Reviews Rate the game you finished/retired

[Yoshi]

Finished HITMAN 3


It's very rare when a developer is able to make a trilogy where each game is equally great, but IOI manages to do just that. The quality is consistent across all three games and never dips below the standard that HITMAN 1 set.

What I love most is the freedom of choice these games give you. They're essentially sandbox games but with a story and a purpose. The possibilities on how to approach situations and kill your target are endless. Even though I've completed the story, I can still have fun replaying the levels because each playthrough will be different for me.

The story, the gameplay, the graphics, the music -- everything is on point. But what really shines for me is the atmosphere. Each location feels like its own living, breathing world. It's really immersive to the point where it reminds me of Rockstar's worldbuilding and attention to detail. Not many games make me feel that way.

The only negatives are the business side of IOI, but I can't deny their talent as developers.

Overall, HITMAN 3 is a fantastic wrap-up to an all-time great trilogy.

5/5

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Oure (Heavy Spectrum Limited, 2017)

Very chill game where you fly around the sky as a big red noodle-style dragon and mostly collect things, occasionally discover a platform to land and flip a switch on, which will reveal more things to collect.

Then there's 8 encounters with "Titans", huge flying beasts that seem to be made out of rock and VERY, very inspired by the bosses from Shadow of the Colossus, which are sort of action-puzzle challenges.

Eventually you collect enough of the things and complete every encounter with every Titan and the game ends. Then there's a New Game+ mode where you get do it over with a slightly different player character and slightly harder puzzles in the Titan encounters.

There is some story-scaffolding to put all of this into context, too, but it might as well not be there.

This game could have been a chill-out classic, but unfortunately the (gamepad) controls are quite un-intuitive and really take a while to get used to - and during the Titan encounters, they often turn out to be the hardest challenge.

100%-ed it anyway, I'm a sucker for flying games. And noodly dragons.


3/5

 

[Mivey]

I finished Get Even


On the surface, this is a (lite) horror game, with a focus on exploring memories to find out what really happened. I don't want to spoil the central focus, I think it's the most effective when you go in fully blind, like I did.

I had a hard time with this game, but ultimately came around to liking it. it feels like the game is pulling a lot of elements from various games. The "choice and consequence" aspect of the game is probably its weakest part, just because of how forced. You decide the fate of random people who you don't know, who are generally overly aggressive or just completely insane, and then the game expects you to feel sad that some random thing you did killed one of these faceless goons. Falls entirely flat, as I said. Another annoyance is the stealth, which is just really not well implemented and yet half expected by the game.

Despite the pretty rough corners, I was ultimately intrigued by the central question long enough to finish the game, so obviously it was doing something right.

For a game from 2017 and using Unreal Engine 3, it looks rather good. A bit heavy on the Steam Deck, it was hard to get a locked 40 FPS, and the biggest problem is strangely the CPU clocks that seem to eat up too much battery. By trying to fix the GPU clock and fix the TPD, I managed to get it there for 80% of the game, but there were still frequent drops.

Overall, a good game. flawed but one that explores interesting ideas about memories, and how they affect our perception of things.

 

[Joe Spangle]

What a great game. If i had played it last year it probably would've been No2 in my GOTY list. The Elden Ring train is unstoppable

A terrific 'Zelda' like (not really that much like Zelda other than a few elements, but its about the closest comparison i can think of).
It really is a thinker of a game, its puzzles are some of the most refreshing I've played in recent history and the lore/world building is great. I, like many here on MC am on the older side of life and so remember when games didn't hand hold to checkpoints or give you the answers to obstacles instantly and so this game had me having to use my remaining brain cells and really dig into the world to advance and i loved it. Its full of secret paths and interesting puzzles and there is a lovely mechanic behind a lot of the exploration that i found brilliant (don't want to spoil anything so wont say any more).
Combat is ok, I struggled a bit with coordination (probably because of the age thing) but the real strength of the game in my opinion is the cryptic way of explaining the world and how to progress. I'm not going to say any more as I found it best to go in blind.

9/10

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Darksiders Genesis


Decent Zelda-style action game in the Darksiders Universe. You can switch at any time between War (melee combat) and Strife (gunplay) and there are several new moves and upgrades to unlock. The level design is good and exploration is often rewarded, but the puzzles lack the creativity and variation of the Zelda games. It's also annoying that you can't rotate the camera, which can make jumping between platforms very frustrating. Fun for a few hours, but not more than that.

Score: 7.2/10


Finished Kill it with Fire


Funny casual game where you need to kill all spiders. To find them all, you'll literally have to turn each stone, open all drawers and move all furniture. Luckily you'll find lots of stuff to help you. There's a spider-scanner with plenty of possible upgrades, and you'll find better weapons after a while, going from an improvised flamethrower to a shotgun and molotov's. There's no need to be careful of the environment, so putting things on fire is often the most effective (and most satisfying) way to kill spiders.

Each level also has several objectives, which you need to complete to unlock new stuff. Some of these objectives are clever puzzles, but most of them are rather boring and repetitive. More creativity and funny ideas could have made this game so much better!

Still, Kill it with Fire is fun to play in short bursts, especially if you hate spiders and love to see them burning.

Score: 7.8/10

 

[Yoshi]

Finished Detroit: Become Human


I'm conflicted. The story was interesting, although cliche at times. The graphics look absolutely stunning. I like all of the main protagonists and their stories. But as a video game, it felt like a chore to play. The QTE button prompts were excessive and awkward. There is a casual difficulty setting that simplifies the controls a bit, but along with that comes a few additional handholding features which I wasn't going to like. I still have no idea why Quantic Dream has such an obsession with tedious control schemes.

One thing I found pretty cool was the main menu screen, which features an android that evolves over time based on how the story progresses.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with it, but the QTEs sour the experience on what could have been a better game.

4/5

 

[Stevey]

Finished Max Payne 3 (again)


This is a great game, sure it doesnt have the noir atmosphere of the first two games, but the writing is just as good.
The combat is a lot of fun, still holds up today even though it's like 10 years old.
Seem to remember it getting some stick for overuse of cutscenes, but this series has always had a lot of cutscenes, and it definitely wasnt a problem for me.

8/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Onde (Lance & 3-50 / Assemble Entertainment, Mixtvision, 2022)

If this game had been ready for publishing in 2012 instead of 2022, there is no doubt in my mind that it would have been a Playstation 3 exclusive.

