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I think I'm in one of those ruts where I don't fancy playing anything too demanding on the brain, so I've gone from finishing PWSim2, to trying a game from the publishers of Onechanbara called Full Metal School Girl, to this. FMSG is fun, but it's an endless corridor shooter that wouldn't have felt out of place in the PS2-era, so in an attempt to pivot from that, I've tried this - a game about rolling a ball around environments that wouldn't have LOOKED out of place in the PS2-era. Anyway, this is apparently the first completely new Katamari game since 2011. It doesn't do much to upend the classic gameplay the series is known for, but progression feels a little different to the instalments I've played. For a start, you don't just get access to the next level straight after finishing the previous one. Sometimes you need to find crowns in the levels you've already played, and an arbitrary cumulative amount will give you access to the next level. Putting it blunt, it feels a little (ok, a lot) like artificial padding to extend the length of the game. But it's a game about rolling up shit. Give me the option of how much I want to replay levels; don't force me to do it. I mean, I'll eventually go back and do all the levels, because the platinum just requires finding all the crowns on specific maps, but still. Give me the option, let's not make it a requirement. The other thing that's weird with progression is the way it's set up. You go from era to era - I've explored a basic, modern day set of levels, the wild west, a prehistoric chapter, and now ancient Greece. But you have an era select menu, where the ones you've not unlocked yet appear as question marks. So right now mine appears as something like "Modern/?/?/Wild West/?/?/Ancient Greece/Prehistoric/?" (hopefully that makes sense) I imagine it's to clue you in to the different time periods you'll be traveling to, but I feel like there could have been a better way to communicate this. Especially when I'm trying to figure out the best time period and mission to go to next while I'm trying to figure out which levels need me to find more crowns to even get into, and which ones just need me to go back in and find the crowns. Looks-wise, it's very much PS2 in a super-charming way. It still has jaggy edges, characters are still blocky and don't have much animation. For anyone that liked/s Katamari for the personality, you'll find a lot to love here. It's also got those tanky controls that have always defined the series. Much like the visuals, this is either something you'll love for the level of control you can achieve, or you'll hate, because you can't quite get to grips with the intricacies of movement. I'm somewhere between the two right now, but that's normal for me with this series. I've kinda waffled about one of the dumbest game series that have ever been created, but it's also a genuinely fun game. The fact you have no real peril, the fun stuff you can roll up, the silly ideas and charming script all combine to give me exactly what I'm looking for right now. The short run time is also a bonus with these games, so I'm not complaining there either. Last night I went from playing on the PS5 with the big TV to playing on PS Portal, and I feel like handheld is the way to go with this game. On Steam Deck or Switch I can see it being a blast.

A cosy/creepy puzzle/adventure follow-up to Strange Horticulture. Once again set in a creepy fictional Lake District village, this time you're in a shop dealing in strange occult objects. You're ensconced in your comfy shop as customers come in bringing news of grim goings-on outside, and you examine the objects on your shelves and consult your reference books to give them the right item for their needs. You get clues and messages which lead you to locations in the town on your maps, giving you little bits of story/lore and additional items. They also help you solve puzzles in your shop for more items or additional help in identifying objects. I enjoyed Strange Horticulture, but I like these weird objects more than the plants in that game. As in the previous game there's' a simple pleasure in labelling and organising your stock on the shelves according to whatever system you come up with.

This caught my eye when they first showed it because it's really quite impressive visually despite technically being an indie game, and it was recently on sale, so decided to finally give it a go. Fundamentally this is a top-down stealth game with puzzle elements. You could maybe say it's a bit like a streamlined, made-for-console take on what Desperados is, comparable maybe to BioShock's relation to the immersive sim. And while a certain group of people will probably look at that and handwave it away for being dumbed down, I think it's actually a nicely accessible version of a genre that can traditionally be almost endlessly frustrating. A key element here are extremely generous checkpoints, which is a simple but often ignored solution to the problem of stealth games being inherently trial & error at times. There have been moments here where knowing the path enemies are going to take is necessary to solve the area, which is of course a guessing game on the first try. But it pretty much just sets you back right before that moment if you fail, which keeps the momentum going and doesn't take you out of it with a big game over screen. That's not saying that you're going to fail all the time though, of course – simply due to its perspective you have an inherent advantage over all your enemies and I find it relatively smooth so far without many retries, which helps staying in the flow. It starts off relatively straightforward with sneaking being your only tool, but chapter 2 introduces a non-lethal blowdart you can use to get rid of enemies that are positioned in a way you can't pass. You still need to prepare the shot and hide the body afterwards, so it's not a win button by any means. When I checked the controls at the start it also seems that at some point you're going to play more than just Hannah, the initial protagonist, so it's setting up for a certain amount of complexity moving forward. But going by what I've seen so far, very gentle introducing the feature, too. The blowdart for example was neatly introduced by Hanna explaining it to two other, younger orphans of their group, which I think is a nicely diegetic way of designing a tutorial. The story starts rather slow with your brother going missing after doing something that really rattles the local authorities, but it does some rather interesting world-building on the sidelines during the first two chapters. It hints at an authoritarian state in a sort of early industrialised setting that is currently dealing with a sickness called the 'heartpox' (which slowly reduces your heartbeat until you die, hence the name), from which the protagonist miraculously recovers at the beginning. Cutscenes are rendered cinematically with extremely impressive, but slightly overacted, character models that are just a tier below the absolute best in the industry, again quite impressive for a smaller game. I'm playing this in small chunks of one chapter per setting because I heard it's a bit on the shorter side, but I'm quite impressed so far. It's a very scripted, linear stealth experience, so like mentioned earlier maybe not a good pick for people who do live and die for Desperados or certain immersive sims, but except for its perspective it also does remind me a bit of the tone, tempo and ideas found in the Plague Tale titles, even if it's not as bleak (yet?), at least on the surface.

I swear, if you ever find you need one of those games that can lull you into a state of meditative relaxation, it's this. From the constant "pshhhhhhhhh" of the different washers, to the satisfying "DING!" of a section completed, it all combines to create a fantastic, non-offensive ASMR experience that's super-peaceful. Since I started this last Friday I've already put about 17 hours in. I've cleaned a Dumb and Dumber-inspired Dog Car, an Art Deco house, and a funfair shooting gallery, amongst other areas. It's basically more of the same when compared to the first one, but there are one or two additions that elevate it slightly. First up is the disc-like steamer that makes light work of flat surfaces. Just walk slowly in a straight line and you'll have sparkly surfaces in no time. Living my best Roomba life whenever I use that one. The soap has also been massively improved. You don't need to buy it anymore for a start. Essentially, you spew white stuff all over the level, and cleaning it off again recharges the tank, so you can effectively use it forever. It's possibly the best new addition, and actually makes the soap useful. One sweep with soap, a second sweep with the widest nozzle and you're generally done. A final big addition is the home base. This hub has a map of the county you'll be travelling across to complete different jobs, and it has a big wide open space on the ground floor where you can purchase and place various bits of furniture. I'm not sure if there's a point to this beyond spending your currencies, but it adds an element of personalisation that's kinda fun, I guess. Yeah, not really sure what I think of this bit right now. One big irritant/criticism currently persists from PS1, though. You know how sometimes a surface will have what looks like a ton of dirt left on it but pings anyway, and other times it feels like you're playing 'hunt the pixel' to clear a section? That's still evident here. It's honestly the only thing that takes me out of it at any given time. If you've ever played the first one, you'll know what to expect. It's great fun, and the humour from the original has definitely carried over into this title. I'm really enjoying it. It's the perfect wind-down game after a long-ass day in work.

