I really didn't enjoy the time I spent with Chained Echoes. The gameplay feels almost wholly unconsidered in a way that I just found frustrating. The writing is truly abysmal where it isn't simply cribbing from other sources. The mostly excellent spritework and beautiful world failed to make up for these shortcomings for me, so I abandoned it.

Visually, Chained Echoes is mostly really good. I like this sprite style, it is a bit like Final Fantasy Tactics, though the characters are somewhat more dead-eyed. The environments are detailed and interesting, though things are thrown together in a way that is more busy than helpful, with unclear walking paths and surprise obstructions being common. There isn't much in the way of dynamic or interesting animation going on, however. Most of the action feels very flat.

The writing is pretty unreadable. It isn't even grammatical errors; it is just that almost every line is juvenile or amateurish. If the game didn't try to take its themes so seriously, this might not be so much of a problem, but as is I found it intolerable for the entirety of my play.
The narrative is a mess. When the writing isn't just bad, the events that are taking place are unmotivated and arbitrary. New characters are introduced with surprise twists that don't make sense. Established characters take actions that are unmotivated and seem to just be based on the archetype that character is based on. Events are interrupted by disconnected cutscenes that have no apparent relation or baring on the story being told. I am sure some of this comes back around by the end of the game, but as presented it is just a nonsensical mashup of Berserk, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Chrono Trigger.
I didn't experience anything in this game that wasn't a pale reflection of some better piece of media saddled with grating dialog and annoying characterizations.

Making up for a weak story with compelling gameplay is a JRPG staple from way back, but Chained Echoes can't deliver here either. It presents a combat system that feels fresh and unique but breaks down almost immediately upon use. The multivarious other systems in the game all feel similarly unconsidered or simply pointless.
Combat centers around an overdrive gauge and a number of typed abilities characters have. Attacking or being attacked raises your overdrive, which puts you into a powered-up mode (until you overheat, then you just take extra damage), while defending or using an ability of a type chosen at random every turn lowers your overdrive. This seems like a cool system you are encouraged to keep in balance, but in practice it just serves to force you into performing actions that don't have value and undermine the other, combo-focused nature of the attacks your characters use. A more thoughtful approach to character ability types, a more flexible version of the overdrive gauge, or more balanced costs/benefits to things like attack and defense would probably solve this entirely, but as presented it just feels unfun and arbitrary most of the time. The mechs use an even more uninteresting and broken version of this system that isn't worth talking about.
Chained Echoes has a lot of other gameplay systems at play. You get equipment upgrades, gems to harvest, combine in an overcomplicated crafting matrix, and slot into that equipment, buried treasure around each map, a Suikoden-style NPC recruiting system, a Final Fantasy 12-style goods trading/selling system, narratively bound leveling, and sub-classes you can unlock, advance in, and master. Most of this feels, at best, ignorable, but usually just tedious and pointless.
Gem crafting involves harvesting from points around the world (you can influence what you get in a way that isn't clear or really even effective) then combining gems together to get better versions of those gems. So much of this system runs on arbitrary, unexplained rules (natural vs artificial gems? gem tier levels? gem types?) and the interface for using it is so tedious that it just isn't worth engaging with in any way.
Equipment consists of simple, straight upgrades you find as you go. Each character has one weapon type (and is the only character that can use that weapon type) and their upgrade paths are linear. You can forge individual upgrades for each weapon, but there isn't a reason to.
Sub-classes are found throughout the world (you need a special item to unlock them -- I always had one and never had to make any decisions around using the item, so...?) and can give your characters new abilities. Usually these are just worse versions of some ability another character has, but some of them can be interesting. Unfortunately they are just completely overshadowed by the basic abilities of each character, so the sub-classes themselves never seemed to have a real point or generate much interest.
Almost every system in the game is similarly undercooked or flawed in ways that just feel like everything was thrown in without much consideration of value, cohesiveness, or design. The one counterexample is a mini-quest board you unlock that gives you small rewards for doing mundane things in each area -- it IS cool to search these things out, complete them, and the board works in a way that was obviously ripped straight from FF12's job board.

Chained Echoes really didn't work for me. Almost every gameplay system is more frustrating, tedious, or broken than interesting and every narrative beat, character, and line of dialog is simply bad.
If you are super nostalgic for the era of game Chained Echoes is invoking, playing Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, or Suikoden are better options. Chained Echoes simply doesn't deliver.

Tales of Kenzera: Zau is a really smartly made game. It takes Ori and the Blind Forest as a basis, iterates a bit on the mechanics, and uses it to tell a heartfelt and touching story explored through an authentic and interesting worldview. I liked my time with it quite a bit despite some of its rough edges.

