This is going to be an impression for the whole first Mass Effect Trilogy, and I say first because yeah, Andromeda did happen after all, didn’t it…? I’m also going to address the elephant in the room right from the beginning so those of you strongly opposed to my viewpoint can avoid wasting their time: I like Mass Effect 3, a lot, in fact is probably my favourite chapter of the series. Now that that’s out the way, let’s begin, I’m going to split my opinion in two different trances, Mass Effect as a game and Mass Effect as a story, for the sake of order.

Mass Effect as a game became in 2007, as a kind of tactical cover shooter RPG by BioWare and, to be completely fair, the first time I played it I didn’t really like it. In fact, even on later playthroughs, where I wanted to get as much score as possible to start the second game with a decent character, I’ve never been charmed by it: as a game, it was just clunky, Shepard’s movement where so damn rigid, the weapons worked poorly for my liking and exploring planets was such a chore, with a vehicle that loved getting stuck everywhere, a giant random worm able to one-shot my crew, buildings, mines and enemies were copied and pasted on different environments. Let’s not forget about infinite elevators loading screens, a plot that was mostly a prologue with 10% actual story and the rest badly written infodumping about the galaxy, the events and the different alien species. For once I would've not minded having to read an encyclopaedia about this information if that would’ve meant a better plot but still, this chapter is just a sort of prologue after all.
Mass Effect 2, a couple years later, took what we already knew of the galaxy and the characters and, since any explanation was already dealt with and out of the way, we kick right into the plot. The game is fast-paced, the action and the cover system smoother, the weapons works better and there are more choices to be made about the arsenal. The mining is annoying, I know, but if you take the simplest effort of spending a total of two to three hours mining for playthrough you’ll get for the rest of a 40 plus hours game all the upgrades. The environments are more inspired, there’s more variety in the side missions, the characters work better in context and now seem to be able to act and think without you holding their hands. Also, the main quest is definitely the high point of the series, a huge, meticulous build-up to one of the most thrilling finale ever seen in a game (despite being a cliff-hanger).
Mass Effect 3 had many issues, I won’t deny that for a second. The combat is now a complete action game but considering the mechanics and the pacing is definitely better this way, weapons’ customization is lacking but functional, same as for the different armours. Mining and space exploration are less of a chore but still busy work, environments and fighting arena are a mixed bag between beautiful inspired locations and some open area with random covers. The choice system now is barebone, the war resource system is pointless, everyone makes jokes on the ending since 2012, there’s plenty to dislike. The reason I so liked this chapter, first and foremost, is because after some ‘emergency’ DLC and expansion BioWare managed to make the story and the finale make more sense, and albeit many still think it’s unsatisfactory I found the reasoning behind the Reapers’ plot acceptable. Not that I was much into the Reapers’ menace in the first place, the whole ‘Big evil things coming to destroy us all’ tale is too old and in this case done too stereotypically to intrigue me. What always sold me about the series since its beginnings were the characters, which brings me to the Mass Effect story part.

