1st playthrough is like: "DAMN THIS IS THE BEST SHIT I'VE PLAYED IN MY WHOLE LIFE"

2nd playthrough is like: "yeah this game is alright..."

The game was worth the wait and all the hype but it kinda fell off specially in the latest parts, but nonetheless still a great game and good entry to the souls games but not the best one.

Can't wait for the DLC

Pokémon Sword is probably the weirdest game in the series for me so far. For a little more context, I've played the remakes of Gens 1-3, played 4-7. and also 9. I decided to replay them and try out the ones I never got around to in order to see how my opinion changes from my first time playing them years ago. Generation 8 was the only one I haven't touched, and after a conversation with one of my friends, I decided I'd finally try it out for the first time. I kept my expectations low because I heard this one is one of the worsts in the series. So what's my verdict? Well, it leans close to being mediocre unfortunately. Now in all honesty, my problem with this game isn't really much, but it's such a big factor that I can't ignore it, though I'll get to that later. First, the good. I think the new Pokémon are pretty damn cool. For these reviews (minus Kalos), I'm only using Pokémon that debuted in that Gen (or regional forms). All of the Pokémon I used on my team were pretty great in both the strength and design departments, so no complaints there. The gameplay itself is fine, it's kind of easy at times but the level scaling felt pretty tight in a good way, where I never really felt over or underleveled (though I did skip some battles near the end). I will say though, most of the Gym Challenges were pretty fun, even if they were really simple in concept. The ones that stood out the most to me were Bea's with that weird rotating disk you have to guide yourself in or Gordie's with the dowsing machine where you need to watch out for the pits. Not all of these are great though, and some of them are literally just... regular battles. I would've preferred the puzzles they'd do in the older games but I don't completely mind these. The Gym Leaders themselves were a pretty good difficulty, not being as easy as I expected but not hard where I'd need more than one attempt, with the exception of Nessa since my team wasn't exactly suited for her battle at that point (I didn't know Applin only learns two moves before evolving into Flapple or Appletun). The aesthetic of the game is also really nice, the region barely feels stale visually (graphics aside), such as with Ballonlea and Circhester. Last but not least, the OST is seriously great. The battle themes especially shine, mainly the Gym Leader's, Hop's, Pier's and especially Bede's which is probably my favourite song in the game. The unfortunate thing is, some of those amazing songs are strapped onto certain characters, and the main things I don't like about this game are the story and characters. The story has very little substance to it until the final act, and that final act is... horrible. Let's start with the elephant in the room, Chairman Rosé is probably the WORST character not only in the game, but dare I say the series. His plan is so crazy that I genuinely can't wrap my head around his line of thinking and I don't think I want to understand anyway. So let me get this straight: He wants to stop the energy crisis in Galar. Got it. So when does this energy crisis occur? A THOUSAND YEARS IN THE FUTURE??? It baffles me because not even ten generations could pass for that crisis to occur. So he's paranoid about something that won't happen for many, many, MANY years. Okay, so what's his plan? He talks to Leon about it, Leon says he wants to help after the final match with the player. For some reason this upsets Rosé so much he decides to bring about the Darkest Day early by waking up Eternatus right before the match started? Why? For what purpose? I don't even care if I got some of the details wrong because frankly, Rosé sucks and I hate him. Unfortunately, most of the other characters aren't much better. Hop, Leon, Marnie, and Bede especially are either extremely annoying or extremely bland. Hop and Leon don't shut up about the latter being THE unbeatable champion, Marnie is literally the least interesting important character I've seen in the series, and Bede is trying so hard to be a good asshole rival but is too busy talking about how he got endorsed by the Chairman to be a good rival (I consistently one-shot his team each time). I saw someone say Marnie was a "walking character design" and that honestly feels true because she barely shows up and she isn't really as interesting as she looks. I bring this up because that feels like the game in general. The game has a lot of stuff that looks interesting, but it falls flat. Luckily, the Gym Leaders were all pretty cool and are pretty memorable to me at least, such as Nessa, Raihan, Bea, and the highlights are Gordie and Piers. I just love how expressive Gordie is and Piers was the highlight, him having a banger theme and a unique stadium, plus no Dynamaxing in his Gym. I forgot to mention, I think Dynamax as a gimmick is... not bad. I'll admit, out of the main gimmicks, Mega Evolution is definitely the coolest one. However, my issue with Megas comes from how there's no limitations on them, unlike the others where they're more limited in use. Dynamax feels like the compromise between Mega Evolution and Z-Moves. You have three turns to have this powered up gigantic version of your Pokémon and all your moves change to certain Dynamax versions. It's not a bad gimmick at all, and Gigantimaxing has basically what I wanted with the design changes, and some of them are pretty cool like Gengar and Alcremie's. I do understand why some people don't like it though, really my only issue with it comes from the Dynamax raids which just really aren't fun if I'm being blunt. I liked the Tera Raids in Scarlet and Violet much better since they feel a lot quicker and as a result these are just painful since they feel super long. Anyway, I don't plan on doing the DLC for a while because I just wanted to do a base game playthrough to get my opinion on it. Overall, this game is pretty good in a lot of qualities, but the story and characters really drag it down.

This game has a lot of potential, but I feel like the initial concept works against it. It’s a bit more mean-spirited, where you kind of hope something horrible happens to everyone and it actually needs to in order to progress. It’s a concept that unfortunately rips away all of the scariness and hilarity that most people would probably be looking for. Aside from a well-timed spawn, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Unlike the other game that this one will be compared to until the end of time, there’s no chance of organic comedy coming from your friends who are avoiding danger rather than looking for it. The point here is to hope that something kills everyone and that the camera man isn’t dicking around somewhere else while it’s happening.