Zau looks amazing and delivers its straightforward story of loss and acceptance extremely well. This is a colorful, vibrant world and exploring it is a ton of fun. You get glimpses of a future Africa that is inspiring and cool while maintaining obvious cultural influences, set alongside an examination of a tribal belief system that is portrayed masterfully without becoming preachy or self-absorbed. All of that rolls directly into the two main characters dealing with the loss of a father and their agency in the world.
This is where the game shines the strongest for me. Everything about it from the voice acting to the enemy and environment design showcase the team's dedication to telling this story in exactly this way.

The world design here is very linear. It hardly feels much like a metroidvania, but I didn't feel like I was missing anything in that regard. Each area has a couple of keys for you to collect to unlock a door, a new ability to gain, and a boss to fight. A lot of the narrative is smartly driven through Zau's interactions with the people he meets and the problems they have, so the linear nature of the game works very well, honestly. I found these simple stories compelling and I really like that they tie directly into Zau's own struggle of dealing with the death of his father in interesting and insightful ways.

Playing Tales of Kenzera: Zau, it is obvious that it is heavily influenced by Ori, with a couple of interesting twists. The main mechanic here is the ability to switch between two forms. This isn't an Ikaruga-style polarity shift though, it is more like two different move sets you swap between depending on the situation. Though it can be a bit confusing, I do like this mechanic. It feels very awesome to freeze an enemy, dash into them and swap for a melee combo, then dash back out to finish them with a ranged barrage, but the times this is possible are less common than I would like.
The combat system needs a couple of things to enable a bit more control and enemies that are more readable and predictable to really shine. A Moon-stance gap closer that automatically switches you to Sun and the reverse for Sun-stance would have gone a long way for me to make these Shaman powers feel fluid and like the dance the narrative of the game describes it as. Enemies have uninterruptable attacks without any real tells and some enemy types are so mobile and have such large invulnerability windows that it feels like the only way to successfully engage with them is to abuse freeze and kill them from range.
Beyond the base combat, you gain a couple of specialized ranged attacks, a grappling hook (that is sorely underutilized), and some other movement focused abilities. These all feel pretty good to gain and are used in fun, if predictable ways as you progress. Unfortunately, most of these new abilities are relegated to the areas you find them in. Even abilities like the grappling hook, which would make the world much more fun to traverse, feel like they are just forgotten about once you finish the area they are introduced in. It feels like a real missed opportunity, unfortunately.

A bit of control jank means Zau always feels just a bit out of control (this DOES fit his characterization, but doesn't feel good) and you often end up with your dashes or attacks not executing as you would want them to. Similarly, I never really felt like the abilities executed as reliably as I would want them to, simply because of control delays or failed inputs. It is very common to get into a state where the input stops responding or just fails to work.

For Surgent Studio's first effort, Tales of Kenzera: Zau is really solid and fun. Similar to Kena: Bridge of Spirits, it is clear there is room for improvement, but Zau exposes its strengths much more effectively and tries for some interesting gameplay iteration. It is worth playing through this just for the very effectively expressed narrative, but if you are a fan of Ori and the Blind Forest or other side-scrolling adventure games, you will definitely find a lot here.

13 Sentinels is telling an engaging story with some really good characters. The gameplay falls down for me in both sections of the game, however. The visual novel parts don't do enough to make things compelling in an interactive way and the tactical battles are flashy and interesting at first but wear out their welcome pretty quickly.

The story is somewhat unique, taking a couple of different sci-fi tropes and mashing them up in a new way. I found the twist to be very obvious from about halfway through the game, though the details were still engaging to uncover, and the characters' individual journeys were still interesting.
The character stories are the real focus here and they mostly deliver on an individual basis. A couple of them suffer from feeling vestigial or unrelated to the actual narrative. Vanillaware ran into this with Odin Sphere as well -- they are trying to give everyone equal screentime without having an equal amount to say for every character. Megumi and Nenji for example just feel like their stories are drawn out or unnecessary in a way that I got pretty tired of. On the flip side, Natsuno, Yuki, Hijiyama, and Miura all work really well and weave together in interesting ways. 
The game is also very obsessed with pairing up the cast (which sort of makes sense in the end but is still weird) in ways that are not always natural or even believable. I don't think most of the 'relationships' the game adds do more for the narrative or character development than regular ass friendships would, and in most cases just detract from what is going on or feel like nonsense.

All that narrative is presented in a very slick visual novel wrapper. You get a very small amount of agency here (you can walk around and choose conversation topics) but really you are just hunting for the next thing to do to advance the very linear plot. I liked this at first, but I don't actually think the gameplay here justifies this being better than simply reading or watching it in a linear media format would. This is a general problem with visual novels though, so you kind of go in expecting it.
These sections look amazing, of course. The backgrounds are varied and beautiful and the characters are all unique and expressive. I like the more realistic style Vanillaware has opted for here, as compared to their usual Adonis/Venus inspired character designs.
The tactical layer is very cool looking and flashy. I really like the way this is presented, in a very simplified visual style with some smart hand-drawn intercuts and flourishes. It does manage to be somewhat exciting and tense... in the beginning. Some choice and depth is gestured at with different generation of mechs being available and different upgrades you can choose, but the differences were obvious enough and couldn't really be leveraged to change your approach or gameplay in many significant ways (beyond one or two abilities). There simply isn't a ton of strategy here, unfortunately, and this mode has more presence in the game than its depth can support.

