xYourDeus

Honkai Star Rail actually surprised me very much. I'm not big into gacha games, and Mihoyo are known for their gacha games, but this game's story is so much fun that it supersedes the downside of the gacha habits. The story progressively gets better as you play it. Every story arc constantly has me captivated and wanting more, especially the fourth story arc, which completely blows away the others. The characters and narrative definitely carries this game heavily. The combat is not bad for a turn based game, however my issue is that the "normal" speed of gameplay feels extremely slow. Once I switched to 2x speed, I never go back to normal because of how slow it feels. It's nice to enjoy the cinematics in their glory, but normal speed moves at such a snails pace I feel it actually hurts the gorgeous visuals. The visuals of the combat are overly flashy, so be prepared to be overstimulated. Lastly, the game still feels pretty fresh to play as a free to play experience. There's tons of ways to get stellar jade (this game's cash shop currency) to make free rolls for characters, so you don't have to feel compelled to spend money on gacha pulls. In fact, it's so free to play friendly, that the main character themselves actually feels like the 5 star character they are. The MC is super strong and versatile to where they can almost always be used. Probably the best gacha game experience I've had, and that's saying a lot as I don't particularly like or play gachas.

LAD Infinite wealth was a really great sequal to LAD 7. I was excited from the announcement when they said that old protagnist Kiryu Kazuma would be back in this game and they did not disappoint. This game legit feels like a love letter to both old Yakuza fans and new fans of Like a dragon. They tried to appeal to both segments of the fanbase by having half of the game dedicated to Kiryu and reminiscing on his past as well as bringing back "beat 'em up" style of combat half way through the game. Which is why this game felt like a love letter to the fans without jeopardizing the quality. The combat is still fun as it was in LAD 7, a bunch of goofy attacks and essence moves that will change based on the job you give to the characters. If you played LAD 7, it's a lot like that, except it now has Kiryu's dragon awakening which allows him to go into free form beat 'em up mode and deal a bunch of damage to any enemies around him. The narrative of the game was okay, it was pretty linear and not as surprising as the last game's narrative was, but still a passable story. The gameplay loops are in my opinion the best part of the game, so much stuff to run around and interact with. A lot of minigames from LAD 7 came back like the can collecting, along with new minigames in Hawaii such as a pseudo door-dash minigame where you deliver food to customers. All in all, the regular hijinks you'd expect from LAD games. Ultimately, I barely if any have any qualms about this game, it's near perfect.

Star Ocean Divine force was a pretty good installment of the star ocean series I would say. The game has an incredibly slow burn at the start, it took me some time to get into it but once you get into mid to endgame the story, cutscenes, etc all take off immensely. The story and the world design has to be the best parts of the game, the voice acting as well as writing in the story is really engaging from start to finish and it helps that you can look at a beautifully designed universe to go with it. Combat is kind of hit or miss, I don't like the action points system that much, it made early game combat super slow and a lot less unenjoyable. Combat skills look nice but the limitations of action points leaves much to be desired. Also I don't know if it's intended but it's possible to level up your character skills mid-combat which can be super cheesy to increase DPS. A really BAD design with the combat is the enemy's detection radius, you will constantly have enemies detecting you through walls and the detection sound will constantly go off if you're on the other side of a wall of an enemy. The detection somehow works through line of sight but it doesn't trigger combat because of the line of sight, however going through groups of enemies causes the detection sound to play over and over again. It's a really bad design that needs to be fixed. Exploration is decent, there's lots of loot and goodies to find in very obscure locations, though IMO early game exploration is not fun because you can't use DUMA's flying to the best of it's ability right from the beginning so traveling is super slow considering how massive the world is. This issue is non existent in late game when the flying is upgraded but I think it's a bad choice locking it until later in the story, as it makes exploration a lot longer than it should be. The last I want to talk about is the dungeons, for most of the game it's pretty fine but the endgame dungeons, specifically Parapoeium integration center, and Scorpium network are absolutely horrendous dungeons. I get that they are endgame but they are dreadful to navigate and go through. The integration center quite literally has about 8 rooms designed the EXACT same and when I was progressing I was going crazy thinking I wasn't making any progress at all because they're designed the same. The Scorpium network is beautiful to look at but a nightmare to navigate and explore. Both of those dungeons are TOO long and filled with needless fluff. I get you want to go out big but overstimulation is not a good thing. It's way to easy to get lost and waste time in them. That being said, I think Star Ocean Divine force is a pretty good new edition to the franchise, did a lot of things right but still has many things to touch up on.