It belongs to this specific school of art direction, with an abstract, yet lavish visual style, great music that rhythmically integrates with the visuals and an innovative gameplay twist on an established genre that Sony went for again and again, back when it sought to establish an image of the PS3 as the platform for 'sophisticated' downloadable games for connoisseurs.

The gameplay twist here is that it is a 2D-platformer, but it also isn't - there are no platforms and there is no running, you glide and float your little agglomeration of cell-like shapes across mostly circle-shaped geometric forms. There is no jumping either, instead you ride shockwaves to and fro between the shapes that make up the paths through the levels, some of which you trigger, some of which you have to catch with the right timing. The challenge is moderate, and the game itself is short - 3 hours for a first playthrough, then maybe two or three more for the remaining achievements, and a speed-running achievement that might take another couple of attempts.

There is a playable demo on Steam and if you like offbeat, artsy takes on platformers and also have a thing for cells and microorganism-like creatures - or, to put it another way, if you enjoyed games such as GRIS, Osmos and flOw - you should definitely take a look.


4.5/5




Also finished Milkmaid of the Milky Way (machineboy, 2017)

After a long personal streak of playing terrible stains on the genre, finally played a nice indie point-and-click adventure again - short, sweet, straightforward puzzles, almost no silly adventure-game logic and all in-game text is written in verse! The visuals are on the sparse side, but the music is very pleasant - great effort from a development team of one person.


3/5

 

[Yoshi]

Finished Clone Drone in the Danger Zone


It's basically the robot version of Gladiator. You're dropped off in an arena and you must kill the other robots to survive. Between each round, you can unlock new weapons and/or purchase upgrades to prep yourself for the upcoming battle.

The story mode is fairly short and can be completed within 2 hours, but there's an endless mode and several challenge modes that will take up much more of your time. The game can be played solo or with a group of friends.

One feature I love most about this game is Steam Workshop, which contains thousands of user-made challenges and endless levels.

Lots of replayability with this one.

4/5

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Forgot to write this one here, finished the campaigns a while ago. It was decent fun, but got quite repetive and uninteresting quickly. The guns and gameplay are pretty good which is the main reason I finished it, but the level design and replayability is not good. The sound design and mixing is often mediocre, graphics are decent.

Far from as good as L4D2, but was still decent fun.

Score: 7.5/10

 

[FunnyJay]

Finished
on the Steam Deck.
Worked perfectly if you ran it through Proton instead of the native Linux version.

The game was really cool and the story was fine. It dragged on a bit, especially on your third visit to Prague during the curfew when you have to sneak around all the streets, and the game "forces" you to keep running bwtween the different areas to finish side quests and the main quest.
It would be really interesting to see a sequel to this game, to see where they decide to end "Adam Jensen's" story.

And let me leave you with the very best piece of the soundtrack:

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Frog Detective 1


Very charming game where a frog detective needs to solve a mystery on a haunted island. The puzzles are extremely easy - just talk to everyone and you beat the game - but the characters and dialogs are incredibly cute and funny. Recommended to play the day after a good party.

Score: 7.0/10



Finished The Adventure Pals


Decent platformer with great controls, lots of short levels and colorful graphics. It looks and plays great, but sadly there's a HUGE amount of repetition. Everything in the game is re-used over and over and over again, and as a result none of the levels feels creative or unique. The game is also VERY easy, except for the bosses which are very well designed. Fun, but only once and in short sessions.

Score: 6.1/10

 

[Mivey]

I finished Norco on the Deck.


A pretty popular game from last year, and I can see why it would garner quite some attention. On the surface it's an adventure game, point and click even, but it features a huge focus on writing that seems to bring it more in line with something like Disco Elysium. Similar style of unreliable narration and very affected writing. The other big game it reminded me was Kentucky Zero Route, not due to actually resembling it as a game, but it featured a similar southern US setting, in this case Louisiana instead of Kentucky. It's technically a sort of cyberpunk future, with the US being more or less a failed state, with some kind of nuclear civil war that messed it up (even more than today).

Having finished it, I gotta say it's kind of an unpleasant game to play. I guess in some sense that's a testament to its writing. It floods you with misery, and the kind of hopelessness you get with intractable family problems, where you know things won't work out and there's really no good solution. Nobody wants to hurt anyone else, and yet they inevitably will and everyone will bad about it. It's very grim dark and, just plain unpleasant.

The actual plot is kind of a trip, starting out reasonably and ending up with something completely insane and far out. Won't spoil it here in case someone else wants to experience it. I am not sure I'd recommend this game to people who struggle with depression or even have suicidal thoughts.

Not sure I really like this game, honestly. I respect it from an artistic point, it looks great at times, and it surely knows what kind of story it wants to tell. But it doesn't leave a lot of to reason about and I didn't get much joy in actually playing it.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Resistance - Fall of Man (Insomiac Games / Sony Computer Entertainment, 2006)

(Trying something new with this post - instead of doing the bullet points pro/con thing, I'm highlighting the main takeaways in bold).

Single-player campaign only.

The game's average metacritic score is 86 and I understand is mostly due to the online multiplayer modes, which these days are only accessible through server emulation run by enthusiasts. Multiplayer featured a wide variety of game modes, including big team battles with up to 40 players in one session - and PSN multiplayer on PS3 was (technically still is) available free of charge. So that was probably the main attraction at the time.

The game's campaign however is a thoroughly miserable experience. It has not just failed to hold up, it clearly was, at best, meh even at the time of launch, even if only compared against the rest of the launch-title line-up on the PS3 (which included Call of Duty 3 and F.E.A.R.). It's inferior to both Halo CE (released 5 years earlier) and Halo 2 (two years earlier) as well as Half-Life 2 (also released two years earlier), all three of which quite obviously inspired a lot of the art direction, enemy design and some mechanics. The terrible decision to combine the SciFi alternate history scenario with the washed out grey-brown color-scheme of World War 2 shooters elevates this game into the hall of fame for the fugliest AAA shooters ever made. The story is remarkable only in so far as that it makes for an exceptionally by-the-numbers and boring campaign out of a very interesting premise and scenario.


2/5

 

[Durante]

I just finished FF7 Remake.

Starting with the positive: the battle system is good. The production quality in graphics and music is mostly great, though texture resolution in general is often lower than you'd expect from a game like this. The character models are obviously the highlight, and animations are great too, both during gameplay and in cutscenes.

In the "I guess it's OK" category, the additional side quests are a mixed bag, but not too bad overall (since they also don't overstay their welcome). Dugeon and map design is very by-the-books but fine. The overall pacing is just decent in most parts of the game, with a few parts that seem really unnecessarily prolonged. Most of the minigames are also OK.

