Dark Souls isn’t hard or unfair, you just need a whole playthrough before you have a decent character. Can’t believe all the times Seath wrecked me, how did I even manage to suck so much?

But that is not what I wanted to discuss here, there are already far too many dank memes about Dark Souls to just imitate other funny reviews joking about the learning curve of the game. What I wanted to focus on was what hooked me initially to the game and what I came to appreciate the most about the series as a whole (yeah, including Demon’s and Bloodborne): the storytelling.

It all begins with the simple fact that I am a huge fantasy fan when it comes to narrative, and Dark Souls does something that I have rarely seen in fantasy in my recent memory, especially eastern made: it does something original. We are all too accustomed to Tolkien and D&D’s pastiches to realize there is something more to fantasy than just adding alien species which still act and think like humans, sucking every sense of wonder from the experience of exploring a fantasy world. Orc, dwarves and elves are as familiar to us as dogs, cats and other house pets: sure, they are alien to us humans but we grew used to them being there and they don’t give us any sense of discovery or surprise.

Dark Souls subverts this by building a world devoid of species inspired by such mundane mythologies, or villains striving for world end or riches, and instead focuses on a far more attractive premise: the world was once empty, void, there was no life or death to speak of and the only living beings were immortal Dragons whose main occupation was to just chill around for all of the eternity. Until, that is, evolution happened, in the form of a flame which symbolizes disparity, and that disparity holds an immense power. Then came the Lords, the rising gods of this empty world, using the flame to challenge the Dragons and claim their role as sovereign of all creation. After a long, brutal war, the Gods came out victorious and built their reigns while still holding the power of the fire, nurturing it so that it shall never fade. That’s the intro of the game, and basically the only time the game will spoon-feed you with important informations. Not that anything more is needed because any major point is eventually subtlety conveyed to the player, but by talking to characters you will meet during the game and reading item descriptions (or by just simply exploring and being observant) you’ll receive much, much more: in depth details about where exactly are you, who the being surrounding you are, what are their goals and motives and what is your role in all these plays among Gods. It is a world as subtle and as mysterious as Nihei’s Blame was. The game director Miyazaki mastered the art and meaning of show-don’t-tell in this series, which in itself is amazing, but what made it so much more than it initially appears is the actual content.

What is the player’s role in all of this? The protagonist is just an unnamed, weak human, now undead, who just kind of arrives at the land of the Lords and wander around killing (or rather, being killed by) everything in sight, no much story to be told about him. Yet, while you’re slowly descending in a hell of decay and undead, crawling through ruins and slaying god-like beings, it is unavoidable to start wondering “Why is everything falling to pieces, and why a single strip of bacon such as myself is able to single-handedly stab a God until it dies?”. That is, my friend, because they are Gods no more. Playing through the game and meeting the right characters will let you realize that you are no more in the ancient era of the Gods, but millennia after, their powers are now fading and what was once luminated by the light of the fire will inevitably succumb to darkness once the fire ceases to shine. You are exploring through a lie, a deception the Gods created to protect themselves from the unavoidable. They have gone mad, once terrific beings now by comparison powerless, now scared to lose everything they created, to die and be no more as the Dragons they themselves slaughtered. Which bring us to the player role in all of this, what exactly do you have to accomplish? Basically, some sort of doom is imminent upon the world and all humans, something so jarring even Gods are unable to deal with it. Is there a way for you to salvage the situation and bring a happy ending?

No, there is not.