The plot behind Mass Effect is pretty standard fare but still effective: after humanity opened its borders to space exploration, met and had sporadic fight with alien races, took part in the council governing the galaxy and making a name for themselves in the universe, everything seems to be peachy and peaceful. That’s why you play as an elite trained soldier, to maintain this peace, kind of. Of course, everything goes wrong because suddenly a mysterious menace threatens the galaxy, you are the only one who knows and your teammates the only ones who believe you. You meet and recruit new people, you can have sexy times with some of them, then you defeat the agent of the evil guys and cliff-hanger, pay for the sequel. The plot up to now had some pretty decent moment, Noveria, Virmire and Ilos were nice, but nothing really stood out.
Now, when the plot kicks in during the sequel, the juicy stuff happens: now the scale is bigger, the galaxy you explore is bigger, every character that was tolerable in the previous title now has developed a great personality and new characters are pretty fascinating themselves: no names are needed but I can’t imagine my experience with this game would’ve been the same without charismatic companions such as Garrus, Tali, Mordin, Grunt, Wrex when he shows up, Jack, Thane, Legion, Zaheed, Kasumi, and why not, even the remaining ones are pretty cool. The stakes are now clearer, you know what and why you are fighting, you have a precise objective and despite traversing through many tangents (mostly to spend some quality time helping your squad mates) and the final suicide mission is pure gold.
The third chapter does not do what everyone expected, which is to solve the galaxy crisis and give a personal, satisfying conclusion depending on your playstyle, yet it does what I expected, or rather what I wanted: it wrapped up my teammates side stories, that’s what it was for me. As Shepard said while discussing his motivations for fighting the Reapers (and definitely not because the dialogue option I chose), he does all of this for the people he cares for, and in my opinion those people received plenty of justice from this game. They are treated and left as friends, they gave him a hand and in return he held all of them close, the final salutes to them were when I realized how much epic the journey with them was. I mean, if you really played through Tuchanka and felt nothing of it, you are wrong, period. Not to mention all the nice little quirks and things BioWare put into this just for the fans: the Citadel DLC was absolutely hilarious and a long, spot on reference to the series highlights.
Mass Effect for me meant the thrill ride I got from missions and characters interactions, like watching a really long action movie with spectacular production values and where the events and the protagonist go exactly how you want them too. I loved playing times and times again and every time my choices would be almost the same because how immersive the campaign was for me, and I’m sure even in the future I’d replicate for the nth time the same, identical, long play of Shepard, the kind of a prick Jesus of the galaxy.

Spec Ops is something I always wanted from a game but realized so that I won't get any satisfaction from it. It's a third person war shooter game dealing with the psychological, brutal side of war rather than putting the player in a power fantasy of being the super soldier saving the world and both of these aspects are flawed in too many ways to speak positively of my experience.

As a war story, it is an uninspired spoof of Apocalypse Now which tries to depict the same descent from the ordinary to hell but fails by giving the player too few choices to prove his or her ability to think instead of just mindlessly killing hordes of enemies. It wants you to feel bad for something that you can't avoid, we are far from the choices in Mass Effect where sometimes your errors and conduct meant consequences that later you'd be obliged to face. In Spec Ops the choice is only to kill, and the consequence is only to kill more, I'm so very reflecting on the meaning of war right now.

As a cover shooter, it blew my belief that every Gears of War-inspired game was better than Gears of War. Yager managed to make something more clunky, unresponsive, linear and uninspired that waving the same chainsaw rifle for three games straight. At least not all the enemies are bullet sponges this time. The AI, for enemies and companions, is obviously terrible and you'll have to do most of the work every time to either protect yourself from being the target for every conceivable grenade and saving your dumb soldiers because they charged against the machine gun, or the sniper, or the fortified hill position. Screw them, seriously.

I'm bashing this game pretty hard, but it is admittedly not as dumb as a story or unplayable as it may sound, its mechanics just didn’t work for me, at all, and the negative opinion mostly derives from large expectations of deep, thought-provoking content that the game did not meet and the frustration arisen in certain sections I replayed times and times again because the character controls as smoothly as a sack of potatoes.

Sail. Sink. Repeat.

The most frustrating aspect of Sunless Sea, which is bound to have players abandoning the game before achieving anything noteworthy, is the terrible amount of repetitions one is going to face of the early stages in any new playthrough. Also, the grinding wasn’t really well thought out, too much resources wasted too quickly, so that instead of being nervous for the unknown threats awaiting in the most obscure corners of the Unterzee the players will mostly find themselves rushing to the nearest port for a mere barrel of gasoline.

That being said, if you are able to counter these two problems and focus of the explorative side of the game, one is going to be immensely rewarded: Sunless Sea has one of the best writing ever seen in a game. It is immersive, gripping, terrifying and even humorous at times. In contrast with the slow pace of the player’s ship traveling discovering new isles and hidden stories, the sense of anticipation for a new menace or an unpredictable event is ever so present as long as the map has undiscovered bits left.