Now, everything to do with the biking sections is just awful. I think they were at least partially aware of this themselves, given that they let you completely skip them on replaying the game. Honestly, I think replacing these with a short cutscene would make for a better game overall.

And of course there's the elephant in the room that they took 1/5th or so of a game that they were purportedly "remaking", and stretched it out to 35 hours so they can sell it as a full game. Now, several of the new parts are worthwhile, don't get me wrong. And I can even go with the argument that you might have to split a game like this into parts if you want to make everything at this production level. But they went way too far, and as a result, the overall variety of the game (in terms of locations and enemy types -- both graphically and gameplay-wise) frankly sucks compared to other high- or even medium-budget JRPGs being released.

 

[Ge0force]

Finished A Plague Tale: Innocence


I have mixed feelings about this game. The gameplay is extremely mediocre and repetitive, and the combat can be frustrating at times, especially in the final chapter. The "puzzles" are also way too easy and straightforward, just push everything that blinks and you'll solve them. On the other hand, everything else is so incredibly well done that I gladly finished the game until the end. Seriously, the storytelling, characters, environments and cut-scenes are truly excellent, perhaps even the best I've ever seen in a video game. I'm really looking forward to play the sequel, where hopefully the gameplay and puzzles have been improved.

Score: 7.9/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule / Sony Computer Entertainment, 2008)

Most fondly remembered for its online-multiplayer gameplay, level editor and user-generated content, that aspect of the game is no longer available on PS3. Presumably all user-generated content created in and for this game is still available in LittleBigPlanet 3 for the PS4 - it will take me a while to get to that game, so I'm just citing claims here.

What remains is the story/campaign mode, which is a physics-heavy collectathon platformer that can be played single-player, but also in local co-op with up to four players. There are even special sections in most levels dedicated to two-player coop (which can only be solved cooperatively and hence are optional for reaching the end of the level) and towards the end of the game there even is a four-player coop-exclusive bit.

The whole premise of LittleBigPlanet basically being a muppet-platformer where the player controls a little puppet (Sackboy) and the whole world being made of actual physical materials makes the controls very floaty and even basic platformer gameplay quite unpredictable since every interactable object on screen has physics properties.

Up to about halfway through the story mode this is fine, since the levels are more about exploring and collecting, but in the latter half of the game, in order to ramp up the difficulty, the level design becomes more and more that of a precision platformer - with the most imprecise controls of any precision platformer ever made - and that's where the fun rapidly evaporates and gets replaced with a lot of cursing and repetition.

The story is mostly nonsensical and might as well not be there. All collected items go towards customization of the player character and even the game's menu screens, but what is the point if you can't go online and show off your creations (or even make screenshots without an emulator or a video capture device, or resorting to taking pictures of your screen on your phone)?

The soundtrack deserves a special mention, it really has a lot of great tunes, but even here is a catch - most of them are licensed tracks, which will get your VOD muted on Twitch and your LP on YouTube claimed by third parties.

So, unfortunately not many compelling reasons left to play this one in 2023.


3/5

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Very long game, but I liked it overall. It has some flaws, lots of fluff and unneccesary things that drags the game out, some bugs, unneeded side activities that was required to progress the story, the kingdom management was kinda fun, but dragged the game to make it longer. I did like the story and combat and many of the system was pretty decent.

I get the "mostly positive" user ratings as the game is fun and enjoyable, but has many flaws, many of them making the game longer than it needs to be. Still, I overall enjoyed it. Haven't bought Wrath of the Righteous yet, but will do when Im ready for it.

Now I will play some games that doesn't take many weeks to play through.

Score: 7.8/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Took me a little over 1 hour to get all cheevos (22). It's a very funy "jokey" game where pretty much everything happens in the bathroom. The game can be finished in under 5 min, but there are lots of endings to get, after every ending the game restarts to the beginning and you have to do the same things again, but in different ways, it get's repetive after a while, but it's fun. Every time to you restart you see "attempt xx" on the screen so you can see how many times you have restarted the game and if you get an ending, the game will tell you which one. Also really liked the sounds and graphics. There's also a fun small free DLC I played through.

The game is one short joke, so if you are not into that, steer away, but I really liked it.

Score: 8.3/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Retired Don't Touch this Button! (9 Eyes Game Studio / Stately Snail, 2021)

Good effort at pushing the envelope for minimalist presentation in a first person puzzle game, but the puzzle design wasn't quite ingenious enough to compensate for the missing audiovisual stimulation (and lack of any story or setting). I did solve 45 out of the 66 puzzles before bowing out.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Took me 2.5 hours to finish it. Decent very fast paced shooter that reminds me of Superhot and Mirror's Edge, but I did not like the art style chosen and the game get's quickly repetive and a bit boring after the 2 first levels (there are 6). Many nice weapons and good destruction though. It doesn't really do anything particularly new and the platforming is often frustrating, the level design also doesn't quite fit the fast paced gameplay as there were times I was confused about where I was and the art style that made certain parts really dark, didn't help.

Score: 7/10

 

[Arc]

I finished two games this weekend:

Fire Emblem Engage is an excellent tactical RPG. It adheres to the classic Fire Emblem formula extremely closely. The story is unremarkable, but there are some likable characters. The star of the show is the tactical gameplay. The Emblem Rings add a new layer of tactical complexity that involves special abilities which can be game changers and make an easy battle a cakewalk or a extremely hard battles doable. The map design, while not as interesting as Fates Conquest, is very solid and there are enough gimmicks to keep things fresh.

I did have several mechanical concerns. Firstly, some of the maps have endlessly spawning enemies. I get the designers want the user to not turtle for dozens of turns, but there are a number of situtations where if you aren't constantly pushing forward, then you will inevitably get overwhelmed. This is especially egregious in the last battle where I frankly did not have the damage output to defeat the final boss and had to turn the difficulty down after being stumped for hours. Additionally it is near impossible to have weaker units catch up in skirmish battles as they are based off your highest level units. After losing three units in the penultimate fight, I tried to level up some unused characters and frankly could not do it because the skirmish enemies are simply too strong. Outside of these gameplay issues, I had a great time and will eventually replay it once all the DLC has released. 8/10.