13 Sentinels is a cool game that does a lot to bring me along despite being a type of game I am not usually drawn to. The story could be tightened up a bit and my choices could matter more, but that honestly isn't really what this sort of game is going for. If you are a fan of Vanillaware or this style of game, I don't think you can go wrong giving this a shot.

Sekiro has such a clear vision and style and is trying new things for From Software in a couple of different vectors. This game plays much differently than Dark Souls and the world building and storytelling are also much removed from From's typical approach. I enjoyed my time with it, but it doesn't work for me quite as well overall.

Sekiro is about parrying in a way that no other souls game is. You will have to rewire your Souls habits to succeed here, but a couple of smart decisions make the onramp manageable. Parry windows are extremely generous and failing usually just means you block (which has other negatives). It is a super interesting combat system that I had a good time learning, despite some of the cracks showing by midgame.
Enemies have poise that you parry, deflect, and clash your way through, whereupon you can score an execution, killing them immediately. Bosses take 2 or 3, usually marking specific delineations for their phases. This is a cool reward moment that makes these fights feel like balletic swords duels when it works, clashing back and forth as you learn their attacks and exploit them. Fights like Jinsuke Saze and O'Rin of the Water feel incredible as you learn their attacks and execute them perfectly. Your first attempt will be 5 minutes of healing, defending, and looking for opportunities while your winning attempt will be 30 seconds of attacks, parries, and executions. I haven't gotten quite this feeling of complete mastery from any other Souls game.
This is unfortunately undercut in many fights by the fact that poise regenerates very quickly when an enemy is at full health, so you will spend much of the battle trying to deal vitality damage to them so that you can finally parry them into an execution. It becomes a tedious and rote exploitation of their positioning and movement that simply doesn't work.
Some unclear UX around perilous attacks makes things a bit more frustrating and fiddly than it probably should be which is exacerbated by the camera and lockon system not playing that nicely with multiple enemies (each of which is doing a perilous attack on you, good luck!).
The lack of any particular ability to customize your build gives the game a very intentional feel, but also made me feel locked into playing a particular way that could sometimes be more frustrating than fun.
The negatives weren't quite enough to ruin the game for me. I did cheat my way through the final boss and don't feel bad about it.

Narrative in Sekiro is trying to be more linear and straightforward than other From games and they don't quite deliver. There is a coherent throughline, but a lot of what happens and why is either unclear or based in some lore or actual Japanese history I don't understand. There are side areas, but the progression here feels very linear, with basically one way to go to proceed and a lot of story-based area gating. It is fine for what it is, but trades From's strength (narrative through world-building and inference) for their weakness (narrative through direct linear plotting).

I love the style and look of this game. It has muted visuals punctuated by bold colors and environments that are grounded but extremely surreal. Enemies are all based in Japanese history and myth which gives things an authentic and compelling edge while allowing giant serpents, apes, and monkeys firing rifles to exist believably along with spear wielding samurai and agents of the unexplained "Interior Ministry."
Along with Bloodborne, this probably has the most striking and impressive look of any From game.

I like Sekiro quite a bit, but some of the uneven difficulty, combat system weirdness, and narrative stumbles do mar the experience for me. It is worth playing to see how different this sort of combat can be, but don't feel bad about cheating if things get a bit too frustrating.

Hexen II is pretty wild and unlike many other games in some fundamental ways, but it doesn't quite come together into something I particularly enjoyed.

There are hub worlds here with a heavy emphasis on puzzles consisting of finding keys or switches hidden in disparate areas and slowly unlocking more and more of the levels. This gives the game a pretty unique feel even though the weapons, enemies, and story don't really have much to say.
Hexen II diverges from Hexen in that it is actually a Quake-like, rather than a Doom-like. As you might expect this makes things more 3D, more hectic, and quite a bit more ropey. I have never really liked the feel of Quake and Hexen II doesn't do much to fix that, unfortunately. Enemies are incredibly lethal and by the end they are repeating the same few with more hit points. I didn't find much of interest by this point, and it just felt like a slog (I turned on godmode for the final level and I don't regret it).

World design here is strong at times, but inconsistent and the level design can be tedious. I enjoyed the first levels, Blackmarsh, quite a bit and they somehow manage to deliver on the feel of a medieval fantasy quest more completely than Hexen does. There are dungeons, granaries, and shops filled with enemies you can believe have just invaded and driven out the villagers.
Upon leaving this area, you go into a series of differently themed levels (Aztec, Egyptian, and Roman) that took me out of things pretty heavily. Only the Roman one really worked for me, but in general the "collect the random things in this area" nature of the game was just more apparent in these more abstracted areas that lacked the specific world-building of Blackmarsh.
Things do look pretty good, with each area having a distinct, identifiable motif and well done environment art. I do still like the look of pseudo 2D sprite based first person games better by this point in shooter history, but Hexen II looks fine for what it is.