The game in fact shouldn’t end as one completes a main quest or surrenders to their inevitable death: the allure of the game is present as long as there are still mysteries left unsolved and new stories to adventure through (which, thanks to the dedication of Failbetter games, get regular updates and additions). The world itself displays incredible charm thanks to the art design and the simple, yet striking game engine, all the more emphasized by an atmospheric score fitting for the most diversified events.

Should you surrender to the chore that grinding is in the beginning of the game none shall blame you, be only aware that beside the game limitations what you are going to miss is a story worth of rivalling Melville and Conrad’s sea tales of descent into the abyss of human madness.

Dark Souls 2 plays very, very good. It has probably the worst hitboxes of the series, but that doesn’t undermine a combat system that expanded on what were already some pretty solid foundations and vastly improved each aspect. You can even wear four rings now, thank the Lord for that.

Unfortunately, if I had to recommend a Dark Souls game, I’d rather emphasize how much better the previous and the later chapter did every thing this game did well: Dark Souls 2 suffers from a lore which, overall, always feel more like a spin-off than a main chapter. Nothing major is added or explained regarding the Cycles except the fact that they exist, the characters inhabiting the world receive mostly the same build-up and contextualization of the first game but their feats and their importance is much less impressive compared to the first title; the environment shows some pretty variegated dungeons, especially in the DLCs, but still not as well thought and designed as the other two titles. Even the combat, the one thing it undoubtedly does better than the previous title, still doesn’t hold up to what came next in Dark Souls 3.

Dark Souls 2 doesn’t suffer for being an uninspired rehash of discarded idea for the first title (which is the only conceivable explanation for some pretty abhorrent encounter in the game), it still is a good game on its own but as a Dark Souls title it is unavoidable to compare make a comparison with the other iterations of the series and notice how it comes out utterly defeated. Those who want to play the game for the sake of completeness though should probably go for the Scholar of the First Sin, it has some improvement over the base game and it already includes the three DLCs, which by far had way more thought put into them than the main locations, in regards of bosses, maps, exploration and story.

Mother of all recent D&D High Fantasy, Dragon Age Origins is what made me discover the genre years ago and by this day I still haven’t found something similar to it that could impress me in the same way. The campaign story is familiar but functional, you play as a warrior who has to recruit multiple companions and armies to deal with the evil hordes threatening the world at large. There are elves, dwarves, orcs, dogs, mages and brothels. Welcome to writing cliched fantasy 101.

What made the predictable story interesting is how Origins has the last and probably one the best choices and consequences system of any BioWare game, or RPG game in general for that matter. Dialogues are interesting because you are often given many possible lines to choose from to expand your character and your relationships just like in more retro games and, even if the world is pretty bland and the lore is too huge to properly understand without taking a week off to study every tome you find, the companions are funny and compelling enough to make you want to explore more, hear more banters and deal some more deathblows to giant Ogres by gouging their heads with your sword.

The combat is a nice mix of CRPG tactics with a third person visual that makes you feel more ‘inside’ the action rather than an almighty but detatched God witnessing it all from the ceiling. The chance to change the camera from isometric to third person was hugely helpful both for strategic and for cinematic reasons: have you ever wanted to ride a Dragon head while dealing multiple blows to it? Boy, who wouldn't.

The world is composed by a huge overall map of the region, called Ferelden, and multiple icons composing the explorable locations. There is no open world to speak of and my most sincere thanks for it, it sure helps never getting side tracked or lost. In fact, going from north to south, from east to west, meeting different people and different races the game provides you with a diversified, multicoloured land to explore and discover, with beautiful landscapes and average looking cities, but never giving you the feeling of being completely lost as per where to go. It’s never going to take the effort to do anything original with the setting though, you might as well change the name to Middle-Earth and everything would still make perfect sense as a Lord of the Rings game.

Dragon Age Origins, as the most memorable efforts from BioWare, is better to be remembered for the incredible cast of memorable and loveable characters: Morrigan, Oghren, Shale, Sten, Leliana even if she was a skank sometimes, Alistair and so on. This is a Fellowship of the ring I would’ve loved to be part of.