Dead Space remake is the epitome of "what you see is what you get". It is effectively the first Dead Space game but with modern graphics. It isn't overly ambitious, but it achieves exactly what it sets out to do. There isn't much to say other than it is well made, competent and fun. It also completely destroys The Callisto Protocol. God that game sucked. 7/10

 

[mssq]

Finished


This was much better than I was expecting from the polarizing reception it has gathered.

The first hour or so doesn't really make that of a strong impression as the melee combat feels clunky and tad bit too simplistic. But when you get in to this rhythm of boxing-like melee combat with some guns that you can combo with it's actually pretty damn enjoyable. Even though you might even feel too strong as you can pretty much dodge every attack they throw at you.

Supporting this combat is story that doesn't do anything groundbreaking but it is interesting enough with its twists and turns that keeps you invested what is happening and why. Sadly in the end it feels the need to spoon-feed you what is happening which I'm not a big fan.

On the visual side of the things I was expecting this to run like ass but maybe they have patched it on the PC as it ran perfectly fine. No stuttering or other annoyances and it looks and sounds great. Atmosphere is one thing this really nails without any real flaws.

So in the end it's a good game that sadly doesn't manage to perfect its gameplay but I still had great time with it. It deserves a better reputation than it has.

Score: 7.5/10

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Finished Murder House (Steam Deck) 6.5/10

I feel a little mixed on this but still trending positive, as the simple fact it is a old Resi style game carries this game a long way; it's an underserved genre and it's always appreciated and impressive when a small indie team releases something faithful like this.

Problem I do have though is twofold:
1) it is unabashedly low budget (which I gather seems to be the appeal of this dev but i've not played anything else by them before) but even though it is aping the PS1 aesthetic it frankly looks worse than most PS1 games. It’s no resi 2, closer to AitD 1.
Hardly a deal breaker but it is kinda odd.
2) For a game that's so short and small in scope I found myself stuck what to do a fair few times (segments that include the blacklight, rope, and piano come to mind)

 

[Paul]

It also completely destroys The Callisto Protocol. God that game sucked.

So in the end it's a good game that sadly doesn't manage to perfect its gameplay but I still had great time with it. It deserves a better reputation than it has.

lmao

I will play it...eventually. On gamepass, bundle or decent sale.

 

[Paul]

Finished Elex 2 - 6/10

At first, I could not get into it. I played about an hour a month for six months. Then I got to a larger settlement, got some quests going and it finally clicked. And for the next 50 hours or so, I was convinced I would give Elex 2 at least 7 or possibly 8/10, because I was having a blast, despite some annoyances. The handcrafted world was there, fun questing, great exploration with a jetpack, fun character progression. Good times!

But then chapter 3 and chapter 4 came, and....yeah. Piranha Bytes have always sucked at latter half of their games - always, even going back to Gothic 1 with its stupid boring dungeon - but Elex 2 takes the shit cake.
Basically all the companion missions are copy pasted laziness, and most of the ending quests are "go to X and kill 50 enemies".

I expect this kind of trash in JRPGs. I do not expect it, nor want it, in WRPGs.

The only saving grace of the last two chapters is that with difficulty set to "story", enemies can be dispatched fairly quickly and those two chapters combined took me some 15 hours. But it was still 15 hours too many, given their absence of quality.

Then there is the utterly bizzare writing, where I felt like half the dialogue flat out made no sense.
In the end...I am still glad I played it, and 50 hours of good fun is nothing to scoff at, but Elex 2 IS Piranha's weakest game ever made.
And Archolos: Chronicles of Myrtana team thoroughly schooled Piranha on how to make their own type of game.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Very fun super-fast paced game where you use a Boomerang to kill your "shadow"-like enemies. It's very short, like 1.5 hours, but it's fun. It's almost like an arena shooter, there are levels, each level has an arena with waves of enemies, when you have defeated them all, you gain a new Boomerang power. Between each level there is a path you walk to the next level/arena where you talk to a creature about the history of the place/island the game takes place in.

Fun fast-paces "shooter", but too short.

Score: 8/10

 

[FunnyJay]

I forgot to write a review of this a couple of weeks ago...

Finished:

A really nice mini-adventure addon for Mankind Divided. The story wasn't that revelatory, but the setting was. I agree with a lot of others who say that it reminds a lot of Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.

I even wish that they ran a bit further with the prison aspect, since it didn't take so long until you managed to scrounge up some weapons and reactivate your augmentations (optional, I know). So, the very interesting setting that placed some cool constraints on you quickly returned to "just" being Mankind Divided in a hostile area.

Still, well worth the money I gave it on sale all those years ago.

 

[fantomena]

Finished

Where the Heart Leads (PS5)

Im not sure if I was dissapointed or let down, but I do think the demo I played during a Steam fest deceived me, but it might be my own fault as a only played 10 min or so of the demo, if I played more, maybe I would know more of what to expect.

So I really wanted to play the PC version as I liked the PC demo of it, the little I played of the PC demo made me think the game was a linear story-driven game in the same way as for example Little Nightmares, but it's not.

The game is basically a sort of dream-like Forrest Gump type of game, just madly boring and uninteresting. So something happens to the farm where you play a family man, a big hole is created, the family dog is stuck and you help the dog get up, but you sadly fall into the hole.

The game heavily text based, far more than let's say Disco Elysium. You basically go through a lot of scenarios, dream-like scenarios, you are being shown and told Whit's life (the family man you control) from young to old. There is minimal gameplay, you basically run around talking to people and do people's errands, everyone looks like ghosts (dream-like scenario) and you are making choices which influnces the later parts of the game, I think, only played through the game once.

Sadly, I found the game to be really boring, the story is messy, without structure, completely uninteresting, so much boring text to go through. You also have an inventory in the game where you can read memories you find in the environments and other things and a menu with all the dialogue in the game in case you missed something. Often it was also difficulty to find out who to talk to.

This is how dialogue/text and choices looks like and what I mean with "ghosts"

The best part of the game is the good looking graphics (took some pics) and sound, but otherwise it's a really boring, repetive and uininteresting game. You walk around, talk to people, pick up memories, sometimes you build something, but thats completely automatic, you just hold a button and everything is provided for you.

Score: 6.3/10

 

[Paul]

it's a really boring, repetive and uininteresting game.

Isn't 6.3/10 quite a high rating for a game with such description?

 

[fantomena]

Isn't 6.3/10 quite a high rating for a game with such description?

No, still liked what I played.

 

[Alextended]

Finished BOTW finally. 9/10.

10/10 game for the majority, what an amazing open world with such great gameplay, but the bosses and ending kind of suck so 9/10 if not less.

