{"user":"nil","url":"https://nil.moe/profile/nil","generatedAt":"2026-09-16T05:13:39.040Z","lists":[{"type":"games","title":"Video Games","count":1065,"entries":[{"id":"322682678652733004","title":"Hollow Knight: Silksong","status":"Playing","score":8,"releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":3060,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["Team Cherry"],"publishers":["Team Cherry"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2025-12-22","updatedDate":"2026-04-27","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Writing.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n+ Mantling.\n+ Downward strike is angled.\n+ Healing time window is generally more forgiving with more opportunities in a boss fight. Combined with the ability to heal mid-air, you can uniquely use heals as a way to dodge certain attacks. Heals a bulk of 3 instead of one at a time.\n+ Glide.\n+ Sprint and related sprint jump and sprint attack animations.\n+ Crests change the whole moveset.\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\nMore vibrant and contrasted colors. A bit more artsy in its direction overall.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Map reading in game.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The run back to Last Judge fight.\n+ No convenient way to track which missing Mask Shards, Spool Fragments, and X that you've yet to collect. You either have to remember or manually track this (e.g., [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/HollowKnight/comments/1nlsdwa/any_easy_way_to_find_remaining_mask_shards_spool/ngdjaq1)).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://hollowknight.wiki\n+ https://hollowknight.wiki/w/Items_(Silksong)#Upgrades\n+ https://hollowknight.wiki/w/Areas_(Silksong)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/hollow-knight-silksong"},{"id":"322682678652801612","title":"Baldur's Gate III","status":"Playing","releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":2880,"platforms":["PC","Mac","Stadia"],"studios":["Larian Studios"],"publishers":["Larian Studios"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Tactical","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2024-08-18","updatedDate":"2025-08-17","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\nChanges from DOS 2:\n\n+ D&D 5e ruleset with some changes. Tactical combat is different, particularly in no longer a need for magical or physical armor to deplete.\n+ Class design. In both DOS1 and DOS2, you often select spells and abilities, particularly benefiting from low-level abilities across categories. BG3 has a tighter class focus, both in combat and in impacting dialogue.\n+ Dialogue features higher quality writing, full voice acting, and cutscenes.\n+ Level designs have more verticality and options to approach an event (for example, 3 ways to enter the underdark).\n\nOther mechanics:\n\n+ I love the dice rolling.\n+ Inspiration.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Multiplayer support, both online and local splitscreen coop.\n+ You can save during dialogue. Especially helpful if you forget to save before an important dialogue encounter and want to try out different reactions.\n+ Characters all gain XP at the same rate. Makes it easy to party swap.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ All the consumables: scrolls, potions, elixirs, poisons, arrows, bombs, soul coins. It's typical DND and RPGs. [I just never use them.](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/19790p7/does_anyone_actually_use_soul_coins_or_am_i_just)\n+ [You can't change the keybind for highlighting interactable objects to be toggle instead of hold](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/15itiqa/make_the_loot_highlight_a_toggle). I greatly prefer toggle given how often you need to use this key as you explore. Fortunately, there's a [mod](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/15mibdu/mod_request_make_highlight_interactables_into_a).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [BG3 Wiki](https://bg3.wiki)\n+ [Forgotten Realms Wiki](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com)\n+ https://mapgenie.io/baldurs-gate-3\n+ [Locations by Recomended lvl](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3131254905)\n+ [r/baldursgate3](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3)\n+ [Reddit: List of time-sensitive quests](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/15q1o77/list_of_time_sensitive_quests)\n+ [Reddit: Companion story quality tiers.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1f7798m/one_year_later_larian_reflects_on_baldurs_gate_3s/ll5nwkf)\n\nNotable settings I use are `--skip-launcher` and karmic dice turned off.\n\n__Miscellaneous.__\n\n+ Generally, short rest after every encounter if hurt or used resources (and never really aiming to save them). Long rest after 3-4 encounters, whenever out of resources. There's plenty of food for long rests, and partial rests are free.\n\n__Custom character vs origin character.__\nFor CRPGs in general, [I prefer a custom character as your main in a first playthrough](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/17bq9yh/what_is_your_opinion_on_playing_an_origin_vs_a). It is the tradition.\n\nIn BG3, the custom character's default name is Tav. Unlike Divinity where I prefer origin characters, BG3 custom characters feature unique story/dialogue. However, the protagonist is silent so you miss out on the origin character's voice acting, and origin characters have alternative unique story/dialogue.\n\nUnique to BG3, Dark Urge (also known as Durge in online discussion) is a middleground option. [Durge is a custom character but with an established origin unlike the standard custom character's blank slate.](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/1apc8u0/do_you_guys_prefer_playing_tav_or_durge) You never experience Durge as a companion.\n\n__Party composition.__\n\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/15gqw7y/party_composition_a_deep_dive_into_bg3_character\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/15fu7ul/poll_results_the_popular_pcs_and_companions\n\ntodos on future playthroughs\n+ [Tactician difficulty](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Difficulty)\n+ [Honour mode](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Difficulty) has some special encounters\n\n### Playthrough 1: 2-player local coop (2024-08-18)\n\nI played coop sessions with Marisa. We only got to the beginning of Act 1.\n\n__Builds.__\n+ We chose origin characters: Karlach for Marisa, Gale for Dustin.\n+ Karlach. [8 Berserker Barbarian / 4 Thief Rogue](https://eip.gg/bg3/build-planner/?buildId=cm94l7jtb16g9m73vtfkkrdby). Melee DPS.\n+ Gale. [10 Evocation Wizard / 2 Wild Magic Sorcerer](https://eip.gg/bg3/build-planner/?buildId=cm94l63om16g8m73vcl36y9x0). Ranged DPS.\n+ Astarion. [Monk Open Hand 8 / Rogue Thief 4](https://eip.gg/bg3/build-planner/?buildId=cm94lq5qq16gjm73vo5s4v1g4). Melee DPS.\n+ Wyll. [Warlock 2 / Bard Lore 10](https://eip.gg/bg3/build-planner/?buildId=cm94lsmjb16gkm73vawq91b8w). Ranged DPS / Utility. TODO: Decide on Sword vs Lore vs etc.\n\n### Playthrough 2: Single player (2025-03-30)\n\n__Builds.__\n+ Durge. [12 Storm Sorcerer](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/179egyk/the_ultimate_allpurpose_damage_caster_optimal). Ranged DPS.\n  + Serves as my party face with high CHA and Persuasion / Insight / Intimidation / Deception / Performance / Animal Handling skills.\n  + I chose the class to complement my top 3 companion choices.\n  + Durge is my party face with highest CHA.\n+ Lae’zel. [12 Battle Master Fighter](https://eip.gg/bg3/build-planner/?buildId=cm94l1pyu16g5m73vn7ybb416). Melee DPS.\n  + Karlach is more offensive-heavy, and I prefer that in CRPGs as the best defense tends to be the best offense to minimize enemy turns. However, choosing Lae’zel for variety.\n+ Astarion. [5 Gloomstalker Ranger / 7 Assassin Rogue](https://eip.gg/bg3/build-planner/?buildId=cm8vwz1rg13bvm73vaa3f7hom). Ranged DPS.\n+ Shadowheart. [12 Light Cleric](https://eip.gg/bg3/build-planner/?buildId=cm94l4j7f16g6m73vv3rh80f9). Utility / Ranged DPS.\n\nBuilds for my non-main companions:\n\n+ Wyll. [7 Devotion Paladin / 5 Blade Warlock](https://eip.gg/bg3/build-planner/?buildId=cm9547vyu16nem73v9bmrp3b9)\n\nResources\n+ [r/bg3builds](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds)\n+ [Reddit: Fairly Optimized and Lore-Thematic Builds for all 10 Companion Characters](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/1e44enb/fairly_optimized_and_lorethematic_builds_for_all)\n+ [Reddit: All Companions' Builds & Gear](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/1bld5x0/all_companions_builds_gear_a_guide)\n\nopen tabs atm\n+ https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Act_One#Underdark\n+ https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Underdark\n+ all the build pages","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/baldurs-gate-3"},{"id":"322682678652767820","title":"Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time","status":"Playing","releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Toys for Bob"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Platform"],"startedDate":"2026-08-09","updatedDate":"2026-08-22","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Writing.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/crash-bandicoot-4-its-about-time"},{"id":"51b0e57c-d52a-4319-83b4-26458749ec29","title":"Hades II","status":"Playing","releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":2220,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Supergiant Games"],"publishers":["Supergiant Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2025-11-08","updatedDate":"2025-11-09","notes":"I completed the tutorial area on 2025-11-08 and got bored of the game. I knew exactly what I was going to get into.\n\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/HadesTheGame/comments/1nr0tmr/its_here_my_hades_2_big_build_and_combat_guide","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/hades-ii"},{"id":"8ebf1268-35d1-49a8-a9ed-2ca53a2ba689","title":"Pathologic 2","status":"Playing","releaseYear":2019,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Ice-Pick Lodge"],"publishers":["tinyBuild"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2026-08-22","updatedDate":"2026-08-22","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Writing.__\nLove the symbolic writing.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\nDrenched in atmosphere. Janky graphics and gameplay. But still clearly auteristic.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Time pauses during dialogue and menus.\n+ You have to knock to enter buildings.\n+ Quests/things to do are a web rather than a simple list.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Lines aren't voiced.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pathologic-2"},{"id":"322682678652495436","title":"Dark Souls","originalTitle":"ダークソウル","status":"Completed","score":10,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":2550,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","PC","X360","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["FromSoftware"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment","Namco Bandai Games","Bandai"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2018-11-21","completedDate":"2018-11-26","updatedDate":"2023-09-07","notes":"Dark Souls stands out most in its minimalist story driven by visuals, glorious orchestral and choral soundtrack, and environment; and combined with excellent, unforgiving combat mechanics. Playing this game from bonfire to bonfire is like playing a speedrun. You have to complete every encounter just right. Any mistake and you start over. I like this level of difficulty because it puts the fault on the user---deaths are (usually) a player's fault, and you learn from deaths and improve in the game through knowledge rather than artificial means like stat scaling. This knowledge comprises map and enemy spawn points; enemy movesets; and experimenting with ways of handling enemies and various encounters.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I've never seen a game be so realistic with its health, and focus on equipment load and individual weapon styles each with its own set of moves, weight, reach, and damage rating. Weak attacks, strong attacks, blocks, kicks, parries and riposte, rolls, and jumps---all of which use endurance. For example, you have to be precise with positioning. You often fight in narrow corridors where long weapons and swinging attacks are blocked by the walls. You need to either position yourself so your swing will not hit terrain or you must use a thrusting weapon.\n\nDark Souls' combat pacing is slow. It's better suited to the sword-and-shield mechanic of timing blocks while recovering endurance and attacking (compare, e.g., to the Dark Souls 3's R1 spam and dodge meta).\n\nExploration is perfected in this game. Unlike open-world RPGs, Dark Souls encourages players to explore every crevice in an area, with the feeling that the area is hand-designed and with missable loot. This is as opposed to the AAA philosophy of designing a generic area filled with a fixed set of assets (side quests, collectibles, enemies).\n\n[Level design is masterful](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ9_RJ2EPo0). Difficulty in the game is not just the enemy AI/moveset but also the challenging levels that you fight them under. For example, my favorite zones are Undead Burg, Sen's Fortress, and upper Blighttown. They have a fun mix of enemies, interesting battle scenarios, great setting environments, and amazing lighting. My least favorite may be Lost Izalith, Crystal Cave, and Great Hollow. These are monotonous in enemies, lack interesting variety in settings (even though there's so much potential with the theme, and aesthetically they're still beautiful as with all of Dark Souls' areas).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The game's lighting is one of its great environmental cues. It's used for atmosphere, camoflauging enemies, highlighting precarious terrain. I love the bestiarity and variety of zones, including enemies that were previously bosses now arising as minions in higher-level zones. The only enemy I didn't like was the Crystal variety which simply reminded me of palette swaps from classic JRPGs. It's a cheap way to make new enemies. Same especially goes for Asylum Demon, Stray Demon, and Demon Firesage who are all supposed to be unique bosses. Game would feel higher quality just omitting the latter two altogether. Lost Izalith is a clear indicator of the most rushed state of Dark Souls development with only 3 monster types in the whole area, and boring terrain.\n\nThe setting variety is \"video gamey\" similar to Ocarina of Time. They're artificially constructed in environment pathing and strangely diverse including ruins, fortresses, demon ruins, and catacombs. Demon's Souls does better at a chilling atmosphere by making the settings feel like they're real places.\n\n__Replayability.__ Dark Souls is one of the most replayable single player games of all time. This is because of several key features:\n\n1. New build. So many viable playstyles, each with different gameplay experiences. Attribute-wise, you can choose pure STR, DEX, INT, FAITH, Pyromancy, and any hybrid inbetween (e.g., STR/DEX quality, STR/FAITH paladin). Weapon-wise, you can choose two-hand vs sword-and-shield vs parry. Armor-wise, you can choose light (emphasizing movement speed and fast rolls) vs medium vs heavy armor (emphasizing armor and poise).\n2. Path progression through the game. Its metroidvania design lets you explore in different sequence orders.\n3. New game plus (and its scaling) continues indefinitely until New Game Plus 7. I like it just as I like WoW's Mythic Dungeons and Diablo III's Rifts. It keeps the difficulties as high as possible until a point where things start to plateau and it really just becomes a numbers game (you need X level for X stats to compensate for the newly scaled Y-stat enemies). I only wish at the end of a game, you had the option to stay at the current level, or even chose among a selection of levels (e.g., all up to the ones you have been playing, or +1.) This lets you constantly challenge, e.g., speedruns at a given level for competitive play.\n3. Multiplayer with duels, invasions, and coop. The game does not systematically support online play very well. You have to play as a twink, i.e., cap your level just to find the right playerbase. There is no real matchmaking. There is no ladder, and no support beyond 1v1s. The addition in DLC is still not feature-filled.\n\n__Controller.__ This game is clearly designed with a controller in mind. The attack vs defend buttons, with strong/weak and defend/parry are naturally bimodal and segmented on a controller. The weapon toggling with the D-pad is way more intuitive than (shift+)forward/reverse scroll options on a mouse. I played all of the game with keyboard and mouse until the endgame when I was gifted a controller by Danny. The only major differences in Remastered is that with a controller, you can parry without having your shield up. This is crucial for saving a few frames to not have to time \"put up shield -> parry\" as well as for enemies that will kick you if you just have your shield up in preparation for parrying. The one benefit of keyboard and mouse is that you can pan around the screen while sprinting. (Sprinting and movement is spacebar + WASD which you can do on your left hand; panning is with your mouse on the right hand.) This is only useful in battle when you sprint and want to pan around to a corner to see if there's an ambush. Similarly, with a controller, you cannot continue sprinting and auto-target; this is useful for sprinting to an enemy with ranged attacks\n\n__Noteworthy memories:__\n\n+ Feeling claustrophobic in the Catacombs while I wander aimlessly into the tombs. As I kill Skeletons, they immediately respawn and they increase in number as I search frantically room by room for the Mage.\n+ Constantly dying to the Skeleton dogs, and especially the 3 dogs in a row with the fourth and one Skeleton King near the bonfire on the way to Nito.\n+ Playing through all of Sen's Fortress with Drake Sword and no ranged.\n+ Going death after death against Artorias. I eventually learned his entire moveset and could predict whether he would do a forward lunging, horizontal, and timing my rolls to get off hits. Boy that was a tough and fun fight.\n+ Siegmeyer saying \"Hmmmmm\".\n+ Crestfallen warrior's quotes.\n+ The upbeatedness and hollowed insanity that you experience with the variety of NPCs: Crestfallen warrior, Solaire, Siegmeyer, Reah, Big Hat Logan.\n+ The backstabbing and NPC invasions with Captain Kirk, Lautrec, Marvellous Chester, Patches the Hyena.\n+ The run back to Bed of Chaos. Fuck that. Crystal Cave also gets pretty close.\n+ Great Hollow. Second worst area in the game due to tedious platforming and slow pacing, second only to Izalith.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ No pause.\n+ No difficulties. All players know exactly how it feels to defeat a boss or an area.\n+ Bonfires as save states.\n+ Universal economy of souls for both currency and leveling up.\n+ Warp ability only after roughly midgame status; and to select zones so you still have to traverse the world to reach the thicket of zones.\n+ No map or GPS, so you really have to remember your orientation with respect to, e.g., the bonfire so you can pick up your corpse's souls if you die. I like this because it's both realistic to dungeon exploration and is one less feature to have to monitor.\n+ Heals are not instant-cast.\n+ Lack of a billion things to pick up from corpses only to sell to a vendor for gold. This is just unnecessary in an RPG. I also liked the idea of Souls as currency, which seems more plausible to get from an enemy kill than Gold as in most RPGs.\n+ Minimalist tutorial.\n+ Single game state. No save options aside from lighting Bonfire. No load options except the one. There are a bunch of character slots (however many times you start a new game) but they are all tied to the same game state.\n+ Armor arrives at a set, often in chests that hand you the full set. This makes it very easy to choose armor by simply uniformly selecting a set that fits your equip load. I love this simplicity and aesthetic.\n+ The combo of parry -> two-hand -> take step in -> riposte. Executing that feels so good.\n+ Crystal Lizards respawn at bonfires or reloading the game. Fortunately one of these is always possible in all Soulsborne games.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Online play with limited coop, invasions, bloodstains and messages. I like the spirit of the idea. But it also seems like Dark Souls is better off experienced as a true single player game. It's not a very good game for playing, e.g., coop throughout with a friend or through various short-burst games. However, it is an interesting way to tie players around the world together in a primarily single-player game.\n+ Lack of inventory weight, where movement and roll speed is based instead on equip load. I can see pros and cons for this, e.g., pros for inventory weight being realism and preparation during an adventure. Cons being needless management and an unnecessary level of complexity.\n+ The hilarity of ragdoll physics, i.e., corpses just flail around after the enemy is dead.\n+ Somehow I was fully expecting the final boss fight to be completely decrepit. That it would be an old man who thinks he's all powerful but is too slow and dies in a few hits. Funnily enough, that's the approach they took in Demon Souls.\n+ I wish this game allowed you to sneak in on certain enemies that weren't facing you. Seems very natural to the dungeon crawler and lets one play the stealth fantasy out. (It actually turns out you can go stealth; but you do need the specific ring combo of Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring and Ring of Fog. This is nonviable as most enemies still see you as they're front-facing. And as a default, you lose benefits of two ring slots for all those enemies.)\n+ Invincibility frames, e.g., during ripostes and backstabs. This makes these actions viable during combat with multiple enemies. Speaking for realism, there's no reason you should use these in a multiple enemy fight.\n\n__Details that don't like:__\n\n+ Opaque NPC quest progression. It's very easy to ruin progression. You can absolve sin if you accidentally hit an NPC (e.g., I accidentally hit Siegmeyer during the Izalith encounter). However, if you accidentally make the wrong response or do the wrong sequencing you can fail a questline.\n+ Occasionally long runs all the way back to a boss. Fortunately, you can [save scum to mitigate this.](https://steamcommunity.com/app/570940/discussions/0/1696049513762633073)\n+ Curses. Half-HP is fine, but the fact that you have to run all the way back to the church is just tedious. Similarly, the limited amount of Transient Curses to make it through New Londo Ruins. I use Cheat Engine to mitigate this.\n+ No respec. You must commit to your build early on, locking yourself from many weapons. Fortunately, you can use Cheat Engine to mitigate this.\n+ Because of the limited supply for upgrades (and the somewhat big commit to upgrade an item to +10 or +15 for viability mid and endgame, the game requires you to really commit to one weapon, two at most, within a new game playthrough. This limits experimentation. Fortunately, you can use Cheat Engine to mitigate this.\n+ Killing Gwyn automatically starts the new game. This means you can't keep a game state at the end of the game while also having completed all of it.\n+ Tools for managing your massive inventory.\n+ Multiple enemy targeting system. You must toggle between the single-targeting system and no target to control movement/aim.\n+ No way to practice bosses after beating them. Fortunately, you can back up saves next to fog doors to mitigate this.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wikidot](https://darksouls.wikidot.com), [Souls lore Wikidot](http://soulslore.wikidot.com)\n  + Contrary to popular belief, [joining another covenant does not actually count as sin.](https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls/comments/18gwxe/does_breaking_any_of_the_covenants_ever_qualify) \"Betrayal\" is only certain events or attacking an NPC. The only penalty for leaving a covenant, by any means, is if you have ranked up in the covenant, then your contributions are halved. [Wikidot](http://darksouls.wikidot.com/covenants) is correct and fextralife is wrong.\n+ [MugenMonkey's character planner](https://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls), [DEX Guide for Dummies](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=353066256), [STR Guide for Dummies](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=357745819)\n+ [Iron Pineapple](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC477Kvszl9JivqOxN1dFgPQ)\n+ [Cheat Sheet](https://smcnabb.github.io/dark-souls-cheat-sheet). I always struggle with balancing completionism via walkthroughs and exploring by yourself. Most games are inttended for the latter experience, e.g., Dark Souls has surprises via ambushes, enemy weaknesses, and boss tactics. On the other hand, Dark Souls features permanently missable items, NPC progression, and invsaions. Checklists are the best middleground. Instead of explicit directions, they outline items in an area and still require exploration to find them. They also give warnings about any permanent missables.\n+ [Maps](https://darksouls.wiki.fextralife.com/maps)\n+ [Cheat Engine Table](https://fearlessrevolution.com/viewtopic.php?t=6856). As quality-of-life, Cheat Engine is essential to spawn items that are missable or require farming, respec, and infinite upgrade materials that would otherwise be limited.\n\nI played the Dark Souls: Remastered version on PC.\n\nMy first playthrough involved 62 hours. I played a DEX build, where my playstyle involved moving to the enemy's back while dodging or blocking their attacks and then backstabbing. Sword (Uchigatana) and shield (Grass shield) were my weapon of choice in addition to the Black Bow of Pharis for the occasional ranged attack for sniping. If positioning is a concern, I parry and riposte.\n\n+ __Starting class.__ Wanderer.\n+ __Starting item.__ Pendant (which does nothing) as Miyazaki himself recommended it or nothing as the best RPG element.\n\nMy zone progression followed [Fextralife](https://darksouls.wiki.fextralife.com/Walkthroughs). This was Northern Undead Asylum -> Firelink Shrine -> Undead Burg -> Undead Parish -> Depths -> Blighttown -> Sen's Fortress -> Anor Londo -> Darkroot Garden -> Darkroot Basin -> Valley of Drakes -> New Londo Ruins -> Duke's Archives/Crystal Cave -> Demon Ruins/Lost Izalith -> Catacombs/Tomb of Giants -> Great Hollow/Ashlake -> DLC -> Painted World of Ariamis. This zone progression worked well with exceptions:\n\n+ Because Duke's Archives is before Tomb of Giants, you have to revisit Duke's in order to kill Rhea.\n+ By the time I entered Darkroot Garden and Darkroot Basin, I was highly overleveled. This suggests I should do it before Sen's Fortress.\n+ Lost Izalith as a zone seems best for last, but you get the Sunlight Maggot which is helpful as a lighting tool for Tomb of the Giants.\n+ By the time I entered the Catacombs, I was overleveled.\n\nMy second playthrough was in November 2021 with a STR two-handed build. Great Club, Zweihander, and Demon’s Greataxe were my favorites. I use my shield to parry when I can and during tricky positioning. No covenant preference. Area-wise, I went the same route as before. It took me 30 hours to complete the game including DLC at level 93. However, for the second half of the game, I did Demon Ruins/Lost Izalith, Catacombs/Tomb of Giants, Duke's Archives/Crystal Cave. \n\nOn subsequent playthroughs, I only do the following areas sometimes: Return to the Asylum, Great Hollow -> Ash Lake (just grab Chloranthy Ring at top), Painted World, Darkroot Basin -> DLC.\n\nTODOs\n\n+ Replay as pyromancer build (possibly dex/attun).\n+ Replay as Paladin build (str/faith), joining Warrior of Sunlight, Princess's Guard, or Blade of the Darkmoon covenant","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dark-souls"},{"id":"322682678652558924","title":"Diablo II","status":"Completed","score":10,"releaseYear":2000,"playtimeMinutes":2070,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["Blizzard North"],"publishers":["Blizzard Entertainment","Sierra Entertainment","Havas Interactive"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2026-05-31","notes":"Diablo 2 did so much on top of the original title:\n\n+ __Combat.__ Core gameplay loop is vastly improved with skill tree and unique active skills. This includes a revamp of mana such that effectively all classes use it, and it regenerates rather than being much more limited as in Diablo 1.\n+ __Itemization.__ Significant expansion of inventory (more item slots including two weapon slots, belt potion slot mechanic, and Horadric cube), loot (e.g., item rarity, uniques, set items), item stats, and customization (e.g., runes, gems).\n+ __Levels.__ Significant expansion of levels, including more content (Diablo 1 is effectively the equivalent of Act 1) and more environment variety.\n+ __Enemies.__ Significant expansion of enemies, including variety, enemy movesets (not just a melee attack and ranged bow and arrows), champion enemies with modifiers, and bosses.\n+ __Builds.__ More classes, each with unique playstyles and multiple build approaches.\n+ __Quality-of-life.__ Includes faster movement speed (and combat overall), item highlighting, and an item stash. And easter eggs like The Cow Level.\n\n__Historical notes.__\nWhen I originally played, my favorite classes were Sorceress, Amazon, and Necromancer.I played almost all classes: Barbarian, Sorceress, Amazon, Necromancer, Druid, Assassin. I remember first playing Diablo II in Nickel Nickel (of course contemplating for a while on a name and ending up going with DarkKiller7) and starting with an Assassin. I didn't like its trap mechanics. I liked the complexity of the Druid and shapeshifting, but it didn't fit my style. I started to converge onto Sorceress, Amazon, and Necromancer as ranged DPS with some variety. Boy were they all fun as my mains. Barbarian was fun with whirlwind and leap, but it was a bit boring to play. Paladin is also quite fun as a buff party member in early game and the OP Hammerdin lategame.\n\nThe problems:\n+ Hacks with exploits, duping, custom gear that became mainstream (white ring? lol)\n+ With the state of internet at the time, and lack of secure features, learning about the above was through hearsay and which often resulted in the opposite effect: scams and exploits where if you were to, e.g., pick up your dead corpse but with an item on your naked body, all your items would drop as you loot and someone can pick them all up.\n+ Tedious reliance on someone to rush your character through campaign Hell if you wanted to start a character afresh and start powerleveling via Baal Hell and Cows.\n\n+ [The Arreat Summit](http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp)\n+ [A brief patch history](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo2/comments/bqah0p/diablo_ii_a_brief_patch_history) | I recall playing during, say, version 1.07-1.09 where Amazon had Guided Arrow + Pierce, Barbarians were popular, and Paladins were rare. I also recall runewords, playing early into version 1.10-1.14, but not yet when Javazon became the dominant Amazon build, Barbarians became the worst class, and Hammerdins became the most popular.\n\nMemories:\n\n+ [Strength bug](https://asgardpvp.com/guides/str)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/diablo-ii"},{"id":"340403321691963984","title":"Doom","status":"Completed","score":10,"releaseYear":1993,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PC","iOS","Mac","DOS"],"studios":["id Software"],"publishers":["Activision","GT Interactive Software","id Software","Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2020-05-11","completedDate":"2020-05-12","updatedDate":"2023-09-05","notes":"Doom has possibly the largest legacy than any other video game. Evaluated as a video game itself, I found it quite enjoyable, immensely so for Episode 1. The combat with weapons, enemies, level designs, and HUD system all worked well. The aesthetic and sound age well even to 2020. Development-wise, Doom's source code and engine paved the way for many popular titles as well as the modding community.\n\n__Story.__ A man fighting hell. That's all that's necessary for this game.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I love the move and shoot gameplay. Playing it in 2020, I'm surprised at how well the game aged in 27 years. It's amazing fighting a dozen+ enemies all at the same time as you weave around the map. Weapons are a core set and all excellent at serving a purpose. The shotgun is iconic. I would also add to that the melee with fists and chainsaw followed by the Pistol, Chaingun, Plasma gun, Rocket Launcher, BFG. Positioning is key to avoid getting trapped and overwhelmed by enemies.\n\nEnemies are well-designed and memorable, each serving a purpose. The basic marines, imps, etc. Pinkies. Specters. The spongy bastard Baron of Hell and Cacodemons. Level designs drop you in an area to explore, with a handful of blocked areas according to keys. Health and ammo packs scattered throughout an area. Missions are only a few minutes long, making the game an easy \"pick up and play\".\n\nAmbushes and traps are so many and so fun: as opposed to enemy spawns in modern games, these enemies are hidden behind walls requiring intricate level design (the false exit in Halls of the Damned!). It's the Dark Souls equivalent of mobs hiding behind a corner. \n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Love the rock soundtrack. It's not as great as folks make it out to be as it's arguably even plagiarism of popular rock songs. But it's iconic. The pixel art and spirte assets age very well playing it in 2020. I love the use of lighting where some areas black out and you have to fight your way through an ambush. And the varied assets. this clearly distinguishes Knee-Deep in the Dead from the other Episodes. And I love that the levels go from scifi in episode 1 to a descent in madness in the third episode. The triplet of health, armor, and ammo is golden.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Oh wow, the relations to Chex Quest are so clear (the first Doom-like I played).\n+ Fending off Barons of Hell in E4M2. Perfect Hatred is such an apt title.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Secrets. They're like collectibles, but optional so there's no gameplay incentive forcing you to find them all like in modern games.\n+ Monster infighting. Wow that friendly fire.\n+ Projectiles are dodgeable, not instant travel (hit scan). Doom (1993) may have either invented this or at the least popularized it.\n+ Cheat codes.\n+ Interactable explosive barrels. Barrel level placement is one of the reasons Episode 1 reigns supreme.\n+ Pre-attack frames. This is crucial for corner peeking hitscan enemies in particular, and not all Doom clones following it had this, like Shadow Warrior where you effectively just trade hits.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ There is no aiming up and down so the game would autoaim vertically for you as the game used 2D coordinates. Crosshairs haven't been invented yet either.\n+ All the corpses and bloodshed stay there and don't despawn.\n+ The quicksaving / save scumming system rather than checkpoints.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Run is an option. Nowadays, source ports have an Always Run option for quality of life.\n+ It's not always clear when a zone newly opens up in the level after you complete a certain objective. This requires a bit of wandering around in the game to see if anything changed. The map could be improved with highlighting locked doors.\n+ Many missions in Doom (episodes 2+, e.g., E2M2, E2M3, E3M6, E4M2) are very scarce on ammo, making annoying to run past enemies to find loot. This is my gripe with quite a few missions. It's not quite the run and gun shooter that one would hope for as it's not feasible to kill all enemies given limited ammo.\n+ Powerups like Berserk actually last the entire level and not just during the visual effect.\n+ You lose everything when you die. This means it's better to save the game at the start of a mission and loading it upon death rather than relying on the game's reload.\n+ The jumping in E4M2 is god awful.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Doom/Walkthrough\n+ doom wads | https://zdoom.org/wiki/IWAD\n+ [Doom maps, including keys](http://www.classicdoom.com/maps)\n+ linking chocolate doom to ultimate doom | https://steamcommunity.com/app/2280/discussions/0/143387886720274443/\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/etk1kg/is_there_any_difference_between_doom_games_on\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/doom/PC_Cheats\n\nI played Chocolate Doom as it's recommended as the most \"vanilla\" experience. GZDoom are best for modern features (e.g., non-pillarboxed widescreen resolution, freelook, crosshair, 60 FPS) and modding. I plan to start with Chocolate Doom first, and then see if I want the higher resolution pixel art of 3440x1440 and 60 FPS instead of the original release's 35 FPS. I played on Ultra-Violence as it’s the highest without being unfair. Nightmare has enemy respawns every 12 seconds, which disfavors exploration/full clears. I like that Chocolate Doom is borderless! I did do keyboard remapping for WASD/E (https://www.chocolate-doom.org/wiki/index.php/Setup/Keyboard_configuration), disabled vertical mouse movement, and set to always run. I did not play with a guide for secrets, playing it blind and only referring to one if I got stuck.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-ultimate-doom"},{"id":"322682678650419788","title":"Doom Eternal","status":"Completed","score":10,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":840,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch","PS5","Series X","Stadia"],"studios":["id Software"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2020-07-15","completedDate":"2020-07-17","updatedDate":"2025-02-20","notes":"Doom Eternal is everything you'd expect of a sequel to an excellent game: innovations to Doom (2016)'s core battle mechanics (particularly with Dash, Flame Belch, and meat hook), new weapon variations, significant enemy variety, particularly with the incredible enemies each adding to the overall gameplay experience as Hugo Martin calls chess pieces, and a badass soundtrack. Doom Eternal also features ambitious level designs with platforming and verticality.\n\nFlaw-wise, there are no major ones. Level designs still feature too many arenas. Doom (2016) did the aesthetic, rune variety, and power ups better but Doom Eternal otherwise improved everything. The Marauder is controversial but nowhere near as bad as, e.g., Doom II's Pain Elemental.\n\n__Story.__ The story is serviceable like Doom (2016), but even more over the top. The humans to Doom interactions are hilariously good. Otherwise I don't really care for it. The first half has way more cutscenes than the second half, and introduced characters like the Betrayer and King Novik disappear in the rest of the game.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Doom Eternal makes significant improvements across a number of gameplay factors: controls, resource management, and enemies. For controls, there are simple, powerful additions: dash and meat hook on the super shotgun (both of which make aerial combat and large open arenas more prevalent), chainsaw is an action rather than a weapon that you swap to before chainsawing (and which regenerates rather than consumes ammo); no crouch; Flame Belch; Blood Punch. Each of these simple changes alters the gameplay in such a great way. The Dash is the FPS genre's best attempt at what makes Dark Souls 3's dodge so great, but here it's especially made to be aggressive (forward moving rather than side moving) in spirit to the Doom style. The meat hook adds a whole new layer of mobility to shotguns, both moving directly to the enemy and the advanced technique of moving in and jump-cancelling, or using it to move forward and sideways. Resource management is now overhauled with fewer ammo per weapon, and with these additions to make weapon swapping most viable, treating minions almost as walking resource bags. This includes the Flame Belch, which actually makes armor pickups viable rather than one-off. New to the glory kill and chainsaw mechanics is the Flame Belch for picking up armor shards off enemies. Glory kills also build up a meter for Blood Punch, which is basically a more powerful melee.\n\nEnemies are overhauled both in their design as chess pieces and an impressive enemy variety, with both new enemies and revivals. All the new enemies are designed very well and really do add new chess pieces that diversify the gameplay. For example, arachnotron and mancubuses are heavy hitters and require prioritizing their cannons. Enemies have plasma shields necessitating the Plasma Rifle, including a new support enemy Carcass. I also like the variety in mechanics such as buff totems, Arch-Viles' summoning, and Carcass' shield. Increased enemy variety includes from Doom 2 such as Arachnotron, Pain Elemental, and Arch-vile, revisions such as Fireborne Baron, Dread Knight, Empowered enemies, and new ones such as Gargoyle, Whiplash, Tentacles, Tyrant, Doom Hunter, and Maykr Drones. The last level with arenas throwing everything at you with multiples of heavy units like Tyrants, Barons of Hell, Doom Hunter, and Pain Elemental is so great; that and the industrial aesthetic reminds me of the last levels of Doom II. On flaws, the Marauder is a controversial enemy, and certainly one of the most considered flaws in the game because it forces a parry-like timing window where you have to wait and maintain a certain distance, and that goes against the entire Doom (2016)/Eternal bullish ethos: it's Doom, not Dark Souls.\n\nLevel design-wise, I unfortunately don't think Doom Eternal improved too much upon Doom (2016)'s flaw of the repetitive pattern of linear corridor followed by arena deathmatch. Doom Eternal simply replaced the corridor with platforming and puzzle-solving. This is an improvement to be sure: I like using the full ability that the new movement options in Doom Eternal have with Dash and Double Jump, and environments feature more verticality with wall climbing, and variety via goo, original Doom's acid and rad suit, destructible and movable objects, and Dash refill orbs. However, it doesn't solve the core issue of enabling an open level design similar to Doom (2016)'s Foundry, which harkens back to the original Doom levels consisting of a large open area where you traverse however you want, trying to find keys to progress onward. The original Doom levels certainly suffered from its own repetition of key-finding, but its more open-ended exploration and backtracking set up so many memorable moments: for example, the iconic element of ambushes as you go through corners or pick up items.\n\nProgression roughly follows Doom (2016) with unlocked weapons, weapon mods via Mod Bots, weapon upgrade points, Sentinel Crystals which replace Argent Cells and also feature miscellaneous upgrades on top of Health/Armor/Ammo, and Runes. There's now a hub, and I hate hubs. It's especially pointless for a mission-by-mission game like Doom: there is no need for backtracking to shops, crafting, or NPCs.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The music is even more impressive than the first game, and that's saying something. Speaking frankly, it attests to the gameplay better than any game I've ever played. Some iconic ones are the intro and BFG 10000. The enemy animations and glory kill variety are excellent. The aesthetic is more arcadey than the darkness that Doom (2016) had: colorful, oversized items and powerups, intrusive HUD. I prefer Doom (2016)'s aesthetic. Level aesthetics are honestly still a little forgettable in its generic hell and metallic environments. But the open areas and backdrops make it quite enjoyable.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ I __love__ the fast travel mechanic. It's unlockable only after every reaching the end of each level in order to let you warp around to pick up any remaining collectibles. With this mechanic, I no longer have to feel pressured to explore everything immediately due to sometimes passing through irreversible linear areas. I can freely play a level at my pace and pick up all remaining secrets afterwards. It's a shame collectibles sometimes bug out.. When reloading the game near the end after I unlocked fast travel, it no longer unlocked fast travel; and in Cultist Base, one battle arena never completed to give me the last Weapon Upgrade point.\n+ Difficulty options now let you toggle from Nightmare in a single playthrough instead of being locked to it.\n+ The map is actually navigable with intuitive mouse controls and a readable 3D map that actually works. Many games fail at 3D maps.\n+ Like Doom (2016), I'm a big fan of the quickswitching meta for single-shot weapons. It builds on the frenetic gameplay and utilization of the weapon variety. Fuck weapon wheels.\n+ Menu has keyboard shortcuts to navigate more quickly.\n+ Game has a decent weapon pool from the beginning, so you're not gimped with just a Shotgun like in Doom (2016).\n+ Enemies fighting each other as you enter areas, just like the original's monster infighting.\n+ Boss fights appear much earlier in the game rather than Doom (2016)'s weird pacing where they only appear near the end. (To be fair, this is like original Doom, but I think even original Doom suffered from this.)\n+ I don't know if it's just my gameplay improved, but I find actual use cases for grenades in this game unlike Doom (2016). The added utility of frost grenade obviously helps. But I use the frag grenade now too.\n+ Hazmat bonuses are not one-off but respawn. It's also health based rather than time-based. I hated this so much in Doom (1993) and Doom II as it limited exploration as you had to use the hazmat wisely.\n+ Tutorial windows require the button they're teaching you in order to dismiss.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ You can only chainsaw minions, not any major enemies like Doom (2016).\n+ Melee punch doesn't do much damage. This includes not even being able to punch the weakest mob to glory kill status.\n+ One new game mode are master levels, brought back from original Doom.\n+ There are mastery tokens so you can byhpass challenges. \n+ Power ups are more subdued in this game and not as awesome as the rage that Doom (2016)'s melee combos had.\n+ Ammo of each type is lowered to incentivize weapon swapping.\n+ Blood Punch. With all the other things, including grenade and chainsaw cooldowns going on, it's hard to predict. You sort of benefit from them as a bonus, not something predetermined.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ The HUD is too busy, way more icons than the first game. I turned off a lot of it: active runes, compass, keycard stock.\n+ There's too many collectibles. The gameplay progression collectibles are Praetor Tokens, Runes, Sentinel Crystal (equivalent to Doom (2016)'s Argent Cell), Mod Bots, Sentry Batteries (which unlock upgrades at your hub), secret encounters (necessary for 100% demonic completion for weapon upgrades), Slayer Gates (which unlock a weapon and add to weapon upgrades), and mission challenges (necessary for Praetor Suit upgrades and Sentinel Crystals). Some collectibles don't have gameplay incentives: codex entries, cheat codes, extra lives. I think this is too much, but fortunately the map and fast travel mechanics make getting all collectibles not too tedious.\n+ Rune variety and rune challenges were a bit better in Doom (2016) than Doom Eternal.\n+ Enemy kills can sometimes glitch, making it impossible to get 10/10 for a level. I've encountered this in 3 different levels.\n+ No death counter. This would be hugely helpful for practicing Ultra Nightmare by doing Nightmare runs.\n+ There are two buttons for Frag and Frost Grenades: toggle grenade and throw grenade. There should just be a dedicated button for each, and this is likely a flaw due to console support.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Powerpyx: Doom Eternal Collectibles Guide](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRr5L69yg_kG653kSGnPJWaCwy4Mmv-KH) \n+ [Performance settings](https://www.tweaktown.com/guides/7757/doom-graphics-performance-tweak-guide/index.html)\n+ [Marauder quick kill methods](https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/g3wphv/marauder_quick_kill_methods) | The 2 Lock-on RL is patched in October 2020, but a [variants still work:j [Arbalest/2 Frag/2 Lock-on](https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/jza0ow/did_the_wombo_combo_to_marauder_took_some), [Arbalest/2 Frag/Auto Shotgun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnSN6Rg8Anw), and [PB/Frag/2 Lock-on](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55bG8KCaDtk).\n+ [Perfecting the Precision Bolt tutorial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1Ac4wfREaA)\n+ [Mastering the Meathook tutorial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K87JhTcLJHg)\n+ [UnderTheMayo's keybinds for smooth quick switching](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELBt4XL75VM)\n+ [400 Hours of DOOM Eternal Explained (Movement Guide & Tips)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on_WcIQPr9w)\n+ YouTubers: [Oyff](https://www.youtube.com/@Oyff), [Under the Mayo](https://www.youtube.com/@underthemayo), [clockner](https://www.youtube.com/@clockner)\n\nLike all other Doom games, I played on Ultra Violence on my first playthrough. I didn't care for the XP or multiplayer. I played blind, only using a walkthrough for collecting all secrets when I'm near completing a level. I got all collectibles except a handful that I missed due to bugs (e.g., switch no longer turning on, enemy not being counted on 10/10 meter, fast travel not unlocking on reload checkpoint) and which I couldn't be bothered to replay. I did research the meta for best weapon mods, weapon upgrades, runes, and Sentinel Crystal upgrades. On my second playthrough I played on Nightmare and followed mostly the same choices. The game's pacing on a second playthrough is so much nicer since I know all the routes and build choices, and it's just a matter of executing the core combat loop.\n\nMy weapon rotation is the following.\n\n+ __General navigation.__ Super Shotgun for its meathook.\n+ __Close-range DPS.__ Super Shotgun / Precision Bolt. For priority targets, I preempt with Frost Grenade / Frag Grenade to focus them down.\n+ __Mid-range DPS.__ Precision Bolt / Rocket Launcher has the highest DPS in the game due to their quickswitch speed.\n+ __Hitscan DPS.__ Precision Bolt / Ballista. Hitscan is useful for long range, weak points, and mobile enemies.\n+ __Sustain.__ Flame Belch + Chainsaw for both armor and ammo. Flame Belch + Rocket Launcher or Frag Grenade for armor on AoE area. Glory Kills and Blood Punches for health.\n+ __AOE.__ I use frag grenades and Rocket Launcher.\n+ __Situational use cases.__ Frost grenades as a panic button, Combat Shotgun's sticky grenade for Cacodemons, Plasma Rifle for erasing enemy shields, Plasma Rifle's Microwave Beam for stunning advancing enemies, Blood Punch on specific enemies like Pinky, Cyber Mancubus, or Doom Hunter, Ballista's Destroyer Blade for the spawncamp/timed ambush, BFG for known areas for Ultra Nightmare, and Crucible for priority targets (Arch Viles, Tyrants, or Barons).