This was an absolutely beautiful remake to put it bluntly. As a first timer to Star Ocean games I was completely engrossed by this game. I really love old school JRPGs and this game really just hits all the spots I love about them. Combat is cool and flashy without being too overly complex, characters are amazing, private actions is basically like a dating sim and it's unapologetically really good. What I like about private actions is that the "dating sim" aspect isn't solely for the main character, you can get your other party members affection up and have them date at the end too, which I think is a good choice. The visuals here are totally stunning, I love how they remade the background designs to look more 3D compared to the pixel characters, it really oddly fits and looks like a good contrast. The game has crazy replay value because you get different endings and scenes depending on who you play as the main character and learn new things, not to mention there's 99 endings in this game. There's so much to explore and experience in this game and Star Ocean second story constantly **** you in to keep playing.

Skyrim is a pretty fun game for it's time, being a 2011 game, there's a lot to do here. It was one of the first games I played on Playstation, played for 211 hours in total. In classic elder scrolls fashion, there's a lot of lore surrounding the game which is really cool if you're a lore-junkie like I am. All of the major questlines in the game have a good plot, the dragonborn DLC takes this to another level. The combat is okay, the main appeal I believe is the amount of ways to approach combat in the game, you can spam shouts on people until they die, or optimize your stats as a stealth build and snipe enemies to death, but I combat is not the main appeal of this game anyways. The worst part of this game really is any quest that isn't a main questlines, side quests, or repetitive quests can be really boring and tedious. If you love to be a completionist and get every achievement, you will have to slow grind a bunch of boring quests to do so. I attempted to 100% this game because I loved it so much but the conditions to 100% it feature A LOT of boring quests. Specifically the "return the thieves guild to it's former glory" achievement, that particularly achievement has a bunch of repetitive and boring quests in it. That alone made me drop the idea of 100%ing this game. However, this game was the closest to 100% I ever got with any game I've played so far with an 84% achievement completion in the base game. Overall I think Skyrim is a great experience for its time. I'd give it an 8/10

Spider-Man Miles Morales is a pretty fun game. It's what you'd expect from a classic superhero game, you feel powerful and can dominate all the bad guys while looking cool and stylish. I had fun playing the game, despite how short it was. I never played the previously insomniac spider-man games so the combat style felt really fun to me, especially with all the spider gadgets and gimmicks with the suit. The story was pretty okay, but I don't think that's the main reason people play a spider-man game. I personally didn't care to listen to all the distress messages being sent out, and only went out of my way to help people if it was on the way to the main quest, a lot of the distress messages from civilians is a little repetitive, but it can be fun if you are a fan of the combat like I am. if you like open-world sandbox games where you're extremely overpowered with a bunch of cool gimmicks, you'll find some fun here for a while, but I think it'll overall be a short experience. I played for about 15 hours before putting the game down.

