waywardrain

As of August 2026, the definitive way to play the greatest videogame ever made.

Great short experience that can be completed in 1-2 sittings. Definitely worth your time. The game has a wonderful art style with a touching story. I also really enjoyed the perspective on the experiences of the Indian diaspora, which we don't get much of in Western or Japanese video games. Only downsides are that it is maybe too short to justify paying anything more than $5 or $6 for the experience, and a few of the cooking minigames are just frustrating trial and error.

The Galaxy games are ranked down there with Sunshine as my least favorite 3D Mario games.Galaxy 1 - well polished game with great atmosphere, but it's just not very fun. Having to leap around the spaceship to get to the different worlds is tedious, there's nothing really in the main hub besides the worlds, the wait-for-a-boss-to-complete-a-slow-drawn-out-attack-pattern-and-hit-them-3-times-to-win mechanic in all these 3D Mario games **** and has needed an overhaul for decades now. I'd give this one a 7, mainly for the nostalgia of how this game hit when it first came out.Galaxy 2 - feels like the fully formed idea that they weren't able to flesh out in 1, but also weirdly feels like it's just some DLC extra levels for 1. The Yoshi mechanic in this game (using the joycon to eat enemies, aim projectiles, and grab things) might be one of the best feeling mechanics in any Mario game. To me, the game was far, far more frustrating than fun, though. I would have no desire to ever go back and play this one again. Also, the Mario head spaceship is one of the dumbest, most pointless hub worlds in any game with a hub world ever made. I'd give this one a 5. Felt like some leftover levels and mechanics they had sitting around after 1 that they just mashed together.

A solid experience with a strong sense of place, but limited by technical issues and repetitive gameplay. Pros: excellent sense of place (feels like a Telltale game set in the town from Life is Strange), great voice acting and character development, talking to people is actually interesting and enjoyable, plus I really enjoyed the cozy game/no fail state gameplay (no time limits, there's never more than one event per day so you don't have to worry that committing to one thing will make you fail something else...basically you can do everything on your first play through stress-free) Cons: basically everything outside of talking to characters...when driving around the textures look like something from an original Xbox game, lots of weird visual glitches, terrible framerate that dips constantly, and the mail delivery gameplay gets repetitive and after your first 2-3 hours. After you've seeing the extent of the town once, it's boring to explore any further

Fun game and well executed on console, but lacks that little bit of refinement to take it to the next level. Halo Wars has a short but sweet campaign, and building up your base and upgrading your units each mission is an addictive little loop. It lacks that little bit of refinement where you actually need "strategy" though, because every mission can be completed with the same army-building formula and then just rolling through the map clicking on 'x' to kill all the enemies. Each mission I just built a mass of scorpion tanks and a few anti-air trucks, fully upgrade them, then stream roll across the map. I think the normal difficulty is waaaaay too easy. I think I failed one mission in the entire campaign. The sign **** strategy game is needing to refine your tactics each mission depending on the situation. This one you just win with the same strategy every time. Again, it was a fun experience while it lasted, but was just missing that little extra something to make it truly special.

WARNING! Game-breaking bugs can completely ruin your playthrough. I can't remember the last time a game has ruined my save file to the point where my only option was to restart from the beginning, but if there's one thing a game can do to earn a 0, that's it. I put probably dozens of hours into this game, painstakingly exploring every nook and cranny for crafting resources and sitting through every dialogue option with every character. There were a number of bugs along the way (audio would cut out for 3-5 seconds whenever a notification popped on my Xbox, there was an optional conversation I just had to skip because the game would freeze whenever I tried to initiate it), but the killer was in Chapter 11 when my save file would only load to a black screen. The pause menu still worked and I could jump back to the main menu, but the gameplay itself was just a silent, black screen. After playing through 70% of the game, my only option was to restart the game from the very beginning and hope it didn't happen again. I'm not going to do that, and I'll likely never come back to this game again. The voice acting, writing, and graphics in this game are all excellent. It has a high level of polish, and I'd say these pieces are on par with an Uncharted game. Unfortunately, the other parts of the game definitely needed more time in the oven. The combat is dull, the shooting feels too loose, and I think they skipped the QA/bug testing entirely. There are major bugs that have been there since the game released, and the developer hasn't cared enough to try to patch a single one.

What the heck did I just play? I'm normally a huge fan of walking simulators, but this one was just too slow, linear, and difficult to understand.