When you complete a game marketed mainly as a co-op game in solo, three times, DLCs included, you know that game did something right. For me, the good thing was the hilariousness.

Borderlands 2 plays as few First-person shooter did in my life, because it tried to give its world and campaign the huge plot of a modern AAA video game but while retaining all the weird self-irony of retro shooters like Quake and Doom: the bad guy is planning to use an ancient power to conquer the world and make a huge profit out of it and, to prove how evil he is, he calls you over the phone and starts calling you names. Your reward for a quest is a, predictable but underwhelming, gun? Ok, sorry, how about we make it a gun which shoots swords? Still not enough? Fine, then a gun that shoots swords exploding on impact, and then split in multiple swords that again explode on impact. Are you not entertained yet?
When I started to die because my hands were trembling too much from laughter, Borderlands 2 became a great video game.

The plot and the characters are cliché and stupid, but they make fun of their own clichés and stupidity. They make jokes on the silent protagonist trope, which is you by the way, seemingly there is not a single thing important enough that the game won’t find some way to make fun of itself, and it never ceases even in the expansions, which might have even more quality content than the main game regarding the script writing.

Whilst, regarding the gameplay, you have an endless arsenal of colourful, powerful weapons to choose from. Shoots from the distance, shoots from decent range, shoots from point-blank for maximum blood and comedic effect, just remember to shoot and everything else will take care of itself, probably by cracking a joke after the fight. Enjoy yourself as you are obliterated by super Bosses that drop the ultimate loot, invincible guns with hilariously broken effects, and have fun getting nothing useful because the drop rates are atrocious. MMO-like loot systems are fun, aren’t they?

The game gets tiring after playing the same scenarios and killing the same monsters time and time again, yet for the time it will take you to reach that stage the ride is going to be absolutely worthy the ticket price.

Atelier Rorona encapsulates many of the greatest aspect from the franchise. The alchemy is intriguing and makes you invest and experiment for hours in your laboratory; the characters are simple yet engaging in their daily life; the plot tells a simple tale about commitment and growth in a capitalistic society where you are asked to deliver what is basically your tax form to the central government every three months. I find this game very relatable.

The charm of the Atelier series has always been in its depiction of a quieter, more down to earth reality than the usual JRPGs focused on parties of heroes going on world adventures to defeat the raging evil that threatens the peace and ordinary life. The Atelier series focus exactly on that peace and ordinary life, showing the ordinary occurrences of people dealing with significant life events – as much as a fantasy world can prove relatable. All of this revolving around the titular character, Rorona, a young but dreamy girl – as per the series standard – caught in an unpleasant debacle, due to her unreliable master, with the local government trying to shut down the atelier she works in as an alchemist. Compared to the later iterations of the series, Rorona will have to struggle against a time limit to fulfil the periodical requests and keep the atelier in business, with the help of a delightful cast of side characters who will help Rorona in her growth from an insecure and apprehensive girl to a confident and capable alchemist.

The narrative is certainly not anything to call masterful or insightful, but it works nicely considering that the game is all about feeling the immersion of working as an alchemist, and that is why the world built around this concept has to grow cosy and comfortable to the players, so to think that it’s worth coming back to the city Arland, to help its people and find that quiet, daily respite. The endings are also influenced by the amount of care and commitment put to fulfil each major request, so if one were to grow attached to the characters and Rorona herself the game will reward that care by showing every possible finale related to each character’s scenario.

Unfortunately, another recurring standard for the series is having both the town and the world hugely uninspired and lacking interactivity or any deeper narrative to further strengthen that feeling of attachment and importance behind the role of alchemist. There is no interesting hidden flavour text like the Legend of Heroes series, nor quests that require your full attention and devotion to explore each nook and cranny of the map at large. There is Rorona, some good side characters with nice stories and colourful personalities – Gio, Cornelia, Lionela, Esty to name a few – but that’s about it, most of the town of Arland will always be filled with characters’ models that speak when prompted but don’t necessarily say anything to make you feel like they are fellow citizens.