I love this game. Already clocked in at 24 hours of play time, been playing early access because I preordered the game and been having a blast all around. I love it when RPGs give you complete agency over everything, and it seems to have no limitations on what you can or can't do, the dialogue options are fun, the characters are interesting to talk to with their own motives and ambitions, the setting is fun. This game has very few weaknesses. The only downside one might see is turn-based combat, but I honestly think it was done pretty well here. The sheer number of skills and perks you get for characters allows you tons of ways to make the combat fun. It's even to a point where you can give your characters the ability to attack multiple times per turn and decimate enemy camps with high dps. The RPG aspects is what initially got me playing this game but the combat is so much fun that I can't put the game down. The game also gives you tons of game options to customize the game to make things even more difficult if you want it to be. I really like the karmic dice option which allows you to go classic DND ruleset using the dice more often which can make combat and dialogues even more complex than it is. The sheer amount of ways to have fun and keep you engaged and coming back to this game is why I think Baldur's Gate 3 is a masterpiece.

I enjoy Chivalry 2, it's a pretty fun and enjoyable hack and slash game. Sometimes it fun to just jump into a game with mindless fun and this game does that well. It's a pretty simple hack and slash multiplayer game, the difficulty on the other hand is a coin toss depending on what lobby you get in, as hack and slash games typically draw a big casual player base, which can be good for the game's activity. The maps are pretty neat and vibrant looking, there's lots of gore as you would expect of a medieval game, and there's lots of options of weapons to use in each map to cause mayhem with. One thing I enjoy doing is launching myself from catapults into the enemy to surprise them. It's a pretty fine game I would say, nothing groundbreaking. It's fine game.

I love RPGs and I love silly/comedic games. Yakuza: Like a Dragon is both of those. This is a JRPG in the Yakuza franchise and it really hammers away on the comedy aspect of the game, to the point where the entire combat system the game is centered around takes place in a fictional battle inside the main character's head. You get to see some of the goofiest attack combos and ultimates occur ranging from Orbital bombardments to Man children in diapers beating you up. It's so goofy but it's so much fun and really funny to watch. I love media where comedic effects and elements are a big part of the plot and this game is just that. Not to mention, a lot of the minigames in the game are also pretty fun to engage in as well. I love doing the can collecting minigame, I love the karaoke minigames, board games, etc. It even has romance options as well and romance related quests which are fun. This game is honestly quite a joy to play if you love a mixture of serious, silliness, and a bit of JRPG elements sprinkled in. This game is a personal favorite of mine.

This game is my personal favorite game of all time. I wasn't even that interested in bullet-hell style of games until I played this game. As soon as I began playing it, I fell in love with it. You can tell how much of a passion project Enter the Gungeon is. There's so many options, so much replayability, subtle story telling, everything just makes you want to constantly do more runs inside the Gungeon. My personal favorite part is just how many things there are in the game to increase replayability. Building the bullet to kill the past, specialized runs like rainbow mode runs, boss rush mode, challenge mode, secret chambers on top of the original five chambers, there is just so much potential to play this game for a long time. I love it when games give me a reason to keep playing, and Gungeon is filled with content where you can always have some goal to achieve when you jump into the game. I can't sing more praise of this game, as it is my personal favorite. If you love bullet hell style games, please give Enter the Gungeon a try.

This game is phenomenal. One of my personal favorite games of all time. I love challenging games personally and Elden Ring was a thrill from start to finish. There's a lot to love about this game, the world is beautiful, the the boss fights are uniquely designed, the wide array or weapons and sorceries to use are extremely fun, it's extremely challenging if you like challenging games like I do. Elden Ring overall has very few low points to it. The main low points can be how the input reading in a lot of bosses is EXTREMELY prominent, some late game bosses are so heavy on the input-reading to where they will literally walk in circles with you waiting for you to move in order to counter-attack you. I've had boss fights where I've literally walked around in a circle for a few minutes without the boss even moving. The other downside is how huge of a difficulty spike the game has in the mid point, early game feels like a breeze if you've been optimizing character stats, but at mid point the enemies and bosses get so powerful they can almost one shot you all the time, to the point where it makes it seem like leveling health isn't even helpful, it's just insurance to not get one shot by some bosses. Even then, some bosses can bring you to near one shot with their combos making vigor leveling seem kind of pointless. That aside, the game has a lot of strengths in every aspect of it.