There are four classes here that all seemed pretty interesting, though I only played as the Cleric. Weapons are more like Heretic than Hexen, with nothing to really push me to utilize their specific properties and no enemy behaviors to really mix things up.
We have a hammer, an ice wand that is basically like the mage weapon from Hexen, a staff that is a rocket launcher (phoenix staff from Heretic), and a sun staff that shoots a beam that passes through enemies and bounces off walls. The sun staff was definitely the most interesting, but usage in this game felt mostly like Heretic does -- I just used whichever I had ammo for without much consideration.
Items come back with the same problems. There are a ton of them. Keeping track of what they do is difficult. Scrolling through your massive list to use them is a futile endeavor.
Enemies don't have many unique behaviors, and all have so much health that I couldn't see any discernable weaknesses on display. This is the weakest part of Hexen II for me and the enemy design and interactions in general just feel too much like Quake for me to really enjoy it.

Interesting game that tries to do a bit more with the Hexen formula but largely didn't come through for me. If the whole game was at the quality level of Blackmarsh and the weapons and enemies were a bit more interesting I would have liked it much more I think.

Steelrising is Spiders' most impressive effort yet. I was skeptical of their ability to push themselves into creating a true soulslike game, but Steelrising delivers. There is quite a bit of jank and budget here, but I liked this game a lot.

The gameplay is fairly standard action RPG combat that is responsive, but can feel a bit loose at times. Defense has an emphasis on dodging and the game is very permissive here, with generous iframes and stamina usage. I used a fast, dual-wielding elemental build and found the difficulty to be essentially negligible for the whole game, which is fine -- I am not playing a Spiders game for the extreme challenge and, to be honest, I don't know if their mechanics can really deliver.
Combat centered around elemental effects for me (I think other builds would be straight damage or poise breaking), and each of them has a unique effect that is fun to try to play around and stack (though ice is just overpowered). Enemy resistances also have a big impact on which you can lean on, so type matching can keep things a bit interesting even when the lack of enemy variety becomes apparent.
There is a cool mechanic that lets you hit a button when you run completely out of stamina to gain it back instantly, a bit like a perfect reload in Gears of War. It puts a stacking debuff on you, but if you play well it can allow you to have near infinite stamina, which feels satisfying and effective. A weird bug where sometimes it gets in a state where you can't regen and can't trigger the recovery does sour it a bit, unfortunately.
This game is the best playing of Spiders games thus far and I was legitimately surprised by how much I enjoyed the gameplay. It is just expressive enough to be fun and not so punishing that the jank and inexactness of the mechanics feels bad.

Steelrising looks good. I don't think I like it visually quite as much as Greedfall and it definitely feels like there is less actual variety to the environments -- you will only ever see French cities, gardens, and some rural areas. They nail a certain level of oppressiveness here that matches the chaotic French Revolution setting very well. Steelrising doesn't shy away from the horror of the historic event even while injecting it with a weird clockwork army twist.
I really like the designs of the machines here, especially in contrast to the player character, Aegis. Enemy machines are mostly jangly weirdos who flop around, making their attacks initially feel very unpredictable and hard to deal with. Aegis (as a dancer) is fluid and lets you feel like you are literally dancing circles around enemies while you fight them. It is a cool take on this clockwork aesthetic that feels unique as compared to Steelrising's contemporaries.
As I mentioned earlier, there really aren't enough enemy types in the game, with many of them being reused with different elemental types. In general, the game content is just stretched too thin. This is pretty surprising, as I felt like Greedfall managed to make really good choices about how to use its content and didn't overstay its welcome quite as much as Steelrising manages to.

The story here is pretty wild and Spiders leans all the way into it. This is a retelling of the French Revolution (including all of the major historic players) but with Louis XVI using a clockwork army to enact his oppression on the people. Things get a bit weird with the members of Estates General speaking at length about liberty and politics and country while an army of automatons is killing everyone, but I am here for it. You make some choices about which factions to prop up that I am sure I would have understood if I knew anything about history. I went with Lafayette because he seems like a cool dude in Hamilton, but he is probably a fascist, so, you win some you lose some.
Spiders is a French studio and it is great to see them tackle their home turf like this. You can see the passion and lived experience in their capturing of the city of Paris and the general feel of the environments.
All the acting is fairly well done, despite the animation only delivering about 30% of the time (again, budget). There are a couple of standouts such as Nicolas Flamel, who is over the top in just the right way. I was also very impressed with Aegis as she (somewhat predictably) becomes less robotic over the course of the game and the acting choices are subtle and believable with a final performance that is super solid.

I liked Steelrising and am happy that it continues Spiders' general upward trend. I think the world and storytelling in Greedfall is a bit better, but the gameplay in Steelrising is much better than any of their previous games and I had a good time throughout!

