Playtime: 8.5 Hours
Score: 8/10

A great little indie ARPG! So I heard about this game when it came out and it’s been in the backlog for a while until recently I picked it up. These last few weeks have been very hard for me on a personal level, with my mom being in hospital and her recently passing away. This game, though simple, provided a nice distraction from all the bad and for that I will always be grateful for it. But what is the game all about?

The story is pretty simple with you being a prince whose father is killed by some evil Frogs and now you need to rebuild the kingdom and get your revenge. The story was nothing to write home about, but it was enough to keep me going and I felt it had some good moments throughout. While the characters aren’t voiced the game is narrated by actor Doug Cockle, who of course voices Geralt in the Witcher games, and as someone who is a big fan of that series it was a real treat to get his VO here! The man could read the phone book to me and I would be captivated the whole way through!

Combat has that souls-like feel of dodging, blocking and parrying but thankfully there are difficulty settings which is great for me since I’m not that into challenging games. The easy difficulty felt good for me in that it was more forgiving but not brain dead easy and I did die a few times to bosses. The combat does feel very good though, with the hits feeling weighty and satisfying to perform and your character will even perform executions on bigger enemies which are fun to see. Alongside that you get a pretty nice variety of weapons and armors to find which always makes completing quests or defeating bosses satisfying since you get that great reward at the end of it.

The game can be a bit on the shorter side, but it's a satisfying campaign and you do unlock new side quests after the main story, so it's got a bit of an endgame to get through as well. Overall though, I loved this game and I look forward to the sequel!

All Games I have Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-games-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/

2nd time completing Part I, 4th time completing the story of this game.

This time I found the opening 3-4 hours incredibly strong, in a way i've never seen them as before. At one point I even started to ponder if maybe Part I is actually better than Part II. Having completed it, though, Part II is, in plain terms, just a far more ambitious, far more complex and, ultimately, far more impressive achievement.

Still, the original has a ridiculously confident vision behind it and equally gobsmacking execution of that vision. A heartwrenching journey that is 100% the 2nd best game ever, behind it's own continuation. God, what a miracle it is to have these 2 incredible games all for myself until I'm dead and gone.

Sable is a beautiful game with a lot to love but it falls short of its full potential.

The strongest offering is the visuals and the world is a place that I loved to explore. The soundtrack beautifully accompanies the atmosphere and fans of Japanese Breakfast will enjoy this just as much. Quests are varied and at times formative creating a relaxing and enjoyable encounter.

Uniquely the game molds itself around your interests. The tasks that you decide to complete shape the path of your character and the lines blur between narrative and gameplay. There are hidden gems in the world with some of the quests hitting me in the feels and making me appreciative and sad about the whole theme of growing up. The writing is good almost everywhere which makes the story's emotional moments hard.

Despite all of that, the game is held back by myriad of bugs and performance issues and the game trying to punch above it's weight by adding a lot of ideas that never get brought to their fullest potiential.

Sable has a lot going for it but still feels a long way short of greatness.

Now this is a Yakuza game!

This feels to me like a more perfected version of Yakuza 4. Almost everything I didn't like about this game has been severely scaled back or removed entirely, leaving a peak Yakuza experience just before 0, the legacy game that you probably shouldn't start with yet everyone does anyway. Once again, multiple protagonists, and I'm gonna rank em.

Part 1: Kiryu is great

The story starts with Kiryu in Fukuoka, taking up a job as a taxi driver while Haruka is off following her dream. As is expected at this point, some bullshit relating to the Tojo's struggles appears at Kiryu's doorstep and he needs to rejoin the Yakuza to get to the bottom of it. Daigo goes missing in the middle of a power struggle in the Omi Alliance, and the plot is Kiryu piecing things together. It's great, especially seeing Kiryu learn to handle a new life away from the orphanage. As well as that, the taxi minigame is great too! It's basically that joke of 'play GTA but act like a regular citizen' and it's great stuff (minus those suicidal pedestrians like what is up with them) as well as the drag races that occur later on, with all the characters of Kiryu's taxi service being likable characters. Like with 4, 10/10 opening, I loved it. But now we go back to Saejima, yayyyyy...

Part 1: Wait, Saejima's good now?

