Reviews Rate the game you finished/retired

[Nebulys]

I finished Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector earlier this week.



I think, ultimately, I preferred this one, but some people may not like the tradeoffs versus the original.

Citizen Sleeper 2 has a linear story, whereas the first one has several endings.

Exploring the belt loses some of the intimacy of being on the single space station in the first game.

But that ability to explore opens the door to tell more stories, get more experiences and feel like you're "part of something", which I think is one of the game's strongest selling points.

What I didn't like was the glitch and dice breaking mechanics, which make the game very stressful in its opening 2-3 hours. But it's narratively important, so I let it slide.

Also, the push mechanic feels kind of pointless, and I preferred to spend my "level ups" boosting my skills rather than strengthening this mechanic.

But neither of those things take significantly away from what is possibly 2025's first game of the year contender.

If you haven't played either or both of these games, I'd recommend starting with the first one and graduating to its sequel. Both are incredible games!

 

[spiel]

Got all achievements in Dragonsweeper

Fantastic RPG spin on Minesweeper. There are hidden rules of monster placement that help you deduce the tile number, and you're supposed to figure them out as you keep playing. I do miss the original version of the game which was really elegant in its simplicity; it had the right balance of contemplation and guesswork in the early parts. But the new version is still fun in its own right and comes with many QoL improvements.

Completed Type Help

Highly recommend this if you're a fan of the investigative/deductive process in Obra Dinn and Golden Idol. I adore the increasingly sinister tone of the entire case and the lo-fi interface (reminiscent of IF games). Played with a partner and it was super fun piecing the clues together on a board with post-its.

These two games are easily going on my GOTY candidate list. And more incredibly, they're free! I've sunk so much time into Dragonsweeper that I happily dropped a tip, but sadly I couldn't find any donate button for Type Help.

 

[STHX]

