Crimson9

Brilliant game. So much depth to it. So much content. My only issue is that there's not too much reason to play more than one run. The DLC is essential but quite high price. Get it on sale and the sheer amount of content here is exceptional.

Starts of well but really doesn't do enough to keep itself going. The story becomes a bit aimless and the upgrades are just more of the same. 20% into the game and you will have seen mechanically everything the game will throw at you. There will be new biomes and more fish to collect and stuff, but mechanically theres no depth (pun intended) here.

I didn't consider Divinity a good game for four reasons: mediocre characters, bland writing, bad world building, flawed combat system. Good news is a lot of the flaws are alleviated here. The combat system is now merely D&D5e. That has its pros and cons (I'm not a fan of dice rolls in general) but its considerably better than Divinity. Larian still has given quite a bit of freedom in the combat with all the barrels and stuff but its harder to break. The worldbuilding is also just Forgotten Realms. Once again, pros and cons. The world is kind of generic high fantasy but its a lot richer than Divinity. On top of that, the game has a much higher production value. The art style and the vistas are exceptional. That said, there's a lot more of Divinity's DNA here than Baldurs Gate 2. For instance, the game follows a somewhat linear act structure rather than giving the player total freedom like in BG2. The acts provide quite a bit of ways to tackle the problems, and the choice and consequence is impressive, but it does feel somewhat limiting until act 3. Larian's weak writing is present here and is the weakest part of the game. The overall story is pretty engaging but won't blow you away. The companions interact with the story well (largely due to Larian's odd obsession with 'origin characters'), but their interaction with a custom character is bland. Nothing about the game is particularly deep but I understand thats not what its really going for. The gameplay outside of the combat is also quite weak. You are never going to come across well designed puzzles, for instance. Its also very annoying how virtually everything can be searched for clutter like plates and cups and spoons, that serve no gameplay purpose and just waste my time on the off chance (and it happens enough to make you keep doing it) that theres something useful inside. Overall this is a great game. The polish and the production values are making people overrate it a bit, but it definitely belongs near the top with the best CRPGs ever.

Legend of Dragoon seems to be very devoutly loved by its community. Its easy to understand why. LoD has a very good difficulty curve. It eases the player in not just with its combat system, but also its progression system, world setting, level design, characters, and story. All of these start off very simple, and it allows newcomers to the genre to ease into it. Its packaged in a game that seems to have been pretty cinematically impressive for its time. The problem is that in most things, Legend of Dragoon remains very simple. The characters remain one dimensional, the combat system adds more complex additions and magic but doesn't evolve beyond that, the progression system is nonexistent, the level design remains too straightforward throughout the game (with only one or two exceptions near the end), the world design remains extremely linear throughout. The story too, remains quite simple. I will say though that the lore behind the world is interesting and fleshed out. Unfortunately, the story itself unfolds through extremely robotic dialogue and ultimately might be the game's weakest point other than its linearity. The OST too, is largely quite simple. Some of the themes like Dart's theme or Meru's theme are like AI generated themes for 'brave warrior' and 'quirky girl' respectively. They are memorable in how goofy they are. But some tracks are actually quite brilliant. This game is pretty anime in a lot of ways. The characters shouting their moves is really goofy and cringe, but oh well. Its just one of this games many quirks. In general, Legend of Dragoon is a pretty simple JRPG. But its well packaged and it does manage to find strength in its simplicity. It has moments of greatness but admittedly does pale in comparison to games like FF7.