The adventurer gameplay is also quite standard, even though, being the debut chapter on PlayStation 3, it revamped some old mechanics from the previous games in the series. The battle system is standard turn-based combat with combo attacks and defence, whilst gathering material is entirely based on which area you are exploring, regardless of the time of the day, the level of your characters and so on. Some side bonuses will raise the quality of items but by the endgame there will be some areas easily more compelling to use as gathering points than others.

Once again, the meat of the game lies in the alchemy system. Those familiar with the Fushigi trilogy will be probably disappointed by how bare the crafting is in this game, it doesn’t have any complex grid over the cauldron and the chance to get particular good traits solely depends on mixing the right components of high enough value. Yet, considering the sheer amount of effects and traits achievable and the vast quantity of items and equipment available for crafting, one will spend tens of hours experimenting between possible combinations to achieve that perfect healing item, that perfect bomb or that perfect armours and weapons.

Graphically the DX version also presents the improved characters models from the Plus edition of the game, rather than the more simplistic and meagre ones from the original PS3 release. The sprites are wonderfully expressive and beautifully drawn to show the best of the character designer, Kishida Mel, abilities. Alas, the world and the enemies lack a general care put into making them look diverse of interesting to look at, the dungeons are mostly linear with very few details and aesthetic values and many monsters are reskins from previous weaker mobs. The secret super bosses are somewhat interesting to look at and challenging, a lot of care will be put in crafting equipment just to defeat them, but there are very few of them and with the right set of items their fights will play as precise and uneventfully mechanical as a clockwork.

Atelier Rorona began a new era for its series, the era where, from being only renowned in Japan, the series went big on console in the west and became a niche product for the foreign audience. To have the whole trilogy at disposal on Steam, and also considering the numerous porting and remasters these particular titles received, is yet again a sign that proves how Koei Tecmo is fully aware of the huge popularity of the Arland games, particularly for nostalgic fans but also to make them accessible to newer players, who’d love to try a quieter approach to JRPGs.

I’d like to advise against buying this game, but the only complain I could use to uphold such an opinion is to admit that I’m terrible at it. The reason I stopped playing is because I got tired of the unforgiving combat system and the amount of dedication required to master it enough to succeeds in every mission, which is something that many other players instead may find worth the effort (or easier than the agony it was for me). Should they manage to resist, they’d be hugely rewarded.

Nioh is stunning as an action title, fast paced, complex, with a very inspired design behind enemies and main characters, most of them colourful revivals of historical Japanese figures, and a level design complex but self-contained enough to never let the players feel lost. The plot was kind of a let-down, not because it was bad but because it was poorly narrated: the storytelling alternates between cutscenes, ADV segments and most of the explanations being done in the missions’ briefings and the game encyclopaedia. It’s a mess.

Yet you are not playing to be the best buddy of Oda Nobunaga, although that would’ve been absolutely groovy, you are playing to slay demons bigger than a house with some stylish sick blade combo and tons of hard to master but hugely rewarding abilities. Much like an ordinary RPG, building a character compromise between different weapons and side arts (in this case omnyo and ninjutsu) that grant the players to experiment with any sort of preferred combat style. The upgrade and enhance mechanics are really easy and intuitive to understand albeit quite expensive in the long run if you plan to stick to certain pieces of equipment. The one thing I cannot justify or appreciate no matter what is the loot system, more akin to a MMO where you’ll often discard your preferred gear five minutes after building it because the enemies drop better stuff at an absurd rate. Considering how every piece of equipment relies on individual stats, you could hold in your inventory ten swords with the same name but very different effects that not always conciliate with what you were trying or hoping to receive: RNG plays the major role in it and frankly, for the kind of game it is, it really felt unnecessary complex and arbitrary.

Edit: Yup, tried it again, I definitely hate this game.

Edit2: Hayabusa can go seppuku himself.

