Once I started Hard mode I came to the realization that the combat really isn't that great. You perfect dodge or parry to gain meter and then use that meter to deal damage. You pretty much can drop using the weak and strong attack buttons entirely because they deal practically zero damage to bosses or the bosses have such tight combo strings that you'll never even get a chance to use the buttons. It just doesn't feel very balanced or great after the halfway point. If you still get massive amounts of dopamine from parrying or dodging, then I think Stellar Blade will satisfy you. If you go in thinking this is going to be the next Great Action Game I think you'll be sorely disappointed.

Stellar Blade does excel with its sharp presentation, level design(for the most part), and excellent music. I had enough fun with the game to play through Hard Mode New Game + and got all the endings, but I firmly disagree that the combat is anything but mid. Its not going to be sitting at the table with Devil May Cry 5, Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden, or Nier Automata but its I guess passable for a first attempt. I hope Shift Up reworks the combat for the inevitable sequel.

Realm Reborn's main story quest really felt like a Trails Of story where 80% of the game is fluff and pretty tedious but the ending sinks its hooks in you and you have no choice but to continue on with the expansions to see where it goes.

I don't know if I'd recommend XIV but I'm definitely hooked. Its one of those "it gets good after 100 hours" kind of experiences. In the long run I have a feeling I'll be going "I should have played a bunch of other games in that time instead of spending all this time playing this" but we'll see.

I can't tell you the exact moment that Unicorn Overlord sunk its claws in me but I seemed to have 100%'d the game in five days. I enjoyed it, but I really can't definitively say what exactly hooked me. I think I enjoyed how most of the stages are very bit-sized and feel almost like quick puzzles than the usual time slog a lot of SRPGS fall into.

My only complaint if there is no way to fastforward through battle animations. You either have to watch the entire battle play out or you skip the battle entirely. I found this really annoying when trying to test out formations to see why some of the would completely fail. A fast forward would have really made me tinker with formations. I ended up just coming up with about 4 really good teams and just giving up with the rest.

EDIT: Gunbusted corrected me. There is a fastforward button. I have no idea why I never noticed this. Thank you for correcting me! I wish I had found this sooner.

After doing every single mission in the game, I just wanted more. I dunno, a 50 hour game where you end up still wanting more might be a really good game. So many games outstay their welcome or feel padded but Unicorn Overlord felt just right.

Magical Pop'n has one of the most fun, well animated characters to control on the SNES and it really feels like the developers focused most of the development on making the character an absolute joy to control.

Sadly, it feels less focus was put into the actual level design so Magical Pop'n is a game that feels very lopsided. I could see myself coming back to this game in a couple of years just because of how fun the character was to control only to immediately drop the game at the halfway point because the levels become an absolute slog to get through.

Mameda no Bakeru wears its Goemon influences on its sleeves proudly but it ultimately is a game that is more comfortable in its own skin than just being a spiritual successor of a series from yesteryear.

Aside from framerate issues in a number of the later levels, Bakeru is a very solid 3D platformer with a shockingly high amount of levels. I did not expect this game to have over 60 levels and figured it would just be a cute short cashgrab that tried to cash in on the sever absence of the Goemon series and its not. By the end of the game you'll be going "Goe-who?" I really hope Bakeru becomes a fullfledged series because I think Goodfeel really nailed this and I'd love to play another one that has a little bit more challenging platforming.

The last hour or so of Jedi Survivor was excellent and I'm eager to see where the series goes from here storywise.

However...

The game still feels unpolished almost a year after it initially released. Lots of strange graphical and model bugs peppered through the entire experience that really took me out of the game.

The conbat felt very off too. Theres kind of a Sekiro feel to the game where you're meant to parry enemy attacks to lower their block bar before you can do any real damage. The issue I had throughout the entire game is that you would completely drain an enemy's block bar and when you'd strike the enemy with your lightsaber, the enemy would get pushed back so dealing damage never really felt satisfying. You'd get one or two good strikes in but the rest of your attacks would just whiff and you were left starting back at having to lower their block bar again. I don't think I ever really got to use a full combo string on any enemy in the entire game.

Despite the underwater theme, Yohane the Parhelion is by far Inti Creates' most shallow game yet.

I was pretty disappointed with Gal Guardians earlier this year but I'm actually floored at how much worse this game ended up being. Its bad when you can look back at Gal Guardians and actually note instances where the developers had at least SOME spark of love for what they were working on. Yohane has absolutely none of that. Its a souless licensed game cash grab not worth your time or your money. I hope the money was worth it for Inti Creates, because I'll be sidelooking all their future releases if this is what we can expect from them now.

If you go in expecting a story on par with the first game in the series you're going to be disappointed. The writing really took a hit this time around and I don't think this will be salvaged with the eventual Spider Man 3. Very by the numbers story that really didn't take any major risks unlike the first game. They set a really high bar with the first game and I'm sad that they came short this time around.

Also the suit Insomniac gave Miles at the end of the story is so bad it should be considered a hate crime wtf were they thinking???

The only reason its not even lower is that after I completed the game, Trips story and the True Final Boss included, I immediately replayed Sonic 4 just to gauge if it was really fair to give Superstars a 1 star.