Because you are not the hero, you are not the knight rolling in town with a shining armour and master sword. Rather, you are the judge. Dark Souls is a trial, a trial where you are presented all the evidence of a case of mass murder, crime against humanity and hoax, with aggravations such as intentional deception, hubris, arrogance, cruelty, the list goes on. You are not slaying the Lords to correct the inequality and injustices in the world, in fact many of them you could just avoid to fight at all. You are being shown their crimes and have to bestow judgment upon them. By the ending, when you face the final boss, this is all the clearer as you think back on your journey and realize exactly what you are facing, and that’s where you have to decide based on what you’ve seen, what you’ve been fighting. Did you murder senselessly what was already dead? Did you bring castigation upon being undeserving any mercy? Or maybe you put them out of their misery? Or, as I did in many playthroughs, you left them where they are, silently condemning them but understanding why they acted that way and, in some way, respecting the gentle illusion they were trying to protect. The Gods in Dark Souls are flawed Gods, they built a world which wasn’t perfect or eternal, they believed they had the power it took to rise above ground and strike for the sun, just to burn and fall down on earth again. These are Paradise Lost’s Satan-like Gods, who are not faulty for what they attempted to do, for their pride and their ambitions, after all they are just as human as the beings they tried to corrupt.

Dark Souls is filled with the moral ambiguity this realization holds. It shows you the aftermath of a glory that once was and let you decide its worth.
I love this moral ambiguity.
Thus I love Dark Souls.

To put it simply, Valkyria Chronicles has one of the best and unique gameplay I ever came across in a videogame. I agree that it is similar to Xcom’s gameplay, especially the most recent iterations of the latter, yet there is something about the setting and the way Valkyria Chronicles presents its war that fascinates me the most.

Instead of being a nameless commander put in charge of an army and sending your soldiers to hopelessly die, the protagonist in Valkyria Chronicles has a name and a face, Welkin Gunther, a gentle but naïve guy who joins the army of the small reign of Gallia (Belgium) to defend its country from the invasion of the Imperial Alliance (the German Reich) during what is basically World War II, with the help of some side character like everyone’s big brother Largo, the spunky Rosie, the quiet genius Isara and the lovable and brave Alicia. Sure, the plot and the characters are pretty filled with anime tropes, and side squad members are relegated to being just descriptions and stock phrases of even more anime tropes, but at least you are presented with a unique face or story before deciding to send him or her in a suicide action to break through the enemy lines or protecting your squad’s retreat. They are handed to you as they are, instead of being custom made and named as it was in Xcom and, moreover, there are just so many chances you can prove yourself to be a bad commander because after you let them die there are no more spares to be procedurally generated. Which is a nice way to set the importance of mastering leadership and strategies but quite useless in the long run since the game is easy enough to be played without letting anyone die. Not much war realism in here, I know, but, as I said, the setting and story are filled with many happy-go-lucky anime tropes.

Yet, despite some ridiculous over-the-top moment which just put you out of the immersion of being a soldier fighting the old trench warfare, the game attempts (and mostly succeeds) at dealing with its themes in a mature and respectful way. It does know how to discuss things like war crimes, death, camaraderie, sacrifice and duty, many times by dumbing down the content but it deserves to be acknowledged as one the firsts Japanese game which tried to dealt seriously with what it means to fight a war as an infantry soldier. There’s no Spec Ops or Valiant Hearts to be found here, it reiterates that war is bad but it doesn’t try to strike for much more, which is a real shame to me, but it gets the job done regardless.

Gameplay-wise instead, I love everything about it: I love how every turn starts with a tactical map in which you can see your troops and the terrain to decide who and how to move accordingly, I love the order system to boost stats and give you the feeling your leadership is having a positive effect on the characters morale, although it is small stuff compared to larger game systems like Total War’s. I love how characters move, take cover (I don’t love how they can’t crouch anywhere but behind sandbag though) fire and react to enemies, and vice versa. I love the palette-coloured graphics, the character design, the boot camp grinding to level your soldiers’ classes, the R&D department to enhance your tanks, the freedom you are given to just end a mission in a turn for a good score using the goddess that is Alicia or to roleplay as a real commander by slowly moving and defending with your characters, taking covers at every corner instead of always mindlessly charging. I just love this weird attempt, half-success at making a strategic-roleplaying hybrid video game. It’s a weird mix I find myself often appreciating when it does something special with it, such as in Crusader King’s II or the Rance series.

Valkyria Chronicles is one of those rare cases where a developer tries something new, and considering the Japanese market that is indeed an incredibly rare event on its own, but it also succeeds just enough to be a memorable, satisfactory experience. The original game made on the PS3 always received strong approve from niche fans but thanks to SEGA porting the game to Steam, with no bug or problems to speak of in my experience, it finally got the world-wide massive recognition it deserved.

