Sholva

Capcom truly Reached For The Moon with this one, bravo. Pragmata, a game that went through various delays, albeit presented in the cutest possible way, by Diana, every year, finally launched and, boy oh boy, I am so surprised by how well done this game is. As usual, let’s first talk about PC stuff, and how the game runs on my system, a Ryzen 7 5700X with 32 GB DDR 4 3600, and an Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB. I’m happy to say that the game is quite well optimized, my system can run the game with the regular Ray Tracing at very good FPS, easily 120+ FPS at 1440p all settings maxed, with some DLSS and Frame Generation at 2x.That said, on PC the extra setting that gives it the Graphical Edge, is Path Tracing and, with that enabled, I need Multi Frame Generation set to 3x, to get an output framerate above 100 at all times, mostly, with pretty decent latency, does not feel laggy at all, played the whole game like that, all settings maxed still, and 1440p, with Performance DLSS 4. Now, on the Controls and Keybinds department, the game plays very well with Mouse and Keyboard, even though Steam told me “a controller is preferred” but…nah, I played the Demo with M & KB, and the same for the whole game. Once you get used to Hacking with the Mouse, keeping it steady (you can fine tune the Mouse Hacking Sensitivity), it’s so fast to do the hacking in combat, very seamless. Aside from a couple of “hardcoded” keys, such as Enter or DEL, I could play this game using my usual Left Handed setup (I move with the Arrow Keys), no problems. On the Graphics department, this game is quite beautiful, lots of glass and metallic surfaces, and indoor shadows that all get vastly enhanced by Path Tracing. Not that the game does not have any “outdoor” areas, it does, and they also look phenomenal, mind you. The visual design is quite unique and in tune with the main theme of the game which, for spoilers sake, I won’t delve into here, but you’ll get it if you play. Sound Design and Soundtrack are very well realized, there are some very nice tunes in some combat sections, and very atmospheric sound design when it needs be. Characters and Story are quite original and genuinely kept me going on to find out all what’s going on, right until the end. Quite difficult to go deep into the reasons why the characters are so great, but the dynamic between Hugh and Diana is absolutely fantastic: Diana is one of the best characters I’ve encountered in a game, in recent years, she’s genuinely adorable, and her English voice actress did and incredible job with her, congratulations because this character is an absolute gem. The Gameplay is the other major ingredient here that kept be going and going: this gameplay is so fun and, most importantly, does not waste a single second, it has all the systems it needs to have, like Upgrading gear, weapons, mods, etc., but all is done in such a way that you barely notice your time is being wasted. All in all, Pragmata feels like a game Capcom would’ve made, maybe in the 16 or 32 bit era, like twenty five or thirty years ago, but they literally did it now, in 2026, with all the expected modern tech we have: I am surprised, that a new IP is like this, in this current age, and I can only say: bravo Capcom, this was very well put together, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Requiem is a celebration of the whole series, and it’s fantastic. This year, 2026, marks the 30th anniversary of the Resident Evil franchise and what a way to celebrate it all, with this phenomenal game. Before getting into more details, this is a PC version review so, first and foremost, some PC Performance data, from having played the whole game on my Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, with 32 GB DDR4 3600 MTs RAM. This game is an actual visual showcase, it is the best looking RE Engine game, to date, and that is even with the regular Ray Tracing it includes, optionally, but then, with the also optional Path Tracing mode, it looks absolutely incredible. Path Tracing does a lot of work for this game’s visuals, improving how light reflects not just on surfaces but also on characters skin, faces and, especially, that beautiful Strand Hair technology we’ve had since RE 4 Remake, now looking even better. A good example of this is switching Grace’s view to third person and walking along the street in the intro, with all those neons and lights from the different shops on the side, and watching how her hair catches on the various lights, simple astonishing. Performance wise, on my system, I can run the game at 1440p Output, with Performance DLSS, Path Tracing enabled, and Multi Frame Generation set to 3x, while the PC Latency remains at very solid levels with no noticeable input lag at all, getting above 110-120 FPS in the most demanding areas, and 140-160 FPS indoors, which is simply fantastic. Moving on, this game is an absolute treat full with good and clever fan service, the one that’s not that much in your face every minute but, when you get it, you have to stop what you’re doing, sit there a few seconds, reminiscing about past games, and the whole series in general, and how we got here, such a good feeling, and very well done, good job Capcom. Now, Gameplay is one of the main highlights of this game, mixing the best elements of games like RE VII, Village and the original ones, with also the best parts of the more action oriented games such as RE 4, 5 and 6, in a good way, and even stuff with some of the CG movies, and so much more. Everything blends together so well: the Grace segments are so good, classic RE gameplay, while the Leon sections are so intense and action packed, with great finishing moves and his usual one-liners. Big part of how great the gameplay is, are the Locations we get to visit, they’re incredibly detailed, with lots of places to explore and stuff to interact with, and simply another way to showcase how much the RE Engine has been improved for this title, it’s insane. And another component that games Gameplay so fantastic in this game, is the zombies: they're some of the most unique types we've ever encountered in the franchise, because of their unique behaviours and quirks, especially in the Grace sections of the game, some of these zombies are amazingly designed, incredible job there. With a Soundtrack to match every moment in the game, be it the tension of walking through a very dark corridor with just a lighter or a flashlight, to having to fight some of the most crazy enemies with Leon, in even crazier situations, the music always feels part of the gameplay, at every single moment. Sound Design is also incredible, especially with Surround Sound (I used Atmos for Headphones) so, if you’re able to use any type of surround, I highly recommend it. Characters are another big high point, with incredible performances from the English voice cast for Leon and Grace, especially the latter, big surprise, how incredibly good she is at portraying her character, her personality and quirks, greatly enhanced by RE Engine’s absolutely marvelous animations, both in regular gameplay and cutscenes…seriously, this is the RE Engine game with the most detailed character’s to date, and really one of the best out there in general, it’s absolutely incredible how much detail they have. All in all, I’d have to get into spoilers here, to keep talking about why this game is so amazing, maybe I should but, nah, I think that, as a fan of the whole franchise, this game felt like one of the best, especially because it’s a new mainline title, and that reaffirms Capcom’s commitment to the series. I’m looking forward to any DLC they cook for this one, should be interesting, and I can think of various possible ways they could add content, like they usually do. Fantastic game, really, what a strong early 2026 game for Capcom, for sure.

The pinnacle of the series, so far: this game is incredible. This review could be extremely short, and simple, if I said there’s a song in it called “Kevin Graham”. And that’d be the review: this game is a ten out of ten just because of that. But the game’s actually a lot more than that : ) By itself, alone, this game improves the modern combat formula that started with the Calvard arc: combat is really fun and engaging, now even more so than ever in Field Battles, with more tools to deal with the stronger enemies, like slowing time down for a few seconds, or certain characters having their special “awakened” state available at full boost. Command Battles are also better than ever, with so many ways to build the characters with various shards skills, arts and quartz that, closer to the end game, start becoming the usual crazily absurd and creative. Before continuing with all the stuff that makes this game basically yet another high peak in the series, we have to talk about PC Performance and settings and, as it is tradition, PH3 have done a masterful job, they’ve ported several games on this new Falcom Development Kit engine, and now we even have DLSS 4.5, which is crazy. My machine runs a Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, with 32 GB of RAM, which is more than enough to run this game at the Ultra Preset at 100+ FPS, with DLSS, at 1440p output resolution. Like all PH3 PC ports, it does scale up, and down, quite comfortably, with settings and resolution so, if your machine is quite low spec, you’d still be able to play the game (as long as it’s Steam Deck level or better, for sure).This game is a bit more GPU intensive than the previous two Daybreak games, mind you, but the bump in Model Quality and other visuals, like Lighting and Animations, is quite noticeable too…so well worth the slight performance cost compared to previous games. This game looks and runs beautifully, it has the best animated cutscenes, and camera work, from any Falcom game, although the Sky 1st remake is quite close, animation wise. Moving on, this has become almost quite certainly my favourite game in the franchise because, to be honest, no Trails game exists in a vacuum: every new instalment, and arc, relies on the foundations established in previous works and, Beyond the Horizon here, has immense pay off to things that, quite literally, started in the very first game of the series, Sky FC, obviously Sky SC as well, the 3rd too, Crossbell and Erebonian arcs, Reverie and, obviously, Daybreak I and II. It is because the series has such unmatched World-Building, that we were able to reach this level of peak in the story, now thirteen games in. If you ever have doubts about something in a Trails game being there “just by coincidence”, I’m going tell you that no, it’s not an accident: they know, they put things where they need to place them, because everything is planned since the beginning. I love the Arkride Solutions Office cast, they grew a lot in Daybreak II, with some of the best Connect Events in the series, but Horizon has even better ones and, an amazing QoL feature: now you don’t need to save scum, or NG+, to watch them all, as there are special connect tokens that can be looted. These events are so important and paramount in Horizon that you need to watch them all: they’re fantastic, emotional in many cases, very funny too, when need be, and I enjoyed them so much. The Voice Actors (played it in English) have perfected their roles so well, what an amazing cast of incredible people, all of them and, of course, great direction. The new Soundtrack pieces in this game are quite something, with some of them evoking leitmotifs from, literally, ten games back, Cold Steel vibes too in some of the tracks where it made sense to have that vibe, and so on. That new Enforcers version theme for Horizon…that was nice, as it has the leitmotif of one of the best tracks in Sky SC. This game elevates not only the Calvardian arc, but also the whole series, to new heights which, honestly, makes replaying the older games a treat, to see how everything was threaded together with such elegance and intent. Overall…I am immensely satisfied with Beyond the Horizon: it’s been everything I was expecting, and then it packed a lot more, that I was not expecting. How will Falcom surpass this? They will, for sure, we’re honestly in the “final saga” for “reals”, this time, as it is quite obvious after finishing this game. How many games we have left? Who can tell, but I can tell it’s been a pleasure going through this journey and, also, watching others follow it and seeing their reactions. Another great year for Trails fans, in 2026, for sure, and looking forward to what comes next.

2024’s GOTY nominee for best RPG felt a bit underwhelming, for me. I’m a big fan of Turn Based JRGPs and I’ve been wanting to play the famous Metaphor ReFantazio, a game so many people claimed it was the best thing in a long time, for the genre, and proof of that is just looking at the many nominations in various awards it got, and all the accolades it received. But, a perfect game for others doesn’t always have to be a masterpiece for me, sometimes not even the best JRPG of that year, or even great, for that matter. And, for me, that is the case with this game. Before explaining my experience, this is a PC game review, therefore we have to talk about the Quality of the PC Port and, in this game, the serious Lack of Optimization and really Poor Image Quality experience, due to the obvious lack of any decent Anti-Aliasing tech in this title. While on my Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB system, the game can be considered “sufficiently playable” at reasonable resolution and frame-rates, it’s nowhere near the level of Optimization and Scalability expected from a title that looks the way this game does. Looks and art style are quite different things here, though: I love Metaphor’s art style, it completely matches the vibe of the story, the characters, the world, etc., it’s perfect for it. But I don’t think a game with this level of fidelity should run like this game does. Furthermore, the game requires insane amounts of Downsampling, via DSR or DLDSR, plus applying the internal resolution scaler on top of that, to even begin to remove some of the extremely ugly Aliasing in the game. It is absolutely, without any doubt, the first AAA game in a long time, for me, where I just couldn’t believe how absurdly aliasing most of the game looked on my machine. It was the case for the Demo, they released, and they only added some FX and SMAA later…and that is simply not enough for the types of assets used in this game. So, performance and graphically speaking, this game is quite disappointing. The Ambient Occlusion used in the game is also too demanding for what visual benefit it offers and, thankfully, the amazing Lyall comes to the rescue with t heir MetaphorFix, so make things more bearable.With that said, this already removes lots of “points” from any review of mine, because there’s no excuse: this game was, to a lot of people, 2024’s best JRPG and thus, it should be better, on all platforms, at a technical / port level at least. Zero excuses, Atlus, please do better, because this is a 70€ game : ) When it comes to Gameplay, I also felt quite disappointed with the combat here; while the basic turn based JRPG mechanics are there, they’re quite basic, too much like some of the Persona games, which doesn’t do any favors to this game, I reckon and, basically, the “action” portion of the combat is so poor and under-developed and uninteresting that one wonders why even adding it as an option, instead of a more direct approach to initiate combat encounters. I don’t mind “basic” for stuff like this but, in the case of Metaphor, it felt quite below basic, even.Once inside the actual turn based experience, for the combat, nothing really felt too new or refreshing, it is basically SMT and Persona mixed in **** you love that, great, happy for you, but I mean, those other IPs already exist, and I expected something fresher coming from a new IP. Music and the Soundtrack are some of the most praised aspects, overall, in many reviews for this game; while I don’t disagree, I feel like the regular battle music in this game is way, way, way overused, a common trend in Atlus RPGs, and it is what it is. Regardless, the OST is quite enjoyable and distinctive, so I appreciate that. Visually speaking, and when it comes to the Art Style, the game is quite unique too, I like it but, again, all gets bumped down a few notches due to the awful aliasing, a shame, because this game would look so clean with good upscaling like DLSS, a real shame indeed. Story and Characters were a strong point for me, in this game, for the most part, leaning more towards its characters, I liked them all, great performances from the English cast, for sure. The Story itself, not the greatest out there, some decent ups, some puzzling downs too, and the ending was not too satisfying…it just happened the way it did and…well, it is what it is. All in all, I wouldn’t say I don’t recommend the game, but I can’t rate it higher or at the same level of some of my favorite JRPGs or even the Atlus RPGs I’ve completed so far. For me, this game could’ve been much more, with some changes here and there but, who am I to ask for that? No game is for everyone, after all.

A great PC Port and quite enjoyable **** the year 2025, Unreal Engine on PC and stuttering tend to go quite together, except in those rare occasions where they don’t, and Stellar Blade is one of such cases. It is a well optimized PC version for the UE 4 title coming from PS5 and, on my system, this was one of 2025’s best performing games. On my Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, this game was very easy to run at locked 120 FPS, at 1440p output resolution and Max Settings, especially with the help of Frame Generation. With pretty decent PC Latency numbers on my system, not even FG could make me feel any significant lag and…yeah, this game has some intense boss encounters, particularly close to the end, and I had no trouble at all beating all of them. Moving on to Gameplay, what can I say: I had fun playing this game; the gameplay is quite fluid for the most part, it does not feel like a struggle at all, running around the more open areas in the game, since Eve can auto-sprint pretty quickly, she’s fast, and the game offers a decent amount of teleport locations as well for those bigger levels. Combat wise, the game is well animated, hits feel like they have some impact to them and you do need to pay attention to enemy tells and react accordingly. My small pet peeve with the combat is the fact that some attack animations cannot be fully cancelled but I guess it is part of the design / need to commit to certain actions. It is something I could see improved by the developers in the sequel, for sure, because other than that, the combat felt quite satisfying. The Soundtrack in this game is fantastic, great ambient pieces and intense action ones too, some others full with emotion, for those particular moments in the game and, in general, great job with the soundtrack, definitely stuck with me quite after finishing the game. The Characters and Story are, for the most part, well written but you can’t expect some amazing revelations in this game that aren’t easy to anticipate, if you have played other similar games, where Stellar Blade draws inspiration from, and you know which games I’m talking about, well it’s quite easy to predict most of the twists in the game. This does not mean I didn’t enjoy them, I did actually like where the story went, and how the characters were handled but it won’t be the deepest story ever for most people. Secondary NPCs, quite a few of them had very cool quest lines, that I also enjoyed so, overall, I never felt bored by the Story or its Characters. And, finally, on a Visual level, I think this game looks gorgeous, for not having any advanced Ray Tracing effects or anything like that, the art style was excellent, the Asset Detail was pretty high on many things (made me spend a lot of time in Photo Mode appreciating desks, computers, stores and NPCs around the city etc.) up on close inspection, and so on. Overall, a very decent action game and, as mentioned, one of the best ports for me in 2025, for sure.

Not just a fantastic Silent Hill game, but one of the best, as well. Silent Hill f is, without a doubt, an incredible Silent Hill experience, worth of being placed side by side, amongst the best ones in the series. What could seem impossible many years ago, is now a reality: the Konami we have today is a far cry from the era where they decided to outsource most of their new SH projects, after Team Silent stopped being a thing. Yet, in 2025 and, obviously, 2024, we have new Silent Hill games coming from third party studios that clearly know what Silent Hill is all about, because Silent Hill 2 Remake is one of the best games from 2024, and now we have Silent Hill f, which is nothing short of an audiovisual masterpiece, with incredible storytelling. But, this is a PC Review too, so let’s talk PC Performance now: on my Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB I can safely say this game runs relatively better than SH 2R, mostly because SH f does not use Hardware Lumen, only Software, which was the one main settings in SH2 Remake that ate most of the performance. The game can be played at 1440p locked 60 FPS, Quality DLSS 4 forced via the Nvidia App, with mostly Max Settings, perhaps dropping Shadows a notch or so, to be 100% sure the 60 FPS lock is always kept.4K DLDSR with Performance DLSS 4 is also quite viable on my rig, in this game, and still looks great. That’s not all, the game does not come with Frame Generation but, if you want smoother FPS output, Smooth Motion can help with that without any extra major artifacts than the ones the game already has which, yes it does, since it’s a Software Lumen enabled UE 5 title, and most do have some fizzling artifacting when moving the camera, around character edges: this is not DLSS, not Smooth Motion, it’s an UE 5 thing, in most games with Lumen. This game also presents some Shader Compilation Stutters plus smaller, less frequent, Traversal Stutters, with the former being a bit more intrusive at the early moments of the game, it gets way better after a couple hours, when the shader cache is warmer. This could be solved in a patch that, by the way, is still yet to come, if it even does. Aside from that, the game has more “consistent” performance than SH 2 Remake overall, that much is obvious. The Art Style has all the Silent Hill vibes on point, at every location we visit in this title, it’s mesmerizing, tense and unsettling, but still gorgeous nonetheless, always, the visual design is incredible. Audio Design is top quality as well: the well-known Yamaoka tunes are easily recognizable in the “Fog” areas of the game, and the “other side” or Dark Shrine soundtrack is also equally stunning and fitting. Sound is as much a part of why this game is so great as its visuals or its script, so please enjoy the sound design in this game, it’s really fantastic. Gameplay seems to be a point of great discussion for this game but, in my honest opinion, I enjoy the gameplay here in SH f more than I was expecting to: it feels that each strike has weight, we’re not hitting “air” like in other games, and there are a few extra tools to deal with enemies. Being a melee only game, I can see why some people feel it’s “not right” but this game takes places in 60s era Japan: if that does not “makes sense” to you, I don’t know what to tell you. Which leads me to the big point of this game, the Story: I was not familiar at all with Ryukishi07’s work so this comes from a zero bias point of view of his style: this man is a genius, plain and simple, if Silent Hill f is any indication of his signature style? Heck, yes. Now, explaining why I consider the story and, especially, they way is presented, to be nothing short of amazing…would require deep spoilers of, at least, the base main playthrough, without counting anything the various NG+ runs may ****, I won’t get into that. Silent Hill f is very much a Silent Hill game, it has all the elements that remind me of the original Team Silent titles, and then it also has its own personality and flavor. If you want to know what the f stands for, that’s for you (mostly) to decide, when you play and find out but, the great thing about a good story, quoting another great character from one of my favorite franchises, Alan Wake: ”There’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear. In a Horror Story, the victim keeps asking “why”? But there can be no explanation, and there shouldn’t be one. The Unanswered Mystery is what remains with us the longest, and it’s what we’ll Remember in the end” Which is also a Stephen King quote, as per that game states, of course. And it’s this unanswered mystery, among many other things, what makes Silent Hill f such a good Silent Hill game. An easy 10/10 if they patch the remaining polish issues on this PC port, it's a gem ****, and it deserves some small fixes, that's it.