the new game from Double Fine, and it's a lovely looking game. There's a jerky, clumsy look to the world that adds a bit of character to the lighthouse you play as. The world is colourful, and kind of looks flawless, with some cool effects. It's made using Unreal so there's traversal hitching, and shader stutter, which can last a while, like screen frozen time, and was bad enough that the game crashed on me. Really bad, I wish people would stop using Unreal. It deliberately controls badly for the first few minutes, but I can't say I ever loved how it controls, it's fine, and for some sections quite fun, but I kept losing track of the light's direction. It reminds me a bit of another couple of company's games, Amanita Design, the people that made Botanicula, Machinarium etc, the game has that sort of look. And Hazelight, because it does mix the game up fairly regularly, but probably not often enough. It's about 4-5 hours long, and it changes the gameplay up at least 5 times, which is to its credit I think, but unlike a Hazelight game it still spends too often on them. Particularly towards the end, there's a section that really labours its point, it's not the short, quick punch you dont have time to get bored of, or even realise you don't like It really suffers from a sense of "but why?" in its design. I can forgive it in the plot, because maybe that's just me missing something, but so much of the gameplay/puzzles leave you feeling that way. To give an example, there's a point where you get covered in pink fluff, pollen maybe? You see it happen and you see that it means you can now jump and glide for a while, that's an example of it done well. Pretty much every other time it'll be something like you need to get a gold orb from somewhere to take to a giant thing to put in, which means it will now shine a light that destroys a blockage (you have to do this repeatedly). There's a bit where you have to (I think) carry energy from a plant, to the next one, which for some reason gives you more energy yourself, which you keep doing, then you'll have enough to smash through a barrier. It's just a series of ideas that happen because That said, at least it has ideas, a decent amount of them, and a few of them are quite good. That said, I was struggling to keep my eyes open for the first hour or so, genuinely, granted I don't sleep well so that's on me, but it didn't engage me at all I don't know, it seems ok, I can't believe it's as well received as it has been, but I do think the traditional games media love a bit of double Fine, so it could just be different tastes

Big fan of this so far. If I were to want to be reductive, and I do, it's sort of Breakout meets Vampire Survivors. You play as a character moving up through a lane, enemies drop in on tiles and lanes, and you fire off balls that bounce around and damage the enemies. When enemies die they drop experience, you pick it up and eventually level up, choosing a passive perk or another special ball to throw out. The balls are in 2 types, you baby balls which just deal low damage but come out more regularly, and special balls, which do more damage and have traits like poison, slow, burn etc You level up and gain a stat point, and can level up your perks and balls, which means you can kind of spec towards something. Have lots of things that fire more baby balls, maybe you hold out for the perk that improves their damage, or increases the damage of all balls when they bounce off anything. All of a sudden your weaker stuff is now more regular and doing more damage There's Fusion drops that act like the treasure chests in Vampire Survivors, randomly increasing the level of perks, or allowing you to fuse certain items. My favourites so far are the blizzard (slow and extra damage while frozen from the ice ball, and the area of effect damage from the lightning ball). and the egg sac combines with the laser, where the egg sac spawns baby balls on contact, the laser hits everything on an enemies row on contact; so if it now spawns a bunch of baby balls, all of them fire lasers doing row damage on contact As you progress there's bosses, you can see them coming up on the map. There's an end of level boss, beat that and you get a gear, get enough of them and you unlock the next level. So far the game has been fairly easy, I'm on the 3rd level from a couple of hours play, and have beaten the 1st level with 3 characters. In between stages there's a kind of farming mechanic. I could live without this truth be told, but it does have some gameplay use. You can plant and grow wheat, wood and stone, these are materials you'll need to build things (I'm skipping over some of this). This lets you build the housing that unlocks new characters when you get the blueprint during a run. You can also build totems and things that improve all your characters, so far these have relied on me beating stages, with bonus improvements for each person I beat it with. It's a mechanic that feels a little stuck on, but there is a use to it while its there

Stumbled upon this while playing Ruined King, as mentioned, because I thought the developer went silent for a while. Turns out they didn't, but were focused on a (then) PC-only free-to-play MMORPG called Wayfinders. (Un?)fortunately this didn't go to plan, their publisher closed its doors and they were left with a game that had an overwhelmingly negative response on Steam due to its microtransaction model. But newly free of their publishing shackles, they decided to revamp the whole thing, make it a single-purchase game without any additional DLC and refine the offline component to get it out the door on consoles, too. So much for the Star Wars opening scroll. The developer in question is Airship Syndicate, who people might know for Battlechasers, Darksiders Genesis or the aforementioned Ruined King, but for the first time, this is a fully 3D game with a 3rd person perspective. It's somewhat reminiscent of a couple of things, a bit of Borderlands here, a bit of Destiny there, and if you took it under the microscope you might even find some PSO DNA. In other words it's a class-based action RPG you can play solo or with up to three friends. There's a couple of things it does differently though – for example, only three out of the 8 characters/classes are available at the start, a knight/tank, a gunslinger and a rogue. The remaining five will get unlocked by completing certain missions and you can freely switch between them by that point. So unlike similar games where you grind your way through the entire game with one character, this very much encourages you to play around with different playstyles. As a result, none of them have too deep of a progression system and only three unique abilities plus one Ultimate to their name. That is enough for them to play quite differently though. I started off with the rogue who does the usual rogue stuff of being a nimble, fast attacker who can power herself up to damage enemies while dashing through. The character I'm currently playing is the gladiator (character n° 5) who can charge up her abilities, getting hyped by an invisible crowd in the background, and punch twice as hard when releasing the button, which is rather satisfying to pull off. You can, however, mix and match weapons, so if for some reason you want the gunslinger to attack with a sword or the gladiator to run around with a shotgun, nothing's really stopping you. In an unusual twist, both melee and ranged combat feels quite good, the latter makes up for the lack of blocks and parries by having Gears of War's active reload system to significantly boost the power of the next couple of shots fired after reloading. Progression is where I'm a bit split at the moment but I also haven't fully grasped it yet. There's a progression tree, but it only boosts you passively (y does x % more damage). There's also an affinity menu where you can bolster three different types of styles, which influence the stat bonuses you gain from certain equipment linked to that style. So in other words the real growth here happens through equipment, not unlike some of those other games I mentioned at the beginning. But the interconnection between those affinities and the equipment – which also favours using a set for a bonus – can make it a bit difficult to digest at first. Though at least on Normal, it is quite easy at the beginning, so you don't have to run around with a perfect build to survive right from the get-go. Structurally there's a city that works as a hub, from which you can access the first open area. Sprinkled around that area are small caves and larger dungeons, which are partially randomly generated and where the meat of the game takes place. The dungeons can also be modified before entering, increasing the challenge, but also the reward waiting at the end. I've only seen the first open area so far but according to the map there's three in total, so it's quite a big game even if you plan to only play it solo like myself. But I could see how this could be a real time sink if you have some friends interested in it, with all the modifiers and higher difficulties and such. Particularly as some abilities also effect the entire party – the crowd boasting from the gladiator for example is an AOE buff. Of course it also has a story, but it's here you can tell it started off as an MMO because it all happens in stiff dialogue sequences with text boxes. It's good enough to inject some life into the world but hardly the main focus. You also have a neat little apartment you can decorate at will, if you wish, and a lot of the loot you're going to find are weird tables and beds. I'm definitely enjoying it. Exploring the world is fun, the combat feels good, there's really nothing fundamentally wrong with it I think. It won't be for everyone but for such a small studio it's quite an achievement.