Like the Heretic expansion, this one is just more Hexen but harder. There aren't any new mechanics and most of the execution is strictly worse than the base game.

Deathkings has some interesting level design and they persist with the hub structure here from Hexen. These levels feel a bit more gamey, though, with less discovery and mystery around how to complete them (for better and worse). This game also uses verticality in a novel way for the series thus far and even has some rudimentary navigation puzzles that feel a bit more cerebral.

Unfortunately, any interesting things the levels are doing is brought down by the encounter design. Almost every room in the game contains a horde of monsters you just chew through. Anything interesting about the weapon and enemy interactions is thrown away in favor of quantity and the game really suffers for it. On top of that, the already pointless and annoying respawning ettins have been replaced with respawning slaughtaurs (I think? the shield knight guys) which are just annoying to deal with, especially in these quantities.

Hexen is such a good exploration of a different take on Doom level design while trying some new and interesting weapons and enemies and this expansion just doesn't succeed in the same way for me. Encounters are tedious and nothing new is really introduced to make this worth playing.

I had a good time with Hexen: Beyond Heretic. The focus here is on one of three characters with a much more limited set of weapons and enemies with more specific behavior than you see in Heretic. This works much better for me and (along with more emphasis on melee options) gives the combat a more tactical feel that brings it back towards some combination of Doom and, strangely, King's Field.

I like the class dichotomy in Hexen and all of the weapons for each class are unique and interesting in some way. I played as the Cleric and, similar to how Doom's ammo works, found each weapon was useful up until the very end of the game (even the Mace). Weapons cause hit reactions you can exploit and your positioning and movement as you dodge attacks is a major factor in your success. This isn't quite as intentional and exacting as King's Field, but it feels like you can just see the Kingdom of Verdite from here.
This weapon system just hangs together better than anything that exists in Heretic. Ammo matters, weapon idiosyncrasies matter, and enemy type and abilities matter. Gathering the pieces to find my ultimate weapon by the end is super cool and the Cleric's version (Wraithverge) is powerful but not a skeleton key for every enemy in the game.
Carried over from Heretic are the massive amount of items in the game. I didn't find these to be too compelling, but I felt like the game intended me to use them, which absolutely makes things feel more like a fantasy adventure. The interface isn't exactly great... just a giant list of items you tab through to select and use the one you want, but it is good enough and I mainly just found myself flipping between the health potion and poison bombs anyway.

Level design in Hexen is a major swing that is unique and interesting, but stumbles quite a bit. This is set up more like an adventure that, again, echoed a bit of King's Field for me. The simple "find a key and use it in a door" gameplay of Doom is twisted here to present sprawling, interconnected levels where you are solving very complicated puzzles between them to open doors and progress. Unfortunately you are often left wandering around looking for the one switch you overlooked or the newly opened passage in an area you have already cleared out. The level connections are fairly arbitrary and the levels themselves have a large amount of symmetry and repeated geometry that makes it hard to really get a sense of the map as a whole. It does get a bit tedious, with on-screen hints like "Something changed in Seven Portals!" being at best, completely unhelpful.
In the end, there is also just too much game here. Too many levels and each is slightly too large. With a bit more restraint and thoughtful design, this game could be truly amazing.

Hexen looks great. This is fantasy Doom-style pixel art with some iconic monsters and interesting, gothic environments. Things get a bit samey by the end, probably due to just the length again.

I had a much better time with Hexen than I did with Heretic. I think it is just a better game all around and I love that they are taking the base Doom formula, adding some new interesting weapons, and pushing the level design to the extreme. It really feels like the team reassessed what makes Doom good and what they missed with Heretic and built this weird, ambitious game out of it.

These last two episodes feel like the dev team came back to this game and their only idea was "What if we made it HARDER?" They don't have anything more to offer than is provided in the first three, unfortunately.

The weaponry and enemies feel even more uninspired at this point, without a ton of room for expression of either one. These episodes don't have any new weapons, items, or enemies and they suffer for it. Encounters feel like a bunch of enemies thrown into a room and weapons are mostly just used thoughtlessly until their ammo runs out and you switch to a different one.

Some of the levels gesture at environmental storytelling, with architecture that seems more evocative and interesting or specific areas with a theme. In Shadow of the Serpent Riders you are fighting your way into castles or dealing with fast-flowing rivers, but none of this rises beyond the most basic representation. In the end they are all just rooms full of tons of enemies, rather than doing something creative with the gameplay to match these environments.

I didn't have much fun with either of these two episodes and with nothing of significance added they only serve to make the base game go on for much longer than the mechanics can sustain. I don't think Heretic is really worth playing through and these two episodes definitely are not. Skip them!

I had a really good time with Lies of P. It is mimicking a lot of things from the SoulsBorne canon but it plays the part extremely well and even has a few tricks of its own that make things interesting.

