Dark mansion, absolutely no lights, couldn't see shit. Watched my teammate get sucked away into the darkness mid-sentence by a Bracken. The trauma made me get completely lost. Found a lamp, walked around with it just to give me some solace even though it just worsened the situation. Wandered around aimlessly while dodging a Nutcracker, got face to face with the Bracken, found a mask, walked in circles trying to avoid it and miraculously found an exit door. Got chased by another mask until I got to the ship. Have no idea how I survived.

This was just my second match. Just this alone was worth the purchase lmao

Black Flag the pirate game: wow, this is actually quite fun and competently made. It's simple and kinda repetitive, but it's amazing how much it works most of the time. Makes you wonder, if Ubisoft made this, why didn't more competent developers follow through with their own pirate games? Maybe this is truly peak, and there's not much others could add to it?

Just sailing around piling ships reminds me a lot of my first dozen hours of Red Dead Redemption 2. I didn't even bother about fast-travelling, just horsing around through the world was so much fun. It's surprising just how easy it is to make an open world game, when you remove all the clutter that makes completing it a chore and just focus on making it a fun place to explore and to be in.

4 stars.

Black Flag the Assassins's Creed game: OH MY GOD STOP RUNNING UP THE FRIGGIN WALLS YOU PIECE OF S

Oh, yeah, trailing missions. I just love those, haha. Wait, there's trailing missions in the sea too? Why...

Why? WHY UBISOFT? Why you keep shoehorning stealth sections if you didn't even figure out how it worked in Metal Gear Solid?

...AND NOW THERE'S STEALTH SECTIONS IN THE SEA TOO?

Oh well, the story and characters are cool I guess. I really like Kidd, and I wish Opía had a bigger role than just a sidequest one.

Also, the death scenes are fucking hilarious. Edward has so much sass and no chill, it's especially funny in the Templar Hunts where he's just standing there waiting for his cue.

2 stars.

The combat is a step up from automatic gacha like FGO, Epic Seven and the awful SinoAlice, but that's not saying much, especially when you have games like Arknights and Limbus Company which have a far more engaging and interesting combat.

The concept is very interesting, but the story and writing is your usual gacha mumbo jumbo that assumes you're already very much familiar with the story you just about started reading.

The English dub with a british accent, which I understand is supposed to be a pretty big selling point about this game, is...underwhelming, to say the least. That is, it was until I listened to the character with a chinese accent and I just fucking lost it.

The artstyle and characters are amazing, though, and the best thing about the game for me. I mean, what other gacha lets you talking apple? A girl made out of tube TVs? PICKLES THE DOG? Give me the apple that talks like an english butler over Paimon any day.

Can't see myself playing too much of it, but it seems decent at least.

As someone who played a lot of RTS but never cared too much for the S part, and was always interested in city buildings but could never get past their complexity, this was a fun experience. It's like Warcraft 3 if the entire game was just collecting resources and exploring. It's deep but at the same time very simple and intuitive.

That said...it's still a roguelike, and like most roguelikes I can't really imagine myself getting too invested into it, especially this one that seems very daunting to progress.

I wish they had made HQ character models as well, and improved localisation the way Vagrant Story did, but other than this, this is a direct improvement on the original game in every way. Seeing the backgrounds and portraits in HQ for the first time and noticing so many details I hadn't before is just an amazing feeling, even if they are exactly as I remember them lol also really cool for it to include Ring Ring Land as well. This is definitely the version to play. I'm glad they recognised the importance of the art in this game and didn't go for a 3D remake like Trials.

Wasn't a fan of the arranged version of the soundtrack, though. I prefer the originals.

Surprisingly unpredatory and sincere despite being a random mobile game. No energy system, no artificial handicap to your progression to make you spend money -- the closest thing to that is that you need some of the skins to 100% the game, but you can play ir normally without them and you just need two or three if you really feel like pushing to 100%, since these ones do pretty much what other skins do.

For this I salute it, despite not being anything that special. THe closest thing to it I found was Candies n' Curses.