Congratulations, Falcom, you successfully remade Peak Fiction. This is, without a doubt, the best way they could’ve remade this game, and I’m happy they chose to do it this way. The thing is, the original game already is an excellent JRPG, with unmatched storytelling and world building but, then, the second game also exists, and takes everything Falcom learned with Sky FC, and surpasses it in every single aspect, if that was even ****, yes, but it is possible, because this series has more than a dozen games at this point, and I know very well what Falcom are capable of. This remake, on PC, runs quite well, on my Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 5060 Ti (16 GB) system, the port feels and runs quite smoothly, it has plenty of scalable settings and it’s easy to play above 100 FPS at Ultra Settings and 1440p, or aim for higher resolutions, variable FPS or even locked 60, and enjoy a much improved image too. Because the only major thing missing in its settings, is some good upscaling like DLSS, to clean up that weak SMAA and TAA; other than that…Falcom did a very notable job on this PC port, and I am quite satisfied. So, keeping it "brief", yes, this remake truly feels like the definitive version of the first game in the series. The combat, the pacing, the very well voiced custscenes, the incredible animations, the soundtrack, the world, the NPCs, the feeling that this world is huge and vast, and it hides many secrets waiting to be discovered, it’s all there, it looks incredible, plays smooth as butter, and it’s a treat for the senses. For all intents and purposes, Falcom have recreated every minute detail of the original, including the ending, and what an ending it is, as it couldn’t be any other way.When I say “every detail” I mean it, it’s all in there, you look for something you expect, and it is there, in all its ultra HD glory too. Anton looking back at that girl walking around the market? Yes, it is in there. Our Bracer Emblem being visible on our belts and clothes? Also there. The emblem being upgraded later on? Yes, they put it in there, too, of course. With the new Animation System they’ve been cooking for the past games, since Trails into Reverie and the modern Falcom Development Kit (FDK) Engine…these details, and the world, are more alive than ever, and it’s all in there, all of it. You just have to sit in there, relax, look at how alive this world looks like and see all the care and detail Falcom put in here, man…it’s wonderful. Best way to enjoy these games is just to take your time and get immersed in this unique setting: it’s a long journey…why rush through it? This is such a special occasion too, just enjoy the ride. I know there are “some” out there who have doubts about certain couple of terms being localized in a slightly different manner, but my personal take on that is simple: it’s the first game, a lot of the stuff we see, close to the end, is quite unknown stuff, to most characters. Can’t talk spoilers here, I don’t want that kind of review, but I’ll say the usual: Let Falcom do their Job, they know this franchise better than any of us : ) Congratulations to Falcom and all the people involved, including the Localization teams; personally I’ve played in English, and quite a bit in Spanish too, excellent job on both, but especially on the latter, surprised actually, the localization in my native language is so good, funny and consistent, that I’m so happy Spanish speaking gamers can finally dive into this series, if the language barrier was an issue before, for some of them. Replaying the beginning of this series, in this remake form, felt so fresh and natural, and I’m very much looking forward to the sequel, as it couldn’t be any other way.

An excellent, audio-visually stunning, pure Survival Horror experience. What can I say, after the phenomenal remake of Silent Hill 2, I had no doubts Bloober Team had reached that point where I could easily look forward to their next project. Well, that new game is here, and it is pretty good. Cronos is an UE 5 game and I’m pleased to report that, at least on my Ryzen 7 5700X and Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, the game has substantially less Traversal Stuttering, compared to their previous UE 5 work on Silent Hill 2. Some stutters remain but they are way more uncommon and less frequent in this title. A patch with some extra polishing there would be nice, but the game is not in such a pressing need for stuttering improvements as SH 2 was on release (and, in some ways, still is, depending on the area of SH 2 we study, still plenty zone with tons of traversal stutters). On my system, the game is able to run 1440p with Performance DLSS 4 (using the Nvidia App Override, to make it use the latest version and the Transformer Model), Epic Settings, Hardware Lumen (the RT setting set to “ON”) and Multi Frame Generation, at normally above 110-120 FPS.That is enough output frame-rate for a smooth experience on my system, with PC Latency usually between 50 and low 60 ms which, for Blackwell GPUs using MFG, is imperceptible in a game such as this one (tends to be noticeable in single player games, for me, above 100 ms, this game will never reach that on my system). Gameplay wise, Cronos is quite a treat, if I’m honest, if you like more classic survival horror games, it has a bit (in some cases quite a bit) of what makes other top games in the genre shine: - Limited inventory, yet upgradeable, space - Somewhat scarcity on ammunition, but it has crafting, so you can balance that too - Visceral, weighty combat, including the option to melee and stomp, to finish weakened enemies, stop then from merging, etc. (saving ammo) - Incredible vibes, atmosphere, and sound design: this game looks very detailed, and the environments are quite varied. - Exploration is very rewarding, which helps with the somewhat harder difficulty compared to other games in its genre: when you explore, you get resources and in special cases (and with the help of some feline friends even) you get useful upgrade modules for the Suit, and other gadgets. - If you are skilled at aiming and carefully plan your movement in the various environments, you’ll realize there are quite a few options to deal with some situations, not every time shooting like a madman is the best solution: look around, run, kite enemies, get a better position to make that charged shot hit the head of the enemy, observe their movements and patters, etc. The Story is very intriguing and, obviously quite inspired with other great games a bit, like SH 2, many Resident Evil games, even some of the previous games from Bloober, and media classics like 12 Monkeys, even. If you like all of that, this game is for you, it’s also full of documents and lore you can collect and read, including audio-logs. Speaking of Audio, we have yet another incredible sound design by Bloober here: everything sounds so punchy, in combat, and when walking around dark corridors, the ambient sounds are on point, and so much more. The Music complements perfectly the overall vibe and sound design, it’s quite good. Overall, to continue praising this game, I would need to get into spoilers, so I won’t. Cronos: The New Dawn, is a pretty good survival horror game, and it’s very nice to see a new IP in the genre and the AAA space, being this good.

A very solid Mafia story, with great characters.With The Old Country we basically get what was promised: a linear, narrative focused, Mafia story, and I’m happy to say that’s exactly what we got. First things first, this is a PC review, so some of my personal experiences with this port:It is an UE 5 game, albeit clearly AA in budget, it is still quite demanding on the hardware. On my Ryzen 7 5700 X and RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, I can run the game quite decently at 1440p with DLSS but, if I want that extra smooth experience with 100+ Output FPS, I need to add Multi Frame Generation at 3x, via the Nvidia App, for this game. This allows me to enjoy the game at 1440p, Quality DLSS and normally stay above 100 FPS (with MFG, again). It is smooth and latency is not an issue, as it’s the case for MFG, it’s quite well designed that way so that latency only becomes noticeable quite above 100 ms, which never happens for me in this game. The High Graphics preset offers a good 30%+ performance boost over Epic, as it so happens in most UE 5 titles, while still looking quite decent so, if you’re in need of the extra FPS or you want to aim for very high resolutions, the settings you should focus on are Global Illumination, and Shadows. This is also a rare UE 5 game that does not have any major shader compilation stutters, so it feels quite smooth, overall. Story wise, this game is very intense, dramatic and emotive, it felt like a trough and trough Mafia series story, and we all know how most Mafia stories end, don’t we? Nothing else to say, but it was pretty good, in my opinion. Gameplay wise, it reminds me a lot of Mafia: Definitive Edition, maybe even simpler, which for some people may be a negative, I didn’t mind though, it was fine, nothing special, did its job. Voice acting, in English at least, which is what I played, is exceptional, incredible performance from the leading actors, with some chilling moments with certain characters, so well done, and animated too, great job. Music was good, in line with most games in the series, even evoking at times some tones from future games, heh.Speaking of future games, without being concrete here, there are references to Mafia I and particularly the second game, and that was quite nice to see, even when certain characters appeared for the first time and I realized who they were, nice.I had some gripes with certain Keybind issues here and there, and the game could use a couple extra polishing or QOL improvements, but that’s it. All in all, for its asking price, 50€ or even close to 40 with a current discount, the game took me almost 20 hours to beat, more or less, without doing all the collectibles (which you can complete in the Exploration mode, anyway).I’d say if this game is a “testing ground” to see if there’s interest for more and denser games in the series, I’d say yes please: I would love a new mainline game in the series, bigger but in the “more dense” sense of the word, not “open world” per se, I think the series does not need to go fully Open World to have great experiences.

A Masterful JRPG. As a fan of JRPGs, having a game like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 makes me very happy, for so many reasons but, basically, it’s clear the developers of this game really love their video games, the ones that made them who they are and do what they do, and that’s how you get a good video game. Let’s talk a bit about PC specific stuff, like Performance: being an UE 5 game, we can see it’s a little heavy on the GPU side of things, it uses Software Lumen as many UE 5 games do, a shame there’s no option for Hardware Lumen, though and, on my Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 3060 Ti, I can get quite decent performance at 1440p with Performance DLSS 4 (forced via Nvidia App), and a mix of High and Epic settings.Normally around 60 FPS, a bit more in some areas, less in certain intense moments, but mostly decent. There aren’t that many Stutters in this game, but it’s not completely free of them; as far as UE 5 releases, this game seems to be one of the smoothest ones, for me so far. The Story in this game is nothing sort of incredible, I can’t talk specifics, you need to learn about it **** is not a very happy story kind of game, though, and Grief is a common theme, so be prepared for all of that. The Soundtrack is an absolute masterpiece, if I’m honest, very, very good, some tracks are still stuck in my head and the final boss theme really delivers. The Characters are beautifully portrayed by their respective actors, all of them, these characters are so good, reliable and relatable. I will remember this cast for a very long time, what a group, as it couldn’t be any other way in such an excellent JRPG. Combat is pretty fun and reactive, I played on Expert difficulty and the game can be extremely punishing the first few hours and also closer to the end, before you gain some levels and really powerful items, but honestly there are many ways to make super broken builds, or a good balance as I did, instead of going for the easy one shot stuff. That way, the bosses remained mostly challenging and I got to experience their incredible moves.Speaking of moves, this game is beautifully animated, some Bosses have absurdly elaborate animations, and it’s a beautiful dance to watch. Same for the playable characters, their skills have very cool animations too but, man, some boss fights in this game are insanely good. Visually speaking, this game is also very good looking, and with an enormous amount of variation between areas, with a great use of color and lighting. All in all, this game is likely going to be my GOTY, and I sure expect to see many nominations in several **** is also like a 50€ game in a time where some publishers believe 80€ and above should become normal: no, it shouldn’t, because as long as there are studios willing to do something fresh, unique and actually excellent, at a fair price, I will keep supporting such studios.

This game was an insanely fun and wild ride.After eleven games, Daybreak II had very deep boots to fill, especially coming from what truly felt like a very complete Trails game, with Daybreak I and, after completing the main story and all side quests and exploring every single corner of the game, I can comfortably say that Daybreak II surpasses my expectations.This is clearly a very classic “middle of the arc” Trails game, we’ve had a few of those at least, in those eleven previous games and, when you are someone who’s played all of those previous games, and paid attention to all the little details and, what one could call “seeds” that Falcom loves to plant within their lore and story well…Daybreak II has fed me with a ton of new stuff to ponder about and theorize, for the future and upcoming titles in the series. Before going on, let’s talk PC Performance: much like Daybreak I (and previous games), we have yet another excellent port from PH3, truly not a single detail is missing here for Settings, and there’s an incredibly high level of care put into making this game scale up (or down) quite well, depending on the Hardware. On my rig, with a Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 3060 Ti, this game can run at mostly Ultra Settings, 1440p, and keep a steady 60 FPS, most of the time, except minor moments with intense particles (certain S-Crafts, etc.), where it may drop into the mid 50s for a second. Tweaking down the new Color Precision setting, and maybe dropping PCSS shadows to Soft, helps quite a lot to gain a decent amount of performance on my GPU, and I can keep MSAA at x2, with Sparse Grid Super Sampling too, and it looks good enough. Daybreak II improves a bit the Graphical Fidelity seen in the previous game, for sure, so I cannot wait to see what extra improvements Falcom has made for the next one. I also want to mention the excellent PC controls customization this port offers, and the game plays like a dream on Mouse and Keyboard, if you prefer this input method, it truly is one of the very rare cases of JRPGs that plays perfectly on this control setup, while most other JRPGs out there barely provide acceptable M&KB support for every aspect of the game.I do enjoy using my DualSense for these games too, but it’s so nice to play a game like this, with some Action Combat bits in it, with a mouse and a keyboard too, I even prefer it due to the greater camera control. Knowing that Falcom never do or insert something into their stories that is “just there” because “they found it looked cool and that’s it”, oh no, nope : ) So yeah, a lot of stuff for future reference, for sure, and lots of theories from past arcs and games…basically have been solidified, for me at least, in Daybreak II, but I am left as thirsty for more Trails as I’ve ever been, after any of the previous eleven games, which is always a great feeling. To me, the beauty of good story telling, is when a game does not literally draws me a picture of everything that needs to “be explained” because, if every single thing is explained plainly, I wouldn’t have anything to grind my brain about, while waiting for the next game. The Gameplay in this game is also improved, especially the Field Battles, now with Quick Arts and Cross Charge attacks. Command Battles are great, as always, but now we can, once again, Steal Turn Bonuses, since they have separated the allies and enemies turn lines, much clearer. Having a place like the Märchen Garten, to do as much combat as we want, is also a valuable addition to me, who loves Reverie so much, even though the Garten here is not as fleshed out as the True Reverie Corridor. The new playable characters, both in the story, and the Garten, are excellent, great Crafts and Animations, absolutely loved them. The Soundtrack is, as usual, quite punchy and emotive where it needs to be, we have some tracks returning from the previous game, here and there, but also a lot of new stuff.I even saw a Tokyo Xanadu Ex+ track played at least once, and I had a big smile on my face. Voice Acting and Localization, as always, excellent. I’m not native English speaker, but…yeah, I love the actors and the localization.Hearing some well-known returning voices was a treat, and spending more time with those from Daybreak I was great. This game has some of the best Character Connection Events, and Side Quests, in the series, too. Some are highly emotional, for all time fans. A certain character in this game, says: "I'd go as far as to say that making mistakes is all part of what it means to be human", and that perfectly summarizes what Daybreak II is all about, hell, even the whole series. Falcom absolutely cooked with this game and it's going to be so important to remember that, come future titles but...honestly also everything that has come before Daybreak II and that, my fellow Trails enjoyers, is the definition of great writing.

This is what Adventure is all about. Ys X Nordics is the first entry in a while that goes back in the timeline, quite a bit actually, right after the events of Ys I and II, and it is really nice to see a very young Adol and Dogi finding new adventures in the lands of the Normans. As usual, the Performance of the PC version for this game is absolutely fantastic, being a port from PH3, and we have an extremely well optimized game, packed with Settings. Coming back from their previous work with Trails Through Daybreak, we get Multisample Anti-Aliasing and the great Sparse Grid Supersampling Anti-Aliasing too. When both are combined, we get an extremely clean looking presentation, which really elevates the already pretty clean art by Falcom in this game, and the new Engine, of course. As far as performance numbers, on my Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 3060 Ti, this game can be enjoyed at pretty good frame-rates at 1440p, 2x MSAA with SGSSAA and mostly Ultra Settings with a couple settings toned down (Shadow Resolution and Filtering) if you want, but not totally needed. The FPS at these settings tend to reach 120 quite often, only dropping a bit in intense cutscenes. Another option is to increase MSAA to 4x, and still be around 80-90 FPS, which is also pretty good like that, or we can lock the FPS to 60 FPS and forget about the FPS counter and just enjoy smooth gameplay all around, the whole game. At Default, console like settings, even 4K DLDSR is possible at 100 FPS or close to it. There’s plenty of room and scalability in the settings, both CPU and GPU scaling, to enjoy this game as best you see fit, because it is an excellent port. Moving on, Gameplay is also pretty smooth and responsive, as it couldn’t be any other way in an Ys game, and the new engine shows its muscle in the Animation department, both in regular gameplay, and particularly action Cutscenes. These cutscenes have an insane level of polish and animation never seen before in a Nihon Falcom game, only getting close are the latest entries in the Trails series, at least up to the one I’ve played. It is fantastically animated and, as usual in all Falcom games, Characters are actually quite expressive for this art style, which a strong point in their games, they manage to convey lots of different expressions and emotions via their very skilled animation on the characters’ faces, eyes, mouths, and bodies, even with the simpler graphics compared to other, bigger AAA productions. The Sountrack packs quite the punch too, ever since playing the Demo, weeks ago, some of the tracks have been stuck in my mind, and obviously now that I’ve completed the game, even more so. The OST does not disappoint, as expected, I always look forward to new Falcom games, particularly in their JRPG series, because of the soundtracks. Voice Acting (in English) is excellent, I recognize a few voices from other Falcom games, for sure, and some I don’t, and all of them did **** boy Adol has more lines than usual, haha, but he mostly remain the silent one we’re used him to be, don’t get your hopes up, but I was surprised hearing his voice more often than usual, it’s good and it fits the moments when we hear him. The Story felt quite interesting and always making me want to keep exploring and adventuring and…yeah, Adventure is what Ys does best, better than almost any other JRPG franchise I know, that’s for sure. Having a Ship we can customize and improve and all the crew and stuff we can do on it…yeah that felt great, even if it’s not the first game that has done it, of course, it was nice to see Falcom’s take on the pirate ship shenanigans, instead of being on the other end and ending up stranded on some unknown island after a shipwreck :P As for Controls, it pretty much controls like most previous Ys games, with a couple new mechanics here and there, and the PC port has an excellent Keyboard and Mouse implementation, even for Menu Navigation, and this is great. I mostly played with my DualSense, but tried Mouse and Keyboard a few hours too, and it’s just naturally good, and easy to control, as we can quickly use skills without having to press a modifier. All in all, another excellent PC release from PH3 and NISA, I had a ton of fun with this new Ys game, explored every corner of the map, and it felt great.