There's people who love this game a lot. There is huge void of JRPGs after all. Not to mention, the game is EXTREMELY anime-y and that does well with the anime obsessed weeb market. And I will say that it is exceptionally stylish. Put all this together and I can understand why someone might find it worth it to power through the first few hours. And after that, I'm sure you'll LOVE this game because it just has SO MUCH CONTENT. Its like a love letter to the anime obsessed (who really ought to spend this time tackling a classic novel and develop some good taste and culture). But anime (and a lot of its byproducts like visual novels) is really one of the lowest forms of art out there. And that makes sense because it is, in Japan, largely made for kids and teens. The Japanese equivalent of Marvel comics and movies. Which makes even more sense in Persona's case given much of this literally seems like the fantasy of a 16 year old boy. This also explains why the sexualized 'waifu' females in this game are 15 years old. If you are a 17 year old Japanese kid playing this game, thats fine. If you are a 28 year old western male under the impression this game was not made for teens, its pretty weird to even be playing this and looking at that (although, given thats a possibility its a case against sexualizing 15 year olds, period.) And its made weirder still given that this is essentially a dating sim for a fair bit of the time. In fact, Persona is a lot of things and no doubt that makes it appealing to the people who become so deeply engrossed in the game. But it also does nothing very well. Dating sim with 15 year olds? Besides being weird, the relationships are not particularly interesting either. Dungeon crawler? The levels are bland and almost seem randomly generated. Turn based JRPG? Refreshing in this day and age, but inferior in depth to DQ11, as well as in enemy design etc. Visual Novel? The story, dialogue and characters are simply not interesting enough. There are some good things. The OST is FANTASTIC. The style of everything is also exceptional. Some of the dialogue can be funny, quippy, and quirky sometimes. Overall, this seems like a game made for 16 year old boys to insert themselves into and experience a power fantasy much like western comic books. Its not meant to be high art, its meant to be popcorn entertainment. If you have the amount of time of a teenager, then the content here will also be amazing and I'm sure you think its a fantastic game. But for adults to play this and consider it to be amazing is just bizarre. The extreme amount of bland content here is not amazing, its a chore.

First of all, I wouldn't say this game has aged particularly well. The games that try to push the limits of their hardware in terms of gameplay and graphics tend to age the worst - see Golden Eye as an example - and Vagrant Story fits that. At the time I'm sure its graphics and gameplay were revolutionary but they havent aged well. On top of that, the game is very gameplay heavy - theres no towns or NPCs to interact with, its a straight up dungeon crawler. So its kind of a chore to play today. That said, I try to keep in mind how a game would be like when it released. And I can see how brilliant this was. The combat system might be somewhat tedious today, but there is still nothing like it. I love the ideas here and when it works its quite engaging and fun. What really sells this game is the art style, the dialogue, the characters and the story. Right from the start it blew me away with how tight the writing was. There's simply nothing on the PS1 that rivals the quality of the dialogue and writing here. Thats not to say that the story is the best I've come across, it isnt, that it has some cliches that I've experienced too many times. But its solid and its presented very well through great dialogue and excellent art style that really shines in the cutscenes. I usually think the writing in JRPGs is the weakest link, so its quite refreshing to come across a game like this. Its very mature and complex. I'd say its ahead of its time but in terms of combat complexity and narrative quality JRPGs only went downhill from here. I'd give an 8 for its time and 6 now, so lets call it 7.

I haven't really played this much and I'm not good at it. However it very clearly is the best RTS I've ever come across. The AI is excellent.

The decision to remove unit stacking is absolutely genius and makes the civ franchise 100 times better. With Vox Populi this game becomes a 7 or an 8. Without it the AI is bad and the game is unbalanced and simple so 6.

Really fun to play with friends. Don't bother playing it alone, the AI is absolutely worthless. Also the graphics are somehow much worse than 5. Districts are a cool idea, but overall its inferior to 5 + Vox Populi.

Never played the original. The combat here is pretty good. Zack is a charming character. However, you can really tell this was made at the start of Square Enix's decline. I really hated FF7 Remake's story. I expected this to have the same level of nonsensical garbage. But its definitely toned down. Theres some very good stuff here, but you can feel the lack of Sakaguchi in the direction of this game. And theres a lot more, by a wide margin, JRPG weirdness and nonsense in the writing and plot than was in 7. It is clearly made by someone who thinks introducing a crazy amount of convolution is somehow necessary for the story.

Nintendo's current game design philosophy seems to not include the word CHALLENGE. A balanced challenge is not present in any game they make these days including this one. Many players are able to have fun in a game that poses no challenge whatsoever (like the new Paper Mario, the new 3D mario, etc. etc.) but I can't.

Best Final Fantasy game to come since FF12. The story is great, the characters are great, the world building is fantastic. Square has taken a big step forward in these areas. On the other hand, everything regarding gameplay here (the combat, the sidequests, the level design, the customization, the progression, etc.) is extremely subpar. FF fans as usual are happily living in a bubble where they aren't even able to grasp the steep decline of this series.