A technical masterpiece, but the gameplay falls short. I played this game on a PS5 Pro and it's without a doubt the most beautiful game I've ever played, both in raw graphics and in artistry. Between the fog, the lighting, and other effects almost every moment is a painting. The game also has fantastic sound design, music, and voice acting. Outside of that, the other positives were basically zero loading times (a game changer in one of those open world map type games), the range of weapons and abilities they give you to tackle the Mongol territory challenges however you see fit, and it's a nice change of pace to have a game portray a viewpoint other than the euro-christian history of the world. Unfortunately, the game itself doesn't live up to this beautiful open world. This is yet another map barf game like Assassin's Creed or Far Cry, and I find these games tend to pad out their play time with lots of dull activities. This game is no different. I would say maybe one or two of the activities are actually fun, then rest are just tedious. There is a Donkey Kong 64 level number of pointless collectibles (must be hundreds of things to collect), most of which do nothing. It also falls into the open world map barf "fake RPG" trope, where each activity only makes your character like 0.000001% better, but they need to say it's something that will make your character stronger so you're motivated to do the otherwise boring, pointless thing. Also, self-serious, story heavy games like this don't work in an open world setting. When I spend 35 straight hours doing side quests, how am I supposed to remember who this minor random side character is who's delivering this slow monologue before they die? The cutscenes are all a slog to get through, because they're just a bunch of overacted drama where sullen characters yell at you for the "choices" the game forced you to make so you could advance the story. For the cutscenes where the characters aren't screaming at you, the one "comedic" character they wrote to try to lighten the tone is just insufferable. All told, I took me 75 hours to 100% the main game and the DLC (I skipped the collectibles). If this had been a more focused linear or semi-open world game that took 20 hours, I think it would've been one of the greatest single-player games of all time. Instead it's a middling, unfocused slog of dull activities.

Starts incredibly strong but loses most of its steam halfway through. The first 15 hours of this game are absolutely amazing. It feels like a blend of Fallout's character building and quest lines with Deus Ex's open-world problem solving with Bioshock's environmental exploring/storytelling with Mass Effect's explore-the-galaxy-with-a-crew-of-characters. Unfortunately, the second half of the game feels unfinished and the two DLC storylines (about 15 hours each) are downright dull. One really strange design decision was to have a very low level cap for both your character and your weapons. It took me about 80 hours to 100% this game, and I would say I spent the last 35 hours at the level cap. This means that I spent nearly half my time with the game stuck at the same level (no new skill points or perks) with the exact same guns and the exact same armor set. Character growth is one of the main things that draws people to RPGs, so at that point you're just going through the motions to complete the quest lines. The two DLCs honestly make the game worse, because they dilute the core experience with a lot of dull gameplay that just isn't interesting and completely misses the elements that made the first part of the game so good. It's a lot of walking through abandoned office buildings and collecting gears, lots of quests that force you through dozens of long loading screens to pad the quest length, and most of the development time seems to have been spent on giving insignificant characters lots of lines of dialogue to say instead of making the gameplay itself fun. If I had spent 50 hours with this game and skipped the DLC, I probably would've rated the game an 8 or 9. Instead, the 80 I had to spend (to do the DLC too) bumps it down to a 6 or 7. Between those two, I'd lean toward a 6 just because the loading times are so brutal.

Honestly, every Far Cry game should be this long. Instead of spending 50 hours clearing out the map and doing side quests and collecting pelts, it was great to get a little 8-hour slice of the Far Cry experience (liberate a base to unlock side quests, then do side quests to upgrade your weapons) and then be able to move on to other games. They also removed all the pointless game features like selecting skills when you level up or having to run around and collect animal pelts. It was really just pared down to the core gameplay loop and removed all the usual Far Cry things that waste your time. The 80s-style music was fantastic, too.

A great story you can complete in probably a day or two. It's like an interactive sci-fi novella with fantastic voice acting and environmental storytelling. The game is from the same team that made Gone Home, so if you enjoyed Gone Home this one is very similar in terms of storytelling and pacing.

A quick experience (about an hour long) with good production values and an interesting premise. The gameplay just boils down to what seems like mostly trial and error to get the last three endings and the character movement is just too slow/sluggish to feel good.

Have you played the Persona games? Were the dungeon crawling / leveling up / fusing personas your favorite part of those games? If so, this might be right up your alley. This is basically just a Persona game but with all the high school stuff and the 45-minute scenes where you have to sit there and press 'x' through a bunch of trite dialogue. I loved it. Persona but stripped down to just the most addictive bits. There is a sudden difficult spike about 4/5ths of the way through the game and the last two dungeons are jumbled messes, otherwise this would've been a 10/10 for me.

Would probably be more entertaining to watch as a let's play on YouTube than it is to actually play. The art direction is great and the gameplay sequences are very creative, but the gameplay itself is a chore. It's just holding right on the thumbstick, pressing A constantly to advance conversations, and some very simple Simon Says for like six hours. It's incredibly linear, so there really isn't any point in playing it yourself. Just watch someone else go through it and give your hands a break.