Spawned from the depth of a convent full of dead brothers, armed with a sword which impaled a guilty god-fearing woman, set out to crash the Church ruling over Cvstodia by dismembering its minions in graphically brutal ways, so the Penitent One rises and begins his blasphemous crusade.

Produced by the Spanish team of The Game Kitchen, Blasphemous was developed utilizing all of the studio’s knowledge about their historical heritage, from the catholic domination and the holy inquisition to recreate a game that would feel as grim, corrupted and uncomfortable as living during the medieval times of witch hunts and executions might have felt. Relics, equipment and collectibles depict with their lore a frightening picture of a world where religion has taken over not only people lives but also their minds, in the name of a faith that should give hope but at what price. All around the game map people are living in penance and fear of God, seeking atonement for their sins, whichever they might be, and being punished both by the environment and by themselves.

Even enemies and bosses are curiously shown to use flog and other torture instruments both on the player’s character and on themselves, so the theme runs deeply within the game. As per why they do this, the plot is complex and multi-layered but simple on the surface: stylistically it heavily borrows its narrative from the tradition of games more interested in building a setting and letting its characters, item descriptions and visual clues to do the narration, rather than having a clear cut and linear narrative. There is no need to spoil anything, as the general premise of the game as well as its synopsis are enough to know what to expect. Everything else, from the symbolism to the themes of the game, is better to discover for themselves.

Another huge inspiration for the game is obvious, the old school metroidvania style of interconnected areas with secrets, mobs, recurring enemies, checkpoints and impressive bosses that block the players path. A huge difference, coming instead from the souls-like inspirations of the game, is how there is no linear path to follow, nor areas blocked by a lack of abilities, keys or requirements. At any given time, since the beginning of the game, the map would sprawl to multiple areas, some arguably easier than others, but each identically opened to the players’ decision as per where to explore.

Technically speaking, Blasphemous is very impressive in its depiction of a fantastical and eerie medieval European setting. The pixel art is detailed and charming to look at, there are many details both in the platforming areas, in the enemies and the backgrounds to look at, so to discern what their story and lore are. Aside from a few non-game breaking glitches and rare hitboxes fault it also plays very responsively to the players inputs. The soundtrack also relies on music fitting for the Spanish and religious environment, with sacred choirs, classic guitars and other tunes to accompany a horrific journey toward a paradise that looks more like a hell.

Dark Souls 2 plays very, very good. It has probably the worst hitboxes of the series, but that doesn’t undermine a combat system that expanded on what were already some pretty solid foundations and vastly improved each aspect. You can even wear four rings now, thank the Lord for that.

Unfortunately, if I had to recommend a Dark Souls game, I’d rather emphasize how much better the previous and the later chapter did every thing this game did well: Dark Souls 2 suffers from a lore which, overall, always feel more like a spin-off than a main chapter. Nothing major is added or explained regarding the Cycles except the fact that they exist, the characters inhabiting the world receive mostly the same build-up and contextualization of the first game but their feats and their importance is much less impressive compared to the first title; the environment shows some pretty variegated dungeons, especially in the DLCs, but still not as well thought and designed as the other two titles. Even the combat, the one thing it undoubtedly does better than the previous title, still doesn’t hold up to what came next in Dark Souls 3.

Dark Souls 2 doesn’t suffer for being an uninspired rehash of discarded idea for the first title (which is the only conceivable explanation for some pretty abhorrent encounter in the game), it still is a good game on its own but as a Dark Souls title it is unavoidable to compare make a comparison with the other iterations of the series and notice how it comes out utterly defeated. Those who want to play the game for the sake of completeness though should probably go for the Scholar of the First Sin, it has some improvement over the base game and it already includes the three DLCs, which by far had way more thought put into them than the main locations, in regards of bosses, maps, exploration and story.

A license game that plays it safe and somehow manages to succeed even without putting anything new to the table. Mad Max isn’t an easy game to recommend, it doesn’t do anything of note and those who would love it are probably two distinct categories: the fan of its setting, especially of the latest film – Fury Road, – and those who indiscriminately like open world sandboxes with nothing much to do except repeat the same chores and find the same meaningless collectibles over and over again. If you are familiar with any recent UbiSoft titles, that’s basically it.