I played it a long while ago and got burnt out exploring the world and doing a ton of stuff for 10s of hours so I didn't have it in me to actually go finish it.

I went back in some days ago, got a bit addicted again just finding random stuff to do, then finally went to the castle to defeat Ganon. I didn't even intend to I thought I'd just explore the castle some and go back out, especially after I found some nice looking armor that had crap stats so I thought I'd go upgrade it, but nope, I got to the end. I have to say the bosses in this game aren't as fun and intuitive as other Zeldas which were epic, here I was just trying to figure out what the designers wanted me to do and it took me a while to figure out how to make him vulnerable and what not in different phases. Kind of gimmicky too.

But yeah that ending, wtf? You better be satisfied with beating ganon cos all the scenes after are meh, don't explain shit, don't show any kind of cool afterwards and are even set up kinda like the game will let you continue playing, see some post-ending stuff maybe as an epilogue based on all Zelda says about having a lot to do, heading to Zora kingdom, etc and let you go back and do stuff you haven't, but nope, you can just load a save from before beating it. Meh.

I guess I'll play some more some time, do some of the big side stuff like getting the master sword fully powered up, I tried a couple times and failed, and other such stuff, do the other two divine beasts and what not. But yeah, amazing game, possibly my favorite open world game, they did so many things right.

I wonder if Tears of the Kingdom will pick up right after this with Zelda somewhere there as npc too and serve as an epilogue that is more satisfying than here.

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Fae Tactics (Humble App, Steam Deck)


Very charming turn-based strategy game, with truly excellent combat, story and game design. You can build a team out of a bunch of unique characters, plus you can add enemy monsters to your team by collecting the cards they drop when defeated. By hit enemies or by being hit, your combo meter fills which result in a very powerful ultra attack that can be a game changer.

There are a few flaws though: first of all the game is WAY too long. There are just too many battles between events that progress the story or give you new characters that allow you to try new strategies. Another flaw is that each in-game day of the week, one element (fire, water etc) is boosted in ATK and DEF. When starting a story event, you don't know which element the enemies and bosses will be. If this turns out to be the boosted one, it makes the game very hard and there's no other solution against this than abandoning the event and replaying it another day, which is just a waste of time. My last complaint is that the difficulty becomes unfair in the last part of the game on "hard" difficulty, unless you spend many hours grinding for powerful monster cards in the free events.

But don't get me wrong: despite these flaws, Fae tactics is definitely one of the best turn-based games out there. Just do yourself a favor and play on normal difficulty instead of high, unless you want to spend a lot of time on this game.

Score: 8.4/10



Retired Black Future '88 (Steam Deck)


Another rogue-like action platformer, but not my cup of tea. The controls don't feel right to me; especially the jumping is much faster than you would expect, often resulting in frustrating deaths. The graphics are also way too flashy and crowded, especially on the small screen of the Steam Deck. This makes it hard to see the location of enemies and even your own character, again resulting in lots of deaths and frustration. To end with a positive note: the game looks great and the soundtrack is really good, but that's about it.

Score: 5/10

 

[Joe Spangle]

Played a load more hours recently of Civ VI


Reviewing it with the Gathering Storm and Rise and Fall DLC as i hadn't played them before despite buying them ages ago.

Its a good game. Classic turn based empire building that the franchise is known for. The original Civ was one of if not the first PC game i ever played and so the series has a bit of a special place in my heart.
The dlcs add a few more options to gameplay and you can toggle them individually. I like the ages/governors and disasters mechanics. There's some other additions like corporations and a zombie barbarian mode (which seems stupid). The graphics get a bit of stick but i quite like the cartoony style. Basically its Civ and so you've probably played one version of it before and if you liked it then you'll get some fun out of this one. I do feel that once a franchise get to a certain number of iterations there isn't really much more they can add and they get a bit bloated. This one is still fun.
Its on sale now.
7.5/10

 

[Mivey]

So I finally finished Chäos;Head Noah,


Took me a good 40ish hours in the end, with all the routes and everything. I also gotta say, I really don't like how the routes have been added to the game here (as the original Chaos;Head didn't have them). In Steins;Gate they were very organically woven into the game, you got a clear decision how to move on, and could then decide not to and you got an alternative route instead. It basically means you can get to the true ending without essentially having to replay it like 8 times.
And that's exactly what Chaos;Head asks of you. It's just super annoying, even with the skip mode. This game also has probably the lamest "true ending" I have seen. It just continues where the previous "normal" ending stops. It just feels like they felt the need to hamper with the "normal" ending in order to create the "true" one.

As for the base game: it's pretty good, and I like how they at least attempt to ground the magic powers in some kind of sci-fi nonsense around quantum mechanics. And they do at least reference things like the Dirac Sea, which is an actual thing (as in scientific concept) that lead to the development of quantum field theory. The story is otherwise very typical anime fare, it's just craziness around delusions that makes things interesting.

I overall still liked the game, but at least so far I'd recommend people to skip it if they don't care about the overall franchise too much. I guess I'll come back to this after having played Chaos;Child, which does seem to continue some of the ideas around Gigalomaniacs and how delusions can become reality, etc.

Also, if you are gonna play it: The Overhaul Patch from Committee of Zero is absolutely essential: CHAOS;HEAD NOAH Overhaul Patch. Fixes game breaking bugs, has an excellent re-translation of the game, better font handling, and introduces a shortcut feature that will help with getting all the routes.

Finished BOTW finally. 9/10.

...

I'm in a similar situation where I played BOTW nearly to completely like a year ago, and kinda just fell of. It's not even that I disliked it, just kinda forgot about my Switch, lol. I think I'll give the DLC a try and then finish it at some point before Tears comes out. If the ending is that bad, then I assume they'll just pick up on things in Tears, which is meant to be some kind of direct sequel to BOTW, from what I understand.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Sly Raccoon / Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (Sucker Punch Productions / Sony Computer Entertaiment, 2002/2011)

Played on PS3.

Classic cartoon 3D platformer with a pinch of stealth gameplay and a sprinkling of mini-games (mostly racing and top-down twin-stick shooting). Great characters, good voice acting, presentation about as good as it gets for a game originally released on PS2. A bit too hard for a game presumably made for kids, but just right for gamers with experience who appreciate a relaxed beginning, smooth difficulty curve and a bit (but not too much) of a challenge towards the end. Additional replay value through speed-running challenges (and those are challenging) that unlock after finishing the main game and getting all optional collectibles.