An excellent sequel and really good PC port. God of War (2018) on PC was a nice surprise for me, and it is a game I thoroughly enjoyed, and it was a high quality port here on PC. I’m happy to say that its sequel, God of War Ragnarök continues this, we got a very good PC version of this game for sure, even though in this case the port does not include many extra settings that make it go quite above its PS5 version, graphically speaking. When it comes to Performance, on my Ryzen 7 5700X and Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti, Ragnarök can be played at mostly max settings, 1440p native resolution, at above 100 FPS easily, thanks to the very much excellent FSR 3 Frame Generation implementation; It is rare to find a game where FSR3 Frame Gen is perfectly implemented, with no stutters or annoying ghosting but, in Ragnarök, it is pretty good, and you should use if you can get around 90 FPS or more, post frame generation. When it comes to Controls and Keybinds, well I played the entirety of GOW 2018 with Mouse and Keyboard, it had excellent controls on PC, and I basically did the exact same for Ragnarök: the PC controls are excellent and I had no major issues customizing my controls to my liking. This may surprise some of you but yeah, action games can be played on Mouse and Keyboard too, they just need to have well designed controls, and this one simply has, nothing wrong with that. Graphically speaking, the game looks quite beautiful, even though as I mention the PC port does not include actual settings that go far above the PS5’s, unlike GPW 2018 did, with stuff like Shadows, but that’s quite alright, the game looks better than its predecessor, in my opinion, and runs really smoothly. Combat is as fun as it was in the previous game, and there are even more options and abilities now to use, both from Kratos himself and also from other companions. Speaking of companions and Characters, the acting performances are stellar in this game, particularly Kratos, Atreus and Freya’s characters, they really did and incredible job here, but so did the rest of the cast, which is quite big and varied in this game. Sound Design and the Soundtrack are two other aspects I really liked in Ragnarök, there are many epic moments in this game that are accompanied by incredible pieces, and many emotive moments too, it’s really great. Story wise, this game goes some places for sure, it’s a truly epic adventure with a satisfactory conclusion, in my opinion, I’m not talking any spoilers here, but I never felt the story felt padded or with bad pacing at all, all the sections of the story felt quite meaningful for some much needed character development, and I got exactly that, and it was well executed in the context of the story and what its characters needed, at that time. All in all, I enjoyed my time with this game a lot, I loved the previous game quite a bit, and I can say I liked Ragnarök just as much, it really does things quite well and it has some incredible set pieces and absolutely epic moments and boss fights. All paired with an excellent and mostly issue-free experience here on PC, a game that runs basically always quite smoothly, it’s been a joy to play it.

A Superb Audiovisual Experience, and Exceptional Remake. The Silent Hill 2 remake, by Bloober Team, is an incredible game from an audiovisual standpoint. On the Visual / Graphics department, the original game had very distinct presentation, no doubt, especially the fog technology used back then, and I’m very happy to say that Bloober Team delivered beyond my expectations here. The visuals in this game are astonishingly good, with extremely high attention to detail on most assets, and incredible Lighting and Reflections thanks to Lumen, especially when using Hardware Lumen, here on PC. Speaking about PC, of course, let’s talk about Performance: as of its release, and the posting of this review (October 17th, 2024), there has been no patch or significant update released, nor Nvidia Gameready driver, for this game. On my Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 3060 Ti GPU, the game can be enjoyed with some Custom Settings at 1440p and Balanced DLSS, even with Ray Tracing set to “ON” (Hardware Lumen), most of the time getting between 50 and 60 FPS, sometimes more, but there will be areas with worse performance, such as the Woodside Apartments. Furthermore, currently this game suffers from both Traversal and Animation stutters, with the former being likely the most noticeable, and it is really a major issue in so many Unreal Engine 5 games. It is not a game breaking issue, but a problem nonetheless and we still don’t know if any game updates will tackle this issue or try to mitigate it. Moving on, to the Audio design, all I can say about it is that, in this particular aspect, Silent Hill 2 is a masterpiece of sound design. The game has been mastered with Dolby in mind too, and with headphones this game is relatively above many of the peers in its genre, I can feel that much. The original game had very unique ambience sounds, and of course iconic Soundtrack, and I’m happy that Konami brought back Akira Yamaoka to the team, because this game is indeed incredible when it comes to audio design. The soundtrack well…if you know the original one…you’ll be right at home, there are new versions of the classics, but they are so good and they respect the originals so well, that you won’t notice: just sit and enjoy. Monster design is another great highlight of this remake, with Masahiro Ito back for this game, it couldn’t be any other way: the monsters in this game look incredible, even the simpler ones. Animation quality is top notch, particularly on the well-known characters that are part of the story for this game, the many nuances in, for example, James’ expression during his journey in this game, when he speaks to other characters, is one of the ways in which the developers are able to tell us more of the story, give us some hints, if we pay attention. It is really amazing to see how James’ face shows hesitation, doubt, guilt, perplexity…and so on, at different moments, and we don’t need the characters to tell us that, we see it. All the characters are very well written, respecting the original dialogue a lot and, in some cases, expanding it quite well. The Voice Acting is extremely good as well, all the actors did an excellent job in their roles, and these are very complex, emotionally speaking, characters; most Cutscenes in this game, where characters interact with each other, simply left me speechless from what I was experiencing, it’s really, really good, and I could’ve never imagined the dialogue and lines from the original, could fit that well two decades later into such a modern looking presentation for this game, but they do. Gameplay has been improved quite a bit, on the combat front, especially. It looks simple, but it works quite well: Melee combat requires paying attention to enemy patterns and dodging dangerous attacks, and ranged combat with firearms is what one could expect from a survival horror game. All in all, if we could ignore the Stuttering and Performance issues, currently in the game, I’d give this game a ****, we cannot ignore those, the game has these blemishes that need patches, so yeah, I’d say 9 or 9.5/10 seems fair, as the issues are currently not game breaking for my experience, but they exist and can be measured accordingly by the proper tools.

A Visual Spectacle paired with Smooth Action and tons of Lore. Black Myth Wukong has pleased me quite a lot and, from the first few moments in the game, we can already see that the production values are quite generous, for this title. Right from the first quite lengthy intro sequence, we can see how much care it’s been put into the Animations, choreography and special effects. The intro perfectly sets the tone, on what to expect for the rest of the game and…let me tell you, it will get a lot crazier. Let’s talk about PC Performance, briefly: on my Ryzen 7 5700X and Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti the game can run at mostly locked 60 FPS with Balanced DLSS and High Settings, at 1440p Resolution. If we tweak some settings and play around with the DLSS scale, we can still get close to 60, sometimes in the 50s (still decent for Gsync), and better visuals if we increase some settings. Ray Tracing is off the table here for a 3060 Ti, as it uses Path Tracing, but the game still looks beautiful without it, albeit quite over-sharpened, and thus I needed to download a small mod that removes the excessive sharpening effect. With FSR 3 Frame Generation, it is also possible to run the game at around 80 to 90 FPS with High Settings, most of the time, it feels fine in combat, but the visual ghosting becomes more obvious due to FSR Upscaling not being able to cope well with certain effects. Controls on PC, if you want to use Mouse and Keyboard, I find them to be the weakest part, lots of keys cannot be remapped, mostly on the right side of the keyboard, and Mouse Input feels off too. I played with my DualSense, but I’d love to see a patch improving the Mouse and Keyboard so I could try it out, as I am left handed and I normally require lots of remapping in my games :P Moving on to World Design, the game is structured into Chapters and, while the first one is clearly a big tutorial and more welcoming to the new player, the game soon opens up a lot more from Chapter 2 onwards, and chapters 3, 4 and 5 are huge, with lots of secondary paths, secret stuff including special secret areas (needed to achieve the True Ending, Chapter 2 also has one of these secret areas, BTW), and of course lots of optional bosses to find. Exploration of the levels is quite fun, never felt bored because the different sections are varied enough. Character Design is a very strong point in this game, and the various NPCs and important characters are extremely well detailed, and animated. Even with my limited knowledge of the Journey to the West lore, I could still recognize some of these characters from the bits I could remember from the original story. Obviously, the game’s story adds its new spin to things and we know it happens after said original Journey, at least. It is…no doubt, a lot of fun, playing through this story, it feels very original and interesting. The Ending, the normal one, felt a bit tame, but that last fight made up for it, it was the best fight in the game, and the game does have some very good fights, trust me. The level of Animation and utter craziness shown by the final boss, really shows how much passion the team of developers put into this, so much care for detail, even the fun attempts at trolling the player within that fight, too. It was glorious and epic. But then, there’s a Secret / True Ending and another absolutely incredible boss appears, with even more insane animation work and choreography. And then an even more epic fight that I won’t describe because of spoilers, but it felt awesome to play that part. Then there’s one more final showdown needed for that true ending, and yeah, there it is. Whenever a Chapter ends, we’re presented with high quality animations in varying styles, depending on the chapter, which was a great surprise too. The Tapestries we also see at the end of a Chapter is gorgeous too. And the final animation cutscene for the True Ending was also beautiful and quite emotive. And of course, Sound Design played a huge role in this game, the soundtrack is gorgeous to listen to, good ambient sounds, good battle themes and great cutscenes soundtracks too. Overall, this game still feels like it lacks some small touches of polish here and there, for this PC port, but for a great part of my time, I had a somewhat smooth experience. There are some Traversal Stutters, but they are so far in between areas that it’s really not easy to notice them sometimes. This is a really fun game and the devs at Game Science really did a great job with it, and I hope they will be able to continue making epic stories and games such as this one.

An absolutely incredible first entry in a new arc. There’s simply nothing out there like Trails and, with Daybreak here being the 11th game in the series, one could think that there’s no way Nihon Falcom could pull off a new entry for a new arc that is as incredibly good as this game but…well, here we are: Trails Through Daybreak is Absolute Peak, from start to finish. Let’s talk PC Performance a bit: on my Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 3060 Ti system, this PC port by PH3 runs, as it couldn’t be any other way, absolutely fantastic, while also looking incredible for a game in this series. At a resolution of 1440p DLDSR, I can comfortably run the game locked at 60 FPS, at Ultra Settings, and also including 2x MSAA with Sparse Grid Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing for everything, Shadows included. This makes the game look quite clean and crisp, with only some minor aliasing here and there, very hard to notice. I can only observe minor FPS drops in really heavy scenes or some S-Crafts, but never below the mid 50s and just for a split second. Moving on to the rest of the game here, well, I’ve just completed it and I really felt quite satisfied, still quite hyped up by that intense finale and last moments, but yeah, quite satisfied. The new Characters are absolutely amazing, as expected, they’re quite varied in both their ages and personalities, and also when it comes to combat, particularly with their unique crafts, always fun to discover new crafts in these games, as it is one of my favorite things to see, because crafts give these characters a lot of flavor and usefulness. Never felt any single character not worth using at some point, which in itself is a bit of an issue, because I wanted to use some of them a lot more but I know…it’s still the first game in a new arc, there’ll be time for a lot more, hopefully :P Gameplay has changed a little bit here, now with the expanded Field Battle System, a very welcome improvement, truly, and the Command Battle Mode (Turn Based) is a good as it’s ever been, even though they have changed some mechanics, here and there. We cannot steal AT Bonuses via S-Crafts, from enemies, for example and, without having the Turn Order displayed (can be done either manually or via in game setting), it gets a bit confusing, knowing those action orders…but thanks to the QoL improvements in this port, it’s no big deal. Animation Quality has improved leaps and bounds over the previous engine, particularly compared to the Cold Steel games, because in Reverie we were able to have a little taste of some improved animations in certain special cutscenes, which was nice. Daybreak boosts this quality and uses it in a very good amount of scenes, and even the regular combat animations are improved, over older games, quite noticeable. Controls are also very responsive, both when using a Controller, and with Mouse and Keyboard, in fact this game plays incredibly well on the latter, as we can customize basically every action in the game and even have separate shortcuts for each S-Craft slot, saving us one key press. Seriously, the game is completely playable on Mouse and Keyboard with no grievances or frustrations, something quite common in many (J)RPGs out there, it is really amazing the amount of work and refining PH3 has put into this particular section of the Settings. The Soundtrack is astonishingly good, I always say this for every other Trails game I complete but, I mean, I can’t name a single track that I didn’t enjoy, with some absolute bangers just at the right moment, they never miss and it is one of the reasons why I love the series so much. I will be listening to this soundtrack many, many times, that’s for sure. The English Localization and Voice Acting is top quality, as usual, I don’t know how they do it…but they do it: every new entry, they manage to find the absolute best actors for each character and…what an absolute great job the Localization team, and the Actors, have done with Daybreak: congratulations for another incredible experience. And the Story well…it’s incredible. I won’t mention any spoilers, but a relatively decent part of why I find this game so amazing, is the fact that I have played the other previous ten games. I can see newcomers quite enjoying this entry, for sure, should they choose to start here, but as a veteran of the series…this game greatly delivered where it mattered, and it was awesome experiencing those special moments, which makes Trails as special as it is. All in all, this an spectacular JRPG, I loved this game, nothing more to say, really, other than thank you Nihon Falcom, NISA and PH3 for allowing this series to be experienced by the Western audience.

High Quality game and PC Port. Ghost of Tsushima has become one my favorite PlayStation games, here on PC, along with the likes of Days Gone and God Of War. The PC Port for this game is quite good, as we can instantly tell by looking at the various settings available and other features. When it comes to Performance, my system at the time of playing this game and this review, is a Ryzen 7 5700X, paired with an RTX 3060 Ti, and 32 GB of 3600 MT/s DDR4. With my system, I am able to achieve above 60 FPS at 1620p DLDSR resolution, with some Custom Settings, mostly everything set to very high and decent settings, with a couple settings down one notch. As per usual, DLSS is used because it really improves Temporal Stabilization, at any resolution. The FSR 3 Frame Generation implementation in this game is mostly excellent and it has gotten even better with the latest Patch; we can combine FSR 3 Frame Generation with any other available Upscaler so, for example, in my case I can use DLSS Super Resolution, to upscale, and FSR 3 Frame Generation. This produces a very stable looking image, in motion, and at a resolution of 1440p DLDSR and most settings maxed, I can achieve an average of 105 FPS, most of the time, with Dynamic Resolution Scaling (via DLSS) aiming for 60 FPS, so that makes it almost 120 when FSR 3 Frame Generation is enabled. Unfortunately, I think Nvidia Reflex stops working if FSR 3 Frame Gen is enabled, but at 90-100 plus FPS, I’m not able to notice any significant latency issues, it plays pretty smoothly, and I do have Gsync enabled, as well. As for the game itself, it is absolutely fantastic: the Story is quite interesting, especially thanks to the very well written Characters we can find and which normally have their own story arcs associated to them. Some of the side quests were also pretty well written, with some having quite the emotional impact on me, for sure. Gameplay is also pretty fun and responsive, particularly on Mouse and Keyboard which is my preferred input method for this game: I could quickly switch stances, with shortcuts, without interrupting the flow of combat, and use other tools such as kunai, smoke bombs, etc., all of that without having to open up a single in game menu or wheel. The game does respond very well to Keyboard inputs, and the Mouse allows for excellent and perfect pinpoint precision with arrows, and Camera Positioning in combat situations. The Soundtrack is quite memorable and hits with the right tunes where it matters, many of those tracks are quite moody and soothing, and the small flute tracks present in the game are a nice touch. The Iki Island Expansion is also quite good, with some new amazing Vistas to find, and places to explore, and with an intriguing plot that complements quite well the main ending of the game. Overall, as I said at the beginning, this has become one of my favorite PlayStation games released on PC, it is just very, very good. It does have some of that good old “Open World Bloat” but way less prominent than in other open world games; if you are a completionist, sure it may be a bit laborious to go and find every single thing, but it’s not as bad as in most other games. I enjoyed exploring this world, with the minimalistic HUD and all, the wind guiding me towards objectives: it felt good. I do hope that **** Punch are able to make another game like this, because this is really very good, and of course thanks Nixxes for another great PC Port.

A really Special and Unique RPG. After a bit more than 90 hours and having witnessed the True Ending, all I can say is that it was something truly special. It really is such a simple thing, in many ways, but knowing what happens in the first game / Dark Arisen, definitely was a big plus. When I started the game I couldn’t have guessed that I would end up feeling so attached to my Main Pawn, and even to other players’ pawns as well: they all felt very much like a crucial part of my journey through this interesting and mysterious world. I just love it, love the pawn system, loved it in the OG and here too and, despite the changes and streamlining of some of the more obscure systems from the OG…I still enjoyed the Pawns a lot, I loved seeing what other players did with them, their looks, their skills, their personality (even if it’s quite basic stuff), and so on…and since most of them accompany me for long hours, I tend to keep them for like 5-6 levels at least, sometimes more, yeah…it wasn’t difficult to actually get attached to many of them if not all. But yeah, our Main Pawn really shines, even if it’s on the basic level…it really felt like that Pawn is just as important as my main character, an extension of it really, inseparable parts of a whole character in its own. One aspect I did not like as much is the very simple way to give props to other player's pawns, now it's just a simple "Like" or "Love/Heart" choice, which feels quite cringe, to be honest, instead of some standard complimentary phrases such as "Thanks" "Your pawn was a good healer" and so on, like in the first game, you know. We still can send them one item, and with the Pawn Quest system, we can even give Gold to every player who hires our pawn...which is a pretty cool system, and I used it a lot, both ways. And the True Ending really moved me, it’s quite well done, straight to the point with the final Cutscene and Conclusion, yet leaving a few questions here and there, for us to ponder, what it all means, what could they mean with what was said? So cool, to be honest. I don’t think there’s any other RPG series that feels like Dragon’s Dogma, and I am happy it is the way it is, nothing more. As for the PC specifics on this release, well we all know it’s not exempt of Performance issues, even though the first small Update improved Frame Times in CPU bound scenarios (mostly the first big city, Vernworth), the game still needs some decent Optimization Updates. On my Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 3060 Ti, I’ve mostly played at 1440p DLDSR, with Quality DLSS, High Settings, Ray Tracing ON, and it’s almost a locked 60 FPS (if using an FPS limiter) in the outdoor areas not close to the City, and between 40 and 50’ish within the City, now with smoother frame-times thanks to the recent update. Still far from perfect but it was really a small patch not aimed to implement actual optimizations so…yeah, we’ll see if future patches do improve those CPU performance issues and various other aspects of the game in need of some extra polish. The Mouse and Keyboard Controls need a bit of love too, with quite a few "forbidden" keys that we cannot use and some obvious Mouse Acceleration going on, not the worst I've encountered, but definitely noticeable. All in all, I would love to see this port improved, and yes…Capcom, I would very much have some DLC in the future, if it’s actually meaningful and adds to the Story and Lore, and expands the World because, for me, the best part of this game was simply exploring the world because it’s truly captivating and exciting, especially if you only truly rest when it’s strictly imperative, and not at every camp you encounter, which your Pawns promptly comment on: “it’s not much of a journey if all we do is camping”, and those are some true words of wisdom, from the pawns themselves…just take your time, this world is really worth exploring, in my opinion, I had tons of fun doing so and I’m sure I left some corners here and there that I missed, but that’s okay, more to look forward in future playthroughs.