Dynasty Warriors: Origins
A very well made game and a massive improvement over the disappointing DW9. Similar to SW5 the game is a "reboot" that focuses on the early parts of the Three Kingdoms storyline and ends at Chibi, but unlike SW5 instead of completely changing the artstyle and the characters they kept the DW8 artstyle and characterization (outside of a few like Zhang Jiao and Dong Zhuo, who were made more serious and interesting, especially ZhanG Jiao, what a glow up). Battles have never felt so good and the player really needs to be careful at all times (at least on the 2 harder difficulty levels). Unfortunately this all came with the game having a single playable character which is absolutely an issue, but all the weapon movesets are varied and unique (and greatly expanded) at least
The game stars an unnamed protagonist (let's call it Ziluan as other characters refer to him in the game) that starts as a mercenary during the Yellow Turban Rebellion but eventually joins one of the warlords of the era. Ziluan is kinda like a Persona protagonist: one expression for the entire game, never speaks a word, has "social links" with the various officers of the era which amount to nothing, and can occasionally pick a choice that ranges from "Yes" to "Sarcastic yes". So without beating around the bush Ziluan is a big disappointment and the first clear negative of the game. The worst part is how everyone, and I mean everyone just loves sucking him off: he is always the bestest, greatest, most impressivest and the sole reason every game battle is won. The series has always been famous for the 1vs1000 gameplay but at least past games pretended the character you were using wasn't the only reason a faction won. The only positive I can think about Ziluan is that it has extremely good animations during battle no matter what weapon type he uses. For the rest Ziluan is a total and complete failure, and let's not even talk about his "OC story" which amounts to nothing at all by the end of the game
On the story side, the early part of the RotTK story has been greatly expanded. Like the Yellow Turban Rebellion which in most games is solved in a single battle is now a whole chapter which includes 5 battles and multiple cutscenes, and the following chapter focusing on Dong Zhuo is even longer. The voice acting is the right balance of good and "hammy" which is exactly what DW should be, and this focus also allows the DW cast to be better developed (although all are not equal on this side). Too bad the actual cutscenes suck. Every one is the same "a few dudes standing still or sitting still while they look at the camera and talk". Nothing happens during these cutscenes, almost zero animations. The only true cutscenes are the CG ones but those are few and very sparse. Past DW games had cutscenes where people at least moved, or fought, or just did something. But here they're just... standing there doing nothing
The actual gameplay is amazing, but a particular focus should be given to the new "large armies" mechanic. A large army is a big clump of enemy and allied officers clumped together and behaving like a single unit. The player needs to continue stop the enemy army from using tactics (which change depending on the battle) while protecting their own strategists until the enemy army breaks, causing a massive morale loss to the enemy (and morale is probably one of the most important mechanic in this game). Even if you play good (and there are many ways to play good, like parrying, perfect dodges, counterattacks) having the morale advantage greatly decreases the time it takes to win and there is a certain satisfaction in seeing how all the efforts during a battle pay off in the end
Returning to the story, I picked the Wei side for the first run and I have to say the DWO Wei story is one of the best I ever saw in a DW game. Not only it's the most realized, but it somehow manages to give all the in-game Wei officers their time to shine. There is a great focus of explaining every battle and how it's supposed to go before even starting the prebattle war council. Every step of Cao Cao's plan is discussed and analyzed, every important RotTK event is adapted. It also doesn't forget to integrates in the later parts of the story the 2 officers which can be saved from their canonical death. It's also the only story where Ziluan's bond to the rest of the Wei officers feels like it has an actual significance, expecially in the normal end which has probably one of the best battles in the series where after the canonical defeat at Chibi Ziluan (and the player specifically) manages to regroup and reinvigorate the fleeing Wei troops in turning a battle for their survival in a massive curbstomp victory where every officers you met in the route has it's own unique dialogue and role to ensure victory. It's almost a shame the Wei True end skips this battle because, well it just ends with a victory at Chibi. Truly incredible
And the illusion shattered when playing the other 2 routes. Now now, I think the Wu normal route is still very good and it's also very unique since it has almost no battles in common with the 2 other routes. But for the Wu True route the writers basically didn't even try in doing someting with the 2 officers you can save (both just end up the same way: they got hurt badly so let's pretend they died for no reason at all). Yeah I know their death is really hard to write away but it's such a cop out, and the "True" end is barely different to the normal one (you even fight the same final battle with 0 changes). And Shu's route, oh boy. This game made me realize why most DW skip all these early parts to quickly get to the post Chibi events. The entire route is just Liu Bei and its 2 sworn brothers just casually getting involved in random things, made even worse by Liu Bei being such a crybaby with zero willingness to do anything at all. The last chapter at leasts adds a few more characters but it's too little too late. And because the game ends at Chibi there is literally nothing the writers could do to have a separate "True" route so the Shu true route is literally the same as the normal route with zero changes. It truly feels like the game originally only had a Wei route and the devs had to scramble to add 2 other routes in a year or something
Oh yeah, let's talk about the "affinity scenes" a bit more. Honestly they're not bad but they're also not that good. The real problem is how to get them: the officer you want to bond gives you some "tasks" which in 80% of the time amount to insanely boring grind like "kill 300 enemies using this weapon and this specific attack" which are on the level of random daily quests from a gacha. These only exist to waste the player time, and there are like 300 of them to do if you want to max all the affinity levels (or get all the achievements). DW games have been pretty bad with random things to grind for for the past games but this system beats them all. This grind is terrible, awful. And even with the map being a small "JRPG-style" world map there are still moments where the player has to waste time by walking from one tip of the map to the other. It's insane how good this game is during battles and how bad it's outside of battles
For the final part, despite the high parts this game ultimately feels incomplete. Ending at Chibi simply doesn't work in RotTK, especially for non-Wei factions. But the worst part is that even accepting Chibi as an end the game still feels "incomplete". Remember what I said about affinity scenes with the cast? Even "villains" or simply characters you can't join get them. And most of those are some variation of "oh Ziluan, I really want to recruit you, you're so strong and I want you all for me. Too bad the developers didn't add a route for my faction" and then it dawned on me: the game is basically set up to have some sort of Xtreme Legends expansion which will obviously add more routes to the story (because it would take much less time than writing the game up to Wuzhang Plains). And hey, nothing bad with expanding a game, but the problem is this game is 80€. And for this price you get underwhelming cutscenes, massive unnecessary grind, various stories that go nowhere, a terrible protagonist, and maybe even a 40 bucks or more "expansion"being sold in a year that will make this costly package slightly less incomplete. And this shit is unacceptable
Make no mistake, this game is good, but what started as a 9/10 eventually ended up at a 8, 7.5 out of ten. I have no problem with giving this game a thumbs up, but in no way is this game worth 80 euros. Do not buy it at this price. KT needs to understand if they want their games to cost so much they also need to put an 80 bucks level of effort in them

 

[TrishaKit]

I just finished Atelier Meruru
From a gameplay standpoint this one is easily the best of the original Arland trilogy. Seeing environments actually change, including what you can collect and explore there as you complete quests gives incentive to complete goals beyond just "you have to do this". Now you want to complete them because they'll help you find better materials for your alchemy! Plus its just fun seeing things change, and I like how this shows even on the world map. I can't say I was held as strongly story/theme wise though. I feel Totori was better in that regard with her story of trying to find her mother. Seeing her grow was also more endearing. But Meruru was still really fun! Seeing a much grown Sterk use his special attacks to finish off some bosses was also wicked cool.
Time to move on to Lulua.

