What I felt was the weakest part of the game was the intro and general premise. Silent Hill’s camera system doesn’t not work well in claustrophobic areas with lots of turns, and the beginning mall has so much of it that you just can’t even see where you’re going (in a bad way). This isn’t helped by the fact that it’s basically impossible to shoot your way through the game, which is fine, but having to run past everything where the camera keeps jittering around made me miss still camera positions and the more open areas of the other Silent Hill games. The story was also quite boring since once you realize the surface level shock of Heather being Harry’s adopted kid, there’s really no substance to the story. The Stanley stuff was kind of neat, but just another shock value thing instead of being something interesting. This also didn’t help to make the gameplay worth slogging through. Many of the bosses are quite samey, narrow hallways were always a mess, and every enemy was a damage sponge. There’s also little to no ammo for anything other than bosses, so you’re just going to have to run past everything or face tank damage in narrow hallways where tons of enemies are. These problems are made exponentially worse the higher the difficulty gets, and with how BS all the encounters are, it’s just not worth it to play on Hard. The puzzles are also all bad, especially the Shakespeare one where you need extensive outside knowledge about ONE play writers work just to get past the first puzzle of the game. Aside from those, the atmosphere is even more tense and draining, with the music being a particular standout for making me feel a kind of dread that no other game has gotten close to. The hospital in Silent Hill 2 got close, but that was only one section of the game, not the whole runtime like 3. The sound effects on monsters and even walking are also fantastic at creating the industrial horror vibe that the first game couldn’t quite reach with limited hardware capabilities. A terrifying game as long as there aren’t people talking, explaining things already explained in the first game, or in a boss fight. Lots of great effects work with poor interactivity.

Has some neat ideas like the comeback system with the health, and the presentation is top notch with some great camera work, but the enemies are quite bad with some encounters that just have unblockable damage that seems almost impossible to avoid. The story also doesn’t seem to impart much of anything, and there are some pretty… problematic aspects to the game to put it lightly. Combos are also very repetitive with a magic system that doesn’t encourage experimenting since the most optimal route is to do the biggest moves. Many of the level goals are comically stupid to the point where consistency was totally shattered, but it’s not a huge deal for a beat-em-up focused game. Another flaw with this combat heavy game is long animations with little to no interactivity with the fatalities, which aren’t necessary, but if you’re struggling in an encounter, you’ll need the health and mana resources. Not a bad first move for the series, but it definitely feels like a first step.

Surprisingly unique camera even if I wish you could control it aside from standing still. Maybe having a way to track where you’re facing to make the platforming more enjoyable or something, but I like how it always highlights important bits or has nice angles that just happen while playing and you don’t need to take your hand off the attack or jump buttons. Other than that, the long checkpoints and focus on keeping buffs active as long as possible made up for the simplistic combat and platforming bits. Not nearly as enjoyable as Ghosts N’ Goblins because it needs to keep threats fair for the camera, but it’s a solid little adventure.

Was pleasantly surprised by this sort of 2.5d puzzler. If doesn’t waste your time getting into some challenging stuff, and the extra puzzles that you do with the rooms themselves were really neat. Although I didnt use it much, the hint system gives too much of the surprise away on the puzzles, which sucks cause there are some really cool mechanics that are only used for like 2-3 puzzles and you move on to another cool idea. Seriously, if you try this game, don’t use the hints! You will ruin a lot of the game for yourself. Another unfortunate part of this game is how underwhelming World 8 is. It’s technically a victory lap for all the mechanics, but almost none of the puzzles use them together in interesting ways, making it more trial and error or too easy, rather than really testing your knowledge. It had a great build-up, but tragically bland ending compared to what came before.

Kind of hate the ambush encounters, it’s a little too simple and easy even on the highest difficulty until the last world, and hitscan enemies made it necessary to have healing items, but this was one of the first to ever do it, and it has amazing levels which all feel unique despite the similar assets on every level. Great game!

