great puzzler but not my bag

The best Assassin's Creed game ever made? Swordplay in this game is pretty dang fun, as is stealth combat (although it does suffer a bit from the Skyrim did-you-see-that-arrow-its-probably-nothimg problem). The liberation encounters are *very* repetitive and shoehorned, with NPCs telling you about a Mongol encampment they just escaped from somehow on the other side of the island, but I can accept that these are issues with the genre of game and it's just not for me. The bigger problem is difficulty: once you get halfway through the skill tree Jin is basically invincible and encounters stop being interesting. This was "fixed" with the addition of the Lethal mode, which makes sword strikes one-or-two shot kills, and speeds up enemy animations to the point that showdowns, the games only source of resolve, are completely unwinnable. Open combat becomes a dodge roll and kite fest ruining the thrill of close parry and slash swordplay. By the end of this game I regretted that I hadn't just quit earlier. Also the writing is pretty weak, a lot of side quests had me snoozing and some of them were literally just walking and talking.

Tight arcade style combat with a delicious "ability-builder" metagame. Like with similar roguelikes (StS) the real fun in this game is working out game breaking ability combos. In StS as soon as your deck begins to break down you're screwed, but the thoughtful encounter design in this game means you can often pull yourself back from the brink with careful play and resource management. That is, until you reach Hades who will wipe the floor with you if you don't have the right build. What pushes this game into 5 point territory is the art design, writing, and voice acting. Every aspect of the world is so carefully crafted and it all comes together to make a joyful, immersive, hilarious, poignant story of messy family drama. Truly appropriate for the Greek pantheon and truly so much more thoughtful and meaningful than the vast majority of AAA games.

GOAT exploration game. Incredible atmosphere and storytelling, beautiful world design and the best environmental puzzles I've ever seen.

this game is soooo long and the battle system is just... not that interesting? maybe too complicated for me to latch on to

Very solid gameplay and beautiful art style, but unfortunately most of the game is uninteresting visual novel stuff. Too many characters introduced too quickly, too much clicking through buttons that just say "do the thing" and don't present any options. Would have benefited from a tighter loop with more frequent rituals.

Very engrossing exploration and survival horror loop. Clearing Castle Dimitrescu was immensely satisfying but the rest of the game did not live up to that high with less interesting environments and puzzles. Eventually devolves into more of a run and gun game with ridiculous COD style set pieces to finish it off.

Baby's first FromSoft game. Intoxicatingly fair but challenging gameplay. Weird, beautiful world design. Story a little off kilter but that's OK

very engrossing and interesting and sooo satisfying once you get the hang of it. also sooo punishing and mentally taxing, definitely feels like type 2 fun in a way that FromSoft games can't even match