\n+ __Never used.__ I don't use Unmakyr as it shares BFG ammo and is strictly worse. I don't use Combat Shotgun and Heavy Cannon's primary fire since they share ammo with Super Shotgun and Chaingun respectively. I haven't found a use case for Chaingun aside from proccing Glory Kills on minions and switching to when I'm out of shells, cells, and rockets.\n+ __Advanced techniques.__ This includes: quickswitch weapon combos, ultra quickswitching with Precision Bolt, Flame Belch + Chainsaw, meathook navigation, Ballista boost to propel yourself, frost grenade CC utilization, map awareness and enemy priority, staying in air, bunny hop, punch canceling.\n\nI use the default keybindings and remap Heavy Rifle (2) to Mouse4, Rocket Launcher (4) to Mouse5, Super Shotgun (5) to Q, Ballista (6) to F, Chaingun (7) to Z, and BFG/Unmakyr (8) to X. PB / RL is the most used quickswitch combo and having them on mouse lets you move with WASD without interruption.\n\nProgression-wise on new playthroughs, I prioritize the [following in order](https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/gzxm5f/ultra_nightmare_runners_what_are_your_preferred):\n\n+ __Runes.__ Air Control, Equipment Fiend, Saving Throw, Blood Fueled.\n+ __Praetor suit upgrades.__ Fundamentals (Hot Swapper, Grappler, Faster Dasher), Environment (Thicker Skin), Fundamentals (Hit and Run), Frag Grenade and Frost Grenade (all), Environment (remaining), Exploration (all).\n+ __Sentinel crystals.__ Quickdraw Belch, Loot Magnet (necessary for picking up armor during SSG's meathook so you can get more armor during Doom Hunter Base), Belch Armor Boost, Health for Blood, Napalm Belch, Armor for Blood.\n+ __Weapon upgrades.__ Combat Shotgun's Quick Rack, then save until Super Shotgun and then Rocket Launcher. The rest are lower priority: Heavy Cannon, Combat Shotgun, Chaingun, Ballista. SSG's mastery is the only one I really use. I farm it on lower minions, mastering by early in Doom Hunter Base. Use Mastery Tokens on Precision Bolt > Destroyer Blade > Microwave Beam > Dual Lock > Energy Shield > Sticky Bombs.\n\n### Ultra Nightmare\n\nMy strategy is to complete full Nightmare playthroughs until I can get deaths down to at most 10, and without a third rune to simulate as if I always had Saving Throw on. Then I can replay certain levels that I find most difficult. Then when I'm comfortable doing all levels without death, I can try ultra nightmare runs.\n\nI don't want to cheat by abusing Saving Throw to Alt+F4. I also prefer an uninterrupted playthrough where I don't practice the immediate next level beforehand.\n\n__Strategies.__\nOn Marauders.\n+ SSG -> Ballista -> SSG typically takes 3 cycles because the first SSG doesn't do much damage but has a forgiving weapon range.\n+ Ballista -> SSG -> Ballista consistently takes 2 cycles when you get the SSG upfront but it's more risky. Starting with Arbalest doesn't help beyond the two cycles.\n+ Arbalest -> Frag -> Lock-on -> Frag -> Lock-on takes 1 cycle.  I find it rather unreliable as it takes a while to do consistently.  It also requires setup with the Arbalest, using both Frags, and 6 rockets.\n+ Within the base game, there are no risky times when you should be fighting Marauder with other enemies that you have to rush it. So take your time with the safer three-cycle strategy.\n\nLevel-Specific Strategies\n+ Hell on Earth\n  + Skip Arachnatron in the train area. Just jump above the environment blasts.\n+ Cultist Base\n  + 3 Mancubus + 1 Cacodemon after you get Rocket Launcher (go for one on left with PB/RL, then one on top left; you can get both before other enemies reach your high ground)\n  + 3 Whiplash (RL staggers them: frag+2 RL on first mid, 3 RL on second left, then barrels+RL on third mid coming from right)\n  + pit arena (Frost Grenade Whiplash,  PB/RL medium range).\n  + Pit Arena: Save Frost Grenade for Whiplash. Chainsaw before Mancubus spawn. Try to preserve the two bomb guys to use on the 2 Mancubus, otherwise zerg down the one Mancubus in medium distance with PB/RL. Use middle area for LoS and health pack as needed.\n  + Last Arena\n+ Mars Core\n  + BFG: Upon pickup.\n  + BFG: In the one arena with the ammo.\n  + BFG: In the final arena with the Doom Hunter.\n+ Sentinel Prime\n  + Don't strafe dash during the chain hold-on attack. Just dodge normally.\n+ Teras Nabad\n  + BFG: Arena area with Pain Elemental and Cyber Mancubus spawn.\n  + BFG: Area with Cyber Mancubus, Hell Knight, Cacodemon, Whiplash, Prowler x2 all spawning right before Marauder.\n  + Crucible: Use generously, pretty much everything including Prowlers or Cacodemons.\n+ Nekravol\n  + 4x Damage: Get right away to rush Tyrant. Then play conservatively.\n  + BFG: Wait until Archvile appears.\n  + 2 on Marauder and Whiplash combo.\n    + Strategy: lock-on burst + glory kill Whiplash. Usually you can get two damage chains before Whiplash arrives.\n  + BFG: Wait until 2 Doom Hunters appear.\n+ Nekravol - Part Two:\n  + Crucible: Save for Archvile in second arena fight.\n  + BFG: Save for last fight. The last fight you can use two BFG ammo and one Crucible ammo.\n    + note the first BFG can despawn (bug) at times.\n    + Use Crucible on first Tyrant.\n    + Use first BFG on mobs (Whiplash, Arachnotron, Baron, Cacodemon).\n    + Use second BFG on Doom Hunter.\n    + Note I've experienced extra BFG and Crucible ammo glitch. So I could also skip one BFG and Crucible usage in this fight since they don't help that much.\n+ Urdak\n  + BFG: Use after you focus down Archvile. A few seconds later, Pain Elemental, Hell Knight, and Mancubus all spawn.\n  + Crucible: Use near end of fight when second Baron appears. This will be during the most overwhelming as it's right after you killed two Cacodemons and some Whiplashes may still be alive.\n  + Boss: PB/RL. Sometimes do PB/Ballista. Use PB/Ballista between boss phases to find minions to get more ammo. If can't get ammo, play conservatively by staying in safe areas.\n+ Final Sin\n  + Crucible: Use on Tyrant.\n  + There is four BFG ammo.\n    + There is a beginning one that I don't really need to ever use.  + Use first whenever, probably after first Tyrant you down and/or whenever you're overwhelmed.\n    + Use second in last arena, near beginning after two Pain Elementals spawn so you can kill them along with beginning Baron.  + Use third whenever, either for any remaining enemies as you're about to down Marauder or against Marauder itself. You pick this last BFG ammo before boss encounter.\n  + Boss: PB/RL focus on forearms as much as possible. PB/Ballista when you see them start moving. Move around but always look for minions to chainsaw near front.\n\nDoom Eternal Level Collectibles to get for Ultra Nightmare. Others not noted don't matter.\n1. Hell on Earth\n  + 3 Modbot\n2. Exultia\n  + 1 Modbot\n  + 1 Sentinel Crystal\n  + 1 Sentinel Battery\n  + 1 Rune\n  + 2 Secret Encounter\n3. Cultist Base\n  + 1 Modbot\n  + 1 Sentinel Crystal\n  + 5 Praetor Suit Point\n  + 3 Sentinel Battery\n  + 1 Rune\n  + 3/3 challenges (need 1 collectible album)\n4. Doom Hunter Base\n  + 1 Sentinel Crystal\n  + 4 Praetor Suit Point\n  + 2 Sentinel Battery\n  + 1 Rune\n  + 3/3 challenges\n5. Super Gore Nest\n  + 2 Modbot\n  + 1 Sentinel Crystal\n  + 5 Praetor Suit Point\n  + 3 Sentinel Battery\n  + 2 Rune (by this point, you'll have all four of your main runes)\n6. Arc Complex\n  + 2 Modbot\n  + 1 Sentinel Crystal\n  + 5 Praetor Suit Point\n  + 3 Sentinel Battery\n  + 2 Rune\n7. Mars Core\n  + 1 Sentinel Crystal\n  + 5 Praetor Suit Point\n  + 3 Sentinel Battery (by this point, you'll only use Sentinel Batteries for Modbots and then nothing)\n  + 2 Rune\n8. Sentinel Prime\n  + 1 Praetor Suit Point\n9. Taras Nabad\n  + 1 Sentinel Crystal\n  + 5 Praetor Suit Point (after this point, you'll only use Praetor Suit Points for Exploration and then nothing)\n  + 2 Mastery Token (after this point, you won't really need them)\n10. Nekravol\n  + 1 Sentinel Crystal\n11. Nekravol - Part Two\n  + 1 Sentinel Crystal\n12. Urdak\n13. Final Sin\n14. Fortress of Doom\n  + 2 Sentinel Crystals > 5 Praetor Suit Points > 2 Modbots\n\ntodos\n+ complete ultra nightmare","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/doom-eternal"},{"id":"2c80dde6-0e68-42c1-96bc-063b20d29d31","title":"Clair Obscur: Expedition 33","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":2465,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Sandfall Interactive"],"publishers":["Kepler Interactive"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2025-05-04","completedDate":"2025-06-16","updatedDate":"2025-06-17","notes":"An excellent JRPG that innovates with parry mechanics and executes on all the core elements so well: writing, builds and progression, engaging combat, diverse levels and world, memorable enemies, and endgame. It even has all the easter egg and humor charm of JRPGs like Final Fantasy.\n\n__Writing.__\nSurprisingly good writing. The setup to the wipeout at Act 1 took me for a pleasant surprise.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nSome fun fusion of mechanics:\n\n+ A foundation of JRPG in a Persona art style.\n+ Dodge and parry mechanics, with a bonfire and item replenishment system of Souls.\n+ A few tactical AP and per character abilities close to CRPGs. This includes attributes and skills to spec for builds.\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\nMusic is surprisingly a standout.\n\nSound effects are standard.\n\nVisuals are typical high fantasy with details and lighting/VFX of Unreal Engine. Some stylized pieces that are fun. Lots of stilted animations and jank that is almost appealing like in Final Fantasy.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Mime encounters for cosmetics.\n+ Many optional superbosses.\n+ Written notes are from past expeditions. And they’re terse and voiced, making them a pleasure to read on the spot when you oick them up. Many games do lore notes poorly.\n+ Lighting path makes it clearer how to proceed.\n+ Lumina point system. Lets you have multiple party members benefit from the same Pictos effect. It's a common problem in JRPGs like Final Fantasy where you might get a Ribbon, and there's not enough for everyone to equip one.\n+ All the outfits. So much fun, much like Easter Eggs, mimes, and Petanks.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Forgiving save system.\n+ Can't respec color of lumina allocation.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Respec requires a hard-to-acquire material. Makes you more deliberate in respeccing, even though games which are way more forgiving in respec are a much better option. Players don't respec all that often anyways.\n+ Monolith is a bit lazy of a level, rehashing the levels and enemies across areas. It goes on for too long to make it to be a nice refresher or thematic reminder of the journey.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://expedition33.wiki.fextralife.com\n+ https://expedition33.wiki.fextralife.com/Interactive+Map\n+ https://maxroll.gg/clair-obscur-expedition-33/guides/expedition-33-zone-progression-guide\n+ Color of Lumina farming: Single-time use is [to farm Chrome Dancessa adds](https://www.reddit.com/r/expedition33/comments/1k8xtjd/farming_colour_of_lumina/mtcijgd). [Otherwise, farm at the Monolith](https://www.reddit.com/r/expedition33/comments/1k8xtjd/farming_colour_of_lumina)\n+ Grandiose Chroma Catalyst farming: Dark Shores.\n\nI played the game with Marisa. We completed the main campaign, all optional content such as Clea in Flying Manor and Simon in The Abyss, and optimized party builds.\n\n__Builds.__\n\n+ Maelle: DPS. [Stendahl](https://www.polygon.com/clair-obscur-expedition-33-guides/599822/best-maelle-build-attributes-skills-weapon-luminas-pictos). Situationally has Last Chance for self-buff, Breaking Rules for shields, Swift Stride for Virtuose Stance, Mezzo Forte for maintaining stance, Payback for situational DPS. Uses Medalum. Agility, Defense, Might.\n+ Lune: DPS. [Elemental Trick → Elemental Genesis](https://www.polygon.com/clair-obscur-expedition-33-guides/600383/best-lune-build-attributes-skills-weapon-luminas-pictos). Situationally has Mayhem for break, Revitalize for AoE heal, Rebirth for revive. Uses Choralim. Agility, Defense, Might.\n+ Sciel: Support / Tank. [Fortune's Fury & Marking Card](https://www.polygon.com/clair-obscur-expedition-33-guides/600811/best-sciel-build-attributes-skills-weapon-luminas-pictos). Situationally has All Set for AoE buffs, Intervention for ally extra turn, Phantom Blade for break, Sealed Fate for DPS. Uses Litheson. Vitality, Defense, Speed.\n+ Verso: DPS. [Free Aim → Follow Up](https://www.reddit.com/r/expedition33/comments/1kdev4h/can_someone_tell_me_how_they_built_their_verso/ms1fmik). Situationally has Phantom Stars for AoE, Overload for self-buff, Defiant Strike for Mark. Uses [Simoso](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/469495-clair-obscur-expedition-33/80981514#6) and before beating Simon, Contorso with Auto Death, Second Chance, Breaking Death, Sniper, free aim Pictos, and death Pictos. Agility, Defense, Might.\n+ Monoco: Support / Tank. [Orphelin Cheers & Potier Energy](https://www.polygon.com/clair-obscur-expedition-33-guides/600974/best-monoco-build-attributes-skills-weapon-luminas-pictos). Situationally has Cruler Barrier for shields, Gault Fury for Mark, Rocher Hammering for break, Lampmaster Light for DPS. Uses Joyaro. Vitality, Defense, Speed.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/clair-obscur-expedition-33"},{"id":"322682678652550732","title":"Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Vicarious Visions"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Platform"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2023-09-05","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/crash-bandicoot-2-cortex-strikes-back--1"},{"id":"342348913305453135","title":"Crusader Kings III","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":4980,"platforms":["Series X|S","Linux","PC","PS5","Mac"],"studios":["Paradox Development Studio"],"publishers":["Paradox Interactive"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Strategy"],"startedDate":"2022-09-09","completedDate":"2022-09-17","updatedDate":"2023-07-05","notes":"Crusader Kings 3 is deep in emergent gameplay, simulating a ruler better than any other game. It's a hybrid of RPG and strategy. There’s no win or lose condition. There’s simply goals you might achieve in a given playthrough: rule an empire, achieve the perfect bloodline, maximize development and innovations, grow your dynasty, maximize gold, found your own religion, serve as a vassal in a small but rich land (the tall strategy).\n\nAll the while there’s a ton of interesting mechanics and decisions you face: your character (lifestyle, traits, culture traditions and innovations, religion doctrines and tenets, artifacts), realm (domain and its various buildings, vassals and their opinion and internal fights and title inheritance), your army, council, courtiers and marriages, intrigue and schemes (including lover bastards and murder), miscellaneous decisions, and the Royal Court. Then there’s events triggering all around you.\n\nPerhaps Crusader Kings 3's only flaw is that it's arguably too easy. AI are bad at wars and therefore it's easy to take over neighboring rulers. You're unlikely to die from non-natural causes. There's little to no murders behind the scenes within your house. Faction uprisings are told to you from the onset, so you can proactively squash them. The perfect information you have is arguably too good. There should be higher difficulties with more aggressive AI, smarter AI, and fog of war-like activities.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nQuite rich in detail for an isometric map game. The UI is surprisingly simple considering just how many systems are in place for your to monitor.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The strategy of marrying your courtiers to high stats. It's a free way to recruit the strongest councillors and knights. Or for inheritable traits, claims or titles, or alliances.\n+ The deviousness of murdering your wife so you can marry someone else to sire more children or for them to inherit a title.\n+ The game is highly moddable. There’s even console commands.\n+ The game has a [character finder](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/m3zi3v/character_finder_in_ck3). This is useful when looking to replace a councillor or knight to maximize stats. I hadn’t even realized it existed until 50 hours into the game, relying instead on Find Spouse for individual courtiers. Same goes for more filters to search, say, your dynasty than simply using the member list in the dynasty.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Micromanaging marriage and guardianship, especially for courtiers. Like other elements of the game I much prefer if things proceed automatically and you can override a decision, or they might propose a marriage and seek your approval before officializing it. The courtiers don't even notify you if they have a child, their spouses die, or their guardian dies, so you have to monitor the Courtiers menu once in a while to see if there's someone you need to marry off/get a guardian. There's also no filter to find specifically the unmarried (and unbetrothed) courtiers, as well as the guardianless courtiers. As a workaround, I monitor two filters: marriageable adults; and children in my dynasty. This lets me marry off my courtiers, which is important. And it ignores the more minor benefits of obtaining guardians for every new courtier child. A better mechanic would be to have them auto-propose marriages/wards, then you can approve or replace the match-up.\n+ Confederate partition is annoying not in that it makes succession hard but because it's universally applied to every title regardless of the culture even if it's highly unrealistic. You could have certain areas use different succession strategies but where development or warring is more difficult.\n+ Not many filters for your dynasty menu. I use this often to those that are unmarried or without a claim.\n+ There isn't much strategy to army composition. Terrain and type counters are negligible compared to stacking buffs for a single men at arms unit type.\n+ There isn't much strategy to composition of holdings. You're always better off going temple. Castles increase your domain limit, limiting the amount of counties you can own. Cities actually make less gold than temples, which also make piety.\n+ Hold Court is a nice feature for more interaction with your subjects. However, [from a gameplay perspective](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/tpgr79/whats_the_point_of_holding_court), it costs 100 prestige and is more often fraught with negative consequences. It should be mandatory, gain not cost prestige, and more balanced events.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com)\n+ [r/crusaderkings](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings)\n+ [CK3 Guide - Who to sway, who to assassinate?](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/it9usl/ck3_guide_who_to_sway_who_to_assassinate)\n\nI played with all DLC activated. My overall campaigns:\n\n1. Murchad as Duke of Munster in Ireland 1066 following the tutorial. My goal was to turn it into the empire of Britannia. Irish culture, Catholicism faith, feudal government. Realm capital of London and second duchy in Munster. Mix of martial and stewardship lifestyles. Archer men-at-arms. It took 54 hours!\n2. Rurik as Duke of Novgorod in 876. My goal was the ironman achievement of the Russia empire. Norse culture, Asatru faith, tribal government. Realm capital of Kiev and second duchy in Novgorod. Martial lifestyle. Heavy infantry men-at-arms. [Tribal strategy](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/n941nd/a_norse_tribal_guide_tips_tricks_and_strategies)\n3. Lubb Muzez as Count of Najera in Iberia 867. My goal was to end the Iberian struggle. Basque culture, Muwalladism faith, clan government. Realm capital of Toledo. Archer men-at-arms. I kept trying to do a [tall strategy](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/kww0zp/playing_tall_guide_tips_tricks_and_strategies_for) with a learning lifestyle focus until Scholar trait then stewardship. However, the Iberian struggle is not the right place to do it: I got invaded constantly and/or struggled to keep up with my neighboring rulers. The Iberian struggle is all about conquest.\n3. TODOs: Byzantine Empire and play with culture/religion, particularly in a tall strategy and learning lifestyle. Northern Lords.\n\n__Marriage strategy.__\n\n+ Marry my player heir for congenital traits. Prioritize Genius > Beautiful > Herculean. Possibly with betrothal for a daughter who will inherit a pressed claim on a strong title, if not the heir which is unlikely. This way, my next player heir has a pressed claim to the title.\n+ Marry my dynasty members, including non-player heir children to rulers, matrilineally for daughters. This maximizes renown. It carries the risk of giving claims to other rulers, but it's rare that you'll ever fight kingdom vs kingdom; it's more likely duchy or county vs kingdom and they'll never declare war. I don't do betrothals: because the marriage is to a ruler, you want young rulers by the time the child turns 16.\n  + Another strategy is to marry for alliances, but I don't really use them due to unreliable AI.\n  + My first strategy was to marry them for congenital traits and keep them around to give titles (ideally as duke vassals). However, I find the benefits are minor—they would only have improved congenital traits and a +5 dynasty opinion—and it doesn't increase renown. They can get usurped anyways. Early game, it's at least useful so they have a chance of marrying a ruler in the future as their rank is higher. This comes at the cost of giving your family power on top of their claims.\n+ Marry my courtiers to highest stats for councilors and knights > claimant for a land I desire > congenital traits and prestige gain.\n\n__Partition succession strategy.__ If I can't change it, I find my favorite son (e.g., best congenital traits or young) and disinherit the other sons. I try to do this before the oldest son is age 10 so I can betrothal for my heir. ([strategies](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/iq8v61/every_method_to_deal_with_confederate_partition)) Alternatives:\n\n+ You can make them take vows when they reach 10, but I prefer marrying them off so they can have children, titles, and continue my dynasty. Letting them continue as rulers for non-dynasty lieges is worth the 150 renown cost in the long run: marriage to a count is 0.2 renown/month, which is 62.5 years. It's higher for higher titles, their children and children's children who will inherit the full title, and the only cost is the potential of them being usurped before the 62.5 years at which point I can invite them to court and marry them off again.\n+ You can send children to suicide knight missions, but again this doesn't continue the dynasty.\n+ Early game, the 150 renown is too much for every son, and they won't be able to marry a ruler. I find it better to limit my partition (e.g., just 1 kingdom and 1 important duchy) so my player heir always remains on top with the brothers as vassals even if the counties are scattered (unless it's the counties I care about in endgame). This especially works well for tribal starts as invading duchies gives you all the county territories. You can special case, say, a second duchy title or county by adding a Scandinavian succession law to more or less guarantee it.\n\n__Title and land strategy.__\n\n+ For counties, it's as simple as fabricating or requesting a claim. For duchies and higher, I request a claim if possible. Otherwise I find a claimant (one tier below me) that I can invite to my court or marry to one of my courtiers, taking down kingdoms one duchy at a time.\n+ You can marry the player heir to a successor (and possibly kill those higher in line), but I find this to be unreliable. The successor is rarely the daughter and murder schemes of a ruler's child has low probability.\n+ In terms of vassals, dukes are best. You're limited in the number of counties and to 2 duchies in your direct domain. You're not limited by the number of kingdoms though, only the vassal limit. This means it's better to use duke vassals as much as possible until you either hit the limit or managing all their opinions becomes too unwieldy (and you're sufficiently strong to handle potential kingdom revolts).\n\n__Army strategy.__\n\n+ Heavy Infantry type is best at endgame. Varangian Veterans work well on all terrains, balancing damage and toughness, and with decent pursuit. They're highest in levy equivalent ([2022 analysis](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/sznken/never_build_cavalry_heavy_infantry_isnt_as_good), [2021 analysis before, say, Northern Lords DLC with Varangian Veterans](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/jfc205/archers_are_best_menatarms_to_use_in_the_late_game)). The spearmen type use the same buildings as heavy infantry for buffs, so Pikemen are the most cost efficient for early game although still worse than other alternatives.\n  + Route: 45/30 Varangian Veterans at 150 gold otherwise 45/25 Mubarizun at 108 gold otherwise 32/22 Armored Footmen at 90 gold (if appropriate heritage). +18%/10% with Barracks, +15%/45% with Blacksmith duchy building. Without any appropriate heritage, Armored Footmen are still better in Levy Equivalent than Crossbowmen—535 to 520—but at that rate you may as well prefer the higher damage for increased full-stack wipe chance. You can start with 22/24 Pikemen at 75 gold to fill men-at-arms slots if you'd like.\n+ Archer type is best at early game, with the highest levy equivalent/cost, and they remain strong endgame. In fact, they have the highest damage endgame so they have the most potential for full-stack wipes by winning in the Early Battle phase. Note horse archers got nerfed with the Royal Court DLC (Feb 2022), being an arched cavalry type that no longer receives the building buffs for archer types. Similarly, armed cavalry like elephants got nerfed.\n  + Route: 25/10 Bowmen at 55 gold to fill men-at-arms slots -> 44/14 Longbowmen at 66 gold (Brythonic, Goidelic or West Germanic heritage) -> 42/18 Crossbowmen at 88 gold. +18% with Military Camp holding, +45%/15% with Archery Grounds duchy holding.\n+ [Full knight army and siege men at arms](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/ljk0ug/best_duchy_building) is compelling in its simplicity. Supply limit is never a concern and you end wars quickly due to maximum siege. It's less powerful damage-wise than heavy infantry or archers. It also requires a lot of [setup](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/r5i2wj/definitive_guide_on_knight_prowess_stacking_and):\n\n  + Knight effectiveness and count: multiple duchy buildings (4 for 300% knight effectiveness after the level 3 innovation), Martial lifestyle (+75% and +4 knights), high fame (+3 knights from Exalted among Men), high title rank (+7 knights from Kingdom).\n  + Knight prowess: breeding (Herculean, Giant, Genius), education (martial education traits), vassalage (someone with martial education granted a county may get +11 prowess from Chivalry Focus), join Holy Order (+4 prowess), faith tenets.\n\nI change the strategy for lifestyle, culture, and faith depending on the campaign.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/crusader-kings-iii"},{"id":"322682678652492364","title":"Dark Souls III","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":1920,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["FromSoftware"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment","FromSoftware"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2018-12-29","completedDate":"2019-01-05","updatedDate":"2023-09-07","notes":"Compared to other Souls games, Dark Souls 3 excels in its aesthetics, including visuals (set pieces to fill an area, boss designs, ideas for boss mechanics) and music. Music in this game ranks among the best I’ve heard in a video game period (ranks with many top JRPGs)---mostly the boss battles. Sound effects are also great. I also greatly prefer Dark Souls 3's bosses, which include not only atmosphere and set pieces (e.g., Deacons of the Deep) but interesting mechanical fights like Prince Lothric and Friede.\n\nMost players prefer Dark Souls 3's combat mechanics (namely, it's faster pace), but I actually prefer Dark Souls 1 (and to a lesser extent Dark Souls 2). Previous Souls games are more methodical and less spammy: with that said, Dark Souls 1/2 still had its flaws in that many enemies are shield-and-circle-strafe-able as opposed to dodging and R1-spamming. I also have mixed feelings about the new third focus bar, which replaces the finite number of casts in previous Souls games. Dark Souls 1's level designs are also better, with better bonfire placements and a feeling of world interconnectedness without [the heavy reliance on teleportation or elevators](https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/4jcxzx/critique_too_many_bonfires/d35tuxx). I also preferred Dark Souls 1's minimalistic story. It felt more diegetic than sandbox-y, without, e.g., a gamey mecca for leveling up, upgrading weapons, and talking to a bunch of NPCs to advance side quests.\n\nThe main flaws as with all Souls games are: tricky pathing of sidequests; mediocre covenant system; lack of real PvP (e.g., no lag, system with actual rewards and ladder).\n\n__Combat.__ Dark Souls 3 feels like Dark Souls 2 (the most methodical of the Souls games) on fast forward. It doesn't cater to my previous safe playstyle of hiding behind a shield until the right time to strike. Instead it encourages dodging via rolls. Unlike previous Souls games, Rolls are more resource-efficient as it costs less stamina and enemies attack more frequently to drain your stamina bar if you just block. Channeling Miyazaki from Bloodborne: \"Shields are nice, but not if they engender passivity.\" While it's faster paced, Dark Souls 3 seems more forgiving than other games. In particular, while enemies move faster, they do less damage. I'm always shocked when I'm not one-hit-KOed or 2-hit-chained to death in a boss fight due to a mistake I made. You can also move(!) while drinking Estus. And spam roll yourself in case you get trapped.\n\nBoss designs are a lot more unique and fit unique areas than the generic Fire Demon/Medusa/Knights of Dark Souls 2 and the development hell of three Stray Demons of Dark Souls 1. With that said, a lot of them are a bit gimmicky in finding a single weakness which is often not all that hard to find. For example, Lord Hodric is obviously not an interesting boss if the same mechanic had already been done (and much better for a challenging fight) for the tree boss. This is unlike Dark Souls bosses that require understanding a specific way to avoid specific moves (e.g., strafe left or right, dodge during X). But I enjoyed the many set pieces as I think bosses should not just be \"tough\" (e.g., Deacons of the Deep).\n\nFavorite bosses:\n\n+ Prince Lothric. The design is ingenious, with incestual-like brothers and a powerful prince Lorian who's shown as gone hollow as he's only on his knees. Teleportation is a great mechanic. Lothric as a ranged caster adds a great complement to the strategy.\n+ Pontiff Sulyvahn. The aggression describes Dark Souls 3 well. The phantom add is pretty easy to cheese though if you just spam R1 as he's summoning it.); Aldric (I love the ranged battle. It's my favorite running and attacking boss in Dark Souls.\n+ Gael. What an epic boss. Gael captures the essence of Dark Souls 3 well with the need for dodging, timing attacks, and maintaining endurance. Unlike the first half of Dark Souls 3, it's far more punishing in that you can get 3-shotted in the first stage and 2-shotted in the second and third stages. The music has an amazing crescendo as the boss gets increasingly more aggressive and with more variety.\n\nHardest (and sometimes unfun) bosses I've found: Prince Lothric (using a greatsword was probably not the best idea as I could only get 1 hit at a time while risking getting two shotted; I should also have learned to circle strafe rather than sticking in front of him); Nameless King (mastered first phase; had to hug him and heal while circle strafe and doging); Friede; Midir (hard-hitting endurance battle); Gael (hard-hitting endurance battle). Favorite monsters: pus of man; enchantress; hand giant; black knight; mimic; crystal lizard; winged knights; Ashes of Ariendal wolves.\n\nMuch like Dark Souls 1, DS3 excels in replayability due to its massive build variety. In terms of attributes, it's STR, DEX, INT, FAITH, Pyromancy, and any hybrid among these. Mods like Cinders and Convergence also add more viable builds, particularly pure casters. There's also huge weapon and spell variety. Unfortunately, unlike DS1, DS3 doesn't have any replayability in its level progression as it's linear.\n\n__Levels.__ These designs are what I imagine a modern Souls game would be like. The decorations make the levels so much more authentic than the barebones empty rooms of Dark Souls 1 and 2. Undead Settlement for example is haunting. The Undead flocking around a fire is well done. I also love the quantity of areas. This focuses on density of quality whereas the number of areas in Dark Souls II---many of which are quite similar---made for a forgettable experience.\n\nFavorite areas: Undead Settlement; Irithyll Dungeon.\n\nI didn't like Farron Keep. It's just a flat square with three pillars and poison inbetween islands. I greatly prefer Blighttown's design, and the lighting of No Man's Wharf. Ringed City is also a shithole in being unnecessarily difficult (see below).\n\n__Specific memories:__\n\n+ Dying to Gael over and over again. Learning the rhythm of the fight. And that long music crescendo over a chorus.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You don't need to farm for Titanite. This makes experimenting with weapons and having an arsenal for quality builds actually viable.\n+ Ragdoll physics are realistic and not campy like Dark Souls 1.\n+ There are many throwbacks to both Dark Souls 1 and Demon's Souls. These are great in that they're not simply fanservice (examples which I think are done poorly is the weird fusion of Siegmeyer and Solaire as Siegward) but they're done to push further a mechanic done well. For example: the cages you enter in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls to move locations; Valley of Defilement (5-1) influencing Irithyll Dungeon; Patches the Hyena; Demon's Souls' Yurt and Mestiphoeles as the predecessor to Navaren; Stormruler-based boss battle.\n+ The speed to open a chest is actually realistic. You just lop the chest open.\n+ The infusion system is an improvement over Dark Souls 1's approach  by making it separate from refinement. Infusion gems also newly enable strength or dexterity scaling.\n+ I like the ember aesthetic. Ember provides an obvious (and pretty) aesthetic showing that you have the feature on.\n+ The reveal that Lapp is Patches all along. I did not see that one coming. The betrayal was fanservice done well.\n+ Fewer limited items: for certain boss fights in Dark Souls 1 you had to kill them a certain way (eg cut off tail, which doesn't appear in DS2+) or summon npcs and keep them alive (only one case in Dark Souls 3).\n+ Toolbelt. It serves a niche for out-of-combat items such as the White Sign Summonstone and Homeward Bone. I wish it could also be used to quickswap weapons instead of the alternative of cleaning your inventory to the bank.\n+ Jump is L3 while sprinting. I hate accidentally jumping with Dark Souls 1's controls, e.g., you cannot roll while sprinting.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Unlike Dark Souls 1, parry has [start up frames](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pscvwXYPcG0) which means parrying is a lot harder as you not only have to anticipate the enemy's attack but you have you to preempt your poise move a few frames earlier in order for it to connect. It was really only until I obtained my favored Target Shield that I felt comfortable parrying again due to its earliest parry window starting at the 9th frame.\n+ Hyper armor as the approach to poise. I do think it’s dumb how unintuitive it is though. Avoiding stagger is largely based on your weapon first and not your passive poise stat that your armor contributes.\n+ Like Dark Souls 2, respec amount is limited per game playthrough.\n+ You can replenish Estus Flasks by killing enemies. This makes it slightly easier at the cost of the satisfaction of maintaining a fixed amount of HP recovery for a given run.\n+ Ashes vs just having more merchants. Ashes are more convenient but more gamey in that one merchant sells everything.\n+ Lock-on targeting is purposelly faulty in this game as you could lose the lock-on and have to retarget if they position behind you. This almost killed me multiple times during the fight with Pontiff for example. Similarly, you lose lock-on if the enemy falls.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Dark Souls 3's biggest flaw is a prevalent flaw in all Souls games but even more pervasive here: missable content. If you perform a sequence incorrectly you can permanently miss an entire questline---whether it be sequencing bosses before NPC encounters correctly, traversing zones correctly (e.g., Patches), or selecting the irreversibly wrong answer. This is very annoying, and it's even worse in Dark Souls 3 because questlines intersect (e.g., Siegward, Patches, and Greirat; Anri and Yoel/Yuria of Londor; Sirris and Ringfinger Leonhard).\n+ Like Dark Souls 2, you still have to go back to Firelink to level up. This combined with other conveniences (e.g., instant fast travel, linear world design) makes Dark Souls feel more video game-y than Dark Souls 1.\n+ Convenants lack in replayability and choices. For example, Darkmoon is the same as Blue Sentinel, and they only work with Way of Blue; you could collapse these three as one covenant. I'm particularly disappointed by the potential with the Moundmakers convenant. Because Moundmakers only are offered a reward by killing the host, there's no incentive for the alternative of actually helping the host. This would be especially during boss fights for chaotic backstabs.\n+ Because there are no incentives with the Way of Blue covenant aside from the possibility of help, there are far more people equipping Darkmoon or Blue Sentinel then there are people equipping Way of Blue. This could be solved by simply removing the Way of Blue covenant and making that mechanic always true.\n+ Items in the item shortcut (down arrow) automatically cycle. I must have died at least a dozen times due to the autocycle and myself thinking it was still an Estus Flask.\n+ Unlike Dark Souls 2's new enemy placement, and more like Dark Souls 1 and Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 3's new game plus only scales enemy stats. This makes new game plus not very interesting.\n+ Curse and Petrification are the same. Bleed with the maggots and poison are the same. The status effect variety is not as interesting as Dark Souls 1.\n+ I prefer necromancers instead of all skeletons reviving once. Necromancers are a more interesting mechanic.\n+ I don't know if I like Siegward. He is an artificial fan mash pairing of Siegmeyer and Solaire, two individually iconic NPCs.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wikidot](http://darksouls3.wikidot.com)\n+ [Cheat sheet](https://zkjellberg.github.io/dark-souls-3-cheat-sheet). I enjoy cheat sheets over walkthroughs as the latter are too detailed via line-by-line instructions, ruining the game's mystery and pace. However, this cheat sheet is also still too detailed. Better would be a list of items in an area and missable events to watch out for. To combat this, I try to look at the cheat sheet only a few times in an area.\n+ [Quality build tips](https://www.reddit.com/r/DkS3Builds/comments/7l60ty/looking_for_the_best_quality_build_to_carry_a). SL1 -> 27 Vigor for soft cap -> 26 Endurance for soft cap -> 38 Dex.\n+ [Cheat Engine Table](https://github.com/inunorii/Dark-Souls-III-CT-TGA). The Grand Archives discord has the most up-to-date knowledge of what Cheat Engine scripts are bannable. Like Dark Souls 1, I find Cheat Engine most useful for infinite upgrade mats and respec so you can experiment more easily. I also save scum by backing up saves in order to speed up any long runs back to the boss.\n\nI played the Deluxe version (bundle of base game and two DLCs) and on max settings.\n\nMy first playthrough (as of 1/6/19 upon beating the game) was 59 hours. I played pure physical (ignore attunement, intelligence, and faith) as a quality STR/DEX build.\n\n+ __Starting class.__ Knight.\n+ __Gift.__ Life Ring.\n+ __Weapons.__ I started with the Long Sword until (and including) Catacombs of Carthus, then the Iriythll Straight Sword until (and including) Smouldering Valley, then the Lothric Knight Sword (immediately upgraded to +6) until (and including) Itrithyll of the Boreal Valley, then the Black Knight Sword (a great sword) until end of the game; then the Lothric Knight Greatsword from them on (e.g., DLCs). I like the aesthetics and speed of the straight sword, but the R1 spam does not introduce any variety, feeling like a hack and slash. It's mindless in that you rarely need to use R2, Kick, Jump Attack, Parry, or swap to two-handed and weapon skills; coupled with Pontiff's Right Eye, the game encourages stunlock R1 spam until you run out of stamina. In contrary, long reach weapons such as greatswords, spears, and halberds have a vertical vs horizontal vs forward thrust motion, each of which make sense depending on the scenario (e.g., are you walled in?) and enemy tactics (e.g., how are they positioned?).\n+ __Armor.__ I play Fashion Souls (as long as it's <70%) as it makes the game more challenging.\n+ I got the Usurpation of Fire ending only because it's the most convoluted so I can take it easier on any future playthroughs; I chose Anri's questline B as that's the only way to get her sword(?); I chose to make Irina of Carim a fire keeper as that offers more utility.\n\nMy zone progression followed the Dark Souls III Cheat Sheet. Notes:\n\n+ Archdragon Peak (did at level 80, which is severely underleveled as recommended is 95-120; fortunately done with coop with Danny; we stopped at the boss, which I eventually solo'd melee with a greatsword for the dragon and Lothric Knight Sword for the second stage.. it took me 3 hours at level 101. The first stage is super easy as long as you stay in front. The second stage requires luck in dodge rolling all his attacks and hugging via circle-stafe. The main challenges are: 1. maintaining stamina; 2. getting in hits (safer to do 2 for 500 per chance with my straightsword than 350ish for 1 attack of my greatsword); 3. avoiding getting two-shotted)\n+ Kiln of the First (beat game at exactly level 100)\n+ Ashes of Ariandel DLC (Wow what a tough area. I had difficulty with this area out of all DS3 areas. There were four sets of enemies that require good crowd control: Farron Follower, Wolf, Corvian Settler, Giant Fly; and multiple enemies that can two-to-three shot me: Millwood Knight, Corvian Knight, both Wolf and Villhelm minibosses. As an area I found it bland with mostly open snow and jumping down roots. There is more variety in the equivalent Frozen Eleum Loyce of Dark Souls 2.)\n+ The Ringed City DLC (This area is a piece of shit in difficulty. Angels and Judicators that you can't kill and must find the summoner much later in the area (what kind of level design is that?). I'm okay with the ganks in the Ringed City area. Those to me are great examples of level design in the Souls series as players can always pick them up if they're cautious of their surroundings.); pairs of Lothric Knights with a buff that can get 3/4 of your health; Harald knights and enemies that always 2 shot you.\n\nIn my second playthrough on November 2021, I played a pure DEX build. By end game, I stuck with Washing Pole, Target Shield, and whatever aesthetic set kept me at 70% weight ratio.\n\nTODOs\n\n+ Replay as pure caster build with faith, int or pyromancy. FP regen later with Simple Gem infusion helps. Consider [EMU Light](https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls3/mods/83) for spell quickcast keys. Consider playing Cinders mod instead for its FP regen and slightly new experience.\n+ Replay as Paladin build (str/faith).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dark-souls-iii"},{"id":"322682678623082060","title":"Disco Elysium","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":1290,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["ZA/UM"],"publishers":["ZA/UM"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-12-31","completedDate":"2022-01-02","updatedDate":"2023-05-10","notes":"Disco Elysium is a true spiritual successor to Planescape Torment. Its story, characters, and pacing reign among the best in video games, and the RPG mechanics including its skill check system make the storytelling feel not just interactive but personal.\n\n__Story.__ The prose is surprisingly good for a video game. It builds atmosphere so well from every dialogue, and it knows how to do world-building including history, characters, factions, and political ideologies. I also like the 24 parts of the brain as the approach to display inner discourse. The passive skill check system works so well to not only give a sense of different builds but also the conversations among those skills to make your character feel unique.\n\nCharacters themselves are strong. Harry's mysteries such as in his dreams and alcoholism are motivated well.\n\nThere can be a lot of exposition dumps at times as the approach to world-building, especially in the beginning. Not unexpected for a script-heavy RPG I suppose. It's not nearly as bad as Planescape Torment however, which would serve you multiple large paragraphs at a time. The voice narration and animation also help with this in serving emotion beyond just the text.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The game is inspired by CRPGs, notably Planescape Torment, and it shows. It's a point-and-click with dialogue options and skill checks, building on the core of what made CRPGs' world-building and dialogue so deep. Unlike Planescape Torment, Disco Elysium builds on its strengths by focusing entirely on the script with dialogue and environment interaction, removing all combat elements. It still benefits from the RPG elements of attributes, items, and skill checks with their randomness.\n\nIt's an innovative skill check mechanic where you can try \"white\" skill checks again whenever you level up the skill or uncover new information. This helps with the indecision of knowing what skill to level up as well as revisiting NPC dialogues to progress. Many skill checks are also passive, making checks rarely feel like you've missed out on content due to insufficient skill allocation. \"Red\" checks are significant with a single try but are often set up with failure in mind (as is the character overall); so it doesn't feel wasted if you fail.\n\nQuest design is fantastic. There are many tasks (quests), and with no explicit markers in good old-fashioned RPG style. \"Secret task\" completion rewards you with additional XP and never feels obligatory to seek out. I greatly like this approach to quest design as it's closer to a task list than a distinct set of game-y video game objectives to complete on a quest-by-quest basis.\n\nProgression-wise, there is XP to level up skills, coins to purchase items, thought cabinet, political alignment to change dialogue options and thoughts. I also like that the idea that you have companions but you don't have to deal with their own stats like a video game: it's all about you while still benefiting from a companion for dialogue.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The art exudes style, evoking atmosphere from its UI, character and environment art, and soundtrack. It's fully voiced and voiced well. I felt fully immersed in the game, playing hours on end not only due to the story's pacing but also the excellent voice acting.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Time mechanic. It adds to the immersion and a lingering sense of urgency. On the other hand, it's non-obvious who's still up to continue talking to indefinitely without passing to the next day.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Run isn't default. Fortunately, you can double-click to run instead of walk, as opposed to relying on Shift key.\n+ Fairly long loading screens and too many.\n+ The list of white checks does not remove checks that are no longer available. You also can't scroll through it with your mouse.\n+ When you can fast travel is inconsistent. Just let us always be able to fast travel.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Drunken Detective's Handbook](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1948691016)\n+ [Thought Cabinet](https://discoelysium.fandom.com/wiki/Thought_Cabinet)\n+ [PSA: Drugs enable you to permanently raise caps](https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscoElysium/comments/dlo2mv/psa_drugs_enable_you_to_permanently_raise_skill)\n+ [Inspiration & Recommendations](https://steamcommunity.com/games/632470/announcements/detail/3334287173823797601)\n\nI played the Final Cut edition.\n\nMy build was 4/4/2/2 with Shivers as my Signature Skill. I generally liked the idea of a technically and emotionally intelligent person while still with minimum capacity for physique and motorics. I never really sold items. Outside of the three XP-related thoughts, I did not seek out others but [gravitated to +stat ones](https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscoElysium/comments/ebiglv/so_what_are_your_12_favorite_thoughts_spoilers); I pursued the same strategy for clothes. I generally only used skill points to reattempt white checks, but I drifted toward Conceptualization and Encyclopedia (for XP); Empathy, Logic, Rhetoric, Inland Empire, Perception, Visual Calculus, Shivers, Half-Light, Composure; and stopping at a max of 8. By endgame, I was close to effectively maxxing out all stats. This means mid-to-late game is similar with all builds.\n\nTodos on future playthroughs\n+ Inland Empire. Can supplement with an alcoholic physique/motorics which I didn’t have high in early game on my first playthrough","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/disco-elysium"},{"id":"322682678652525132","title":"EarthBound","originalTitle":"MOTHER2 ギーグの逆襲","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":1994,"playtimeMinutes":1680,"studios":["Xtal Soft"],"publishers":["Xtal Soft"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2011-09-30","completedDate":"2011-09-30","updatedDate":"2023-08-26","notes":"The title made several innovations:\n\n+ A much tighter and witty script.\n+ Tighter level navigation and where to go than in Mother 1.\n+ Rolling HP counter during battles.\n+ Non-random encounters.\n+ Beautiful SNES textures and 15-bit color that ages well.\n+ Areas that feel vibrant and lived-in. A significant improvement over the empty squares in Mother 1.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Starmen.net](http://starmen.net). It is a community site founded by Tomato.\n  + [Walkthrough](http://walkthrough.starmen.net/earthbound)\n+ [EarthBound Central](https://earthboundcentral.com). It is a blog owned by Tomato.\n  + [Newcomer's Guide](https://earthboundcentral.com/newcomers-guide)\n+ [WikiBound](https://wikibound.info/wiki/WikiBound)\n\nThis was my first entry to the Mother series.\n\n__Version.