Played a few hours now, it has that special Silent Hill weirdness going on... where everyone you talk to seems off in someway. Considering the setting I probably should play in Japanese with English subs but I kind've hate them so it's English dub all the way... it does the job. I'm playing this with both combat and puzzles set to "story" as the game has multiple endings and, for reasons know only to the dumbass devs, the puzzle difficulty doesn't stack and I know this'll take at least 3 playthroughs to max out... so I'll ramp up the difficulty in NG+. Obviously being on the easiest difficulty I'm capable of tanking a few hits but multiple enemies are still a handful... I got ganked earlier by 3 (sexy) scarecrows. Attacks boil down to light/strong attacks, attack at just the right time and you'll cause more damage, strong attacks cause enemies to be stunned which in turn gives your light attacks more oomph. You also have a sanity system which allows you to focus attacks, this can be depleted and causes damage if you're attacked while using it... this stuff isn't really coming in to play on these difficulties though. It plays well enough but performance isn't without it's faults (on Xbox) there's a hitching thing going on that I'm guessing is the game loading the new areas as it goes... it's not massively intrusive just a little annoying. The game looks nice though and the audio sets the tone nicely. I'll be putting a few hours in over the weekend.

I know it's out in just a few days, but I was looking for something to play and instead of doing like I said and trying Hollow Knight again I wanted to give this another shot, the early access. I've really turned around on it in this session I think, maybe it's due to updates or maybe the quality of the game is a lot better than Hades I, or maybe it's just that I'm better at the sequel. But I think it's really good, something is really clicking here this time. What I think it is that the battle systems are more intricate, cause of the shift towards this style of battle mage gameplay. It has more or less the same systems and mechanics as the first one, but with a stronger emphasis on finding harmony with your combat options I think. Your basic starter is a staff with decent range, you have a cast which binds enemies and you can stack boons on top of that obviously, and you have your specials which tend to be ranged moves, but not always. The cast is hugely useful for kiting enemies and grouping them, which benefits certain AOEs that like clustered enemies but it can also be used by you with certain boons to regenerate mana. On mana, it feels like a much more important mechanic than in Hades 1 I think, if I recall in that game the game didn't just recharge your mana in each room, but I might be wrong on this. In this game, they specifically tell you to spend all your magic in each room, there's a big benefit to speccing builds that regen mana passively or from certain attack combinations and I think this lends to combat feeling less mashy and more skillful, which is a problem I think I had in the last game, it always felt like I was mashing. Here it feels much more like I'm actually playing the game, but that might be just on me not really enjoying the first one. But I think the sequel's witchiness just produces more interesting kits to fight with and makes it feel 20 percent less unga bunga (but still pretty unga, all told) Another thing which makes high mana use important is the 'hex' mechanic, which is the same thing as the super mechanic in the first game but you proc it by spending mana. So if you're holding onto magic and not finding opportunities to use it up a lot, you are throwing away DPS and crowd control There's an absolute shitload of 'reagents' and things that unlock stuff in your home base, and it has the same gift system as before to unlock accessories you level up in your runs. It has some new mechanics like an armour system which buffs your cast speed, or makes you run faster or whatever, but you lose it when you lose your armour. My favourite weapon so far are these fireball staffs that let you play like a zoner, and they have a special which is about crowd control damage. You unlock boons for it that let you zig-zag the fireballs around when you dash around and things like that. If you've played Hades 1 there's not a lot to say, I'm sort of skimming through the dialogue cause you can't turn subtitles off, which means I kinda just read it quickly and move on. I'm not that interested in it, but there's a few exceptions. One thing is that there are way more Homeric inclusions here, characters like Odysseus and others I won't spoil, so it's stuff I'm more familiar with and I enjoy the stylish twist it offers. There's a boss fight in this I cannot spoil but it's the coolest boss fight I've seen in a game in a while, and Hades 1 really only had one good boss fight imo, the last one. Maybe the first one also, the other two were rubbish. So hopefully that's a standard it can keep up. Anyway, surprised it's clicking with me, as a Hades 1 hater. I think I read that your saves carry across to the full game, but if they don't then I'll just treat it as a challenge to push as far as possible with a low level character come release, and maybe I'll actually read the dialogues this time.

Bought this a few days ago and I think this might, maybe, possibly, be a game some other people are interested in. As the name implies you're the owner of a small bookshop (in the form of a trailer you drive around with) and try to make a living in a small coastal town by visiting certain places and selling books. The books are categorised into genres like crime, fantasy, non-fiction etc. and certain areas favour one or the other – for example, if you go to the beach, you should pack a couple more children's books than usual because they're good sellers there (keep in mind this is a game of fiction and does not represent reality). You can also decorate your shop and certain decorations influence people's buying habits. A chair or a dog (don't ask) will make people stay around longer and possibly purchase more, whereas certain items with a theme could result in higher sales of related books, ie. spooky decorations push Stephen King novels and such. So below the cozy fassade this has some very manipulative capitalist energy but ultimately it's all done in a cute and inoffensive manner. The majority of the book sales happen automatically, meaning you see people walk in and out of the trailer and tiny speech bubbles showing what they're buying. But a couple of times per day someone will ask for a recommendation, which is where the slightly more active part of the process begins. Someone might ask for an easy read with few pages, someone might specifically ask for certain themes or time periods. For the most part it's easy enough to find the right one as there's also a bit of leeway, but occasionally you come across one that doesn't make much sense (asking for a happy ending but refusing your recommendation if it doesn't have one for example). Some are also a bit weird, like a fanatic of classic plays being super happy when you recommend Hamlet, as if they'd never heard or read about it. The books are real-life books of course. At first I was a bit disappointed there wasn't a list of what you could stock but ultimately this would just be an incomplete list of, well, any book ever written, so kind of pointless. The way it works is that you buy them pre-owned without any clue what's in the box and only by the time you're out and about and someone wants a recommendation can you actually go through what's on display and make an informed choice. There's a short summary of everything and I've already taken screenshots of a few that sound interesting. It's also not snobbishly discrimating, you can have Shakespeare and Le Guin right next to manga like Sailor Moon or Dragon Ball, which I think helps to make it more believable. I think it's a nice cozy game for this season, nothing too deep but also not mind-numbingly passive, a nice middleground that might even indirectly give you a recommendation here and there. Also looks fine on Switch 2 handheld mode despite being a Switch 1 game, though I suspect native resolution on a Steamdeck for example would fare even better (keep in mind the screenshots look worse than the game because of Switch 2 compression). This was my very first recommendation btw., I think the game is stalking my IP.