To put it simply, Valkyria Chronicles has one of the best and unique gameplay I ever came across in a videogame. I agree that it is similar to Xcom’s gameplay, especially the most recent iterations of the latter, yet there is something about the setting and the way Valkyria Chronicles presents its war that fascinates me the most.

Instead of being a nameless commander put in charge of an army and sending your soldiers to hopelessly die, the protagonist in Valkyria Chronicles has a name and a face, Welkin Gunther, a gentle but naïve guy who joins the army of the small reign of Gallia (Belgium) to defend its country from the invasion of the Imperial Alliance (the German Reich) during what is basically World War II, with the help of some side character like everyone’s big brother Largo, the spunky Rosie, the quiet genius Isara and the lovable and brave Alicia. Sure, the plot and the characters are pretty filled with anime tropes, and side squad members are relegated to being just descriptions and stock phrases of even more anime tropes, but at least you are presented with a unique face or story before deciding to send him or her in a suicide action to break through the enemy lines or protecting your squad’s retreat. They are handed to you as they are, instead of being custom made and named as it was in Xcom and, moreover, there are just so many chances you can prove yourself to be a bad commander because after you let them die there are no more spares to be procedurally generated. Which is a nice way to set the importance of mastering leadership and strategies but quite useless in the long run since the game is easy enough to be played without letting anyone die. Not much war realism in here, I know, but, as I said, the setting and story are filled with many happy-go-lucky anime tropes.

Yet, despite some ridiculous over-the-top moment which just put you out of the immersion of being a soldier fighting the old trench warfare, the game attempts (and mostly succeeds) at dealing with its themes in a mature and respectful way. It does know how to discuss things like war crimes, death, camaraderie, sacrifice and duty, many times by dumbing down the content but it deserves to be acknowledged as one the firsts Japanese game which tried to dealt seriously with what it means to fight a war as an infantry soldier. There’s no Spec Ops or Valiant Hearts to be found here, it reiterates that war is bad but it doesn’t try to strike for much more, which is a real shame to me, but it gets the job done regardless.

Gameplay-wise instead, I love everything about it: I love how every turn starts with a tactical map in which you can see your troops and the terrain to decide who and how to move accordingly, I love the order system to boost stats and give you the feeling your leadership is having a positive effect on the characters morale, although it is small stuff compared to larger game systems like Total War’s. I love how characters move, take cover (I don’t love how they can’t crouch anywhere but behind sandbag though) fire and react to enemies, and vice versa. I love the palette-coloured graphics, the character design, the boot camp grinding to level your soldiers’ classes, the R&D department to enhance your tanks, the freedom you are given to just end a mission in a turn for a good score using the goddess that is Alicia or to roleplay as a real commander by slowly moving and defending with your characters, taking covers at every corner instead of always mindlessly charging. I just love this weird attempt, half-success at making a strategic-roleplaying hybrid video game. It’s a weird mix I find myself often appreciating when it does something special with it, such as in Crusader King’s II or the Rance series.

Valkyria Chronicles is one of those rare cases where a developer tries something new, and considering the Japanese market that is indeed an incredibly rare event on its own, but it also succeeds just enough to be a memorable, satisfactory experience. The original game made on the PS3 always received strong approve from niche fans but thanks to SEGA porting the game to Steam, with no bug or problems to speak of in my experience, it finally got the world-wide massive recognition it deserved.

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.

Himawari’s most pressing issue is that it tries to be a story oriented visual novel while being a character driven novel. I heard many referring to the huge plot twists ending every route, especially after the epilogue for the last one, yet I feel each and every one of them fell flat for the simple reason that I had been given not enough knowledge or reason to care about the mechanics behind the world, as the plot mostly focused on characters’ interactions, which aren’t that impressive too.