__ There are several versions:\n\n1. Mother 2 (SNES, Japan). This is the most original release. There are many regional differences between the Japanese and English localized release ([legendsoflocalization.com written by Tomato](https://legendsoflocalization.com/earthbound), [tcrf.net](https://tcrf.net/EarthBound/Regional_Differences)). There is no translation of Mother 2, official or fan.\n\n2. Earthbound (SNES, North America). It is Mother 2 localized to English (see differences above).\n\n  There are a handful of un-censoring and un-localization hacks. As of writing in 2023-07-28, below is not exhaustive but an initial listing from what I found while researching Mother 1 versions. Re-research this if aiming to play EarthBound.\n\n    + [MaternalBound](https://forum.starmen.net/forum/Community/PKHack/WIP-MaternalBound-Uncensoring-Other-junk-hack). It is an un-censoring patch (but not an un-localization).\n\n3. Mother 1+2 (GBA, Japan). It is a port of Mother 2 in Japan. There is no official North American (English) release. Compared to the SNES, the GBA port has inferior music and sound effects ([discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/earthbound/comments/1fjn9n/snes_or_gba)).\n\n    + The [Mother 1+2 fan translation](http://mother12.earthboundcentral.com) release did not fully translate Mother 2. only translated names for the Mother 2 part and not the full game.\n\nI played EarthBound (SNES, North America) using the Snes9x emulator. I would prefer Mother 2 if an English translation were available. At the time, I had also not researched unlocalization and uncensoring patches. I would also prefer the Higan emulator.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/earthbound--1"},{"id":"322682678652803660","title":"Elden Ring","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":3540,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Switch 2","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["FromSoftware"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment","FromSoftware"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-02-25","completedDate":"2022-03-26","updatedDate":"2024-07-09","notes":"Elden Ring is a true successor to the Dark Souls series, innovating with open world elements enabling new forms of exploration and level navigation. Level design is the core of what makes Soulslike games so excellent, and Elden Ring sets a whole new standard. It also stands out in its sheer scale of content, larger than even Dark Souls 2 and its 3 DLCs: a single playthrough can take 120 hours for all content (contrast to 40-50 in previous Souls games).\n\nThere are many other elements that make Soulslike games good, and indeed, they also appear in Elden Ring: combat, enemy design and variety, wonderful art, atmospheric soundtrack, and diegetic storytelling.\n\nFlaws to Elden Ring? Content reuse, including sub-levels like forts and catacomb rooms, and bosses. I would much prefer they scale down Elden Ring's size and remove the bloat.\n\n__Story.__ Cryptic and standard for a Souls game. I'm a fan of the approach to storytelling but as in all Souls games, the story itself isn't deep. It's a minimal world logic to connect whatever interesting levels or enemies FromSoftware can think of.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Elden Ring effectively has four types of gameplay: world exploration, progression in curated levels like the main zones and Catacombs, boss encounters, and side quest progression. Each one feels fulfilling and lets you enjoy them as you build your character.\n\n__Level design.__ Elden Ring most builds on Dark Souls 1's strength of interconnected levels, going beyond a metroidvania to an open world. The open world has rich detail brought by the individual level designs, enemies, art design, boss and NPC encounters, and unique loot. It's the epitome of the idealized feeling in open world games, where you can find any area off to the distance and actually reach it.\n\nWhat makes Elden Ring's open world stand out is that it's explicitly designed to be explored without the crutch of quest waypoints and map markers. This goes against the pattern of open world RPGs like Elder Scrolls and Fallout which guide content from one quest hub to the next; and Ubisoft-style games which clutter areas with formulaic content such as outposts and climbable towers (this also includes Horizon Zero Dawn, Dying Light, and Ghost of Tsushima). Breath of the Wild is the closest similarity, but even that game still suffers from formulaic content and has little rewarding loot off the beaten path unlike Dark Souls' unique equipment.\n\nThe open world even includes boss fights rather than closed pre-destined areas. This allows for new mechanics. For example, there's horse fights and emergent patterns: ogres can damage the Death Rite Bird or the catapults in Stormveil Castle kill the Lion miniboss; and you can even invade during boss encounters.\n\nThe areas feel like you can explore in any direction and where there's sufficient assets and interesting content variety that the world doesn't feel empty. You simply mark on your map where you haven't explored yet and you'll encounter something new. I haven't found a game since Thief where I would explicitly take notes on my map in order to mark places I haven't explored, areas currently gated, NPC locations and those who I should revisit for a side quest, and boss encounters I want to return to. The world is incredibly expansive: 20 hours in, I only finish exploring Limgrave; 47 hours in, I finish exploring Liurnia and Aisled River.\n\nElden Ring's worst flaw are formulaic encounters in order to pad content: catacombs, sorcerer isles, minor Erdtrees, evergaols, bosses, forts. There's sub-level and boss reusage in all Souls games, but Elden Ring is the worst of them all. Prior to Elden Ring, the worst case was Bloodborne's chalice dungeons, and Elden Ring's catacombs are basically that. Dark Souls 1's Asylum Demon appeared 3 times, which was a major criticism at its time; in Elden Ring, the same dragon appears 10 times and same goes for other bosses such as Erdtree Avatar, Ulcerated Tree Spirit, and Crucible Knight.\n\nA drawback to its expansive and diverse approach to world navigation is difficulty. Outside of the scripted boss fights, it's rare to feel at threat when you can easily kite enemies with your horse or run away given the mostly open space. It's only in the confined spaces like Stormveil Castle does the game's level design harken back to Dark Souls. And these levels are extremely good: it's amazing just how labyrinthian they feel with you scaling rooftops and intended ground areas (excellent verticality) while it all somehow connecting back as a circular path. These levels all feel realistically designed like Demon's Souls Boletaria and not video gamey in nature.\n\n__Combat & progression systems.__\nCombat and RPG mechanics are largely the same as Dark Souls 3. Dark Souls' base moveset includes R1/R2 chains, running attack, and rolling attack. The notable differences are the following.\n\n+ Jump for both exploration and jump attacks. The jump attack effectively serves as a plunging attack that you can apply anywhere as a part of the core moveset, particularly for closing distance and breaking shields.\n+ Stance-breaking for critical hits using jump attacks and R2 attacks. This is similar to Sekiro.\n+ Crouch. On top of stealth for starting certain encounters, it even adds an advanced move to your moveset, similar to untargeting your enemy to backstep. This is especially helpful for, say, greatswords where R1/R2 are horizontal slashes and the crouch attack is a thrust.\n+ Ash of War similar to Dark Souls 3's Weapon Arts, but it's a weapon mod.\n+ Guard counter. Adds aggressivity to the tank playstyle.\n+ Stealth critical attacks, similar to Sekiro.\n+ Crafting for arrows and consumable buffs.\n+ Horse which includes double jump for exploration and its own combat controls with left/right swings.\n+ Summon-type ashes.\n+ Power stance, from Dark Souls 2.\n+ Stakes of Marika are near boss fights to reduce the amount of running back to bosses.\n+ Solo players can no longer be invaded.\n+ Flask of Wonderous Physique as the approach to limited yet replenishable buffs.\n\n__Multiplayer.__\nPvP is not good. Unlike Dark Souls, you can only invade solo players that use an item that allows for invasion. This makes the newb experience much more friendly to invasion. On the other hand, it makes the invader experience extremely difficult. Combine this difficulty with the same netcode of Dark Souls 3, so lag is a real issue and ping makes parrying unreliable. And combine this with the little reward from invasions as Elden Ring has no covenant system.\n\n__Other gameplay elements.__\nBoss design remains stellar in this game. Individual bosses stand out, and the boss composition is always great at variety among humanoids and beasts, and with varying attack patterns. My favorite bosses are Crucible Knight, Godskin Apostle, (the first) Dragon overworld fight, Radahn (played solo without NPC summons), and Malenia.\n\nI admire Elden Ring's ability to appeal to an even wider audience. It's not just NPC summons in Dark Souls to aid boss fights. You can postpone areas to explore others so you effectively level up and make the postponed areas easier. There's Torrent. There's summons. The common newb tactic of turtling under a shield can now be more aggressive with Guard Counter.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Details are effectively Dark Souls 3's but expanded in diversity and assets due to a new IP. The artwork is always astounding, from the scenery to equipment details and fantasy creature design. Bosses like Astel are a great example, where Astel displays the horror and awe as a blend of sputtering insects and cosmic beauty. Soundtrack and animations remain just as excellent as other soulslike games. \n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Immersive HUD.\n+ Infinite stamina when outside of combat.\n+ Flasks replenish after vanquishing an enemy group, not just at bonfires, and including certain enemies such as elites. This encourages trekking forward and is an improved implementation of Dark Souls 3's hidden meter replenishment.\n+ Ashes of War can be infinitely applied, only restricted to being binded to a particular weapon. Helps with experimentation unlike limited respecs.\n+ All the various surprises, like opening a chest and being transported to another realm; or meeting the Bell-Bearing Hunter boss invasion when trying to visit a merchant.\n+ Dark Souls 2’s torch is brought back for use in caverns, and it doesn’t need tedious ammo collection.\n+ Map has a nice balance of guidance for world exploration but actual dungeons do not have maps, and many points are not automatically marked such as NPCs, bosses, and any other interesting encounters.\n+ Invasions during boss fights. Black Kindred Blade is especially a fun one.\n+ Malenia is one of the most difficult bosses I encountered, partially because I aimed for a consistent parrying strategy which is significantly more risky than just dodging. It took me 4 days over a total of roughly 20 hours.\n+ [Discovering (touching) a Touch of Grace is sufficient to rest there and set your checkpoint.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/t4ursf/til_even_if_you_dont_rest_at_the_site_of_grace) This always confused me in Dark Souls 1/3.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Fast travel at any time and not just at bonfires.\n+ Transmog.\n+ No weapon durability. Spam hit all the invisible walls you’d like.\n+ It's advertised as a joint creation of Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin. GRMM's contributions are minimal in this game: you can see some of it in the NPC lore's complicated family relations and at a very high-level the political landscape. But everything else is clearly Dark Souls' DNA: world design, enemies, bosses, and the overarching lore. The attribution is obviously done for marketing, not unlike having famous advisors on your papers more for the clout than their individual contribution.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ It hasn't been fixed since Dark Souls 1: rotating through spells is a pain. This makes diverse sorcery including builds like a battlemage annoying as you constantly have to cycle through your spells in a clockwise manner. Any modern RPG would simply give you multiple keybinds. Instead, Dark Souls effectively limits your spell diversity because it's cumbersome to switch spells in the middle of combat. Consider the [EMU Light](https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/31) mod for future playthroughs.\n+ There are missable side quests. Rogier dies if you meet Ranni at the Three Sisters before completing it. Volcano Manor sidequests are locked out if you kill Rykard. Corhyn disappears (and therefore one ending disappears) if Lendyell turns to ash before you complete his sidequest's objective first. Latenna. Dolores the Sleeping Arrow puppet is missable if you complete Ranni's quest before giving Seluvis' potion. Nepheli's last quest objective disappears if you beat Maliketh.\n+ Input buffer can queue, say, a dodge immediately after you get hit which would cause you to get hit again for a number of enemy movesets that require a short pause. There are times that you die from the buffer in all Dark Souls games but it’s most a problem in Elden Ring due to the prevalence of timed attacks.\n+ As usual in Dark Souls, fighting giant bosses can be frustrating because your lock-on camera is unreliable. At one point, you're targeting the body and completely whiff your attack as your angle is incorrect.\n+ Like Dark Souls titles, you can pick up an interesting item and not know which category it is so you search through your entire inventory in hopes of finding it. A simple solution from AAA action-adventures is to enable viewing the item in inventory immediately after picking it up. Similarly, you can spam loot items and forget what you picked up: would be nice to be able to display the most recent new items. Surprisingly, Elden Ring does let you change sort order by pressing L3; but you still have to search through categories instead of looking at, say, All Items.\n+ Aside from night time bosses, day night cycle doesn't make a difference beyond cosmetics. This is true of most open world games, and the only time I found this meaningful was in Dying Light.\n+ Three Wise Beasts puzzle. It's a nice change of pace in the game, but the puzzle is a poor implementation of hide and seek with no intuition or critical thinking involved, just looking randomly through the map.\n+ The map markers are useful but they're all the same color and difficult to distinguish. It can also be difficult to locate all your various markers without tediously scrolling through the map at a sufficiently high resolution.\n+ Although Melina serves as the equivalent of a firekeeper, she hardly shows up in the game, appearing more often like any other NPC does with their sidequest. This keeps with the new story element of being maidenless, but she's supposed to travel alongside you at all times and yet it's easy to forget she is.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Fextralife wiki](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com)\n  + [Interactive map](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Interactive+Map). For a minimal playthrough, I keep on Sites of Grace, Flask Upgrades, and Maps by default. The rest are discovered blindly or as needed.\n+ The equivalent to the [infamous DS3 checklist](https://zkjellberg.github.io/dark-souls-3-cheat-sheet) is [Roundtable Hold](https://roundtablehold.net). I find these checklists overwhelming in Elden Ring though; 100%ing playthroughs beyond the first is exhausting. The higher-level bullet points in [Fextralife's Game Progress Route](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Game+Progress+Route) is another alternative.\n\n### Playthrough 1: 2022-02-25\n\nI played a STR/FAITH build. This was a result of recently playing Strength in DS1 and Dex in DS3 on November 2021, and a Sword/Odachi build in Nioh 2 on February 2022. I would play full caster with INT but something about playing a caster build for a first playthrough seems off, especially since Souls games aren't balanced well for ranged attacks. STR/FAITH lets me lean more into FAITH's offensive spells if I feel like it later game (especially true for Elden Ring where FAITH now also includes pyromancy), or just stay as a magic-buffed swordsman like a prototypical Paladin. As it's a first playthrough and on game release, I generally played blind  instead of trying to get all missable items and side quests. That said, after covering all of an area blind (e.g., Limgrave, Liurnia), I would look online in case I missed content like night time bosses or caves as well as secret areas for progression as otherwise going back to an area means you're severely overleveled. By the time I finished Caelid, I felt overleveled relative to the rest of the game as completing all optional content gave me so much Souls; so I just started dumping my levels into secondary stats and buying everything in shops.\n\n+ Class: Confessor. Keepsake: Golden Seed.\n+ Main weapon: Straight Swords, Greatswords, and Colossal Weapons scaling in STR or STR/FAITH. My specific progression was Broadsword, Greatsword, Iron Cleaver, Claymore, Banished Knight's Heavy Halberd, Golden Epitaph, Blasphemous Blade, Maliketh's Black Blade. I also kept on a Buckler and Seal.\n+ Equipment: Whatever keeps me at <70% for max defense while remaining fashionable.\n+ Main spells: Giantsflame Take Thee; Flame of the Fell God; The Flame of Frenzy; Honed Bolt / Lightning Spear; Flame, Cleanse Me; Blessing of the Erdtree.\n\n### Playthrough 2: 2024-07-06\n\nI played as bleed (Arcane) build. Undecided on ARC / DEX hybrid or pure ARC with minimum requirements for DEX / STR gear.\n\n+ Class: Hero (it had the lowest combination of stats in MIN/INT/FTH which I don't plan to spend on). Keepsake: Stonesword key (for the variety option alternative to Golden seed).\n\nMiscellaneous\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/xvqfkw/bleed_build_dexarcane_question/\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/18bip0a/when_doing_a_general_bleed_build_is_it_better_to/kc4eo26/\n\nTODOs\n+ Replay as INT build as a pure caster with the occasional melee spell (Adula Moonblade), and with an INT-scaled weapon (e.g., Moonveil) for staggers or out of FP.\n+ Replay as Power stance quality build (e.g., spears, curved sword, straight sword).\n+ Other builds to experiment with: DEX build, Frostbite build, Scarlet Rot build, Dragon/Incantation build. [Example post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/valbrk/pvp_build_tier_list_and_their_counters)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/elden-ring"},{"id":"322682678651427404","title":"Fallout: New Vegas","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":1650,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Obsidian Entertainment"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment","1C/Cenega","Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2019-12-21","completedDate":"2019-12-25","updatedDate":"2023-09-13","notes":"Fallout: New Vegas is Fallout 3 in a desert wasteland and with better dialogue gameplay and quests (some are among the best in gaming history). Most significant is that the story is more detailed, with each faction having reason. Fallout: New Vegas has the most engaging dialogue gameplay I've seen in video games, alongside Morrowind. Fallout New Vegas is a master of player agency and roleplay, closer to Morrowind and Elder Scrolls games in your ability to define your character (not just a chosen one) and his/her relationship with factions.\n\nFlaw-wise, it still has the janky combat of all Bethesda games; overly barren environments without a real sense of exploration, more just point A to B; and bugs.\n\n__Story.__ Main story is fairly mediocre like Fallout 3's, but fortunately not as hackneyed as you're an ordinary courier, not the son of a great scientist. The faction reputation and consequences, and the many sidequests scatted around the different towns each building up reputation/meaning with characters is a significant improvement over Fallout 3.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Mostly the same game as Fallout 3 with slight changes: a slight emphasis on specialization (no chance to get perfect character until very end of late game, fewer skill points per level, perks at every other level instead of every level, traits); iron sights; skills/perks are slightly more streamlined (e.g., Small Guns/Big Guns are just merged as Guns); factions each with a reputation system; ammo subtypes. There's much more depth in dialogue than Fallout 3: (deterministic) skill checks with Barter and Speech; special stats checks; quests/maps/experience purely from navigating the dialogue options.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Engine is the same as Fallout 3. It feels even more barren than Fallout 3, where with the desert wastelands there are just fewer interesting assets. I don't recall as many obviously repatched assets like Morrowind's dungeons and Oblivion gates or Fallout 3's subways.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ The Ghost Town Gunfight mission setting the stage for Fallout's choice of factions and player agency.\n+ The iconic hub of Freeside and its full-of-life-characters like the Kings and the Atomic Wranglers quests.\n+ The assorted Boomer quests in the quest Volare!.\n+ The Ultra-Luxe.\n+ Not knowing any better and taking Boone with me to Crystal Cove. Proceeded to wipe the entire base, then get to the Fort and wonder if this is really going as planned (about 1 hour wasted on whether I want to commit to this, then deciding it's all for the best and I may as well just watch for any of the Legion quests)..\n+ Democracy Inaction was an absolute slog to play. But the surprising realism in its premise is shocking.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Weapon sway depends on if you're standing or not (and like Fallout 3, your gun skill level).\n+ Going through dialogue options, e.g., starts quests, adds to the map, adds/loses fame. This makes listening to the dialogue actually worth it beyond the lore.\n+ Challenge perks. It adds more immersion to how perks arise beyond just leveling.\n+ The mission GPS indicator always tells you where to go and is generally sensible without the need to follow a guide. You're still forced to look things up though for understanding the deep dialogue trees as well as when the simple 2D directions don't work well (e.g., vertical, or needing to get keys to get access to areas/navigating mazes).\n+ Movement speed is tied to light armor and holstering your weapon. Adds to the immersion that for movement you keep your weapon holstered and travel light! No sprint though.\n+ Companions don't die. They only get knocked out for the duration of a fight.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Caravan card game. Literally did not play it once.\n+ Slow motion after every death, not just VAT. I turned it off as it slowed down the game's pace.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Crafting system is not good. It's too inconvenient to access, ingredients unclear, and not necessary if you can just purchase them given the large amount of Caps you get.\n+ Like Fallout 3, VATS system in targeting limbs is largely pointless. The head or chest is the only really viable option. It's never incentivized to disable body parts like it is for example in Horizon Zero Dawn.\n+ You can't play the game anymore after you beat it.\n+ Beating game isn't saved, you have to reload a previous save.\n+ DR/DT and DAM/DPS aren't separate slots but take the same place in stats, fading every second to the other which is annoying.\n+ Too much backtracking in the vaults/dungeon areas, and when going to questgivers that are several loading screens deep.\n+ No native 21:9 support, but some config changes (http://www.wsgf.org/dr/fallout-new-vegas/en).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki: Quests](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_quests)\n+ [r/fnv](https://www.reddit.com/r/fnv)\n  + [Wiki: Modding guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/fnv/wiki/moddingguide)\n+ [Track playtime on Steam](https://steamcommunity.com/app/22370/discussions/0/648814844765269046)\n+ [Rika: Streamlined list of good mods](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ci3sNT0wcrbjETw4sM7JqlK-zmcjoLqJFSjqhmTjk_0/htmlview)\n+ [Oxhorn quest playthroughs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LuNQZA5HFA)\n\n__Version.__ I purchased the base game including all DLCs (evaluated separately).\n\n__Playthrough.__ I played on mouse and keyboard. My total playtime according to Steam is 43 hours, completing all DLCs and NCR's main missions but not all sidequests or alternative faction playthroughs.\n\n__Mods.__ I played with essential mods which only improve performance or fix bugs: New Vegas Script Extender, JIP LN Plugin for NVSE (more script functionality and fixes bugs), NVTF - New Vegas Tick Fix (fixes visual stutter; it added lips out of sync so I removed it altogether), NVAC - New Vegas Anti-Crash, 4GB RAM patch, ini tweaks, Mod Organizer 2, YUP - Yukichigai Unofficial Patch, Unofficial Patch NVSE, CASM with MCM (autosaves), OneTweak (borderless). After 34 hours into the game (on Honest Hearts DLC), I added additional mods (sorted roughly by importance and/or load order).\n\n+ UI: Mod Configuration Menu, Vanilla HUD Remastered 4K, Immersive HUD (+Adjustable HUD).\n+ Textures: NMCs Textures, Wasteland Flora Overhaul, Enhanced Terrain LOD, Effect Textures Enhanced, Improved LOD Noise Texture, Enhanced Camera, Strip Wall Billboards.\n+ Weather: Nevada Skies (+JohnnyGuitar NVSE; ultimately replaced with FNV Realistic Lighting after I encountered a desert storm during Pleasant Road.. unbearable to navigate and fight enemies who have 100% accuracy).\n+ Lighting/ENB: Rudy ENB (I couldn't get the most popular ENB of Enhanced Shaders to perform well), Interior Lighting Overhaul, Dynavision 3, Old World Blues Path Lighting.\n\nAs much as I wanted to alter gameplay with sprint, dynamic crosshair, and character face overhauls, I couldn't feel comfortable switching it without a full first playthrough.\n\n__Build.__\nI played a [stealth sniper build](https://www.ign.com/articles/2010/11/02/fallout-new-vegas-scout-sniper-hardcore-guide-1131544).\n\n+ Primary statistics: 8 Agility, 5 Intelligence.\n+ Skills: Guns, Sneak, Repair, Speech (lots of unique quest mechanics from dialogue), then slowly added Lockpicking, Science.\n+ I used only Light armor for maximum movement speed. \n+ I played a bit with weapons until I got the Ratslayer then Sniper Rifle (which I only slightly prefer over Anti-Material Rifle due to more abundant ammo/repair and silencer; though I prefer AMR's slower-but-heavier attacks and flashy kills), then stuck primarily with a sniper except in close combat situations where VATS is not enough so I switched to a shotgun/melee.\n\nI chose to side with NCR over Legions as the designers clearly put a gameplay advantage for them: companions, significant map presence, etc. I also favored diplomatic routes when possible. Some choices I made: NCR among the four factions; Birds of a Feather, killing Cass; Rey Brain for Rex; weapon upgrade for ED-E.\n\nI completed all DLCs in chronological order once I hit level 20 and did not complete the last piece of the main story until I completed all DLCs.\n\ntodos on future playthroughs\n+ any gun build not vats sniper\n+ melee build\n+ side with imperial legion","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallout-new-vegas"},{"id":"322682678624156236","title":"Hollow Knight","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":1590,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Linux","Switch 2","PC","PS5","Mac","WiiU","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Team Cherry"],"publishers":["Team Cherry"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-08-04","completedDate":"2021-08-12","updatedDate":"2025-12-27","notes":"Hollow Knight is the best metroidvania of all time, combining elements from classics like Castlevania and Metroid with the deep combat of the soulslike genre. The platforming elements are also excellent. Both combat and platforming are difficult but fair alongside titans of its genres like Super Meat Boy and Celeste.\n\nFlaw-wise, Hollow Knight inherits one of the worst elements of Dark Souls: several long corpse runs. Fortunately, I found the game not too difficult as I was acquainted with 2D metroidvania combat before playing Hollow Knight, and Dreamgate is featured late game. Backtracking in Hollow Knight can be a pain, and it's easy to get lost on where to go next given all the interaction of areas. In terms of replayability, Hollow Knight also doesn't have any build variety like other metroidvanias with RPG elements.\n\n__Story.__ Hollow Knight inherits Dark Souls' diegetic style. There are NPCs percolated through the game with cryptic messages and which progress their content. Slowly areas unlock and the overarching story is revealed.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core gameplay loop is one of soulslike and metroidvania games, searching through a new area, defeating enemies, finding the next checkpoint, and unlocking new abilities to progress to the next area. Enemy variety is excellent, particularly with 53(!) bosses and each with up to 3 variations. There's also a good amount of platforming challenges. Particularly new mechanics include:\n\n1. The soul mechanic as mana is excellent, encouraging aggressiveness by attacking to refill it like Bloodborne while with a variety of spells including healing that benefit from such mana.\n2. There are mapping tools which help balance blind exploration and blindly following a map. In particular, the map isn't updated until you rest and purchase a map for a given area. It also serves as the early purchases with your geo (the currency), where these quality-of-changes are enabled over time.\n3. Additional mechanics include multiple fast travel systems (including Dreamgate to set your own waypoint), Spells which serve for both combat and unlocking areas, Nail Arts, Warrior Graves, and Whispering Roots.\n\nThe map and unlockable powers is metroidvania-like. It's extremely open in what areas are open to explore. And unlike Souls games, there aren't general levels for each area, with the only major progression missing being your Nail upgrade. For example, there are so many paths to explore after City of Tears.\n\nThe death penalty is soulslike with a return to a spawn point and defeating an enemy to reobtain lost geo. This encourages the classic risk-exploration tradeoff in whether to return back to your spawn point to replenish heals and save your geo or to venture forth hoping you'll find the next checkpoint.\n\nControls are responsive and feature a minimal and intuitive moveset. Movement is precise without acceleration and where dash arrests cetical movement reminiscent of Megaman games. Jump is Castlevania-like in holding it to jump higher, alongside unlocked abilities. Attacking enemies with attack and dodge, with directional attacks like pogo sticking enemies from the downward strike and upwards strike.\n\nProgression-wise, there aren't stats like Castlevania or Dark Souls. Rather powers unlock in Metroid style, charms as a light form of equipment, and with upgrade items: Mask Shards to upgrade max HP, Vessel Fragments to upgrade max Soul, and Grub and Essence rewards.\n\nReplayability is somewhat limited. Steel Soul mode is the only variation on a second playthrough. Endgame, there is plenty of content at least to continually test your mettle. The Grimm Troupe and Godmaster DLCs are integrated well into the game and serve as challenging endgame content alongside Trial of the Coliseum and White Palace.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Beautiful art style with tight animations on movesets and getting hit or hitting. The atmosphere and overall soundtrack is also great.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The spawn enemy mechanic as the way to recover Geo, and which appear before a boss encounter if you die at one. I greatly prefer this over Dark Souls' approach of picking up a corpse during the boss fight.\n+ Unlike Dark Souls, you can't accidentally hit NPCs.\n+ Sometimes when you rest on a bench, there's an NPC resting on it too.\n+ To unlock Charm Notches, you must unlock a certain number of Charms. This encourages widespread spending so you actually purchase everything.\n+ No missable content. Nothing like the opaque NPC quest objectives in Dark Souls that are easy to miss.\n+ Hornet's yells during each attack reminds me of Megaman boss battles.\n+ Collector's Map is available late game so you can track all the remaining Grubs. By the time I got it, I only needed 6 more.\n+ White Palace is a nice approach to endgame content focusing on platforming challenges where other endgame content can serve as combat challenges.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Pantheon of Hallownest is by far one of the most challenging content in video games. It's somewhat bullshit because it's just a marathon lineup of all 53 bosses in the game. With that said, it's optional. You can even practice on individual bosses via the Hall of Gods.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Parry mechanic isn't well-telegraphed or rewarding, so it's not core to the combat. For example, there's no riposte.\n+ To teleport back to the latest checkpoint, there's no consumable item like Homeward Bone. You just Quit to Menu. There should be an ingame approach to do this as backtracking is tedious.\n+ There are no regular enemies that pose a significant threat akin to Black Knights in Dark Souls. Regular enemies are more for chip damage and where you can be suddenly low only if you’re careless in fighting too many at once or over environmental hazards.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://hollowknight.wiki\n+ https://hollowknight.wiki/w/Items_(Hollow_Knight)#Upgrades\n+ [Short progression guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/HollowKnight/comments/5whg5n/a_short_progression_guide_with_movement_ability)\n+ [Charm Tier List](https://www.reddit.com/r/HollowKnight/comments/8vpya9/hollow_knight_charm_tier_list)\n+ [112% completion checklist](https://hollowknightchecklist.com)\n\n__Version.__\nI played the game with all four content packs, leaving the two content DLCs of Grimm Troupe and Godmaster as postgame content. \n\n__Playthrough.__\nI originally played it on Mac on 09/15/18. I couldn't get into 2D soulslike combat and metroidvania at the time. \n\nMy next playthrough, I completed effectively all content, with 110% completion including Path of Pain and Nightmare King Grimm. It's interesting just how much a difference in perspective affects things. I didn't do Pantheon of the Knight, Pantheon of Hallownest, Pantheon bindings, all Radiant bosses, Steel Soul mode, and Speedrun achievements.\n\n+ Charm-wise, I use Long Nail (later Mark of Pride), Quick Focus, and Grubsong.\n\n    Later, I add Quick Slash, and at 11 Charm Notches, my loadout is Unbreakable Strength, Mark of Pride, Quick Focus, and Sharp Shadow, the last of which is situationally swapped with Grubsong and Thorns of Agony.\n+ Geo-wise, I found the game well-balanced: by the time I got all 3 Dreamers, I had enough for the everything plus 10k geo, with only the purchases remaining of the three Divine upgrades and Salubra's Blessing.\n\n__Path of Pain.__ It took me roughly 5 hours to beat Path of Pain, with 3.5 hours spent alone on the final segment (beating my head against the wall repeatedly for the hardest piece of it, where I could do every other part of the segment consistently). What an accomplishment but also what suffering to get there. My thumb is even sore for having to press A/B (particularly in timing the hold-A jump). I found the platforming quite fair overall, with the more challenging segments like the first section quite fun and reminding me of Super Meat Boy and Celeste. It's the bullshit portion of the final section that I had to beat my head against the wall for.\n\n__Nightmare King Grim.__ I beat it after roughly 3 hours. Once you learn his moves and don't die within seconds of the fight, the fight plays like a fun reflex game. You know exactly how to react to each move, punish, and/or heal. It's all a matter of executing it over the course of roughly 49 hits, practicing over dozens of runs until you can commit each reaction as instantaneous muscle memory. I didn't read this guide until after beating NKG, but [this strategy and build was pretty much what I did](https://www.reddit.com/r/HollowKnight/comments/9h0i1z/i_beat_nightmare_king_grimm_heres_my_advice).\n\n### Playthrough: 2025-12\n\nI started playing with Marisa.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/hollow-knight"},{"id":"322682678650364492","title":"Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask","originalTitle":"ゼルダの伝説 ムジュラの仮面","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2000,"playtimeMinutes":1260,"platforms":["Wii","N64","64DD","WiiU"],"studios":["Nintendo EAD Software Development Group No.3"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Gradiente"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2011-12-31","completedDate":"2020-11-29","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"As with all Zelda games, Majora's Mask (MM) excels in a number of core assets: lock-style battle mechanics, a classic story rife with colorful details, supporting characters in a world of Zelda-specific bestiary and races, level design, and music (from the background to how it drives the game with the ocarina). What makes Majora's Mask stand above all other titles is its atmosphere, namely in its surrealism and sinisterness. Its side quests and characters also stand out: Skull Kid, Mask Salesman, Bomber kids, Tingle; and sidequests like Anju & Kafei; Business Scrub Scramble; Zora Swan Song.\n\nControversially, MM's world design goes further than just a metroidvania, abiding to a 3-day cycle---an alternative to Ocarina of Time's past and future world timelines. I find the 3-day cycle conceptually interesting and pragmatically infuriating. Time management is tedious, requiring you to complete tasks at the right period, and it was borderline impossible to make progress without a walkthrough in hand. If you don't complete a task in time, say, if it's required in Day 2 or you're 90% through a temple, then you have to go ahead with resetting back to Day 1, then hitting the Song of Double Time to skip to Day 2 or redo the temple. Certain quests also require multiple trials. For example, recompleting Snowhead Temple so you can get the Gilded Sword, re-trekking dungeons for the Frog Choir, or doing most of Anju-Kafei quest to obtain the Sun Mask, Bottle, and Postman Mask. The game is certainly beatable without a guide. But a guide is necessary for MM's core strength, which are all the sidequests.\n\n__Story.__ Main story is darker than any other in the series, with a grim atmosphere of impending doom, progression and lack thereof from the loss of memories. I love its focus on the supporting characters while having a shorter than typical main quest.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Most of the core gameplay is the same as Ocarina of Time with Z-targeting; a sword, bow, items like bombs; heart pieces; ocarina; metroidvania world design; and enemies and races. As part of the N64 era, MM like OOT has some clunky controls, with Z-targeting not always reliable (and if it fails, it changes your camera angle so it's hard to use when trying to target an enemy); and aiming your bow with your left analog stick. Majora's Mask introduces masks, allowing Link to transform into creatures like Deku, Goron, and Zora for new abilities and their own instrument; as well as other masks like Bunny Mask for faster movement and Blast Mask for infinite close-range bombs. I found this mechanic immensely enjoyable: it added depth to Majora's Mask as you use the variety of masks across your journey for exploration; and it adds a collectible. Another major change is the 3-day cycle instead of Ocarina of Time's two-time time travel between future and past.\n\nI greatly enjoy the 3DS' quality-of-life additions, making it my preferred version (see details below).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sounds.__ Graphics are impressive. I especially like the polished detail and less muddy textures in the 3DS remake. 3DS' improved framerate from 15FPS/50hz (PAL) or 20FPS/60hz (NTSC) to 30 FPS is very welcome.The soundtrack is iconic.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ As with all Zelda games, jumping, climbing, etc. is automatically handled for you.\n+ On 3DS, third-person camera control is now possible. This is almost a must-have for modern playthroughs.\n+ On 3DS, Owl Statues no longer provide one-time saves but permanent saves. This is a significant improvement over the need to use Song of Time for every permanent save on N64. In addition, the 3DS remake adds Quill Statues, which add additional save points for easier progression, but do not add to the warp points with Song of Soaring.\n+ On 3DS, Song of Double Time lets Link jump to a specific hour of the current day, making side quests signifiacntly easier to progress.\n+ On 3DS, the main screen's HUD is more minimal than in the original game.\n+ On 3DS, the Bombers' Notebook is expanded, listing Events as a checkmark that you've completed them in a more fine-grained form than the Happy Sticker for each character upon completion of all their quests.\n+ MM requires you to play the songs, so you end up remembering the tunes by muscle memory rather than just click on them from a songbook.\n+ To move the fastest uses a notable mechanic: rolling as Child Link < Bunny Mask < rolling with Goron Mask. Epona is also fast but more difficult to control so it's often not worth using her.\n+ While the game is renowned among all Zelda titles for being difficult to play blind, [MM at least has no permanent missable items or content](https://zelda.gamepedia.com/Permanently_Missable_Items#Majora.27s_Mask).\n+ The Restoration Project mod for Majora's Mask 3D fixes Zora swimming, Inverted Song of Time, and, as my favorite quality-of-life improvement, it adds multiple keybinds: the 4 primary masks to the D-pad, I and II buttons to ZR+X/Y, the Ocarina of Time, Item, and Gear menu, and fast Arrow Switching!\n+ The Frog Choir is perhaps the most tedious in terms of tasks. You must recomplete a dungeon boss (Goht) as well as traverse mid-way through Woodfall and Waterfall Temples to defeat their Gekko mini-bosses.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ There are too many items with too few hotkeys as a console game. On 3DS, the I and II buttons have no keybind. You must tap them. In N64, you have 3 keybindable buttons while in 3DS, you have two keybindable and two non-keybindable. MM would be perfect as a keyboard & mouse PC game. There are too many items to use in an area, requiring frequent item swapping for their hotkey which hampers the gameplay, and bow/hookshot/mirror shield aiming is precise with a mouse. [Fortunately, there's a workaround on emulator using Steam Overlay](https://www.reddit.com/r/Citra/comments/fdu5rf/majoras_mask_3d_project_restoration_menu_controls/fk2mdtx), and Project Restoration also adds more keybinds.\n+ All the Piece of Heart fragments in each dungeon. This makes it tedious to find as they're not on the Compass Dungeon Map, so you must resort to a walkthrough.\n+ On 3DS, Link's menu must be tapped and cannot be navigated through the controller.\n+ [On 3DS, Inverted Song of Time is nerfed from 30% reduced in-game time to 50% reduced in-game time](https://github.com/leoetlino/project-restoration).\n+ On 3DS, the most controversial gameplay change is simplifying Zora to a slower swim. I somewhat agree as 3DS misses the fun mechanic of dolphin swimming.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ http://www.zeldadungeon.net/majoras-mask-walkthrough. Caleb Simpson is knowledgeable about the game's trivia, providing unique insights that I wouldn't glean without individually reading up on all the obtuse source references. The walkthrough is thorough and engaging. Just as great as Caleb's Ocarina of Time walkthrough.\n\nI started playing in 2012 right after I played Ocarina of Time. I played via the Project 64 emulator on PC with a Gamecube controller. However, I stopped after Great Bay Temple and right as I started Ikana Canyon. Fortunately Majora's Mask is not so long that starting over is impractical and which I already forgot most details. I played again via the Citra Nintendo 3DS emulator with Majora's Mask 3D at 1440p (my monitor's resolution), 7 years later on 1/6/19, and using a Xbox One controller. I dropped the game yet again right before entering Goron Village but picked it up again on 11/27/20. I installed the [Project Restoration mod](https://restoration.zora.re) (v1.5.8) which greatly added quality-of-life benefits (my most significant complaints are the lack of hotkeys and the nerfed Inverted Song of Time). I reserved any HD mods (HUD, textures) for future playthroughs. I did 100% completion.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-legend-of-zelda-majora-s-mask"},{"id":"322682678652599884","title":"Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time","originalTitle":"ゼルダの伝説 時のオカリナ","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":1620,"platforms":["NGC"],"studios":["Nintendo EAD Tokyo"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2011-12-31","completedDate":"2011-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Details I like:\n\n+ Empty Bottles can be used to swipe at things to get (e.g., water, fairy). In LTTP, you need to use a Bug-Catching net.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Camera control does not age well. It's automatic and in a time where the Nintendo 64 controller does not have a right analog stick for manual camera control. (Super Mario 64 was better, but its use of the C-stick wasn't as fluid as the modern approach of a right analog stick.)\n\nI played via the Project 64 emulator on PC and using a Gamecube controller.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-legend-of-zelda-ocarina-of-time-plus-the-legend-of-zelda-ocarina-of-time-master-quest-two-game-bonus-disc"},{"id":"8ee72772-cee6-492f-9c6a-183d8eae435b","title":"Metal Gear Solid","originalTitle":"メタルギアソリッド","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PS1","PS3","PSP","Vita","Switch"],"studios":["Konami Computer Entertainment Japan"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Puzzle","Tactical","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2002-12-31","completedDate":"2002-12-31","updatedDate":"2023-08-15","notes":"Metal Gear Solid (MGS1) is one of the three titans establishing the stealth genre, alongside Thief: The Dark Project (1998) and Tenchu: Stealth Assassins (1998). MGS1 pioneered tactical shooter mechanics in stealth, Kojima's style, and it's arguably the first cinematic video game. \n\nThere are no significant flaws to this game. It's really that good and I find it ages well replaying it in 2023. The most noticeable flaws are twofold: the backtracking with the sniper rifle and PAL key; and stealth gameplay ends after roughly Psycho Mantis, instead focusing on the story, action, and set pieces.\n\n__Story.__\nIntricate and cinematic especially at its time. MGS1 heavily features cutscenes and fully voiced dialogue. It's a Japanese take on an 80s action military movie. There are memorable cutscenes and events outside the core gameplay like the Meryl prison shootout, rappeling down the Communications Tower, Hind fight, Psycho Mantis, Snake's torture, and Metal Gear Rex.\n\nThe story is at a stage where it's decently written and not too off the rails in having to connect disconnected storylines from previous games ([reddit discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/hjf90r/why_are_the_bosses_in_metal_gear_solid_1_so)). For example, MGS1 bosses like Psycho Mantis and Sniper Wolf have unique designs, and they have distinct backstories. There are no MGS4-style backstory exposition dumps where each Beauty and Beast unit is a traumatic child soldier and phoned in by Drebin.\n\nYou can see Kojima's style begin to emerge:\n\n1. A penchant for soap opera-style plot twists, which appear at almost every corner. Just to name examples: the DARPA chief and ArmsTech president death; Cyborg Ninja being Gray Fox; Decoy Octopus impersonating the DARPA chief; the elevator having four stealth camo soldiers; Naomi being Gray Fox's sister; Master Miller is actually Liquid; Pentagon sending Snake with Foxdie to kill the two hostages as their ultimate mission; Grey Fox having killed Naomi's parents; Colonel following the Pentagon's orders because of Meryl effectively as hostage; Pentagon nuking Shadow Moses and Hal choosing to stay behind so Snake and Meryl can escape; the Patriots collecting data at the end as their ultimate mission.\n2. Portrayal of women and sexuality. All the flirting with Naomi, Mei Ling, and Meryl is funny given how out of character it is in later titles. Particularly crazy is that one plot point involves Meryl's ass.\n3. Exposition dumps.\n4. Wacky character designs in an anime-esque fashion. Foxhound bosses are all named and themed after an animal. And Solid and Liquid Snake being clones of Big Boss.\n5. [Lengthy cutscenes](https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/3i63us/metal_gear_solids_cutscenes_by_the_numbers).\n\n__Gameplay.__\nMGS1 set up all the essentials to make up a stealth shooter, and the Metal Gear Solid series especially. This includes semi-linear level design with open areas, weaponry, boss fights, NPC alert/caution system, radar, controls (standing, crouch, and crawling stance; wall interaction including holding onto it and knocking on it), codec, item/weapon selection, and save/checkpoint system.\n\nI really enjoy its open metroidvania-style level design. It beats the linearity of MGS4. Backtracking can be annoying at times, but the areas are sufficiently small.\n\nUses a top down camera angle followed by first-person mostly for additional viewing. This mostly works, but you quickly see the limitations at times when guards detect you or bosses attack you from outside your camera FOV. And using first-person is a clumsy way to see them, especially when there's not an easy way to aim.\n\nStealth has a tight gameplay loop, where I enjoyed the following playstyle:\n\n+ In any new area, I take down enemies with minimal ammo usage and explore everything before proceeding to the next.\n+ Chokehold as the main approach. It is the most challenging in that you must sneak and get close to the enemy. For nonlethal, you choke only a few times rather than all the way.\n+ Silenced weapons like the Socom with the silencer obtained later in the game.\n+ Stun grenade and chaff grenade to escape sticky situations. They're especially helpful in areas such as the staircase climbing in Communications Tower or the Underground Base with many sentry turrets. FAMAS and grenade are used if need to kill.\n+ Situational weapons like the PSG-1, Stinger, and Nikita for boss fights.\n\nSurprisingly, the [stealth pretty much ends in the latter half of the game after Psycho Mantis](https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/e3kbit/am_i_crazy_or_is_there_very_little_stealthing_in). It reminds me of MGS4 and MGS5 in this regard, in that the latter half of the game takes a noticeable quality dive.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nBlocky 3D pixelation that's standard for the PS1 era. These graphics don't age as well as the 16-bit pixel graphics of the SNES, but it has a style that retro gamers are appreciating more and more (in recent years around 2020, this includes retro shooters like Dusk (2018) and Bloodborne PSX). The soundtrack is also iconic.