Played around 4 or 5 hours of this now (split between yesterday and today) enjoying it a lot, the previews really weren't lying when they said it was Dead Space in all but name and in my opinion that's no bad thing as that's one of my favourite franchises of all time. In tone and feel the game shares a hell of a lot from some the survival horror greats, mainly down to inventory space, lack of ammo and how flimsy you are even though you have a suit of armour on... if you've played any recent third person horror game you'd be right at home here. Saying that the game I'm mostly reminded of when playing is actually Control thanks to the weird environments and random floating junk hanging in the air. Supplies are scavenged in the field or can be made through crafting, so far the game is doing a good job with giving me just enough to get the job done... there's no hording ammunition this early on. Story wise I'm very early so don't really know what's going on, I remember reading the devs saying they'd unwittingly made a game about Covid and given some of the logs I've found and read I'd agree with that whole heartedly... whatever is happening has definitely piqued my interest though so that's good. After the Silent Hill 2 remake my main concern was the combat, I found the shooting in SH2 to be a little too skittish and in some ways this is too... there are upgrades that look like it can help out with that but at the minute, with ammo being as scarce as it is, I'll admit I'm using aim assist a little... hopefully I can get rid of that down the line. So far in terms of offensive I have the starting Pistol and the Shotgun equivalent... both can be charged for more damage with the same amount of ammo used, obviously this is risk and reward as charging takes time allowing the enemies to close the gap. Gas cannisters and red barrels make an appearance (of course) and do exactly what you expect them to with the big difference that your suit is completely fireproof and you can literally stand right next to these things and melee them... you also have a defensive fire attack that explodes outward in a 360 circle... handy for stopping the enemies merge mechanic. The biggest niggle so far (and considering it's a horror game it's a big one) the game hasn't been scary... it has atmosphere in spades but it really isn't scary at all. I've jumped once but that was mainly down to a loud noise coming from nowhere. So after some initial skepticism as to Bloober pulling this off I'm pretty happy with what I've seen so far and I'm hoping I can get it clocked before my travels next Saturday... I'll definitely be smashing some hours in tomorrow.

Started playing this yesterday, was recently on a sale (would have loved to pay full price on release, but without a disc on Xbox, well...). The beginning is all over the place and retroactively made me appreciate just how strong an opening Life is Strange had back in the day. Showed you the tornado as the big climax on the horizon and then immediately grounds you with that wonderful sequence in the school's corridors. Lost Records feels more like a JJ Abrams kind of thing where it has that mystery carrot dangling in front of you but remains so vague for so long you start to wonder if the payoff will be worth it. The story starts off very It-like, in the sense that a group of friends did something when they were teens, then made an oath never to talk about it again but at the beginning of the game one of them contacts the protagonist to meet up and it then moves on from there. It's split between the present and flashbacks in the mid-nineties. In an odd twist, the scenes in the present take place in first person – whether this is a stylistic choice or is paving the way towards a twist involving the protagonist's appearance I don't know yet. Kind of leaning towards the latter, and it certainly adds to the mystery. But no matter the perspective this is a Don't Nod narrative adventure through and through, meaning you slowly walk through slightly stylised but detailed environments, look at objects and have your character monologue about things. In between doing that there's dialogue scenes where you pick answers that influence future narrative beats and relationships. So in that sense very much what you'd expect and, frankly, why I'm here for because I really like the LiS games. What's new is that, Telltale style, there's now a time limit on answers, so saying nothing is an option as well. Dialogue also flows naturally 'around' the timing of your picks, a bit like in Dustborn (which was very popular on here), though not as janky, thankfully. The characters so far are relatively stereotypical, but again, that's kind of what I'm here for. Certainly not unlikeable though, the usual bunch of outcasts and nerds that don't quite fit in. Another big element of this game and one I'm not entirely convinced by yet, is using your camcorder to record footage. It's simultaneously used for story progression, for example by having in-universe interviews with your friends, but also doubles down as the equivalent of the camera from LiS1, so to highlight different collectibles in the area, which are thematically linked. For example, if you film a bunch of posters, signs and other things that belong to a movie rental store, they'll get linked up and Swann (the protagonist) will make a little highlight reel with the clips your recorded. On one side it's a neat little interactive feature that does a good job of capturing the magic a camera had on millennials like us before babies got born holding smartphones in their hands. On the other hand it kind of feels like you need to run around with the camera a lot, which distracts from its native visual style and atmosphere. Which might be some clever kind of meta commentary, possibly. I don't hate it, but I think I preferred the simple nature of Max's camera. It hasn't blown me away as of yet, mostly due to how slow the opening is and how often it shifts between present and past. But at the same time I'm quite hooked as to what's going on and it hints rather subtly at some stuff I'm not going to spoil here that goes beyond what I was expecting (though, in fairness, I haven't seen a single trailer or review for this). It took me around 2 hours yesterday just to get to the part where they show the game's title so it's safe to assume I've only seen what would be considered the prologue.

