impact of the narrative when it comes to plot twists or the ending. Similarly, Omori focuses so much on what makes it different, that it sometime forgets the essential and what makes it similar to great games.

A turn based RPG with an emotion system, sounds like a great premise, however it turns out to be more of a skin than anything else. The combat system features 3 main emotions namely : sad, happy and angry. Together, they form a classic weapon triangle, where each of them are effective against one and weak against the other one, those 3 emotions also boost or reduce statistics such as : luck, speed, defense and so on. I ought to mention, there is a 4th emotion outside this triangle called neutral which is self-explanatory.

Despite being able to further the intensity of one emotion by triggering it once more up to 3 levels (for instance the sad emotion becomes depressed and finally miserable), this system feels like an aggregate of systems most people have seen, and it's quite easy to notice, as the game's structure feels imbalanced at times, sometime throwing long sections of gameplay seemingly for nothing, just to extend the length of the game, giving players plenty time to do such analysis. In spite of the combat system being effective to some extent, I guess I expected more from it, passed the quick discovery of those familiar elements with different names that is, the gameplay loop became more of a repetitive chore, and the pacing problems amplified this sentiment.

Gameplay aside, the story left me with a bitter taste too. The narrative is constantly ominous, with a coexistence between wholesome and sinister elements, fueling a heavy and tensed atmosphere, by the time the story actually hits the player with a horrific plot twist, the player is overprepared and the impact the said plot twist has is limited. In other words, by using the same thing over and over again, it becomes less effective, and what should be something special in the narrative, ends up being less unique and more dull.

The game tackles head on dark emotions, and warn the player by all means possible beforehand, from its simplistic yet worrisome cover picture, to its warning when you actually launch the game. For the same purpose, and it is a shame, the story's threads are clearly visible and conventional for the most part, so much so any sort of dramatic event is predictable and no elements of surprise hit the mark.

Of course, the player should be informed of themes depicted in a game, however, Omori's warning message when the game is launched looks more like a spoiler than anything else. Without being perfect, the PEGI system or any similar rating systems, offer the possibility to warn players without giving too much information. Perhaps using a similar concept would have allowed Omori to find a better middle ground between warning and secrecy.

On top of a predictable story, there are multiple side quests, but I don't have any nice superlative that comes to my mind to describe them. Some side quests are repeatable and propose dreadful minigames, I let you imagine where and how a developer could decide to implement one or more achievements.

In conclusion, despite its great concepts and interesting themes, Omori's execution is mediocre for the most part, questionable for the rest. The gameplay is forgettable, it's just a combination of well known systems in disguise, changing names so they fit the theme of the game, is not enough to create something unique. The story is predictable, not necessarily bad, but definitly not great either. I think Omori is one these games that could have benefited being a visual novel instead of a traditional game, but that's just my opinion.

Sort of confused by the hate bandwagon when it's not too dissimilar from any other Bethesda game since Oblivion, but as it goes on it steadily wastes more and more of your time.

Bethesda games really rely on sort of putting you in a trance more than they do doing anything actually fun, but this continually breaks your trance with constant loading screens, menus that don't work, and way too many procedural environments. There are compelling concepts and little nuggets of ideas scattered all throughout the game that are so disconnected it results in nothing compelling at all. Staging a space game is insanely hard, but I think they probably could have just gone the (still unsatisfying) Outer Worlds route of having a solar system of planets each with one area to explore. Instead you are treated to miles and miles of fucking nothing, and all of the actually interesting handcrafted areas are all one offs that you never come back to and are not allowed to build settlements on.

Comparing any given sidequest area to the rest of the procedural ones on the same planet is almost like night and day. During one companion quest I was brought to a beautiful tropical planet but found I couldn't build the one settlement I wanted to build there. Then, upon going to another procedurally generated area found that it was actually a shithole swamp planet with nothing to actually offer. This happened multiple different times on multiple different planets. Fallout 4 had a terrible settlement system but this somehow surpasses it, the existing habitats are all somehow uglier than the scrap shacks and vault assets in F4, you are not allowed to build anywhere pretty or of interest, and every settlement has limited storage which is usually makes any attempt at building or setting up a mining network not worth it in the slighest, and you can do pretty much everything on your ship anyways.