This game plays a bit like Bloodborne and a bit like Sekiro. It is very parry heavy, though I found the parrying to be not quite as forgiving (though also not quite as necessary) as in Sekiro. There is some Bloodborne in there as well though -- blocking temporarily costs life that you can regain by attacking, similar to the rally system.
Lies of P executes all of this extremely well. This is the first game in this genre that I have played that I would truly say plays as well as a From game does. The weapons feel heavy but responsive, attacks feel fair, and though the bosses are mostly pretty easy (especially if you summon help) many of them feel like they could fit into a souls game, in terms of abilities and strategy.
The similarities do end there, however, for better and worse.

Some of the systems are really cool. Weapons you find along your journey are split into blades and handles, which can be mixed and matched. The handle provides the moveset and stat scaling for the weapon. The blade provides the form factor and damage types. The system breaks down a little bit in that certain handles are usually going to be better for certain weapon types, so your choices are more limited than they seem. Additionally, the advance weapons (special damage type) only really scale with advance handles, so if you are going that route (as I was) you are even more limited. I liked playing with this system, but broader upgrades for the handles and more ability to feasibly form combinations would have gone a long way.
Similarly, equipment is streamlined to the point that it basically doesn't need to exist. You can make a few choices about status effect resistance or type damage resistance, but it feels perfunctory at best.
The damage types themselves felt good though. Acid, Fire, and Electricity each have some weapons and equipment that apply them and have special effects. Additionally they work better or worse on different enemy types, which I enjoyed. Swapping to a new weapon type when entering a new area based on the enemies I found there gave me a bit of a Monster Hunter flavor, with preparation having a larger part here than in other Soulslikes I have played.

The world design is a pretty big disappointment, unfortunately. There are a lot of cool environments with circuitous routes through them that make sense given the chaotic state of the city. Each area, however occurs in a strictly linear fashion. They unlock like chapters and you tackle them in order, only really returning for plot events that essentially turn previous areas into new levels. Lies of P has basically none of the exploration and self-determined area order that the best entries in the genre provide.
It does work ok with the very linear nature of the story and the journey that P is on here, but it just isn't as satisfying as it could be even though the levels themselves are fun to fight through. It is telling that this is a major negative to me, but most everything else about the game is strong enough to make up for it.

Lies of P has a premise that didn't initially appeal to me, but Neowiz leans so hard into the Pinocchio story that you have to respect it and things actually end up being pretty compelling. I really like all of the crossovers with the book and it was fun to see what was going to come up given that my knowledge of the story is vague at best. The world they explore here of alchemists and puppets with hidden agendas and opaque history ended up feeling very cool to me for most of my playthrough.

I liked this game a lot and will probably return to it for another playthrough at some point. Despite the lack of autonomy and choice for how to tackle things, the gameplay itself is so solid that things just feel really great. I am looking forward to DLC for the title and will be paying attention to whatever Neowiz comes out with next!

Heretic is ok but feels like it misses most of what makes Doom good. It is cool to see some new weapons and enemies but there isn't much beyond that.

The level design here is more straightforward, with almost every mission just being a collect the keys in order as you fight through rooms of enemies sort of affair. There are a couple with some interesting teleportation or exploration challenges, but for the most part these feel like straightforward, fantasy caves and temples. I do like that the levels feel much different than Doom though.
I like the art in Heretic quite a bit. It presents a bright, Saturday morning cartoon version of fantasy with saturated colors and lighting that gives it quite a contrast to the dark hellscapes of Doom. Things like the final boss, D'Sparil being the guy that you have seen over and over in the stained glass windows throughout your ordeal are cute and fun.

The weapons start out promising but the team seems to run out of ideas fairly quickly and most of them fail to really make a case for their inclusion here. Individual weapons don't feel suited to defeating particular enemies or particular challenges and where Doom makes your ammo resource an interesting source of power increase (from the pistol to the chain gun) or decision-making (between the energy rifle and the BFG), ammo here just ammo. Each weapon has a different type and you sort of cycle through your armaments as you run low on a particular type. It isn't really very satisfying or fun.
The Spectral Crossbow is by far the standout to me, with its somewhat interesting shot pattern it functions like a hybrid of a shotgun and a sniper rifle.
Enemy design doesn't do the weapon designs any favors. New enemies are introduced throughout most of this three episode campaign and they have different attacks, but your approach to them never really changes. Fighting a Maulotaur is basically no different than fighting a golem, it just goes on for longer.

Heretic plays well enough, but definitely feels like a by the book proof of concept done by a team that didn't really have a clear idea of what makes Doom's systems or level design work. I do love the swing at making this weird, fantasy fast-follow to Doom even if it ends up being a fairly mundane experience to play through.

Caves of Qud is a classic roguelike with a very creative and evocative world to explore. Some structural problems don't really stop the character customization and world building from carrying this game to a really incredible experience that I will be following for a long time.