Saejima's story is about him breaking out of prison (again) It's more interesting than 4, and like Kiryu, it's cool learning about the other inmates. There is some weird pacing with the imagination segments, but it's fine, I guess it's the only way they could fit in combat. Speaking of which, Saejima has fun combat now! He has armour on a lot of his attacks, as well as a larger health pool, actually conveying through gameplay that this is a big man not to be fucked with. But after you escape, you end up in a mountain village, in a sequence of walking through snow and shitty hunting tutorials, and if you were in a Discord server with me, you know I didn't enjoy, especially when hunting and trapping were two separate tutorials that really could have been one. But after that, you get to Sapporo! And my god, a city with side content? Saejima sidequests? Not getting chased down by the cops? It's all I ever wanted! But anyway, while the main plot does become an annoying fetch quest for a bit, it's still super fun to play as Saejima. His section gets a 7/10, the first half is still kinda lame.

Part 3: Wait, this is critical path content?

The next stage is Haruka, now trying to become an Idol. So naturally, this is a rhythm game now. At first, I was into it. The streets are littered with dance battles you can do, and the minigame was kinda fun. But it gets repetitive real fast. A lot of the game is training for the princess league, with you doing the routine of the same songs over and over, alongside some boring side stuff like greeting fans and interviews, so I did end up skipping basically all the side content here. But the story is good. Haruka's staff are all good characters, and it does add enough backstory and intrigue to the main plot that I was invested. One thing I will say is how docile Haruka is now. She was never super aggressive, but she did have a backbone and some of Kiryu's stronger tendencies clearly rubbed off on her in previous games, like when she slapped Mine in Yakuza 3 and did everything she could to protect the orphans. But now? She just kind of accepts shit from rivals like t-set. I get she has to act professional, but even an internal monologue of 'Yo, FUCK these bitches!' would have gone a long way. But overall, I'd give the whole act a 6/10. But regardless, she shares her act with another character, which leads me to...

Part 4: I FUCKING LOVE SHUN AKIYAMA!!!!!!!!

Shun Akiyama opens a branch of his money lending business in Osaka, where Haruka's plot is going down. So he lends his aid to the squad, piecing together the plot as he goes. And he's still a legend, basically everything I loved about him in 4 remains, now with aerial combat because RGG studios knew they weren't beating the Sanji allegations so just rolled with it. But he adds a great deal to Haruka's plot as he figures out the mysteries of her agency. 10/10 again, this guy's a legend.

Part 5: Hey, a new guy

The new character here is Shinada, a former baseball player forced to quit, learning there was some shady business behind what went down in his life. He's a funny guy, a constantly broke loser who makes money by getting laid a bunch (I mean doesn't sound too bad) while fighting more with weapons (I cheesed so much shit with the infinite durability pole you have no idea) his side thing is a baseball sidequest which I didn't bother with, but his plot is fun. All about teaming up with the people he owes money to to uncover the conspiracy behind his baseball career and how it ties into the main plot. 9/10, he's great.

Part 6: You tried your best with that finale, guys.

So, all the parties come together, the plots in motion. It's time to finish this.
The finale actually starts strong, with everyone getting together in Kamorocho and heading out to stop the villain's scheme, with only the rooftop plot point being really dumb (It's a rooftop with no camera, just wait and bait him out, dumbasses) before the finale. Akiyama, Saejima, and Shinada all get decent final boss fights, but the main villain turns out to be unable to fight, working to give his gains to the TRUE final boss...who I barely remembered. Hell, when Kiryu confronts him and asks what he's doing, he responds with 'I don't know'. even the game knows it's an asspull, but you confront him...and then watch a jpop performance...then you fight him. And the fights pretty good, the narrative weight just isn't really there. 8/10

So overall, it's pretty damn good. Next up is the last of the Kiryu saga (and Gaiden but that seems to be Yakuza 6.5) so I'm looking forward to that

I regret putting off this franchise for THIS LONG. After playing the first Portal last week, I dove into Portal 2 with expectations so high they scraped the stratosphere, and somehow, this game launched them straight into the moon.

Portal 2 has some of the most fun puzzle gameplay ideas packaged with an iconic visual style, alongside some of the most dynamic environments Valve has done, but what truly left me speechless was the narrative. I went in expecting the same funny writing from the first game, and got a surprisingly emotional rollercoaster ride that expands on everything that I went through in Portal 1 with GLaDOS and adds Wheatley into the mix who is the complete opposite of GLaDOS. This game is brilliant AND I CANT WAIT TO PLAY IT AGAIN!!!!.