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Introduced the stealth camo and bandana to the series. In this game, they're given by submitting and not submitting to Ocelot's torture respectively (this also affects the game's ending).\n+ All the cinematic details. For example, the character's name and voice actor name like a credit scene whenever a new character is introduced.\n+ If you punch Meryl in the caves, then quickly equip the cardboard box, a wolf will pee on you. This makes wolves nonhostile as you backtrack to get the PSG1.\n+ Some cutscenes have an interactable camera. This title started it.\n+ Unlike the other titles, the [cardboard boxes](https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/Cardboard_box#Metal_Gear_Solid) have a transport utility usage.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ No real nonlethal option yet in this game. There are forced kills with a minimum of 9 in the game. There's also no tranq gun until MGS2. For a mostly nonlethal playstyle, this game incentivizes being a ghost (no real encounters) and relying on chokeholds with timed chokes to knock them out. The gameplay incentive is the final score at the end, which depends on number of alerts, kills, ration usage, gameplay time, and difficulty.\n+ There's first person view to see your surroundings. No aiming such as headshot locational damage; you rely on the isometric camera angle.\n+ Meryl's codec frequency 140.15 is at the back of the CD case and not shared in game. A hassle but part of Kojima's quirk.\n+ Many boss fights are somewhat gimmicky in that you need to know the right trick to defeat them: for example, Controller 2 slot for Psycho Mantis, Nikita for Sniper Wolf Part 2. How to handle the rat that ate the PAL key.\n+ A pro gameplay tip: [you run faster while holding a grenade](https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/36umjp/holding_chaff_grenade_while_running).\n+ A pro gameplay tip: you can spam weapon/item equip in order to silently run on metal flooring.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The backtracking back and forth to pick up the PSG1. Then a third time to go to the Communications Tower after your torture. And then the PAL key when it's dropped, where it's not clear where to go and how to freeze/heat the key (do you equip/unequip the item? how long do you wait? how do you know when it switched?). It's the most annoying problem in MGS1 with roughly 30 minutes of wasted time.\n+ A guard seeing you is instant alert status, even if you take him down immediately upon spotting.\n+ The range for chokehold is finicky. Get slightly too far and you perform an idle animation. Get too close and you bump into the enemy causing an alert. Accidentally keeping a direction held while pressing square triggers a slam rather than a chokehold.\n+ You have to equip the keycard to use it. This leads to annoying micromanagement such as using the keycard to open doors while wearing the gas mask in Otacon's lab area. Or swapping between ration and body armor.\n+ Aiming can be finicky, particularly with the sniper rifle and during boss fights where the enemy is not even in your screen but a bit off and you have to shoot in a general location hoping you'll hit them.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid)\n  + [Walkthrough](https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid_Walkthrough)\n  + Plot summary: [Shadow Moses Incident](https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/Shadow_Moses_Incident)\n+ [Moonmoon playthrough: 2019-12-31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZXuKpWbM_8)\n\nI played this way back as a kid on the original PS1. One of my favorite PS1 games of all time.\n\n### Second Playthrough\n\nI replayed the game on 2023-08-12.\n\n__Version.__ As of 2023, there are [several versions](https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/8cmxft/best_versions_to_play_the_series_for_the_first/dxg6df7) (see also [PS1 vs PC](https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/35ggd3/metal_gear_solid_1_ps1_vs_pc/cr48hiu)). There is also an incoming \"Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1\" to be released on 2023-10-24. It doesn't seem to be any remaster like the HD collection but a compilation, so no use in waiting.\n\nI played the PS1 version: \"Metal Gear Solid (USA) (Rev 1)\" ([\"Rev 1\" explanation](https://www.reddit.com/r/Roms/comments/bokml9/what_is_the_difference_between_these_two_metal)). I used the emulator Duckstation (version 0.1-5613-g5d750a88 (dev)). As of 2023, Mednafen or Duckstation are best; see also my Silent Hill entry for details. I used default settings with an internal resolution scale of 6x (from the original 4:3 ratio at 320x240 resolution to a native 1440p), Geometry Correction, and execution mode to [Interpreter (Slowest)](https://www.reddit.com/r/emulators/comments/u8xi7g/duckstation_guide_for_accurate_settings). See also [Youtube video](https://youtu.be/bDD54AQzmRY?t=164) and [Twitter post](https://twitter.com/Dreamboum/status/1384198075284025350); I didn't follow these settings but used them as reference.\n\n__Playthrough.__ I played on Normal difficulty ([difficulty differences](https://metalgearspeedrunners.com/wiki/doku.php?id=mgs1_difficulty_differences)). Hard and Extreme remove the radar, and I find it an integral part of the MGS1 experience. Without the radar, the game can often rely on trial and error, as well as memorization, and is therefore suited to a follow-up playthrough (tracking camera and turret angles can be especially annoying). I occasionally savescummed with the emulator's save/load state. This helped reduce the slower save and loading times if I were to reset using the in-game system.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/metal-gear-solid"},{"id":"322682678652491340","title":"Path of Exile","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":1740,"platforms":["PC","Mac","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Grinding Gear Games"],"publishers":["Grinding Gear Games"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"startedDate":"2019-01-10","completedDate":"2019-01-24","updatedDate":"2026-05-31","notes":"Path of Exile is the best action RPG in the genre. It takes highlights from what makes the Diablo series so iconic, and pushes these details even further. What a fanatical, ultimate end-game game for the hardcore action RPG fan. It's a great design point in considering the WoW-casual that Diablo 3 shifted to from Diablo 2, and the more hardcore elements of RPG pushed even further than Diablo 2 in Path of Exile.\n\nFlaws:\n\n+ Trading.\n+ Too many mechanics. PoE over the years runs into feature bloat.\n+ The minmax nature of ARPGs at endgame makes currency farming the endgoal, and much content can [feel unrewarding](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1229n9i/i_didnt_kill_maven_exarch_or_eater_once_this). In fact, the Atlas tree enables turning off mechanics and this is optimal to specialize to only a handful.\n+ Death is obscure. You can die out of the blue and the game doesn't really give you viable ways to react. The game is either tolerable and not that difficult, or immediately difficult due to an imbalanced enemy with all sorts of weird conditional damage multipliers.\n+ Campaign is a forgettable experience, feeling like a chore. It is not fun or have a meaningful progression curve like Diablo 2's level gating and various progressions through Normal / Nightmare / Hell or Grim Dawn.\n+ Personal taste, but I greatly prefer Diablo 2's class separation and slower pace. Class identity makes new characters feel all that more meaningful. PoE technically has more build diversity by splitting by types (e.g., traps, melee, ranged, summons, etc.), but it still suffers from same-ism: for example, most builds prescribe to the same meta in utility gems. Path of Exile also started the trend of zoom-zoom ARPGs which makes you appreciate less of the actual game.\n\n__Build mechanics.__ At a high level, PoE enables key role archetypes: magic ranged, physical ranged, traps, pets, melee. What most defines a playstyle is the set of gems (skills). Gear, flasks, passive skill tree, and others are all based on the desired playstyle with the choice of active skills. Other playstyle choices are: passive vs active (that is, click intensive).\n\n+ __Gems.__ I really like the idea of gems (active and supporting, and levelable) and a passive skill tree that's universal across all classes. It's a unique design point in contrast to the standard of ascendancy class-specific skill trees and stat allocation. Gems conflate the idea of skills with your gear as you have to find ones with appropriate sockets; I feel this ties things quite well. Gems are more powerful in variety than Diablo, with support and active gems. Same goes with flasks.\n  + One major disadvantage of gems is the lack of class identity. Classes are generally chosen for various ascendancy passives in synergy with build choices. Class choices like Marauder or Witch aren't as distinct as Diablo 2 classes of Barbarian or Sorceress. With the lack of class separation, certain playstyle choices are done almost universally across all builds such as utilities: for example, flame dash, determination and defiance banner, molten shell + cdwt.\n+ __Itemization.__ PoE puts an emphasis on crafting and rolls perhaps more than any other RPG. It builds on Diablo 2's idea that rare items can be extremely powerful with the right affixes and rolls, leveraging many crafting items to modify affixes and add new mechanics. In PoE, a rare item can often be better than any standard unique item.\n+ __Classes.__ Unlike more traditional RPGs like Diablo and D&D titles, class choice in PoE is really closer to class choice in Dark Souls in that it is important in determining certain starting allocations, but many choices play a more significant role in defining your class fantasy (particularly gems).\n+ __Passive skill tree.__\n+ __[Pantheon (3.0, 2017)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/The_Pantheon).__\n+ __[Atlas passive skill tree (3.13, 2021)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Atlas_Passive_Skill_Tree).__ This is tied to Atlas completion, which is per account and league.\n+ Other interesting ideas: divination cards, no universal currency where all items are inherently useful (similar to Stone of Jordans in Diablo II as gold was useless beyond repairs).\n\nRemoved mechanics\n+ __[Crucible (3.21, 2023)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Crucible_Forge).__ Good idea in concept (weapon skill trees). But bad execution as it was tedious finding a good tree to build on a weapon. Furthermore, the investment was difficult early to midgame as you're often upgrading gear.\n\n__Progression Mechanics.__ \nLeveling consists of the usual ARPG standard of playing through multiple acts, each with its own areas, enemies, and boss encounters.\n\nEndgame features a nice pattern of mapping in order to beat the final epilogue bosses like Maven and Shaper. The pattern is to play maps, slowly increasing tiers and your map progression, all the while playing through the various league mechanics written below. These mechanics add variety encounters to maps and also enable various forms of side progression on their own (e.g., Delve, Heist) or build up to epic missions (Incursions, Syndicate).\n\nOn specific major mechanics below. Roughly, I categorize them as major if they have their own progression over multiple encounters.\n\n+ __[Labyrinth (2.2, 2016)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/The_Lord%27s_Labyrinth).__ I like the trials and the idea of trials before obtaining the next class. It's a traditional RPG element (see also Maple Story). The runs also involve deadly traps to dodge that add variety. Labyrinth runs are too long though.\n+ __[Maps (2.4, 2016)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Atlas_of_Worlds).__ Maps is perhaps the best implementation of endgame in ARPGs (contrast to, say, Diablo 3's rifts). Maps include magic and crafting options, progression with tier system, unique boss fight style maps, master missions, Maven questline, Kirac vault rewards, favored maps, passive skill tree. Each tier has a unique map and not just scaling of the same zone; and each map is overloaded with attributes as an item, so you get a lot more variety.\n\n  With that said, they're still not as good as Delves as they require backtracking and incur RNG on which maps drop. Delves are a linear route with a constant density of enemies. The only problem is that you have to farm Maps in tangent in order to have sulphite.\n\n  In contrast to Path of Exile's mapping, I prefer Diablo’s bounty system which revisits past maps and with new content for endgame players. I do like the mapping system over rifts though as there's more variety in the content (e.g., shaping atlas, filling out atlas, different content appearing such as Shaper and Elder). The map system using the same tile palettes and monsters as a given map is interesting, but it encourages no revisiting of the 10 acts. Instead, these really are just treated as \"tutorials\". In 3.5, the endgame consists of map atlas, delving, the different master contents appearing in the map (e.g., incursion, betrayal syndicate, bestiary), and gear and level grinding (flasks, gems, gear, jewels, passive skills, crafting theory), the 4-occasional labyrinths. This gets repetitive once you start tasting them all by, e.g., T10+ maps.\n+ __[Bestiary (3.2, 2018)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Bestiary).__ Adds variety. But often rarely worth it in terms of currency balance.\n+ __[Incursion (3.3, 2018)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Temporal_incursion).__\n+ __[Delve (3.4, 2018)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Delve).__\n+ __[Immortal Syndicate (3.5, 2018)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Immortal_Syndicate).__\n+ __[Heist (3.12, 2020)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Heist).__\n+ __[Kingsmarch (3.25, 2024)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Kingsmarch).__ Passive income based on sending out minions for missions. A mobile app mechanic, not unlike World of Warcraft's garrisons.\n+ Other interesting content ideas: hideout.\n\nThe following are other [Extra Content](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Extra_Content) encountered while traversing areas. They add nice variety although the amount of content is overwhelming and a signal of quantity over quality. See also [League Mechanics](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/League_mechanics).\n\n+ [Vaal side area](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Vaal_side_area)\n+ [Rogue exile](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Rogue_exile)\n+ [Shrines](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Shrine)\n+ [Strongbox (1.1, 2014)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Strongbox)\n+ [Torment (1.3, 2014)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Tormented_spirit)\n+ [Essence (2.4, 2016)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Essence)\n+ [Breach (2.5, 2016)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Breach)\n+ [Abyss (3.1, 2017)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Abyss)\n+ [Blight (3.8, 2019)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Blight_(game_mechanic))\n+ [Legion (3.7, 2019)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Legion)\n+ [Delirium (3.10, 2020)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Delirium)\n+ [Harvest (3.11, 2020)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Harvest)\n+ [Ritual (3.13, 2021)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Ritual)\n+ [Ultimatum (3.14, 2021)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Ultimatum)\n+ [Expedition (3.15, 2021)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Expedition)\n+ [Ore deposits (3.25, 2024)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Ore_deposit)\n+ T16+ maps only\n  + [Viridian Wildwood (3.23, 2023)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/The_Viridian_Wildwood)\n  + [Nameless Seer (3.23, 2023)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Nameless_Seer)\n  + [Reflecting mist (3.25, 2024)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Reflecting_Mist_(interactable_object))\n  + [Sentinel (3.18, 2022)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Sentinel)\n+ Extra requiring manual activation\n  + [Beyond demons (1.2, 2014)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Beyond_demon)\n  + [Tempest (2.0, 2015)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Tempest)\n  + [Harbinger (3.0, 2017)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Harbinger)\n  + [Forbidden Sanctum (3.20, 2022)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/The_Forbidden_Sanctum)\n\nRemoved mechanics\n\n+ [Forsaken masters (2.2, 2016)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Master_(Forsaken_Masters)): They feature daily missions. Dailies suck. Fortunately, you get them upon log in, and there is no cap; so you're not forced to play every day, just log in.\n+ [Prophecy (2.3, 2016)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Prophecy)\n+ [Metamorph (3.9, 2019)](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Metamorph): I like the idea of its focus on single target DPS. It's not another mechanic favoring fast clear speed.\n\nI like the genre standards: tons of items being dropped; magic find; health and mana pools with 5-6 spells; sprawling minimap zones; shrines; identify and portal scrolls; league as active content and with a resetting economy; no bind-on-pickup/equip items. With that said, Path of Exile maintains certain things from the Diablo II era that seem unnecessarily painful, but I don't know that trades off against being too streamlined as WoW's state since Cataclysm did. For examples: must identify rares before vendoring in order to get more currency; identify scrolls (not even Deckard Cain for mass identify; I do like the more play-like feeling of shift-right clicking to quickly identify each item rather than moving the mouse from each item back to the identity scroll stack. It's a power user move though and should be made more intuitive); portal scrolls (although there is a nifty portal gem which you can use via your second weapon set slot); no auction house, relying on third-party services which makes trade non-instantaneous but does require more social interaction; services like selling a crafted bench, mirror service, labyrinth completion, or xp leech (all of these require player trust based on services that could be better maintained to avoid needing those trust issues in the first place); must single click each currency item to the currency tab instead of a dump single click.\n\nI like that this game doesn't hold your hand. It plays like a 90s game in difficulty, level of handholding, and complexity of mechanics (e.g., stats). Acts 6-10 are like a nightmare/hell new game plus of Acts 1-5.\n\n__Lore.__ Mediocre. It feels closer to a porn story in that you expect one to exist, and it ties everything else in, and the demographic doesn't care if it's too in-depth.(It's a weird analogy; I didn't come up with it.) I would prefer a more interesting story however.\n\n__Aesthetics.__ I like the grunge medieval look. It really fits Diablo 2's persona, moreso than the cartoony WoW look of Diablo 3. I think the settings could have better fit the action RPG however. Contrast with the Souls series where a specific area has unique monster designs for that area (e.g., fortresses, monasteries, etc.) as well as unique monster placements that trap the player if they're not aware of their surroundings. Action RPGs are unfortunately a genre that converged onto the idea of facerolling all mobs. With the minimap overlay as the optimal strategy to encourage full exploration, you just don't pay attention to any single mob encounter or part of an area. That sucks.\n\nThe soundtrack is forgettable. It works, but it doesn't stand out. I like the voice acting, but the dialogue like other action RPGs is a wall of slowly moving text. There's no way a player can be expected to listen to it all. I do like the mechanics of the carvings during the areas where they're played as you continue to traverse the zone; that's an excellent idea.\n\nThe gear aesthetics are honestly forgettable. Even the highest endgame gear like Inpulsa looks drab. It seems like all the good gear aesthetics are in the supporter packs that you pay real money for. (Contrast with, e.g., Guild Wars 2 which also has a cash shop for cosmetics but still retains a lot of nice aesthetics without it via each gear piece as well as dyes.)\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The [development manifesto](https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-forum/dev-manifesto). It's one of the most unique aspects of Path of Exile that I haven't seen in other games (in addition to the no universal currency, passive skill tree, and trading system). See also the [trade manifesto](https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2025870). From zero bind-to-character items to no auction house to linking items which verifies ownership. I like that they acknowledge the trading API with a public website is not ideal, and that trading would ideally be limited to the social level of forum-posting, not something that's basically close enough to being instant that it may as well be an auction house. Treated as a subpar auction house, it's clearly more inconvenient in having to mass-message people until you get the desired mass coumable; or if you have to wait until a player is online to see their index of items and hope it's available. Treated as a subpar social trading system, there's basically minimal speaking.\n+ No universal currency, dependent on items instead. I especially love its denominations as an improvement over Diablo 2's. Chaos Orbs are not just like Stone of Jordans, but you can also go higher with Exalted Orbs or lower with Orb of Alchemy. Minor how slow the trading system is and sometimes significant arbitrage, trading between currencies is itself pretty fluid.\n+ No multiple games with some lobby. All players are connected in one universe.\n+ Gems can be easily unsocketed.\n+ The universal passive skill tree is at first daunting but also much simpler in unifying stat allocation and skill trees across all classes.\n+ Crafting system. Rare items with strong attributes are actually best-in-slot more often than a legendary item. In Diablo 3, BiS ended up being sets due to powerful set bonuses which removed a lot of gear decisions.This is useful for a casual but against the PoE philosophy.\n+ Loot filter.\n+ Map makes it clear where you have and haven't explored.\n+ Potions auto-refill.\n+ World map has an icon notifying which locations have a waypoint to be unlocked.\n+ You can hold Alt to highlight over a map and see if you completed it on Atlas or its bonus objective. Similarly, you can hold Alt to see an item's numeric value roll range.\n+ Instead of holding shift, you can toggle skills to [set attack without moving](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/9imwt6/psa_dont_forget_to_set_attack_without_moving_on). Helps avoid hand pain if you play and hold shift too long.\n+ New to 3.22.2b, you can rename characters online.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ As of 3.26, you can [mass identify items](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1mvn6nl/what_a_time_to_be_alive).\n+ As of 3.26, you can pause the game.\n+ No repair.\n+ With ARPGs I always have a minor annoyance in trying to optimally route my map clearance. For example, should you zig zag to cover all spots or should you walk around in a spiral following the boundary? It's breadth-first search vs depth-first search, and with logistics such as walls in your way making one or the other strategy more efficient per generated map.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ With the conflation of gears, gems, and abilities, it's extremely important for a build to have the right gear combination with proper color sockets and links, and not bad gear attributes themselves. This makes individual gear choices incredibly tedious because you make to plan very ahead in understanding how certain gear fits with one another. This is just a no-go for leveling as it significantly slows down progress. Imagine for example, getting a good gear item, and with good sockets/links, but its colors are already satisfied by other gear items. Now you have to wait until you can replace that gear item before you can wear this one.. (With that said, this makes for excellent theorycrafting at the endgame. Gear has to fit holistically gem-wise; reach the max 75 resistances for fire, cold, and lightning; and get any remaining strength/dexterity boosts to equip all your gemmed gear.)\n+ There is little system in-place for good trading. The community had to set up their own third-party software for this; it's a bit embarrassing that this is offloaded to users, and is nowhere near as good as an in-house solution can be with direct integration into the game. As poe.trade is essentially an auction house (and with many sellers as bots), it makes little sense to have players online in order to trade, and to not just implement an auction huose (or even something similar but more in-spirit to the game such as a [\"shop\" in your hideout](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/af75g9/the_bigger_poe_gets_the_worse_trading_will_get/edwhdrd/). This avoids potential scams and online reuqirements for trade; and also cool API ideas such as loot filters which filter items based on their currency trade value (c.f., Exilence app). This ensures you'll never drop a rare item or unique with perfect rolled stats.\n\n  As of 2023, PoE implemented their own external trade site rather than anything ingame. This makes the extra steps in trading unnecessarily tedious vs ingame, requires buyer and seller to be online, search API is not as up to date as what an ingame solution woul via direct buy and sell instead of whispers, forces you to meet to trade, and has potential for scams. In fact, it also doesn’t work well for bulk selling items of varying types such as essences and contracts. For this, players rely on TFT or must otherwise bulk sell individual item types, resorting in 10+ trades rather than one.\n\n  On the design philosophy of not making trade too easy, I agree and think trade as it is is already too easy as everything now is basically thought of in terms of currency, so you often don’t use certain trade items because their  usage would be worth more than your plans. A better solution than the artificial limitations today would be something like an in game trading market area. For example, the booths set up in Ragnarok Online where you walk around to browse and see what you can buy/sell. This feels more authentic as part of the design of trade being more natural and slow. You must physically visit an area, it encourages social interaction (haggling), and it makes sense why buyer and seller must be online; this all slows down trading in frequency and precision, all the while feeling authentic to the fantasy roleplay. See also the [Trade Market idea in the Trade Manifesto](https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2025870), where search results are harder to be finegrained but trade process is ingame and instant.\n\nIntroduced in 3.25, the currency exchange market is a significant improvement enabling liquid trades for at least currency items.\n+ While the game isn't really pay-to-win, stash tabs are a necessity gating much content, whether it be quality of life at the endgame for buying via currency tab or barring any selling until you get a premium stash tab.\n+ There's no good multiplayer experience such as doing endgame content together unless the Atlas strategy is exactly the same. Multiplayer only really appears in trading. There are no incentives set up for causal grouping or guilds.\n+ It's clear this game does not have the polish of a AAA title. There is constant server lag during peak hours and occasional disconnects. While I personally haven't experienced it enough to be detrimental to my experience, the disconnects from the game and lag are minor annoyances.\n+ You can't bind flask usage to the same hotkey. I have to spam \"345\" whenever I DPS as those are my buffs, which is annoying.\n+ Lack of good PvP content to encourage a community around it.\n+ No inspect feature.\n+ Can't right-click item to fast equip (instead of dragging over). I also prefer right-click over ctrl-click to quickly move an item to the second window such as trading, crafting, and the stash.\n+ All the players in town. It's a visual mess and ear bleed. They're purposefully not enabling the option to hide players because it's MTX advertising. For similar reasons, you can't log into hideout.\n+ [Highlighted expedition markers should stay highlighted](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ouxm0o/highlighted_expedition_markers_should_stay)\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [poewiki.net](https://www.poewiki.net). This is better than Gamepedia (now Fandom) which is less up-to-date and filled with ads.\n+ [r/pathofexile](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile)\n+ Builds\n  + For the latest meta, see [poe.ninja](https://poe.ninja), filter to day 1-2, then look up the builds on Reddit and YouTube.\n  + [r/pathofexilebuilds](https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds). They have a League Start Build Index every league. It's curated at the start of the league, targeting beginners, and may not be the best league starters or endgame builds.\n+ Trading\n  + https://www.pathofexile.com/trade\n  + [poe.ninja](http://poe.ninja). Price checks.\n+ External tools\n  + [Path of Building](https://pathofbuilding.community)\n  + [AutoHotKey](https://www.autohotkey.com). Essential to remove the need to piano finger spam potions and skills like warcries on cooldown. You can enable a script to automatically refresh pressing a skill upon cooldown, or have it simply spam multiple potions/buffs upon a single press like mouse click.\n  + [Awakened PoE Trade](https://snosme.github.io/awakened-poe-trade/download)\n  + [Better PathOfExile Trading](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/better-pathofexile-tradin/fhlinfpmdlijegjlpgedcmglkakaghnk). Improves trade website by providing bookmarks to save trade searches and additional currencies when seeing trade offers.\n+ Miscellaneous\n  + [my armory](https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/nilmoe-6632/characters)\n  + [Campaign area order](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/irf8bx/badgers_leveling_guide_for_newer_players), including [passive Skill Points quests](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ws3oc1/here_is_a_list_with_all_passive_point_quests_and). Can check which you completed with \"/passives\".\n  + https://www.poelab.com. Lab map is fixed every day, so you can use it for optimal pathing.\n  + Item Filters: Follow them in [Path of Exile's account](https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/nilmoe-6632/item-filters). You no longer have to manually download them from https://www.filterblade.xyz.\n  + https://www.craftofexile.com\n  + [Settings guide](https://maxroll.gg/poe/getting-started/options-keybinds)\n  + [Hideout Showcase](https://hideoutshowcase.com)\n  + [Timeless Jewels](https://vilsol.github.io/timeless-jewels/tree)\n\nLeague mechanic strategies\n+ [Bestiary (3.26)](https://maxroll.gg/poe/currency/red-maps-bestiary)\n+ [Betrayal (3.26)](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1litk2r/326_updated_syndicate_and_betrayal_guide)\n  + The 2-2-5-5 strategy is consistent across leagues. The specific members depends on the meta, which will change every league. Search for [league-specific Betrayal cheatsheets](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/search/?q=betrayal+cheatsheet&sort=new&restrict_sr=on).\n+ [Delve (3.21)](https://maxroll.gg/poe/currency/delve-farming-guide)\n+ [Expedition (3.25)](https://maxroll.gg/poe/currency/expedition-farming-guide)\n+ [Heist (3.18)](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/t9l76f/big_guide_to_heist_how_i_made_a_mirror_in_a_week)\n+ [Harvest (3.25)](https://maxroll.gg/poe/currency/harvest-farming-guide)\n  + The strategy is consistent across leagues. Choose the lifeforce color that sells the highest according to meta. However, always prioritize the plot if it has a unique seed: it drops Sacred Blossom which sells the highest.\n+ [Incursion (3.21)](https://maxroll.gg/poe/currency/incursion-farming-guide)\n+ [Kingsmarch (3.26)](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1lmq5gw/divines_for_everyone_loweffort_guide_to)\n  + [On worker efficiency (crops / wage)](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1eyglie/kingsmarch_worker_tier_efficiency)\n\nOther strategies\n+ Atlas\n  + [Rolling maps](https://maxroll.gg/poe/getting-started/atlas-progression-guide). As of 3.26, I only [chisel T14+ maps](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/90ghvk/struggling_to_get_past_t11).\n  + [Map modifiers to avoid](https://maxroll.gg/poe/getting-started/how-to-roll-maps#map-modifiers-to-avoid-header)\n+ Gems: Fill empty slots on your weapon swap with gems you can purchase from a vendor and can level to 20 with your stat allocation. Check market value for the most expensive gems.\n+ [4 vendor tabs of varying tiers](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/15g77pd/previous_player_coming_back_what_do_i_do_with/juh2lft): 1 divine, 100c, 50c, 10c. It's the simplest and most practical way of selling items without having to look up each one such as jewels.\n\nTips:\n\n+ Use a portal gem in your second weapon set. Use the keyboard shortcut to swap to the weapon, call the Portal skill, then swap back.\n\n### Playthrough (2019-01, 3.5.0 Betrayal League)\n\nI played until level 91 with a total playtime of 118 hours (as of 1/25/19, and according to Steam where much of it is idling in my hideout browsing Path of Exile guides and the trade API). I beat the game (Act 10) at level 68 with a Steam playtime of 24 hours. I did everything except for beat Shaper at the end, with a 159/159 map completion (~120 completed).\n\nI experienced everything in the game. I can tell when I really get into a game if I commit over 16 hours in a single day, follow the community (e.g., Reddit, global 820), use third-party tools (Path of Building as installed software, POE Trade Copy to Path of Bulding Chrome extension), play nonstop for consecutive days (stalling even real life work), learn about meta for currency farming (which is extremely boring), and even learn from the hacker community about given exploits and cash strategies (I used G2G and my two transactions were each completed in <10 minutes; spent total of $45 for total of 59 Exalted Orbs).\n\n__Build.__ I chose by looking at the most popular builds for each class in the current league (Betrayal/3.5). Then I saw the gameplay. I played a summoner in Diablo 3 and while fun, it was a little too hectic. I would like to do something with more explicit mob control. Action RPG in general seems to do best with ranged as you have minimap presence, and where you don't target just one mob but multiple.\n\nI chose the most popular and seemingly powerful meta here: [Enki's Arc Witch](https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1147951). To maximize learning gameplay mechanics, I defaulted to its build and general item/quest strategies. It's a great no-brainer-type guide, helping from leveling all the way to the highest-end endgame with 10+ Exalted Orbs (it's just before billionaire status with rolling Headhunter and perfect RNG stats). I made only one modification: drop 4 5% maximum life passive skills for 18% increased attack speed. When selecting gear modifiers, I also preferred 3% attack and cast speed gains over any 1-2% DPS gains (e.g., I chose an Amulet with 5% increased Attack and Cast Speed enchant; this has a 3% total DPS decrease over Enki's personal character choice of Gain % of non-Chaos Damage as Chaos Damage). Mobility is just king in Path of Exile endgame as it speeds up map clearing, delves, any low-level farming, and is a huge quality of life improvement in general. Enki's Arc Witch build lacks most in single target fights (e.g., bosses). Arc isn't the best for single target DPS; the build requires staying in position to cast Arc or otherwise sacrifice DPS by just using Storm Brand and moving; and the build only has ~4.5k life (I had around that at levels 90-100 even with all the top gear). Getting additional mobility lets you be a little more skilled in casting Arc and dodging quickly. The second major flaw is survability. With ~4.5k life even in T15-16 maps, certain mods like monsters dealing extra damage can cause you to get one-shotted if you're not careful. This can be very frustrating given the death penalty on XP, which makes leveling from 90-100 a taxing experience.\n\n__Loot filter.__ I used NeverSink semi-strict for my loot filter starting in Act 6. At level 70 and above, I used Neversink strict. After farming and getting ~5ex in total currency, I started to use the very strict filter in order to avoid any middle-trips during a map; I don't need to pick up rares to identify and vendor any longer as I make more money from explicit currency farming. I only sell items worth at least 1c for the effort.\n\n__[Atlas strategy](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/a83vm7/new_players_guide_to_crafting_maps).__ I went to the highest tiers I can clear quickly.\n\n+ Transmute all white maps (T1-5), Alchemy all yellow maps (T6-10), and Alchemy and Vaal red maps (T11+) with no additional Zana monds and 4 chisels for T13+. Following numbers online, it only makes sense to chisel T14+ maps.\n+ Dailies spawn on your last map's +/- 1 (for max of T14-16) so try to complete last map before daily reset at T15 ([reset is (maybe) 6pm Pacific](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/7002xx/sc_when_time_do_the_daily_deals_reset/dmzg0w6)); use Zana's Elder mod (15c) on all daily Atlas objective maps for maximum rewards if they aren't already T15 ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/aewoi6/psa_always_run_your_daily_master_mission_maps)). \n+ Some [mapping guides and meta](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/6shakw/guide_mapping_for_newbies) suggest Atlas strategies so you farm a single map for the specific tier you're targeting. I went with the strategy of completing all maps. This lets me see all content as the canonical approach, achieve the completionist achievements, and following the introduction of Atlas objectives, it is required if you plan on completing the daily content such as [delves, incursions, Zana, and bestiaries](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/a1doji/whats_going_to_be_your_atlas_strategy_for_betrayal/eaoxhit/).\n+ Note: When doing the T13-15 farming strategy, dropped maps always roll the tier first from 1 to X+2. If no such map exists in a given tier, it will downgrade to the next tier (this means you can’t skip tiers to guarantee a higher drop rate for the highest tier. For a shaped map surrounded by low level tiers, it will eventually downgrade to them as neighboring maps are in the pool just like completed maps.\n\n__Farming.__ For a day and a half, before I remembered about real money trading (\"RMT\"), I followed the meta on farming. For January 2019, this is low-level Syndicate farming. See 2019-01-path-of-exile-farming.md for details.\n\n__On real money trading.__ The community (e.g., Reddit) is against hacking and real money trading. I acknowledge the spirit of this (especially for a legal community). However, these are important to accommodate faults in a game such as grinding requirements. I'd rather just spend the cash to avoid the grind; it's hugely more time-efficient (c.f., a max of ~400c/hr via Syndicate farming in Betrayal as of January 2019 is roughly 2.5ex which is only 4$). I spent a total of roughly 50 exalted orbs (as of 01/22/19) on my gear; I reached even Enki's personal character's DPS of ~1.1M Arc DPS on Shaper/Guardian while enemy is chilled and shocked, I shocked an enemy recently, and Storm Brand is attached to the enemy. Note I sacrificed 3% total DPS decrease for 5% attack and cast speed on amulet. I agree with this perspective of not overdoing it ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/abc2be/mathil_doesnt_want_your_handouts/ed0xxcc)): \"getting your own currency and building up your resources is a key part of the game. Take that away (e.g. by just accepting freebies from your fanbase as a streamer) and you're only playing half the game. It's like turning on 'god mode' in any other game - fun for 5 minutes but then you realise you just killed the game.\"\n\n__Miscellaneous.__ My mind typically wanders as I clear a map. This is because with ARPGs in general, combat is a little brainless in their simplicity (it's mostly about the crafting/building stage). With my Elementalist, I only have 3 active abilities: Arc for main damage; Storm Brand for DPSing large-health enemies; Decoy Totem for aggro-ing away large-health enemies. I have one movement skill. I have 3 buffs: 2 golems, 1 DPS gain.\n\n__Miscellaneous resources.__\n\n+ [Enki91's Twitch VOD](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/362880842?filter=archives&sort=time). It is representative of my gameplay experience.\n+ [I like this guide for currency farming.](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/a9x3rv/some_tips_on_making_consistent_money/ecno0mf) Unlike others, it’s not singularly focused in that it pushes for the true endgame, exploiting current league mechanics and economy such as low level delves.\n\ntodos\n+ when available | delve\n+ when available | last major solaris Pantheon power (Infernal King in T13 Caldera).\n+ atlas\n+ Install autohotkey for autopotion spamming; PoE trade macro (to know whether to vendor uniques); exilence for monitoring net worth per hour.\n\nGear todos (see guide)\n+ I only really use Storm Brand for tough enemies. Maybe swap Culling Strike with Blind then? Waiting on how I currently fare at T15/16 and bosses.\n+ 10 remaining skill points to 100: Celestial Judgment; 6 5% maximum life (alternatively, drop 4 for 2 3% attack speed and Berserker's 12% attack speed); 2 strength and a jewel socket.\n\nHoly grail gear todos\n+ Best RNG numbers: 2 daggers, helmet, amulet, chest, 2 rings, glove, belt, boots. Corrupted Inpulsa's for chest with +1 to Level of Socketed Gems.\n+ Jewels: second mod on Watcher's Eye (20+ Exalted Orbs for ~5% total DPS increase). better RNG numbers on 2 abyss jewels.\n+ Flasks: best RNG numbers.\n+ Skill gems: Level 21 20% Storm brand. 23% quality or level 21 each in general.\n\n### Playthrough (2023-04, 3.21 Crucible League)\n\nI played the league at launch (2023-04-07) and dropped the game 1 week in on 2023-04-17. I was at level 90, just entering tier 13-14 and running into a wall of having to farm more maps to get more red maps and needing better gear to grind currency and survive at those higher tiers. I had roughly 10 divine orbs worth of items in total. By this point, I felt I experienced the league and anything I missed in previous leagues. The remaining elements are a regular farming experience and endgame bosses.\n\n__Build.__\n\n+ Explosive Arrow Champion. Follows [Zizaran's build](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMNk4sq6lx0).\n+ [mbXtreme's 3.21 Atlas Tree prioritizing Essences and Maps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXkXIDc23LI), followed by [Expedition and Eldritch Altars](https://maxroll.gg/poe/currency/expedition-currency-strategy).\n+ [3.21 Crucible League Start Build Index](https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/12bcnsi/321_crucible_league_start_build_index)\n\ntodos\n+ gear\n  + upgrade flasks\n  + continue farming wailing essences of dread\n  + wait for divine flask price to go down, finalize pantheon upgrades\n  + wait for rain of splinters price to go down\n+ complete map\n\n### Playthrough (2023-12, 3.23 Affliction League)\n\nI wasn't really into the game. I stopped shortly after reaching maps (got to T2).\n\n__Build.__\n+ [Zizaran: Boneshatter Slayer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEHduuJA69g)\n+ [Reddit: 3.23 Affliction League Start Build Index](https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/18bqsnb/323_affliction_league_start_build_index)\n\n### Playthrough (2025-08, 3.26 Mercenaries League)\n\n__Build.__\n+ [PhazePlays: The Ultimate Volcanic Fissure of Snaking Build Guide — Berserker [PoE 3.26]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khR0v6JMMJo)\n+ [Tuna: VFoS](https://maxroll.gg/poe/build-guides/volcanic-fissure-of-snaking-berserker)\n+ [Reddit: VFoS Fubgun vs Tuna vs Phaze](https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/1l99opn/vfos_fubgun_vs_tuna_vs_phaze)\n+ [Palsteron: My Atlas Starter Tree for 3.26](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wbBydzPeCc)\n  + I prefer this atlas tree as league starter. It prioritizes map drops > clear speed via delves (Sulphite Intoxication) + shrines > red altars > expedition.\n+ [3.26 Secrets of the Atlas League Start Build Index](https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/1l5xyzt/326_secrets_of_the_atlas_league_start_build_index)\n+ [3.26 Secrets of the Atlas League Atlas Passive Tree Index](https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/1la71vl/326_secrets_of_the_atlas_league_atlas_passive)\n\nBuilds I'm thinking to play longer term after accumulating 10-20 Divinity Orbs.\n\n+ [Palsteron: Forbidden Rite of Soul Sacrifice Occultist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M25TDNJKx9g)\n  + [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/1lmdz0u/how_much_does_it_take_to_start_off_the_forbidden)\n+ Kinetic Blast\n  + [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1msgikm/what_builds_did_you_play_this_league_and_how/n94ea2d)\n\ntodos\n+ lag spike. It can cause 20-30 seconds.\n  + https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1d44wlm/why_does_my_ping_spike_to_3k_every_30_seconds/\n+ complete atlas\n+ to learn\n  + see all the strategy guides above\n+ Consider autoflasks with auto click durations\n  + https://github.com/JoelStanford/PoEAutoFlask\n  + https://github.com/nidark/Poe-Companion\n\ngear todos\n+ belt with warcries cannot exert travel skills\n+ yoke of suffering\n  + need 76 dexterity elsewhere\n+ other gear\n+ large cluster jewel with fuel the fight: 5-10 divine\n\ntabs open\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1d44wlm/why_does_my_ping_spike_to_3k_every_30_seconds/\n+ https://forums.sonic.net/viewtopic.php?t=18040\n+ https://forums.sonic.net/viewtopic.php?t=4494\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/1l99opn/vfos_fubgun_vs_tuna_vs_phaze/\n+ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khR0v6JMMJo\n+ https://maxroll.gg/poe/poe-atlas-tree/rn9t10ss\n+ https://pobb.in/cagvbOfqLqG9\n+ https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Mercenaries/WdOgdVKCm\n\n### Extras\n\nnew playthroughs\n+ continue playing builds until you're knowledgeable enough to experiment with your own\n+ experience the endgame bosses\n+ This is insane(ly cool): [instant buyout trades](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1mvrbdc/instant_buyout_trade_coming_to_poe1)"},{"id":"36a53400-410e-4d28-bcbd-2f2f0a951cb4","title":"Pentiment","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["PC","XONE","Series X"],"studios":["Obsidian Entertainment"],"publishers":["Xbox Game Studios"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-11-24","completedDate":"2022-11-29","updatedDate":"2022-11-30","notes":"Pentiment is a rare nugget of gold. It has quite the density of historical, artistic, philosophical, and theological background, which stands out in the video game genre. Josh Sawyer is uniquely a game director with a solid academic enthusiasm for history. This depth does wonders for the gameplay. It not only adds context and a deeper appreciation for the setting the characters are in, but it also substantiates them to make them feel real as you can borrow from the larger context to understand things from fewer moments. Add onto this the wonderful storytelling, richly unique art style, and dialogue/time mechanics.\n\nFlaw-wise, Pentiment suffers only really from its constant backtracking in order to discover new dialogue and events.\n\n__Story.__\nSome examples of deepness: marriage expectations, how the church functions, how the church influences others' lives, signs of poverty with how they come by food and obtain money from the miller or pay the abbot. Medicine for Claus is restricted as winter is coming and trade is being limited, due to French bandit raids from the west, cut trade routes from the east due to Ottoman Turk invasions, and the pillage of Nice in the south. New arrivals appear from varied historical circumstances, like the owners of the Golden Hand due to troubles in the east and south, so they felt pressured to move.\n\nThe saga is surprisingly deep. I had expected Act 1 to be all of the game. And it continues! It has a sweeping tale of grief (including the death of his infant son August) and friendship. It's nostalgic just how well you see characters be born and grow up through the Acts, and how new relationships birth some due to your choices (e.g., encouraging Endris the blacksmith).\n\nThe Perfect City is such a nice mental state. I love how it depicts Andreas' inner thoughts. The twists and turns in Andreas' pain is so heartbreaking.\n\nThis is a rare game where choices actually have consequences. Sure, there's flavor text here and there like any RPG. But the choices you make have ramifications on your later gameplay abilities, whether it be who you accuse and how that affects the rest of the story, or the moment-to-moment dialogue which leads to dialogue checks.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nIt's a point and click adventure, written as an engaging mystery with a rich setting like Disco Elysium and the Forgotten City. Most notable to Pentiment's gameplay is not only the choice in background and dialogue options like a typical RPG (including dialogue checks), but the time mechanic. Time progresses naturally, with NPCs shifting. The set of actions you can take are limited at any given point, choosing only one of several possible events. I like this as a sense of urgency, replayability, and the notion that your choices define what information you have at hand which will ultimately have consequences (on the larger mystery as well as tidbits of conversation, when the dialogue mentions previous information you unlocked). \n\nExamples:\n\n+ You only have a few days to solve the first murder, and there are many more people to have dinner with and talk to that isn't possible in those few days.\n+ In the second murder, you can only do one activity: traverse the trees outside St Satia (\"Investigating Otto's Murder\"), go on a hunt with Leonhardt to learn about his information (\"The Miller\"), listen in on confessions with Father Thomas (\"Investigating Otto's Murder\"), or buy a round of alcohol for everyone at the inn to see if anyone's lips are loosened (\"The Golden Hand\").\n+ During the second murder, you may or may not be able to convince Brigitte to let loose about Martin's secrets.\n+ Searching during the day of the second murder, you can find a necromancy manual in the abbatoir. This unlocks the Duplicitous Accounts quest.\n\n[Quests.](https://pentiment.fandom.com/wiki/Quests). I love their design. Gives you plenty to do but you don't feel bad for not having to complete all of them (in fact, you can't!).