What an Incredible Experience, we need more games like this. Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is, in my opinion, what Video Games Should Be, period. It’s no wonder I’ve loved this game so much, since Vampyr is already a great game, but I am speechless at how much the team at DON’T NOD have evolved in their craft: this game is big, but not to the point of making be bored of it, on the contrary, I wish so much that this is not the end of it, and there’s more of this franchise but…if it ends as it has (and I’m aware there are several endings), I wouldn’t hate it, I felt satisfied, I just wish we can have more of it, because it’s so good. Let’s briefly talk about PC Performance, it’s a PC review after **** my Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 3060 Ti system, this Unreal Engine 5 game runs beautifully, even at Very High Settings and at 1620p DLDSR Resolution, downsampled to my native 1080p.This setup can keep stable 60 FPS and, quite often, is above 70-80 FPS, paired with Balanced DLSS. With a few settings tweaks on Foliage, View Distance, Effects (these on High) and Shadows (at Medium), the game receives a healthy 20 percent boost, at least, in case you need more FPS, or want to play at 4K, you only need to still use some DLSS, since it cleans things so much. We can also play at 1440p with DLAA on the 3060 Ti, similar settings tweaks and all, and it looks amazing too at that resolution, since DLAA is the best Temporal Anti-Aliasing solution, currently available when it comes to visual quality versus performance lost. Moving on, as with previous games from DON’T NOD, the Story is simply amazing here, and I won’t spoil any of it because this is a game worth going in almost “blind”, for sure, just let the game carry you across its well-crafted story. Characters are exceptionally well animated and this is shown in the various high quality cutscenes, with an insanely high quality Depth Of Field too, unlike many other games where the DOF effect has this obvious lower quality…no, here it’s good, as it should, it looks excellent. And the Voice Actors behind these characters all do an amazing job, especially our protagonists, they nailed the chemistry between them, perfectly, they are so good. Gameplay reminds me of various titles I’ve enjoyed a lot, from Vampyr, of course, to Hellblade, with also quite a bit of both Plague Tale games, for sure, and also even the likes of Tomb Raider, the modern games, and God of War 2018. Why all these games? When it comes to World Design, it very much resembles what would be a mix of God Of War and some of the modern Tomb Raider games, Plague Tale too, even Hellblade, really, it’s like a “3D Metroidvania” too, in a way, since you can come back to locked areas, with new abilities, and get some new stuff, or learn about the Lore a bit more. The Combat starts off a bit simple, but it quickly becomes so much more, once you learn to use the appropriate Synergies between both our Protagonists, Red mac Raith and Antea Duarte.There’re lots of talents to learn, and items to equip, where you can basically build and add tons of synergies when switching between both characters, in combat, and this is key to have a fun and engaging experience, which I’ve had, with this game. It’s not up there with the likes of God Of War, of course, but there comes a point in the game where you basically feel you have enough tools to deal with the enemies in various ways, and it works quite well, as long as you know how to use those tools. World Design is incredibly good in this game, there are some breathtaking locations to discover, traverse and explore to the last inch and corner, and there’s stuff to find most of the time, including some very insightful pieces of Lore. Traversing around this world has been a pleasure, I never felt completely lost, thanks to the great art design and various recognizable land marks, since you revisit areas quite often, and neither felt like the game held my hand all the time, it’s a good balance…and lots of games could learn a thing or two from this design, for sure. The Soundtrack hits all the correct tones when it needs to, it’s so melancholic at times, and so fierce when it needs be too, and it evokes so many feelings too, it complements the so well-written story and lore of this world, so well. All in all, I feel Banishers Ghosts of New Eden is going to be one of the top 5 games I play on 2024, it’s going to be quite difficult to match how great this game is, in its genre at least, this year, at least here on PC. It’d be a shame if a lot of people out there slept on this gem ****, perhaps many consider it “AA” grade, and perhaps they’re not wrong, but boy do I wish we had more games like this, we NEED more games like this, and I hope DON’T NOD keep on making them like this.

A massive improvement over LAD 7, almost in every aspect. With Infinite Wealth, there were moments where I thought “wow, this game is so good”, in fact there are so many moments like that because, as someone who’s played every previous game in the series, I can see how much care and passion has been put into making this. The game is full with very well placed references, properly used fan service, not just because every other long running RPG series where each game is connected to the previous ones does it…but because the developers know how much the series matters to them, and of course, to us. With Infinite Wealth here being one of the biggest games in the franchise (I’d say it’s bigger than Yakuza 5, and that game is pretty long), well I could only keep taking my sweet time and ponder about all the stuff that the series has gone through, and all these characters, and it’s so good, so, so well done, really. This is a PC review, though, so let’s talk about Performance: On my Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 3060 Ti, much like with LAD Gaiden, this game can be run at a very respectable 1620p DLDSR Resolution, downsampled to my 1080p native, with Quality DLSS and I’d get around 90 to 110 FPS unlocked, or very much perfect locked 60 at all times, the whole game, not a single moment dropping or running **** settings maxed, of course, and I have to say this is quite possibly the best looking game in the series, especially the Lighting in Yokohama and Kamurocho, with the Honolulu areas being a bit too bloomy at times, but I can understand the reason why, aesthetical one. Character Models and their Animations are insanely detailed in certain cutscenes, to the point that I clearly noticed they put extra effort in animating even their neck muscles and all, with extreme detail mind you (that Chapter 1 scene at the bar…man, sweet animation **** series always shined in this aspect, ever since they started doing the Kiwami remakes and later using Dragon Engine, but clearly Infinite Wealth here represents the peak of their animation, and hopefully they can continue with this level of quality in future titles. The Soundtrack has some incredible pieces, especially for the Bosses, it really does sound like a trivial thing to say, since the series has some truly memorable pieces, but yeah the music in this game is overall pretty epic, quite happy with most of it, especially certain couple tracks in the latter chapters and the finale…damn. Gameplay wise is where the biggest improvements can be instantly noticed, coming from the previous main line game: combat is now much better, being able to position the characters and direct some of the attacks towards environmental objects, enemies and even party members, for really nice combo attacks and stuff. I find it still has room for even more improvements and tweaks, especially when it comes to certain status effects and debuffs but, overall, having played Infinite Wealth now…it’d be very difficult to go back to the previous game’s system, which was very basic. Story and Characters were, mostly, quite good, with excellent character bonding scenes, they were all very good, there’s a lot of camaraderie going around, lots of wholesome moments and laughs, and so on.Ichiban is still a very good character and he makes everyone around him better too, that’s the type of person he is, while Kiryu is his usual self, we all know how it goes but he has some excellent moments in this game for sure, truly incredible stuff, particularly from Chapter 8 onwards or so, when we get to do certain events, those…were amongst my favorite moments in the whole franchise and I’m so happy they included those, optional as they are, there is no way I was going to leave those unchecked. What I did not like as much are the Antagonists: I won’t mention their names, just in case, but most felt quite plain and their motivations didn’t feel as solid as in other games in this franchise, and I know we got some plain villains in the past, at times, but normally they’ve been pretty decent. The ending felt a tiny bit rushed too, in my opinion, I understand that they have to set stuff up for what comes next…just in case but yeah, not my favorite ending either, from this series, so far. There are some pretty obvious loose ends, which is a shame but, again, I assume they're saving stuff for future games. All in all, I think Infinite Wealth is a very good JRPG and Like a Dragon series game, but not my absolute favorite in the franchise, it’s pretty up there, though. Now that we’re here…I wonder what RGG Studio will be cooking in the future, definitely hope to see Ichiban back in a new main line game, for sure, but there are so many new characters now to explore and have adventures with, really, and hopefully I’ll be there to keep having fun with the series.

Another great entry in the series. Like a Dragon Gaiden is a nice surprise as it is another game using the Dragon Engine, and we know that RGG Studio wanted to move on to using Unreal Engine, as we saw with Like a Dragon: Ishin!, this year. But I am happy to see good old Dragon Engine coming back, and it does seem we’ll be seeing it in January 2024 when Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth comes out, as well, as the Demos included in Gaiden also run on Dragon Engine. From a PC Performance standpoint, the fact that we’re dealing with Dragon Engine means that this game runs pretty similarly to how both Judgment games run, and with my Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 3060 Ti I can run this game at Max Settings, 1620p DLDSR resolution, downsampled to my native 1080, with DLSS set to Quality, and the game can run quite above 60 FPS, sometimes close to 100, depending on the moment, so I choose to cap to 60 in this case, to save some power. Alternatively, another option is to run 4K DSR and use Balanced DLSS, still holds 60 FPS most of the time, except a few places like some areas within the Castle, which are quite crowded. Performance DLSS would likely fix that, though. Gameplay wise, this game has pretty responsive real time action combat, and Kiryu feels pretty awesome to play, especially with all the new fun stuff from the Agent Style, but his Dragon Style is still pretty good for 1v1s and some enemies with tons of HP. There are some very nice ways to initiate cool combos and juggles when mixing up both combat styles, and it feels great and very responsive. Side Content in this game is pretty decent, with some fun callbacks to older games and moments in the franchise, and its characters, and this time most of the sub-stories are gathered from the same NPC, Akame, which I found it was a nice addition to the cast, and hopefully we see more of her in future games. The Arena is also fun, I love doing arena matches in all the games in this series, and I had fun with this one for sure. On the hardest difficulty available from a new save, I found the game quite balanced and fair, but against strong enemies, I needed careful tactics to not get destroyed, and that pretty much is quite similar to how it works in previous games. Once you get to a point when your skills are quite maxed or almost there, Kiryu feels like the usual beast he normally is by the end of every game, and it is so much fun. The Soundtrack is pretty nice, some classics from the franchise and some really great tracks, the final boss track is especially great. Nice to see Pocket Circuit back too…that ate quite a bit of my time, for sure, but I love it. Overall, a nice “smaller” game which I spend like 40+ hours with, so not that small, but I reckon others are way longer. The ending is absolutely incredible too, exceptional performance from Takaya Kuroda in that scene, I have no words, it really elevates this great game into one of my favourite in the whole series. A marvelous game to tie us in from the end of Yakuza 6 to the next game in the series, coming early 2024, definitely worth playing to experience all the bits in the story from Kiryu’s perspective, those who we didn’t get to see in Like a Dragon (the 7th main game).

Alan Wake II is an absolute Masterpiece, and Remedy at their best. This game represents everything Remedy have been doing, ever since the first Max Payne, every system, evolution in their design, their characters, the way they integrate Live Action into the story…every single game before Alan Wake II has led to this new title, and it’s glorious. As a Remedy fan I cannot be happier after having completed this game for the first time, it’s been an incredible experience. Before getting into more details, let’s talk PC Performance and specs, briefly: on my Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 3060 Ti, I can play this game at 1440p DLDSR (monitor is 1080p native), with Performance DLSS, and some Custom Settings to allow me to achieve 60 FPS and above, with Ray Tracing OFF. The most demanding areas are those found in Cauldron Lake and its forests, also some on Watery, but overall, with the proper settings and taking into consideration that this game still look great even at the Low Preset, it’s possible to keep nice visuals and decent performance, on my system. On the sections when we play as Alan, the game tends to perform better, so I’m even able to use Path Tracing and the aforementioned resolution and DLSS level, and stay normally between 45 and 65 FPS, depending on the area, and the game looks absolutely insane. I can only imagine those running current generation RTX 40 series…will be playing with incredible visuals, thanks to Path Tracing, and at much greater frame-rates than I do, so yeah, overall I’d say it’s one of the best optimized games I’ve played in 2023, but it’s also one, if not the most, demanding game, even at Low Settings, but of course way, way more when we crank the settings up and Ray Tracing is enabled. My only technical concern with the current version of the game is a Mouse Judder issue at frame-rates between 30 and close to 60 (gets better above 50), and this seems to be a particular Northlight Engine issue that was already present in Quantum Break, but I don’t remember feeling this in Control, definitely if it happens in that game, I can’t notice it that much, not sure. Hopefully it can be fixed via an update. Going back to the game’s design, it’s absolutely one of the most brilliantly realized Survival Horror experiences I’ve played in a long time, and Remedy have proved they can make games in this genre, because they have excellent designers, writers and sound engineers. Speaking of Sound, the music in this game is fantastic, the effects very well done, and the end of chapter bespoke tracks are a real treat, make sure to stay until the end, they’re all worth it. I loved the Live Action episodes in Quantum Break, but I understand creating those gave Remedy quite a few of troubles, budget wise, so I’m happy to see they found an alternative approach to implementing Live Action, and I’d say it’s really quite similar but done in a smarter way. Some of the Live Action bits in this game will truly blow your mind, especially if you’re a Remedy games fan, that’s for sure, you’re not prepared for what’s in here, it really surprised me in a very good way. Besides the Live Action stuff, another thing in this game that blew my mind is that they use full Performance / Motion Capture for NPCs we talk to; normally this is done in most games partially, and in more detail when in cutscenes, but in Alan Wake 2, we can just be talking to an NPC, asking them questions, and the whole body is perfectly animated, from head to toes, their movements and expressions are so detailed, where normally in most games we only see full performance capture in very close cutscenes. Remedy have always been great at Motion Capture, they have their own studio after all, and this game is a showcase for that. Overall, I can’t wait for the free New Game Plus DLC which will add some alternative changes to the story, it seems, I can imagine how they’ll do it, it will fit well within the game’s systems. And, of course, I cannot wait for the Night Springs and Lake House Expansions, I think it is pretty obvious how things are going to evolve and continue the Remedy Connected Universe: Alan Wake II is just the beginning.

An Excellent Action-RPG Platformer. Let’s be honest, I’m pretty sure most of us Legend of Heroes Fans, particularly of the Trails series, wanted to check this game out to see if there are any meaningful connections, teases, clues and whatnot about the lore of this game being in any shape of form “connected” to the rest of the Series. And that’s fine, I think there has to be a Good Reason (other than the obvious, making some money) as to why Nihon Falcom gave NISA the task of porting this game and, more importantly, Localizing it, including quite a bit of Voiced Dialogue. I was pleasantly surprised with the great amount of voice work in the game, surely not a lot compared to any of the Trails games, or even some of the latter Ys games but, certainly, for a game originally developed for the PSP console, this was a great surprise that they decided to add English Voices to the scenes that, I assume, were already voiced in Japanese. So, if this game and some of its characters end up being canon for the Trails universe, that remains to be seen, we don’t know, but we can’t say it won’t be relevant in the future, so Time will tell (emphasis on “time” really, considering some of the stuff we can see in the game, heh). In any case, as it is the norm, this yet another Excellent PC Port from PH3, even if it’s such a simple game, the effort can be seen right from the settings menus that were added. Performance wise, this game runs smooth as butter, albeit locked at 60 FPS, it is fine because we can use our monitor’s full Refresh rate, in my case I had it running at 240 Hz, and the 60 FPS feel quite smooth and lag free thanks to that. The game looks quite clean and nice at 1620p DLDSR resolution too, on my R7 5700X and RTX 3060 Ti, all settings maxed, and since it’s such an easy game to run, we get to save some GPU and overall system power while playing, which is great. Controls are pretty tight, for a game requiring a substantial amount of basic platforming, there’s no lag at all and all actions are quite responsive. And so is Combat, even if pretty simple compared to more complex Action RPGs, it’s quite similar to some of the classic Ys games like Origins or 7/Celceta even, a mix between those, decent combat…simple but fun, never boring at all. Character progression is meaningful and when we get a new piece of gear, it’s nice. They really did a good job cleaning up the pre-rendered cutscenes from the PSP era, they look pretty nice and clean. Overall…whether this game ends up being part of the main Trails / Kiseki canon…to me is not a deciding factor to having enjoyed this experience: this is a pretty good game, honestly, if you like Ys…this is right up there, and if you like Trails in general, and want some brain food to have some theories in there, go ahead…this story may very well, one day, be quite relevant to the whole Trails series…after all, it’s all in the title ; )

A step down from previous BGS RPGs. Starfield had a lot of hype going for it because it is a new IP and it is a Bethesda Game Studios RPG but, in my opinion, it fails to deliver. The game is a big step back from previous BGS games, and it’s really obvious due to its design, and how this game shows a total Lack of Respect for the Player’s **** example, when exploring a building in Neon City, taking an elevator within the same building, so it triggers a loading screen, then going outside said building, which is yet another loading screen, then 10 seconds later go outside the District to the next one…and another loading screen. All in a matter of 30 seconds to one minute, you can get a ton of loading screens which, at least on my system, are not instant, they take like 3-4 seconds. And yet, despite all of its loading screens, the game Severely Underperforms on Nvidia GPUs and even a bit on Ryzen CPUs: core and thread scaling is subpar, compared to other Open World games that even use Ray Tracing. On my Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti, this game underperforms when it comes to GPU and, more importantly, CPU utilization, particularly in the bigger cities but, even in Space, I have seen my frame-rate go way below 60, when literally there’s nothing on screen but a planet or a moon in the background, and some **** fact that the game shipped without decent Image Reconstruction and we had to rely on a DLSS Mod to avoid using the awfully looking FSR 2 is also mind boggling and, of course, if you try any of the free DLSS 2 mods, you can see the huge difference in Visual Stabilization.There’s also some traversal stutter in cities that just doesn’t go away, but it’s manageable.Moreover, there are also huge stutters when Switching Weapons, which seems to be caused by certain mods of special weapon traits, and it’s really annoying in combat. The Keybinds themselves are like a little mini game, if you happen to be one of those people who needs to remap a lot of stuff (like I am, being left handed), because the Keybinds Conflict screen is a mess, and we cannot scroll through it if there are too many repeated keybinds.That leads to another glaring issue: Lack of Accessibility Settings. This game basically has no meaningful Accessibility settings and that’s quite sad, where other titles are doing so much more in this department. Features such as Field Of View adjustment, a proper UI that feels useful and not a chore to navigate or even the most basic of things such as Brightness Calibration, also missing from this game, let alone the broken HDR. Conversations and important [b]Dialogue Cutscenes, while most of them are well lit and look good, often show the NPCs looking at weird directions, or stuck on geometry or other NPCs. I found the Main Storyline quite lacking in exciting moments right until the last part, where it actually gets interesting, not only script wise, but we also see actual interesting Game Mechanics being used, for a change, but too late really. There are Faction Chain Quests that offer a much better RPG experience compared to most of the Main Questline, and that’s is really obvious even for the very early stages in some of these faction missions. Space Combat is highly simple and there’s not much to it, and when it comes to actual exploration…this is not that type of game, as landing on a random planet doesn’t do much for the player: there are some pre-defined interest points, but many of them are the same, even in the same planet “tile” (gravitational anomalies, for **** you need resources, sure, find the planet with the stuff you want, and set an Outpost…done. Combat is serviceable but nothing particularly special either, it still feels somewhat jank, but way better than Fallout 4, at least.Third Person Animations are quite better than Fallout 4’s at least, but the bar wasn’t too high to begin with. The massive bump in Asset Quality compared to Fallout 4 is one of the big positives, and the game has some very detailed objects around the world, like computer and terminals and stuff like that. The Sountrack is decent, fits the theme of the game, but maybe it is a bit repetitive, if anything. I enjoyed Companions when it comes to their special Quests, and their personalities, but I have to say Bethesda still hasn’t nailed the act of bringing companions to battle with us, they get stuck very often and, if they’re far away from the player and we engage in a conversation (there’s no warning or anything), the companion won’t get any special affinity or bond points for some of the choices, since they are out of range, I guess? Sometimes they do teleport themselves, though. Overall, 6/10, too many lacking features on PC, gameplay seems quite diluted compared to even Fallout 4, and the game does not feel like it was properly optimized for the vast majority of hardware configurations out there, which are using Nvidia GPUs, and that’s around 80 percent of Steam users.