This is a much beloved game and I perfectly understand why. Still worth playing today with no reservations - hard to believe the whole series is still only available on PS2/PS3 (and Sony's Playstation Plus Premium as a streaming game - but The Sly Collection, which has the PS3 remasters of the PS2 games, is only available on there in the U.S.!).


4.5/5

 

[fantomena]

Finished

Metroid Prime Remastered (Ryujinx)

First time I played through and finished the game. Bought the Wii U Trilogy many years ago on the eShop, but got stuck 30 min in, so this is sorta my actual first time playing the game.

I really enjoyed it. For being a remaster the game looks, sounds and controls great, some areas are stunning.

The game itself is really good, some annoying parts with lava and lava enemies, but otherwise a really fun and great first person metroidvania game. Lots of cool upgrades to find and discover, many secret areas, story is kinda "eh".

Ryu performance was really good, only had a few seconds of stutter when I started up the game and when entering doors.

Score: 8.5/10

Finished

The Stretchers (Ryujinx)

It's a funk, quirky and janky co-op focused game (if you play solo you can control them both with each joystiq, like in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons). It's one city/map, you control 2 medics you can customize (skincolor, shirt color, hat, gender). You are sendt on 17 different missions, each taking between 3-13 min to finish, if you finish on time, you get bonus XP points (but nothing bad happens if you don't finish on time, you still can finish the mission).

On each of their back is a stretcher, so you decide which one's stretcher to use, you then walk around the mission area finding people who are dizzy (basically knocked out, they have stars on their heads showing they are dizzy), you crouch with both medics and they are transferred automatically to the stretcher. It's somewhat of a puzzle game too as some people (there are 5-6 people you need to rescue who are dizzy in each level) are not that easy to rescue so you need to find a way to reach them, but it's mostly easy as each level only take a few min to finish.

The fun part is the jankyness and the physics, but it can be annoying to as the physics can make the puzzles (reaching out to the people you need to rescue) a bit annoying at times.

Otherwise there are a few side missions which basically last 2-4 min where you have to use a saw (like the stretcher) to cut down trees to build ramps. I did them all, not that many, but fun.

There is a story and you can replay missions in your "home base" when you have finished all the story levels, you can replay them to gain a better XP score (XP is only used to see how good you were, nothing else) and time trial (do the levels as quick as possible). Otherwise you can drive throughout the entire city/map (you have a medic car), but there is nothing to actually do. The content is the story missions and the few side missions.

Fun game, the concept worked, very short (3-4 hours), but the physics and jankyness can make some of the rescuing (puzzles) quite frustrating.

Score: 8/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished

Cruis'n Blast (Yuzu)

A fun, but super basic and simple arcade game through and through.

It has a few different modes. Tours is sorta like a campaign, 5 tours, each tour has 4 tracks/levels, it's all about getting from a to b asap, so there are not laps in the game and each level takes max 2 min to finish, so overall around 2 hours to finish the Tour mode. Each tour has a theme, like ufo, storm, chopper, night, escape. Like in the escape tour you havee to avoid police, in ufo tour you have to avoid ufos, in storm tour you have to avoid storms. You can find cash in each level which you can use to purchase engine upgrades and other cars, there are 3 keys you can find and pickup which let's you buy certain cars. The game is very fast-paced so it's easy to miss them. There are shortcuts in many levels which let's you beat your rivals faster, you have nitro from the start you can use and you can buy more with cash before a race.

However, there are really just 5-6 different tracks, these tracks are basically reskinned, mirrored or backwards based on all the 5 tours, so even though there are 24 levels alltogether, most of them are just reskinned, mirrored or backwards, which I found boring and dissapointing. Visually the game looks gross and ugly despite all the colors, the cars looks especially bad.

When you are done with the tours (you need a gold medal in a tour to unlock the next, you get a gold medal by being on first place) you can try out time attack mode (beat your times), try getting all the keys you've missed (3 keys in every track), you can also play arcade which are 5 of the original levels/tracks unchanged.

The game is overall fun, but super basic, lacks a lot of content, a lot of reskinned etc. levels, took me 2-2.5 hours to finish including the arcade levels.

There are better arcade racers out there like HotShot racing, imo.

Score. 6/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished

Part Time UFO (Ryujinx)

A suprisingly fun, small physics-focused game. You play as a small ufo, there are 30 jobs, each job requires only 1-3 min to complete. You control the ufo and do different tasks. For example in a job called Ocean 1 you use the claw the ufo has to pick up fish in ocean and carry them to a boat to your right. It's all based on physics so the game can get a bit janky and frustrating at times, but it was still a lot of fun. Each level brings you 3 goals, finish it before the time runs out and 2 other goals that are basically challenges, like pick a fish of every color and put them in the boat, you get a gold medal for each completed goal. There are 10 "pages" of levels or so, each page includes 3 levels, each level has 3 challenges, each challenge gives you a gold medal, you need a certain amount of gold medals to unlock the next page. So each level have a certain name like "Restaurant", "Toy Shop" etc. and there are 3 of each in the game, so "Toy Shop 1", "Top Shop 2", "Toy Shop 3". Each of them has the same concept, but with different challenges and stuff to do.

When all the levels are done, you unlock 2 bonus levels, one which is all about building the highest tower possible with different objects you are given and a longer bonus level called "Treasure Island". During every level you gain money, to access treasure island you need to buy a ticket for 15k, the first ticket is free. The bonus level has a timer and is all about getting through different rooms while acquiring all the treasures in each room. When the timer is done, you are done and need a new ticket to try again, almost like a roguelike mode, but not quite. You lose time in general in the game if you are hit by an enemy.

Otherwise you can use cash to buy different costumes that gives you different abilities. Ape costume gives you less janky swaying, ufo costome makes you quicker, fisherman costume let's you be quicker to carry fish and so on. There are many costumers that does different things.

You can also play coop if you want.

It's a very fun game despite some frustrating moments with the janky physics, some of the levels are a bit too like each other and it takes you just around 2 hours to finish everything up. Didn't finish the treasure island bonus level as I couldn't afford more tickets and to get more money you need to replay levels, which I wasn't interested in.

Score: 8.7/10

The game is also available on Android and iOS.

 

[Yoshi]

Finished Sons Of The Forest


A fun and mysterious survival game with much improved gameplay over its predecessor. You can play alone or with your friends. What makes it a strong singleplayer experience compared to other survival games is its companion AI system. Right from the start, you're introduced to Kelvin who will help you with many tasks such as building a shelter, gathering resources, creating a campfire & more. It makes things a lot easier as you're starting out. Companions are also available in multiplayer.