\n\nReplayability is quite large. This is thanks to the short playtime, your background, many paths you can take and quests.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nIt's a style that works really well. Sprites in a monotheistic 16th century era. Text animations and ancient font. Sidescroller camera view. The occasional music usually in acapella is wonderful.\n\nThe story has quite the creepy vibes at times. Those are the parts that I definitely remember.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The idea of an ambiguous killer. It adds to the replayability, as well as to you deriving your own conclusions who is the most likely killer. Plus, it helps that the game doesn't keep things too ambiguous because it reveals the overarching mastermind.\n+ The Lansquenet card game.\n+ The time skips on new acts. Always fun to see what changes. I like the detail especially with the new clock in Act 3.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ There's a big problem with many point-and-click adventures as a genre: repetition. You can never tell when there's new dialogue/an event at any given time. So optimally, you would have to traverse every area after every time skip, talking to everyone again to see if there's any new information. This is a slog. I find this particularly an issue with Pentiment because certain activities pass time, and many things are missable. This means you really have to talk to everyone again before you decide on a particular activity.\n+ You can't easily skip dialogue that you already read. This makes additional playthroughs somewhat tedious.\n+ No text log.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nMajor decisions on my first playthrough: past residence of Flanders, past time of Hedonist, background in Theology, favorite subjects in Orator and Logician. Act 2, I chose Poland. Act 3, I chose Tinker, Barbs, and Reformation.\n\n+ Act 1, I accused Prior Ferenc.\n  + I had lunch with Otto and the charcoal burners.\n  + I gave Magdalene a romance adventure book.\n+ Act 2, I accused Hanna. From my observations, Guy pinched from the abbey and had a necromancy ritual. This doesn't have anything to do with the costumed killer at the Rathaus though as the necromancy would have put Otto in a stupor. Martin seems plausible. But there's no evidence really attached to him aside from his impostor secret, that Otto knew, and that they had a heated argument.\n  + I hunted with Lenhardt, then take food to the brothers. On my second day, I went to the ruins past St Satia, then had dinner with Niko and family, then ordered a round of drinks.\n+ Act 3, I got Apollo and Artemis to help me down the salt mine. For the mural:\n  + For pagan, I chose Ill Peter's story. The human sacrifices is the most brutal, but I wonder how much it's sensationalized given it's the Roman's depiction of pagans, not from the pagans themselves. The charcoal burner's seemed a little too obscene and somewhat arbitrary since he only latched onto it as he was a boy; but I do like it being based on Tassing the nymph.\n  + For the period of the abbey's founding after the Romans left, I chose the Saints receiving the Christian Bavarians.\n  + For the revolt, I chose to honor the peasants.\n\nTODOs\n+ This is an excellent game to replay under different backgrounds, event selection, and final accusations. I definitely want to do it at some point when I have a somewhat fresh memory of the story still so I can appreciate the details. But not so fresh since it may be repetitive without being able to easily skip dialogue.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pentiment"},{"id":"2fe1c507-fea7-457c-b927-720cd94a3900","title":"Project Diablo 2","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2020,"platforms":["PC"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"startedDate":"2025-07-11","completedDate":"2025-08-20","updatedDate":"2025-08-22","notes":"Diablo 2 is a legendary game, and this is the best iteration.\n\nFlaws are all the things not fixed.\n\n+ Endgame content is still fairly low, with a limited number of maps. It's not as extensive as Path of Exile or even Last Epoch.\n+ No systematic trading in-game. It requires a platform like [Project Diablo 2's website](https://www.projectdiablo2.com/market) or a third-party platform like d2jsp. It's even worse than Path of Exile's trading because you can't sell via automated or manual stash tabs or direct whisper from the website.\n+ Lobby system with 8 players and no bigger world, timeouts, server lag, and lack of advanced search filters.\n+ Bad UI. For example, no MF counter. No chat history beyond a game, so I often lose track of a whisper. Can't inspect other players' gear. Can't rename tabs or have a dedicated map tab.\n+ Death penalty with corpse retrieval is a nightmare and way too punishing.\n+ Rushes are finicky and not easy to do in a single game. You rely on people to TP you to waypoints and other bosses. At the least, the trade website has rush services that are cheap enough.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nMajor changes in my opinion, in descending order:\n\n+ Rebalanced skills and itemization, greatly improving build variety. This includes a rebalance of the teleport skill for all classes to benefit and granting every mercenary an aura. Drops in player 1 online games are also set to /players 5, greatly increasing drop rate.\n+ New endgame content of [maps](https://wiki.projectdiablo2.com/wiki/Maps) and corrupted (D2R’s terror) zones. I love the map events like Gheeds.\n+ Official trade website.\n+ Loot filters.\n+ Improved crafting, including worldstone shards as a corruption mechanic.\n+ [Allocated loot](https://wiki.projectdiablo2.com/wiki/Patch:Season_10). Fixes the free for all issue that plagues public games though not often used in practice. I prefer Path of Exile's \"short allocation\".\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\nSame as base Diablo 2.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ All the quality of life changes [as highlighted in the wiki](https://wiki.projectdiablo2.com/wiki/General_Changes). The ones I most like are written below.\n+ Inventory is now twice as large, and where charms have a dedicated inventory. It's a nice quality of life where otherwise minmax would require filling your entire inventory with charms.\n+ Runes and gems are stackable. Stash tab for crafting, shared account wide stash tabs, and more stash tabs.\n+ Gold is auto pick up.\n+ No more missables like accidentally killing Cow King or Nihlathak.\n+ Higher starting stamina.\n+ Game name in lobby search automatically upticks. Excellent for boss rush games so you can immediately join the next game.\n+ Autoparty.\n+ Gold in shared bank is [safe from dropping as part of the death penalty](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo2/comments/pwot56/d2r_does_the_gold_in_shared_stash_count_towards).\n+ You can set a [home act.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/1g7wyq1/set_a_home_act_is_insane_qol)\n+ You can display advanced stats that the base game doesn't such as Cast Rate, Hit Recovery, Block Rate, Magic Find (MF), and Gold Find (GF) with the default hotkey of 8. This includes breakpoints for your class.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ No \"always attack without moving\" like in PoE. It's a significant quality of life for melee attacks.\n+ No multiboxing allowed. So you can't rush yourself or trade between mules. This is gated by the same IP address, but you can white list yourself although this is not allowed for this purpose.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Homepage](https://www.projectdiablo2.com), including trade and armory\n+ [Wiki](https://wiki.projectdiablo2.com), including [runes](https://wiki.projectdiablo2.com/wiki/Runes)\n+ [r/projectdiablo2](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2)\n+ [DarkHumility's Season 11 Tier list](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SeEs_vHlQMHMbFJlNF0EZ7yXxYLTF0CfJ7f2_9ZQp58/edit)\n+ [Reddit: New Player Guide (2025-05)](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/1kimqdk/project_diablo_2_new_player_guide)\n+ [Kryszard's PD2 Loot Filter](https://github.com/Kryszard-POD/Kryszard-s-PD2-Loot-Filter)\n+ [pd2.tools](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/1h5fkd4/introducing_pd2tools_a_site_like_poeninja_for_pd2). Like poe.ninja for PD2.\n+ [PD2 Trader](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/1lka2wn/introducing_pd2_trader_opensource_tool_to_help)\n+ [Spanxxxy: How to Gain Wealth on Project Diablo 2 (PD2)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfD2rRMWpHM)\n\nGeneral Diablo II resources\n+ [d2jsp](https://forums.d2jsp.org)\n+ [MF Run Counter](https://github.com/oskros/MF_run_counter)\n+ [Waypoints](https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Waypoint#Full_Waypoint_Listing)\n+ [Maxroll: Important quests](https://maxroll.gg/d2/resources/important-quests)\n+ [Maxroll: Map layouts](https://maxroll.gg/d2/resources/map-reading)\n+ [Maxroll: Rushing](https://maxroll.gg/d2/resources/rushing). See also [leveling](https://maxroll.gg/d2/resources/general-leveling).\n+ [Maxroll: Breakpoints & Animations](https://maxroll.gg/d2/resources/breakpoints-animations)\n+ [Maxroll: Damage reductions](https://maxroll.gg/d2/resources/damage-reductions). Fire and Lightning are the most important, then Cold, then Poison (it's only damage over time and fixed with Antidote Potion).\n+ [Reddit: %Enhanced Damage vs +Maximum Damage](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/r6s8w4/max_damage_vs_enhanced_damage)\n\nStrategies\n+ Gold: Early game, gamble amulets for +3 druid summon. Later, [stockpile Zakarum Orbs to sell a stack of 50](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/pl30ki/comment/hc7jchn): roughly 0.10 HR for 7.5 million gold. Keep a reserve of 3-5 million for any Gheed event during maps. Use Gheed's with 15% vendor when buying (Edge is nerfed as of Season 11).\n+ [What to pick up in maps](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/1dp086z/map_clear_speed/)\n  + My value threshold for trading shifted a lot. From 2 wss to 3 wss to 5 wss to 0.1. It depends on clear speeds and if I constantly reach the max limit of 50 listed items.\n+ Maps: [If magic, use destruction orbs to make white. Upgrade white to rare. Reroll T1s and T2s to 80+, and T3s to 100+, using ptopaz or pdiamond which are the least valuable pgems. Settle for less density if there's two bosses, high rarity, and/or high percentage of crafting mats, etc. Corrupt the map.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/1abckjm/how_often_do_you_reroll_maps_its_so_expensive/kjnwnx4) (post's numbers are pre-Season 9; see [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/1gagqgq/how_to_get_rich_in_pd2_s10_comprehensive_guide)).\n+ Small Charms\n  + Prefix: All Res to cap > specific Res to cap > Attack Rating + Max Dmg > Attack Ring. SCs provide 5 All Res, 11 specific Res, 20 Attack Rating / 3 Max Dmg, or 36 Attack Rating. Sockets provide 15 All Res, 30 specific Res, 40 ED / 15 Max Dmg (jewel), or -5/5 resistance rainbow facet. Sockets are equivalent to 3 SCs in All Res, 2.7 SCs in specific Res, and >5 SCs in damage. Therefore the most effective SC prefix is All Res.\n  + Suffix: MF > Life. I aim for 150-200 MF (more comes from maps and PD2's p5 drop rate) and 2000 Life pre-buffed. SCs provide 7 MF vs 20 Life; sockets / slams provide 30 MF (Ist) vs Increase Maximum Life 5% = roughly 100 (Jah) vs +35 Life / +10 Vitality = 30 Life. Sockets / slams are equivalent to 4.3 SCs in MF, 5 SCs in Life. Therefore the most effective SC suffix is MF. MF SCs also cost less than Life SCs.\n\n## Playthrough: Season 11 (2025-07)\n\nSettings\n+ Hotkeys: Replace spell hotkeys F1-F10 to QWERASDFZX, making quest log (Q) to L, character stats (A) to C, inventory (I) to B, weapon swap to V.\n+ Home Act: 4. Especially great for trav runs.\n+ Farming: I experienced them all. But roughly my mains were Pit -> Trav / Chaos / Maps.\n\n__Summon Druid.__\n\n+ [PD2 SUMMONER DRUID GUIDE – S10 UPDATE](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/1i7tc0u/pd2_summoner_druid_guide_s10_update)\n+ [PD2 Summoner Druid - An In-Depth Guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/jutnj1/pd2_summoner_druid_an_indepth_guide)\n+ [DarkHumility: PD2 S11 Summon Druid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvHHtAoAIYg)\n\nI got to level 90, level 40 summon grizzlies, capped fire and lightning res, 75% block, 1000 life, and 300-350 MF. It completes 25 second average Trav runs, T1 maps (albeit slowly), and could do higher if cautious. Net worth is about 5 HR. From here, I decided to use my funds to gear an endgame build. Playtime on the character is 46 hours.\n\ngear todos\n+ 8x summon life skillers\n  + I owned 8 summon skillers (all with no or useless secondary stats, or max of +20 life), sold for 1.8.\n+ hoto\n  + I owned 29 all res, bought for 1, sold for 1.5.\n+ denmother\n  + I owned +3 summon grizzly max fire res slam with 2x shael 1x ptopaz, sold for 1.5.\n+ torch\n  + I owned 37 vit / 14 energy / 18 all res, sold for 1.25.\n+ arach: 0.5\n+ dracul + pierce for merc: 0.10-0.25\n\n__Phoenix Strike Assassin.__\n\n+ [S5 Phoenix Strike Assassin](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/v9kibs/phoenix_strike_assassin_guide)\n+ [S7 Phoenix Strike Assassin Part 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/12oqapr/pd2_phoenix_strike_assassin_guide_part_2)\n+ [DarkHumility: S11 Phoenix Strike](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=632MDxhX3oU)\n+ [Spanxxxy: S8 Phoenix Strike Build](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axbveiCj9Fg) ([armory](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/18df0re/what_should_i_know_about_phoenix_strike_before/kcgrh7o))\n+ +% elemental damage has no effect on phoenix strike ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/m63dbr/phoenix_assassin_guide_elementalist_by_sass/gsdkrf5)).\n+ Related: [Spanxxxy: S11 Blade Sentinel Showcase](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/1ml6xxe/i_like_to_pick_stuff_up_the_monsters_drop)\n+ Related: [S11 Blade Fury / Blade Sentinel](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectDiablo2/comments/1l3a5n7/bladesin_a_comprehensive_guide_for_blade_sentinel)\n\nI got an endgame geared level 94 Phoenix Strike assassin. Compared to the summon druid, it has faster clear speeds on maps due to the mob density. It's slower on classic maps like Trav and Chaos Sanctuary as they benefit from teleport for traveling. Net worth is 60 HR. Playtime on the character is 116 hours.\n\nGear and breakpoints after self-buffs (skills + cta + demon limb):\n\n+ Skills: +31 total MA / +17 all skills\n+ Resistances: 80 Fire / 75c Cold / 75 Lightning / 75 Poison\n+ Life: 2637\n+ AR on Phoenix Strike: 9.1k excluding Demon Limb (it adds roughly 1.2k). 10K AR is enough to average 98-100% hit rate on normal mobs in T3 maps.\n+ Elemental Mastery: 27 Lightning\n+ Elemental Pierce: 13 Fire / 15 Cold / 50 Lightning\n+ Life Leech: 17\n+ Mana Leech: 3\n+ Life after each Kill: 0\n+ Mana after each Kill: 2\n+ Magic Find: 186\n+ Block chance: 45\n+ Damage Reduction: 24\n+ PDR: 24%\n+ IAS: 15 (7) max\n+ FHR: 86\n+ FRW: 55\n+ Merc: 75 / 75 / 75 / 75 Resists / 9 Damage Reduction / 51% PDR / 8 Life Leech / 105 (8) IAS / 42 FHR / 35 FRW\n  + Auras: Defiance, Level 12 Conviction (Infinity), Level 8 Might (Templar's Might)\n  + Note: He has 105 IAS for an Ogre Axe breakpoint using 30 IAS Laying of Hands; alternatively, he can do 89 with Colossus Voulge using 20 IAS 3% Life Leech Laying of Hands.\n\ngear todos\n+ 1x 3os stalker's cull: I saw 268 / 27 for 1.25.\n+ 6/6 cta: lowest I've seen is 12-13\n+ 8x 5 all res mf sc (I have 4x no suffix 1x 3 mf 2x 22 fire res 2x 20 light res for 82 / 60 / 79 / 78)\n  + For max I need 45 / 40 / 40 / 22. This is possible with 8x 5 all res, 1 fire res, 1 AR/max dmg.\n+ +3 skills 2os lidless: ~50\n  + This replaces my +2 skills 3os (+30 str) lidless. This may affect my str/dex requirements.\n+ pdr or frw slam on wisp projector, from 33 life\n\nGear considerations\n+ str / dex requirements\n  + arkaine's valor (165 str), steel carapace (154 str)\n    + main. +40 str from 2x bartuc, +20 from 1x bartuc, or 0 from 0x bartuc\n    + swap. +30 str from lidless 2 skills 3os, or +20 str from lidless 3 skills 2os\n    + For Arkaine's, I need -18 str with 2x bartuc and lidless 2 skills 3os, -8 str with 1x bartuc, +12 str with 0x bartuc.\n  + bartuc's (115 dex), stalker's cull (115 dex)\n    + I need +20 dex with 0x bartuc.\n+ weapons\n  + Alternative: 2x 3os, high base damage (see required level; it varies), stalker's cull, 3x -5/x light facets\n  + Alternative: 2x 2os, high base damage (see required level; it varies), high life leech, high ED, +1 all skills bartuc, 2x -5/x light facets \n    + This upgrades mainhand from 1 to 2os, 5 to 9 life leech, 281 to 300 ED, and -5/3 fire to -5/x light.\n    + This upgrades offhand from +1 all skills, 3 to 2os, 8 to 9 life leech, and 290 to 300 ED.\n+ merc\n  + Alternative: pdr / res / life leech / vitality slam verdungo. However, String of Ears replaces Andy's 9% life leech for 8%.\n  + Alternative: 20 str 5% pdr boots. However, you can strength bug templar's might. My level 94 merc has 206 str base and +26 str templar's might is exactly 232.\n+ 2 all skills 2x ist gerke or 2x ist stormshield to replace 3x ist bartuc and respec dex for 75% block. This sacrifices 2 ma skills 1x ist for fbr, increased chance of blocking (capped to 75 instead of 50), pdr, and all res.\n+ 3 all skills 2os arkaine's valor (~50 hr) and 2x -5/x light facets\n  + others: decide on [arkaine's valor](https://wiki.projectdiablo2.com/wiki/Chests#Arkaine's_Valor), [steel carapace](https://wiki.projectdiablo2.com/wiki/Chests#Steel_Carapace), [silks of the victor](https://wiki.projectdiablo2.com/wiki/Chests#Silks_of_the_Victor), [chains of honor](https://wiki.projectdiablo2.com/wiki/RWChests#Chains_of_Honor)\n  + 2 all skills 3os arkaine's valor (7-10 hr) and 3x -5/x light facets\n  + 2 all skills 2os silks of the victor (~6-10 hr) and 2x -5/x light facets\n  + 3 all skills 2os steel carapace (~30+ hr) and 2x requirements -15% jewels for steel carapace\n    + 35-40 enhanced damage / 15 min/max damage / 100 attack rating: This requires adding 2 more fire/light mf scs. Worth it damage-wise because these jewels provide more value than their equivalent scs, compared to 15 all res jewels vs 5 all res scs.\n    + 15 all res: This enables replacing 1 fire res mf sc and 1 light res mf sc with 2x 3 max dmg ar mf sc.\n\nshared gear between characters\n+ bk\n+ mara\n+ waterwalk\n+ cta & lidless\n+ charms (gheed, anni, some sc)\n+ merc gear (vamp gaze, templar)\n+ almanac, navigator, skeleton key","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/project-diablo-2"},{"id":"324411268791272016","title":"Resident Evil 2","originalTitle":"バイオハザード RE:2","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":510,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","iOS","PS5","Mac","XONE"],"studios":["Capcom Development Division 1"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-04-09","completedDate":"2022-04-11","updatedDate":"2022-04-12","notes":"RE2 (2019) is what a remake of a classic should be: build on the core survival horror elements while reimagining with modern advances in graphics and controls. RE2 particularly excels in its atmosphere and level design, with tension as you manage your resources, fight zombies, and explore areas.\n\nFlaw-wise, although the paths for Leon and Claire are sufficiently varied, the choice of Routes A and B have only minor differences, so there's really only content for playing Leon and Claire once, with the Route order being negigible. I also dislike that Leon and Claire's playthrough is illogical and can't happen in the same timeline.\n\n__Story.__ RE2 has better atmosphere than RE1 and the characters feel more real with their backstory and reactions to scenarios. It's a shame that Leon and Claire barely interact, only effectively meeting in the beginning and end like a video game story.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Like RE1, RE2 introduces an excellent resource management system across health, ammo, and inventory space to constrain your ability to fight back, adding tension to escape or spend your valuable resources on a given zombie. In RE2, it's typical to run around zombies to conserve ammo. Combat is limited: there's no kick like RE4 that makes killing zombies extremely easy after shooting their knee or RE4's knife with infinite durability; or RE5's stomp.\n\nNew to RE2 is the idea of two playable characters under distinct routes. There's even Ada and Sherry as playable side characters for a segment. Leon and Claire differ in their weapons and partially in their campaign as they team up with different characters and progress the story in a slightly different order. In the original game, Route A and Route B also differ: for example, item placement, Mr. X only appears in Route B, and the Zapping system, where choices in Route A have consequences in Route B. Unfortunately, unlike the original game, the remake only has [minor differences](https://www.reddit.com/r/residentevil/comments/akpvaf/spoilers_all_the_differences_i_could_summarize) when playing a given character in Route A vs Route B.\n\nI also like the RE2's balance, where your upgrades and inventory effectively resets halfway through the game so the game doesn't fall into a lull at the end due to you having accumulated a hoard of ammo and heals. Also new is Mr. X, an invincible monstrosity that you have to dodge throughout the game, adding to the tension.\n\nRE2's level design also stands out over RE1. I greatly enjoy the Racoon City Police Station over RE1's mansion which felt inherently more video game-y, and all the areas around the Police Station you navigate with an interesting level of verticality and interconnectedness. Objectives aren't always laid out for you, lending you to read through notes you've collected to find out the solution.\n\nControls are simple and intuitive. I like the move away from tank controls, which is a great quality of life addition over the original game. Your gun's crosshair narrows if you stand still, encouraging deliberate positioning to take shots.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nDetails are excellent as is the lighting and facial animations.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ No tedious management of Ink Ribbons like in RE1 (and also why I avoid Hardcore difficulty here).\n+ Map is quite good in detailing the area layout as well as items or areas you need to revisit.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ In addition to manual save stations following RE1's typewriters, RE2 (2019) also introduces automated checkpoints. This makes the game slightly easier.\n+ The change to a third-person point of view instead of fixed camera angle. It's not better, just different, replete with its assorted design decisions such as zombie ambushes and immersion.\n+ The video game-y elements: Going into your inventory pauses the game (I don't remember if this was in the first game). If you open all locked doors with a given key, the game tells you that it's no longer necessary and can be discarded. Map tells you when an area is fully explored.\n+ Dodge mechanic. Funny enough, I never used it once.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Changing sub weapons with Shift. Sub weapon usage is already dated with you having to hold Spacebar to get into Ready mode, followed by actually using the weapon (all stationary). Worse than RE4 however is that there's multiple sub weapons so there's now controls to switch among them.\n+ Fuck door campers. Doors closing quickly was likely implemented intentionally so you can’t just kite zombies outside an area and shoot at them. But because of this, zombies can camp a closed door when you exit an area and it’s near impossible for you to re enter without getting hit.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nThis entry does not include the Fourth Survivor and Ghost Survivors DLC, which are action-oriented and not that interesting in my opinion. Having not completed the original, I decided to play the remake as there's quite a bit of community discussion around the remake vs original being debatably better (even with nostalgia frogs vying for the original). Ultimately, they both have their own place given that they differ in experience. I played Leon A / Claire B on Normal difficulty. I played blind.\n\nMy general strategy:\n\n+ Zombie: Shoot with handgun (Matilda for Leon, Quickdraw Army or SMG for Claire) at knee until they down, then run away. If I need to kill (e.g., if I backtrack through the area), knife head. When overwhelmed or without a knife, shoot head with handgun or shotgun.\n+ Licker: Try to walk past. If I need to kill, shoot head with Shotgun (Leon); and Grenade Launcher with Flame Rounds (Claire).\n+ Dog: Shoot head with burst fire handgun (Leon); and SMG (Claire).\n+ G-Adult: Shoot eye with Shotgun or Flamethrower (Leon); and Grenade Launcher with Flame Rounds or Spark Shot (Claire)\n+ Ivy: Flamethrower (Leon); and Grenade Launcher with Flame Rounds (Claire).\n+ Bosses: Magnum (Leon); and SLS60 with High-Powered Ammo, Grenade Launcher with Acid Rounds, or Spark Shot (Claire).\n+ Grenades: I typically only use when overwhelmed or out of ammo.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/resident-evil-2--1"},{"id":"322682678624196172","title":"Resident Evil 4","originalTitle":"バイオハザード コード:ベロニカ 完全版 バイオハザード4 バリューパック","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":960,"platforms":["PS2","PS3"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"startedDate":"2021-03-31","completedDate":"2021-04-02","updatedDate":"2026-04-09","notes":"Resident Evil 4 overhauled the series toward an arcade shooter with action-heavy elements, with for example a third-person view, crowds of enemies at a time, larger weapon variety, and upgrades. It especially features high replayability with higher difficulties and its weapon variety, enabling different playstyles.\n\n__Story.__ I like RE4's idea of being fairly standalone, more detached than others in the series and therefore enabling itself to work without the legacy requirements of corresponding to Umbrella. It's a fairly blockbluster story, nothing that stands out much.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Particularly notable in RE4's action elements are: body part damage (the core combo of head or lower leg shot -> kick the enemy down -> knife until dead; lower leg shot for immediate knockdown of enemies rushing you), context-sensitive actions, quick time events, ability to slash at enemies when they're down to further conserve ammo, health, inventory, and weapon upgrades, and merchants, currency, and treasure collectibles. Weapon variety is excellent. There are multiple viable paths to take down enemies in the game, and like other strong classic games like Super Mario 64, RE4 allows expert players to carve their own style.\n\nResident Evil series has always had great enemy variety, but RE4 pushes it even further. As an action game, RE4 enables significantly more variable enemies such as plagas, invisible rushing enemies (novistadors), shields, regenerators, J.J., chainsaw enemies, Garrador. I also like the dynamism in the level designs, not only with verticality but the ability to break down doors, push down ladders, and knife at destructible objects. These levels really assist in controlling the large groups of zombies you fight.\n\nControls age decently well. The FOV, tank controls, ready stance to knife, and standing in order to aim/reload are limiting but don't feel too constraining playing the game in 2021. RE4 tries to reach a middleground between classical survival horror like RE1 and typical action shooters. Other controls such as knife, gun, action, and run are simple and intuitive. What I find doesn't age well however is swapping weapons mid-fight by going to the menu (even grenades). Modern standards enable shortcuts to not ruin the combat pace.\n\nCarrying around Ashley as an escort for much of the game seems a huge flaw on first glance. It doesn't actually hamper gameplay in practice. Intensive fights have obvious hiding areas for Ashley or otherwise make her not appear for story reasons. Less intensive fights are slightly more challenging as you have to be careful about positioning with Ashley as a second target next to you.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ A blur of somewhat cartoony and realistic graphics. Ages pretty well to be honest. Atmosphere in the game is lacking overall, with less of an emphasis on sound design, lighting, and ominous background music. Everything is well-lit.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The wide viability of the knife for ammo conservation: knifing at traps, enemies when they're down, breakable objects to get at their loot.\n+ Loading screens are seamless.\n+ Most all areas have finite enemy spawn.\n+ Plagas appear with a higher chance if your playstyle involves shooting heads. Excellent counter tactic, balancing in favor of other playstyles like aiming for legs or not going for the risky combo. On the other hand, knee shot staggers don't always work, and the suplex action only affects one target while adding +30% chance decapitation. This means shooting the head is generally better for the crowd control unless your aim is closer to the knee, they have head armor, they rush you, or it's single target. (It turns out this detail is not actually true, although I wish it were!)\n+ Upgrades are gated with game progression. This is good for balancing as it prevents focusing too much on one gun.\n+ You can try to minmax health and ammo by waiting for certain plot progression where all health is restored, or to use full health heals; and ammo upgrades to restock or before selling.\n+ As part of its survival horror roots, you cannot buy ammo or beyond carrying 2 first aid sprays. Otherwise there would be no feeling of limited health or ammo. (And true to its action genre, RE4 has plentiful of both if you play conservatively.)\n+ You can kill snakes and crows for drops.\n+ The Combine feature of different Herbs set the standard for the franchise.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The game is a bit more forgiving than past games, with Continue proceeding to the last checkpoint rather than the last save.\n+ No Item Box like in previous games. Instead, the attache is large enough.\n+ Key items and treasure do not take inventory space.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Item drops despawn. Forces you to pick them up during battle.\n+ Map includes an explicit mission marker. That's just a little too streamlined in action for my tastes. The levels are already designed linearly enough that you don't need explicit markers.\n+ Save, merchant, and lore items are a little too video game-y in their placement. Lore items also nonsensically reveal the enemy's entire plan to you. I think you can make a great action survival horror like RE4 but without the more arcade elements.\n+ Red Catseye is only accessible before you can get the treasure map. This is the only treasure that requires knowing its location beforehand.\n+ No native borderless support. Windowed + Borderless Gaming worked easily though (and sometimes Shift+Tab first to open the Steam overlay to get my mouse control back).\n+ No English subtitles.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [The Definitive Tactics Guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=807923566)\n+ [The Definitive Weapons Guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=731850249)\n\nI played a little in high school (2006) as Danny and Dalton were very into the game, but I never went far. Playing the game again, I played the Ultimate HD Edition on PC, which includes the latest HD remastering, supporting 60 fps (although QTE now requires twice as many button presses as it was designed for 30; and certain animations are janky), 4K rendering, widescreen, and texture mods. I play on controller as RE4 was designed for it; I prefer mouse and keyboard but the tank controls and limited FOV make it unlike modern FPS; QTE and poor inventory management controls further hamper the M+KB experience. I played on Normal.\n\nIn survival games, I prefer damage per ammo rather than damage per second as I often don't spam shots in favor of making each bullet count. Instead of being completionist, I collected all treasure explicitly marked on my map and while navigating; but I didn't use walkthroughs if, e.g., I missed a spinel treasure or yellow herb.\n\nLoadout:\n+ Red9 (basic enemies)\n+ Striker (crowd control and nearby strong enemies)\n+ Semi-Auto Rifle (strong enemies and enemies from long distance)\n+ Broken Butterfly (strong enemies, typically bosses)\n+ 2 Flash grenades: AoE one-shot plagas\n+ 1 Incendiary grenade: for emergencies\n+ 0 Frag grenades: I find the shotgun and roundhouse kick sufficient\n\nPurchase / upgrade priority:\n1. Case & most versatile weapon's damage\n2. Other weapon's damage\n3. Ammo capacity\n4. Reload speed\n5. Rate of fire\n\nHealth item usage priority:\n1. Large bass (takes up too much space)\n2. Green/red/yellow herb combo (increases max HP)\n3. Triple-green herb combo & first aid spray\n4. Green/red herb combo (wait for yellow herb if applicable)\n5. Gold egg (most space-efficient)\n\nCraft priority:\n+ Craft healing. Don’t craft ammo unless truly needed or full as they drop dynamically.\n+ Handgun ammo = Gunpowder + Resources (S)\n+ Shotgun/SR ammo = Gunpowder + Resources (L)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/resident-evil-4-and-resident-evil-code-veronica-x-bundle"},{"id":"337475510253650512","title":"RimWorld","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":3720,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Ludeon Studios"],"publishers":["Ludeon Studios"],"genres":["Real Time Strategy (RTS)","Simulator","Strategy","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-09-18","completedDate":"2022-09-30","updatedDate":"2022-10-01","notes":"RimWorld most excels in its AI management of colonists. You don't directly control a colony. You're an overseer that provides indirect orders and the colonists determine the precise path and sequence in which to complete orders. Combined with a slew of core systems, this enables a wide amount of emergent gameplay. It's the best example of emergent storytelling, pushing further on the sandbox gameplay and roguelike sim philosophy. Unlike Dwarf Fortress, it's significantly more accessible due to graphics and UI.\n\nFlaw-wise, perhaps RimWorld's most significant is that it's not easy to recover from losses. One failure to defeat a massive raid and you wipe your whole colony. Even if you get lucky with a handful of colonists to hide out, there's not much left except to rebuild all over again. In other words, failure means repetitive gameplay. RimWorld isn't like Crusader Kings or Dwarf Fortress where the game is about the story of an empire or age, and not the specific colonists where defeat is closer to signifying failure than it is just a conflict in their story. You spend so much time on base building and progression, and it can all be taken away in a single raid.\n\nVarious systems offer more depth than your typical RPG. For example, instead of fixed slots, apparel is based on body parts as well as a clothing layer system. This also applies to damage, defense, and health conditions, which apply to body parts. This adds to the gameplay experience, such as accumulating permanent injuries over the course of battle where a colonist or two might not only incur a scar but lose a toe or leg entirely, impairing their movement speed (at least until you operate on them with bionic parts).\n\nIdeologion system introduced by the Ideology DLC is excellent, providing more depth behind the colonists' belief systems and how they act. Royalty DLC features psycast powers, nobility and titles, and more items including techprints which provide an additional unlock for the research tree. Importantly, Royalty has quests in order to obtain royal favor for increase title rank. This incentivizes players to partake in quests more often as quests in the base game were often not worth it.\n\nCaravans have a peculiar balancing problem. The rewards are often not worth it until closer to endgame as the risk of raids while, say, 3 of your most able fighting colonists are away is dire. Raid difficulty adjusts for your colony wealth, and it's unintuitive that you have to bring lots of wealth on your caravan (which also slows it down) in order to account for the possibility of raids.\n\nCombat has mixed depth. Early game, RimWorld features bad pathfinding and ludicrous amounts of raid enemies as the form of difficulty. During these invasions, RimWorld becomes a turret defense, tunneling enemies under the controversial strategy of a killbox. Later, new strategy is required due to three types of raids: drop pod raids, sieges, and breachers. Drop pod raids requires your base to be designed well enough that you can defend from multiple positions such as narrow hallways. Sieges require you to defend at long distances, either with mortars or going offensive such as taking the battle upfront or luring them with a sniper. Breachers require you to have killbox-like setups on all sides of your base to ensure proper coverage, and [you can manipulate their pathfinding to get closer to killboxes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXFVTjaBzOk). These strategies add to the combat depth, but honestly, the game's strengths are in its base building, social interactions, and emergent storytelling. I find the challenges caused by colony events (quests, various notifications like toxic fallout or solar flare) to be [most interesting](https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/2rv55b/death_to_the_killbox_or_why_they_should_not_exist).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nUI is intuitive. It's still complicated, and sometimes unnecessarily so with how certain tabs are far more useful than others despite taking equal space. Still, RimWorld has done an excellent job at distilling such a complex system in an accessible manner (contrast to, say, Dwarf Fortress' UI).\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can copy various filter settings. This makes it so easy to transfer settings across different bills or structures.\n+ You can loot any downed raiders before they bleed out to loot clothing without the tainted status.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Skill decay. I like that it encourages specialization and you can't just have uber pawns by grinding all their skills. It's unbalanced however for certain skills such as Doctor, where you're punished for remaining uninjured. I prefer an implementation where skill decays but only to 0 for a given level, never down a level (solved with [Mad Skills](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=731111514)).\n+ There's even decay with faction rep, so nothing is really worth grinding except for your base's wealth (e.g., endgame gear) (solved with [Remove Gradual Relations Decay](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1860686739)).\n+ The balance of raid difficulty against colony wealth. I think this scaling works quite well, especially toward the storyteller appeal akin to D&D dungeon masters where the game is specifically designed to always be challenging, even if you accumulate gear at a faster-than-normal pace.\n+ It’s actually more advantageous to not ally with tribal factions. Their raids are among the easiest and allying with them only means you’ll face tougher enemies.\n+ It's not easy to train the shooting skill. There's hunting, but it's not very fast compared to, say, training crafting, and it's not easily scalable to multiple colonists at a time as you easily run out of animals. You can use a smoke launcher and fire at animals to train shooting, but it's tedious to micromanage this as you have to manually draft colonists (solved with [Combat Training](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2570757153), specifically a 1.3 forked version that enables infinite HP combat dummies as the 1.3 forked version without it has buggy swaps between the training and original weapons).\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Missing quality of life features that mods have fortunately fixed:\n  + All the flavor text for natural storytelling are too hidden away in the Log menu (solved with [Interaction Bubbles](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1516158345)).\n  + There's no auto hunt, so you have to manually mark creatures to hunt instead of using a filter option to specify the types of creatures much like any other work type. There’s also no auto for cutting down trees, mining, and taming (solved partially with [Allow Tool](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=761421485), though this mod has other features that I disable as I find them unnecessary bloat; [Colony Manager](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=715565262) solves these but also adds more features and even items which changes vanilla).\n   + You have to wait until a colonist deconstructs an item before being able to build or move an item over it (solved with [Replace Stuff](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1372003680)).\n  + You have to press Need or Bio after selecting a colonist to see their mood and stats, which is tedious with many colonists (solved with [RimHUD](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1508850027)).\n  + You can’t set an urgency to haul certain items such as deteriorating harvested crops or raider corpse loot. This forces you to micromanage colonists to pick up the items or temporarily set the Haul work type priority but only if other items aren't also set to be hauled (solved with [Allow Tool](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=761421485)).\n   + Colonists won’t clean the room before using it such as cooking or sleeping (solved with [Common Sense](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1561769193)).\n   + True to its roguelike sim roots, its menus rely too much on plaintext (solved with [Dubs Mint Menu](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1446523594)).\n  + The cleaning area is tied to your home area. The home area was designed with a buffer for fire in mind, which doesn't work well for cleaning. The colonists dumbly waste time cleaning outdoors (solved with [CleaningArea](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=870089952)).\n  + There is no on-screen combat text, so it’s hard to tell how a fight is going (solved with [Damage Indicators](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=942369931)).\n  + Colonists don’t know to re-equip their weapon after being downed (solved with [Where is my Weapon?](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1539028008)).\n  + Traders can park at arbitrary edges of your base (solved with [Trading Spot](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=757603224)).\n  + You can't filter by material in, say, the smelter, crematorium, or stockpile zones. This can make it frustrating to throw away trash gear loot and only keep the high quality above as it's largely based on material, not just its condition or durability (solved with [Material Filter](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1541305730)).\n  + Planning your base is crucial (defense for all sides of your base, geothermal vent positions for power, fertile soil positions for farm, then the rest of your base). But the tools are rudimentary (solved with [More Planning](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2551225702)).\n+ The \"Craft\" type is an anomaly that shouldn't be bundled together. It includes haul-equivalent grunt work of stonecutting, which does not require any skill or grant XP. It also includes drugwork like assembling smokeleaf joints, which uses Cooking skill (solved with [Work Tab](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=725219116)).\n  + You can't fully zoom out for a nice screenshot (solved with [Camera+](https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=867467808), although I dislike its panning changes).\n  + Pawns can trap themselves when filling in holes, so you have to micromanage their building (solved with [Smarter Construction](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2202185773)).\n  + Only one pawn can deliver materials to a given blueprint (solved with [Share the Load](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1356838246)).\n  + Good feels tracking of level progress (solved with [Level Up!](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1701592470)).\n+ Animal ranching (outside pack animals for caravans) is more pain than gain. Farm animals require somewhat tedious micromanagement at times as you have to let them out the pen, as often the pen is not enough food (or otherwise you have to spend the food to feed them, which raises the quest of whether butchered farm animals provide more food than you fed them). You get plenty of meat from hunting, which you generally do anyways to level up colonist shooting, as well as raids. At least animals with advanced trainability like dogs serve as haulers.\n+ The gauranlen tree isn't worth it. It takes up too much time and for little gain, where most dryad roles don't have much core benefit. The main one is hauler, but maintaining a tree takes 4.5 hours whereas if you want haulers, it's simpler to train animal haulers. Situationally, it could used for extreme biomes, as the berry and medicine dryads can mitigate the issues of limited grow periods.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://rimworldwiki.com), including its excellent [guides](https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Guides)\n+ [FrancisJohn's killbox guide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8fsjNjbz8Y) ([Tutorial Nugget playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS-hAL3jgjOvy3MrdfvKPDH60q_tzOup8)) has the most accurate design. It incorporates the range for heavy SMGs, the semi-circle for proper targeting, an EMP side area, turrets for distractions and forced nonclustering, and reinforced walls. Many recommend a 2 wall-to-1-sandbag design, but the 1 wall-to-1-sandbag design here provides a larger shooting cone as colonists can peak both corners.\n\nMy first campaign played the base game with Cassandra Classic at Strive to Survive difficulty, temperate forest biome. I played with no mods. Around midgame, I added quality of life mods that only avoid tedium in either gameplay or only affect the UI. I tended to savescum. I thoroughly enjoyed the efficiency in building my colony’s colonists and base and treated invasions as more a side matter. This did diminish the value of stakes as I would always reload if someone were to die. I think this is OK at least for a first playthrough as you’re still learning the game. Play commitment mode afterwards, much like a Doom Eternal Ultra Nightmare mode or Crusader Kings 3 Ironman mode. At 225 days (3-4 years) and 41 hours of playtime, I had 13 colonists. I failed during the ship activation with 9 days left. There were simply too many double raids with multi-pronged attacks, and my colonists couldn’t heal fast enough for the next day’s raid.\n\nIn my second campaign, I played with all DLCs activated, Randy Random, Strive to Survive difficulty, commitment mode, temperate forest biome with large hills. Commitment mode can be daunting due to not knowing a certain mechanic beforehand or just bad RNG and setup leading to a wipe. To mitigate this, I savescum if the failure was so disastrous it destroyed the colony, going back to the last autosave (every day). I used the same mods as my first campaign and added ones with minor gameplay changes: [Pick Up and Haul](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1279012058), [Filth Vanishes with Rain and Time](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1508341791).\n\n+ I lost to a 4x tribal raid at around 180k wealth, 110 days (1.8 years), 38 hours of playtime, one the previous day, then 3 back-to-back. It was only supposed to be 3 tribal raids of roughly size 20 due to a quest where you redirect raiders to you. But they each ended up being of size 30-40 and the three were simultaneous. Gotta thank Randy Random for that one. Ultimately, it was bad timing: I was hoarding wealth with two slaves I planned to give away to the Royal Empire and three new recruits that I was still gearing and leveling up their shooting (not all equipped heavy SMGs). In retrospect, I should've mortared them when they were bunched up before starting the assault, although I don't know how much this would help. The killzone wasn't outputting high enough DPS to get them all in time (they were all bunched up), and a melee tunnel blockage didn't work fast enough before my frontliners got downed. I could at least have my tankier and melee skilled colonists to move up to a barricade level to draw in enemies as I get overwhelmed though. This will draw aggro and still let my ranged DPS get their full damage output and incur less damage. The best strategy would be laser-focused on defenses, always upgrading all your pawns with heavy SMGs and not taking too many at once, being proactive in mortars, and being cautious about quests to take.\n+ I continued my save by wiping the remaining raids with the dev tool and having my colony incur its current injuries (such as the death of my medical and intellectual specialist). I had just gotten to enjoy midgame with enough components to manufacture more heavy SMGs, plenty of power coming from geothermal generator, and researching marine armor. I was just learning about how to effectively utilize a semicircle killbox, my mortars, and turret redirection for sappers. I had yet to truly experience beyond level 1 psycasts and endgame Royalty and Ideology gear. I hadn’t even experienced a siege or breach yet.\n\n__Colony base strategy.__\n\n+ Combined room for dining, recreation, and throne. Ritual room is separate, near the outskirts like bedrooms.\n+ Clean room combined for kitchen, hospital, and research.\n+ A room right next to my kill zone has a mini hospital with a few beds, a dining table, and a stockpile of a few meals. I find this crucial for enabling my colonists to be drafted for semi-long periods (e.g., back to back raids) without mental breaks that can be disastrous. These can heal downed or wounded colonists, or take up prisoners at least until they’re in stable condition; it can serve as a bit of rest; and it can serve as food.\n+ My full base with walls serves as the animal pen.\n+ Defense strategy: Killbox on all major sides (up to 4, fewer if covered by natural terrain). For sappers, there are unpowered turrets to redirect them. For sieges, there is a mortar room. For drop pod attacks, the base is naturally designed with long hallways so I can attack from doorways or pelt them as they get closer and without cover.\n\n__Colonist composition strategy.__\n+ My starter triplet always consists of 1 medical and intellectual, 1 construction and crafting as the production specialist, and 1 plants and cooking. They must be diversified in other skills, with at least 1 in shooting.\n+ Shooting: As many as possible. I fill remaining colonist slots with shooters (filtering by the usual requirements like no bad traits, permanent wounds, and age). They spend time hunting to level up their shooting or haul and clean if not as extras to the other roles.\n+ Medical: As many as possible. 1 serves as the main doctor for surgeries and most tendings. More medical helps as backup such as when multiple colonists and prisoners are bleeding out.\n+ Intellectual: 2-3. 1-2 for research, 1-2 for mineral scanning (the need for research also dies down by this point), and 1 to speed up drug synthesis.