 

[fantomena]

Finished Alan Wake 2 + Expansions (PC)

Still a fantastic game that got itself hampere down due to no physical + EGS exclusivity. Fantastic gameplay, good story, great world building, most beautiful game I have played so far (with path tracing enabled). Played and looked better than on my PS5. The story isn't as good as in the first game, feels like everything about the story except for the story involing Alan himself progressed. Lots of interesting wouldw building on the side, but I wish the story had progressed more as who knows if Alan Wake 3 will ever be released.

Story expansions were decent and fun too.

Score: 8.9/10

 

[Mivey]

Lots of interesting wouldw building on the side, but I wish the story had progressed more as who knows if Alan Wake 3 will ever be released.

I think the progression is pretty good (with Final Draft ending). There's still some open questions, but some of those connect fairly organically with other parts of the Remedy Connected Universe, and can be addressed in a Control 2. If it's clear that there won't be an Alan Wake 3, then they could probably easily provide an epilogue via expansions packs ala AWE in Control or other future Remedy games.

 

[STHX]

There isn't much to say about Suikoden I since it's a game from 1995. Like with many "firsts" the game has many archaic systems (especially inventory management) that have been refined or removed from its sequels. But considering this is a game from 1995 (it was a Playstation game yes, but it came out the same year as Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest VI and Terranigma, all SNES rpgs so it took a big gamble by releasing on PS1) it's still a very interesting experience. It features interesting subversions considering the era it came out but nothing to extreme. All in all replaying it was a nice experience and I will gladly move to II when it's time
But 2 things in particular stand out: 1) the remaster added an auto-save feature. I mean nice, if the autosave also "saved" every screen or something ismilar, instead it only saves when there is a save crystal in the current "room", except the game has maybe 8-10 save crystals in total so it's completely useless. Boy does this game love to starve the player while exploring dungeons, which combined with 2) this game has one of the most insane paces I can remember. There are people that argue Chrono Trigger is a very fast paced game since a lot of things happen one after another but at least CT has some moments of "calm". In Suikoden you literally can't go 20 minutes without something happening, from the beginning until the end. There is a part where you just finished exploring a dungeon, barely walk to the next destination and are instantly thrown into the first "major battle", and as soon as you clear it you're thrown into a dungeon which ends on the first 1vs1 duel all without save points (unless you intentionally exit the dungeon and walk back to the nearest save point). I can't think of another rpg like this

 

[MegaApple]

Finished : Spider-Man Miles Morales (PC)

Swinging is still the best part (even if it feels, designers can make it more complex, but chose to keep it simple), expanded a bit from SM2018. Combat was nice, Venom abilities were decent addition. Visual presentation (details, animations, effects) are industry leading.

Rest of the game left me "meh".
Painfully meh story (I like the idea - "friend turned foe", bad execution), disappointing after rather decent SM2018 story and excellent Spider-Verse movies. Ubisoft-like open-world activities felt worse here than in SM2018; good for passing time and de-stressing but didn't feel worthwhile.

Rating - 2.5/5 (C-tier)

 

[Mivey]

I finished Pillars of Eternity 3 sorry, I meant Avowed.

Coming into this, I expected an RPG with amazing combat, some great side quests (the kind they are famous for), lots of great roleplaying opportunities and perhaps a good story, that likely was not going to touch too many of the deeper topics of the setting, in order to ease people into it.

What I got was a story that feels more like a direct sequel to Pillars 2 than I imagined. Like, sure, the Watcher isn't here and the direct consequences of the ending of Pillars 2 isn't touched here, though clearly referenced and the events we witness in the Living Lands feel every much as world shattering than what happened there. To the point where I do not know how they will make future games in this setting that reference the events of Avowed. You can take the plot in so many wildly different directions by the end.

The combat is an absolute delight. I have never played an RPG where magic felt so snappy and useful. There are magic systems where you are more OP by the end, but it's often a struggle to get there, but it feels like a joy here in Avowed. By the end you are still deeply rewarded for strategic thinking and crowd control mechanisms, but even as a mage you can mix and match things as you want. Want to focus more on melee combat with sword, spears or daggers? Sure, go for it. You find great weapons throughout the game and it will still be highly viable.