Combat is also more boring than Fallout 4, this being thanks to them having to build a number of different basic enemies types for each planet. The most it tries to offer are the endgame "starborn" enemies who annoyingly warp and duplicate themselves at random to waste your time instead of offering a challening fight. Space combat is also incredibly simplistic and you'll probably have reached the upper limit of what you can do with it before you're even a quarter of the ways through the game.

Starfield is so insanely scared of you finding out how shallow all of it's systems are that the entry points to basically all of them are locked behind perks that require you to grind settlement building and planet exploration to get anything done. The ability to sneak is now a perk that barely does anything because on top of all the usual terrible Bethesda stealth, everything you do makes noise that attracts enemies, and almost every major questline has at least one stealth section. Basic features of things like crew management, shippbuilding, settlement building and crafting are all locked behind multiple different perks that take forever to get. And most combat perks could be easily mistaken to generic bullshit perks from a Ubisoft game. "Take 15% less damage from energy weapons." Like that.

The story is not entirely devoid of charm, but the advanced facial muscles combined with Bethesda's signature procedural animation make every NPC seem less real than even Oblivion. I found my eyes wandering to the subtitles more often than not to escape their hideous gaze. There are lots of fun little characters scattered around who are more interesting than any of the main ones but ultimately only get 2 or 3 lines of dialogue. Why give me the option to focus on these interesting characters when the game doesn't want me to?

Towards the end of the story the game throws you into a different dimension and emphasizes that you can see the differences in all the choices you made by replaying all of your quests. This is of course a lie because none of the quests or decisions you make have any actual consequences. One major questline I did involved me joining one of the game's many pirate factions as a double agent, but ultimately deciding to betray my government superiors for threatening me with imprisonment. In the process, I killed the high ranking general who hired me, was forced to give his ship to the pirate fleet and made them one of the richest and most powerful factions in the universe. Keep in mind, despite all of these characters and locations being targetable and attackable from my ship, I was not allowed to attack them until the end of the questline as they were all essential. Almost every NPC even vaguely involved with a quest is essential despite the fact that game spends its entire later half emphasizing how none of this matters and you're going to leave it behind anyway. Anyways, after becoming the (second) most powerful pirate in the galaxy and basically declaring war on the game's main faction, I was able to return back to the main city with absolutely no consequences besides all my companions giving me a very subdued and measly argument on why I shouldn't have done that. Later on I got an insane bounty from the same pirate faction for killing a bunch of their guys for guns (despite me killing all the witnesses and the game acknowledging that in text) and none of them attacked me or mentioned it whatsoever.

I think all I expected from this game was for it to be the game between F4 and ES6, somewhere on the level of the Outer Worlds, disposable but holds your attention. I had to actively try to beat it because it was just that boring. I think I would be more forgiving if it was not also confirmed that they shut down potential TES and Fallout games by Obsidian while powering ahead to push out this slop. Microsoft would be wise to put the hammer down on the braindead practices of all the shitty companies they acquired, but I think the rushed release of Redfall confirms they're perfectly complicit in keeping these games as awful as possible in the hopes they can trick their players.

Tunic is a mess. It's an extreme puzzle soulslike zelda 1 mix that uses an antiquated gimmick, an in-game manual, as the main progression mechanic.

Tunic is too hard of a puzzle game if you want to play a soulslike, and too hard of a soulslike if you want to play a puzzle game. The Zelda comparison is fair, but only if you're talking about The Legends of Zelda, first of its name. I spent hours being lost not having a single clue where to go only to find out that I was simply walking past a door or a turn I was supposed to take.