Each route, except maybe 2048, focused heavily on slices of life, mundane and every day content with sparse dramatic revelations and climaxes, so I was involved with the characters, I could relate to them (especially Akira, he’s my man) but as for the events I couldn’t care less or, in some cases, understand their importance. I was presented with a cast of characters having a simple, initial objective, to send a homemade rocket to fly into space, and from there it develops into a complex tale regarding the ambitions, the motives and, sometimes, the madness of the men reaching for the stars. What already made my emotional involvement with the story collapse were the inevitable comparison I unconsciously made with a comic named Planetes, which dealt with basically everything that is in Himawari only in far more depth, with better characters, a shorter more cohesive story and general better writing. I won’t make any distinct parallel between the two since it would be unfair and not say much about Himawari’s own merits. As for one last, personal digression, I hated the character of Daigo, from beginning to finish I couldn’t fathom his personality, his goals, his involvement with the story, everything he meant, did and stood for. Those who already read the novel may imagine how my impression of the story and the characters related to him was undermined by this, I won’t deny that what are often times considered to be the best parts of the game were, in fact, what had me the most groaning and rolling back my eyes for this reason.

Lastly, what hammered the remaining nails in the coffin, was the lack of an aftermath in every, single route. They just end, show you some plot twists, build a circumstantial resolution but leave so much open you’d just hope the next route had the answer you sought. They don’t, never. If you have questions in the middle of the game better forget them and hope it’s something the game thinks is deserving of an explanation before the ending. Regardless, oftentimes the more you will go on with the story the bigger will be the twists presented and the more the lack of any epilogue, explanation or context will leave you with just the build up for a grander sci-fi story that is never going to be told.

In a time where horror games are either first person jump scares fest or RPGmaker-made jump scares fest, it’s rare to find a game which gives a good example of the meaning of horror without the need of scaring the viewer. Taking the definition from the Oxford dictionary, horror refers to “an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust.” The reason most horror games and movies fail to me nowadays it’s because they all focus too much on the fear and shock part of the equation, forgetting the importance of that ‘intense feeling’. By that I’m not saying making a louder, piercing scream or a bigger monster but rather something that will stick with the players, that will haunt them during nights and waking hours, something strong enough to leave a mark even after the experience is passed, something that, in particular cases, might be realer and scarier than your average zombie or serial killer.

Detention is not scary because there are ghosts, sudden loud noises or because it puts the player at peril, rather these circumstances happen in very rare occasions during the game. It is scary because it presents a scenario far too real and common, based on real events moreover, and spins on it so that the player is forced to realize the reality of what is presented, the truth behind the shown atrocities and just how frightening human beings can be in certain environments.

It is not surface horror, it’s pervasive horror, which seeps into the mind and brings psychological consequences on one’s perception of reality, akin to what other more famous titles such as Silent Hill 2 or Rule of Rose managed to achieve. The horror is not something necessarily stranger or far from us, it might be near, behind you, or even inside of you.

Ever wondered how Ghost in the Shell would have worked if it was made by Michael Bay? Well, look no further, because Binary Domain answered the call.

In a world where sci-fi has to be slow paced, philosophical and filled with atmospheric music to be taken seriously (yes, I am referring to Blade Runner, of course), one game dares to defy expectations, presenting a thought-provoking but still familiar theme such as what separates human intelligence from artificial intelligence and lets you decide what to think on your own, while also giving you a big fat machine gun and telling you to shoots robots down to pieces. God, I love this game.

Binary Domain is not especially well designed in terms of graphics or gameplay, although it comes with an immensely satisfying shooting system where you can blow any parts of the enemies you are aiming to, in a bullet rain so huge that it makes The Matrix feels inadequate. What makes it shine, aside from this, is the speed-light paced adrenaline rush that is the campaign story, the possibility to order around people to blow up robots as big as skyscrapers, the sensation of having hordes of cannon fodder scrapheads to mince to pieces and a cover system which is… it’s nice, it does its job.

I’ve said ‘blow up’ and ‘to pieces’ far too times in this review, may this serve as a testament of how gloriously epic it’s the sensation of playing the game.