One of the best things about this game is that you can play it now and really get a good understanding of how deep the decline of Square Enix has been since Square Soft's golden age by comparing it to its horrific remake. But anyway, while FF6 was probably actually the game that kickstarted Final Fantasy's golden age, FF7 is the one that really propelled Final Fantasy's popularity in gaming. It was also a monumental game in showing the capability of games to be cinematic experiences. That alone would make this a respectable game in video game history, but FF7 is amazing in general. The characters are exceptional in both their personality, and their designs - which are absolutely iconic. The story starts off fantastically, and then takes a turn into JRPG convolution and insanity. But it continues to have exceptional moments throughout and ends fantastically. The score might be the best Nobuo Uematsu has ever done, and thats saying a lot - because it propels this game to have perhaps the best OST in video games. The gameplay is pretty typical of JRPGs, which means its somewhat mediocre, but the materia system is pretty excellent.

I honestly didn't see the level of innovation in level design that I did in Mario Galaxy here, nor is the atmosphere nearly as good. Sure it moves back to a Super Mario 64-esque level design where theres plenty of neat little activities to do in a large area. And Mario's movement is also really good. That said, theres not much challenge here, less so than even 3D world and Galaxy. You can even complete 999 stars just by buying infinite with money. You sort of have to make your own challenge with speedruns or the annoying multiplayer game. Anyway I think this game is mediocre at best and is a reflection of Nintendo's declining game design.

Sakaguchi's last Final Fantasy, and the last great final fantasy game. The move to full 3D definitely comes with a lot of losses here. Gone is the world map. Even without that, the individual levels are far more linear, the number of NPCs is reduced. The comedy also doesn't work nearly as well with this format as it did with the style of 7, 8 and 9. However, the move to full 3D allows for great scenery, and more importantly, a more personal attachment with the characters. And thats a good thing because the characters are fantastic here, as is the story. There's still a lot of JRPG weirdness, but this might be one of the tightest, most emotional, stories in the franchise. This is also the height of the turn based combat system and the leveling system. Both the sphere grid and the ability to move characters in and out are exceptional additions. And the gameplay would only go downhill from here.

What a shock, the best horror game of all time has a 3.8 rating from the brainless masses that are gamers. Anyway, the first two chapters of this game are by far the best horror experiences you will ever have. Smart scares, decent gameplay, brilliant atmosphere. The last two chapters are a real let down. It feels like the developer ran out of money or interest. The overall story is good, but definitely very reminiscent of Silent Hill 2 and all the other psychological horror it produced.

This is a pretty bad card game compared to Magic the Gathering from what I've gathered (haha.) Overall a pretty bad card game in every way.

Wow! I didn't think a Zelda game could surprise me with its story but Links Awakening does! Its story is charming, sad, mysterious, and has a fantastic ending. The gameplay is similar to most 2D Zeldas, and I'd argue it doesnt innovate nearly as much as most other 2D Zeldas. The map and level design are solid, although the puzzles dont seem to be quite as engaging as I'm used to from Zelda. As a remake, I really love the new graphics and fluidity, but I think they could have made more changes.

Nioh 2 improves on Nioh 1's combat, but not much else. The thing is, Nioh 1's combat was its strongest point. Its atmosphere, lore, story, polish, level design, world design, all were lacking. Nioh 2 doesnt make any improvements here.

The popularity of Dark Souls spawned a ton of 'souls-likes' and nioh is considered one of the best. Unfortunately, Dark Souls has become associated with two things - difficulty, and lots of combat. The thing is, Dark Souls is more than just that. It has great lore. It has great atmosphere. It has amazing level design. Its somewhat philosophical. Nioh is none of these things. You could say its close to the later Soulsborne games, but even these have higher polish, better lore, better level design.

Great examples of games as art. The atmosphere and artistic vision of this game is absolutely astounding. The multiplayer is great. The soundtrack is exceptional, and the level design is solid.

One of the landmark games for sure. Ultimately its great just cause what it does is so unique and enables so many different creations. The actual game design is very limited and requires mods to be properly enjoyable. For instance the game world is massive but everything you need can be found in one mine... And villages are not particularly useful either. The OST is absolutely brilliant.

I have to appreciate how good this game is with family members. Solo I would never play it, as there is a real dearth of new ideas and great level design here.

Games are rarely philosophical like this. And even more rarely do they successfully deal with these themes and tie them into an interesting story. That's what Nier does better than any other game. Its a decent example of games as an artform, although I'd argue that it falls short of other examples such as Dark Souls and Shadow of the Colossus. Other than that, I loved the music, and enjoyed the variety of different gameplay. But overall, despite the variation of different gameplay, it overstays its welcome and becomes really dull. Level design and the main type of combat are pretty uninspired. Its very tedious. 1 point off for the oversexualization of the main characters too. Its just JRPG cringe.

