Elden ring is a lot of things, but I think the most apt description is a flawed masterpiece. To start, let’s acknowledge the masterclass in FromSoft’s first step into open world game design, and doing it in the best way since Breath of the Wild. I adore the sense of exploration this game gave me. It doesn’t do it quite as well as Zelda in my opinion, but it’s hilarious how both Nintendo and From’s first try at an open world blows every other open world game out of the water with their incredible direction. Exploring and discovering things off the beaten track was such a joy. You’ll come across the smallest little thing and find yourself in a deep new area, connected to several quest lines and then a whole unique optional boss. Not to mention that along the way you’ll see some of the prettiest views and vistas you’ve ever seen in a game. It’s almost overwhelming to ride around and be torn on all the interesting things fighting for your attention. Although, I have to say that I think that this is done best in the earlier areas, but then gets progressively less interesting the further you get into the game. I get the impression that the first 2/3s of the game had more assets and time put into it. Even the ending sequence felt a little rushed to me.

Regardless, the world itself is so wonderful and interesting, and the lore and story are amazing. Dark Souls is great, but I’m really quite glad we’ve moved away from its shackles to tell a completely different story in a world with completely different rules. Elden Ring is also full of genuinely wonderful characters! FromSoft has never had a big focus on this, and while their characters are beloved, they’re not exactly too deep. This time, plenty of characters get well told stories, with more lines and cutscenes than ever before, and this goes a long way in making them feel more tangible. The Lands Between may just be my favourite video game world I’ve ever inhabited.

But I have an issue in the world, and that’s that it’s stuck in a soulslike. Elden Ring is a cheese sandwich, the combination works pretty well, but not excellently and leaves you wanting a bit more. If Souls is anything, it’s meticulously crafted. Souls is all about that perfect difficulty, and the nature of a true open world area is exploration. Stumbling across a place you’re over levelled for and blitzing it, or somewhere you’re under levelled for and fighting an impossible task just feels bad in a souls game. The openness also makes me really really miss the dedicated, phenomenal level design of the souls games. The routing was tight, you saw everything crafted for the player to experience in that moment, and exploration felt so good when it was laid out as optional and rewarding. The legacy dungeons just don’t feel as good as the traditional levels of a souls game when they’re THIS open. There is just so so much to miss. I can jump from rooftop to rooftop towards the goal, or I can walk in and be presented with 5 equally as viable routes forward. When you’re someone who wants to explore everything, having to do one path, and then come back and do another, and find yourself walking around in circles desperately trying not to miss anything just doesn’t feel as rewarding. The enemy placement also doesn’t feel as deliberate because of course it doesn’t, it has to accommodate for players coming in from every angle; as opposed to Bloodborne knowing that you’re travelling from point A to B in a castle, and giving you the perfect amount of enemies, puzzles, traps, and items along your way. Don’t get me wrong, they did a great job of making such a free experience feel this good, but it doesn’t work quite as well as the purposeful design as the other games.

Of course, you can’t talk about FromSoftware without talking about bosses. And honestly…a bit disappointed here. I can’t quite tell you what it was, but a lot of the bosses just didn’t quite give me that ‘feeling’ that other souls bosses do. I wasn’t having quite as much fun as I felt I should have when fighting them. They’re all spectacles for sure, but something just felt missing. I will say I’m not a fan of Elden Ring’s big delay gimmick with its bosses too, often times charging attacks for like 4-5 seconds (sometimes even throwing in bait movements) and then just swinging very quickly. It feels gimmicky, like something I just have to get hit by and learn to just count down, and takes me out of that ‘dance’ of a boss fight. Don’t get me wrong most bosses are good, but just never soar at the heights of the franchise. There are exceptions of course; I fucking love Malenia, Malekith is a blast, Rykard is the best gimmick boss in the series etc. But compare the boss roster to their last game Dark Souls 3…and the downgrade is undeniable.