\n+ Construction: 2-3. 1 is your main builder for the production specialist role and quality items. The other speeds up construction. A Transhumanist builder is also key for neural supercharger and sleep accelerator if your ideology doesn’t include the meme.\n+ Crafting: 2-3. 1 is your main crafter for the production specialist role (same pawn as for construction) and quality items. The other is a component fabrication slave, easily the biggest bottleneck midgame as you often mine for steel faster than you can craft components.\n+ Mining: 2. Mine steel and components as the bottleneck early game, and deep drill late game. Usually I only need 1 mining full-time late game for, say, plasteel and that’s plenty.\n+ Social: 2. One is your trader, takes the leader role, and is your highest noble with psycasts. The other is your priest. It also helps to have at least two wardens. Warden is not a full-time job, so they supplement another role.\n+ Cooking: 1. With 10+ colonists, cooking becomes one person’s full-time job, supplemented for example with hauling and cleaning in spare time.\n+ Plants: 1-2. Even with 5 sunlamps’ worth of crops, only 1 colonist needs to harvest; extra reduce yield for the sake of convenience. My main planter also auto-chops trees in my base thanks to a pen marker. The only other bottleneck is sowing crops, and everyone can do that as it only affects sowing speed. Between sowing and harvesting periods, planters supplement another role.\n+ Artistic: 1. A large sculptor slave, especially in midgame to craft enough quality items to get impressive rooms. By endgame, they don’t make anything more, so they supplement another role.\n+ Animals: 1. I only tame or buy horses as caravan pack animals. It's a shame you don't run into many wild animals who can be tamed to haul. The only major ones are predators which are too dangerous to tame alone so you have to tame in pairs. Handling isn't a full-time job so they supplement another role.\n+ Melee: 0, maybe 1 or 2 situationally. I don’t use it as I rarely employ the 3-wide corridor strategy. It only helps in deciding who will be my frontliners as raiders close the distance.\n+ I top out at around 12 colonists. Any more and I can't utilize them well without expanding my base's ambitions.\n\n__Gear strategy.__\n+ Heavy SMG on all colonists with <15 shooting. Charge Rifle otherwise, but only if it's at least the same quality or better than the heavy SMG. Until I can manufacture heavy SMGs, I loot guns from raiders.\n+ A few of my weakest shooters also equip EMP grenades for use against mechanoid raids, especially Centipedes.\n+ TODO psycasts. Permits are cataphract, orbital salvo, transport shuttle, glitterworld medicine drop.\n+ Devilstrand duster, button down shirt, and pants, flak vest, and simple helmet on all colonists, hood for those with social ideology roles. Devilstrand is prioritized as an early research. Nobles use TODO.\n  + By endgame, the best shooters replace the duster and vest with cataphract armor. Simple helmets are always replaced with cataphract helmets. Armor protection [is significant](https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/bys1fu/armor_effectiveness_visualized_how_useful_is). A bionic leg helps offset the cost to a move speed of 4.04 c/s from the flak vest alternative of 4.48 c/s. This avoids having to swap before a raid which takes an in-game hour.\n  + I don't bother with flak, recon, or marine gear as it requires too many components and plasteel for a midgame investment. It’s easy in midgame to funnel raiders in a killbox anyways.\n+ For bionics, I generally prioritize replacing injuries, then eye, then arm or leg. Eye is quintessential for higher DPS (and therefore safer fights), and it also helps researchers and doctors. However, I do add a bionic arm to my main construction and crafter ASAP as you will often wait on them as you rely on their skills entirely for so many crafts.\n\nTodo\n+ deliberate on ideal colonist composition\n+ test smoke launcher training again\n+ bionic eye farm\n\nTODO campaigns\n+ mountain base. This makes flooring and walls significantly simpler. It encourages a melee playstyle so you can block tight corridors to handle infestations, which are the new main danger.\n+ lost tribe\n+ cannibals\n+ tree worship with tree meme, gauranlen tree, anima tree\n+ challenge ideas: different biomes, higher difficulties","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/rimworld"},{"id":"329792308835779137","title":"Silent Hill 2","originalTitle":"サイレントヒル2","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["Team Silent"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-04-26","completedDate":"2022-04-27","updatedDate":"2022-04-27","notes":"Silent Hill 2 is story-intense. It refines the gameplay with controls and has fantastic enemy design. It established Pyramid Head as a mascot of the series. It's not as disturbing as Silent Hill 1's ambience (especially early game like the School or Hospital); rather, it's more unsettling in its story impact and dreamlike mood.\n\n__Story.__ The premise is the same as the original where the protagonist is a regular person in search of their loved one. The reveal is one with adult themes, and with a few case studies beyond James himself of the suffering of people visiting Silent Hill.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nThe core gameplay is largely retained from Silent Hill in its level design, combat, control system, and inventory management.\n\nThe most notable change is that Silent Hill 2 lets you use strafe instead of tank controls! This is a massive difference as it resolves one of my biggest problems with Silent Hill 1. In game, this is known as 2D (strafe) or 3D (tank) controls. You can also now block, a move that Resident Evil 7 adopted as part of the survivor horror controls. Unlike Silent Hill 3 and RE7 though, the enemies move too sluggishly to warrant blocking as a common strategy. You also escort around Maria in several parts of the game.\n\nWhile the controls are much improved, the camera is still wonky in its combination of fixed camera angles and a dynamic camera. Fortunately I found the Search camera action more useful in this game, perhaps a result of just my experience with Silent Hill games rather than an improvement in Silent Hill 2 overall.\n\nLike the first game, there's an emphasis on limited resources and with melee and ranged weapons. There's plentiful ammo and healing supplies though, so you're not that limited. In addition, melee is quite good in the game as you can stunlock and kill most any enemy in a 1v1, and often do so without taking a single hit if you can hit them first before they hit you.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nIt's largely similar to Silent Hill 1 in its emphasis on sound design, lighting, and fog to limit LOD distance. The polygon detail is noticeably higher of course. Voice acting is not unlike Silent Hill 1 in feeling stilted and dreamlike in its lack of personality and meandering responses. I think it's part of Silent Hill's charm in adding to the mystery of it all---whether it's intentional or not.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Puzzle solutions are not as obscure, and examining items often tells you explicitly what they're for.\n+ Map now marks save locations.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ You can save anywhere in most Silent Hill editions.\n+ Instead of pickable items being a different color or more visibly outlined against the background, you can rely on James turning his head.\n+ In the world, it's much easier to run away from enemies because Silent Hill 2's Lying Figures and Mannequins are slower than Silent Hill 1's Air Screamers and Groaners.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You can no longer reload by simply readying your weapon. This means you have to go to the menu to reload or otherwise take the animation delay of reloading once you hit 0 ammo. I like the idea of forcing a reload animation but any modern game would simply make this an explicit action one can press in real time.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Silent Hills Memories walkthrough](https://www.silenthillmemories.net/sh2/walkthrough_en.htm)\n\nReading online, the recommended release is Director's Cut on PS2 or Director's Cut on PC with the fan-made [Enhanced Edition](http://www.enhanced.townofsilenthill.com/SH2/) for ultra widescreen support, controller support, and PS2-based audio and graphics quality. The HD collection port to PS3 and Xbox 360 is not good. \n\nI played on Normal for Combat and Normal for Puzzle difficulty. I played blind, only resorting to walkthroughs when I get stuck, and did not aim for a particular ending in mind (I watched the others after beating the game). My weapon playstyle:\n\n+ Melee: Used for 1v1 situations on slow enemies I can stunlock before they return a single hit: Lying Figure (you can bait their initial attack), Mannequin. I like the Steel Pipe most for its stunlock capabilities due to fast weapon speed compared to the Great Knife.\n+ Handgun: Used for enemies that I would likely take a hit from if I try to run up close to melee (e.g., Nurses take 3, sometimes 4 if they're the dirtier skin variant), and for groups.\n+ Shotgun: Used for Abstract Daddy and bosses.\n+ Rifle: Reserved for the last two bosses.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/silent-hill-2"},{"id":"322682678650393164","title":"Spelunky","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":1140,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","PC","Vita","X360","Switch"],"studios":["BlitWorks","Mossmouth"],"publishers":["Microsoft Studios","Mossmouth"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-09-18","completedDate":"2020-09-30","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Spelunky is the highlight of mainstream indie roguelites along with Binding of Isaac, FTL, and Rogue Legacy giving rise to the subgenre. It executes well a concept of combining roguelike and platformer elements, paired with great controls, enemy variety, and level design. I find it a perfect game to play while watching a Twitch stream, listening to a movie, or grinding a TV series, and it's easy to pick up and replay.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Spelunky is an excellent roguelite building on elements from platformers. It encourages core concepts: deliberate decision-making, emergent gameplay with universally applicable controls/items, and resource conservation. For example, bombs assist both in platforming and damage; traps can be used to kill not only yourself but also enemies.\n\nAnother memorable component in Spelunky is its many instant death scenarios, unforgiving with certain platforming and enemies. In addition, a ghost spawns after 2.5 minutes every level, ultimately giving a balance of tension to move quickly and cautiousness to not trigger traps. Core controls are also excellent: sprint, rope and bomb, attack, jump with ledge hanging. Emergent gameplay arises exponentially from the universality in controls, with a good set of tools, enemy variety, and level variety.\n\nLike true roguelikes, there is no real progression across games. The one exception are shortcuts, which help casual playthroughs beat the game. They are also a fantastic way of getting used to new areas without having to grind older areas only to die immediately.\n\nThe game is challenging in its unforgiving attitude. Like Dark Souls, you feel responsible for each death and truly do learn from each failure: enemy movesets, platforming traps (an iconic instant death scenario that's totally your fault), improved resource management.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Cartoon graphics are timeless. I love the expressions on all the characters and death animations: dark humor at its finest. Music is also excellent.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Quickstart option to immediately get to playing once you launch the game.\n+ The Damsel as the approach to gaining life. It's not just a health consumable!\n+ The iconic stealing of items from the item shop followed by running away from wrath of the shopkeeper.\n+ The many instant deaths, e.g., spikes, tiki traps, arrow traps.\n+ Runs feeling like half an hour when only minutes have gone by each level.\n+ All the advanced player techniques: whipping arrow traps, timing bombs to hit locations mid trajectory, landing on enemies or ledge grabbing to avoid fall damage, enemy hopping, bounce on water, [ledge grab for height-constrained gap jumps](https://reddit.com/r/spelunky/comments/1n3l62/advanced_tricks_gif_guide/).\n+ The nonlinear difficulty curve. The Jungle easily has the biggest difficulty spike. I like the change in pace with the Snow area. Once I completed the Jungle, I felt comfortable with a handle over the entire game. The Mine and Snow both felt so much easier after the Jungle. The Snow shortcut requiring a Key from the Mine also encourages the shortcut-only playthrough to also master at least the route from Mines to Snow.\n+ Specific memory: Finally unlocking the Door for the final shortcut, bringing the Key to the Mine after 22.3 hours in Spelunky. I got to the third area 5-7 times; a few deaths were absolutely RNG.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Characters are just cosmetic.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You can't save progress in the middle of a run.\n+ Multiplayer is only local.\n+ I wish Spelunky kept a detailed stat chart of your rin history, so you can tell what you die most to, etc. Similar to ladder video games' stats.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://spelunky.fandom.com\n\nI played the HD version. Apparently RMNDolphy really likes this lol. As of the finished date, I only beat Olmec through shortcuts. I didn't beat Olmec from a full playthrough, or reach Hell. I'll leave this for revisiting playthroughs.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/spelunky"},{"id":"322682678652744268","title":"Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":1830,"platforms":["XBOX","Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["Obsidian Entertainment"],"publishers":["LucasArts","Activision","Aspyr Media"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-07-01","completedDate":"2022-07-05","updatedDate":"2023-05-01","notes":"KOTOR 2 makes only minor changes in its mechanics, most especially in Force Forms. However, it stands out in its writing with a more interesting story and characters. The RPG mechanics in progression, quest design, and character choices all remain excellent. The combat is dated and fairly repetitive, particularly by the end of the game.\n\n__Story.__ The writing is stellar. Each world has interesting factions and characters. It's particularly notable in KOTOR 2 that light and dark side are not staunchly good and evil. The dark side factions all have reason to their existence, building on a theme of grey much like Kreia is as a primary companion. Quests are not phoned-in but each unique with a good background, sufficiently varied objectives, and with various decisions leading to different outcomes depending on your alignment.\n\nIt's a more unique journey than the standard good overtakes evil of KOTOR 1. The main cast is also excellent with characters like Kreia taking center stage in their elusive nature and grey morals, and Atton to back up the real worldness of the game where Jedi Sith are treated more as religious fantatics with planetary destruction as consequences. These two alone are better than any of KOTOR 1’s companions. Others are good, just like in KOTOR 1, but don’t have nearly as much scenes as Kreia and Atton to really define their character and see them grow. You also get several companions come back from KOTOR 1 like the much-loved HK-47.\n\nYou also play your party members much more this time in order to provide multiple perspectives, and I find the perspective-switch quite interesting as a storyline approach. It's a common pattern in fantasy books especially (e.g., Game of Thrones).\n\n__Gameplay.__ Combat is almost entirely the same as KOTOR 1. Most significant difference are Saber/Force styles.\n\nUnlike KOTOR 1, all skills are now important and not just Persuade. They all influence your options during NPC dialogue, let you upgrade your weapons, and Security is now important to open lockboxes as they can be destroyed if you attack them. This means the Sentinel class is optimal from a skills perspective, trading off against the melee Guardian class and the caster Consular class.\n\nCertain companions can prestige to become Jedi/Sith depending on your alignment and their alignment with you. They also have an influence system.\n\nThere are unique advantages to light or dark side in terms of mastery, items, and even companions. This greatly improves replayability as you can enjoy both a slightly different story due to dialogue choices/companions but also slightly different gameplay.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Same game engine as KOTOR 1 with minor graphics improvements. The orchestral soundtrack is good as usual with iconic Star Wars riffs. Environments are varied well in variety like in KOTOR 1, so there's fortunately not too much repetitiveness in asset reuse across the areas and planets.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Unlike KOTOR 1, there’s no longer an incentive to gimp yourself early game by not leveling during your initial class. In KOTOR 2, you already get force points during levels in your initial class, which was the main reason you wanted more levels in your second class in KOTOR 1. There’s also a minimum level in KOTOR 2 to obtain a prestige class of 15, and you automatically get the class assuming you committed from the game’s beginning to attain 3/4 light or dark. In addition, the level cap is 50 and not 20, so it’s unlikely you’ll ever get capped in a single playthrough as you reach around 30 at endgame. There is metagaming if you want to maximize Force Powers for certain companions though, waiting until they become Jedi/Sith as they have no minimum level (e.g., Handmaiden).\n+ HUD finally tells you whether a container is empty.\n+ Unlike KOTOR 1, easy way to switch between ranged and melee weapons.\n+ The minigames of Palaak and swoop racing. Same just as in KOTOR 1. For Pazaak, my favored deck is +/- cards, then - cards. - is better than + because you get more card draws, and those may be enough to automatically get you a good card value without playing.\n+ There are many more areas where you can swap party members in menu and not have to go all the way back to your ship.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ There's still no keybinds to specific abilities like a typical MMO (c.f., Dragon Age Origins especially). You have to cycle among the options within each category. This is especially annoying as many force buffs last only 20-30 seconds, so you constantly have to reapply them.\n+ Unlike KOTOR 1, merchants and item containers don't have a fixed stock. It's set randomly the first time you interact with them. Therefore the game requires savescumming if you're looking for a particular item.\n+ Like the first game, stealth is not that useful. There are no stealth sections, and stealth is too much of an inconvenience to set up before every encounter.\n+ Certain feats are retroactive like Toughness. However, class skill point feats are not.\n+ Like KOTOR 1, you have to have the companion in your party to change equipment. This makes it difficult to track which party member has what gear. It's especially difficult because you play multiple companion perspectives in this game, so they're all pretty much useful. I prefer FF7 Remake's approach where in the menu, you can see all party member's gear and equip them on/off so that your current active party can pick and choose. At least you can do this to some extent on the Ebon Hawk, but nowhere else; and the equip screen doesn't let you overtake gear from another party member's so you can't tell all gear both equipped and unequipped for a given slot.\n+ Reused levels from the last game, particularly Dantooine and Korriban. I didn't find the level reuse to be too bad though. It made sense story-wise as you're revisiting areas laid to destruction after Revan.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [StrategyWiki](https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic_II:_The_Sith_Lords)\n  + [Merchants](https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic_II:_The_Sith_Lords/Items). It's helpful to know which merchants have the highest sell percentage, as well as which merchants have a random stock on first speaking to them.\n+ [r/kotor’s KOTOR 2 FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/wiki/kotor2)\n+ [Dan Simpson's Companion influence guide](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/xbox/920194-star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic-ii-the-sith-lords/faqs/34513), [TSLRCM influence guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/ruofg1/kotor_2_tslrcm_influence_guide), [Companion build advice](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1234247381)\n+ [Skill allocation discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/d39y0g/a_skill_primer_for_kotor_ii_rewrite), [More discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/k7c2p6/skills_in_1_v_2)\n+ [XDarkStrikerX's Consular / Marauder LS](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/mica7q/meet_my_new_absolute_powerhouse_buffed_i_dont), [Consular / Assassin LS](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/mgn32j/my_best_ls_character_so_far_without_xp_farming)\n  + Useful to learn build info for stats, skills, feats, Force Powers, and gear\n  + [Class combination analysis](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/jngrdg/an_exiles_path_comparing_the_9_possible_pairings), [Caster-specific class analysis](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/j1fkud/comment/g71v1hy)\n  + [Consular discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/mv0rr3/kotor_2_ls_consular_build_spoilers), [More Consular build discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/glnxer/optimal_beginning_consular_build), [Caster build discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/qit49d/force_only_build_kotor_1_or_2)\n  + [Feat/force power discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/ruibbl/best_forceability_setup_kotor_2), [Force power discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/v5ihgd/weakest_to_most_powerful_force_abilities_in_kotor)\n+ [KOTOR 2 save game editor](https://deadlystream.com/files/file/503-kotor-savegame-editor). It's essential for multiple purposes: a respec mechanic, to avoid the grind of merchant inventory/quest reward savescumming for the best gear, and to close any quests that bug and can't be progressed anymore, staying on your log.\n+ I had to follow [PCGamingWiki](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic_II_-_The_Sith_Lords) in order to delete the intro videos and enable windowed. Windowed works OK if you hide the taskbar and move the top window bar so it's hidden above. I wasn't able to get borderless to work without massive flickering, and it still wouldn't let windows on my primary monitor display.\n+ I had to use [Widescreen UI](https://deadlystream.com/files/file/332-widescreen-ui-fix-for-knights-of-the-old-republic-2-the-sith-lords) to avoid the UI stretching on 16:9. I also set the game in NVIDIA Control panel to hardcode a frame rate of [60 FPS](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/lpm266/fix_for_stuck_after_combat_bug_in_kotor_2).\n\nI played on Difficult difficulty as I found the game too easy on Normal, but I did switch at times when I found the encounters tedious. I played with [TSLRCM](https://deadlystream.com/files/file/578-tsl-restored-content-mod), which the community recommends as the best way to play the game. How much TSLRCM adds is [overrated](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/3xt4fa/what_exactly_does_tslrcm_restore_to_kotor_2): it's only minor dialogue and a quest here and there; the most important change is bugfixes. The most significant restoration of the HK Factory is unbalanced and an exercise in tedious combat.\n\n__Build.__ I played 15 Consular / 15+ Assassin, male, dark side. I chose a caster playstyle largely because I really enjoyed playing as a mage in Dragon Age Origins, and this game has a similar dated MMO combat style. I had also played a Sith Marauder build in KOTOR 1 and wanted to delve more into range and spells.\n\n+ Naively, a caster playstyle would prestige to Jedi Master/Sith Lord. However, JM/SL offer no new good force powers; in fact, even staying as Consular is better due to more Force Power and defense/lvl and higher saving throw stats, at the cost of 8 FP/lvl instead of 10 (FP is not an issue mid to endgame) and +3 WIS for light side. A pure caster’s only real options are to stay Consular or prestige to Watchman/Assassin (0 Force Powers and less FP/lvl but more defense and skills) or Weapon Master/Marauder (0 Force Powers and less FP/lvl but more vitality and defense).\n+ Male has Handmaiden’s Disciple feat which scales with Wisdom.\n+ Dark side has the mage-like destruction spells which means less FP cost, but FP is plentiful. Light side is better with +4 WIS: better mastery (+3 WIS) and unique gear (Circlet of Saresh's +5 WIS over Force Focusing Visor's +4 WIS). It also has Force Enlightenment. Optimally, you want to go DS first in order to learn Force Potency from the first Jedi Master as well as attain Hanharr for attribute bonuses. The Sith prestige class is also generally better in offensive stats. Only then do you change to LS for minmax or stay as DS for the convenience. I stuck with pure DS to save LS for a second playthrough (and with a different class, e.g., Weapon Master).\n\nMore details.\n\n+ __Base attributes.__ 12S,8D,15Con,14I,14W,14C. Leveling attributes go to +1Con, rest W. Hanharr +3W +1Con, HK-47 +1W +1 Con, T3-M4 +1W.\n+ __Base skill points.__ max/lvl Persuade, max/lvl Awareness (+1 from Kreia and more from WIS bonus), max/lvl Security (delayed until it's a class skill), ~16 Repair (less with Valour and gear bonuses to attain T3's 21 speech check), ~16 Computer Use (delayed until it's a class skill; less with Valour and gear bonuses to attain T3's 21 speech check), max/lvl Demolitions (delayed until it's a class skill; after attaining Repair, Computer, and Awareness needs).\n+ __Feats.__ Master Toughness, Regenerate Force Points. For melee, add Master Two Weapon Fighting, Master Flurry, Master Dual Strike, Weapon Specialization: Lightsaber, Weapon Focus: Melee Weapons. For more survivability, Master Jedi Defense, Regenerate Vitality Points, Mobility, Master Conditioning. Maybe for stealth, Stealth Run.\n+ __Force powers.__\n  + Buffs: Force Enlightenment (Speed, Force Armor, Valour), Energy Resistance, Force Immunity. For stealth, Force Camouflage.\n  + Heals: Heal.\n  + DPS: Force Storm. Maybe Destroy Droid, Kill.\n  + CC: Insanity. Maybe Master Force Scream, Force Wave.\n  + Passives: Battle Precognition.\n+ __Endgame gear.__\n  + Main hand: Lightsaber with Level 27 Name + Pontite crystal, Telgorn Jolt Cell III + Expert Fencing Emitter + Improved Beam Lens\n  + Off hand: Short lightsaber with Level 28 Kaiburr + Pontite crystal. Telgorn Jolt Cell III + Expert Fencing Emitter + Improved Beam Lens\n  + Force-Focusing Visor\n  + Ossus Keeper Robe with +3 CON +3 Regen Underlay\n  + Mental Boost D-Package\n  + Jal Shey Mentor Belt\n  + Jal Shey Meditation Gloves\n  + Name's and Nomi's Armband\n\nFor companions, I followed general build advice and influence guide to keep track of the important dialogue responses on a given planet. I didn't care much about minmaxing them or unlocking all possible bonuses to my character as this requires quite a bit of metagaming and planning instead of RP.\n\ntodos on future playthroughs\n+ jedi master","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic-ii-the-sith-lords"},{"id":"328938079248187969","title":"Subnautica","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":1740,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Switch 2","Android","PC","iOS","Steam VR","PS5","Mac","?","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Unknown Worlds"],"publishers":["Gearbox Publishing","Unknown Worlds"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-05-14","completedDate":"2022-05-18","updatedDate":"2023-09-05","notes":"Subnautica is remarkably effective at capturing the immersion of a person trapped in an underwater alien planet. The game encourages exploration, resource management, crafting, and base building, and all toward a main campaign that tells a story and incentivizes you to keep proceeding in the other systems. It's a masterful approach to exploring an unknown place and building yourself up to be able to see everything and traverse new biomes and environmental hazards in order to eventually complete the game.\n\nFlaw-wise, Subnautica's early game is better than Subnautica's mid and end game. Air, food, drink, and radiation aren't problems anymore, the radio no longer triggers, and you recognize the formula behind the wrecks and life pods. While there's always new biomes, resources, and wildlife to explore, the wildlife is not as threatening as when you first started the game with limited knowledge.\n\n__Story.__ I like its diegetic approach, like a slightly more explained Dark Souls. Entire biomes may only be found through a careful exploration of a zone, and areas may need to be revisited given the massive 3D space to explore.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Subnautica is close to a sandbox but with marked campaign objectives. The progression system is numerous as you build your own base, craft vehicles, and upgrade yourself and your vehicles. It's easy to get lost in optimizing for efficiency as you farm resources and obtain items such as charging stations, farming, storage lockers that maximize your efficiency. Finally, there's a nicer campaign that pushes you toward full progression. I really enjoy the sense of progression in the game as you explore, pick up materials, and craft to advance your arsenal.\n\nEarly game consists of three steps:\n\n1. Pick up food and water, find materials, and scan everything, especially blueprints.\n2. Craft core equipment and tools.\n3. Repair your pod and build extra storage.\n\nThere are so many forking paths (see [Subnautica Wiki's Getting Started](https://subnautica.fandom.com/wiki/Getting_Started) and [Exploration Tips](https://subnautica.fandom.com/wiki/Exploration_Tips)): build equipment such as faster movement speed and bigger O2 tank, build a base such as for battery charging and farming, build a Seamoth, find blueprints for vehicles and other items, explore the radio signals, Aurora, and other biomes you encounter, and explore alien bases to progress the story.\n\nBy midgame, you have the Seamoth. You can easily farm materials to expand your base, search for blueprints to make your Cyclops and Prawn Suit, and upgrade. This includes even building Cyclops as a mobile base. Like early game, there's still the wonder of new biomes you're newly exploring in depth, such as the outer regions of the map.\n\nBy endgame, you're using the Cyclops and Prawn to go to the deepest biomes. You get the final upgrades for your Prawn and Cyclops. You find the Purple and Blue tablets to disable the Quarantine Platform, and finally craft the Neptune to escape.\n\nExploration is excellent. However, it's annoying to keep track of where you haven't explored and where, say, entrances to the Lost River and Jellyshroom Cave are. This is due to a lack of a map or any note-taking tools aside from Beacons. Fortunately, this is something an external tool like the [interactive map](https://subnauticamap.io) solves, or a mod.\n\nDifficulty-wise, enemies aren't really a concern in this game. I've traversed fine with Stalkers, Warpers, or a Reaper Leviathan hanging around. I've never been in a situation where I can't easily run away when I pull aggro. Deaths have mostly only occurred from running out of oxygen due to greed or being lost in a cave (especially before I got a vehicle and the largest O2 tank). With that said, I greatly enjoy Subnautica's lack of combat, focusing instead on immersive exploration and dealing with environmental or aquatic lifeform hazards with your tools or by simply retreating.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nServiceable level of detail. The art itself is wonderful and captures the alienness of the environment and exploration underwater really well. Sound design is also excellent.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Cyclops can effectively serve as a mobile base. It's limited only in its charging requiring to park in certain locations (hot areas in the deeps) or otherwise visit bases for power cell charging stations. It also can’t fit a vehicle modification station and can only park either your Seamoth or Prawn suit, so you need a real base at least to park the other, and it doesn’t benefit from a scanner room. It technically has finite storage space, but practically the amount of storage you can fit is more than enough for a playthrough.\n+ Subnautica may be the first video game where I actually enjoyed the underwater gameplay. Unlike games where underwater is a side addition to movement and combat on land, there's ample control and mechanics that make swimming underwater actually engaging.\n+ The vehicle variety. The Seamoth, Prawn suit, and Cyclops all have their uses in different terrain. Even the Seaglide remains useful, having been in my inventory from beginning to end of a playthrough.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The game doesn't pause when you read lore. This is a huge shame because you often pick up such items underwater, and you're pressured to not read the item right away because otherwise you'd lose lots of O2. This lead me to rarely read the lore at all.\n+ Only five quick slot keybinds. You need a mod for, say, [6-10](https://www.nexusmods.com/subnautica/mods/14).\n+ No way to dismantle items. This means there's no infinite recycling. Fortunately, deconstructing your base does obtain your materials again, and in fact at 100% recycle efficiency.\n+ No autosave such as based on a time schedule or after every death. I only remember to save right before exiting the game, which can be multiple hours for the one session. This means a game crash means a significant amount of lost playtime.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://subnautica.fandom.com)\n+ [Interactive map](https://subnauticamap.io)\n+ [Main campaign guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1310734379)\n+ [Depth guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/subnautica/comments/aqx061/subnautica_depth_where_do_you_go_with_which)\n\nI played blind and later looked up references such as wreck locations and base building. I played with no mods but later added [MoreQuickSlots](https://www.nexusmods.com/subnautica/mods/14). I built a temporary base for storage under the Lifepod, then a base in Grassy Fields next to Lifepod 17 and the entrance to Jellyshroom Cave, then I migrated to my Cyclops as a [mobile base](https://www.reddit.com/r/subnautica/comments/7sd4tv/mobile_base_cyclops_v20). I built a base in the Great Cove Tree area between Lost River and Inactive Lava Zone for a moonpool with its vehicle modification station. It's also slightly above 900 meters so perfect for parking the Seamoth.\n\n__My vehicle upgrades.__\n\n+ Player: Rebreather, Reinforced dive suit and gloves, Ultra High Capacity Tank, Ultra glide fins, Compass.\n+ Seamoth: Depth Mk3, 3x Storage.\n+ Prawn: Depth Mk3, Jump Jet, 2x Storage, Drill Arm, Grapple Arm.\n+ Cyclops: Depth Mk3, Engine Efficiency, Thermal Reactor, 3x empty slots, 6x Ion Power Cells.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/subnautica"},{"id":"322682678650374732","title":"Super Mario World","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":1990,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["Arcade","SNES","Wii","WiiU","New 3DS","SFAM"],"studios":["Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Playtronic","Gradiente","Hyundai"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-11-08","completedDate":"2020-11-11","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Super Mario Wold is a more polished SMB3. Ultimately I find it the more replayable game with its more forgiving save point system, 16-bit SNES pixel art, and simply better gameplay. I find both to be truly excellent, reigning among the best platformers of all time. I attribute SMB3 only slightly more in terms of innovation and attribute SMW only slightly more in terms of overall gameplay.\n\n__Gameplay.__ SMW is SMB3 but refined even further: more diverse levels (e.g., in environments and types such as Ghost Houses, caves, new renditions of lava levels with moving platforms to follow the entire level), refined character controls, enemies, and checkpoint system. Novelty-wise, it's the first game with Yoshi who effectively provides an infinite life source on levels he appears (if you can get him back after he runs away when you get hit), double jump, various attacks after consuming an enemy or berry. Spin Jump also becomes the new A button, replacing Pick Up Item / hold to Run which now becomes Y, alongside Jump as the first. Features new power-up of Cape Mario which is even better than Tanooki Mario and generally the best power-up, hence the default over Fire Mario. Simplifying things from SMB3, there is no longer a P-Meter which I felt was unnecessary, but SMW still enables momentum in moving faster up to a limit does increas your jump height and enable you to fly when as Cape Mario. There is also no overworld collection of items, instead having a single item slot not unlike Mario Kart games. Yoshi coins offer another approach to gain more lives. You can now aim up when shooting Koopa shells.\n\nPlatforming and overworld-wise, SMW introduces Dotted-Line Blocks which require visiting a Switch Palace in order to make interactable. There are Midway Gates and Giant Gates. Climbable fences.\n\nDeath penalty-wise, for the first time in the Super Mario series, you have a save point every few levels, based on the latest completed castle, fortress or haunted house. Now you no longer have to deal with the punishing Continue system, which either did not exist (SMB1), was finite (SMB2 and SMB3 JP version), or was still quite brutal for harder worlds as it always reset the entire world sans a few elements (sometimes this is 9 whole levels). Technically, you can manually save in Super Mario World by re-beating a Ghost House. This is obvious quite menial, and it's no wonder future ports enable a more explicit save option. In addition, SMW features Midway Gates which serves as the first explicit checkpoint system in the series. I still savescummed as I wanted to breeze through the game without getting frustrated, but I only saved at every checkpoint. This proceeds as if I continually farmed 99 lives by grinding a certain level (particularly the Koopas in 1-2).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ As the first game to be released on the SNES, Super Mario World is far more colorful than prior titles in the SNES leap from 8-bit to 16-bit. The soundtrack is more expansive and remains iconic. SNES games are truly the pinnacle of pixel art and I would enjoy SMW even if it were released in modern times as if it were another indie 2D platformer.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The game is perhaps the most user-friendly of the series with ? blocks that provide tutorial information about controls.\n+ You can get Bonus Stars from cutting the tape, and depending on the height you cut it at, when reaching the goal; otherwise you just get 1 Coin. Bonus Stars accumulate to play a minigame that rewards Mario Lives. It's a nice bonus but is never truly necessary as it's very easy to farm Lives.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Pressing L/R provide the camera control in select levels.\n+ The secret exit necessary for Forest of Illusion's Roy Castle. And other exists like the cape flying over a bottomless pit in Chocolate Island 3.\n+ Castle levels remain fairly unforgiving in their difficulty with the lack of any checkpoints.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on the emulator Higan as it is the most accurate SNES emulator.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-mario-world"},{"id":"322682678650427980","title":"The Last of Us Part II","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":1440,"platforms":["PS4","PS5"],"studios":["Naughty Dog"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-06-23","completedDate":"2020-06-25","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The Last of Us 2's strength is its cinematic experience, weaving a harrowing tale through a dual narrative storyline, strong characters (and the loss of them), and gameplay. It's a lengthy saga going beyond the typical movie experience, paced slowly at times to really build to its thrilling moments. Outside of its story, TLOU2 also refined TLOU's gameplay elements, offering engaging mechanics throughout the course of its 20-25 hour playtime (and that's impressive). Moreover, TLOU2 pionereed ultrarealism graphics, reigning among the top AAA games in the PS4 console generation.\n\nFlaw-wise, the diversity can be a bit too large of an agenda, distracting from the quality of the actual video game. Abbie's story should also have intersected with Ellie's story more as Abbie's is inevitably a bit weaker, leading to occasionally weak pacing. I did not find this to be as an issue as much as the anti-SJW fans however or the fans with a strong attachment to having their favorite character live. The stealth gameplay, while decent, is also elementary.\n\n__Story.__ Most of all, I love the nuance in the character interactions. The story's pacing is also quite good, going from the death of the protagonist followed by city exploration intermixed with other playable characters and flashbacks followed by Abby, and then a short timeskip to Santa Barbara for a final action-oriented climax.\n\nThe overarching morality of vengeance isn't as bad as the antifans made it. It is hamfisted here with Abby just happening to be the daughter of the top surgeon. And they specifically playout the daughter-father dynamic. And one of her friends is pregnant? PLEASE. But it's not like the game is necessarily condemning violence and vengeance. I interpret it closer to that of Oldboy: it's just people stuck in a fucked-up situation; no one in particular to blame, just reality. And people learning to overcome these harsh pressures. Although hamfisted, some of the character parallels do remain interesting from a storytelling perspective. Flashbacks of Abby with glimpses of happiness but stuck thinking about vengeance. And flashbacks of Ellie who only had happiness because of Joel's sacrifice.\n\nThe diversity of characters is okay with me to be honest: asians, big-nosed/less conventionally attractive, fat people, lesbians, bisexuals, masculine women, Jewish culture, mexicans, atheists and religious folks. It's absolutely pushing an agenda, but I'd rather it push the diversity agenda (which I actually do agree with) than the opposite of ignoring, or worse, spreading the problem. I do agree Lev being trans, and the whole shaving head as the root cause of their problems, as detracting from the main story (did not even realize that was why he shaved his head). A transgender identity crisis does not fit into this story. Playing the game, I thought Lily was just some religious term in their cult; and when Lev said that he would be married off, I thought this was simply a matriarchal cult!\n\nThere's a great point about Abby's story paralleling Joel's in TLOU1 (https://old.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/hg6yoy/the_last_of_us_part_ii_sells_more_than_4_million/fw25vx6/).\n\n__Gameplay.__ Gameplay largely follows The Last of Us, but significantly more polished in controls, new enemies, and even better animations. Stealth is the same as the original game in being fairly simplistic, but I'm a huge fan of the audio cues which give a better indicator of alert status. There are also more stealth options: for example, silencers and a stealth skill tree. Your companion can spot when an enemiy is out of your line of sight and about to spot you. I think it's particularly the movement mechanics that make the stealth feel so much more smooth than the first game. The alert is still bad though: once spotted, everyone automatically knows where you are.\n\nOn progression systems, the crafting is the same as The Last of Us. Upgrades are more streamlined, with linear skill tree paths for Survival and and the Upgrade Bench. Upgrades include new upgrade branches from magazines, pills as the skill upgrade currency, bolts as the weapon upgrade currency, and crafting materials for ammo/healing, and lore. You also pick up a large gun and small gun holster. There is a sufficiently novel set of mechanics, from weapons to swimming to new enemies like shamblers and stalkers to taking arrows out of you to a melee sequence playing as Abby, that make the game still interesting halfway through the game. I found a use for all the weapons (particularly the bow, molotov cocktail, silenced pistol, and rifle/shotgun/melee when things get hairy) but never used the Smoke Bomb or Trap Mine. Even at the end of the game they reward you with a silenced SMG as well as levels where you can unleash Infected.\n\nControls are very smooth and simple. Circle (with tap vs hold) lets you easily vary among standing, crouch, and prone positions with one button. Many interactions are either tap or hold the Interact button. L1 works well as a general-purpose run, with L2 and R2 as aim and shoot. This game's Detective Mode with R1 is among the best implementations (it only shows targets, and you can barely move). But Detective Mode is still a bad mechanic. I'm generally a fan of TLOU's D-pad based equip shortcuts; it's like Dark Souls but a bit more involved to handle more items. Way better than equipment wheels at least!\n\nThe game's pacing encourages exploration, from the cordoned-off zones in the linear levels to the more open-world areas where you can get suppleis, upgrades, collectibles, and new cutscenes/dialogue. I'm also surprised by the linear levels filled with more open shops to browse. Enemies on the beaten path, and the occasional ambush, also keeps you on your toes. Finally, I'm surprised by just how much content there is in this game. It would be excellent if it just stopped around Ellie's Seattle Day 3, with 9-10 hours of content. Abby's story substantiates the overall themes, adds a few new gameplay mechanics, and entirely new levels such as the island and bosses.\n\nEnemy variety is decent. It's paced well in introducing them across the game to keep it interesting. Most impressive is the level design variety, from suburban homes to areas like hotels and hospitals to sewers and tall grass.\n\nFollowing TLOU and Uncharted, the platforming is excellent. It's not typical video gaming platforming. Rather it's like urban parkour, with a few presses to leap over obstacles and gaps, climb walls, crouch and go prone to wiggle your way through narrow areas. You can now break glass with the throwable objects. Adds a bit more variety to the Uncharted-style platforming. Rope also comes from Uncharted 4. Short and tall grass. And yellow markers on gaps to indicate what you can get to. I'm a big fan of this style of platforming overall. Your companion helps along the way with the animations. Most impressive are the audio cues on where to go next, both from the companion and Ellie herself: I love whenever Ellie makes explicit note when she can't make a gap, or could do it but I just happened to time the jump poorly. It adds to the immersion of increased interaction between playable character and the world, which is an express goal of the platformer genre.\n\nThe mix of companions you play with, and the occasional times you're alone, are excellent. Keeps up with variety from a gameplay perspective, let alone the actual diverse story.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Presentation is stellar. I'm most impressed by the level of detail in all the semi-open linear zones such as shops and houses. They all feel lived-in and real in proportion (unlike most video game levels). Facial animations during cutscenes are particularly on par; they're closer to standard Uncharted 4 detail during the in-game rendering. The detail on their backpacks is awesome. Gameplay animations are also smooth. The story cinematics are well-detailed. There are no loading screens, seamless integrated into the animations.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ The museum flashback is cute. Tons of good quips at each other. And the mirror scene where Ellie makes faces! And building on Ellie's fascination with space.\n+ Getting ambushed when at the weapons workbench as Ellie on Seattle Day 2.\n+ The Nora scene.\n+ All the neck stabs, from the stealth kill animation to the cutscene killing the Korean woman playing the rhythm game.\n+ Abby's unarmed melee sequence.\n+ The skycraper level area. Character-defining, building on the inner flaw beyond Abby's outer strength. Not tense or interesting gameplay-wise because it was incredibly easy platforming though\n+ Day 3, going against a sniper and it hinting at being Tommy. I actually wish they did this more at connecting the two stories instead of only waiting at the last day.\n+ Stealthing through the middle of a gunfight between two factions.\n+ Choking Ellier near to death. Jesus are the scenes brutal.\n+ Still playing Abby and then Ellie in Santa Barbara? Oh my god I can't believe the game hasn't ended yet.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ You can stealth kill clickers?? What a game changer! Abby's lack of stealth kill was also fine, as I found there to be ample crafting materials for shivs.\n+ The map for the semi-open world areas use an actual map from the game. Fuck yeah. I loved that ever since Thief.\n+ I love the amount of accessibility options, from audio to visual to the detailed options for difficulty settings.\n+ The guitar playing minigame. And the song shared with Joel and Ellie. That's some feels. And Ellie's rendition on Take Me On (which is a reward for exploring!).\n+ Flicking your controller when the flashlight goes out.\n+ Taking out pieces of the weapon to upgrade it, and all those smooth animations.\n+ The two running modes, where you go full sprint when in combat.\n+ Very forgivingly placed checkpoints.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about\n\n+ Kinda weird that Seattle Day 1 had this very open area with multiple objectives, and then the rest of the game converted to a semi-linear with some open areas format. I vastly prefer the latter, with the former feeling a bit more trope-y (see also it being done from Uncharted 4 DLC). But what a weird shift.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Safes. I hate puzzle collectibles and their need of not only being easily missed but the backtracking. I think codes in general are fine, like the gate codes in Seattle which make the game a bit less automated, forcing you to read through the artifacts you collect. Fortunately safe code combinations tend to be very close to the actual safe.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI beat the game in 22 hours according to the in-game save time. I played the game on normal difficulty and mostly blind without a walkthrough. I upgraded somewhat ad hoc. I generally tried to explore every crevice but not guaranteed to have caught everything. I only looked at a walkthrough to make sure I do have the safe combination for each safe I found. I was also stuck a handful of times.