This is the collection that came out a year or so ago that has both the PS1 games in it. We have a thread for the Wii remake, which I'd completely forgotten about, but that seems to be an actual remake and didn't include the sequel. There's also a PS2 port, which I've played, and we'll get to in a bit, and I think that may have been a remake too. First off, I've played through the first game, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, it's pretty good, and it looks alright all things considered. You couldn't tell looking at it that it was a PS1 game originally. The cutscenes are slow as fuck, there's an option to skip or fast forward them, but a bit of editing wouldn't have been the worst choice, so I've no idea what the plot is because I'm not sitting through all that. The game plays fine, for the most part, the design is pretty simple, early 3d platformer in that it's polygons that you traverse in 2d. You grab enemies and throw them at other enemies and items. Later this is so you can solve puzzles to progress, and these can get tricky, but also use them to double jump. Again, easy enough at first, you're just climbing up to higher platforms, but gets much tougher later. There's a few rough edges, some old fashioned elements with how hit and miss contact can be with enemies, particularly in the background, and it's tougher than something like Kirby which it's most similar too. The bit where it does show it's age is the movement. There's a very digital, block by block feel to how the game handles. There's no overstep to edges, grabs, or the game being generous enough to extend your jump so you make it when you maybe shouldn't quite. It's most noticeable in the more difficult platforming, if you're not precise then it's not happening, but as the world moves in the same stiff pattern as you do it can be a bit maddening. It's where that PS2 version I mentioned comes in. That's the version I've played the most, and I swear the movement is smoother than here. It's that era of Japanese exclusive remakes like the Sega Ages line, so I think it's a full remake of the game, and as such controls a little more fluid. It wouldn't amaze me if that's what the Wii version was based off. Maybe I'm imagining it, but while this is a pretty good version, I'd probably rather play that one

Finished this a few days ago, rather enjoyed it so I thought I'd give it a bit more exposure. From what I can tell it's based on one of those internet properties, as in someone is drawing little comics with the characters and selling merchandise and such. Interesting idea to translate this into a full videogame, but the end result speaks for itself. This follows the template of a very classic JRPG with exploration, puzzles and turn-based combat. You play a new character in this specific universe that gets thrown into a little time-travelling storyline, where you need to visit certain areas and time periods to destroy core nodes of an evil plant that wants to destroy humanity and restore earth to its primordial origins. In that sense it's not subtle with its environmental themes and it kind of makes the antagonist sympathetic in a way, like you sometimes root (pun intended) for Poison Ivy in a Batman comic. Though in this case the enemy isn't some attractive model but rather a weird amalgamation of vines and thorns that can possess other living beings. While you're time-jumping around you're controlling a party of four and dispatching said mutated enemies in turn-based combat. It's a relatively basic, straightforward combat system with four different attack types and therefore four different potential weaknesses on both your end and enemies. A timeline in the upper right corner shows the turn order and it's here where it adds a tiny bit of unique depth to systems, as you can alter that timeline by spending some energy and, for example, move one of your teammates in front of an enemy to maybe get some healing done before they can hit you. I doesn't go much further than that and stays very simple as a result though. There's only two or three bosses where I had to go out of my way to incorporate a proper tactic, like forcing one half of a boss duo to duel on of my characters (by moving their turn to coincide with one of mine) so that they couldn't use their devastating team-combo. But otherwise this doesn't go beyond what your usual Mario RPG would do – which was fine for me, but might be a bit too limited for other people. One thing I enjoyed is that how much it crammed into its relatively short length (16 hours). You visit a ton of different locales – farms, schools, Paris by night –, the storyline does tackle quite a few different subjects and gives every party member breathing room, resulting in a game that feels significantly larger than its playtime suggests. It also doesn't shy away from more dark moments, but portrays them in a very digestible manner through some rather well-written dialogue. While you time-hop around you cross paths with one NPC at different stages of her life, which gives it a very human anchor to mould the storyline around. I do love how very French it feels, too. A lot of games are either very Asian or very American these days, so it's always nice to see something like this pop up and have a French farmer girl make fun of the Parisian high society, or people using Euro as their currency, or just every atom of its design channel classic French/European comic artwork. For a small game it's also very polished, with rather beautiful visuals, nice UI work, really good character portraits, a genuinely great soundtrack. Some of the puzzle designs can seem a bit badly signposted but I ended up getting through without too much trouble. Twice I had a character die in battle but remain at 1HP so I couldn't revive them, which was a bit annoying the second time as it was a boss battle so I kind of had to let them kill myself to retry. But ultimately this is a very accomplished effort all around. I played the Switch version on Switch 2 and it's mostly 60fps, but when I checked its performance on Switch 1 earlier this year it looked kind of rough, so Switch 2 or PC is the way to go here I'd say. (Also, Nintendo has to do something about screenshots on Switch 2. There's no reason for them to get saved in such awful quality.)

A Soulslike from top to bottom, AI Limit adds a female protagonist that you can play dress up with then calls it a day. Honestly, that's a little bit reductive, but this game genuinely plays like My First Dark Souls. You run from area to area, battling with tough enemies along the way before eventually stumbling across a boss who seems to exist for no other reason than to make you question your life choices. To be honest, I reckon I'm about half way through now, and despite a complete lack of originality in concept, gameplay and everything in between, I'm actually mostly enjoying it. There are the occasional jumps from challenging into sheer frustration, but it's mainly my own fault. Whenever I lose focus I end up screwing up repeatedly. Combat is exactly what you expect. Light and heavy attacks, various spells, a couple of different defence strategies. Parry, dodge, defend, roll. All that good stuff. But with a sci-fi edge that leans into post-apocalypse. The looks are... serviceable. Like, you can throw a maid outfit on the player character if you want, but each outfit is tied to different stats and resistances, so it's not all about the titillation. I do like the almost cel-shaded look of the Blader you play as, and I do like the design of enemies, but there's also this filter that makes the whole game look a bit... I dunno, muddy? It's almost like the devs wanted to ape Stellar Blade, but didn't have the balls to go all out like that did. Along the way there are secret quest lines, hidden areas, random things to pick up, and something the game calls Corrupted Bladers - tough enemies that hit hard, fast and can mess up your timing a hell of a lot. Nothing is impossible to beat, but if you let your concentration slip, you can and will be absolutely battered, even by simple enemies. One thing I do really, really like over the SoulsBorne titles I've tried is the change to losing currency. Usually, you'll lose all your cash and have to retrieve it. This game takes a percentage of the currency off you and that's it. Right now, I lose 25% every time I die, but there are accessories you can equip that change this amount, as well as the total amount accumulated. It keeps the risk/reward aspect - a death can bump you back under your next level up amount, after all - but doesn't make it quite as frustrating, and also means you don't just need to bash your head against a boss over and over again to get your souls back. You can also use it tactically. Bump it up enough and you can let yourself get taken down for a quick shortcut back to the nearest branch (this game's bonfires). As someone who REALLY struggles with FromSoft titles and other similar games, the My First Dark Souls comment is really accurate. The fact I've made a modicum of progress, and only occasionally have to switch off because it dips from challenging to frustrating is what's keeping me going right now. For anyone with experience in this genre, I'd say avoid it, unless the style really grabs you. If you're someone who WANTS to get into this kinda game, but isn't up to the difficulty of FromSoft games, I'd say give it a go and see how you get on with it.