Oh man, when this game has you blazing around the arena taking quick shots to keep moving, few 3rd person shooters feel as good. The bosses are also very fun, and I kind of wish this game had a boss rush mode because they are way more interesting than the normal encounters. I would say the biggest flaws of this game are that half the encounters are pretty bland, and that melee is SUPER disincentivized thanks to it draining your AR gauge. If anything it should refill it so you can whip around the play space even faster, but as is, you’ll have to slowly chip through enemies increasing health the higher the difficulty gets. It also feels pointless to go for zero damage runs thanks to hitscan weapons on enemies, and the fact that your allies will randomly make things way easier or way harder. Cool game, but there is so much holding back the amazing parts that it’s hard not to be disappointed by what could have been a truly standout action shooter.

I think the main thing holding back this story is the order which things are presented, and how much information is repeated. I know that it’s a mystery and that piecing things together alongside the characters is nice, but many moments of intrigue fall flat thanks to what order we see events in (the introduction of the idea of Beatrice comes to mind). I also understand that important information only being said once could lead to misunderstanding by readers, but the whole point of a mystery story is read closely and think about the meaning of everything you see, so it’s hard to get invested in certain scenes when you already know what they are talking about or have heard it already. The kid characters also weren’t engaging from the start thanks to their immaturity. They may say that it’s weird to be all grown up and miss childhood, but we don't get to see that side of them until all the weird shit is happening. The kids get better, but they were much less interesting compared to the adults and servants. The adults are much better in this regard since they don’t pretend to be nice to each other. Passive aggressive comments are everywhere, some of them are just straight up horrible to each other in front of a group, and they don’t hide their true intentions. Some might find that bad for a mystery, but knowing what everyone knows/thinks is way more engaging since you feel connected to the characters as everything happens. Maybe not everything had to be shown and rather implied, but I still found all of them very interesting anyways. The music is also very good. The visuals aren’t very good, but you’ll be reading for most of the game anyway, so it’s not a lose. It’s a game with a lot of great qualities. The pacing is surprisingly good despite how long this is, new additions to the narrative make sense, the topics explored aren’t particularly unique, but they explore in more interesting ways than you’d expect, and after a certain point, most of the characters are a joy read along with. Great novel, but you’ll have to do a bit more skimming than you’d like to get to the interesting bits where info isn’t repeated and the kids don’t act like kids anymore.

Precise jumps weren’t a great part of this game, but the great use of shadows, ambient noises, and viscous enemy designs/death animations made the game feel like an adventure you had to think and be careful about rather than a glorified walking sim. The amigos were a tonal whiplash, but the darkness coming out to destroy them made things feel dire again into the more action heavy second half. It’s a weird little game, and I think other previous cinematic platformers captured the harshness better, but this one feels a lot better to play moment to moment while still being pretty tense even with generous shortcuts. I know it’s a kids game basically, but it was still pretty interesting, especially the ending which was a very good wrap up.

Pretty impressed that there was a dialogue option for almost everything I could of that I wanted to say. For many it’ll probably be different, but my time with the game had the Narrator constantly using philosophy as the reason to not tell me why I should kill the princess. It was funny the first time, but it got old quick because why would you want to kill someone for no reason. I even took the paths to leave and I was swiftly course corrected on the prescribed story. That alone almost killed my motivation to play since it was now clear my choices didn’t matter within the first 10 minutes. You even lose the ability to resist attacking her if you play a scenario more than once early on, so why should I even bother caring about the decisions? Maybe if there was more of a logical reason to be doing this, it could have worked like in Silent Hill games, but the starting premise was very dull for me. I figured it would eventual turn into a story about learning about your character since everything in the game didn’t seem like it was real (the princess has no character due to how much she changes), but even that fell flat at a certain point. Enjoy the humor for what it is, but this game felt so aimless it was hard to enjoy more than that part of it.