Outside of bugs that will be eventually fixed, there are some things that the first game does better in my opinion, such as the overall storytelling. I was much more engaged with the story & lore in the original Forest. This one didn't click with me as much. The ending felt lackluster and underwhelming in comparison. Since it's Early Access, it's possible they'll expand and make improvements to the overall story & lore, but the changes will have to be significant.

To sum it up:

Pros:

• Kelvin is a very helpful hand. Really impressed with the companion system as a whole
• Superb enemy AI system. Cannibals are unpredictable to fight and will attack at different angles
• Weapons are very satisfying to use, the shotgun especially packs a punch
• The GPS makes navigating the map a lot easier compared to how it was in the first game
• Environment & graphics are gorgeous. Had to stop a couple times to take in the scenery

Cons:

• Weak story, unsatisfying ending

All in all, I had a blast with the game and highly recommend it to fans of the survival genre.

4/5

 

[fantomena]

Retired

Tokyo Mirage Sessions™ #FE Encore (Ryujinx)

It's a port of the original Wii U version. Heard many good things about it, but couldn't get into it. Didn't find it interesting for some unkown reason. I really like JRPGs, just didn't find this interesting enough to continue playing after the prologue.

Good thing I went to the high seas with this one, otherwise I would have wasted a lot of money.

 

[Paul]

Finished Atomic Heart


Great game overall. Really enjoyed it for some 35 hours or so, did all the optional testing grounds etc. Briliant visual design and great gameplay (the robot respawn was not too bad once I got how to manage it). Combat is meaty and just didn’t get old for me. Puzzles were fun, not too hard, but cool to do. Even liked the lockpicking minigames, finally something a bit different from Fallout 3 stuff that's copied everywhere.

Story has lot of interesting stuff in it, but also lot of…weirdly bad writing. Some interesting concepts are just thrown at the wall and left there. Russian voice acting is vastly more natural and fitting than the american dudebro one, but is marred by terrible subtitles (too small, on rare occasion even missing entirely). But hey, at least “crispy critters” was explained in the story (and again, it does sound lot more natural in russian). I liked the humor, especially when talking to dead people. Some of the cutscenes were amazingly well done.
Also, later in the game there is such a Bioshock homage moment so shameless I couldn't help but laugh. Mundfish really loved Bioshock.

Endings are both interesting and not quite as satisfying as I hoped. But still well worth getting to.

I played the gamepass version and there were few annoying bugs - nothing gamebreaking and always fixable, but patches will be welcome.

Btw from playing this I really strongly doubt the developers are pro-Z.

8.5/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Slow start, but got really good and intersting after 20-30 min. Interesting story that got kinda "wacky" towards the end. Nice pixel graphics, decent sound and very interesting and intriguing gameplay. It's a text-heavy game, so only play it if you like to read a lot. I enjoyed it quite a lot.

Score: 8.4/10

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Grow: Song of the Evertree


Grow: Song of the Evertree combines town building, cleaning, growing plants, petting animals, alchemy and exploring dungeons in a charming and relaxing game. By mixing essences like ice, water, dry etc, you can create unique worlds in the branches of a huge tree called the Evertree. In these worlds, you need to clean rubbish, plant seeds and water them to make them grow.

When your world is fully grown, you'll get fruits, materials and animals that you can sell for credits, which you need to build your town at the foot of the Evertree. The more houses and shops you build, the more people are coming to live in your town. You need to keep people happy by completing quests and providing them with a job that they like.

The game is very casual friendly, as everything you need to do is explained very well. You'll constantly get new objectives to keep you busy. There are also many (hidden) dungeons to explore, where you can find unique items.

Despite the fact that there are lot of things to do, the game is a huge checklist with lots of visual customization options. It becomes rather repetitive after a while because you're repeating the same tasks over and over again without any actual challenge. But no doubt you'll have many hours of fun before that happens. Recommended.

Score: 7.9/10



Retired Scourge Bringer


Another rogue-like that combines melee and gun combat, and is focused on very fast gameplay by dashing in the air. By exploring the levels and defeating enemies, you'll collect blood that you can use to buy perks or upgrade your weapons.

While the game looked very promising to me, I never managed to master the controls. While dashing, I often ended up in another location than I expected, which resulted in many frustrating deaths. Because of this, I wasn't able to defeat the boss of the first world, despite many tries.

It's hard for me to say if this is a good game or not, but it's definitely not for me.

No score.



Finished Guardians of the Galaxy


This game turned out to be a lot better than I expected. It not only became my favorite Marvel game, but also one of the best cinematic games I've ever played. The characters are great, the dialogs often very funny, the cinematics and voice acting are extremely well done and there's a lovely 80's soundtrack. The combat lacks depth, but is very spectacular to look at. And the level design is truly excellent. Well done Eidos! Very recommended.

Score: 8.9/10



Finished Ittle Dew


Short but charming Zelda-like adventure game, with a small overworld and a bunch of dungeons filled with clever puzzles. The game is very casual friendly, as it provides you with many (optional) hints and tutorial messages throughout the game. Recommended!

Score: 8.0/10



Retired Immortal Defense


I was in the mood for a tower defense game, and this is definitely a special one. There's a great story behind it and the "towers" and graphics are unique compared to other games in this genre. Sadly, the screen is often way too cluttered with bright bullets, making it very hard to see which tower is effective against certain enemies. There are also too many similar levels, making the game too long and repetitive after a few hours. Not my cup of tea.

Score: 6.2/10

 

[Paul]

Finished Shadow Warrior 3


Gamepass PC version. It was....hmm. On one hand, competently made, with good graphics, nice weapons, fairly interesting (though at times annoying) enemy design..
But on the other it is about 7 hours long and probably two of those hours I was somewhat bored and wanting it to end already. Plus the ending boss was annoying and made me drop difficulty to easy (I play with controller). Humor was mostly flat and even Hoji being back didn't improve things much (I absolutely loved Lo Wang's and Hoji's buddy comedy dynamic in the first game).
Design-wise, this is a pure riff on Doom 2016, pretty much identical. And I am not huge fan of this type of design. Completely linear levels with no exploration, lot of dumb platforming and endless locked down arenas with respawning monsters. Compared to the first game, it just sucks.

But still, I can't give it a low score, because it is not bad. It just ain't for me.