Labelled as a stand alone dlc to the Robocop game from a couple of years ago, there's enough to Robocop Unfinished Business that it feels like more than that. Granted you'd hope for a little more variety in a proper sequel, not because the core shooting is bad, just that it's unchanged from Rouge City The plot is kind of The Raid or the more recent Judge Dredd film, in that it's set in a residential tower block and you're kind of working through it. It's actually where the lack of budget shows because you don't really get a sense you're working through a building, it feels a bit circular and unconnected from each level. The story is that someone has stolen Robocops chair thing, they clearly need it for something nefarious so Robocop tracks them down to an OCP owned apartment block. OCP have moved a bunch of people in but it's all a con, even ignoring the mercenaries that have now taken it over, the residents were sold a con and are pretty desperate. The game is still trudging around and shooting everyone. I still think Robocop is a bit too vulnerable all things considered, but it has to have some challenge I suppose. The issue I have is I tend to linger behind cover and try to pick off enemies, rather than wade in like I think you're supposed to. You get a couple of flashbacks to play through, even at least one none Robocop one. There's a couple of new enemies that I've seen so far, and at least one new weapon. It's been a little glitchy so far, although nothing game breaking for me, although it seems to vary with people experiencing worse than me (I was able to hold 6 health items at some point for some reason). It's still fun though, not as good as the main game, but worth a play if you liked that one, and there's a lot of game for the cheaper price

Speaking of RPGs with hard edges I've put 30 hours into this, though it's maybe closer to 25 hours on this attempt. I bought it years ago and found it one of the most baffling games I tried to get into, even though I generally like games with hostile worlds and mechanics. Tried it again the past week and now I'm surprised how much more typical it really is, at least in these initial hours. The background is that it was made by a very very small team over the course of 12 years, I think initially just one dude who had a background in TES modding (which definitely shows here in that it has its skill system, where you learn by doing). What it is is a sort of squad-management open world RPG, with a very amorphous structure, set in a post-technological world where you're given no quarter. It gives you basic tutorials for mechanics, but you have to pick your own objectives and be disciplined about completing them step by step. You don't just follow a questline, you make your own stories although there is a background lore to discover also. You pick a background, I picked wanderer which starts you off in 'the hub' which is this derelict town with destroyed walls and buildings, and a pub. You presumably can build the place back up, but lore documents around the area suggest that it's a regular target of some religious sect or something. So I didn't bother. You can also pick a starter character who's a slave and has to break out of jail, which sounds really interesting. There's an 'easy' one where you start off with a squad already, a sort of Mad Max one where it's like the wanderer but you also have a dog. You can even start off in a camp of cannibals, definitely not where you want to start learning the game cause if someone does manage to eat your arm off, it's gone forever (tho robotic prosthetics exist) This is a screenshot of most of the early hours, when I tried my hand at solo bounty hunting. These guys just left me like that cause they're racists, but other factions are more helpful So after realising that you can't play the game like that, I decided to become a farmer (which is what my character's proficiencies were in anyway, not slicing things with swords). Found some arable land near a hive village where I could grow wheat and grapefruit and turn them into rice, bread and fuel, also set up a small stone mine. Built a base around it and a small shop to sell surplus produce to wandering caravan traders. Spent the income from that on hiring more people from the pubs in nearby cities, but not too many cause it's not a large farm. You can script jobs for your characters with a sort of gambit style system, if they can't do the first job they do the next one and so on, and will go to sleep and eat when they need to and defend each other from weird dinosaurs. So once you figure this out you basically automatically generate resources and money. It's very satisfying when you get a self-sustaining loop going like this But one issue I have is I've totally neglected defense, and am reliant on the nearby town to defend me from threats. Some bandits already tried to extort me, I stabbed the leader in the face and he came back seeking revenge which nearly got hairy, so I need to buff up and get weapons if I don't want to have to pay a protection racket. Also I'm bored of the farming and want to be able to explore beyond this one weird forest I've spent most of the game in, so I have a team of 7 now, 4 labourers and 3 fighters, I had my engineer sneak in the nearby weapon shop to steal some buster swords, and we're going to hire a mercenary on contract for a few days to attempt some harder bounties. Which probably would really cut into the bounty itself if I don't do it fast There's a vid here of the slave background which shows off a really different experience to the one I describe, where it's more top down RPG Metal Gear Solid. The point is you can sort of mould the game into a very different role playing experience if the idea of base building and optimising your farm sounds dreadfully boring

Finally bought a new game for my PC. Sure, it was 37 quid and looks like Skyrim, but that's neither here nor there. I think everyone knows it's a bit of a TES clone, down to most of the controls (at least on Xbox pad) being in the same configuration - Y for jump etc. I'm expecting, over the course of the next 50 hours, to be questing, lock picking, alchemy-ing and, most importantly, collecting flora and fauna for the cooking of. My build will be one handed with shield for parrying, and a side line in conjuration. So, pretty much my favourite TES build. Played an hour. Couldn't be happier. For now, at least.

Got to admit, when I had this recommended to me it raised an eyebrow, it just doesn't look like it's going to be any good. It is, however, great. It's got the same 2d sprites that face you no matter how you move around them that the likes of Doom and Duke Nukem had, but it doesn't play at the pace they did, and nor does it throw enemies at you like you might expect. The plot is that there's been an outbreak, a city has gone in to lockdown, with government death squads slaughtering anyone they see inside the zone. You play as someone who is in the zone, and have to fight your way through the infected, the soldiers, then eventually find out what the real plot is. It's played very tongue in cheek, with Max Payne style digitised comic strip cutscenes It's pretty short, about 2 hours, and it's fairly easy, although I would recommend saving from time to time because you can take a lot of damage quickly and I wouldn't fancy starting the levels from scratch. It's really cheap too, just over £2 in the sale

The actual title doesn't contain Shin Megami Tensei in it, which is probably because it's already stupidly long, but it'd do wonders for brand recognition. Anyway, Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army was a PS2 Devil Summoner game, and this is a remaster / remake of it, somewhere in between because it's definitely upscaled cutscenes and quite possibly game world but they've adjusted the combat and gameplay. Apparently, I've never played the original. The combat is more active than a usual jrpg, kind of like Ni No Kuni. In battles you're locked in the combat area and you, as Raidou, can use light and heavy attacks, shoot enemies to stop them dodging about, and increasingly lob some slowly recharging magic. What makes Raidou unique as a Devil Summoner is that he can summon 2 demons to help him rather than 1. These demons generally act on their own, although you can tell them to cast specific things, and you can tell them to not use magic if you're low on mp The MP system works differently too. Your team all share one bar, and your demons will constantly be using magic ideally, so you really need to recover MP constantly. Fortunately, using your light attack gets you MP back, although it doesn't do as much damage, so you want to alternate between lots of light attacks and a heavy to mix recovery with actual damage. There's a few other moves too, specials that can be triggered at points, and the ability to hide your demons when really powerful attacks are coming Outside of combat the story has been pretty interesting so far. A girl who asked us to kill her then got kidnapped by demons, so we're sorting that out. From what I understand each chapter is it's own thing. You use your demons out of battle too, occasionally to help with the investigation, sometimes just to recover items So far I'm really enjoying it. It's pretty easy, although I suppose how many fights you get in to determines that. You can avoid a lot, but it's probably not a great idea early on while the combat feels fresh, just so you don't end up having to grind for a boss