\n\nI was only spoiled by a few things: Joel killed by Abby (from scrolling through reviews), Abby's sex scene, and the last part of the game being devoted to Abby (from looking at walkthroughs to see length of game).\n\nPlaying this game after Fallout, I appreciate the dynamic scripting and character interactions in Naughty Dog games. There's all sorts of effects that make this smooth and less janky than in Bethesda games: dynamic audio, so only one person speaking actually dominates, non janky animations, etc.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-last-of-us-part-ii"},{"id":"322682678651419212","title":"The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":3060,"platforms":["PS4","XONE"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2019-12-28","completedDate":"2020-01-13","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Witcher 3 stands out as one of the best RPGs of all time. Its story, characters, quests, and beautiful audiovisuals keep you immersed in the game. Core gameplay with its combat and progression systems is fantastic. The story is mired in moral dilemma without a clear right-or-wrong, and with decisions having consequences on the world state.\n\nThe combat could be improved as it becomes increasingly repetitive. It lacks character customization/replayability, which is a minor flaw.\n\n__Story.__ Love the story, characters, and the overall presentation. It's clearly a polished story with history behind each dialogue. The main story is excellent. I would watch a television series that's as in-depth like this: for video game standards, it's certainly among the best writing alongside Elder Scrolls and Fallout quests. Geralt of Rivera is a sardonic badass and a father. Ciri acts her age and tomboy upbringing. Dandelion is fantastic; he's more than just your prototypical silly JRPG character, with depth like his crusades across social classes and apparently with a cross-dressing elf Elihal. Even supporting characters like well-written with flaws: the Bloody Baron seems kind at first glance but is a drunken wife-beater; Keira is selfish and willing to share Alexander's medical knowledge to Radovid; the Witches are slowly revealed to require bloody customs from the villages after your decision about the Whispering Hillock. Johnny's enthusiasm and love for alliteration makes me smile. Vesemir, Lambert. The list goes on. Quest choices have consequences on the state of the world, and are often a choice of lesser evils. You can also play as Ciri who has her own moveset (her dash move in particular defines the rhythm). Journal entries are fantastic and unlike most other games, e.g., Tomb Raider or Horizon Zero Dawn, the story's engaging enough that I actually do read them. Even many sidequests are interesting, pushing further on variants such as several Witcher Contracts being not as they seem (e.g., In the Heart of the Woods, Where the Cat and Wolf Play..., Oxenfurt Drunk, Skellige's Most Wanted).\n\nFlaw-wise, the main story's questing is paced somewhat badly given the arsenal of side quests (common flaw among open-world games); and the very slow setup where the majority of the game is In Ciri's Footsteps. Most side quests are forgettable and are made to artificially fill out the map (e.g., most Witcher Contracts); good sidequests are typically branched off the main quest. Ciri is a little too much of a Mary Sue.\n\nAgree with this take. https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/5f9pv5/so_what_is_it_that_makes_witcher_3_such_an/daimgh3/\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core combat loop is great, pushing on all the best elements of deep combat games like Dark Souls, Dragon's Dogma, and Devil May Cry: swordplay; Sign magic of the magesword variety; and utilities like healing consumables, bombs, crossbows, and torches. Weak and strong attack; target auto-lock; sprint, dodge, and roll; guard and riposte; quick menu for magic/utilities; stamina bar that depletes when sprinting or using magic. I agree with fan consensus however that it is repetitive: there is too little enemy variety to require you to change your rhythm, there are no environmental cues, there is no sense of weight or weapon variety. Fighting shielded, flying enemies, and underwater battles are especially annoying (shields have limited options like no kick; flying requires the slow-reloading crossbow)\n\nI love the quests and dialogue. Reminds me of Elder Scrolls and Fallout, but voiced with an actual character than a fill-in protagonist. There are also other western RPG mechanics that I like as they don't often appear in other games of the genre (see details liked below). A common pattern in quests is that Geralt wipes out a monster infested area, and then people repopulate and start selling services. Or that people can disappear/be missable. It adds to the notion of consequence. There isn't as fancy a stealing/crime/sneak mechanism, environment interaction like looting items and attacking/pickpocketing NPCs, day/night and AI patrol schedules, or tag-a-long companions in this game like Elder Scrolls or Fallout though; or armor types meaning much like in Dark Souls. Many side quests have uninteresting stories as well.\n\nProgression system involves skill points during leveling (including mutations) and Places of Power; mutations; and ARPG/MMO-style equipment (including runestones). Crafting system is fairly deep with blacksmith crafting (repair, upgrade, dismantle), alchemy (toxicity, decoctions, gathering/crafting), and consumables (food, alcohol, potions, oils) The alchemy system with potions, decoctions, and various shrines encourages a \"buff\" game like World of Warcraft which I don't like. But I love the encouragement of mastering one's understanding of decoctions/potions and oils. For example, reading the bestiary for oil weaknesses as you prepare for an enemy. Customization is somewhat limited overall, feeling closer to an action-adventure with no additional weapons with movesets like Dark Souls. This limits replayability but streamlines the game instead of being too complex in terms of building a new class. A one-time completionist playthrough is still satisfactory with enough content: sidequests, location discovery, Places of Power, Treasure Hunt (sometimes which are sidequests), Sunken (Secret) Treasure, and equipment/crafting.\n\nSaving is done by both checkpoints and manual saves (my preferred system). There's inventory load like Elder Scrolls/Fallout and you loot items from random households like Zelda/JRPGs (fortunately, crafting, alchemy, food, and quest items are all free). The detective pieces, occasional horse race, and brawling also add to the diversity.\n\nGwent is a fun, simple minigame with just enough complexity to collect them over the course of the main game. There's not as much variety as the greatest card minigame of all time: Triple Triad. One card to win per merchant ensures you play a good variety of people instead of fixating. Spy is an overpowered mechanic however: card advantage is key like most card games, especially in the beginning when you build up the opponents' score.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I like the Eastern-European fantasy vibes, with culture like Polish vampire-beings and bestiary being different than what's standard in western fantasy. Gorgeous environments and faces especially for 2015. Combat attacks look like a dance. The kill animations where your last slice rips open the belly of an enemy is an awesome feeling (and it's unique per enemy). Soundtrack is excellent. Dialogue is not just talking heads, an issue even with more modern games like Horizon Zero Dawn. Quest descriptions are more lore-ish with paragraphs when you first get them and not just a list of quest objectives. Some textures and meshes are less attractive though. Head models have too many repeated uses.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Going through the cave with Keira.\n+ The Bloody Baron, the forensic analysis of his wife and daughter's rooms, his nonlinear recollections of Ciri's journey, the blumpkin, Anna as a water hag, and his hanging. That quest chain is certainly one of my favorites of all time with its engaging story and gameplay.\n+ Broken Flowers. The hilarious escapades, and all as an introduction to Dandelion for the first time in the game.\n+ The Play's the Thing. Hiring people, and choosing actors and actresses, and remembering lines. This is like FF7.\n+ The sentient naviety of trolls (and the hilarity particularly of Trollololo in The Volunteer). And how I felt bad killing every last one of them at every option I had in quests for their precious Cave Troll Liver.\n+ Possession. What a haunting sidequest. I especially like the narrative in how it moves about. I am totally seeing this as like a Mushishi/Supernatural episode. The Cerys-Geralt humor with Yennefer is a fun detail for jokes. The Lord of Undvik is also a similar episodic-like short story (with the only annoyance being the quest ordering being bananas to do properly). The whoel chain is fantastic save for the obvious choice of Cerys as the ruler (for a game that's always a choice of lesser evils, this was a dumb choice; would be better if, e.g., Cerys found the right person but was not rewarded properly due to sexism and/or taking longer than Hjalma; or if the lack of evidence ended without Svanrige backing them up).\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ You can haggle for quest rewards. It adds a nice RPG mechanic that's not in the western RPG mainstream like Elder Scrolls.\n+ Lore restricts you to use two different swords, steel for humans and silver for monsters. And oils on your sword for certain monsters.\n+ You can sell at a better rate for junk/food to innkeepers, herbs to herbalists, weapons to blacksmiths, and armor to armourers. Some merchants are also less stingy than others when buying your loot, and each has a limited supply of crowns.\n+ Lower weapon durability degrades the weapon's stats.\n+ You can autofollow roads with your horse. Reminds me of Black Desert Online where the substitute to any fast travel and clicking on a town and autorunning there, in which you can always go faster by using your staminar bar.\n+ Quest descriptions are more lore-ish with paragraphs when you first get them and not just a list of quest objectives.\n+ If there are multiple quest objectives, you can toggle among them to determine which one your directions point to.\n+ All the escorts with you sprint when you sprint. The pacing finally depends on you in escort/follow quests!\n+ You're free to explore the environment but subareas can have much higher-leveled enemies than you are, encouraging you to revisit.\n+ Your sign magic can influence the environment Batman style: break down doors with Aard; light candles with Igni; Jedi mind trick people with Axii.\n+ Console commands like Bethesda games.\n+ There are limited locations to fast travel, and you have to be at certain signs to fast travel rather than being anywhere.\n+ You can skip dialogue on a per-line basis, which in many video games is not possible given that the scenes involve movement.\n+ 21:9 aspect ratio is natively supported as well as borderless!\n+ Immersive HUD where HUD elements disappear after severals econds when they’re no longer needed.\n+ Even in the hardest difficulty, there's a point to the Mediation/Wait mechanic, which is automatic replenishment of your oils, potions, and bombs if you have hard alcohol.\n+ It's optional to go around to every house in a town/city and loot everything. That's your prerogative. You really only need a specific amount of loot for endgame and making money at the end of the day (https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/37tlbm/psa_you_only_need_a_tiny_amount_of_loot/).\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Witcher 3's detective mode may be the only implementation of it that I'm okay with. It's unintrusive: turn it on and see all the things you can interact with, and that's it. And it only has use cases in forensic analysis and looting scenarios, so there are no cases for it during combat like the Arkham series or Horizon Zero Dawn. And it makes finding loot underwater not as much a pain. And the visual effect is unobtrusive. That said, Witcher 3's detective mode still streamlines the forensic analysis and interactable objects too much, where you rely on highlighted blobs rather than better environment design. I prefer the classic video game design (like with quests) where you have to make your own deduction from clues rather than follow the red color.\n+ At the start of the game and after the prologue, there are (relatively minor) options to determine the events of Witcher 2's impact on the world state of Witcher 3. This is a nice detail but it only impacts a particular conversation, and it can also be an unncessary branching factor where choosing one option has less interesting dialogue. This is similar to Mass Effect and Dragon Age.\n+ You can still mount when over the equipment load. This makes it feasible to loot everything from an area, jump on Roach, then go to the closest fast travel sign to a town to sell everything. This is is convenient but sacrifices some of the purpose of the equipment load.\n+ Invicibility frames during dodging is an upgrade skill rather than core to the dodging mechanic.\n+ Areas being level gated. This sacrifices open world freedom, but the other mainstream alternative is level scaling which is the worse of the two evils. The only solution is to gate levels but reduce the gap.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ It's not clear which dialogue options have a major impact on the rest of the game, and some of them are time-constrained! This makes me hesitant on choosing any dialogue option without resorting to a guide first to know I'm safe to just roleplay.\n+ There are many missables: time-sensitive side quests, certain weapon rewards from missions, gwent cards, mutagens like doppler (only in one quest option) and succubus (only in two quest options), dialogue paths lead to changing events where an NPC who holds a quest, gwent card, or merchandise no longer appears. Similarly, chests that reward you with relic weapons have a random item level. This encourages you to save scum so you can get the highest item level.\n+ You can't target lock onto bosses. Bullshit.\n+ Potions, oils, bombs, and decoctions refill upon meditation with alcohol. This makes them consumables that I didn't feel comfortable using in the early game, but fortunately alcohol is cheap to accumulate in late game.\n+ There's a slideshow recap when loading a new game or traveling worlds. This is unskippable and is a minor waste of 10 seconds; it's a hidden loading screen in any case, signalling long load times. Fortunately it disappears after you beat the game.\n+ There are some doors that are signaled as locked but without keys. That's irritating. Just mark them as not interactable!\n+ Companions during quests are incredibly weak, including powerful sorceresses. Their only use is staggering enemies.\n+ Collect Em All Gwent quest. Nothing keeps track of which Gwent players you've already won a card from and specific cards you're missing. A recent patch did add a somewhat rudimentary tracker though. This makes it difficult to ensure you play with everyone to win the 52 or so cards of out of the 66 total players.\n+ Level requirements on quests are often illogical. For example, Rough Neighborhood is a level 10 quest gated by a level 26 quest.\n+ All sorts of bugs.\n+ So many escort quests, and not the intelligent kind as many NPCs have a fixed movement pace.\n+ Grandmaster Feline armor includes a stupidly angsty hood that covers half the face. I could wear glasses or a mask to remove the hood, but it still covers the Geralt's eyes, which are animated during cutscenes and which I'd rather like to say. Therefore I stuck with Mastercrafted Feline armor and/or other armor I picked up.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki\n+ https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/The_Witcher_3_secondary_quests\n+ http://gwent-cards.com/\n+ map (especially useful for sign posts and places of power) | https://witcher3map.com/, https://mmo4ever.com/witcher/maps/novigrad-no-mans-land-hearts-of-stone/\n+ best merchants to sell | https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=756607382\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/9z5oqw/a_list_of_choices_from_witcher_2_and_everything\n+ steam combat/alchemy build (top-rated as of 2019-12-30) | https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=453260742\n+ FightinCowboy's combat/alchemy build | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ATkGx0iFUE\n+ max dps build for optimal spec and gear | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNFFyScdduI\n\nI played this as my first entry to the series. Witcher 3 is largely touted as the best in the series across aesthetics, environments, main plot, sidequests, progression systems, and combat (the open world and combat of which are significant departure from prior entries). The only contender seems to be Witcher 2 for its story. For any missing knowledge, I Googled and watched Youtube recaps. I watched a playthrough long ago in 2012 up to Bloody Baron and the Keira.\n\nI played for a total of 146 hours (according to Steam). I beat the base game in 103 hours. I completed most all quests, including Collect Em All. I only missed: Hazardous Goods (Velen); A Final Kindness, A Walk on the Waterfront, It Takes Three to Tango (Novigrad); Flesh for Sale (Skellige); and miscellaneous unmarked secondary quests. I did not complete all treasure hunts, scavenger hunts, or discover all locations. I played on the hardest difficulty (Death March) to make the experience more unforgiving and to force a mastery of mechanics like Dark Souls. That said, Witcher 3 combat isn't its strength, and even at this difficulty I'm starting to see the repetition and easiness at level 3 nearing the end of White Orchard where the game feels forgiving. There's so many missables in this game, but I fortunately did not spoil myself by looking at per-quest dialogue decisions. I did a combat/alchemy build with light armor, light attacks, and Quen: combat because that's what this game's all about; and alchemy as it's a unique element to Witcher series. Equipment-wise, I use Cat School Gear, Ekimmara, Katakan, and Ekhidna decoctions, and Swallow potion. Endgame I stuck with Toussaint Knight's Steel Sword (with Preservation runeword), Aerondight (with Severance runeword), and Manticore armor, Nilfgaardian Guardsman's Gauntlets, New Moon Trousers, and Manticore boots (with Levity runeword and Greater Glyph of Mending; no dyes).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-plus-dark-souls-iii"},{"id":"322682678652790348","title":"What Remains of Edith Finch","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","iOS","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Giant Sparrow"],"publishers":["Annapurna Interactive"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-05-06","completedDate":"2022-05-06","updatedDate":"2022-05-06","notes":"The moment-to-moment memories are endearing. It's an overall fun yet morose tale in learning about the history behind the family and what happened to everyone. The variety in ways the deaths are told is pretty remarkable: playing as an animal, swinging, watching an interactive comic, taking pictures, playing as a creative baby.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nThe house is colorful, feels lived in, and is packed with memories. You can almost feel the nostalgia without knowing yet the story behind the house.\n\nThe orchestral soundtrack is excellent.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The swing physics and feeling. It was pretty immersive in the sheer momentum and fun of swinging.\n+ The baby playing with toys.\n+ The multitasking of a monotonous job and the mind wandering.\n+ All the secret passage entrances. They're like something out of a Wes Anderson movie in flippantness.\n+ The subtitle text focusing your camera to emphasize specific shots.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Controls use directional movement more than buttons. For example, you hold down to close an open book.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ For a first-person game, it's [surprising that controller is better supported and designed that way than mouse and keyboard](https://steamcommunity.com/app/501300/discussions/0/1319962173910029292). For example, rotation and other directional controls are more natural with an analog stick.\n+ Controls are never explained and purposefully obtuse.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/what-remains-of-edith-finch"},{"id":"322682678652458572","title":"World of Warcraft","status":"Completed","score":9,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":29520,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"publishers":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2007-12-31","completedDate":"2009-12-31","updatedDate":"2023-07-07","notes":"MMOs (and WoW especially) are most unique in video games for their social community aspects with elements like voice chat, guilds, and guild vs guild competition; and the feeling of grind progressions across gear and miscellanea side missions like professions---all with lasting effects (once you hit a grind tier, never will you have to do it again for that character). Neither of these aspects exist in modern games. Grind is lambasted these days as popular modern games make casual gaming easier with only single-game-lasting effects: multiplayer FPS since forever, MOBAs since 2012, and battle royales since 2015. WoW really canonicalized the gear grind at endgame with core PvE and PvP distinctions, and distinguished itself from even future MMOs by tying it all back to the community---something few MMOs accomplished.\n\nstrengths\n+ pre-modern wow with social aspects to quest together, form guilds, find pick-up groups, and many more\n+ massive player base and community websites\n+ pve content | 5, 10, 25, and 40-man raids\n+ pvp content | battlegrounds, arenas, dueling system, faction city raids\n+ custom ui\n+ achievements\n+ economy\n+ multiple specializations\n+ expansive overworld with seamless loading screens\n+ decent lore\n+ playable factions, races, and reptutations\n+ macros\n+ linkable items/quests/etc.\n+ dungeon, pvp, etc. finder interfaces\n + World events. It really set the precedent to a moving universe.\n\nflaws\n+ modern era wow with its reduction of rpg elements and systems like Group Finder; c.f., Black Desert Online\n+ tab and focus targeting system; c.f., Black Desert Online, Elder Scrolls Online\n+ combat as abilities, cooldowns, and rotation system; c.f., Black Desert Online, Guild Wars 2\n+ endgame is a constant grind for better gear (cf League of Legends for ranked endgame with only cosmetic upgrades)\n+ dailies, which obligates regular short-session playthroughs rather than intense long playthroughs (e.g., just on weekends)\n+ content becomes outdated (e.g., gear, low level zones, warlords of draenor garrisons, legion artifacts)\n+ poor balance during leveling between zone progression, dungeons, and pvp. by the time you hit 20% of new zones, you're already max level and overleved for the remaining content.\n+ lack of solo rated queue as arenas are just not the right platform for top tier PvP (cf League of Legends). It's often too much effort to depend on meta for team compositions as well as players to assemble 2, 3, or 5 for rated arena, or 10 for rated battleground. But I can appreciate why vanilla WoW didn't have it in, in favor of balance and more socializing.\n+ bad default interface (cf Guild Wars 2)\n+ basic personalization, e.g., transmogification\n\nI started playing on a private server for 1-2 years (WowCrack). Boy are these my fondest memories with both a guild on Horde (Serenity) and a guild on Alliance (Faith). I remember doing raids, hacking, dueling, idling my time with friends while sitting at Thunderbluff, and farming dungeons for miscellaneous trinkets. I think I had around 45 days of /played time on my BE rogue alone, forget about my Tauren Warrior Sometimes, Undead Priest Neverr, and Human Female Rogue Sekyruu. Serenity guild (No Mercy shortly beforehand) and Faith alliance guild. Certain personalities like Marco the Warrior, Eidos the guildmaster and BE Warlock, Katara the rogue and priest, that high pitched voice gnome warrior, Dozer (an Undead Warrior tank and DPS), Andrew (warrior, then death knight). Asana(?) my crush on a human female Druid and mage (?). He/she was brilliantly intelligent and coy, and remained sexually and gender ambiguous.I have fond memories of playing on the private server without any access to scripted monsters or any fights. So I deeply appreciate all the programming that goes into WoW. Even to this day I smile at how much they have evolved.\n\nDo I really not have my WoW screenshots anywhere? That's a damn shame.\n\nAt its core, what I enjoyed about World of Warcraft was the mix of the following elements:\n\n+ If you enjoy the lore and questing, you're guaranteed to get the better game from RPGs. For me: I like lore, but I enjoy my JRPGs and films for this instead.\n+ If you enjoy the social aspect with a community and PvE raid progression, there is no alternative. For me: As of 2018, I can't stand the online playerbase community though (they're too immature, lack a proper education, and generally refer to low derivative discourse that is often repetitive).\n+ If you enjoy PvP, it all depends on the style you want, e.g., shooters for quick reaction, real time strategy for high level thinking. For me: I'm not really a competitive PvP player anymore, but I do enjoy queuing up once in a while and steamrolling via stealth, burst damage, and well-timed usage of crowd control. I haven't found the right slot to fill this hole other than cycling across video games as I continue to play them all and new ones get released.\n+ If you enjoy farming for that last piece of optimization, you should take a step back and think about where you might more productively enjoy those optimizations for life in general (e.g., your career, other hobbies). For me: I already apply it to my career and other hobbies.\n\nConclusion: See above. It only makes sense to visit MMOs during an exciting release of new content, to both experience the hype and the game to better understand the genre over history overall. No MMO (or game for that matter) will be a constant that I will semiregularly visit and play as a casual. My personal style better fits playing games at obsessive, short intervals until I learned all there is and I can do a hard stop.\n\n## The Burning Crusade (2008-2009)\n\nBurning Crusade is by far the best expansion, and perhaps the best expansion in video game hiustory. It further formalized PvE as 10/25-man raids and PvP with arena and battlegrounds, and began the WoW esport scene. Blood elf and Draenor races are meh. The Burning Crusade's new continent and raids are amazing though---I loved them, including the new patch Sunwell's dungeons and raids. I also loved new additions like Jewelcrafting with socketed gem gear and guild banks.\n\n__10-man and 25-man raids__. Love the fundamental setup.\n\n__Arena.__ Yes.\n\n__Daily quests.__ Very controversial particularly with the way modern WoW has taken this extreme. I can appreciate what Ion Hazzikostas says about it which is that it introduced structure to questing that wasn't done before, where previously you would run to X zone, kill X mobs, and more. It made questing part of the endgame content rather than something purely for leveling.\n\n__Flying.__ Yes and no. I love the idea and greatly enjoy flying. But it also forces map design to be so much larger. The 5000 gold barrier for fast flying (270%) is also super hard; I never even got it when I played hardcore during high school. I only had the level before. It's hard to tell but I may actually have preferred a WoW where all maps were intelligently designed to be small and more cohesive. It's basically impossible to not fly in maps now.\n\n## Wrath of the Lich King (2009-10)\n\nI have somewhat fond memories of when I first played (the legit version of) the game. I farmed dailies in Wrath of the Lich King, did the Wintegrasp world pvp weekly, and did raid / dungeon heroic weeklies for the loot. Then I even did 2v2 rated arena. Boy that all sucked quite a bit of my time.. The expansion of dailies as a system forcing you to spend your time is really really bad. It makes it difficult for casuals to really enjoy the game.\n\n__Raid difficulties of normal and heroic.__ I didn't like this scaling system, and modern WoW just took it to the extreme with infinite scaling Mythic+ dungeons and Mythic raids only top guilds can complete.\n\n__Achievements.__ This is excellent. The best way to keep track of things.\n\n__World PvP.__ I love Wintergrasp! At least, when it was active.\n\nNew class (death knight), profession (inscripting), and PvP zones are all meh. The map and Dalaran as my idle city of choice over Shattrath from TBC is great (although in TBC I mostly stayed in Thunderbluff); it's better to have the hub be a smaller city like Dalaran to concentrate players. The first time of vehicular combat is done very well with Wintergrasp, WotLK introduced only sparse amounts of mini-game style combat. It only went worse in modern WoW when too many world quests would have you not even interacting with your classic mechanics to finish them.\n\n__Championing.__ I liked the \"Championing\" idea (https://wow.gamepedia.com/Championing) introduced in Wrath of the Lich King, where you can buy tabards at Friendly status and then proceed to farm to Exalted via dungeons rather than obscure dailies. It's a shame you can't farm this way for Warlords of Draenor factions. It looks like Cataclysm was the last to do this; Warlords of Draenor stopped.\n\n## On the Modern WoW (From late WoTLK/Cataclysm and Beyond)\n\nOver the years, WoW streamlined. And I do think this is a better choice both for the industry (the larger audience is the causal gemers) as well as for the longevity of WoW (personally, I'm no longer ever going to be a hardcore gamer willing to do, e.g., dailies). However, it remove many core RPG elements: RPGs tend not to have this minimalism and streamlined feeling.\n\nIn general, I miss RPG elements:\n\n+ Unique class mechanics that play to their class fantasy (https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/9jhxs0/remember_the_good_times_of_character/e6s8by2/). Every class has the basics: main attack, finishing move, CC, heal, interrupt. To be a true RPG, each class should really offer unique elements. I don't understand what my Rogue is doing with a gunshot proc, gunshot attack, and a self-heal. And I'm surprised hunters apparently have a Sprint. (Possibly related: I remember when Sprint had a 5m cooldown and Blade Furry was 2m instead of 30s. Boy did those require you to think about cooldowns more wisely.)\n+ Single worlds, with a lack of phasing, cross realm zones, and scenarios. This encouraged more social interaction and world events. That said, I do like the cinematics and customization that phasing offers, I wish the two were a bit more seamless, like SWTOR did. Phasing in the open world removes identity from known players. Everyone in a city you will never know as they're effectively NPCs. With non-phased realms, you would always see the same people: the best enchanters hanging out in a city, the best guilds and geared players in a realm, duel partners. Imagine single-realm BGs where your reputation is on the line for AFKing.\n+ No LFR channel. For endgame dungeons, this encourages social interactions from guild chat and pick-up-groups from the active LFG chat channel. Parties would naturally form in world encounters and you may find friends while leveling with a stranger together.\n+ visiting a class trainer to respec and learn all the spells, including ranks. And the idea of having them be unlocked via dungeon drops.\n+ Factions that actually matter (e.g., do not share auction house and are cross-realm)\n+ Gold where item purchases actually felt weighty (epic flying was an echievement evn I couldn't get as a WoW rogue in Wrath of the Lich King, and I played 45-60 days /played; rewards overall are just that much more meaningful, something that would see yourself spending your teens/20s on and which you could never see that happening in BFA)\n+ World pvp ganking and actual fights (iconic vanilla PvP videos often did world PvP instead of battlegrounds). You now have to turn on a flag in your nameplate to fight Alliance / Horde in the world (and they have to too). Without world PvP, there really is no significance to choosing a faction any longer—it's really just choosing a subpopulation you get to play with. Certainly this means no more raiding Stormwind or Orgrimmar!\n+ Best in slot gear and PvP vendors. The RNG on warforged items makes it impossible to achieve BiS gear. This is a holy grail in terms of RPG elements, and is a concrete goal you can shoot for in getting a specific gear set. RNG is simply limited to whether a boss drops the item, and if you win the roll. Here, you must a,sk deal with variations in ilevel, which primary trait, and ghe individual abilities in the case of Azerite armor.\n+ gear stats that actually vary a lot across items (e.g., weapon speed) and required more though than the scalar item level\n+ talent tree\n+ Everything is on the global cooldown timer now. It feels like I'm just relying on autoattack, the occasional moving maneuver, and the economy of one ability per second, rather than the ability to reallt burst down by spamming a set of abilities within one global cooldown tick. It's yet another example of the new streamlined WoW vision.\n+ Consumable items aside from food (e.g., elixirs, stat boosting buffs) aren't used anymore because of the easier difficulty. Natual regeneration of HP/MP is so much faster, and the loss of HP to kill one mob is so much less. Dungeons and elite areas previously required crowd control, and I would die more often to fight a really tough quest boss.\n+ Trinket ring, engineering, and consumables for utility.\n+ No WoW token for pay-to-win.\n+ profession choices that actually matter\n+ Glyphs, which added further depth to weapon customizability, were removed in Legion.\n+ Gem sockets were added in The Burning Crusade but moved to be prismatic sockets (accepts any gem) in Warlords of Draenor and made items with gem sockets uncommon for most items.\n+ enchants\n+ First Aid moved from a secondary profession to be part of Tailoring in Battle for Azeroth. This effectively removed the complexity healing consumable in combat (and a major in-game mechanic to motivate leveling up a secondary profession).\n+ 25-man raids giving highest item levels, not 5-man mythic+ dungeon alternatives like BFA.\n+ having loot systems via Need and Master Loot rather than personal loot\n+ Lack of most portals, forcing all party members to actually travel to the dungeon instance instead of instant-teleporting from summons.\n+ PvP rank titles (e.g., seargeant) that actually mattered\n+ GMs that actually fucked around in the world and didn't just play as customer support\n+ epic players that became wow employees like ion hazzikostas\n+ singular focus on one character rather than incentivizing alts\n+ Weapon mastery skills I'm ambivalent about. They seem half-hearted in grinding. They should be more complex or just removed. I do like the memory of being a Rogue and having to go to Thunderbluff to get the Mace skill and explicitly grind it. It could push in that direction where it incentivizes something new, and not just more time to level up.\n+ Items in inventory, such as mining pick, enchanting rod, fishing pole, Rogue poisons to buy and then craft, hunter ammo. Other complexitise include shaman totems, secondary weapons, and lockpicking.\n+ Inspect having a limited 10m range. That way, it's obvious to tell whl's mirin, I like the subtle social cue of everyone gathering around someone in Orgrimmar decked in epic gear.\n\nExamples of new failed systems in modern WoW: phasing and sharding; Dungeon Finder; Titanforging and Warforging; Transmogrification; War mode.\n\nWithout these RPG elements, the streamlining feels less like an immersive RPG and more like a modern social game like League of Legends (indeed, that was what the revised talent tree reminds me of). The Wow gampedia wiki on the evolution is interesting (https://wow.gamepedia.com/World_of_Warcraft_evolution_guide).\n\nAsmongold's reaction video to this post is also a good summary of the problems since simplifications in Cataclysm.\n\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/9o28vr/the_state_of_battle_for_azeroth_asmongold/\n\nHe rants a bit to needless degrees. But I especially like the point about modern WoW no longer having things you can strive for. For end-game players, they're more interested in optimizing their raider.io score and parses from Warcraft logs than looking to optimize their \"non-best in slot\" gear. PvP is still in a decent place, because there's concrete progression via Conquest points to get the next gear upgrade (albeit a very specific gear item); Badge of Honors received even after losses/RNG from wins so you can purchase transmogs from old gear (but note: no PvP vendors); and precise PvP ratings to determine your rank.\n\n## Cataclysm (12/2016-12/2016)\n\nI zoomed through these when playing again. I didn't really enough time to study its content. I do like the idea of overhauling the classic maps rather than adding yet another zone to explore. I also like the ambition in removing certain portals to force exploration. E.g., a portal from Dalaran is only to Orgrimmar---you have to venture to other zones manually.\n\nThank you Patch 3.3.0 in Wrath of the Lich King for introducing the Dungeon Finder! (was this after I left the game?) This makes getting arbitrary dungeons SO SO much easier than waiting outside the portal of a specific dungeon and spamming LFG in chat. It's a natural idea building on Battleground always being queueable. It's funny how dead the chat channel becomes after this. There's basically no point to having per-Zone chat channels anymore; I remember really only using it during my TBC expansion times by having miscellaneous chats while leveling. I also miss partying with random people in the world map to complete a batch of quests together. Now it seems more like it's a solo activity.\n\n__Adventure Guide.__ To me, this is bloatware. It will never be as good as following Wowhead or WoWpedia. Why introduce something like this when third-party systems already solved this?\n\n__Transmogrification.__ I actually don't like this system. I prefer having iconic gear that people can identify. There's a status to them. If you care about Fashion, I think WoW should have gone the Dark Souls route of enabling Fashion Souls where you're at an explicit gear disadvantage, but ideally that disadvantage isn't that bad compared to just executing mechanics. Look at the icons that defined Tiers (I remember being envious of Rogue Tier 1 and 2's artwork; and wearing T4-6 and Sunwell, and Season 5/6 Deadly and Furious Gladiator). They're only good for that era; I wouldn't want to see those again unless everything else such as mechanics are also the same.\n\n## Mists of Panderia (12/2016-12/2016)\n\nIn general, I zoomed through these when playing again. I didn't have enough time to study its content.\n\n__Pet battle system.__. It's interesting. I need time to collect my thoughts.\n\n__Scenarios__. They're interesting. I need time to collect my thoughts.\n\nMonk, Pandaria map, Pandaren race, PvP zones, PvE zones are meh.\n\n## Warlords of Draenor (09/2018-10/2018)\n\nWarlords of Draenor represents a significant departure in the vision for WoW, since the peak of Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, followed by the steep decline in activity in Mists of Pandaria. I don't like the new vision.\n\n__Story progression.__ I greatly enjoyed leveling based on the idea of \"story progression\". In general, in WoW I'm always so cluttered with tons of quests that I can comprehensively go through one leveling zone's quests and be so overleveled that I start needing to skip other zones. What I'd prefer is a greater density of quest quality by having fewer main quests per map. It seems like this is the case if you only follow the \"Story Progression\" quests per map. (I started doing this in Warlords of Draenor of level 90 and above.)\n\nThe quest map that's default is also good enough to not require another addon. I especially like the pattern of only getting flying after you complete many of the achievements in the map.\n\nApparently for leveling, it's recommended you do quests as you'll have to finish these stories anyways. Dungeons only really give you achievements for completing on the first time, and battlegrounds give you honor points. Battleground are much easier to ground at the endgame rather than the many more items to grind out during questing. However, you should do dungeons now to get the achivement for the first time, unless you think you can solo them at a higher level or can wait for timewalking dungeons. This is likely the case for all expansions except the last on heroic. It's not too big a deal beacuse you wouldn't be able to do many of the boss-specific achievements or Mythic. So you'll need a team in any case to farm old expansion achievements.\n\n__Timewalking dungeons.__ Lets you visit a lot of the classic dungeons including vanilla, The Burning Crusade, etc. This is great!\n\n__Unified Group Finder for dungeons, raids, PvP, battlegrounds, etc.__ Makes it so much cleaner. Thank you. Now if only they did the same for collectibles (not just mounts, pets, appearance as in the current panel, but also Reputation and Achievements).\n\n__Garrisons.__ I don't like it. It encourages solo activity where everyone holes up at their base. It also forces you to track yet another feature. It's nice that you get certain features unique to yourself, and which are permanent in the zone. But I wish it was done in a way that didn't require constant monitoring. It looks like no one at endgame or post-Warlords of Draenor even uses their Garrison aside from idle farming of gold (which isn't much).\n\nNew focus on item level (since which expansion?). It makes things easier as a way to define each person. ased on their gear level. But it also makes me not really attention to my stats when selecting gear during leveling. I hole thats not the case at the endgame, when ideally everyone has same item level but wih minor stats variations.\n\nTalent and specs are redesigned (since when?). This is super nice. This makes it much easier than not having to visit a class trainer to respec.\n\nThe quests make it much nicer to follow, and without the need flr an external addon. (And it's officially guaranteed to be accurate.)\n\nThe stat simplifications in Warlods of Draenor are great.\n\nI like Warlords of Draenor's newly introduced Adventure panel, which provides some guidance on what to do next. But there's already so panels and things to keep track of that things remain daunting. Rather than introduce a panel that points the way, do more like the stat simplifications by cutting the fat.\n\n__Pay to win via WoW Token.__ Legitimized gold-purchasing. This was bad.\n\n## Legion (09/2018-10/2018)\n\n__Class Halls.__ I don't like Garrisons, and I don't like this. It's great that they're at least still inside Dalaran, and they focus on longer missions and fewer followers. However, this mobile game idling shit doesn't fit into an MMO. It's forced activity.\n\n__Artifacts.__ I don't like it. I much prefer RPG drops.\n\n__World quests.__ Apparently a replacement to dailies. I like that they push the playerbase to engage in the world, even if it's only the expansion's part of the world. I don't like that they're dailies though; maybe weeklies would be a little less pressure for the casual user (e.g., imagine doing this on weekdays for someone with a career).\n\n__PvP Brawls.__ I like them as a weekly engagement similar to Brawls in Hearthstone.\n\n__I love the voice acting dialogues in Legion.__ Lets you stay in control while the scene goes on. This is way better than cutscenes.\n\n__Honor system.__ I like the overhaul, simplifying the need for PvP-only gear.\n\nBroken Isle continent. I like the idea of zone scaling, so all zones remain relevant. However, I don't like the ideaolf having to choose the order I go in. I prefer a linear route, and ideally experiencing the densest pack of all For zone order I followed https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/5pgqmh/what_is_the_best_legion_zone_to_go_first_second/.\n\nNew class (Legion Hunter), PvP zones, PvE zones are meh.\n\nI'm a big fan of the Legion mobile app which lets you manage your class hall missions on your phone. It's a natural extension of the Armory mobile app. (I can see reasons for why and why not they should have continued the mobile Auction app.) I actually wish there weren't such resources to have to maintain in WoW though. It's a forced way of encouraging active usage, like a mobile game. It's also a shame this doesn't let you manage older content such as Garrisons; and as of the Battle for Azeroth expansion it lets you monitor the new missions table and no longer Class Halls. There should be no reason why, and it would only encourage non-deprecation of previous content features.\n\nThe main professions seem completely useless for endgame. Wrath had each profession offer one unique advantage (e.g., an enchant, or a specific armor with slightly better stats) and all of which were roughly equal. Here there is zero advantage to any professions—for crafting, all better items are found elsewhere; and for gathering, it is only useful for farming gold.\n\n## Battle for Azeroth (09/2018-10/2018)\n\n\"Can someone tell me what the selling point of this expansion is? Warfronts? Azerite gear? Island Expeditions? They've all flopped.\" (https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/9nhus0/i_have_lost_all_faith_in_ion_hazzikostas_as_game/) It seriously plays like Legion 2.0 with nothing groundbreaking. Some improved tweaks to the system (e.g., professions, war mode). I liked this review of Battle for\nAzeroth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLURznzDU-c\n\n__Azerite armor.__ Replacement for Artifact weapons. But now.. armor. In addition, there are now new mission tables which just replace Legion's Class Hall and which replaced Warlords of Draenor's Garrisons. Reputation controls your item level, and which unlocks abilities in your gear.. ugh. Please go back to item drops!\n\nLegion artifacts are no longer used in Battle for Azeroth. With Azerite Armor, it's like Garrisons being replaced with Class Halls. That's stupid.\n\n__Warfronts.__ Bad. The weekly changes are a nice way of having cyclical, changing content. The PvE raids aren't that interesting though—they seem like a weird combination of PvE and MOBA games. I'm of the opinion that they should distill their core mechanics rather than add a zillon more PvE/PvP game modes.\n\n__Island expeditions.__ They are meant to be an always-available component as complement to the core content which is rotating, e.g., raids, world events, Timewalking Dungeons, Warfronts. They're a big disappointment. The content is uninteresting; as of the release, the rewards are paltry (small amount of Azerite gain compared to alternatives). There's no reason to participate in this content.\n\n__Realms and War Mode.__ In Battle for Azeroth, instead of realms wih pve pvp rp status, you now just tirn on war mode to teleport to a new \"server shard.\" You get an XP bonus for turning it on. I always have it on!\n\n__Warforged and Titanforged gear.__ I don't getting gear that automatically levels up to your stats. It's another example of streamlining where there aren't RPG gear sets that vary across levels. Rather they all scale with you.\n\n__Professions__. I like the idea of having separate levels per expansion. It makes it so easier than having to powerlevel via the auction on 500ish levels. However, professions are a joke in the modern era of WoW: there is no advantage to having a profession that you couldn't just buy from the Auction House.\n\nNew continent, races, PvP zones are meh. For leveling, I did the zone order of Vol'dun > Zuldazar > Nazmir, following https://www.wowhead.com/guides/battle-for-azeroth-leveling-and-consumables. The quests have too much cinematic content. Cut scenes are not fun to watch. Include them as part of the gameplay please. Dazar'lor is not a fun capital city for Horde: there's too much elevation, which is especially bad without flying; I much prefer Orgrimmar and Dalaran, even if I understand the design idea to make for a more expansive city instead of Dalaran's basics.\n\nI ended up doing a \"Character Transfer\" to move from the realm Drak'Tharon under the name Always to Illidan under the name Array. I also did a race change to Blood Elf Female, with the customization settings of 3 (Skin Color), 3 (Face), 9 (Hair Style), 2 (Hair Color), 1 (Earrings).\n\nI like the idea of Mythic+ dungeons, which is that you can time dungeons at ridiculously difficult levels of scaling for NPC damage and health. It's a good way of still granting loot that's not just from raids. That said, I don't know how I feel about unbounded levels. I suppose it is nice to see just how far people can get world records. Mythic dungeons do feel a little lazy in terms of content, since the majority of the end-endgame is just scaled levels and not fundamentally new content.\n\nAfter ticking 120, I followed this for the endgame meta: https://www.wowhead.com/gearing-up-in-battle-for-azeroth. Day-to-day, my initial days after 120 consist of:\n\n+ pve | heroic dungeons (with a daily bonus)\n+ pvp | unrated battlegrounds and arena skirmishes (with a daily bonus; and a weekly bonus which stacks past weeks, so you don't miss out)\n+ occasional | warfronts, brawls, world events, timewalking dungeons, weekend bonus event\n+ misc | world quests (with a daily bonus)\n+ misc | farming achievements\n\nThis would get me gear with ilvl 320+ (pre 8.1+). At that point, day-to-day would be to:\n\n+ pve | mythic dungeons (locked weekly, weekly bonus)\n+ pve | raid finder (locked weekly)\n+ pvp | unrated battlegrounds and arena skirmishes (with a daily bonus; and a weekly bonus which stacks past weeks, so you don't miss out))\n+ dailies | emissary world quest (for reputation, azerite power, ilvl reward)\n+ weeklies | warfronts, weekend bonus event, island expeditions\n+ occasional | brawls, world events, timewalking dungeons\n+ misc | farming achievements\n\nThe end-game for ilvl 340+ (pre 8.1+ numbers but content is same for 8.1+) is to get into a decent guild then. Then grinding for ilvl 380-390 (highest possible before patch 8.1.0) is:\n\n+ pve | mythic+ dungeons (no locks, weekly bonus)\n+ pve | normal, heroic, mythic raids (locked weekly)\n+ pvp | rated arena and battlegrounds (with a daily bonus; and a weekly bonus which stacks past weeks, so you don't miss out)\n+ dailies | emissary world quest (for reputation, azerite power, ilvl reward)\n+ weeklies | warfronts, weekend bonus event, island expeditions\n+ occasional | brawls, world events, timewalking dungeons\n+ misc | farming achievements\n\nOptimally, I would play until I experienced 95% of BFA's content. This means roughly ilvl 340 right before you join a guild to run heroic raids, Mythic+ dungeons, and rated PvP. The rest requires more serious commitment and is more of the same but with a community and higher-level gameplay from players.