The game is visually stunning. I loved how this game looked at 4K and (trigger warning for Derrick01 ) with DLSS and FrameGen I got a constant 100+ FPS throughout that still felt super responsive. This might as well be the best Unreal Engine 5 game in that respect I played. I do not recall any major stuttering or bad "camera feel" throughout. Obsidian has some amazing, world class engineers, on it for such a feat.

My only complains about this experience, the few warts to this otherwise beautiful game, would be about the side quest design. The writing for many of them is great, but very often there is a lack of "paypack". You rescue someone, or make some kind of important choice for someone, and there is very often no meaningful reaction. You often do not have to go back to see what the quest giver is saying, and even when you do, it feels like an afterthought. Clearly a budget thing, this feels like the kind of thing Obsidian is usually quite good at. Another more minor thing is that the choice to split the game into parts also makes it feel like a lesser experience, compared to their previous open world title New Vegas. I get why they did this, it must make devoplment so much more manageable, but you also lose out on so much cool interactivity and without it.

That said, overally I loved my time wi th Avowed and was really happy by the time the credits rolled. It's just nice to see the traditional epilogue slides explaining the consequences of your choice to you.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Great, fun game. Is more of a exploration-puzzle game than an action game, was actually suprised at how little shooting there was, you could easily finish the game without firing a shot. One of the most beautiful games Ive ever played (path tracing enabled). Great story, great environments, great world building, fun to explore, interesting characters. I did find that they could have explored parts of the story more, as I felt the ending came abit abrupt.

Score: 8.5/10

Finished



Nice game (6 hours) about a man doing a job underwater, exploringa and fixing things in the midst while he is having a crisis about his emotions due to loss. Some bad pacing, but the story was nice and the environments were nice. Nice looking game too.

Score: 8.2/10

Finished



Good, fun game. Great graphics, great looking environments, interesting story, lots of combat moves, abilities you can upgrade and buy. However, I did find it dissapointing that there were a ton of invisible walls, the money not being able to climb of different trees, rocks and such and how little impack the combat often felt when using the regular "stick". Very slow running too.

Score: 8/10

 

[Mivey]

I finally finished Yakuza: Like A Dragon. The first main line game without Kiryu as the protagonist. Instead the game introduces Ichiban Kasuga. Himself a two-bit Yakuza underling, who similar to Kiryu accepts a long prison sentence for a murder he did not commit. So right out of the bat, RGG Studio did not exactly re invent the wheel here. Ichiban shares a lot with Kiryu: the aforementioned prison term, they both hang on to an old fashioned, honour based view of the Yakuza, they are both fairly naive and have a fairly simple world view. What differentiates them is mostly personality. Where Kiryu was mostly aloof, almost shy, Ichiban is a lot more extroverted and emotional. It also helps that fundamentally, he likes being a Yakuza, in way that never really worked for Kiryu. The kinds of tasks that he had to do, like beating up people for money, where clearly not things he ever enjoyed doing, as we see in Yakuza 0. Ichiban feels more suited to a life where you don't need more than understanding who your friends are, and the ability to solve problems with your fists.

I really ended up liking Ichiban, to the point that I think he makes Kiryu retroactively look bad.

The story in this one is about as convoluted and complex as you can expect. I don't think it is quite at Yakuza 5 levels, it's far more straight forward than that, with a few, relatively predictable twists, and one surprising but also really clever one right at the end. Not going into details here (mostly because I'm lazy), but YLAD has easily one of the best narratives in the series to me. This feels like what Yakuza 1 wanted to be, a compelling villain who shares a close connection to our hero. Great, great villain and resolution at the end.

The party that accompanies Ichiban is also a big new thing: since YLAD is one big tribute to Dragon Quest, Ichiban has his "party". I loved this addition to the story as well. It makes this game so much more interesting, as you hear the characters talk with each other about stuff you find in the world and you have bonding events that you unlock as your level up their friendship levels (mostly by having them in your party during fights).

My only big negative about YLAD is the combat. I get that RGG Studio wanted this game to be a callback to old Dragon Quest, but I hate how restrictive and unimaginative their take on classic JRPG combat is. They really should have made use of positioning and introduce a few more mechanics to introduce more complex tactics. As it stands, this really feels old at hour 10, and it never really gets interesting. Level up to a certain point, use the enemies weaknesses, quickly find a healer, and then you are set for the entire game. It never, ever expects more from you. I really hope Yakuza Infinite Wealth introduces some new ideas here. Of course, there are still the spin off titles, like Lost Judgment, who retain action combat, but it would be neat if the big meaty main line games had good combat too.

overall, though, I still really liked YLAD. Combat woes aside, this feels like a fresh new take on the series and I am looking forward where Ichiban's story goes from here.