Haven't found as much time for this yet as I wanted between Elena and Switch 2, unfortunately. But I think I'm 10-15ish hours in so enough to form an early opinion. Bit of backstory, but according to EDGE this is a very loose, semi-spiritual sequel to Blade of Darkness, Mercurysteam's debut title (back when they operated under a different banner still). That game can be seen as the progenitor of the souls-like, even though Fromsoftware perfected the formula years later – a bit like the relationship between kill.switch and Gears of War in other words. I never played Darkness though, didn't look appealing to me back in the day and I've since found out it's ridiculously difficult, so I'll continue to stay clear. Playing Blades of Fire I think it's quite apparent that it does approach the genre from a different angle and outside certain mechanics that have been done to death since Demon's Souls – enemies respawning upon rest – they don't have that much in common ultimately. Combat for one is very much its own thing with every face button assigned to an angle of attack, which is both easy to grasp and also leads to some interesting, spur-of-the-moment combos, like swinging a big hammer around from the left and then swirling it around to either hit the enemy in the head or ramming it into their bodies from below. Holding a button executes a heavy attack, which depending on the weapon type has massive windup but usually kills any normal enemy with one blow. Some enemies are vulnerable to specific weapon types or only at certain regions of their bodies, hence the specific targeting. There's a lot more depth here, of course; some weapons like swords and spears can either be swung or used for piercing attacks, which is a toggle that quickly becomes part of your muscle memory. Defensively you have a dodge roll, block and a parry – more on that later – and the block also generates stamina. So while it does have this second infamous energy gauge, it's not some passive thing but just a bit of micromanagement you have to consider. Overall I think the combat is extremely well executed, feels great to play, really solid and satisfying hit feedback and quite gory too if happen to land a charge attack that kills. One of its biggest USPs and also seemingly a point of contention online is weapon forging. Every weapon you wield has to be forged and the process is a mix of putting together materials and completing a little minigame everyone on the internet seems to hate with a passion. I don't exactly love it either, but it's not that bad – plus you can skip it for weapons of the same type after you have done it once. The minigame itself influences how often you will be able to repair said weapon, because, yes, they deteriorate and can break. Usually not a fan of this mechanic (I never used good weapons in BotW) but as this game is so inherently designed around it it's actually kind of a neat feature. They take a while to break, you can always just forge a carbon copy and in my case I found myself using that opportunity to simply try something new when visiting the forge. Case in point I was wielding a spear for a long time to fight small, short-range enemies and by defeating a lot of them I unlocked the blueprints to forge their dual axes, so when my spear broke I did that and are now messing around with this pseudo-Kratos armament. It won't be for everyone but I rather like this 'loop' – and the forge is a cool place anyway with good music and some very heavy, clanky machinery that's fun to watch. The materials you use also allow you to go really in-depth in how the weapon is going to handle, as you can influence damage dealt, stamina consumption, even the parry window (shown in milliseconds) and more. It's pretty cool but thankfully all very easy to grasp, so while you can really dig into the micromanagement, it's definitely not rocket science. And while we're at it, parry timing, even when you really open up the window through forging, is quite strict. We talked about this feature before but it's not really prevalent here and I rarely go for it as a result – but the payoff is huge, as it's staggering enemies for so long that you can land a fully charged heavy attack even for the slowest weapon type. One aspect I have mixed feelings about is its level design. It's of course a significant improvement over the navigational nightmare that was Lords of Shadow 2, but depending on the location its labyrinthine nature can be a bit overwhelming. There's a fort you get to relatively early in the game, with a bunch of stairs circling multiple centralised halls, and some paths are blocked, so you end up never really knowing what floor you're on and what direction you're moving towards (the map is a simple 2D bird's view). Didn't quite enjoy that part, especially as you also have to protect a – thankfully both in gameplay and lore immortal – NPC. Every other area was quite enjoyable to traverse though, those have been more open-sky, woodland + ruins kind of deals, but free from any markers or guidance, so you have to run around a bit to find your bearings. I'm quite enjoying that, feels refreshingly old-school, so hopefully the fort remains an unlucky exception. There's also a sidekick I haven't mentioned yet because he doesn't have a true gameplay function like, say, Atreus in God of War. Instead he's some sort of in-game explanation as to why your logbook automatically fills with weapon blueprints and lore details. In a nice touch he sketches enemies while you fight, so the drawings in the pause menu become more detailed the more you combat the same enemy type. Other than that he's just there to talk a bit here and there but I'd like to point out that story isn't this game's strong suit, at least early on. It does hint at stuff but not much has happened yet. Visually I think it looks a tad dated, but still quite nice. Bit of a hig-res version of a PS4 game, targeting 60 (but not always getting there). They sometimes fill the screen with particles, like if every forest in the world had just burned down, but other than it's neat-looking and the art direction is strong as usual from the team. Anyway, long story short I think this is pretty cool. It's very AA, it has some faults, but the motivating forging and super satisfying combat are real high points. But it's also a game that demands a certain commitment due to how complex its level design is. I've heard it's pretty big so it'll probably take a while until I can give a final verdict. No photo mode and can't turn off the HUD either, so the screenshots are a bit meh.

Started this after I beat BG1 the other day, on 'core' difficulty which is like the default (no buffs or debuffs to damage or dice rolls, beyond which you naturally get). I've beaten the first dungeon and did two largeish quests in the first area of chapter 2, but have many others in the journal. There's a noticeable step up in detail, not necessarily visually but in that there's a lot more unique voice lines for each character over BG1. Characters tell you their backstories, they do this a lot actually and it's kind of annoying when you're trying to prepare spells and devise a strategy for a difficult room full of annoying snake mages and Minsc is yammering on about his hamster. But you can sort of see the start of modern Bioware here a bit, though it still feels a million miles away from something like Mass Effect 2 or 3 imo, which is where bioware got really good at this I think. The first quest I did after the tutorial dungeon, which was incredible long, was this one where you had to defend a keep of a rich aristocrat's daughter that had been taken over by trolls that required ice and fire attacks to finish them off. So they're reminding you early on about the importance in DnD of preparing spells and equipping arrows, and the baptism of fire which was BG1 and some of its late game fights have made me a bit more smart about this now. These are RTFM games, you have to read what things mean before hitting your head against stuff, like I did at times. And then you have to read again in game when you get a magic scroll, which is full of all this lovely and lore-heavy flavour text about what actually happens when someone makes themselves invisible or throws a massive fireball at something tbh, I struggled with the keep quest cause the game doesn't really tell you what level is appropriate for what quest, but I got over it when my Inquisitor Paladin found a +3 flail which applies Ice, Acid and Fire damage in the same dungeon, so sort of lucky that that is what I selected my +1 proficiency in. Then I devised a strategy which involved throwing Minsc into a room berserked to fight beetles that cast confuse, and spamming doom magic at the main boss in the next room so that my debuffs could hit it more easily, and his saving throws/THAC0 took a hit. THAC0 still sort of spins me sideways, as well as the way in which the UI will say something gives you +1 to your armour class, but actually make the number smaller, cause the way THAC0 works is it's the 20-sided dice roll you must get to hit someone with armour class 0, so if your THAC0 is 14, you must roll 14 to hit 0. If you're trying to hit armour class 6, then you must roll at least 8, if they're -6 then you gotta roll 20. Which you probably won't, so you need some buffs to even hit stuff. It actually took me playing an entire DnD game to even internalise these rules, which are simple but the way they are applied in reverse means they feel like they aren't. I never picked it up in PS:T cause you can skip so much fighting in that game. Not even going to get into what saving throws do. BG3 did away with THAC0 of course Right now, I'm playing two rival factions of the Shadow Thieves against each other, who are at war with some mages or something. I don't even know if I can complete this quest on my Paladin cause Paladin's lose abilities if they fall off the Lawful Good path, so if I can't then I might have to let Yoshimo go (and get shanked, maybe). There are also a million other quests in the capital city of Amn so I'm trying to avoid walking around too much cause they kind of bombard you a bit, compared with BG1. The chapter seems extremely open and I've had to deny some quests that would take me down an evil path, though they sounded interesting. The other quest I did was to defeat an evil gnome in a circus tent who cast illusions on everything, which is where I got hit by this. Solve it and you win maf's new monitor

