This game answers the question: What if Persona 4 was a good game?

This is a heck of a lot of game. It's like an extra large pizza with every topping, and a side of cheese sticks, and vegetables (for health). This is a good and bad thing. I still can't believe a game like this got made. It's an incredible experience that I want to keep going back to, but I'm also stuffed on it.

Had fun playing with friends, although not my preferred genre of game by any means.

This game is weird and imperfect, and more Pokemon games should be weird and imperfect. I loved my team of Typhlosion, Leafeon, Espeon, Ursaluna, Empoleon, and Crobat. One of my favorite teams.

I'm not going to finish the post game, but this game was good enough to finish, which is more than I can say for Brilliant Pearl (which I did not finish), and Pokemon Shield (which I did finish, and played post game, and did DLC, and it brought me no joy).

I loved Yakuza 0. I love Yakuza Kiwami more.

Great story. More focus on Kiryu and Kamurocho made the story fly by, despite spending 25+ hours in the game. I loved Kiwami moves, and for some reason I liked the combat much more in this game than 0.

Majima everywhere is fun (and better than Mr. Shakedown). I was screaming with joy at every Majima fight, and the Majima events were about as good as video games can get. I see people complain about this feature, and I cannot imagine not loving it. It's perfect. Majima is a freak, I love him.

By completing the story and Majima Everywhere I had enough points to get every ability, which I did not even come close to completing in 0.

Great game. Highly recommend, especially for fans of Yakuza 0.

Will come back when I'm not in the middle of my capstone

Unpacking made me feel some things. I've moved a lot as an adult. Between college, back home with my parents, moving in with my partner, moving to another country with her, and now back, this game really resonated on a personal level with me.

I occasionally found playing it tedious, but the attention to detail of the sounds and visual, as well as the touching story, really got me good.

This game is neat. Fan translation is hit or miss, and doesn't really capture the charm of modern DQ localizations. Glad I played these games once!

I just don't think it's that good

I 100%ed this game in 5 play sessions plus the years I spent playing these games as a child. So 100%ing this game took 5 days and 22 years.

This game has Guerrilla Radio, so that's a nice touch.

This is one of the best turn-based combat to exist. I like it, even if chaos is more American Libertarian rather than Le Guin-ian anarchism.

When COVID-19 started my friends that run a local vegan restaurant/independent music venue needed help to stay in business. They began to host Instagram Live fundraisers where bands/individuals played music to maintain a sense of community and collect donations for the venue. My wife and I watched these using the chat function to talk with friends while bands played. That experience is what The Outer Wilds was like at its best moments.

This is the first game that made me ask the question "Is this game art?"

Vibes? Immaculate. Side stories? Hilarious. Minigames? All consuming. Main story? Phenomenal. I don't play games for stories, and yet this game changed my viewpoint. The writing and localization in this game is stronger than perhaps any other game I've ever played, and is a high point in video games for me. Highly recommend.

I played Rondo of Blood because Professional Video Game Expert Tim Rogers will review it for his Action Button Reviews Series. I'm treating his reviews like a little book club: if he announces he will do a review and I'm interested in the game, I want to play it to for my own opinion and be better informed for his analysis.

Wow! Rondo of Blood is cool! This is the kind of game that feels like it's from 1993—hard as nails and rewards players for learning the levels. It's designed for multiple playthroughs where levels become laughably easy runs to the bosses. Getting to that point is rough. My little brother watched my play the first few levels dozens of times while I died again and again because I am bad at games. However, I could confidently turn it on and rush through quite a few levels since I played them so many times (because, again, I'm bad at games). That's a cool feeling! I can really see the DNA of this game in Bloodborne, because I had to do the run to Father Gascoigne so many times that the level design is burned into my memory.

The sprite work and graphics in this game still hold up really well, and I love the music. It's like cool guy butt rock in the best way possible.

At the end of the day, this game was never quite fun to play, although I can appreciate just about all of it. Movement is stiff and deliberate (once again, this is like Bloodborne!), and takes a pretty steep learning curve to even feel competent.