JRPGs have really gone down the drain since the demise of Squaresoft. Octopath traveler tries to revive them by divorcing the genre with all the changes and quality of life that have happened over the past 2 decades. What is ultimately presented is a pretty sharp, decent, game. But the problem with JRPGs isn't that they changed, its that they changed in a negative way. Octopath Traveler doesn't address any of the problems JRPGs have, it doesn't borrow game design from new masterpieces. Its a very uninspired game in terms of design, and also falls short of the old JRPG masterpieces such as Chrono Trigger and FF7 in the music, storytelling, and characters aspect. Furthermore, its always overpriced.

This game doesn't have a lot going for it. Its pretty bad in almost every single way, and is worse than pretty much all its predecessors and the similar games. On the other hand, its very cute.

EXTREMELY funny, lovable design, interesting combat. It would be rated higher but the game is mind numbingly easy to the point where I could basically get through it by button mashing rather than interacting with the pretty good combat design.

I remember one summer I was extremely bored and found this game on my cousins Wii. Despite my incredible boredom I could still barely get through it. Looking back, I think this is a downgrade in every way from its predecessors.

Nintendo's quality continues to decline. Contrasting this game with a thousand year door really shows that. This game was mind numbingly boring, nonsensical and easy.

This is a city PAINTER, not a city simulator. The only thing it simulates is traffic. The economics are absolutely laughable.

This is a remake, but honestly it improves so much from the original that I almost consider this to be the original. As a game RE1 is sensational. It's one of the first survival horror games, and it deserves high praise simply for kickstarting a genre like that. But not only was it one of the first, it is, to this day, one of the best. The survival elements in resident evil probably never exceeded how well they were done in this game. The level design also might be the best here. The plot is devoid of the convolution introduced later. Honestly, the only thing that steadily improved in the series was the combat. It is a bit clunky here.

God this is overrated. The story is mediocre at best. The characters are fine, not exceptional by CRPG standards. RPG elements are less than usual for CRPG standards. Turn based combat is cool, but is let down by two things: overabundance of environmental effects, and the armor system. The armor system is such a colossal stupidity that I can barely stomach playing this game. The constant looting of everything is tiring. The universe and lore are not nearly as interesting as other CRPGs. Utterly overrated in every way.

Solid gameplay and nice themes, let down by typical roguelike game design and RNG effects. Ultimately its just a rush of enemies and bosses and some lore and story thrown in while you grind content with different effects and weapons. Cool, but not my cup of tea.

The gameplay is pretty bad. Its interesting how CRPGs really havent aged well in gameplay. The RPG elements aren't great either. The story and universe are good, but I'd wager if this didn't have star wars attached to it, no one would really care.

Never really played a bioshock game before this. I was kind of shocked at how bad the excessive enemies were in this game. One enemy after another in this rush of constant combat with the occasional story beat and thematic imagery thrown in there to make gamers gush about how this is somehow genius.

Skyrim is a big mess ****. On the one hand, Bethesda's game design ****. The combat is really bad. RPG choice making is borderline nonexistent. Character progression has been excessively streamlined. Level scaling makes it feel like you arent getting stronger. There is an over abundance of loot. There are tons of immersion breaking things happening in the world. On the other hand, content is king. Skyrim has a ton of content. Not all of it is great, most of it isnt even good. But there's quite a lot, dozens of hours worth, of great content. So I have to give it props for that. But to get to that content you have to slog through some horrific gameplay. And its not like the main story saves that. Mods, do, however, save this game and can make it an 8/10 game. But vanilla is a 5 at best.

This is really hard. Disco Elysium brings a ton of positive things to gaming that haven't been done before. Splitting your personality to 16 different traits each representing inner monologues and aiding in RPG choice making is brilliant. Of course, its mostly used for the former - constantly and excessively - and not much in the latter. The monologues are rarely brilliant, usually dreary and exhausting. There's a constant attempt at humor, it misses with me, and worse yet, ruins the immersion. Maybe its someone else's cup of tea. The RPG choice making well, Disco Elysium is the perfect example of illusion of choice. There is SOME choice for sure, but not much. And the promise of the excellent personality system is not utilized whatsoever. The story, the world, the writing are pretty good for video games. For video games. It hardly reaches levels of classical literature. And it often strikes a tone that repulses me. I like the focus on politics, and its handles with subtlety, though again underutilized to say anything particularly meaningful. Overall, I can see for a medium like video games that people think this is something exceptional. But I found it a slog.