Picked this up as it was discounted on Steam and I’m feeling very intelligent after playing Blue Prince. I thought there was a thread but I guess not. Anyway, I booted it up to try it out and 90 minutes disappeared very quickly. Artistically, the game is a knockout. The mysterious animal theme is a very nice. Now that I’m thinking about it, the mysterious atmosphere of the game reminds me of Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP, even though they have nothing else in common (I haven’t thought about that game in over 10 years). The subtle visual and sound effects are very well done too. Gameplay wise, it’s kind of like a compact metroidvania with a focus on puzzles.

This game has been undergoing a bit of a renaissance recently cause of the unity fanport and I figure I've played enough that I feel I want to type words at the internet about it. It's a version of the game which fixes tons of bugs with the earlier DOS version and allows you to run it at a high framerate, and in typical TES fashion supports tons and tons of mods which drastically change the experience. Version 1.0 came out just last year. https://www.dfworkshop.net/ It takes place in the kingdoms of High Rock and Hammerfell (the latter I've not seen yet). You're on this quest for Emperor Uriel Septim VII, the same guy who gets murdered in the opening to Oblivion. You're solving a problem for him, something to do with a letter to some queen with some private matters in it, and the ghost of a vengeful king. None of that matters too much cause it's more about navigating this huge unyielding world (larger than Great Britain in its scale). This is a very different Elder Scrolls than the ones after it cause it's this procedurally generated universe, maybe less than 0.1 percent of the world is authored content. So cause of that it means that they can have thousands of towns, but they are all populated by the same looking buildings and NPCs, just laid out differently. Which is a fairly repetitive, but it is designed as a sort of abstract RPG framework rather than an open world game with RPG elements. Like the world is all there, you can spend years of your real life exploring it but it's not the point (and is insane)*. The point is way more on how you build a character to tackle dungeons, and how the different reputation and skill systems in the game interlock to allow you progress through the world's regions, main quest and factions/dungeons. The sort of 'RPG framework' thing comes into play with the character creator, which is the part that impressed me when I first tried and failed to get into it after Morrowind. There's so many skills in this, beyond the ones that later TES games have. You have all that restoration and blades stuff and you also have the cool levitation skills from Morrowind. But then there's 'climbing', which rolls a dice anytime you push against a wall and does a sort of BOTW style climb against it, and you will slip if your stats are bad at it. This has obvious potential for immersive sim solutions in some dungeons and you can use it to climb over the walls of gated towns at night. Which you might want to do cause you will get arrested if you try to camp outside or will get attacked by ghosts if you loiter. There's languages in it, like the Orc language or Dragonish. I don't really know what they do yet. There's things in it like 'ettiquette' and 'streetwise' which do dice-rolls in your interactions with NPCs, which you have to rely on to find directions to the guilds and churches or specific quest NPCs. My speech skills are really low so a significant amount of time is spent trying to extract the most basic of directions from NPCs. Which is pretty grating, but in a sort of immersive way. When I get enough magicka to cast charm it will be way easier I guess. Stuff like faction and regional reputation seems to play a part in this also, which could have the side effect of pushing you to stick to certain regions and make questing more frictionless cause people might have heard of you and be more willing to help you out. The meat of the game is in this questing, whether it's main quests or sidequests for factions or oddjobs or whatever. There's a timing mechanic to them, go to this dungeon, kill this cunt and come back within 28 days. Or go to some guys house in the town a couple days over and kill the tiger in his bedroom (???) and come back in 14 days. The world is not designed to be traveled in real time so you open a map, type in the area they tell you and it will tell you it took you 5 days to get there, or maybe less if you travel 'recklessly' (which seems to mean you will be unrested on arrival). Then when you're in the dungeon, the dungeons are huge, you mainly seem to rely on using the rest mechanic to heal health, fatigue and magic. Which also counts into that timer. So it's about time management and having ways to save that time really help, like the recall spell or restoration magic. I guess potions could help later but I haven't been able to tell how to get them or make them, they seem incredibly rate in this. Also the dungeons can have locked doors which might be blocking your objective, so not having alteration or lockpicking could cause issues. In terms of deep stories and lore there's not a lot there, it's more about this systemic approach to difficult problem solving in a role-playing context, I think. It's a really difficult game and the tutorial dungeon is designed to kick your ass with a combination of enemies and obstacles in a way to make you reconsider your build, or your approach, or just even playing the game at all. I don't know much about this particular youtuber but he was apparently one of the most popular TES content creators and disappeared for ages, anyway he came back with this vid which maybe explains the game a bit where he does a weird challenge run showcasing the game's systems *That hasn't stopped modders from trying to turn it into that kind of game tho, the mods on nexus are really interesting

I think everyone knows what this is and what it's about by now... I've played around with it for three or four hours so far and to be honest I think I'm a little bit in love... Up front, so far I'm pretty bloody awful at dodging and parrying but apart from a couple of (I presume) optional bosses things haven't been too bad and it's not punished me too badly. There's a couple of mechanics that I'm not to sure on, mainly Lune and her "stain" system... she absorbs different coloured stains to power up her spells... but I'm sure it'll fall in to place. There's also something in here that reminds me of Lost Odyssey a whole lot which is nice. It looks lovely after turning off all the usual bullshit such as movie grain and motion blur (seriously do people play games with this stuff on?)... another game that doesn't have hdr though. The voice work is top notch unsurprisingly given the talent involved, music has been wonderful and I'm loving just how somber the whole thing is and given the subject matter I wouldn't want it any other way... can't wait to get my teeth in to this properly with more party members and more combat options.