An unfortunately shallow and boring game. Feels like one of the more generic Metroid style games out there. Most of the combat boils down to shallow reaction tests thanks to the parry, the weapons have very little interesting about them to utilize in traversal or combat, enemies don’t require much thought to deal with thanks to generic behavior, and most collectibles/abilities feel like they would have just been better off as innate parts of the Penitent One. Most of what you pick up is also very incremental upgrades rather than any significant addition. About the only enjoyable part of the game is the strange world and nice music, but if you’re fine with a more relaxed pace game, this might be a good fit. Just don’t expect to be blown away by anything or to feel much while playing.

The worst part of the game is how much harder the early game is compared to the late game and mid game, especially if you kill Nemesis early on. After getting the Eagle and First Aid storage, and the extra inventory, the game becomes a standard action affair with little to enjoy because of how plentiful ammo is.

A lot of great additions to characters. Most of the new changes and moves feel like they match the characters playstyle, and it’s more options to press their strengths while still keeping their weaknesses. The system changes are much better though. Holding down back and reacting to overheads is less strong now thanks to that creating much longer blockstun before being able to stand again. However, if you do this successfully, you’ll get full GRD after 6 blocks, and if you call out a fake block string with the new step mechanic, you get some GRD for that (and it’s still fair thanks to being able to Roman cancel someone attempting to this on your offense). Hitting good D blocks also makes the tempo gauge retrigger faster so people aren’t just stuck blocking the same strings mindlessly over and over. The only problem now is that combos are still pretty long to sit through when you get hit, but this game is rock solid everywhere else.

Very tense game. Unlike in the original where it's very easy to run past a lot of encounters, several seem designed around roadblocking you until you find more firepower. Aside from the end of game, the resource balancing is top-notch, and you have to get good at juking zombies and stunning some that aren't worth killing. Camera angles are also much more interesting all the way to the end of the game. The first licker encounter is genuinely perfect and there are several other fun tricks like the spiders, highlighting ambushes with dogs, the mirror room with the licker jumpscare, I can go on and on. The cherry on top is the second campaign where you can choose what Claire can get in her survival horror. The biggest issues (similar to Metroid) are that the better you get, the more time is spent watching doors opening and closing. The game is also so much easier once you know where all the items are that the magic is gone. Still a great game!

Biggest issue is that half the levels aren’t really worth playing. I understand the premise of the game is pretty weird even for puzzle games, but most of the levels were really easy and were only interesting cause of the visuals. This game also commits the cardinal sin of puzzle games where you have to wait around a lot to see how your people will react to the commands or enemies in their path. This does encourage thinking through every input to not waste time, but only on the time stop ones where you have to start the sequence to let the humans go (which were all far and away the best puzzles in the game). Everything else you could just coast through without really understanding what you did, or just break the puzzles without having a clean looping solution, which made one of the biggest appeals of the end puzzle screen kind of feel pointless on many stages. I also kind of wish they took the Can of Wormholes approach where they use the very generous hint system so they can make every level extremely challenging to compensate. The ending also doesn't hit as hard of humans becoming one because this is a solo experience. Aside from the nice level editor, you end up treating humans as tools first and foremost rather than beings to be taken care of or to work with.

For such a fast paced fighting game, there isn't much done to make opening up your opponents feel very satisfying when they have so few defensive tools to stop the near infinite amount of mixups that the player in advantage can annihilate opponents with, and then further press with resets that are even harder to stop since you will have even less options from being in hit stun. Its got a lot of unique characters, and is still the best team fighter out there right now, but if you're getting hit, there isn't much to think about. This problem is made much worse by how fast some moves come out, namely overheads which are usually supposed to be slow since if you hit them, you get a combo on someone blocking low, but since almost every grab leads into combos, there's little risk in going for any of the insane mix options you have, especially since instant aerial overheads that can easily crossup are so common amongst the cast. Ms. Fortune especially. Snowballing is just way to prevalent, and its seems the only character you kind of have to respect in neutral is Big Band since his moves are so big and safe.