6/10

 

[FunnyJay]

Finished Return of the Obra Dinn with all fates solved.
Now this was really a treat!
I played Lucas Pope's Papers, Please back when it was released and thought it was great!
I remember hearing a lot about Obra Dinn on Rock Paper Shotgun back when it released and watched a LTTP video from Eurogamer a few years ago, so I knew this was a game right up my alley.

It's been on my wishlist for years but I never pulled the trigger on it until I saw it was on sale last week.

The presentation is fantastic, and the story is intriguing. Jumping from memory to memory and seeing the story unfold was really cool, and the feeling you get when you finally nail down who a character is and how they died is fantastic.

My only spoiler-free complaint is that it gets a bit unwieldy and annoying when you have run around the ship, jumping in and out of memories, hearing the same story beats play out and the same music pieces play over and over when you just need to check some minor detail to verify something. I feel that it would have been really nice if you just could have accessed all the unlocked memories directly from the notebook.

On to spoilers!
The game's reliance on using the hammocks to identify the characters got a bit stale after a while when you kept revisiting those memories over and over to check the hammocks.
Also, there are a lot of the random regular sailors that I felt you really had to guess a bit to actually identify. Some of them kept re-appearing, but there were no really obvious ways to really figure out who they were.
This lead to utilizing the game's trio validation to get rid of some of the harder characters.

Also, how you were supposed to figure out that the characters that survived the ship ALL stayed in Africa, I don't really know.
The surgeon, fine, that was spelled out.

All in all, a unique experience that you really can't re-experience in the same way.

A strong recommend from me!

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished God of War HD (Santa Monica Studio, Bluepoint Games / Sony Computer Entertainment, 2005/2009)

Played on PS3 as part of the God of War Collection.

The first game in the franchise (all of which I somehow managed to let pass me by all these years) is a good mix of third-person hack/slash and 3D platforming, but also becomes surprisingly non-linear and exploration-friendly in the middle part of the game, where the game does allow extensive backtracking and collectible hunting, almost like a metroidvania. And sometimes progress is gated by an actual puzzle, too.

The middle part was also the most fun part of the game for me, when the multi-level upgrade system for weapons and abilities starts to pay off and you really get to slice and dice with those combo moves. Towards the end, the game seems a little padded for playtime and the final boss fight is kind of a let-down.

But in summary, the game is still great fun to play and also very enjoyable to look at and listen to after all this time, which once again makes it that much more of a shame that it hasn't been ported from PS2/PS3 to more modern platforms.


4/5

 

[fantomena]

Finished


A positive suprised, liked it a lot. Difficult to explain the game, but it's a text-heavy game like Disco Elysium, but also sort of a visual novel, but with quite a lot of interactivity. You can decide between a few character who you are gonna be, you are on a Halo-looking space station and the goal is to leave. To leave you need to talk to a lot of different characterss and do tasks for them. The way to complete tasks is based on the dice-tabletop rules, so how success full you are is based on some randomly generated dices you are given. However, the amount of dices you have are based on your energy, you also need to eat food or you will die.

Often you need to put multiple dices into a mission to get it completed and the circle in the mission windows shows how far along you are. The game is in a way turn-based as when you run out of dices, you need to end the cycle, which is basically days, so you need to end the day.

Here's a pic of how it looks

Otherwise it's hard to explain the game, but I loved it. Great design, great art style, nice music, addictive gameplay. Only negative is that the dice-gameplay was sometimes too random which made it frustrating to acquire certain resources in the game (you often need certain resources to complete missions).

Score: 8.7/10

 

[Mivey]

I finally finished Yakuza 5.

According to Steam it came in at around 75 hours, though seemingly only 65 hours in game, I played a large bit on the Steam Deck, so maybe it's the usual miss match of game time due to not properly detecting sleep. As for the Steam Deck, sadly I cannot recommend Y5. There's a bug where the wrong audio will play for certain cut-scene videos, which just makes this story-heavy game unplayable. I know that there is active working in giving Wine better support of Windows Media Foundations, so hopefully a future version of Proton will fix this.

As for the game, I'm really impressed by the sheer scale of this game. This is easily the largest Yakuza game of them all so far. Instead of just Kamurocho, (Tokyo) and Sotenbori (Osaka) , we get to play in 3 more cities: Nagoya, Fukoka and Sapporo. Basically covering pretty much all of Japan's major cities. While each of the new maps is clearly smaller and less detailed than Kamurocho or Sotenbori was, it's still really neat to play Yakuza in a new setting for once.

The new character Shinada was handled really well. It shows that the writing is still pretty good, all they need is some fresh material. With poor Kiryu, they just don't know what else to do, he's already pretty much perfect, he knows what he needs to be. Guy just deserves some peace and a nice retirement at this point. Akiyama is again the star of the show to me, He easily feels like the most interesting character of the series to me, which is funny since he's not a Yakuza at all.

I really liked the minigames this time around, or "side stories" as they called them. So taxi driving for Kiryu, the hunting minigame for Saejima, the dancing/sining minigame for Haruka, and the baseball minigame for Shinada. None of them stick out as much as the cabaret minigame, but it's still fun, so can't complain.

The substories were all pretty good. I can't complain there. Both Y5 and Y4 are a massive step up here from Yakuza 3, you can tell they really started to understand what this franchise is about during the latter PS3 era, 2010 onwards.

The overall plot is ultimately pretty milquetoast,but made a bit more interesting with the curveball that the mastermind was unknown until the very end, though one was given quite a few clues early on. A decent effort overall. But with now 4? games that talk about a potential war between Omi and Tojo, I really just want to see it happen at this point. Just all out Yakuza gang-war. No last minute saves from Kiryu and friends. Oh well.

Yakuza 5 is great, and I can recommend it to any fan of the series.

 

[DrShrapnel]

I originally had this on PS4 Pro, and my impressions were that it was a fun open world game with lame side activities.

Anyways I double dipped on PC, and now had the intent of playing to completion. Man, I had no idea the game picks up the way it does. As time goes on the combat just gets more and more enjoyable, to the point where clearing out enemy strongholds is so much fun. Insomniac did a great job making me feel like Spiderman with all the cool skills available to unlock. Gadgets were pretty good, although I only really bothered with two during my playthrough.

The mod scene though….hoo baby the suits available are so nice. I wound up playing through the game in an Amazing Fantasy suit that looked like it was ripped straight out of the comic.

I just want to say that if this is sitting in your backlog, or you fell off it at some point - pick it back up. It’s absolutely worth it!