A Great Game That Simply Gets The Job Done. I am completely new to the Armored Core franchise but this seemed like the perfect opportunity for someone like me to get into it, and I’m glad I did. With AC VI, I was greatly surprised about how much faster paced this game is compared to most other games FromSoftware has released in the past, at least on PC, it does work quite well that the game is so action packed and faster paced. When it comes to Performance, I played this game on my Ryzen R5 3600 and RXT 3060 Ti and, for the most part, performance was more than excellent, at 1620p DLDSR resolution, quite above 60 FPS except those particular moments when a huge particle explosion such as the one coming from a Pulse Shield or similar stuff, which made the FPS tank quite hard into the 40s or 50s, but only a short moment. That is something certain bosses and special enemies can do sometimes, but it is not common enough to be an annoyance. Controls and Keybinds are mostly great for this port of the game, it plays very well with Mouse and Keyboard, as the game uses a sort of soft-lock system, and I played my whole three playthroughs all the way to the NG++ ending, with Mouse and Keyboard. My only nitpick here is the fact that the Auto-Lock On feature from the aiming computer system, if you engage it and are using the Mouse, will lose its objective often if you mouse the mouse, which…you kinda will unless you let go of the mouse completely, which is dumb, because you’re likely using most of its buttons to fire weapons, jump, maybe quick boost or whatever you like. So, for me, the automatic lock-on system seemed useless except in very particular scenarios or bosses, but even then…I am skilled enough to be able to move the mouse camera faster and with more precision than any automatic camera movement could ever do. When it comes to Story and Characters I found this to be one of the strongest points in the game, just like its great gameplay is, of course; for a game where we don’t see any actual human character model, I couldn’t but feel very attached to some of the characters we interact with along the game. I love that each mission has a short briefing too and, as the story develops more and more, those briefings become much more than just a mere transaction of info about the next job, and it’s very well executed, it’s just a simple radio communication, no faces, no character model gesturing, just deep and very clear words. It is fantastic and the actors did a fantastic job. Finishing the regular new game campaign leaves us with lots of questions and the need for more, and it is great that once the credits are over, we are right back at the first mission briefing but…things have somehow changed a bit, and we can also take different decisions for some of the missions, which is nice, and we can even find a few new missions too. Once you basically have the whole picture when you’re close to the end of NG++, everything falls into place, and it’s hard for me to choose my favorite ending, I think all of them work well enough if you understand the lore and all the relationships between some characters, and so on. Obviously, the NG++ ending and its overall campaign throws a lot of new information and revealing stuff into the mix, it was pretty good, too, especially the exclusive new missions here, and some of the new boss encounters. Music has been great in general for this game, most of the tracks go well in the moment they’re played and some of the bosses’ tracks are quite epic and very emotional even, depending on the boss, lots of care was put into those tracks clearly, I noticed. All in all, I had a blast with this game…it can get pretty difficult at times, but nothing some trial and error, switching a weapon or two, etc., cannot improve, sometimes drastically, sometimes slightly, which is also fun. I liked that the game encourages trying out new parts, weapons, everything, because you can always sell the parts and get all your money back, no questions asked, as it should be. And again, the Gameplay being so fast paced yet so precise and engaging is fantastic, never ever got tired of destroying enemy MTs and stuff, and fighting more dangerous enemies, etc., it’s just super fun all around. And, certainly, the words “621, I got a job for you”, will stay with me for quite a while. Many others too, but mentioning those in detail would be quite the spoiler, but I can tell you that this game got me quite emotional at times, and I loved it, I’m very glad I gave myself the chance to try a game from an IP I’ve never played before. We certainly need more games like this.

An amazing Treat for fans of the Series. After ten games, so far, completely Localized and ported in an official manner, I of course have my favorite games and moments, but I have to say that Trails Into Reverie here is much more than I was expecting and, believe me, I had high expectations, but this game surpasses all of them, big time. I knew this was going to be the actual end of both Crossbell and Erebonia’s sagas, but Nihon Falcom went above and beyond all possible expectations, honestly, if there’s such a thing as being too satisfied…that’d be me right now, after playing this game, including all the post-game content of course. Let’s take a small detour from the review itself to talk about Performance and, at this point, this is the part that surprised me the least, because the game has Stellar Performance, as it is tradition with the ports produced by PH3. On my Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti this game performs quite similarly as Cold Steel III and IV, so I basically played the whole game at Max Settings, 1620p DLDSR downsampled resolution to 1080p native, with fullscreen MSAA 4x too, and very much stable and locked 60 FPS, at all times, not a single drop in like 100 hours of playtime. It is possible to play at 1440p and locked 120 FPS, reducing the amount of MSAA to 2x, but I prefer the maximum image quality possible and 60 FPS, for a game like this. This game I also feel it looks slightly better than both Cold Steel III and IV, it’s not a huge difference but, considering it is the last entry using the old engine…it serves as a good send off for it and I think it looks pretty decent all things considered, especially with the extra PC specific settings that we’re used to get in these excellent ports by Durante and his team. Having the Graphics Settings available within the game itself, instead of a Launcher, is a great QoL addition too. Continuing with the regular aspect of the review, well I won’t get into spoilers but it’s obvious that they went all out with the Fan Service, but the good type, the one that’s done correctly, aimed at fans of the series as a whole, making it so worth it if you played the previous arcs. This was strongly solidified for me when I started doing the Daydream episodes and, let me be honest here, Trails in the Sky the 3rd is a favorite of mine, not just for what it represents, an obvious connection point between Liberl and both the Crossbell and Erebonian arcs, but also because of the Door System it had. With Reverie here, the Daydreams felt pretty much like those Doors, they are all really great, I enjoyed them so much, and of course they even added a couple of special ones teasing the “future” in the series, or more almost like the present at this point, hopefully soon for all of us waiting for the official Kuro No Kiseki English Localization and Voice Over announcement (I sincerely cannot wait to meet and learn about the new cast and their actors). Speaking of the Actors: simply bravo, all of them, incredible performances all around, going from the main protagonists in their respective series to all the supporting characters, they are all great and this is something NIS America seems to improve with every new entry, and I hope they continue to do so with the Kuro games. It is not so much about sounding exactly like the Japanese actors per se, but how they convey the personality of their respective character, and I believe they all did an excellent job. The Japanese actors sound amazing too, so being able to compare how both sound, really makes me appreciate how most of them are so very cleverly chosen, in the English voice over. Lastly, as it couldn’t be any other way, the Soundtrack in this game is also fantastic, especially the new tracks, some of the new combat theme songs are quite catchy and I can’t get them out of my head honestly, they’ll be there for a while I feel. Having one last chance to listen to a certain track for the final post-game boss was also quite hype, couldn’t have been any other track, it was the correct one : ) All of the new added small Quality of Life changes too, compared to Cold Steel IV, felt quite welcome as well, and I really love the Reverie Corridor system, since to me the Trails series is, currently, one of the best Turn Based JRPG series out there, so having a chance to battle enemies to my heart’s content feels great, while also being rewarding at the same time. I’m really looking forward to the future of the series, now that we’ve crossed that half point.

Those of us who played the OG Max Payne in 2001 spent those two years afterwards being extremely hyped for the **** it was worth it. Max Payne 2, like its predecessor, is yet another gaming history Masterpiece. Everything that made the original fun to play and exciting, the sequel had it turbo-charged, all of it, and then some. This game was pretty praised for its ragdoll physics back in 2003, some games were starting to use pretty "advanced" physics, for the time, and surely Max Payne 2 was one of those. I remember being blown away by the graphics when it came out, and my PC had some trouble running it at pretty high settings, but it was still manageable. In 2023, this game still holds up quite nicely, without any graphics mods or anything, only the usual widescreen fix and...pretty much that's all you need (maybe the d3d8to9 wrapper, included with the famous widescreen fix from ThirteenAG, but I've played on DX8 too, many times, without major issues). Since it's a DX8/9 game (depending if we use any wrapper), it's pretty easy to force insane amounts of Super Sampling AA or Downsampling into this game, and any semi modern GPU will handle it at pretty good FPS, no issues, and you'll get an absolutely jaggie-free looking game. In this sequel we can see how Remedy upped their technology a lot, with the inclusion of actual in game Televisions, which did not require their own separate cutscene, all done in game, something they would continue using in all of their games, such as Alan Wake. It was amazing to just take a break and watch the bizarre yet funny in game shows and follow their "plots" episode by episode, and still is today, it never gets old. And the story in this game is one of the best from Remedy, no doubt, unforgettable characters, we keep wanting to know more about them, most are shrouded in ambiguity and that's keep that thriller feel for sure. The story in this game was what surely cemented Remedy's path towards their future, which then we saw with their next amazing game, Alan Wake. With the Remake for these two games, Max Payne 1 and 2, already announced, I look forward to seeing these running on the Northlight Engine and with modern physics, I can't wait, I've replayed these games so, so **** I'll continue to do so, they're simply timeless and Max Payne 2 here is just incredible.

I've played Max Payne 3 several times ever since it released and, no matter how many times I do, I can't find myself to find it as good as the first two games, for a couple yet simple reasons. Firstly, the Pacing: this game has a terrible first part or first few hours: the Flow in the Gameplay is constantly interrupted by what are clearly Loading Screens masked behind in-engine cutscenes, and I mean constantly, like "clean one room, cutscene, clean the next room, cutscene", it's quite terrible design. Furthermore, sometimes these cutscenes are pre-rendered, and when stuff "loads" in the background they switch to in-engine real time rendering, which maybe it was not too jarring in 2012, but nowadays it's bad, hasn't aged well at all. Secondly, I don't think it's a very good Max Payne game. As a Third Person Shooter, it's competent, if only the insane amount of Cutscenes would let us actually shoot stuff for more than 30 seconds. Combat and movement feel good enough but, considering this game came out 9 years after the second game, not a lot has changed, it's been modernized, sure, but I felt the shooting mechanics were good enough already in Max Payne 2, although I reckon they're a bit better in this third instalment, for sure, and it does feel quite responsive. I don't see any need to have a Cover mechanic though, it does seem the developers tried to adapt mechanics from certain other well known third person franchise, as many other games tried, and I think it doesn't work well with the pace and flow of the combat. Story wise, it pales in comparison to the original games, for sure, and the ending is extremely weak for what it's Max's last story, the end of the journey. Graphically speaking, it was not a bad looking game in 2012, using modern techniques for the time such as Tessellation and improved AO, even offering MSAA on top of the FXAA, which is nice. Level Design is also a bit of a hit and miss, some levels feel decent, while others seem like quite poorly designed and clearly meant to be basically cutscene festivals and scripted set pieces one after another, which is a shame. And when the game starts feeling a bit better **** just ends, and that's it. The throwbacks to the original games, by letting us play in some periods from Max's past, wearing a more appropriate attire and in the more familiar NY setting, are nice, but that alone does not make the game feel like a proper Max Payne game should, sadly. Still, the game does has its merits as a third person action shooter, but it could've been so much better, had Remedy worked on the development. I don't think anyone would ask or expect for this game to be remade someday but, perhaps after the Remakes for the first two games are done and released, things could be seen under a different light, although I won't hold my breath for that to happen.

I played this game back when it came out on PC, and I was blown away in 2001, but I never published any reviews for it, nor its sequel. Never too late, I guess : ) This game is a timeless masterpiece, and that's how it is. It marks the beginning of an incredible journey for Remedy (well, their first game was Death Rally, also good in its own way) but, looking back at this game now, where it "all began", I can see the seeds being planted, the ideas, the intention to do a lot more with the franchise, and with everything. Without Max Payne, we wouldn't have Alan Wake, or Quantum Break, or Control, and we wouldn't be waiting in anticipation for Alan Wake II. Now that the Remake for this game, and the sequel, have been officially announced, I can't wait to see those two games merged into one and running on the amazing Northlight Engine. These days, in order to play Max Payne on modern PCs, we need some fixes but, fortunately, they're easy to get and they work amazingly well, still a perfectly playable experience from beginning to end, despite the game having some issues when FPS are uncapped; on my most recent playthrough, I had no issues at 120 FPS running on a 240 Hz screen, though, but YMMV so, if you see any issues, best to cap those frame-rates at 60.

Good game, but it shouldn’t have released in this state. I normally dedicate a good portion of my reviews to PC performance and for Jedi Survivor here I cannot ignore the poor state the PC version still is. The game launched with very poor CPU and GPU utilization issues, which after thee patches after release, five in total counting the ones implemented right before launch, has improved a bit, but not enough to call it a smooth experience, at all. You see, the planet of Koboh is the main area in this game, we spend 80% of the time here and always end up coming back here, also at various times in the day and, particularly when its night time, Koboh exhibits pretty poor CPU performance and very unstable frame times. This is even without Ray Tracing, but enabling it makes things even worse, as expected, sin Ray Tracing has that extra load on the CPU side of things too. On my R5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti, I’ve played Open World games such as both Spider-Man games with great performance, even at 1620p DLDSR, but Jedi Survivor here can’t even do stable 50 FPS at 1080p, running around the Harvest Ridge riverbanks in the central hub area of Koboh where the Pyloon’s Saloon is. This is even with RT OFF, and increasing resolutions doesn’t really do much to improve the poor CPU performance in this game: the code has serious bottlenecks and I have seen the numerous reports, with frame data analysis, from users with much more powerful rigs than mine, also showing how unstable the frametimes can be. Brute Forcing through a bad PC port **** can only help until a certain point, the game is still under performing for a lot of people no matter how much hardware you throw at it, compared to similar or even bigger current generation games. I take my time to test every update that releases, and while I have seen CPU improvements being implemented, which have improved Ray Tracing performance by 20-30%, the starting point for that uplift was so abysmally low that not even a 30% increase feels decent, also because the frame times are still very bad, reaching the 100 ms area quite often. So, the game still needs more patches, as of May 21st of 2023, and I have just completed the main story, so let’s talk about that a bit now. If you liked Jedi Fallen Order, this game is a must to play, even if you choose to wait for more patches, the Gameplay is fun, the Exploration is a lot better than the previous game, more stuff to discover, cool secrets and encounters, it’s all in here. Music is pretty decent, with some really epic tracks for some of the most exciting moments but also many of the more dramatic ones. This is truly a game crafted by Respawn for sure, something you may forget while playing until to reach a certain set piece at the end of one of the planets and you instantly go “yeah, this is 100% Respawn, no doubt”, and it feels awesome. Characters are very detailed, graphically, and well animated, and when it comes to their writing, I like most of the main cast stories and how they develop. Level Design is superb, some of the vistas in Koboh are spectacular, everything is seamless when going from one place to another, so good job there Respawn. The game looks excellent when RT is used, and a bit weak on the Lighting side if RT is OFF, which is a shame but nothing major. Asset, Geometry and Material quality is great, it looks like a Current Gen game for sure. That said, I have some issues with how they wrote most of the villains and antagonists, I’m not getting into spoilers, but I feel that for the second game in this series, they should have taken a few extra risks, particularly what can be considered the “main villain” through the first two thirds of the game…felt quite hollow in the end to me, how their fate came to be, among other issues. That alone would make be just score this game at like 8.5 or 9 over 10, it’s not terrible that some characters are poorly written, overall the rest are quite amazing, but I cannot ignore the current state of this game on PC, and I’m aware it also has severe issues on consoles, which in the end all come from the same core issues, like having crashes on PC when RT is enabled in one of the planets, I’ve seen consoles also crashing, and so on. Unfortunately this means I have to score this game at a 6/10, until they vastly improve its code. Yes, to me performance is worth a whole 3 points at least, it is crucial, I’m not asking for the impossible either: plenty of good PC ports out there, including some from very modern and demanding games. I hope this is not the end of this IP, and they do more with it in the future, I support Respawn in their decisions and I like this franchise a lot, but they need to fix this game’s performance.