It is a lot like Limbo or Inside in that it is a linear 2D game where you just hold right the whole time and solve puzzles as they come up. I personally don't think the gameplay in these types of games is fun or challenging, but the experience is at least interesting while it lasts. I would rank this ahead of Limbo and Inside, because the gameplay element where you bring your ship along with you throughout the journey and maintain it is a fresh take on this kind of experience.

My favorite 2D Mario game. I won't call it the best (which is debatable depending on what you're looking to get out of a Mario game), but this is the most fun I've ever had playing a 2D Mario game. I played and completed Super Mario World for the first time last year, and this feels like the first true sequel to SMW. Yoshi's Island was its own thing and the New Super Mario Bros games felt like they were just there to tide people over until the next 3D Mario game. This is the first 2D Mario game since SMW to capture the ambition, innovation, and sense of exploration that made the Super Nintendo original such an all-time classic. What makes this game so great? The sense of movement feels amazing. It feels incredible just to jump and move around the stages. There is a ton of variety between the stages, and some really creative moments in each level, so the game never becomes a slog where it feels like you're just running from flag pole to flag pole to flag pole. If you tried the New Super Mario Bros games and they didn't hold your interest, this game will make you rethink how you feel about 2D Mario as a franchise. The only drawbacks to the game are that it feels shorter than your typical recent 2D Mario game (none of the typical 2D Mario endgame extra-hard content in this one), there isn't much replay value after your first play through, and it's definitely on the easier side relative to recent Mario releases. These aren't a big deal to me personally (quality > quantity and fun > challenge, in my opinion), but just something to keep in mind if it's important to you. That being said, this is absolutely a game that is worth experiencing at least once in your life.

About 30 hours into the story, this game was on pace to be one of my 5 favorite games of all time. After 125 hours and completing the game, I wouldn't even put it in my top 50. So what went wrong? First, the good. This game has a tremendously addictive core gameplay loop. The combat is great and fusing personas to try to create personas that break the combat was as much fun as I had in a game all year. Leveling up your social links, and the way these social links tie back into the core combat, had me completely hooked and was another of the game's biggest highlights. The soundtrack was amazing. The art design was amazing. The game's sense of style was amazing. The setting (a rural Japanese town in modern times) was unique and amazing. The overall premise of the game (solving serial murders) was amazing. The calendar / time constraint is also amazing, because it pressures you to make the most of every open afternoon. Also, the "remaster" on the Switch runs buttery smooth with practically zero load times. Being able to grind through a dungeon or complete some social links while on-the-go was a big highlight, and probably the main reason I was actually able to complete this game (it's the perfect airplane game). Everything from the core gameplay to the game's setting and style was a perfect 10/10. Where the game hasn't aged well is it's story and pacing. I just highlighted all the things I loved about the game above, and the game seems dead set on not actually letting you do those things. There are dozens of points in the game where it becomes highly linear, taking away your ability choose how you want to spend your time, and forcing you into some pre-scripted school event over the span of days or weeks. Normally, this is cool, but these scenes go on FOREVER. It is sometimes over an hour straight of reading through dialogue boxes. What doesn't help is that 90% of this dialogue is the most trite, dull stuff you'll ever read and most of the main characters are walking cliches where all their dialogue is just something to reinforce their main cliche. To complete the game, you'll probably have to sit through 15 or so of these 40-90 minute blocks of "character development" with dialogue so hollow it will leave your brain 0.2 seconds after it disappears from the screen. The other problem with the game's story is that it's highly linear. For almost any dialogue option, there is a right and a wrong choice. The "bad" choice is almost never obvious, and if you make the wrong choice it is much more difficult to level up your social links and unlock the true ending. You end up feeling forced to look up the "correct" answers to the major story beats and social links, so you don't waste your afternoon with that companion. It's just not a fun gameplay dynamic, and it kind of **** that the game punishes you for choosing to play the character how you want to play him instead of how the developers want you to play him. Another big problem to be aware of is the game's rampant homophobia, transphobia, and objectification of women. The homophobia and transphobia is a small piece of the game, and only occurs in a couple of scenes. The objectification of women pervades the entire game though, and there are multiple mainline story beats dedicated to it. In this world, women are either young/attractive and exist to be fondled, ogled, and sexualized against their will, or they are fat/old and exist as comic relief. Two of your party's main characters are basically unabashed perverts, all of their dialogue centers around saying objectionable things to women, and I hate them more than any videogame characters I've encountered in recent memory. If you think the movie "Porky's" is good and fun, you will probably like them, though. In summary, Atlus created an absolutely fantastic foundation for a game, but the pacing, dialogue, and themes have not aged well at all. I would still recommended playing it, because the good parts are just so good. Just know what you're in for.