A common criticism of the boss design is that there is a repeat boss problem, and I have to agree. Elden Ring has a lot to explore, and a lot of bosses. At the end of every single catacombs, cave, halfway through a big dungeon, even roaming the world, you’ll be met with a boss. Of course not every single one of these can be a Slave Knight Gael level unique encounter, but I also can’t pretend I wasn’t bored by the 17th ulcerated tree spirit or Erdtree Avatar, or Watchdog. There really did just need to be about 5 more bosses, which they could have spread out across the world to make the repeating less egregious. But it’s weird, because even the mainline story bosses get repeated. You’ll fight the first boss 3 times, the 2nd twice, and even different versions of the several other main bosses. It’s odd. And it makes these insurmountable threatening foes feel…surmountable and unimportant.

Despite my boss flaws, fighting itself is wonderful. The build variety and weapons are so expansive, and the movesets and new combat mechanics make each weapon such a joy. I used to just pick one weapon and would pretty much only use R1. But in Elden Ring, I would just have to try so many weapons, and I found that the flow of combat had me using my entire moveset. Jump attacks, dual wielding, jumping to dodge, weapon arts; the list goes on. And when fighting a great tough boss like Malenia, the game rewards you by giving you specific openings to punish certain attacks with only certain moves in your moveset!

My flaws aside, what it does right, it does damn near perfect. I don’t know if they needed more time to make the mediocre repetitive stuff better, or if they should have just cut it entirely, but a game with 10/10 highs falls short because of it. Souls to me is about navigating intricate, crafted levels. Not so much riding from place to place hitting r1 on random mobs, doing a small catacombs on the way, and then entering the large dungeons that just don’t reach the heights of regular Souls level design. I loved it, but it also made me realise I loved Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 quite a bit more. And yet I want much more Elden Ring. I can’t wait for the DLC and I want more games like it. Like Breath of the Wild, they’ve created a formula to be mastered, but for now Elden Ring is a diluted masterpiece.

Gamers I have a confession. I just can’t get into Bethesda games. I’ve tried Skyrim and Fallout 4 and just couldn’t bring myself to engage in either. But the Fallout show has come out and it’s pretty fun, so here I am wanting to give the series another go. So what better way to go than the game widely regarded as the best in the series, Fallout: New Vegas?

I tried, I really did, but I’m sad to say that the cycle repeats itself. I just can’t get into New Vegas either.

What is it about these games people like? The incredibly bland combat? The flat boring worlds? The entirely uninteresting characters with flat delivery? The mindless wandering around?

Other games I don’t jive with I simply feel are not for me. But this one…I’m completely lost on the good here. New Vegas offers me a bland world with terrible combat and uninteresting characters. Travelling miles across complete emptiness to get the thingamajig back from Raider Clan 17 for Mr Cowboy or Mr Evil Murderer wasn’t really the incredible RPG experience i’ve heard so much about. And i’m not even mentioning the amount of bugs and crashes I encountered during my hours. At least it did have the odd line that made me blow air out of my nose.

I understand that this game is supposed to be a sum of its parts, and not just its individual failures. But I just do not see what others do in these games. Why would you want to be in this world when you could be In Breath of the Wilds’ post-apocalypse, or The Witcher and Elden Ring’s fantasy? Or with Red Dead’s succinct lived in wilderness? Or Metal Gear V’s tight gun play? Is the draw the classic Bethesda completely pointless ability to pick up every item so you can ignore 99.9% of the items? Or screenshot the 34 forks in your inventory for a tweet?

I understand my severity in this review may be ignorance. I mean this is widely considered a fantastic game, so SOMETHING must be done right here. But I’ve given this game 8 hours of my life now and have found no joy in it at all. So for now I will drop this until…who knows, Fallout Season 2?

I’m so happy this exists. Persona 3 is already very special to me and they did it such justice. This game’s themes and story is so personal and wonderfully done.

Everything about this is so faithful, capturing everything great about the original and bringing it to new heights. Even all the additions are excellent. The male link episodes are all great and really add to the depth of the characters that don’t get so much in the main game. The new music is just fantastic and fits right in with the feel of the original. The gameplay additions both in and out of battle are so incredibly smooth and make playing the game even more fun. I love how they’ve made the battle system feel the same yet so much better with the theurgys, shifts, and of course party control. And how can I praise his game without mentioning its incredible UI. I thought Persona 5 was the peak of UI design but this game is right here with it. All of the menus, the combat art, and the evoker silhouettes are just outstanding. All of the additions compliment the original so well while taking nothing from it.