The world-building here is amazing, especially considering it is very procedural, stringing together a Gamma World sort of environment with generated factions and communities for you to explore and discover. The consistent themes of self modification (through mutation or technology), discovery (from ancient technology to the local recipe for soup), and collaboration makes the world of Qud an amazing and evocative one to explore. This also leads to Praetorian death squads warping into the map and killing you instantly on occasion, which can feel bad. The unpredictable, dangerous, and weird bend of everything around you does serve to keep you on your toes despite some structural monotony you can run into.

Structurally it is similar in a lot of ways to Tales of Maj'eyal. There is an overworld that is static from seed to seed but a higher level of fidelity than ToME makes every piece of this world generated and explorable. This ends up giving you a specific goal that is always the same while the individual places you explore, creatures you meet, and items you find are different.
I found this static structure to be the biggest weakness of the game. Creating unique builds and characters is fun but the actual experience run to run ends up feeling very linear and samey. You will always progress to Grit Gate, Golgotha, and Bethesda Susa and the experience of each will be largely the same. Like ToME, the level-based danger of these areas means you will probably go through the same steps to surmount them as well making the beginning of the game feel like rote preparation for these challenges.

Creating your character in Qud is in-depth but made simpler by a bunch of premades that give varied experiences and work well. Broadly you are choosing between a mutant or a 'true-kin' (full human able to install cybernetics), and then specializing in a number of abilities, weapons, or attack types. It feels as cool to put together a 4-armed freak with a turtle shell who zaps people with super-charged static electricity as it does to roll around the world cobbling yourself into a cyborg death machine from discarded ancient technology. There are a few things that feel like traps or vestigial remnants of old development explorations, but the constant rate of updates to this game sees many things get phased out and replaced with interesting new toys.

Qud is a beautiful game, going a step beyond ascii to a character set that is evocative, expressive, and interesting. The color palette works especially well here. I love the muted colors that are still varied and used expertly to delineate different areas, creatures, and dangers.
Some size wonkiness and wildly swinging threat levels can make things play a bit badly on occasion. It is weird to see a crystalline structure the size of a mountain that takes up the same amount of space as a snapping turtle. It can be a bad experience when a guy that looks basically like most other wasteland guys you see kills you from across the map with a high-powered laser rifle.

The sometimes weird balance aside, playing Qud is an experience that isn't replicated in any other game. This is the Dwarf Fortress of classic roguelikes and has as much depth, interest, and fun as you would expect from that description. Freehold Games has created a classic here and I expect it to only get better as they continue to expand and refine it.

I liked Geneforge 1: Mutagen better than either of the Queen's Wish series, though there still isn't much here that sticks with me.

The major problems here are that the gameplay is just too repetitive and samey and the whole of the game itself goes on for too long without enough to say or introduce. Similar problems to Queen's Wish. This seems like a Spiderweb constant to me.
Being an individual character that summons minions does work better than the party based approach in Queen's Wish. I played as an Agent, which basically just becomes a mage by the end of the game, blasting everything down without too much of an issue. I used summons for the first part of the game, but their power and value fell away by the end and I just stopped summoning them (which is probably intended with the character I built).
Things feel very random in this game, unfortunately, with arbitrary stuns or slows having a massive impact on a fight going from intensely difficult to completely trivial. This does cut both ways, but every combat sort of resolves into who can stun who first. Not much of interest here by the end.
I will say that some of the summons and some of the spells are interesting and have some positional gameplay, but the aforementioned stun meta sort of removes most of that anyway.
Exploration is sort of novel, with each zone you travel through having some specific task you can do to make it "safer," allowing fast travel through it. As you progress you are making a network of conquered areas across the island that, while extremely meta, feels like you are having an impact on this island and your place in it.

Narratively there are also a lot of parallels here with Queen's Wish, with three factions you are dealing with as you smash your way across this island. Each of them has a different philosophy and you are sort of picking which of them to support (or just doing your own thing). I didn't find this super compelling and the actual divisions between the factions feel pretty contrived. This feels more like Shin Megami Tensei than Bioware, which is novel for a western RPG.
There is maybe something being said about slavery and the responsibility of a creator to their creations, but things feel incidental because none of it is really tied to my goal (getting off the island) or the overall problem here (the Geneforge).
Geneforge suffers for having a lot of very similar characters, similar groups, and similar situations that make it seem like there are valuable interactions to be had, but really don't matter and sort of blur together by the end.
Just like Queen's Wish, if half of this game's content were removed it would simply be a better, cleaner, and more engrossing experience.

The game is visually just fine. It needs reactivity more than it needs fidelity though this remaster does improve things slightly in both respects.

Geneforge didn't surprise me and didn't really impress me, but I think this more straightforward RPG quest is a better fit for these Spiderweb games and I had a good enough time with it.
It brought me along much better than either Queen's Wish did, though I was definitely done with it before the end.

This game has a lot of style and seems to have a lot of substance, but none of it landed for me. It is a narrative heavy game with a narrative that didn't work for me and some cursory gameplay mechanics that are mostly underbaked or just uninteresting.