They did it, again, and they did it right. This 2023 is becoming the year of the perfect remakes, first we had Dead Space, and now Capcom shows us how it’s done too, with RE 4 here. I can firmly say that this is an absolutely incredible game, there’s so much love and care poured into this remake that it makes it quite possibly one of the best Resident Evil games out there, it is…it’s just that good. Let’s talk Performance first, on my Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti, the game runs quite decently at 1620p DLDSR with Interlaced rendering, easily above 60 FPS most of the time, no problem. The thing with RE Engine games that’s still not there yet is TAA and Temporal Upscalers, we got FSR 2 for this game, for the first time ever on a RE Engine game, but its visual quality and temporal stabilization is not great at all with its current implementation, so I had to settle for Interlaced to get some performance back. Hopefully Capcom improves this, whether by updating FSR 2 to a newer version, or also adding DLSS, I think they should do both, honestly. The main issue with the Graphics Settings though is Ray Tracing, as it can make certain setups crash if they’re lacking enough VRAM, instead of just slowing down. That is something they should try improving, and also the overall quality of this Ray Tracing implementation, which kind of leaves a bit to be desired, honestly. Moving on to Sound Design, well this game really sounds amazing, most of the tracks are quite epic and very cleverly selected for each moment, we have some of the OG ones coming back but re-arranged and changed a bit, the Shooting Gallery has not right having such a cool song haha, and so on…they did good here. Environmental sounds are also pretty good and on point, everything on the Sound department I think it’s great here. Character Models are some of the best I’ve seen in any RE Engine game, they have leveled up once again the quality. The new technology looks insanely good, especially in cutscenes, where some of the characters look straight up as if they were CGI. Graphics, overall in this game, are incredible, some of the set pieces are astounding, and I could not stop taking my time and take so many screenshots with the included Photo Mode. Controls are pretty good on PC, with Mouse and Keyboard, just like the previous games, this one plays exceptionally well, with no major issues. It’s a shame that the Gyro Aiming controls are so poorly implemented natively, with barely any control over things like sensitivity or the lack or options to make the right stick do quick flicks, which is the preferred way to use Gyro Aiming, among other things that simply are missing here. Story is very much a huge improvement over the original game’s, for sure, and the scripts for the characters are much better written overall. Leon and Ashley now have pretty good chemistry together, with a lot more idle chatter and very cool moments. Luis really shined in this game too, they gave him a lot more stuff to do and much better background story. Ada remains as mysterious, cold and distant as ever, because in this game she can actually be her true self instead of trying to fool Leon, like she did in RE 2 Remake. Both Leon and Ada have grown a lot since then, and this game clearly shows this in all of their interactions. Continuing to talk about characters would get quite spoiler’ish, so I’ll leave it at that: good job to all of the actors, I loved all of their performances. All in all, this game is a blast to play, another example of how to properly remake a classic video game, and it clearly shows how much Capcom have learnt about working with RE Engine, and I can’t wait to see what future games this engine brings us, even beyond Resident Evil games.

One of Nihon Falcom’s finest, and a crucial game for this series. As the last game in the series that uses the more classic style for the character models, Azure is such a polished RPG, a culmination of all the lessons the developers learnt along the way in previous games, with the Sky trilogy, and a step up in every single aspect over Trails From Zero, also an excellent game, of course. Durante and his team at PH3 come back again to deliver us, PC users, one of the best PC ports for a JRPG that we can enjoy in this platform, the attention to detail in the various extra game settings included is a treat, I feel so happy whenever a new game in this series is ported to new, modern platforms, and here we are again. Much like their previous port for Trails From Zero, Azure runs exceptionally well on many different PC setups, I had no issues running the game at 1620p DLDSR and locked at 120 FPS on my R5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti, overkill for this game, but the positive here is that the PC is barely using any resources, very low power and the GPU fans are not even on, haha, all very silent, so we can listen to the incredible Soundtrack in this game. And what a Soundtrack: this game has some of my favorite tracks from any Nihon Falcom game, and I like a lot of them from many, many games but…this game has some truly epic ones. If you’re discovering Trails for the first time and this will be your first time with this game and saga, enjoy: what comes next exists thanks to this, because the Crossbell Duology connects many dots from the Sky saga with the Erebonian (Cold Steel) saga so, if you haven’t played any of the Cold Steel games yet…I also envy you, because I have, and you’re all set to go for it, right after Azure. With Trails into Reverie coming July 2023, it is now a very good moment to play this series, either by revisiting it, or playing for the first time. The characters that the Crossbell saga introduces in the series…are some of the best, and you can be sure they’ll have a lot more stories to tell us in the future. If you love the Lore of the Trails series…this game is incredible in that aspect but it’s up to you to discover all of it, and enjoy it. Thanks to Nihon Falcom, NIS America, Geofront and PH3 for making this series more accessible than ever, so that more people can discover it, because it truly is a series of games that once you get hooked on…there’s nothing like it.

Another fantastic game in the Like a Dragon series. Like a Dragon: Ishin! has been quite a surprise because, a priori, looking at the setting, it looked like a completely different mood compared to other games from RGG Studio, in this series but, right at the start of the game, we can already see that this will, in fact, be a great game within this franchise. I’ll start talking about PC performance, on my Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti system, this game performs amazingly, it’s pretty easy to run it way above 60 FPS at 1620p DLDSR downsampling (from 1080p native, my main resolution), Max Settings, and no need to use Upscaling at all. I choose 1620p DLDSR over 4K DSR because I find it looks better in this game, but 4K is also doable at 60 FPS, might need some Upscaling though (in which case I suggest XeSS over FSR 2.1, the former looks a bit cleaner overall, particularly at Ultra-Quality, but both can experience some temporal shimmering artifacts though, be aware, minor ones…but they exist). In the PC port we can find the expected settings from previous RGG games, so it’s all in there, including an FOV setting and pretty Customizable Controls. With the 1.03 Update, the game is free from any Shader Compilation Stutters, it runs pretty smoothly now, except very small hiccups right when a loading screen happens, nothing major there. When it comes to Characters, this half remaster, half remake of Ishin brings back some good old favorites from previous games in the series, which is really nice to see because I really like their actors’ performances, both here and in those other games, of course. The Soundtrack is the usual high quality from RGG games, with some character specific tracks from previous games coming back but with new arrangements fitting the era this game takes place in, a nice touch indeed. Gameplay wise, I mostly found the combat to be pretty decent, this is after all a PS3 game with some improvements and the combat feels it’s from that era, but it’s not too bad once you get used to it, definitely it’s not the worst in the series. I played on Hard Difficulty and the game felt relatively balanced, except in a couple encounters here and there. The more skill points we get, the better the combat becomes, that’s for sure, and that’s a good thing. Again, not the best in the series, but I enjoyed it for what it is. Speaking of balancing, I found the Crafting system to be the weakest link here in this game, it’s nice that we have it, but it creates an unnecessary grind, if we want to level up the Blacksmith to a decent level to take advantage of discounts, or to unlock all the crafting variants. Surely, it’s meant to be combined with the rest of the “Another Life” activities such as Farming, but it’s a grind, nonetheless, and some people may not like that. Optional, for sure, because you don’t really need to craft anything in order to complete the game, you still get decent weapon drops and other items when defeating some bosses, but if you want more cool items and such…yeah, you either use certain money making exploits, or grind. All in all, I’ve enjoyed this game quite a lot, the story is pretty moving, with many epic moments and boss fights, it’s full of characters with so much charisma and the ones that got changed, from the OG release, to this remaster/remake, fit in so well in the story, because their actors are top tier. After playing this game I am now more eager to know about the next game in the series, Like a dragon: Gaiden, and of course looking forward to the day where Like a Dragon 8 arrives, likely next year.

This game is incredibly good. Now that I have achieved the true/secret ending, I have many question still, but I believe I’ve also understood a big part of what is happening in this game, and these are the types of games I enjoy the most: those which don’t tell me everything to the last letter, and leave me filling in the gaps with my own theories and stuff. The PC port is is absolutely what I love to see in my fast paced action games, it controls pretty well with Mouse and Keyboard. FPS wise, it can run at pretty good FPS on my R5 3600 and RTX 3060, easily above 80-90 FPS from 1080p to 1440p with a mix of High and Epic Settings and with the help of DLSS (mostly on Quality DLSS). It just so happen to be another Unreal Engine 4 release suffering from some Stutters and hiccups (not shader cache/compilation related), which get accentuated when Ray Tracing is enabled, much more manageable with RT OFF, but still needs a patch or two to get those stutters smoothed out, and then it will feel even better, this game deserves to run as smoothly as possible, I have hopes for it to be improved. No story spoilers here ****'s just fantastic all around, this game feels like DOOM Eternal and Control mixed together, gameplay wise, almost as if the story was written by the likes of Remedy (another studio I love), with so many mysterious developments to find out and so many questions to be asked and theories to formulate. Also very Aliens vibes all around too, in the visual design and setting especially (let alone how Selene speaks and her mannerisms, very Ripley like), and funnily enough I'd even say Metroid as well (especially Prime), but with a super-fast paced combat but...yeah, the exploration and the way things are unlocked and gated after achieving better gear is very much so Metroid, and it's great. I wouldn’t call this game a complete “roguelike”, it has some small elements found in other famous roguelike games, but this game is more than that, to me at least. It’s so hard talking about this game but not mentioning spoilers or my own take on what I think it’s going on…but yeah, I am satisfied, greatly. Replayability is off the charts also in this game, I love exploring every corner of each biome every single time, because it never gets tiring or repetitive, since the combat is great and it looks amazing at the same time. A fantastic game all around which hopefully gets those stutters patched out soon. Definitely one of my favorite PlayStation games ported to PC. I give it the 9/10 until they release a patch that hopefully improves the slight stuttering issues, then it's getting that 10/10 for sure : )

An excellent Remake. The original Dead Space from 2008 has a bit of a rough PC port, with quite bad mouse acceleration issues, very low FOV and a few other issues, but aside from that it is quite playable nowadays in any computer really. This new remake, though, has none of those issues, it works absolutely fine with Mouse and Keyboard, as most Frostbite games do, really. If you’re wondering if it’s worth playing the old game, before this remake, or not…I would say it is not necessary, but definitely worth checking out, because then the differences in the remake will be even more shocking. And shocking, they are, indeed, while it retains lots of the same levels layouts, in certain areas, some are completely redesigned but still feel familiar. The major impact though comes from the incredible new Visuals and Graphics: Lighting looks amazing, for being a game that does not have any RT Global Illumination or Reflections, only RT Ambient Occlusion. Shadows and Volumetric effects are also quite excellent, this game looks mind-blowingly atmospheric compared to the original from 2008, much more immersive that’s for sure. For Performance on my PC, a Ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB (3200 MT/s) and an RTX 3060 Ti, the game normally runs quite well around 60-80 FPS at 1440p DLDSR downsampled, with Balanced DLSS, but there are still areas in the game with lower than expected performance (not common, but there are, got better with the latest update recently), and some minor area traversal stutters are still present, but they’re not too distracting in y game at least. I have finished the game twice, for the new, alternate ending, and I have to say that the experience was 90%+ quite decent, and the rest some hiccups here and there. Hopefully the next patch will get rid of the remaining smaller issues. This is a no spoilers review, so I cannot get into some of the particular details that enhance this Remake so much, but know that there are many, many details and references that, if you’re a Dead Space fan (of the whole franchise), you will certainly love when you find and notice them. The AI Director system seems to work well and the better we play and dispatch enemies, the more unexpected stuff may happen, I felt like this in my playthroughs, and I also believe the game will adjust the amount and frequency of ammo drops, depending on how we're doing. It's a system that manages to keep things relatively tense and interesting, I enjoyed my time a lot on Hard Difficulty, for sure, felt pretty balanced for my skill level. Overall, after around 40 hours in two playthroughs…I can say I had a lot of fun with Dead Space, it is one of the best Remakes I’ve ever played, and I include in that list the likes of RE 1 and 2 Remakes, for sure. This Dead Space remake has set a very, very high bar as far as Remakes goes, for me at least, it’s all I could’ve asked for a remake of this classic, and I hope EA lets Motive Studios continue this interesting journey, with the only logical choice: remaking Dead Space 2 : ) This game deserves the 10, but I’ll keep at 9 because of the random performance issues at times, they’re not awful, but 10 means no issues at all for me.

This game is just fantastic. As a fan of Survival Horror games, this one hits all the right spots, from the old school graphics to the gameplay, inventory management, and so on, but it also adds a fresh spin to things with the radio mechanic and obviously we know some people have discovered that they’re also using SSTV to hide images within certain radio frequencies in the game. There’s certainly a lot of stuff hidden in those frequencies and that is very cool to learn about. The story is told in such an interesting way that it’s not easy to describe without getting into spoiler territory, but it was highly pleased to see it all unfold. The cutscenes are done in a very nice graphical style, pretty minimalistic but they convey their “message” fairly well, and the emotions to the player. When it comes to gameplay and technical aspects, well this game does not require much power to run, no ultra fancy graphics settings or anything, and controls is probably the weakest part here, with no choice to remap Keybinds individually. I played with my DualSense, and it felt fine, but I couldn’t really try Mouse and Keyboard because I’m left handed, so not being able to remap keys for me it just means I will have to use a gamepad. Inventory space is a bit limited but it is nothing to worry about if you’re used to those old school survival horror games. The game offers some old TV/CRT like filter but it looks a bit too blurry and I would’ve liked some extra tuning to that mode, even though I ended up using it for most of my play through, it fits the look of the game pretty well. Sound design is pretty nice too in this game, apart from the previously mentioned usage of radio frequencies to solve puzzles and deal with other stuff in the game, sometimes, it makes certain scenes feel with just the perfect amount of unsettledness and mystery. It is hard to write a review for Signalis and not mention any spoilers, but I can say it is a truly unique game and I hope this studio can keep making games that are this special, in the future. Experiencing what this game has to offer for the very first time really felt like one of the best gaming moments for me in 2022.

Another quality PlayStation port on PC. Like the previous game, Spider-Man Miles Morales here is another excellent PC port from the Play Station franchise. When it comes to Performance, on my Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti system, the game performs quite similarly to Spider-Man Remastered, perhaps even a tiny bit better overall. Personally, I played most of the game at 1440p DLDSR, mostly Ultra Settings, including Ray Tracing, and while there some drops below 60 and well into the low 50s, when swinging around, quite often the game can stay at or above 60 FPS, while looking pretty nice. It has very decent Keyboard and Mouse customization settings, but I played this one with my DualSense controller, with no major issues, feels pretty good. Story and content wise, the game is shorter than its predecessor, but it felt quite complete to me, the characters are very likable, the neighborhood has this warmer feeling to it, and Miles being a younger protagonists, also goes though the expected character development from someone his age. Just like the previous game, it is a visual spectacle in many of the major set pieces and boss fights, and much like in the previous game, I spent quite a bit of time making use of the nice Photo Mode, indeed : ) My main gripe with the game is the lesser amount of unlockable skills compared to the previous game, even though Miles does not feel weaker in any way compared to Peter, there are clear nuances and differences in their play styles, for sure, but I wanted a few more unlockable skills along the way, or gadgets, that’s all. I enjoyed this game just as much as Spider-Man Remastered, and I only wish the story continued even further after the end, because I really had fun with it but, I guess that will be for Spider-Man 2, which hopefully will end up making its way to PC at the proper time.

Incredible Graphics and Sound presentation. The first game in this saga, A Plague Tale: Innocence, surprised many people with its great graphics and story, back in 2019. Three years later, it is absolutely incredible that we can play a complete sequel, and with such a huge jump in visual fidelity, because Plague Tale: Requiem is a very beautiful looking game, for sure. Let’s talk Performance, firstly: on my Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti, the game is often at, or close to, the 60 FPS cap I manually set via Rivatuner, at 1440p DLDSR, Ultra Settings, with Quality DLSS. I also spent quite a lot of time at 1620p DLDSR, but with Balanced DLSS, and the results were pretty similar. The one setting that impacts performance the most is Draw Distance, but it depends on the area, so my advice with that one is to lower it to High or even Medium, but you will see some popping in the more open areas, not so much indoors. In the occasions where my system cannot keep 60 FPS, it often hovers around the low 50s, and the worst I’ve seen in this game is 45 to 48, particularly in a couple scenes. Overall, paired with my Gsync monitor, not a big deal, but I’ve also noticed small short frametime spikes when the game does an auto-save, not too bad, but they’re there, sometimes. Considering how amazing the visual presentation is in this game, I think the performance is quite justified and it’s not that difficult to play at a higher and better performance and settings level than current generation consoles. Sound design is also incredible in this game, particularly if you can use Dolby Atmos, but even without it, the game sounds incredible, and the soundtrack is absolutely fantastic. When it comes to Characters, much like Innocence, Requiem does not disappoint at all, and getting into specifics would be spoiler territory, so I’m going to avoid that, but be prepared for various kinds of feelings, happiness and sadness all over, much like in the first game. I had a great time with the game, its improved combat mechanics over the first installment, and exploring the levels, which are much bigger than in Innocence, but still in a familiar way: I never felt lost or anything like that, this is not an open world game. My only nitpick about it is the skills progression system, which is completely tied to how we play: three types of tiers and each one corresponds to playing full on aggressive, full on stealthy or a mix or both, and after each area with enemy encounters, and the game does an auto-save, you will see sometimes you have leveled up one or various of those progression tiers. Therefore, there’s “player choice” involved here, but the game fails a bit at properly explaining how this works, especially early on. All in all, still an amazing experience, and very much worth playing if you liked Innocence, both games together make up for an incredible saga, and it will be interesting to see what the future holds for this series.

One of the best Trails games finally gets the treatment it deserves, with this spectacular PC version. If you’re a fan of the Sky trilogy, continuing directly with Trails from Zero just feels right, and completely explaining why would involve heavy spoilers, so I won’t but…know that when you hear people say “this game is best enjoyed after the Sky series”, they’re not wrong. That said, if you do not care about strong references and plots from the Sky series and want to jump straight into the Crossbell saga (maybe to then continue on to the Cold Steel games), that’s okay too, as a JRPG, Zero is a great game, very complete with a really amazing story that keeps getting more and more intense and interesting with each chapter. When it comes to performance, this game is pretty easy to run on a wide array of PC setups. Visually speaking, the work done on the textures it’s amazing, compared to the original PC release and other earlier iterations for other consoles. The game looks pretty clean and runs very smoothly at 120 FPS, on my R5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti, of course, plenty of power for such game, including max MSAA and all. This game does not require a strong computer, so if you prefer to play at locked 60 FPS, a relatively mid-range PC like mine will run at a very low power consumption and very chill, and that’s fine, no need to waste energy, but 120/144 FPS feels quite smoother over 60, if you have a high refresh screen, even when browsing in game menus, so I would recommend that if you can. Gameplay wise, this game follows a similar structure to the Sky series, which is one of the reasons why it feels like the natural saga to jump in afterwards, but if you have already played Cold Steel I and II, the battle menu is also similar there, so your muscle memory will be there at least. One of the greatest features you may love from the Sky or Cold Steel sagas is here too, like the great interactions with NPCs: everyone has something to tell, their stories evolve along our four main characters as well, so doing the rounds talking to everyone we’ve met…it’s quite rewarding. You may even see certain little cameos if you played Cold Steel III, but I won’t spoil that, it’s up to you to find them. Soundtrack in Falcom games is amazing and Trails from Zero here…is no exception, it has some of the most memorable tracks in the whole franchise, so take your time and enjoy them. The track name feature is very useful to go and find that one song you keep remembering in your head. Finally, if you thought that Zero was a great game, you’re in for the journey of your life when Trails to Azure arrives: that game is absolutely incredible, it is all what Zero is, and then more, more and more, and it keeps going on with amazing stuff. Be hyped, because Azure is top JRPG moments, from beginning to end. If you discovered this franchise through the more modern Cold Steel games (like I did with CS I back in the day when it came out), you’ll be happy to notice and see how the Crossbell saga shaped and influenced a lot of the stuff we can see in the Erebonia saga, for sure. Thanks to Nihon Falcom, NISA, Durante and PH3 and Geofront for their hard work in this game and support to the community. Being a Trails fan has never felt this good, and it’s not gonna stop getting better, looking at the release calendar for next year.