For Hard Mode, missing an attack and dying to a crit on the first enemy had me mentally checked out of the combat. It’s not unique to this game, but it’s actually insane how much luck plays a role in the fights. Sometimes you crit the boss a bunch and get stuns, sometimes you get crit a bunch or they are just go first and snowball before you can do anything. It’s nice that you can counter these things with debuffs and weaknesses, but many late game enemies rely on using expel or death spells to press turns, which are less than accurate to put it lightly. This means the best strategy is investing into mana regen for the insanely long dungeons and boss fights, otherwise you won’t be able to go through their giant health pools and enemy encounters. Many of the random encounters while backtracking are also wastes of time where you just one shot them and there was no point in even having it. The fights end faster than many games, but Earthbound let you skip weak encounters altogether, so I don’t see why something similar couldn’t have been put here from the start to make backtracking bearable. The dude in the Amala Labyrinth helps, but it’s pretty inconsistent. While exploring a new area, encounters are engaging though, even though I had the same team for half the game because they randomly got OP abilities and covered each others weaknesses (if you’re curious, the team was physical Demi-Fiend, Healing/Force Sarasvati with mana regen, Force/Death/Ice/Debuffs Incubus with mana regen, and Elec/Buffs/Healing Kikuri-Hime. Later on I got a similarly OP team who could just skip most enemy turns thanks to resisting death and physical, and full teams heals while being able to regen mana). The visuals and music especially are pretty good, no complaints. The story was pretty bare bones throughout, but it was at least propped up by interesting settings and nice scenery. The characters weren't real people and were instead walking philosophies, which I didn't mind, but it was really weird especially for the teenagers. The other mechanics are pretty cool like how you basically need to fuse demons even if you really like a party member. It’s a cruel game, and that system really emphasizes that part of it. I unfortunately had an OP party for most of the game just by sheer chance, but I guess that’s part of the chaos, some people get insanely lucky, some don’t. I also really enjoy how you at least have to be thinking about how you’ll construct a party for boss fights since grinding levels is a huge waste of time, and there really are a staggering amount of bosses to think through. Grinding can let you get more powerful demons earlier through fusions, but that won’t help much if you don’t find a party member who can help on a boss or at least not be a detriment. The bosses overall are pretty solid since they rely more on unique parts of the combat rather than being a reskinned damage check the whole game. Things like figuring out how to lower their evasion to even be able to hit them, cycling to Demi-fiend when their weakness opens for maximum damage, etc. Dante is also a really fun part of the game even if it doesn’t make much, if any sense why he’s here. Nocturne has its insanely frustrating moments, but once you get past the rng check of matador with accuracy boosting abilities, its not too bad and this is one of the better "traditional" jrpg's out there.

Pretty fun to move around in, but the fact that momentum is ground to a halt almost every ten seconds or less is a real buzz kill for wanting to practice levels and get better times (which isn’t even including some unskippable cutscenes). The scoring system also doesn’t incentivize true mastery by taking no damage, which was a really surprising omission. Not picking up every little topping makes sense cause the focus definitely seems to be on speed which is why the constant starting and stopping felt so jarring. I think what could have made things way better is if there was a way to keep the dash going for the whole level, even if that meant cutting out a few levels which aren’t very interesting anyways. Still fun, but if you like this, you’ll enjoy Dustforce way more. As a point of praise, the ice level with the Screw Attack gimmick was the far and away the best level. Played to the games strengths and had the most interesting second lap. Really felt focused on speed rather than really basic jumping.

Sad this game wasn’t very difficult, even on pain mode. It also doesn’t seem to want to take itself very seriously (until the last moments) even during the scary moments (the blind guy right after the Rick beating made me not want to keep playing). I have a hard time getting immersed when it just seems to want to joke around with its setting even though it also wants to be a harrowing experience with a few of its moments and interactions. I think for the combat to be better, a feature of Brad dying in combat being an instant game over to make the horrible things you can do more appealing to go for would have gone a long way. As it is now, it’s a neat experience with a few well used interactive bits, but not much special unless you’ve never seen a traumatic family story.