This time tho you get a sick sport car and also the option to pimp it as you see fit. That is quite fun.

No really, the best part of the game is in its car. You can modify basically every part of it, it rides magnificently and sounds even better. You feel invested in upgrading it and it is a pure joy to ride it everywhere, inside sandstorms, on empty roads, during battles and as a battering ram during sieges on enemy bases. The world is a huge barren wasteland that perfectly reflects the setting of the original movies, but both the characters and the plot lack the insightful mind of the original author, George Miller, and the enjoyable and trash punchline of the 80s. Players are going to do quests and side quests more for the heck of it and a urge to complete everything rather than for any sort of attachment to the titular main character – a huge downgrade both from Mel Gibson and Tom Hardy tbh – or any other character for that matter.

Nevertheless, the game is engaging if played in small doses so not to feel loaded by its monotony and sameness. Avalanche studio certainly made it looks beautiful and it is significantly optimised for PC performances. If you just like strolling around in your ride and punch the everliving sh-t out of mobs with a combat system akin to the Batman Arkham series – because that was the combat system which was ‘in’ at the time – then this game will provide tens of hours of pure enjoyment and thrill.

What does make a good platform and puzzle videogame? Is it the unresponsive controls? Or maybe the luck-based stages with instant deaths? Probably it’s how abilities’ lag may cause losing time and many more deaths. Some may argue it is the long backtracking from checkpoints to the actual puzzles, with slow sections in between where control is taken from the players, thus making the videogame a glorified slide show. Others will say “No, it’s how control inputs overlap with each other, so every move is always a shot in the dark”. But then again, can we forget the huge importance of having slow characters during segments that require perfect, immediate reflex to achieve success? As well as how important is to have precise movements nullified because the characters’ idle animations, like breathing and floating, still lead to death as they are out of the players control? My favourite though has to be having controls mirrored for an entire chapter but the camera still functioning as normal, so that the players cannot see where they are going and move in that direction at the same time. Priceless.

So, really, what does make a good platform and puzzle videogame? Because I don’t know anymore.

What I do know is that blind trial and error does not equate to a balanced learning curve, just as banging the head against a door does not equate to finding the key to open it. Putting aside how highly impractical that is, most importantly it can’t be described, by no means, as a fun experience.

When you complete a game marketed mainly as a co-op game in solo, three times, DLCs included, you know that game did something right. For me, the good thing was the hilariousness.

Borderlands 2 plays as few First-person shooter did in my life, because it tried to give its world and campaign the huge plot of a modern AAA video game but while retaining all the weird self-irony of retro shooters like Quake and Doom: the bad guy is planning to use an ancient power to conquer the world and make a huge profit out of it and, to prove how evil he is, he calls you over the phone and starts calling you names. Your reward for a quest is a, predictable but underwhelming, gun? Ok, sorry, how about we make it a gun which shoots swords? Still not enough? Fine, then a gun that shoots swords exploding on impact, and then split in multiple swords that again explode on impact. Are you not entertained yet?
When I started to die because my hands were trembling too much from laughter, Borderlands 2 became a great video game.

The plot and the characters are cliché and stupid, but they make fun of their own clichés and stupidity. They make jokes on the silent protagonist trope, which is you by the way, seemingly there is not a single thing important enough that the game won’t find some way to make fun of itself, and it never ceases even in the expansions, which might have even more quality content than the main game regarding the script writing.

Whilst, regarding the gameplay, you have an endless arsenal of colourful, powerful weapons to choose from. Shoots from the distance, shoots from decent range, shoots from point-blank for maximum blood and comedic effect, just remember to shoot and everything else will take care of itself, probably by cracking a joke after the fight. Enjoy yourself as you are obliterated by super Bosses that drop the ultimate loot, invincible guns with hilariously broken effects, and have fun getting nothing useful because the drop rates are atrocious. MMO-like loot systems are fun, aren’t they?