The story here is of a woman in her 20s returning to a hometown she left for unclear reasons and dealing with the emotional fallout she caused then and that her return has caused now. Simultaneously, she is dealing with an overbearing and disapproving mother and sister and then also generational trauma. The game is trying to say something important here, but it fails for me in a number of ways.
Some interesting and probably realistic depictions of grandmother -> mother -> daughter interactions that just feel very oppressive. I think this is basically the only thing that succeeds, giving you a very good look at this particular interaction and how it affects people. Everything wrapped around it cheapens or undermines it to the extreme for me, or just presents obvious negativity as positive in a way I find hard to reconcile.
The fights. Jala uses emotional attacks against people in the same way her mother and grandmother do. The point here is that generational trauma is bad when pointed at you, but you can use it to bully your friends, I guess? It honestly feels like the parallels are accidental or happenstance or something and it might even be interesting or say something except for...
The resolutions. Everyone you emotionally abuse and treat like shit gives in and becomes your friend (or more than friend) and loves you for it. It is hard to believe this tale of someone having made mistakes, run away, come back and then bullied and berated everyone into thinking she is cool again. This effectively undermines anything the game is trying to say for me and removes the agency (and value of their forgiveness and friendship) that any of the NPCs would otherwise have.
The father. This is the character everyone loves because he is the one rooting for you and letting you fall asleep watching movies with him. I find this trope of accepting, loving father as a port in the storm of dealing with an abusive mother to be extremely toxic. I get that this is a common trope, and he keeps his head down to avoid confrontation, but getting out of the way while your spouse emotionally abuses your children is pretty much in line for me with getting out of the way while your spouse physically abuses your children, no matter how many times he calls his daughter by cute nicknames or gives her an encouraging wave. Like actually just get fucked with that. To be clear, my problem here is not with the realism of the character itself, but with the presentation of it.

The gameplay here is cursory.
The main attraction is turn-based RPG combat, fueled by enemies with some number of mystery vulnerabilities to one of about 5 different debuffs you can inflict. Maybe you can infer which debuff will affect which character by their personality, but at best it just feels like "guess what the writer was thinking."
To make things more interesting (?) you also have a suite of moves that each do more damage to an enemy with a particular debuff already on them. So even if you were going to strategically use the effect of a debuff, the gameplay just pushes you towards putting the debuff on then using your ability that targets that debuff. There isn't really anything of interest either strategically or mechanically here.
Some simple Mario RPG-esque mini games for each attack serve to keep you engaged, but only barely.
The only redeeming part of the gameplay is the cooking game, which uses the same mini-game mechanics from the battle system but applies them to resource management as you follow instructions from your parents on how to make a dish. It is cute and the mini games serve much better in this context to keep things interesting. The only part of the game I sort of liked!
Also, there is a skateboarding minigame that controls terribly, has no real stakes, has a point system that doesn't make sense, and just feels vestigial and pointless.

Visually this game is bright, colorful, and unique. The models and textures are well done, and it has style, though the style itself doesn't particularly appeal to me. It has a lot of wild animations and a ton of variation, though they are strangely poppy and have a ton of really bad interpolation that makes things look very unpolished and bad to me.

This game doesn't work on any level for me. You can definitely see what the team was going for, but the lack of mechanical interest and contradictory narrative and gameplay design just brings the whole thing crashing down.
It is awesome to see this much diversity on every axis -- cultural, sexual orientation, gender identification, etc... It is a real bummer that the game and narrative behind it all is what it is.

Very solid DLC that gives you a reason to come back to this game, has some excellent story (better than the main game), but doesn't quite explore combat in the way I would want a roguelike to.

The gameplay and enemies are, for the most part, directly from the main game. This is a roguelike sort of mode, with some random affixes you collect on each run that usually amount to a certain style of play being more powerful. This worked ok for me, but never felt like it had too much of an impact run over run. For the most part this encourages you to focus on a particular weapon and never really felt like it changes things any more than using that weapon does in the first place, which is a bit of a bummer.
The combat is still very fun and engaging, even in these randomly strung together environments and I never really missed the puzzle solving that the main game has so much of.

The story this DLC is telling is very well done. Valhalla is sort of a stand in for a therapist and Kratos is here to come to terms with his past and figure out his future. It works surprisingly well, and some revisitation of past events and characters is contextualized and accepted in a way that feels powerful. I like this introspective look at a character with a very juvenile and fairly irredeemable initial concept and how that can fit into the current world and story they are trying to tell. The ending is powerful and feels like a real step forward for the franchise without just erasing everything from its past.
This is miles better than anything the base game provides.

I had a good time with this DLC. The gameplay is more Ragnarok with a couple of small twists that can be engaging, but don't do too much to keep things interesting for long. The draw here is absolutely the narrative. This is a powerful part of Kratos' personal journey that is told well and worth experiencing, especially if you have played the previous versions of God of War.