Persona 3 is not my favourite of the 3 modern titles, and for better or for worse, they haven’t changed the few things I don’t love about the original. The pacing is still a little off. There’s times where nothing much happens to progress the main plot, and times where too much happens. I still think most of the social links are less interesting than in later games. And while this is improved by the new link episodes, I do have a couple of gripes. Junpei’s baseball being brought in far more than what feels natural, and Shinjiro opening up to a guy he just met while closing himself off from his long-time friends - both making the writing a little forced. But all in all, some great additions, even fleshing out the (pretty mediocre) villains further. Tartarus, while better in this version, is still not as fun as real dungeons. But my flaws with the game aside, the masterful translation of everything else just captures the game so well. Hell, 90% of my flaws are just with the base PS2 version, so I can’t fault Atlus for keeping the game faithful.

I loved being back here exploring this city with a fantastic cast and fighting my way through Tartarus again. The Persona loop is just so fun for me, and this game handles the two parts wonderfully. Every time I was starting to get a little tired of the school life, it would be the right time to battle. Every time the battles grew tiring, the game would through an interesting boss at me, and just as I’d want to jump back into my daily life, I’d reach the end of the Tartarus block.

An absolute must-play that had me smiling like a child at times, and bawling my eyes out at others. While I still think it is the weakest overall of the modern Persona titles, that’s only because this series is so strong and even with its small flaws, Persona 3 Reload is still a 10/10.

Coming back to this again was such a treat. Some of my favourite combat and cast of characters in video game history. The music and world is excellent and wow, is this game pretty.

The new episode was awesome too! Just long enough length for me and adds some interesting depth and mechanics. Yuffie is now solidified as my favourite character to play as, and I can’t wait for the eventual meeting of her and the main cast in the sequel.

Unfortunately still has those pacing issues and bad side quests that knock this game down for me, but still a must-play.

This is an excellent remaster. I'm shocked I enjoyed it as much as I did. I enjoyed the PSP game, but honestly I thought it had shockingly bad pacing, that the final dungeon was a travesty, and that the strength of Zack and Sephiroth's voice performances were the best parts of the game. So, a remaster that keeps all those problems and removes the best part of the game could only be worse, right? Not at all.

Playing this made me see that I really rushed through my initial playthrough. I really wanted to see that (rightfully) famous ending, and anything that wasn't in service of that felt like it was in my way. I didn't engage with the missions, which meant I was woefully underlevelled for that final dungeon, and random encounters felt much more frustrating than they should have. The newly added ability to dash also really improved this aspect of the game; I could swear that it effectively halves the number of random encounters in the game - a welcome change. Finally, the new voice cast does a great job making the characters their own, and they still shine in their own way. Sure, there are specific lines that don't hit the same, but there's an equal number of new takes that I prefer to the original voicework. The updated visuals far exceeded my expectations of a remaster; it's very easy to forget this is running on the original game's logic though you will notice it at times. Still, It looks magnificent now. The missions, in particular, are significantly improved, while still fairly repetitive in their overall design.

The combat is significantly improved :the new lock-on system is snappy and responsive, and the camera is very good at staying on target. The new way to use actions is reminiscent of FF7 remake and much better for it. The toning down of the DMW, by reducing the size of often repeated 'memories', only serves to improve its impact. Now, when you get a fullscreen cutscene, it really pulls you in; it's Square Enix saying, "sit up, this is worth seeing," and considering how funny or interesting they often are, they're absolutely right. And If you've seen them far too many times, skipping them is easy, quick and seamless. The best change may be that Limit Breaks, Actions or Summons you roll from it are stocked and you can use them whenever you choose now.

This remaster elevates the game by a whole point for me. It still has additions to the FF7 lore that are... questionable, but what is actually essential here is so worth seeing. I really recommend it to any fan of the world of FF7.