This game is endless. Not in the sense that you’ll never finish a single playthrough (though the chances are pretty high considering its difficulty and unpredictability) but because the possibilities are limitless. In Crusader Kings II you play as whoever you want to be, count, duke, king, emperor, ruling your dynasty from scratch until you are uplifted to great power or until you fail miserably and get wiped out in a cleanse war or deathly plague.

I certainly never once finished a game, it was hard enough to grasp every little mechanic you could use in the first twenty to thirty hours and after that I mostly focused on exploring possibilities and the hidden events, role-playing as a wise king and caring father or a ruthless unforgiving tyrant that had everyone who even dared to look at my wife beheaded.

Hilarious combinations are daily occurrences, there are plenty of reviews, memes and threads about Satanists popes, centuries old inbreeding dynasties, dumb rulers being murdered by their own stupidity, comedic cuckoldry, disastrous wars, you name it. One might complain that it’s mostly a RNG game where every risk calculation is bound to be wrong, but that’s exactly the point. There is a reason why Ironman mode has only one automatic save slot, so that you can experience your campaign, your story, as a real medieval life simulator: you carefully planned the assassination that will lead you into a sure-win succession war for the reign of your brother? Too bad, the assassination failed, everyone knows it was you, rebels arise, vassals revolt and your brother calls his allies to wreck doom upon your sorry head. That’s life, not every thing plays the way we imagined or wanted it too and more often than not it screws you in the behind, hard.
Not like you couldn’t play in normal vanilla mod with a plethora of cheats, if you just wanted to chill and cause havoc all around the world with unlimited resources and armies, as I said the game possibilities are limitless.

Play this game if you want to experience the unpredictable, the unavoidable, the unexpected, the unsolvable and generally to have a great time in the most complete, complex and vast strategy and role-playing game ever conceived.

The conclusion to the Dark Souls trilogy is, in itself, a grey, emotionless, void travel where everything you learned from the previous games is now more dead and hopeless than ever. This time you are put again into a Cycle where you either choose the delay the unavoidable, to erase everything once and for all and put a stop to the madness which begun with the demise of the Ancient Dragons or even more possibilities that, as per usual, resolve in you not being able to change much into the matters of the world and the time. Feels good to be completely useless.

Generally speaking, the combat has vastly improved both on the mechanic side and the bug haunting it since forever (I personally had pretty much no problem with hitboxes in this chapter) and it is in its most complete state. Tons of weapons, tons of armours, tons of sorceries and miracles to play with; gear up and be ready to be brutally ploughed, again.

My main issue with a game that is probably the most beautiful and visually stunning in the series is that it’s still lacking on giving you the weight and greater sense of scope behind your quest: as I was exploring and traveling to deal with the same problems of the first game, with a slightly different spin on it this time, even if the intro portrayed the incoming doom of the world and who’s got a part in it (aka the guys you got to buttf*ck with a sword) I didn’t feel the “Oh, so that’s him, finally, that’s where you were” vibe of the first game. Famous characters lacked the build-up that made them intriguing and seemingly unreachable and impossible to understand in Lordran.
You are wandering around a castle, learning subtle clues about its Lord, but it never has the same atmosphere as, for example, strolling through the Duke Archives in the first Dark Souls and be swarmed by subtle visual clues and lore about Seath and what’s behind the madness which permeates his giant palace as well as his mind. I reached Archdragon Peak with no idea regarding what awaited me at the end, so even if I was surprised by the revelation I still didn’t feel the huge payoff of a more complex build-up in a more unknown but understandable domain.

Admittedly, in some cases it was a feeling you could hardly avoid: the build-up to Aldritch and the locations before reaching him were top-notch in terms of lore and revelations, the final boss was worth of the conclusion of the series and, speaking of personal favourites, Gael was the time of my life, both for how the fight was choreographed and for what he stood for as a character.

Also, the online is finally not-broken enough to have a jolly good time with your pals or just getting a helping hand if you have failed fifty times in a row trying to deal the first blow to certain sons of mothers I remember all too well for my first playthrough.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.