The puzzle design in Tunic is frustrating, because the entire game is based on purposfully obscuring or not giving crucial information to the player. If you were to beat the game legitemately, you'd have to go through a lot of trial and error, not only on the soulslike part, but also on the puzzles. The game has 0 feedback for most puzzles you do, only vaguely indicating what you're supposed to be doing in the manual. The true ending, without a guide, is IMPOSSIBLE. There is no way someone can possibly find everything needed for the true ending without spending endless hours looking through every nook and crany of the map. Some people are into that, and it's their type of game, but I'm definitely not.

There's a crucial difference between Tunic and games like Outer Wilds. Outer Wilds guides the player via a command board that recaps not only what you already know in clear english, but also indicates connections between things you know in case you've missed them, while also guiding the player where to go explore next. You can look at the board, and figure out a destination. Tunic doesn't tell you where to go, only giving you slight hints, in a cryptic language in the manual. At some point, this becomes very discouraging, and I personally just used a guide. I'm very happy that I did so, because I would not be able to figure out what I'm supposed to do without a guide. To add insult to injury, after getting everything required for the true ending, the game bugged out and gave me the regular ending.

The soulslike elements of the game are lackluster as well. There is no variety of weapons, equips or items. There are a few useful items, and a few spells, and one sword. The equips you get are either gimmicky, either completely useless, either so good that you'll only be using a few given equips the entire game. Without the damage up defence down equip, I wouldn't have beaten the game in the time I did. The equips don't have a description, to fit the gimmick of the game, and are only vaguely described in the manual. This is a very bad thing, as most of the time you're unsure whether an equipment is even working properly. The bosses are all uninspired, the only boss I found enjoyable was the final boss. There are 0 humanoid fights, meaning that most of the time you'll be running around dodge rolling until the boss eventually lets you attack it. Only on the final boss do you get the chance to weave in attacks and dash out mid-combo when needed.

Overall, the game is just frustrating. It feels like it wasn't playtested enough, and has rough difficulty spikes and confusing puzzles all over. It felt more like I was fighting against the game the entire time, rather than playing it.

Truly the product of an evil time and culture. One of the most Iraq War era games of all time. Where James Bond quips become rape jokes and saving the world is as easy as calling terrorists retards. The gold AR trophy referencing Saddam is an insane inclusion. And as always in video games, we must suffer a bunch of nerd's ideas of how hot, badass people would talk, as if they've ever met any. I really love that this game exists. The craziest thing about it might be that they stuck with calling their superspy, assassin protagonist Mike. So funny lol. Mike the spy.

I did NOT buy this game. Some guy I don't talk to anymore bought it for me and every day I thank god I did not spend a penny on it. I'm usually a turn-based fan, but this gameplay is just not fun or satisfying in the slightest. The emotions mechanic just made it feel like Pokemon but without any of its redeeming qualities (getting to see my favorite little creature on screen :3). I beat it with no problem but it was so boring and easy I considered using cheats just to read through the story. Which brings me to my next point that I think the game would have benefitted more if it was just a visual novel. The psychological horror element could have been so much stronger if that was the case because I wouldn't have had to play through such a boring game. The soundtrack was good, too, but I don't think I've gone back to listen to anything aside from My Time, but I don't really count that because I actively listened to that song long before this game's release. Overall this game did not add anything to my life aside from a little giggle when I see a gif of basil turning around with a stupid caption over it. I genuinely don't think you will ever find someone who hates this game more than I do.

I don't think anyone expected Larian Studios to take this year by the horns with Baldur's Gate 3. Much less churning remarkable mainstream success and universal critical acclaim to make headlines as GOTY. By the time I'm writing this, it already surpassed Tears of the Kingdom for being the highest rated game of 2023 on Metacritic, maintaining an active player-base which peaked over 875,000 players, became the most pre-ordered game on PSN (beating Insomniac's upcoming Spider-Man 2), and spawning an Elden Ring sized discourse amongst the industry over whether the bar of quality Larian laid down here is economically viable to expect. The Elden Ring comparisons aren't strangely too off-base because just like what Elden Ring had accomplished for open-worlds, Baldur's Gate 3 achieved the same effect for role-playing games moving forward. Larian has done something truly unthinkable with crafting an immensely engaging CRPG with production values comparable to any mainstream AAA video game in the market right now… and making it a colossal commercial success worthy of all the accolades it received.