I played the game for about 2 hours and feel like I’ve already experienced everything it has to offer. The upgrades it sells you are mostly cosmetic and the amount of views you get per video seem completely arbitrary. You’ll have some rounds of gameplay where everyone dies in the first 5 seconds, leaving you with 60% of film left and others where barely anything happens at all. The environments don’t really give you that much to play with and there’s no reason to wander off because there’s only one camera. Every day ends with an awkward movie experience where everyone sits around looking at the unedited footage and maybe sometimes you’ll hear a light chuckle under someone’s breath. It’s nice that they offered it for free, but I probably won’t go back to this one until it gets some major updates.

I think my brain has a problem.

Everytime I think about this game or say it's name outloud I always misread the name as "Backshot Roulette" instead of it's real name. It started off as a joke one of my friends said and now it's the just the name of the game in my mind, it's gotten so bad that now most of my friend group also just call it Backshot Roulette and now I think one of my friends wants to fuck the Dealer! please send help I think me and my friend group have been infected by the woke mind virus!!!!

Oh yeah umm game really fun, love the visual aesthetic and the Dealer has the perfect blend of charming and creepy that you'd want from a game like this. Overall really solid and great all around.

There’s a line that stands out to me where Barret refers to the ‘Gilded Saucer’, emphasising how the bright lights and supreme extravagance of the Gold Saucer serve as a distraction, a veneer for the true ugliness of the world and the ugliness and exploitation beneath the surface. This ought to be what the game is about, but it feels more like the whole game experience has become its own gold saucer, each region like another ‘square’ full of amusements and distractions.

I must admit I had a hell of a lot of fun with this game. It kept me playing for weeks, about 150 hours, with plenty more postgame challenges and tedium left over. The game is bloated as hell with filler and busywork, but also packed with fun mini games and delightful combat. Aside from some tweaks like more aggressive AI for party members or range and jumping attacks for everyone, I don’t have any issue with the combat and it kept me coming back for more.

The main story doesn’t match up to that though, so the overall package is frankly disappointing and frustrating. Despite much speculation and hints from the creators at something big and meaningful, it doesn’t follow through. All the narrative weight goes into plot and driving to the next big spectacle, rather than saying something or really focusing on the characters. Characters are sometimes reduced to love interests, magical plot devices and comic relief in their vastly expanded, stretched out journey. So many opportunities to dig into their feelings and connections are wasted in favour of brief feel good moments and affection gauges going up. Sephiroth no longer feels at all unnerving or threatening. Big lore dumps are added in attempt to add history to the game’s world but I find they lack flavour.

When they’re not competing for ‘best girl’ the leads do feel engaging. It’s clear they have their own relationships not just the one they each have with Cloud, so it’s a bit sad not to see more of that, which could’ve been a better use of the side quests and even the various times the party splits up in main story chapters.

The game suggests some great positive influences from other titles like Yakuza series and even western RPGs. It’s also got some bad habits from them too like some annoying cinematic button presses which don’t provide the emotional weight intended.

Having said all that I really appreciate the scale of this game and the effort and love poured into it; it certainly shows more than other recent entries to the franchise. I hope the same level of passion and fun can go into an original story for the next mainline FF or even a separate IP. The final chapter seems divisive but I actually found some intrigue in it. In recent years the multiverse concept has quickly moved en vogue to cliche but there’s actually a few crumbs of excitement for me there. Maybe they can pull it off, maybe we’ll never learn.

I was not expecting to love this as much as I did. It's not perfect for sure, but what it did right was more than enough to push it to 5 stars for me!

The combat felt THE best I've experienced in a soulslike outside of Fromsoft, even surpassing Dark Souls 2 or Lies of P for me. Aggro Crab just gets it somehow! My only gripe with the combat is just that the game got a little bit too easy towards the end. I think this is because you can unlock so many powerups that you get to a point where you can just mow enemies down without much trouble. I fought the final boss with full upgrades and took almost no damage (I didn't use assist mode a single time except to get the gun achievement post game). I would've loved to see a NG+ mode or boss rush to address this or just better scaling at least.

The platforming and movement were an absolute joy. Rolling around in one of the many incredibly creative shells and using the grappling hook had a great sense of speed. Sure some platforming sections could be janky but it never bothered me to the point of frustration. I wasn't even expecting the platforming going in so the level of quality it's at was a pleasant surprise. It also sounds like the team is hard at work on fixing bugs as well. Speaking of bugs, most of the ones I experienced just had to do with me getting launched after using certain moves. This also didn't happen often enough to frustrate me either.

The story is the other part that was a huge surprise. I was fully expecting the story to just be goofy crab shenanigans and there's for sure a lot of crab/ocean related humor that was mostly just fine and sometimes fell flat, but the main character actually goes through a lot of meaningful growth, the story gets pretty dark and serious, and it even had me on the verge of tears a few times. It wasn't a life changing story by any means, but it felt way more epic and meaningful than I could've anticipated.

The game also has a lot of references to other games which were kind of fun to discover though it felt like there were a little too many references at times. Now and then the attempts at humor even went a bit too far imo. Still, it was a great experience.

HIGHLY recommend this game to anyone who enjoys soulslike games or is looking for a challenge/different experience. I have heard about more bugs on other platforms so it could be worth waiting a while for more bug fixes. I'm feeling pretty strongly that this'll be my GOTY this year.