The game gets tiring after playing the same scenarios and killing the same monsters time and time again, yet for the time it will take you to reach that stage the ride is going to be absolutely worthy the ticket price.

“Let’s go back, to a life worth living.”

Thematically speaking, it is hard not to be impressed by what Valkyria Chronicles wanted to achieve with its latest iteration. While proposing to their audience a new chapter after the success of the first Steam porting (because let’s face it, without that the franchise would be very well dead with Revolution being the nail in the coffin), SEGA also went heavy hand on hammering the antimilitarist theme of the series with a new fresh cast of characters in an imaginative brutal campaign set during the well-known Second Europan War.

As per usual, the characters are mostly anime tropes of hot-blooded rebels, humble quiet blokes and various shades of aggressive but cutesy women. The great difference this time is how the addition of side squad stories for the non-main characters helps to expand on each member of Squad E, to brush more detailed personalities and motivations for them to be enlisted and at odds with a war that ultimately none of them wants to be in, for no one likes to murder or to risk their own life if not driven by a greater personal drive.

Which, despite the obvious contradiction of giving the players achievements for killing a large number of enemies, it’s still a commendable effort. Many times, throughout the game, the war is not just painted as a fight for freedom from the Federation viewpoint anymore: by adding, with due reinterpretations, real war episodes such as the winter retreat from the Russian campaigns, human experimentation, suicide attacks and so on, the tone is definitely darker than is previous titles of the series. It is almost graceful to the players to keep the light-heartiness of the characters, in spite of most of everything, to counter the strong subjects at matter.

This does not mean that the characters are unable to perform according to the tone of the events, they all have their breaking points and harsh moments, there is a fair share of melodrama and idealism, but they fit well considering how real and painful some events might appear to those familiar with actual historical war scenarios. After all, it is better to draw a positive meaning from ruthless times rather than cynically accepting that there is no significance to suffering.

Aside from the differences in themes, the gameplay remains mostly untouched but still as strong as it was in the first game: the turn based strategic combat is more versatile now thanks to more Command Points (CP) provided each turn to perform more actions, the promotions to corporal for standard privates to add even more CP and how tanks now don’t cost 2 CP for each time they move. The new Grenadier class is brutal, hard to employ in every situation and extremely overpowered, but well balanced if considering how also enemies’ Grenadiers can give hell to the players’ troops in almost every mission they are present. Hard difficulty in side skirmishes is still as silly as it was before, with any actual challenge replaced by just adding more enemies to each map and leave the players to figure out how to not be wiped out in a couple turns, when the placement is not merely dumb: in one of the last skirmishes, an enemy camp was guarded by three snipers that weren’t blocking the players from capturing it, while also being put behind a cover that hindered their shooting; what was their point exactly?

Features in the headquarters, like the experience point boot camp, the R&D department to upgrade weapons and tanks, the mess hall taking the place of the cemetery for learning new orders, are pretty much left unchanged with maybe more possibilities for characters customization thanks to a larger arsenal of weapons and equippable accessories for extra stats. Orders mechanic are still as exploitable as before and, since the game actively rewards with more EXP and war funds finishing missions in the fewer possible turns, many will be tempted to avoid immersion in the strategical setting in favour of a more one-man-army, blitzkrieg approach for the added bonuses. Which is a shame, since Valkyria Chronicles is still the most similar experience available in the videogame industry to the splendid turn-based tactics of the latest XCOMs.

Valkyria Chronicles is a hard title to recommend, it is very unique to its own genre and since this fourth chapter is on every level, even graphics and game engine, the same as the first one, many players may as well stick to that. Or, they may happily gift SEGA with their money, buy this game and hope for more future development from this series. Certainly, Valkyria Chronicles 4 won’t give anyone something inherently new, notwithstanding the aforementioned differences in plot presentation and themes, but it is still a solid game with enormous potential and open to both a fast-paced and a more relaxed and strategical approach to war games.