What we have on our hands here is the western equivalent to Dragon Quest XI. If ya know, ya know. But for the tragically unenlightened, essentially, a grand cohesion of classical genre design sensibilities crossed with the modern technical know-how we’ve become accustomed to nowadays. Marking itself not just a “Greatest Hits Collection RPG”, or y’know, “a game for the older fans”, or, “for people starving a true return to pure BioWare role-playing form”, but a wider encapsulation for what the role-playing genre has accomplished. How far we’ve gone since the archaic days of grid paper and pencils, yet reminding us of the potential still not fully tapped despite what our favorite generational RPGs led us to believe. Baldur's Gate 3 isn't a nostalgic celebration of the genre's preexistence but a pushing triumph for role-playing tomorrow. The best response one may think could disprove my notion in a post-New Vegas world is the other role-playing critical darling released in recent years, similarly taking loving homage and inspiration to its CRPG roots -- Disco Elysium. A fair response. I deeply admire and love that game, even with the messy controversy going on behind-the-scenes, but Disco Elysium only captures the specific cerebral aspect of the role-playing experience to reinvent the appeal of the genre. Not to discredit the artistic ambition on display, but I believe that’s still a limited showcase for making a passionate case about the true quality the role-playing genre can offer. Baldur’s Gate III captures something much grander, more all-encompassing, more than the sum of its parts taken all across the RPGverse. Obviously, there are shades of the original Baldur’s Gate games, but there’s also shades of Neverwinter Nights, Planescape: Torment, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Dragon Age: Origins, Fallout, and unintentionally Deus Ex with how reactive the systems and mechanics are to break them in creatively advantageous ways that made the developers surprised. But the game’s roots travel deeper beyond those role-playing titles making up the genre for the past decades. Thanks to its usage of the Forgotten Realms setting, it reaches the essence for why these games are truly enjoyable experiences.

Dungeons & Dragons is something worth considering whenever we approach the topic for role-playing video games and what’s the unique appeal for them weighed alongside different genres. It’s the origin point for where it all stemmed from; The Dungeon Master creates an elaborate campaign with his merry band of social misfits to play part of, engaging with their own imagination and creativity to battle the imaginative odds thrown at them. That’s the breaking-it-down-to-bare-essentials of the usual D&D experience but it’s the backbone for every RPG since then. Just replace “Dungeon Master” with “[insert name of developer]”, replace “Campaign” with “Story/Main Quest”, and the player is just you, the actual gamer, with his band of party members and companions. I think these are roots we don’t really keep conscious of anymore with newer strings of RPGs, because the execution and quality can be scattershot, but Balder’s Gate 3 is the one I’ve played that feels the most authentic to that original tabletop experience being replicated through this medium. There’s this overwhelming sense of confidence in what it’s doing, how it’s doing it, and the why behind it all that radiates such big dick energy and a sense of liberating player freedom I haven’t encountered since Fallout: New Vegas. The Assault on the Moonrise Towers, breaking into the House of Hope to duking it out with the dastardly devilish Raphael, the hyper intense time sensitive prison breakout of The Iron Throne, and even the final battle are highlights where you can feel this freedom being exercised the most. The combat encounters in this game, rarely, feel just monotonous or unfair. You’re given so much flexibility in how to approach enemies through you and your party members’ unique skill-set or interacting with the environment. It plays like how you probably would ideally think and RPG would in your weird little head. There’s a group of enemies huddled together? Just throw a barrel of oil at them and set the ground before them on fire with an arrow or cast a spell. Having trouble with a really tough individual enemy or boss you have little confidence in whittling down? With enough strength, and passing a dice roll based on that, you can just push them off the ledge nearby and that’ll do it! You can even master the art of prep-time by having your main playable character be in dialogue with an enemy before combat triggers and switch to your other free party members to set up traps around them to get the complete upper-hand in battle. If you’re lucky, it’s even over before your entire turn ends. Outside of combat, you may be banned from a certain Sorcerous Sundries but with the help of a spell that disguises your appearance the NPCs treat you like they’ve never met you before, restarting their dialogue history with you. What I love the most about everything I’ve described you can do in the game is that although some may overshoot what the developers intended as possible creative solutions to certain obstacles, the game is designed so flexible that it never feels like an invalid choice but a testament to your imagination at play in/out of combat.