As far as I know, the only city builder game worth playing. There are prettier games out there, but this actually attempts to be a city SIMULATION, not a city painter. It doesn't do an amazing job. The economics are wonky, everything is kind of janky, its easy to break and cheat this game. But its the best thing out there in this genre.

Another example of EA greed butchering a franchise. Very depressing. This is a downgrade from simcity 4 in every way.

I want to give this a higher score, but its hard to do so. Its an interesting game though, a mix of Souls, Zelda, and Metroidvania. The Souls influence is present, but quite light. In an era where people associate difficulty with Souls games, I can see why people may think so. But there isn't much souls dna here apart from the fact that it is mildly above average difficulty. Dying has very little consequence though, unlike Souls. The combat is largely Zelda/Metroidvania, not Souls. One thing that is quite nice is the exploration and level design. However... it is also a bit disappointing. The game gives some degree of nonlinearity, but since certain levels require certain items, there is also a set way to tackle almost every part of the game. The level design is okay, but rarely mind blowing, and also its easy to not be able to see where you have to go simply from the perspective. Very annoying. Checkpoints are somewhat rare, which is nice, but the overall levels are small, and keep this from feeling like a grand adventure. I get it though, its an indie game. Ultimately the only thing that makes this game quite cool and unique is the guide book. Its a very cool idea and brave in an era of everyone using game guides and whining about not getting all the info right away.

I get that its the first game to do true psychological horror, so I'll give it credit for that. But it has to lose points for the twilight zone dialogue, mediocre level design and horrific controls. Even the story, I have to say, was rather predictable. The enemy design and how it ties into your guilt is definitely a really good concept, and revolutionary for the genre.

Probably the worst of the main Paradox games. This is basically a map painter. As a game it does have some tactical considerations and is more complex than risk, but not nearly as much as a game like HOI4. As a simulator it is total nonsense.

An improvement over CK2 in every way, but it will take a few years and a few DLC and mods for it to rival CK2 with DLC and HIP.

Mechanically this game is very unimpressive. But for roleplaying it can be amazing. Mods really make it come to life. DLC is obnoxiously expensive though, and basically mandatory, so 1 point off for that.

Almost forgot to come here and give this my only 0 for being the worst game ever released. Gj blizzard.

The motion control gimmick works fine but its hardly a brilliant addon. Other than that, the game design of skyward sword is not innovative. Which is a problem already but in many ways I find the game design here to be a step backwards. TP and Windwaker were more open than Skyward Sword in many ways, and had better designed and less obnoxious tutorials. Some of the dungeons and bossfights are good but overall this is my least favorite zelda game by a mile.

The finest example of video games as an art form. The vistas, the story, the sheer size of the collossi, and most importantly, the incredible, incredible, atmosphere truly come together to make an artistic masterpiece. Video games as a medium tend to focus on a few things and do them well. Mario or Zelda are exceptional in art style and gameplay. Naughty dog games tell a good story. But Shadow of the Colossus is a type of game to do something unique in this medium and showcase the strengths of video games beyond just gameplay or interactive story telling. Every part of this game oozes sheer artistry. To use an analogy to describe it. I'd say this is like Mozart, while most popular video games are pop songs. This may not be the most popular, but it will endure longer as a masterpiece of this medium.

I was actually surprised by this game. Nintendo's declining game design capabilities made me wary of playing a game like this. But theres a lot of positives here. The characters are all basically over the top archetypes of certain personalities, but somehow still believable and loveable. I was very attached to my group of characters. The story was also surprisingly decent, and the choice of which group you align with gives you 3 very different endings. Two big problems though. One, theres no difficulty where this game feels challenging but fair. On normal or even hard, its simply too easy. Par for the course with Nintendo in 2019. Also female byleth looking like a stripper really annoys me. But overall this is a good game.

There's a lot that it improves from Galaxy 1, but overall this is basically just 'more super mario galaxy'. There are new ideas, new mechanics, new levels. Sometimes it exceeds the heights of its predecessor, but its not nearly as innovative as Galaxy 1 overall.

Fantastic game with tons of great ideas, great levels, and great atmosphere. Probably the best Mario game.