Great Visuals and Gameplay. Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered on PC is a really nice looking game and Nixxes Software, once again, prove that they know their stuff when it comes to porting games over this platform. The game’s release is not without a few flaws here and there and we’ve already seen a small patch released a couple days ago, with a bigger one coming in the future. One of the most amazing aspects of this game is how well designed and realized New York City is, and how good it feels to swing around everywhere. It’s just not how it feels, but also how well animated Peter’s movements are, the acceleration, speed, momentum, there’s a lot of stuff packed in there to make it feel believable, that we’re actually swinging around NYC for real. Clearly, a ton of development time and work has been put into that major aspect of the game, to make it reach a level where it feels this good…I don’t know how much time and effort it took Insomniac Games but…and incredible job, because it’s great. Characters are pretty well animated and their English voices are very nice too, the game’s story has several moments where their performances really shine, with lots of emotion packed in there for sure. Let’s dive into the actual PC Performance and, as most people who’ve played or heard of the PC port by know, you may be aware that the general consensus is that this is a really CPU demanding game, especially when using Ray Tracing Reflections. Indeed, on my Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti, the game can really push those 12 CPU threads to really high utilization when RT is enabled but there are still some settings and tweaks that we can use to make it run a bit better. With the proper settings, it’s possible to achieve pretty close to stable 60 locked FPS at 1620p DLDSR downsampling, with Quality DLSS, only dropping below 60 here and there when swinging around outdoors; indoors though, it’s usually more stable even though certain interior places can have pretty demanding RT Reflections too. It is uncertain if, at this point, the developers may yet offer any performance enhancing updates in any future patch, those may come…or not, but the game in no shape or form runs badly all things considered…it’s just quite demanding, which is different, and finding a good balance between your CPU and GPU loads in game is crucial, for what you may want to tinker with certain CPU demanding settings, in game resolution to increase GPU load and/or stuff like DLAA which may help putting even more load into your GPU, if you feel it can be utilized a bit more. This is all when using Ray Tracing, because without it, the game can easily run above 100 FPS at 1440p and even 1620p, Max Settings, on my system, still looks fine, but of course RT Reflections add a lot to many areas of the game. Keybinds are quite decent for Mouse and Keyboard usage, and I’ve only found that we’re lacking some shortcut keys for stuff like individual gadgets usage, because most of the other in game actions that are important, like web-shooting, can be mapped to individual keys no problem. Mouse Input has no apparent acceleration or any other issues that I can feel/see, and it works well enough. That said, for this game I played with my DualSense controller, with the added features that only work when Steam Input is disabled, and wired, of course, as usual. It’s a nice experience, even though I felt the adaptive triggers a bit too weak and the sound coming from the speaker to be…pretty much useless (we can hear some sound when shooting our webs, that’s about it I think). Moving on to the aspects of the game I find aren’t as great…well, if I said earlier the world is great looking and nice to traverse around, it also presents big classic open world issues, like lots of repetitive tasks and events, radio towers to hack (although there aren’t that many) and other typical stuff many consider very average open world “filler”. Besides that, I found that I wanted a few more Side Quests, the ones that we got…are mostly great, but the game could’ve used a few extra here and there, to expand the lore and certain secondary characters even further; I really loved the side content we got…but that’s why I would’ve loved to see a bit more. That aside…I can say this game was a lot of fun to play, combat never gets tiring, which helps a lot to alleviate that “open world filler stuff” to do, until 100% completion so, overall, I’d say this game is a solid 8.5/10, maybe even a 9 if we consider that other open world games tend to have inferior gameplay, and the same or even more amount of average open world tasks and filler stuff to do.

Much more than a “remake”. Final Fantasy VII has always been a lot more than a simple game in the well-known brand; as we know, it can be considered a franchise on its own, that has spawned different titles across various platforms and even CG movies, leaving some of those titles stuck in certain consoles for a very, very long time. What Square-Enix calls the “Remake Project” I believe intends to produce a cohesive experience, taking parts and bits from all that Compilation work we know exists, and shaping it into a lot more than a mere “remake” because, without getting into deep spoilers, yes, “Remake” is a lot more than just what we may think, it’s a subtitle for the first game, which indicates the direction the story in the game is headed to, more so than alluding to being the original game, but remade, with modern graphics. Certainly, most of the stuff that happened in the original story for the Midgar portion, does happen in Remake, for sure, and it’s even greatly expanded with incredible results: Animation work is excellent on the characters, their facial expressions do tell a lot of their intentions without even the need to put it into words, and the English voice over is quite fantastic. These characters feel like they’re alive and they show their emotions pretty well and, if we pay attention, it’s an important part of the story-telling in this game, how the different characters interact with each other. Let’s get a bit into PC specific port details, and let’s be straightforward here: this amazing game deserves a better PC version. I’m not saying it runs badly or it’s broken in any shape or way, it runs pretty nicely on my Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti and, at 1620p DLDSR, certainly looks stunning and runs quite above 60 FPS at all times, but the PC port is pretty barebones: there’re only a couple Graphics Settings to choose from, and barely any performance scalability going from High to Low well…due to the lack of meaningful settings. I felt quite disappointed when the game initially launched, half a year ago, on the Epic Games Store, looking at the PC specific settings, and nothing has changed now, for the Steam release. Besides that, the price of the game is also quite insane for a standard PC digital edition: 80€ is not a common price among PC games but, fortunately, sales are a thing and there are various and official places to get games these days…so my advice is to look for the best price that suits your needs, no need to pay that much for a standard digital game when sales exist. One other amazing aspect in this game is the Soundtrack, which is absolutely incredible and I don’t think there’s any track in this game that I do not like, they’re all great, of course the expected favorites are still fantastic too and masterfully recreated for this game. Gameplay is pretty fluid and responsive and I never get tired of the slow motion mode when opening the menus in battle, it’s a nice effect, completely optional if we don’t want to use it…but it’s really cool and nicely implemented. Overall, I think this game nails down pretty well what I was expecting, and even surpassed all I could have thought of, in a good way. Knowing how the original story goes is a plus when playing this new game, it’s not really needed but surely rewarding to know all the backstory from the original game, especially when doing more play-throughs, you will end up picking up more subtle details that have been planted into this game’s plot and its characters, many, many references and subtle hints in here. It is a plot that leaves us with many questions, lots theories that we can think of, but the hints are all there in the game, and even more so for those who know all the stuff from the Compilation. The Intermission story is also very nice albeit a bit short, but it clearly shows a few improvements certainly fruit of player feedback, especially regarding combat mechanics: Yuffie is a great character in this version of the game and she plays great, especially in Aerial Combat, a low point in the regular campaign, for sure. Pretty thrilled to see what they do for the other characters we’ll get to play in Rebirth and beyond, they’ll surely add even more layers to the already solid combat foundation. I am excited for Crisis Core Reunion, knowing that they’re intentionally remaking the visuals for that one, to make it more in line with Remake. Would give a 10 if the PC port wasn't as barebones, but it pretty much is a must play game for fans of VII as a whole.

The good old Beat'em Ups are coming back. TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge is a very fun game, especially if, like me, you are a fan of the classic beat em up games from the 90s. It is safe to say it’s one of the best TMNT games, of course not that hard to achieve since it’s been quite a while. Some of the classics, like Turtles in Time or Hyperstone Heist, were also very good games, for their time, but they all had big issues when it comes to hit detection (I guess what we would call "hitbox detection" today), and this is mostly improved in Shredder’s Revenge, but it’s still not completely perfect, and we’re still going to get a few surprises here and there or unexpected hits coming from way off or position in the axis, and this is particularly evident in the hardest difficulty setting, where every hit we get hurts a lot. Continuing on the difficulty aspect, I think Normal is far so easy, whereas the next one available, which is called Gnarly, feels too punishing, and clearly the game was not properly balanced for this one, much. I feel the other great modern beat’em up game we got recently, Streets of Rage 4, manages difficulties quite a bit better, at least from Normal to Hard, and even going to Mania, you can feel the difficulty curve being smoother, so to speak, like there’s a much better "difficulty progression", if that makes any sense. That said, apart from that detail that could easily be tweaked and patched in the future, the game is pretty awesome and enjoyable. Performance wise, this game seems pretty easy to run and I encountered zero issues on my Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti, which clearly is way more than enough PC a game like this needs, but I experienced zero frame drops or anything like that, it’s pretty much all the way. Moving on to the game’s Controls and how it feels in action, I think the improvement over the classic games is quite massive here: we have lots of different movements we can use, and none of them are particularly difficult to execute, they’re pretty simple and we have an interactive tutorial to learn all about these moves. The game offers six initial playable characters, and a seventh one unlocked after finishing the Story Mode, and that’s is a very nice amount of characters, compared to most beat’em up games, certainly, at least on release. The Graphics are nicely done and the UI is easily readable but, if anything, it would’ve been great to have some retro, CRT style, shaders available to use, as those would fit pretty well with the visual design in this game, even though the clean pixel design is quite well done as it is. The Music is absolutely amazing too, I can never get tired of it and just like in the old school games, the soundtrack is a crucial part of the experience when playing each level, and this game really delivers there, for sure. One final last flaw in the game though, the multiplayer has some cross-play related issues at the moment when it comes to Steam-Gamepass crossplay, in game it’s not currently possible to find online players other than those from the Epic Games version, no Steam or Gamepass players are shown currently, and it seems to be a known issue due to certain versions needing an update. Furthermore, it does seem that in order to connect with Gamepass players, both Steam and Gamepass owners need to link their…Epic Games accounts, then invite using the Epic UI in game, a bit…weird, but again the developers have mentioned that it does seem that the Gamepass version needs an update. All in all, this is another must have beat’em up, especially if you liked the classic games, or more recently Streets of Rage 4, this one is quite good too; SoR 4 still feels like the more complete and bigger game, clearly with higher budget, but TMTN: Shredder’s Revenge is a pretty solid and affordable game in the genre, and quite enjoyable to play.

This is how you make a prequel. Yakuza 0 is without a doubt one of the best games in the series, and it is quite obvious that RGG Studio knew what they needed to do, to make this game the amazing prequel that it is. Certainly, it is the best entry point for anyone wanting to get into the franchise, and this is the way I did it, years ago, when this game came to the PC. But the interesting thing about Yakuza Zero here is the fact that…once you’ve played the whole series, going back to Zero…is even more amazing compared to the first time. At least…this is the case for me, because then we can appreciate the huge amount of care and attention to detail put into this game, with so many little details and bits here and there referencing things that we get to learn, to some extent, in the following games. Replaying this game is quite nice, and since I didn’t have a review posted here for this one (I thought I had) well, I just replayed it recently and this is a good time. This game is top epic quality from start to finish, of that there’s no doubt. Performance wise, this is a decent port here on the PC, it has some minor caveats here and there, but nothing that a quick visit to PCGamingwiki can’t fix, and other than those small quirks, the game runs pretty nice on the PC. I originally played this game on my old i5 4690K and GTX 1070 machine, and it ran quite fine at 1080p with some Super Sampling on top too, enough to do 60 FPS at all times. Currently, on my Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti, I have played at 1620p DLDSR and with SSAAx4 on top, so that’s a lot of resolution, and still able to keep locked 60 FPS at all times. What amazed me the most the very first time I played, back in the day, were the incredibly detailed character models, especially in the cinematics (there’s a mod on PC to switch the in game models with the slightly higher versions used in cinematics, which I used and works great) and their facial expressions, animations and skin quality / textures and their eyes…are just insanely well done for a game not precisely sporting the latest state of the art tech when it comes to engine and stuff like that. It’s a testament of RGG Studio’s skill when making these types of games, they know how to do it well. And the music…well, this franchise has amazing tracks, and Yakuza 0 has some memorable tracks, for sure. The voice acting is incredible, one of the best I’ve seen and you can feel that the actors had a blast when working on this game. Gameplay is pretty fun and enjoyable, it never gets old with all the style switching and great amount of different heat actions available, and yeah...feeling the weight of each hit on the controller when it vibrates enhances the experience. Good combat doesn't need to be overly complex, and I think this game strikes a good balance, and I'll never get tired of punching thugs in a game like this, it's just very fun. All in all…Yakuza 0 is one hell of a start for the series so if you’re one of the lucky people out there who’s yet to experience the series…congratulations, the journey is one to cherish forever, enjoy. This is a great game, from an amazing franchise.

The Evolution of Open World Game Design. I’ll start right to the point: Elden Ring is an excellent game, but the PC version is not the best it should be, simple as that. The PC version of Elden Ring needs a bit of love and care: it’s a shame that, as of the day of posting this review, the game still suffers from shader chaching issues, or possibly asset streaming problems…maybe both; whatever it is, for some PC setups and users the problem is bigger and more noticeable than for others. For me…it’s alright, because it seems the more I play, the less frequently said issues occur, and overall the experience is not tarnished much by it, for me : ) Now, on the actual bad design aspects in the PC version: the Menu Navigation is a pain, because it has some hardcoded keys, like Q, E, etc.; Sometimes we’ll need to press Q to go back a menu, while in other occasions it’s just the expected ESC key. That is poor design, and lack of proper testing with people used to play PC games. Secondly, Camera Movement and Target Selection are awful on Mouse and Keyboard. The target lock and camera reset actions are bound to the same key, with no option to decouple them, for starters, and idem for the dash and dodge/roll keys, same crap. With both my DualShock 4 and Dualsense Controllers, the game plays as expected from a gamepad, no way to officially show Playstation buttons, though (only with mods), a minor issue anyway. I understand certain developers from other companies / games have been publicly criticizing Elden Ring lack of proper User Experience (“UX”, if you will), but that’s not exactly what I’m talking about here, or at least not in the same manner: those developers are a disgrace to their respective companies and should rethink their words next time…because their games aren’t exactly the prime examples of marvelous UI/UX design, either, I’ve played all of them, I know. There’s stuff to be improved for this PC version but, with that said…yeah, what’s left after going past those issues is an incredible video game that teaches very important lessons in Open World Design, which I hope some other studios learn from and get inspired by. This concept has always been there and used in some video game franchises, in the past, which we have now seen evolve, in some of their recent titles as well. What Elden Ring does, is just taking all the great aspects of their previous games, and expand it into this great open world they’ve crafted for us. I’m not a veteran of the Souls Series at all, but I’ve played all kinds of games since the 90s, and I don’t feel a game being less hand-holding on me is a problem…it just makes me feel more free to do whatever I want and, If I mess up and die…I die, and learn, then repeat but, in the process, I have fun, because no matter what I do…I’m learning, exploring, discovering. I think this design fits perfectly for such an Open World game, it does, it works and I like it. On the Performance side of things, the game is locked at 60 FPS, which is another aspect I’d like to see improved, but not as crucial as the other poorly designed stuff previously mentioned; More importantly, frame-pacing feels off, especially because the game’s FPS limiter is not good enough, and also the game locks itself at 60 Hz on Fullscreen, so I recommend playing in Borderless if your screen supports higher Refresh Rates. I’ve been playing at 1620p DLDSR, on a Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti, and FPS are normally as close to 60 as possible, sometimes in the low 50s in certain demanding areas, all while at Maximum Settings. I’m eager to see what Ray Traced effects they implement on a future update, because currently stuff like the SSAO and Shadows are quite poor in places, especially SSAO has this while halo / overlay around objects that are also close to a water surface, and Shadows flicker quite a lot, especially distant shadows / from vegetation. The Story requires a lot of exploring and talking to different important characters to even begin to comprehend the basics of what’s happening, but I love that because it makes me want to play more, and leaves a good part to the user’s interpretation. There’s not a lot of voice acting, compared to other games, but the actors do a great job with their performances. And the Graphics, while not being the most photo-realistic ones we’ve ever seen…well who cares? When the game looks so gorgeous anyway, because its artistic design and atmosphere are really top notch. So many areas in the game leave me speechless, with how beautiful they look, and I wish this game had an official Photo Mode…oh, please, we need one (I know, there’s a good one with third party tools, but this should be a standard feature in these huge games). An easy 10/10 if the issues ever get fixed, for now…a bit lower from me, but still an excellent game nonetheless.

Another great Yakuza series game. Yakuza: Like a Dragon is an interesting new take for the series which, until now, always was based around real time action combat, with certain RPG like elements like gaining skill points to unlock skills, some gear to equip, etc., in the past games. If they ever continue this new saga and still want to keep it turn based, I would like to see big improvements to the skill selection menus and other UI stuff to make combat more fluid; I understand they mostly take inspiration from Dragon Quest games, but I’d love to see improvements on how we select and quick use skills and stuff like that, and I’d mention as an example the Kiseki series of JRPGs, because that’s my favourite JRPGs series currently, and I think their latest games (the ones here in the west) have very much my preferred way of executing commands and showing UI menus for skills. On the Performance side of things, this game runs pretty nicely on my Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti, managing at least stable 60 FPS at Max Settings and 1620p DLDSR resolution (around 70’ish if uncapped) which, for a game like this, is more than enough. 4K is possible, but the frame-rate is in the 40s area, and it feels quite choppy, so a 30 cap would make more sense at 4K, but 60 FPS is so much smoother that I stuck with that. Graphics wise, this is the first Yakuza game on PC that has Temporal Anti-Aliasing, and it shows: the annoying visual shimmering from previous Dragon Engine based games like Kiwami 2 or Yakuza 6 is mostly gone, at last, and the visual presentation of the game is one of the best in the series, in my opinion, especially when it comes to cinematics and cutscenes, with a very nice usage of Depth Of Field too. My only gripes with the graphics are the Screen Space Reflections, which aren’t too great, and some of the Textures for certain assets could have been a bit higher quality, as the game doesn’t even allocate more than 3.5 to 4 GB of VRAM at 1620p on my system. Overall, it’s not a bad looking game among those in the series, I think it’s one of the best ones, visually, but I can see a lot of room for improvement, especially if a future game implements stuff like DLSS, to improve Temporal Stability, or even Ray Tracing…can you imagine Kamurocho at night with Raytraced Reflections? We need this to happen, it’s the next logical step, in my opinion, at least as an optional feature. The soundtrack in the game is quite decent, albeit a bit repetitive for combat scenarios, and the voice actors did one hell of a job (I played in Japanese voices), with a stellar performance from Ichiban’s actor, especially in the last chapter (if you know, you know). Obviously, this game benefits from all the lore we should, by now, have accumulated from previous entries, and I think the writers did a great job in making this game a kind of a “passing the torch” type of experience, for a new generation of heroes, more fitting than ever in this installment, due to the JRPG style. The story had some bits that could’ve been executed a bit better, but overall aside from those small moments, the story felt quite great and enjoyable, and there’s a good amount of character development. Still, lots of questions left to interpretation for the players to make their own theories, obviously to hype things up for an inevitable sequel, I hope sooner than later. I enjoyed this game quite a lot, it’s not perfect…but I was expecting to dislike the new combat system and instead what I found was an incredible cast of playable characters and a big new area to explore in the series, and I really can’t wait for the next game.