The overarching grand story of Baldur’s Gate 3 may not be one of the greatest stories ever told or anything like that but it’s such a damn memorable adventure. It’s supported by a cast of party members who embody different but altogether aspects of what makes this game so addicting. It follows the mold of what certain Black Isle/Obsidian games have troped where they’re all a dysfunctional group of outcasts with layers worth peeling to get to the core of what ultimately unites them together -- personal torment -- and how they follow who could be the most tormented of them all, could mend their inner conflicts, or make it worse. I need to give proper applause to the stellar voice cast behind these party members; especially to Neil Newborn as Astarion who put more than 100% of his energy into delivering this assignment, giving life to the fan favorite poster boy of this game. A pedestal which is rightly deserved, much as the rest of the core party. What I love the most about these personal stories each companion has is how integral, through varying degrees, they are to the main plot. They’re not really just awkward non-important side stories that don’t bleed into the main story at all, creating a weird disconnect from how they’ve grown in those personal quests compared to how they act in the main one. That actually goes for so many of the side quests beyond the companions’ for this game, almost none of them feel inconsequential or meaningless detours because they all end up spiraling into each other to some extent. Throughout my playthrough, it surprised me at how my choices for some of these ended up being vital for how some of the bigger, plot important quests were approached. Especially for how it builds an interesting narrative of what’s basically a power struggle between the true masters behind the Absolute, the Harpers, the Guild, the Githyanki, a Vampire Lord, the Shar, high-ranking devils from the Nine Hells, and [spoiler]. There really isn’t any actual politics present in these, at most it’s kinda relegated to the background, but it still works well in presenting a setting like Forgotten Realms as something you’re a mere adventurer of. A sprawling, bustling canvas you’d have to sink so much of not just your time and diligence but your own personality into the mix too.

That’s the underlying quality for what makes Baldur’s Gate 3 not just one of the best role-playing games I’ve played in recent memory, but one of the very best I’ll ever play. Larian understood the ingredient needed to make a game in a genre like this incredibly special is the attention towards the relationship between the game -- or more aptly, the developer -- and the player themselves. Like in an D&D campaign, tying this back to earlier, the back-and-forth relationship between the Dungeon Master and the player(s). Your experience in this game is going to differ from mine and any other person’s playthrough because of the sheer interactivity woven in the gameplay and how the story is carved by your mindset and choices. It probably doesn’t have the full branching depth as Fallout: New Vegas, nor reaches the passionate deeper narrative thinking of Disco Elysium, but what it has over those two is reminding you why role-playing games, the grand adventure you partake in, resonates within some of us because all it takes for it to come alive is fully trusting the player and their imagination.

an endless parade of loading and transition screens. the worst performance you have ever seen so that ten thousand milk cartons can be realistically simulated in real time in zero gravity. strangers walking up to you and telling their life story so you can do a mission that you will not remember in five minutes. holding W (sometimes shift!) so you can explore the wonders of Abandoned Mining Outpost #584. the possibility of alien life turned into a chore. when you think of discovery, wonder, and adventure, i hope you think of lifeless worlds and fast travel menus, because that's all this is. what a joke