Superstars starts fine and could have possibly been almost as good as Generations, but by the halfway point the small amount of charm Superstars starts with wears off and so does the level and boss design.

By the time I finished Trip's story I came to the conclusion that it might be time to just give up on this series. We're never going to get a Mania 2 or even a Generations 2 at this point and if Superstars is the best they can manage then its time to bow out.

Fate Samurai Remnant found itself in a very compromising position where it isn't enough of a musou game to satiate musou fans and Fate fans might enjoy the story, the slog of having to play through the game three times (4 if you want to see everything) will make them hate every second of playthrough 2 and beyond.

I really enjoyed the story and absolutely loved the True Ending, but I don't think I could really recommend the game because of how much of a chore the game gets.

I'd say wait for an anime adaptation.

A prequel that feels more like it was made for convenience rather than necessity. It has a handful of moments that will pique the interest of a hardcore Utawarerumono fan but it doesn't ultimately deliver something as gripping as Mask of Deception. Without saying too much, the mystery boxes the story leaves for you to mull over once the game is over just aren't that interesting.

The transition from turn based strategy to a more tradition ATB battle system isn't graceful either. I don't even think the developers were very confident in this new battle system because its very easy to overlevel which basically allows you to kill enemies on the overworld without even having to enter a battle. 70% of the game was me just auto killing everything and occasionally having to fight a boss legitimately occasionally.

As a big fan of Utawarerumono, my biggest fear was that Monochrome Mobius was going to be a flop that might tarnish my love of the previous games and while I don't think Monochrome Mobius exactly hit that mark, I feel very confident that I should probably quit while I'm ahead. I don't have much faith in this series going forward.

Just an overall letdown.

The further I got into Pikmin 4, the more I began to dislike it.

I never played Pikmin 2 and apparently Pikmin 4 is meant to be a compromise between the time management pikmin games(1 &3) and a more leisurely play-at-your-own-pace pikmin game (like 2?).

All I can say is that a lot of the elements from 2 that they incorporated into Pikmin 4 did not resonate with me at all. The caves were interesting at first but I began straight up avoiding any of them that were Dandoori levels. The timed puzzle dandoori levels were fine but the battle missions where the game forcibly splits the screen were incredibly irritating. I almost never needed to see what the CPU opponent was up to so these sections became something I dreaded having to play after the first one.

I also found the gameloop to be far too noticeable which made Pikmin 4 seem more like an extensive chore than anything. I think a good game
is one that masks their gameplay loops so that players aren't even aware of them. I find a lot of recent Nintendo games have really been dropping the ball with this.

A good chunk of Pikmin 4 can be boiled down to:

Explore to find manhole caves which can lead to dandoori challenges which rewards players with rescued npcs with an ailment that the player needs to cure by doing night tower defense missions. over and over and over again.

By the end of the game I was ignoring a chunk of the content because it became too tedious. Maybe people will love the 20 floor dungeon at the end of the game, but I was pleading for the game to be over because it became such a slog.

Its very possible that Pikmin 4 just isn't for me, but its very hard for me not to see a good 75% of Pikmin 4 as just unnecessary padding.

Pikmin exploration: Great, wish there was more!
Caves: fun diversions at first but become a slog in the second half of the game.

Dandoori battles: padding

Night tower defense missions: padding

Pikmin 1 or 3 may be much leaner games than 4 content wise, but I found Pikmin 4 too overstuffed with content that became less and less appealing as the game went on.

EDIT: Score has changed since Savage Gauntlet has been added

Finished the campaign after about 70 matches.

I think players who don't want to support Blizzard or Overwatch 2 could find a decent home in Exoprimal. As someone who rarely plays multiplayer games, I got hooked on this one and while I'm clearly not an authority on what makes a multiplayer game good or bad I would highly suggest checking Exoprimal out if you have gamepass. Playstation players might want to stay away from this game because I don't think I could recommend paying 60 dollars for a game that probably only has a month to live.

The only real complaint I have is that the game's premise of killing thousands of dinosaurs would have worked so well as a Horde mode game but Capcom decided to put all their effort into making a objective based Overwatch clone. A horde mode is apparently in the works (they tease it after you finish the story) but it really needed to be a day 1 mode.

EDIT:

Savage Gauntlet launched and I'm going to have to deduct some score. What Exoprimal needed was a Horde mode for players who were getting burnt out from the PVP. Just a simple mode where you shot at hundreds of dinos. Savage Gauntlet is not that mode, sadly and I've washed my hands of Exoprimal as a result.

Savage Gauntlet is a time attack mini horde mode where you and your team try to clear a few waves of enemies as fast as you can. The faster you clear this ten minute mode, the more you're rewarded. The question becomes: if you're playing a game and you realize that you and your team are not going to end up completing the match faster than your best time, then why not just leave the match mid-game? The mode has only been out for 12 hours and I'm already seeing people ragequit and go afk when a team goes over their best time. I can't even blame them. If I kept getting into matches with 3 tanks in a mode thats all about dealing the most damage as quickly as you can deal it out I'd get tilted too.

Now that the dream of a fun horde mode has been put to rest I'm done with this game.