Japanese Folklore Greatness. Ghostwire Tokyo is quite a new fresh IP from Tango Gameworks, quite different from their previous series, The Evil Within games, which I really like a lot, both of them. Tango has moved away from pure Survival Horror to a more Action oriented / Paranormal Thriller type of experience and this is fine, because it is a new IP after all, I am happy seeing studios trying new things, which does not invalidate their previous work (I’d still love to see more in the Evil Within series though, of course). The PC version of Ghostwire Tokyo looks really amazing, it is a game that supports Ray Traced Reflections and Shadows, and particularly the Reflections are some of the best I’ve seen so far in a PC game, only a bit below games like CP 2077 or Control, since in Ghostwire there aren’t RT Reflections for stuff like transparent assets (windows from cars or stuff like that). In any case, for the rest of the reflections, they do look amazing and very detailed, and they fit the atmosphere of the game pretty well, being a game set in Shibuya, with a lot of rain and wet surfaces. Performance on PC is also quite excellent for a game that looks like this, the game can easily full over 100 FPS with Raytracing disabled at 1080p and 1440p DLDSR on my Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti, with all the normal settings maxed, and the fact that we can use DLSS only enhances the experience even further. With Raytracing enabled, I can keep my game above 60 to 70 FPS at 1440p DLDSR and Balanced DLSS, which is not bad at all. There’s one issue, currently in the game, that affects VRAM usage, regarding the Streaming Texture Quality setting: if set to high values such as Cinematic or High, the performance can suddenly degrade, permanently, until either restarting the game or switching that Texture Streaming setting to “Auto”. This fixes the performance degradation for me, and haven’t experienced this issue ever again. The game also suffers a bit from Shader Cache issues, so once in a while a small stutter will occur, when a new asset appears, although it did not bother me too much, compared to other recent games like Elden Ring, where it happens more frequently. Moving on to Gameplay: I had a lot of fun with the Combat in this game, and the World Traversal is also quite enjoyable, once we unlock certain skills; think Dishonored series, something similar to that, even better maybe, since we can glide around for a really long time when fully upgraded. Combat…for me was fun, and diverse enough; I’ve read some reviews and opinions claiming they did find the combat boring and repetitive, then only to tell us that they barely used any tools, like “just used the Wind based attacks, that’s all”...well, of course, that’s the issue: Wind is used as the standard spammable attack, long range too, Fire is the big hard hitting skill, with great AoE, for the bigger Visitors / threats, and Water is medium to close range, meant to Cut Through enemies defenses (like umbrellas). Then we have Talismans, which can add a lot of Crowd Control to the combat, useful quite often, or to speed up the Core Extraction process. The game Controls pretty well with Keyboard and Mouse but, sadly, the Gamepad default settings are a bit of a mess when it comes to Acceleration / Deceleration, makes no sense they included this. I tried my DualSense and it works fine except for that, but I prefer first person games with M&KB, anyway. It lacks FOV adjustment though, so I hope they patch it in soon, default FOV feels like 90 Hor, not terrible, but far from ideal for 16:9 at least. One of the best aspects in the game, though, is the Lore / Folklore of Yokais, it was quite a treat being able to read about all of this in the Database section so, if you’re into this kind of stuff, take the time to enjoy the entries, they’re pretty accurate with the actual folklore, and quite detailed in their descriptions. Animations are really top notch, especially for the ethereal weaving, it's obvious they put in a lot of effort into making these look really smooth and fluid. The weakest part in this game, in my opinion is the Story and the Characters: while the main duo cast of Akito and KK are great together, the other characters felt not too fleshed out, and it seemed like the game lacked a couple chapters here and there to expand on some of this. I understood pretty well the message this story was trying to convey, it’s a simple message, but a much needed one nowadays, with all that’s going on in the world, but this game feels like it quite suffered the hardships of the pandemic, it’s obvious. All in all…a decent experience, but it could’ve been better with a little bit more here and there, especially on the Story. The game feels fresh, and if you know Tokyo/Shibuya a lot, you’ll see how well it’s been recreated, that is quite nice to see.

Cyberpunk 2077 is, to me, a huge step up in terms of graphics compared to CDPR’s previous hit, The Witcher 3, or any open world RPG that exists to this date. Even without the extra amazing stuff that is having Raytracing enabled, the game looks impressive, there’s no denying that. The designers who spent countless hours on creating the NPCs and characters deserve a lot of praise: I’ve taken like 300 photomode screenshots and at least 60% of those are from characters, because they look incredible and pretty unique from each other. Their animations feel amazing, no lip sync issues, weird face expressions or anything like that: it is something CDPR nailed with most characters in The Witcher 3 as well, but it gets elevated to new standards for CP 2077…great job there, period. Voice acting is also great, nothing felt out of place and also the soundtrack is quite great, even though I prefer music from fantasy oriented RPGs, some of the tracks in this game are amazing, so no big complaints there. Performance wise, I was lucky enough to being able to play this game with two different GPUs: my good old GTX 1070, and later on I managed to get an RTX 3060 Ti, both paired with a Ryzen 5 3600. On the GTX 1070 it was not possible to achieve stable 60 FPS at all times even at Medium settings, and I believe CDPR failed to make it clear that the official system specs for the game are aimed for 30 FPS, and not even that, because a GTX 1060 is not doing 30 FPS at High Settings, at all times, in this game, it’s just not happening. On the RTX 3060 Ti the game finally runs pretty well, even with RT effects enabled, but since it’s an open world, there are places where the FPS will dip below 60 and even below 50, especially in really crowded areas where the RT Lighting effects over NPCs clothes and stuff gets too taxing. No big deal, because luckily the whole game doesn’t take place in these places, and it’s pretty varied, with zones exceeding 80 FPS with RT Ultra settings too, at 1080p and of course always with DLSS, which looks and works great in this game. Now…by the sound of this review so far, this is a great game, isn’t it? No, it’s not. It is not a terrible game either, but it’s not what it could’ve been. For starters, this is the kind of game I had to spend two hours fighting the Keybinds and Controls, because I remap a lot of keys (being left handed) and we cannot remap keys like “F”, “Enter”, or use the arrow keys; the .xml config file can be manually edited, but it’s a laborious process as it contains a lot of actions linked to the same keys, it’s a pain, honestly. This felt unacceptable for me on a triple A game in this time and year, it just makes me have a very bad opinion right from the very first minute, and to this day it hasn’t been patched to improve it in this aspect, which is sad. There are also lots of Quality of Life features that CDPR managed to patch into The Witcher 3, like a better inventory system, or even crafting, that in CP 2077 are so terribly implemented that it hurts; a prime example of this is our phone: browsing contacts, which aren’t even organized alphabetically, is a pain, and one would think that in 2077 phones could work better than a fossil from the pre-smartphone era from 2004…only, they don’t, because stupid design choices I guess. Then there are bugs…a lot of them, most are non game breaking and are small rough edges that shouldn’t have been missed in QC, but if the QA testing team missed, or were ignored, for stuff like the really bad keybinds in the game, I’m not surprised this game has a ton of small bugs and random glitches, not at all, for whatever reason. The story…lastly, I liked it, it has several endings or paths at the end, depending on certain choices, quite similar to The Witcher 3 here, and it left me with some mysteries and questions unanswered while other matters were quite settled. I didn’t hate it, the story, mostly also because the important characters are well written and you end up caring a lot for them, and that leaves me quite satisfied. _____________ Edit - Patch 1.5, Feb. 2022: The game has improved quite a lot, although I still feel it has room to improve, and certain keybinds are still hardcoded, but it's much better for sure, now, therefore bumping the score to 8 seems fair, from my original 7/10. Update 1.5 has been great so far, and I hope they continue elevating the quality of this game more and more.

This game could, and should be, much better. Dying Light 2 has experience a very bumpy PC release, with major issues like crashes, not being able to launch the game, getting stuck into a death-loop that, for some of those who experience it, has taken like two weeks to get fixed, if not more. Then we also have the absolutely terrible Keybind settings this game has released with, which as of the day of writing this review, Feb 17th, and Patch 1.0.6, has been quite improved and we only have a couple of keys and actions still hardcoded (like Mouse Wheel up/Down, or the F key for the Stomp skill, still hardcoded), a much better situation than a few weeks ago where almost everything was hardcoded. It is still inexcusable to launch a PC game with such huge Keybind issues, and I ended up finishing the game mostly playing with my Dualshock 4 gamepad, because the alternative was to make a custom Mouse and Keyboard profile with like 20 keys remapped or more, to make them match with the actual hardcoded keys in the game. On the Performance side of things, this game runs pretty decently on my Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti, especially without Raytracing, there are no performance issues on regular settings, and it performs smoothly at any resolution ranging from 1080p to 1620p DLDSR, even at 4K with the help of DLSS, I can get a bit over 60 FPS at that resolution, and the game still looks decent even when it’s not using RT. Now, with RT enabled, the game looks quite fantastic, for such an open world design, mostly thanks to RT Global Illumination and RT Ambient Occlusion, but I believe it suffers from issues regarding how it manages memory allocation and most people are experiencing huge performance degradation when RT is used, after some time playing, even those with the beefy RTX 3090, which has lots of VRAM to spare, so definitely something odd is going on for now. This issue hasn’t been addressed yet and it would be a shame they didn’t, because the vast array of different types of setups I’ve read on the forums, that it is affected, is too spread to consider it an isolated issue. I’ve had this issue happen to me randomly, especially when certain cutscenes trigger, when right up to that moment, the game was running at 70-80 FPS with all Raytracing settings enabled. Furthermore, in my case at least, my GPU usage stays at 100% when this performance degradation occurs, it doesn’t drop so I hardly think it’s a CPU related issue. When it comes to the gameplay itself, the game offers some new ways to traverse the environments, the most notable one being the Paraglider, which is quite fun and nice to use. For combat mechanics, we’re mostly still using melee weapons, like in the first game, but we also have some ranged options like bows / crossbow. Although, in my opinion, some of the physics we could see in the first game have been simplified for DL2, or totally missing actually, but I believe it’s a known issue and it will be improved. Environments look quite detailed but the game suffers from too much copy-pasted locations, especially evident for the GRE quarantine areas, and most apartment buildings we can explore or where we go for certain secondary quests. This is very disappointing, and I would rather have less GRE areas but each one being an unique, spooky, mysterious quarantine area with its own sub story, rather than “go there at night, look stuff located basically always on the same rooms, or similar placements, then grab the audio cassette from the doctor…go outside”. That was really bad, it’s fine for one or two, but all of the GRE areas in the game are clones of each other, quite bad design if you ask me. Characters look decently animated, and textured, I have no issues with them, but most of the writing for many of them is quite average, like it’s obvious this game suffered from changes in the writing team a few years back, and something is missing or had to be changed. I have no doubts stuff will be added for expansions but, as it is right now, I can only bump the score from my original, provisional review, to around a 6.5/10, will give it 7 here to round it up and that’s being generous. There is a lot of potential in this title, but it was not realized for release, but I hope in a year or so it’s a much better game.

Good performing PC port, but not without flaws (on release). On PC, God of War plays really well thanks to being a very competent port in many aspects, but this is another port from PlayStation that launches with bad mouse input, much like HZD did in 2020 (Edit: Feb. 12th: Precise Mouse Input has been added, working nicely). The main issue this game presents to the PC user is the terrible Negative Mouse Acceleration it has, because the developers mapped gamepad input to the mouse camera and, in addition to that, it came out with very strong negative acceleration, meaning that very slow movements will quickly increase in speed, and swiping the mouse pretty fast will make the camera completely stop, therefore doing quick flicks will be detrimental to the player. This needs to be fixed, because other than that, the game plays pretty well on Keyboard and Mouse and, even with this issue, one can get used to moving the mouse in very controlled motions and constant speed. I completed (100%) the game on Hard difficulty, exclusively using Mouse and Keyboard so…even with negative acceleration, any experienced player can adapt to it, for sure, but it needs to be fixed. Moving on, the game also launched with some Memory Leak issues, which I personally didn’t encounter, and a couple patches have already been released, addressing some of the issues, and I do expect a few more patches for the mouse input, etc. On the Performance side of things, which is crucial to any PC game review, the game runs quite well on my Ryzen 5 3600 and [b]RTX 3060 Ti; At Original (Console) settings, it’s pretty easy to run at 100-120 FPS (120 FPS lock is not completely possible, but close, due to being a little bit CPU bound at times) and, if we want stable 60 FPS or anything in between, higher graphical settings are of course doable, pretty much. Ultra Shadow Quality is pretty demanding due to the huge amount of new shadows included in many areas where the original console settings didn’t have any or they were a lot weaker. This setting can impact performance around 20% or more, depending on the area, so be aware of that. Lowering Atmospherics, Reflections and Model Quality one notch down from Ultra to High can also provide another decent boost, and paired with DLSS (and DLDSR, which works with DLSS too), we can find a decent resolution and settings combination that looks and performs great, because the Graphics Settings have pretty decent scalability. Keybinds are another aspect crucial to PC games and many reviews omit talking about it; well, I don’t, since I’m left handed, in the first place, and that means I will always need to remap the default keybinds. In this game, all of the keys I would normally use can be mapped, and only a couple actions are not able to be remapped, like the one bound to “T”, which is used to access Lore we find in game, we have no option to remap that one action, so I ended up mapping it to one of my extra mouse buttons. The Arrow keys work for movement, too, which it’s what I use, and another lacking feature here is that there’s no Walk key, so Kratos will always be jogging. Other than that, with those issues aside, what remains is a truly amazing video game, with a really nice story and character development; voice acting is phenomenal for the main cast and other characters, such incredible talent and passion put into this game, clearly. Sound and music are amazing as well, and the visuals and level design are quite good, and I do love being able to go back to areas I’ve visited and explore more of them, because level design in this game I think it’s pretty well done. I love exploration in video games, and this game promotes one of the best ways to do exploration: let the player do it because they feel curious about it; the level design, especially for the Lake of Nine, does exactly that, it did for me at least: I wanted to explore because I was interested. That sentiment was pushed even further thanks to Atreus, which was always so eager to explore, like me. Then with the amazing stories from Mimir, the experience felt absolutely complete for me, it’s an amazing feeling. I also loved the subtle hints, even early on, about what was going on, even in the first minutes, there are hints all over the place; the minds who thought about all of this and placed all these hints and clues, visual or in events we see at certain points, are great, such a good job. Combat is also pretty snappy and responsive and there are lots of ways to deal with enemies, which is refreshing. I really enjoyed fighting enemies in this game, especially some of the optional bosses, which can get pretty difficult, but they’re so fun to fight. This game is pretty good, after such legacy the God of War franchise holds, I like how this game marks the beginning of something new, honors the past very well but, at the same time, leaves us with so much more for the future.

Good PC version for a really good MH game. Ever since Capcom started using the new modern RE Engine, with RE VII, we knew it was a very versatile engine with lots of potential and scalability, and the games that came after quite proved that point, on all systems. The Nintendo Switch needed a good, new Monster Hunter game, and MH World wasn’t going happen over there because, frankly, World still looks amazing today, especially at max settings and high resolutions, on PC, and it’s quite demanding too. With MH Rise, that’s what Capcom did, a bespoke Nintendo Switch game, that plays very well, but looks substantially lower quality compared to World, yet plays amazingly well, the animations are quite good and monsters look greater than ever, especially in the way they move and animate. On PC, MH Rise gets some visual upgrades in the form of better quality textures, mainly, but overall the geometrical quality of most assets remains quite similar to the Switch version, but being able to increase the resolution and frame-rates is a big bonus too. On the Performance side of things, the game is quite easier on the hardware compared to MH World, and it is able to run at stable 60 FPS, 4K resolution, on my Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti, and pretty close to 120 FPS at 1620p DLDSR, everything maxed of course. Being a port from a Switch game, another advantage is that the game is able to perform quite well on 4 core CPUs, like my secondary system which has an i5 4690K and a GTX 1070, and on this PC the game is able to run at 60 FPS and more even at 1440p, so I believe a lot of players will be able to enjoy good and smooth performance in this game. One bug/issue in this game, still not fixed as of the posting of this review, is the Resolution Scale (known as Image Quality in the options): 100% Scale is actually doing 75% internal resolution, which I confirmed by manually counting the pixels on screen with basic geometry / math; and then 150% Scale is actually 112.5% over native resolution, so there’s no easy way to do native resolution, but I reckon for now that the closest way is just setting the scale to 150%, and the game will be slightly downsampled. Controls and Keybinds are excellent on Keyboard and Mouse, for the most part, I believe the mouse still has this really, really tiny deadzone, but it feels better than in the Demo, for sure, so I have no major issues with it. There’s one single key I’ve found I cannot map, which is ALT, but it’s no big deal for me, I have plenty more keys to map, and a simple macro or remap via software can fix that issue, too. I am also a left handed player, and I can map the whole right side of the keyboard with no issues, arrow keys included, which is excellent. Now that I have spent more than 70 hours on Rise, I can say I enjoy its more fast paced combat, movement mechanics and overall feel, compared to World; the latter is still an excellent game, with lots of content, but Rise feels so good with the new improvements to movement and fluid animations, and high frame-rates, that it’s truly a joy to play on PC. I have high hopes for the next big entry in the franchise, if they use the best parts of Rise, RE Engine, better movement mechanics, a bit more fast paced than World, but with the amazing graphics of World, only even better, can’t wait for what comes next, and for the Sunbreak expansion this summer, for sure. I am not a veteran on the series at all, but I feel that with both World and Rise on PC, we have a good base to please most types of MH fans, and a lot to expect for future titles and content, which is great. Monster Hunter Rise is a very enjoyable and fun game, one that proves you don’t need the absolute best Graphics in the industry to have a solid experience; the game is just really well done, and getting into a hunt is so straightforward and fast here on PC that it’s just a fantastic experience, as it should be.