\n\n## On Classes\n\nI main a Rogue. In retrospect, I would probably choose a class that lets me spec to two roles and not just locked to DPS (e.g., Monk for DPS/Healer, Druid for all, or Demon Hunter for DPS/Tank). Modern WoW balances the class specializations so all DPS roles, heal roles, and tank roles are roughly the same. This makes hybrids far better whereas in Wrath of the Lich King and before, specialty classes were always best. I've played all Rogue specs intensively. I enjoy Subtlety the most for its bursty damage. Combat/Outlaw is nice for chaining combo points, following Slice and Dice/Roll the Bones, and long-term abilities like Adrenaline Rush. Assassination is fun for laying up dots and just maneuvering—this lets you put more effort toward positioning in the field and timing attacks.\n\nI also used to play a Tauren Warrior as a tank and Undead Priest as a healer in my Burning Crusade days. Dalton played a Warlock. Danny played a paladin.\n\n## On Factions and Realms\n\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/8lsvih/comment/dzimw2x\n\nGreat point. Because of this, the best choice is Horde, and the most populated/highest rank Horde realm. There are nonadvantages to having faction balance (in fact, the advantage skews the opposite so it's easier for the finder queue). I do like the appeal of the Human aesthetic, and also the best racial ability in the game of Every Man for Himself (at least before it was nerfed in modern WoW to share cooldown with trinket).\n\n## On Alts\n\nOverall, I never really took advantage of this. There are certain features that incenvitize getting alts (such as new expansions offering new classes), and the instant leveling feature you get with that new expansion. But many achievements on a character are not shared across the account (as of 09/2018, this includes reputation). It doesn't make sense to have to re-farm all of these per character. Rather, it would be nice if all collectibles, including Achievements were shared across the account. Certain things may not make sense, such as in-game currency (e.g., Gold, Honor Points) and quests.\n\n## todos (before I stopped playing)\n\n+ to farm\n  + item level\n    https://www.wowhead.com/gearing-up-in-battle-for-azeroth\n  + achievements\n    + farm nightslayer armor transmog from molten core\n    + solo old dungeons and raids\n      + firelands | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLHRM5GHOYM\n        + note can't solo \"only the penitent\" though\n    + flying in draenor (https://www.wowhead.com/draenor-pathfinder-guide)\n    + scrap 500 items\n    + various battlegrounds and pve achievements\n    https://www.wowhead.com/gearing-up-in-battle-for-azeroth#pvp-and-war-mode\n    https://www.wowhead.com/guides/conquest-points-wow-pvp-gearing\n    https://www.wowhead.com/battle-for-azeroth-dungeons-overview#achievements\n  + water walking mount (farm timewalking badges for angler reputation; need to farm ~100 more dungeons for total of 5.25k reputation (i have 1.5k))\n    https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/9orm46/you_can_get_your_azure_water_strider_mount_today/\n  + professions meta\n  + specific utilities that are helpful\n    + all the hearthstones\n      + https://www.wowhead.com/item=65274/cloak-of-coordination#comments\n    + mount with repair vendor\n    + water walking mount\n    + sky golem\n    + gears for maximum passive movement speed, maximum swim speed\n  + reputation\n  + collections, e.g., mounts, pets, appearance\n  + cataclysm battle pets\n  + unlearned flight locations\n+ addons\n  + reorganize action bars so cooldown buttons are all large and upfront. these\n    are what you monitor. the rest can either be hidden or left at bottom.\n  + move target debuffs, player energy, and player hp closer to center\n  + move garrison and class hall buttons to minimap\n  + warcraft logs https://www.wowhead.com/how-to-use-warcraft-logs-to-improve-character-performance\n  + rework macros\n    https://www.wowhead.com/getting-into-legion-pvp-guide\n  + auctioneer\n  + gathermate2\n\n## Resources (as of 2019)\n\n+ https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/character/illidan/Array\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/ | community and news\n+ https://worldofwarcraft.com/ | armory\n+ http://www.wowhead.com/ | guides and items\n  + http://www.wowhead.com/outlaw-rotation-guide\n+ https://wow.gamepedia.com/ | wiki\n+ http://www.wowprogress.com | raiding and progress\n+ https://raider.io | raiding and progress\n+ https://www.wow-professions.com | profession guides\n+ https://www.curseforge.com/wow/ | addons\n+ https://www.worldofwargraphs.com | statistics\n+ https://realmpop.com/ | realm statistics\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/5pgqmh/what_is_the_best_legion_zone_to_go_first_second/\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/34xah2/who_is_in_your_crz_us/ | cross realm zones list\n+ http://www.ravenholdt.net | rogue guide\n\nPlaying history:\n\n+ 2009-2010 (WowCrack The Burning Crusade, retail Wrath of the Lich King)\n+12/2015 (Cataclysm)\n+ 09/2018-10/2018 (Battle for Azeroth)\n+ 05/2019 (Battle for Azeroth)\n\nIn 2017 and 09/2018, I used my own UI.\n+ auto sell grey & repair\n+ bagnon\n+ bartender4\n+ capping battleground timers\n+ details! damage meter\n+ gladius\n+ gtfo\n+ inflight taxi timer\n+ mapster\n+ mikscrollingbattletext\n+ minimap range extender\n+ npcscan\n+ omnicc\n+ prat 3.0\n+ sexymap\n+ shadowed unit frames\n+ tomtom\n+ worldflightmap\n\nIn 10/2018, I switched to ElvUI, which has a much cleaner default interface. My profile was based on\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/98k2nr/that_feeling_when_you_finally_get_elvui_set_up/.\nMy addons are as follows:\n+ capping battleground timers\n+ details! damage meter\n+ deadlybossmods\n+ elvui\n+ gtfo\n+ inflight taxi timer\n+ instance portals\n+ mapster\n+ mikscrollingbattletext\n+ minimap range extender\n+ npcscan\n+ omnicc\n+ raider.io mythic plus\n+ tomtom\n+ worldflightmap","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/world-of-warcraft"},{"id":"322682678652799564","title":"A Hat in Time","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Gears for Breakfast"],"publishers":["Gears for Breakfast","Humble Games"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2026-04-28","completedDate":"2026-05-02","updatedDate":"2026-05-02","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Writing.__\nPunchy, great vibes.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n+ Hats to control an active ability.\n+ Strong core mechanics: sprint, crawl, dash, double jump, attack.\n+ Progression mechanics: hats, badges.\n+ [Collectibles](https://ahatintime.wiki.gg/wiki/Collectibles): Pon, Yarn, Time Piece.\n+ Excellent open yet linear level design.\n+ Mandatory progression requires only a few time pieces in each act. You can choose to do optional content now or at a later time such as when you unlock more hats. There are also Blue and Purple Time Rifts.\n+ Levels are memorable and unique worlds.\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\nGraphics are clearly too smooth and budget-based. Art direction and humor though is very charming. Also love the poster pages for each act and chapter.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Wonky camera at times due to small closed-off environments like rooms. Also you have restricted panning ability, using a separate button to pan up and cannot pan down. Mitigated by turning off Top-Down Camera and Camera Assist.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://ahatintime.wiki.gg\n+ https://ahatintime.wiki.gg/wiki/List_of_Chapters_and_Acts_in_A_Hat_in_Time\n\nMotivated to play this after loving the 3D platformers of the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 generation: for example, Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, Donkey Kong 64, Banjo Kazooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Psychonauts, Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank.\n\nI beat the base game, did not get all collectibles or do DLCs.\n\nSetup:\n+ Badges: Hookshot > Fast Hatter > Scooter > Item Magnet > Compass.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/a-hat-in-time"},{"id":"322682678651412044","title":"Amnesia: The Dark Descent","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Frictional Games"],"publishers":["Frictional Games"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-03-05","completedDate":"2020-03-09","updatedDate":"2022-04-30","notes":"Boy does playing this game give me anxiety. It shines in atmosphere: lighting, sound design, the occasional enemyj, and the plethora of the unknown. The mechanics of stealth and core movement are minimal and great, and the limited supplies add tension. Sanity is a great mechanic, and the lack of fighting back. What makes you scared are not the few jumpscares but rather the anxious immersion that truly makes you scared once something does happen. On flaws, the puzzles can be arbitrary at times and wears patience as you may use up a limited supply of items while trying to solve them. Enemy AI is also janky.\n\n__Story.__ I love the way the few enough notes add to the puzzle-solving and story, alongisde the hallucinations. Only the later encounter with Agrippa felt like a forced exposition dump. I love that only later in the story is it revealed that Alexander can speak to us telepathically, and that the notes slowly reveal his immortality.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I like the sanity mechanic, and the use of lighting. Relying on stealth and the core movement mechanics of crouching, walking, and running, and the lighting is great. The protagonist's constant hallucinations slowing your movement speed and the occasional falling down due to relapses further makes you feel helpless.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Ambient sounds are excellent. The visuals still remain scary today with its lighting and hallucinations. Flashbacks as you enter certain rooms are a great way of both adding to the story and adding to the atmosphere with hallucinations, not knowing what's real. It's all the blurry vision of the unknown that makes you fearful. The Lovecraftian slime that continues to trickle in as you advance is excellent.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Opening the door in the Storage and immediately shutting it once I saw the zombie inside. The UI is rudimentary and basic but serviceable---nothing complicated needed. I like the options for running and stealthing; helps with hiding from monsters and running away.\n+ Shuddering when I opened that when door cabinet, a jumpscare in sound, and a skull and bones fall out.\n+ The chase sequence after the level where you escape the water monster in the sewer.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Autosave. More immersive.\n+ Losing sanity when you see the monster is a great way to skimp on the scariness of the actual monster involved. If you see him in bright light and from Youtube gameplay videos, the monsters are not nerely as scary.\n+ Death penalty is not too harsh: you restart at the last entrance you came into, which means sufficiently ample checkpoints. You do lose out on oil as you continue dying though, so it can be harsh particularly if you get stuck on puzzles.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Oil for the lantern and tinderboxes being limited supply. Makes you be conservative of a finite supply. The finite-ness adds to the anxiety. But I also find it annoying in combination with puzzle-solving, where you can only backtrack a finite number of times as you're literally running out of time.\n+ Enemy AI is too wonky at times. When you die to start a challenging encounter, the enemy can despawn and make going through it again very easy.\n+ All the various common torture traps like the Iron Maiden and the Wheel make it feel a little more trope-y than scary.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.gamesradar.com/cheats/19421\n\nI was very aware of this game Freshman year in college in Fall 2010. I could never play it though as my laptop did not have the specs.\n\nI played with mouse and keyboard. I did not follow a playthrough except when I got stuck in order to keep with immersion rather than completionism. I did lean toward following a guide bit more than I should've in order to streamline the experience, e.g., given multiple routes, I just look up what the right exploration order is, and I don't spend too much time if I'm stuck on a puzzle (I don't like figuring these out). Later on in the game I got more used to the mechanics and assets so I relied less on a guide. Reflecting back, Amnesia is a once in a lifetime opportunity (or at least until you forget the majority of the experience after many years); so it's good to try minimizing the use of walkthrough even if it adds frustration; this is worth it over the risk of spoilers, which I did spoil myself a few times away from some scary sequences since I knew what would happen by accidentally reading the walkthrough's next line.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/amnesia-the-dark-descent"},{"id":"322682678652827212","title":"Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2000,"playtimeMinutes":4110,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["BioWare Edmonton","BioWare","MumboJumbo"],"publishers":["MacPlay","Black Isle Studios","Interplay Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2023-04-30","completedDate":"2023-05-09","updatedDate":"2024-08-18","notes":"Like BG1, BG2 still stands outs in its deep systems and mechanics, quests, and level design. Compared to BG1, BG2’s mid to endgame of a traditional D&D campaign, where progression starts to come up a to head, is arguably where D&D shines most. Unlike BG1's linearity, BG2 is also closer to the standard of modern western RPGs where you're offered a number of quests and areas to explore, and you can complete them in any order.\n\nI wouldn't say I necessarily enjoyed playing any Infinity Engine game: Baldur's Gate 1, 2, or Planescape Torment. Rather, I found it useful from a historical perspective, informing mechanics, influence, and understanding the style of vintage CRPGs. Like taking medicine or absorbing lecture notes. Things that did not age well:\n\n+ UI and controls. Includes wonky inventory management, too many UI buttons.\n+ Combat. RTWP is a hit or miss. The 2e ruleset of AC/THAC0 and systems with specializations, skills, abilities, and mage/priest spells are overly complex. Many components could be streamlined particularly since much don’t actually matter (same with the bloated UI). With that said, the subset of the systems that are viable make for incredibly deep and varied builds.\n+ Graphics and sound. Looks too smooth, bland in color, and non-detailed. Sound is repetitive.\n\n__Story.__ Excels in worldbuilding and large ensemble cast with distinctive personalities. So many quests, NPCs, and areas that feel lived in and immersive. Companions and villains are all memorable, more so than in the first game potentially due to more unique premises.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nThe same as BG1, but BG2 really hits its stride as effectively the middle and endgame of a D&D campaign. It’s often argued this middle area of levels 5-8 is where D&D really opens up and starts to shrine, and I don’t disagree.\n\nLevel design wise, BG2 is much more compact than BG1, with less open empty space. It has tons of detail, and exploration never feels rote.\n\nBuilds comprise the following key systems:\n\n+ Like BG1, the [class system](https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Classes) is deep. On top of the original class choice, there’s class kit (advanced class), multi class (hybrid class), and dual class (class switch). RPGs in later decades only ever go with one of these system archetypes: for example, Path of Exile’s advanced class, Titan Quest’s hybrid class, and KOTOR’s class switch. It’s pretty amazing to see all three in one game, and that they’re regularly used in party compositions.\n+ The amount of variety of spells and skills in this game is incredible: mage spellbook up to level 10, priest spellbook up to level 10, thief skills, one-off class and companion abilities, and one-off main character abilities.\n+ Stats, weapon specialization passives, and alignment.\n+ Equipment and consumables.\n+ Choice of companions, given the many available.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ It's crazy to think Thief had come out a few years ago and Morrowind would come out 2 years later. Like BG1, BG2's pixelated graphics are dated even for its time. It uses the same Infinity Engine and has made little improvement graphically from BG1.The pre-rendered backgrounds and sprites are ugly in both detail and color.\n\nVoice acting is also only partial. And the Infinity Engine has a notable pattern to its ambient sounds and soundtracks that can feel repetitive (not the individual tracks but how often they’re played).\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Like BG1, quests are unstructured. They're text and you have to read through the details and actually immerse yourself in order to find out how to proceed on next steps. It's not a list of chores and waypoints.\n+ You can import character saves from Baldur's Gate 1.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Vendors have infinite gold. So you can unload to vendor all your loot by visiting one trader.\n+ Gem items. These are mostly just sellable for gold, but there are [cases when you do need to keep them](https://steamcommunity.com/app/257350/discussions/0/541906348040582467). Same goes for [statless items like rings, amulets, and girdles](https://steamcommunity.com/app/228280/discussions/0/1471967615880028797/).\n+ [Items in containers don't despawn (unless the area itself changes)](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/663933-baldurs-gate-enhanced-edition/65345042). Items dropped on the ground do after 24-48 in-game hours.\n+ [Level drain](https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Level_drain). At the least, it's not a permanent change like a character permadeath or a broken weapon. You can heal it with Lesser/Greater Restoration or visiting a temple. Still annoying though.\n+ Additional complexities in stats like Fatigue and Reputaion.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ There are two timing mechanics that pressure you to complete quests in a timely manner.\n  + [Quests can be time-sensitive based on in game hours, usually companion quests and stronghold quests.](https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/3wad9q/started_bg2ee_what_time_sensitive_quests_to_keep) You need to be cautious when using Rest Until Healed. This issue is particularly problematic at the beginning of the game when you're overwhelmed with quest options and new companions. At the least for quests like Nalia's, you can go to the desired area to trigger the next quest objective, then go about freely as the quest is no longer time-sensitive.\n  + Certain triggers in the main quest block side quests. So you're forced to complete side quests before you carry on with the main story. Fortunately, it's not too many triggers, but no one has documented well what quests get blocked by each chapter.\n+ 2e’s THAC0, Saves, and AC system is a mess. I have to re-learn it every time I play an Infinity Engine game. See Baldur’s Gate entry for more on my comments about it.\n+ No sort inventory key. Or any easy way to manage inventories across characters other than cycling through them, possibly dropping items on the ground for others to pick up.\n+ No respec. You need to resort to external tools like [the save game editor EE Keeper](https://eekeeper.sourceforge.io).\n+ Like BG1, NPC dialogue has a weird quirk where if you try to go through the various options you can end up recycling parts of the conversation. It feels very unnatural.\n+ Weapons can break. This would be fine if they were repairable. I just reload the game when this happens.\n+ Entrance/exits aren't highlighted like containers and doors when holding Tab. I was confused once in a while trying to find stairs above or to the basement.\n+ Identifying items is cool from a mechanics complexity perspective. But from a core gameplay loop, it’s tedious. Identify takes up a Tier 1 Arcane Spell slot, where Tier 1 is so critical. So to Identify, I have to wait until I can Rest (and there are no time sensitive quests), then retool my spellbook, identify everything in a given batch, then retool my spellbook back. Either make identify more streamlined for spellcastsrs (for example, in Divinity you can split combat vs non combat allocations) or make identification cost viable from NPCs (like Diablo’s Deckard Cain).\n+ You can't change time at a granular scale, only really [set 8 hours ahead by resting](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/258273-baldurs-gate-ii-shadows-of-amn/52083473). This is annoying on particular quests like [Locate a Caretaker for the Orphan, Risa](https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Locate_a_Caretaker_for_the_Orphan,_Risa) where the caretaker is only around for a few hours a day.\n+ You don't automove when clicking on an interactable object. So you have to click around it to get near first.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Baldur's Gate Wiki](https://baldursgate.fandom.com)\n  + [Importing](https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Importing), [GameBanshee article on importing](https://www.gamebanshee.com/baldursgateii/walkthrough/importing.php)\n+ Quests\n  + [Sorcerers.net: Quest list ordered by availability in each chapter](https://sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/Walkthrough2/SoA/chapter-2/quests/quest-list.php). This is my preferred navigation of quests as it’s usually done in RPG wikis. BG’s wiki is not well-organized.\n  + BG Fandom Wiki has good per-quest wiki pages.\n  + [GameBanshee: Walkthrough by area](https://www.gamebanshee.com/baldursgateii)\n  + [Almar's Guides: Spellhold tests](https://www.almarsguides.com/computer/games/BaldursGate2/Misc/WorldOverview/Spellhold/Dungeon/Tests)\n+ Mage/Priest spells\n  + [Lilura blog: BG2 Mage spell tier list](https://lilura1.blogspot.com/2021/01/Baldurs-Gate-2-BG2-Best-Mage-Spells-Best-Sorcerer-Spells-Ranked-Tier-List.html)\n  + [Steam: Spells and Abilities Guide for BG2EE](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=237917858)\n  + [Steam: In-depth guide to Cleric/Mage](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=895942694)\n  + [Links to Sorcerers.net and pihwiki.bgforge.net's spell lists](https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/svyv0t/theres_so_many_utility_spells_in_this_game_i_feel)\n+ Equipment\n  + [Lilura blog: Best weapons](https://lilura1.blogspot.com/2017/08/Best-Weapons-Baldurs-Gate-and-Baldurs-Gate-2.html)\n  + [Mike's RPG Center: Weapons list](https://mikesrpgcenter.com/bgate2/weapons.html)\n\nI played Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition on PC (Steam). This entry does not include the Throne of Bhaal expansion.\n\nIt's been extremely difficult motivating myself to get into Baldur's gate though: the long playtime, dated UI and gameplay, and graphics turn me off. I'm also just not a fan of RTWP and party management. With that said, it's a blocker to try other CRPGs I'm interested in: PoE, Pathfinder, Neverwinter, BG3, Fallout.\n\n__Playthrough style.__\nI researched online for character setup and build information. I generally played blind, though I referred to walkthroughs in case I got stuck on a quest (looking up the quest on the wiki). It's difficult to refrain from being XP-suboptimal, and missing potential content including missable questlines. But you really need to for maximum immersion and a spoiler-free experience. You can always be completionist and power game on future playthroughs, and I expect for a classic like Baldur's Gate 2, I'm likely to replay the game at some point in my lifetime.\n\nI generally completed all quests I ran into. I mostly ignored EE-exclusive content such as new companion quests like Hexxat. EE quests aren't well-regarded in the community, and EE content pads what is already a long game that I burn out of, certainly by the 50 hour mark. I can always try these on a future playthrough.\n\n+ Stronghold: Fighter (Barbarian) stronghold from Nalia\n+ Storage: Chest closest to entrance in Stronghold. Early game, a barrel in Waukeen's Promenade near the Spell Store.\n+ Sided with Shadow Thieves.\n+ Questing: I spent the majority of my non-main quest time in Chapter 2, completing all the side quests I could find while exploring all unexplored zones. From a powergaming perspective, I would be better rushing for Imoen so they get XP instead of Yoshimo. But if this harms my original intent, I can always use a [mod or save game editor to update Imoen’s XP anyways](https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/qpjjmw/comment/hjuaxqf).\n+ [Sacrificed Wisdom stat](https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/y0kjtv/which_ability_point_to_sacrifice_in_spell_hold/).\n+ Mithral Token Machine: Boots of Speed (15), Boots of the North (5)\n+ In Chapter 4's Spellhold, escape via ship with Saemon instead of Underdark. The ship provides extra content instead of going directly to Underdark.\n+ Finding items when you just dump them into a barrel or chest is difficult. There's no organization scheme.\n\n__Difficulty.__ Core Rules is the canonical difficulty from a game design perspective. So I played Core Rules. There’s not a significant difference from [Normal to Core Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/a4pfhd/core_rules_or_normal_for_a_new_player), and the game is quite manageable with freely using Rest Until Healed, maximum HP rolls, and savescumming/lowering difficulty to avoid failed scroll scribing or companion permadeaths. For reference, my first playthrough of BG1 was at Easy difficulty.\n\nCore Rules is the best difficulty given that the game only changes percentages at higher difficulties. It’s better to modulate the difficulty by your [other choices: for example, roll a worse character, take a worse team, use lesser items, restrict spell use, or do the harder missions earlier](https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/x24852/comment/imhzapi).\n\nI swapped to Story Mode whenever I felt irked by the combat or wanted to zoom through quests.\n\n__Miscellaneous settings.__ Default keybindings and settings are dated. So there is some tweaking necessary.\n\n+ Camera movement. There are [keybinds to set Scroll (Up/Right/Down/Left) to WASD](https://steamcommunity.com/app/257350/discussions/0/1639787494971967652); no AutoHotKey needed. And you can set the scroll speed. I find this less jarring than have to double-press Select All to re-center the screen (which does a discrete jump rather than smooth navigation). Moving manually with WASD is not too much work over the ideal of having the camera auto-track your characters.\n+ Auto-Pause. I set it on for Enemy Sighted, Trap Found, and Weapon Unusuable.\n+ Rest Until Healed.\n+ Maximum HP rolls.\n+ Keybindings. I generally stick with defaults to stay to true to the vanilla experience (such as R for Character Information and Q/L for Quick Save/Load). Exceptions:\n  + Select All to E, so 1-6 are party member selection.\n  + Thieving to T. Because it's so commonly used.\n  + Quick Loot to F.\n  + Unbind Right Interface from U to nothing. I misclick it often when pressing I for Inventory.\n+ Party AI on. I set each party member to Use Special Abilities/Offensive Spells/Defensive Spells, Thief to use Find Traps, none to Use Items, and none to Prefer Melee or Ranged (I equip items manually).\n+ [Debug mode on](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Baldur%27s_Gate_II:_Enhanced_Edition#Issues_fixed). Lets you use cheats such as [Ctrl+J](https://steamcommunity.com/app/257350/discussions/0/43099721422705160/) to teleport your party instead of having to make them do long and tedious backtracking.\n+ [Show AOE](https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/u1ohrc/aoe_indicators_you_can_enable_using_notepad_in).\n\n__Mods.__\n\n+ [Portraits Portraits Everywhere](https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate/mods/31). Nothing game-changing, just nice to have imaginary faces even if unofficial for every NPC.\n\n__Build.__ I continued from my BG1 cloud save.\n\n+ Weapon: 2x War Hammer (Crom Faeyr and Hammer of Thunderbolts) or Flail (Flail of Ages)\n\nStarting stats.\n\n+ Gender: Male\n+ Race: Dwarf\n+ Class: Fighter (Berserker)\n+ Alignment: Chaotic Good\n+ STR 18/DEX 18/CON 18/INT 18/ WIS 18/ CHA 18 (via Ctrl+8 cheat)\n+ War Hammer +++\n+ Two-Weapon Style +++\n+ Imported equipment: Ashideena +2\n\n__Party.__ I chose companions based on several factors: canon / story-heavy (Imoen, Minsc, Jaheira, Yoshimo), personality (e.g., Jan), power gaming (mages and dual wielding melee), and satisfying my Good alignment (so must be Neutral / Good). My party is:\n\n+ Minsc. Ranger. Melee DPS.\n  + Weapon: 2x Axe (Axe of the Unyielding), Mace (Skullcrusher), Bastard Sword (Jhor the Bleeder), or Flail (Flail of Ages). I use early game Two-Handed Sword; [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/1zwxev/bg2ee_weapon_proficiencies_for_minsc/).\n  + Has Priest spellbook.\n+ Jaheira. Fighter / Druid. Melee DPS / Heals.\n  + Weapon: 2x Club (Gnasher) or Scimitar (Belm). I use Shield before I get [2 points in two-weapon style](https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/y0oha9/best_weapon_for_jaheira)).\n  + Has Priest spellbook.\n  + Generally a weak character relative to others. But Insect Plague (level 5 Druid spell) makes them powerful especially early game.\n+ Imoen. Mage / Thief. Ranged DPS.\n  + Weapon: Shortbow (Tuigan Bow) or Quarterstaff (Staff of the Magi).\n  + Has Mage spellbook.\n  + Has Thief skills.\n+ Jan. Mage (Illusionist) / Thief. Ranged DPS.\n  + Weapon: Crossbow (Drow Crossbow of Speed) or Quarterstaff (Staff of the Magi).\n  + Has Mage spellbook.\n  + Has Thief skills.\n  + I use Jan for most looting as he can unlock openings, remove traps, is my main identifier so he can identify any picked up magic items and move any preoccupied inventory to other party members, and is my first mage member to learn any new spells from scrolls.\n+ Aerie (who I generally swap given other companion quests). Cleric / Mage. Ranged DPS / Heals.\n  + Weapon: Sling (Sling of Seeking) or Flail (Flail of Ages) and Shield (Shield of Harmony).\n  + Has Mage spellbook.\n  + Has Priest spellbook.\n\nI generally use the 3x2 formation. I picked up [companions temporarily to do their quests](https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/8uw600/should_i_pick_up_companions_just_to_do_their/e1ixx2l). Here are the intermediate companions I used for a longer period of time:\n\n+ Yoshimo (effectively a Imoen replacement). Thief (Bounty Hunter). Melee DPS.\n  + Weapon: 2x Katana (Celestial Fury) or Shortbow (Tuigan Bow).\n  + Has Thief skills.\n+ Nalia (effectively a Jan replacement). Mage / Thief. Ranged DPS.\n  + Weapon: Shortbow (Tuigan Bow).\n  + Has Mage spellbook.\n\nI generally adopted the same strategy regarding skill priority, mage spells, and priest spells across party members:\n\n+ Mage spellbook:\n  1. Blindness, Magic Missile\n  2. Glitterdust, Mirror Image, Invisibility (I can’t stand Web given I have multiple melee characters)\n  3. Haste, Slow, Flame Arrow, Melf's Minute Meteors\n  4. Minor Sequencer, Stoneskin, Polymorph: Self\n  5. Breach, Spell Immunity,  Animate Dead\n  6. Improved Haste, True Sight\n  7. Spell Sequencer, Project Image, Mordenkainen's Sword\n  8. Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting\n  9. Shapechange, Chain Contingency, Spell Trap\n  10. (Higher Level Abilities). Improved Alacrity, Summon Planetar, Summon Dark Planetar\n\n  + Minor sequencer (2 level 1-2 spells): 2x Blindness, 2x Web, Bless + Chant, Remove Fear + Mirror Image\n  + Spell Sequencer (3 level 1-4 spells): 3x Lower Resistance, 3x Flame Strike, 3x Mass Cure, Pierce Magic + Breach + Lower Resistance\n  + Chain Contingency (3 level 1-8 spells): 3x Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting\n+ Priest spellbook:\n  1. Bless, Remove Fear, Cure Light Wounds\n  2. Chant, Hold Person, Slow Poison\n  3. Animate Dead, Holy Smite, Dispel Magic, Cure Medium Wounds, Summon Insects\n  4. Protection from Evil 10' Radius, Lesser Restoration, Death Ward\n  5. Chaotic Commands, Insect Plague, True Seeing, Flame Strike, Mass Cure\n  6. Aerial Servant, Harm, Heal\n  7. Regeneration, Creeping Doom, Sunray\n  8. (Higher Level Abilities) Implosion, Energy Blades, Summon Deva, Summon Fallen Deva\n+ Thief skill priority: Open Locks > Find Traps > Pick Pockets > Detect Illusion.\n\nFor powergaming:\n\n+ Magic is best in BG2, so the best party is mage-heavy ([1](https://lilura1.blogspot.com/2021/02/Baldurs-Gate-2-BG2-Best-Party-Composition-Party-Creation-Guide-Party-Size-Powergaming-Party.html), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/tckfm9/best_party_for_bg2/i0ekdg7)). With that said, for optimal play, it involves micromanaging spellcasting every round and resting after every fight.\n+ It's better to have no temporary companions in your party as they split XP. However, you lose out on dialogue with extra companions so it's worse story-wise. There is a level cap, but you likely won't hit it without going solo party ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/4f53jr/whats_the_level_cap_in_bg2ee), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/12uljbm/if_a_character_hit_the_level_cap_will_the)).\n\nOn additional playthroughs, things I can try:\n\n+ Evil playthrough.\n  + Mage build\n  + Some of the best party members are Evil such as Edwin (Mage (Conjurer)), Viconia (Cleric), and Korgan (Fighter (Berserker)). I can try them alongside Neutral companions I skipped the first time.\n  + Side with Bodhi's Vampire Coven\n+ Solo party","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/baldurs-gate-ii-shadows-of-amn"},{"id":"322682678650361420","title":"BioShock","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["Mobile"],"studios":["IG Fun"],"publishers":["2K Games","Starwave"],"genres":["Shooter","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-12-10","completedDate":"2020-12-13","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Developed as a spiritual successor to System Shock 2, Bioshock streamlined the experience and added much needed improvements to still enjoy the game in 2020. It captures the essence of System Shock 2's strengths---gripping atmosphere, characters, subtle sound design and enemy ambush cues, logs and ammo to incentivize exploration---and greatly improves upon the combat and RPG elements with streamlining and more modern FPS elements.\n\nFlaw-wise, the shooting gameplay sees its age with no precise aim using a broad crosshair without iron sights, no movement or hiding controls, and generally bullet sponge enemies that run straight at you. I found the enemies particularly turned into bullet sponges late game, costing an inordinate amount of ammo and where it became annoying to use your weapons and limited your gameplay options (Hard difficulty). When it comes to immersive sims, I also found Bioshock somewhat disappointing as it's largely linear with few opportunities for emergent gameplay.\n\n__Story.__ The premise keeps the initial story exciting: exploring an underground civilization after a plane crash, discovering its oddities, desolate culture, and the madman behind it all of Andrew Ryan. The atmosphere with the sound design, ambushes, and enemy aesthetics add to the horror. The plot twist of betrayal.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Bioshock captures the atmosphere of survival horrors, emphasizing exploration by scavenging, resource management in currency and ammo, and maintains light RPG build elements. Enemy types in Bioshock are more memorable and distinct, e.g., Big Daddies. The spiritual succession of System Shock shows. Combat types follows System Shock 2 with plasmids (psionics) and weapons featuring multiple ammo types. Build progression is streamlined with two currencies, dollars and ADAM, tonics as a replacement of skill points, and weapon upgrade machines; you drag-and-drop tonics instead of having to commit to a build; and taking pictures of an enemy type with the camera replaces having to research organs with chemicals in order to gain a passive damage bonus. Level progression follows System Shock 2's but the levels themselves are far more linear with a quest compass (to Bioshock's benefit; System Shock was a maze). Navigation includes hacking stores, turrets, and security cams; and looting items from corpses. Checkpoints are Vita-Chambers, which regenerate your body after you die (surprisingly, with no death penalty including any loss of currency) and do not alter the game state: all enemies killed or partyway damaged before you died remain at that state.\n\nUnlike System Shock, Bioshock includes moral decisions with Little Sisters.\n\nCore gameplay loop ages well. Explore a new area, loot things, explore every crevice and beware of traps or ambushes. The movement and shooting controls are simple and work well: move, shoot, right-click to swap plasmid and weapon, middle-click to swap ammo type, keybinds to quickswap to an item. Enemies only occasionally feeling like bullet sponges but otherwise featuring mechanics that make you feel like you know the right approach to tackle them or dodge their attacks.\n\nLate game, the game replaces enemy variety with health and damage scaling. This makes enemies bullet sponges, where you're forced to blast Splicers with multiple shotgun rounds at point-blank range. Pistol and machine gun are worthless.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The atmosphere is gripping. I'm frequently jumpscared by my own volition with the enemies stalking around. The graphics in the remastered are perfect: it's detailed yet with its own style that feels like it could have been released in 2020. I love the sound designs, particularly in the enemy dialogues that give a sense of their despair while also clueing you into exactly where they are.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The camera is a perfect example of Bioshock's streamlining to its benefit over System Shock 2. It retains the core idea of putting effort into mastering individual enemy types. And it removes the tedious element of managing an inventory of chemicals of corpse items. Instead, it builds on the core FPS mechanic of shooting, encouraging you to use the camera during action rather than as a separate activity.\n+ Double usage of plasmids for both combat and environment interaction.\n+ Gene banks are great balance between being able to swap out tonics on the fly and having a fixed build in a single playthrough.\n+ Levels have a Little Sisters counter.\n+ Monster infighting between Big Daddies and Slicers.\n+ Aside from the negligible ADAM/Tonic missables with the Save or Harvest Little Sisters choice, there are few missables in the game. The one exception is not killing Sander Cohen to get a Power to the People machine.\n+ I enjoy the hacking minigame. Perfect level of difficulty.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Enemies respawn.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ No accessible menu to see the tonics you equipped or your research level.\n+ Collecting junk items to turn into items in the U-Invent. Did not make a big enough impact in the game. I do like that you can craft not only the rare ammo types but also certain Tonics.\n+ No native borderless support. Fortunately, windowed mode with Borderless Gaming works.\n+ While I enjoy the weapon variety, it's not true weapon variety in encouraging a specific approach for a specific enemy. The pistol and machine gun simply become too weak later in the game, where you rely on close-range Shotgun (of which the 4 max clip isn't enough by Point Prometheus), AOE Chemical Thrower, headshot Crossbows.\n+ Hilarious, I learned from the keybind screen that you can toggle zoom (aim down sights). Hip-fire accuracy isn't actually any lower so there's no real reason to use sights.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.playstationtrophies.org/forum/topic/282669-gatherers-garden-guide-spending-adam\n\nI played the remastered version in BioShock Remastered (2016) on PC. I chose to save the Little Sisters. This makes the beginning more challenging (requiring better gameplay to learn) while giving better rewards in the long run: [the difference in Adam is negligible as you can still buy everything, while you get unique unpurchaseable plasmids from saving](https://bioshock.fandom.com/wiki/Little_Sister_Gift). Otherwise I played blind and on Hard difficulty. This is one step below the hardest (Survivor). I used default keybinds except rebound Equip Weapon 7 (Chemical Thrower) and Equip Weapon 8 (Crossbow) to Q/Z.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bioshock--1"},{"id":"322682678650370636","title":"Black Mesa","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":870,"platforms":["Linux","PC"],"studios":["Crowbar Collective"],"publishers":["Crowbar Collective"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-11-17","completedDate":"2020-11-22","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Half-Life is a staple in cinematic linear FPS, combining elements of survival horror, action, and environment action unlike that of any other FPS title. It makes leaps in storytelling in video game history, going beyond prior titles like Unreal, Quake II, and Shadow Warrior, and released around the time of System Shock 2, Deus Ex, and Silent Hill. The core gameplay is also excellent in its level design encouraging exploration, enemy variety each with distinct roles encouraging different weapon usage, and environment variety. Development-wise, Valve's focus on open-source code and engines have also paved the way for titles like Counter-Strike and Team Fortress. As a remake, I don't know what really changed, but it's obvious that Black Mesa's significant overhauling of the Xen four chapters was an improvement. Xen is Half-Life's equivalent of Dark Souls' Lost Izalith. Xen is still Black Mesa's worst part of the game, particularly Interloper.\n\nFlaw-wise, there's little even when playing and evaluating the game without its historical origins. Game relies on manual saving moreso than checkpoints. Enemy AI is wonky, particularly HECU who have auto-aim and with the lack of stealth. Some controls are dated.\n\n__Story.__ Story holds up in 2020. As a Ph.D. myself, I find the trope of geniuses gone wrong still works well here. Loading screens are abrupt in freezing the screen.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The game is part survival horror (just as the game was figuring out its genre elements with smashes like Resident Evil and Silent Hill), part FPS action-adventure, and part puzzle-solving with environmental interaction and exploration. Solid core FPS, with exploration for ammunition and weapons within linear areas. Light physics environment interaction is revolutionary, enabling more varied approaches to progress in level and solve some light puzzles. Excellent enemy variety.\n\nControls are simple and intuitive. I'm pleasantly surprised just how much of the controls haven't changed much since then, showing Half-Life was really at the peak of where the FPS genre solidified. For example, Doom was still earlier in the stages without even mouselook until years later. My only nits are the weapon selection in pressing a button to select a weapon type (e.g., medium weapon) followed by the specific weapon (e.g., Assault Rifle). There's too many choices here. I'd prefer Call of Duty's approach of limiting a select number of weapon carries and forcing you to choose which ones to keep around, or Doom's approach of keeping the full variety but distinguishing the role of each item. Long jump system is also weird in that thjere's a meter you must explicitly monitor.\n\nThe overhauling of Xen in graphical fidelity is great, and I loved roughly the first two hours with the game treated much like a survival horror. Hours, my patience started to run in as the facility (Interloper chapter) especially just felt extremely tedious to find where to go next. Xen feels closer to a DLC/expansion standalone rather than the final chapters of a game, where you would wish it would end already.\n\nWeapons feature enough variety and serve core purposes, each with a primary and secondary style to their attack. The crowbar is perhaps the pinnacle representation of Half-Life in its use as both a powerful infinite melee attack and in destroying obstacles in the way. This is also one of the first games with environment-based weapons, i.e., turrets.\n\nHealth system uses the Doom approach of 100 max health, 100 max armor. There are First Aid stations that allow to heal up to a limit, adding to the feeling of finite health.\n\nDeath penalty and save system is reliant on auto saves and manual saves. Like many PC games at the time, Half-Life is designed with quicksaves in mind as the autosaves are too infrequently to rely solely on.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Remembering brief scenes particularly in the beginning of the game, I'm astounded by the increased resolution, lighting, and soundtrack. I don't know what artistic differences there are from the original game, but Black Mesa is truly a modern rerelease in terms of polygon count and graphics polish. The graphics show visible age in 2020 rather than 10 years ago. The soundtrack is particularly impressive. Some areas are more visually upgraded than others, leading to a weird inconsistency sometimes. It has voice acting!\n\nThe environment variety is quite impressive for its time. Facilities (across many different parts, from the scientific research areas to partially sunken areas to recycling), New Mexico outdoors, Lambda facility, Alien outerworld. Xen is especially a marvel in artistic flair, clearly taking on an aquatic inspiration. I love its integration of human settlement assets early in the levels, showing a progression of where the Black Mesa Research Facility had already explored until later where you've gone where no man has before.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Unlike any other game, all cutscenes are rendered in-game. This was done at the same time as Metal Gear Solid (1998).\n+ Black Mesa has quality-of-life game options like Always Run (otherwise you would hold Sprint) and Fast Weapon Switch (you don't have to use the archaic system of selecting a weapon with your hotkey, then pressing the mouse button to swap to it).\n+ All the NPC side companions you bring along in the beginning of the game for a brief amount of time. Whether you save them or have them die is purely for amusement.\n+ Monsters vs human NPC fighting. I love the feeling of pick off a side so that both forces end up being greatly demolished.\n+ Unlike a linear FPS like DOOM (2016), the game doesn't really have the feeling of synthetic \"arena\" fights. There is some artificial enemy spawning, but the levels mostly feel more natural as enemies already appearing, and you encountering them as you progress.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Black Mesa's human enemies HECU have perfect aim, which can be frustrating.\n+ Like most old FPS games, projectiles like frag grenades are treated like any other weapon and therefore a bit of a drag to use.\n+ You wouldn't expect advanced AI in a game this old. But it would be nice to at least enable some stealth option. They just immediately detect you so there's little no element of surprise.\n+ There was a frustrating jump pad that I couldn't get to land onto a tree path, even after watching a walkthrough to precisely land the jump. Not sure if bug. I just enabled noclip to fly onto it.\n+ The facility platforming area in Xen after you beat the Gonarch is so tedious. Had to resort to a walkthrough as the pathing often is arbitrary.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI first tried this game in October 2012 and did not get very far. Playing it again, I initially tried Black Mesa difficulty (the Normal equivalent in the original Half-Life). Challenging FPS combat is not necessarily Half-Life's strong suit, and so I simply chose for what I expect to be the most balanced and developed difficulty level. However, as I started to fight HECUs, I found the duck and shoot, savescum if you lose too much health, approach to be too overbearing for enemies like marines so I just kept it on Normal (equiavlent to Half-Life's Easy). Playing this game in 2020, I'm evaluating the game by itself, not in contrast to Half-Life 1 which I barely remember having played it more than a decade ago as a kid. I played blind, only resorting to a walkthrough whenever I get lost.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/black-mesa"},{"id":"327894313070494273","title":"Blood","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["PC","DOS"],"studios":["Monolith Productions"],"publishers":["GT Interactive Software"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2021-02-12","completedDate":"2021-02-13","updatedDate":"2022-04-07","notes":"Blood reigns as one of the best classic FPS games (also known as retro shooter or boomter shooter). Blood perfectly captures cultish atmosphere and setting, unique weaponry, enemies, some of the best level designs of all time (e.g., train level, carnival level), core controls, and a well-designed difficulty. Released in 1997, Blood is at the pinnacle of the classic FPS with controls such as freelook, jump, and crouch, prior to the trend in following Quake (1996). It stands among the holy trinity of Build Engine games—alongside Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior.\n\nBlood's flaws are: inverted difficulty curve and the occasionally confusing level progression (albeit less in Blood of all retro shooters). Cultists with Tommy Guns are a badly designed enemy, perhaps the worst hitscan enemy of all time. They have <0.1s reaction time, where you can get hit faster than shooting into a corner when you already know they're there or even with savescumming and prefiring.\n\n__Story.__ The protagonist isn't silent, with a forboding narration adding to the game. The environments define a unique cult hurror. Blood defines atmosphere in a way no other shooter of its generation does.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Core Doom-like gameplay but with unique weaponry, enemies, and gothic level design.\n\nThe game oozes atmosphere, and the levels are among the best of the genre with realism and enemy placement. I greatly prefer the natural placement of buildings and doors, making for intuitive navigation, than the artificial placement of assets in Doom/Heretic levels. Maybe it was the difficulty I was playing, but I greatly enjoyed not having to micromanage my ammo outside of the first one or two levels in an episode.\n\nThe weapon arsenal is particularly memorable such as the Dynamite Bundle, Sawed-off Shotgun, Pitchfork, and Aersol Can. Like other games at the time, there's both a primary and secondary fire.  I greatly enjoyed the weapon kit and try to use all guns so as to maximize ammo efficiency:\n\n+ Dynamite Bundle: A core weapon for AOE damage rather than as a side weapon like most other titles (in the form of a limited ammo grenade). Dynamite Bundle is particularly good for corner peeking and then bouncing off the corner to get enemies out of line of sight. Or peeking in a body of water, getting all the enemies to come at you, then popping up on the surface to throw a dynamite underneath.\n+ Sawed-Off Shotgun: Short range.\n+ Tommy Gun: Medium range.\n+ Flare Gun: Lights enemies on fire who take damage over time. For use to conserve ammo on weak enemies where you can kite them and wait until they die.\n+ Napalm Launcher, Tesla Cannon, Voodoo Doll: single target DPS. Napalm Launcher is also a faster alternative to AOE than Dynamite Bundle.\n+ Aersol Can, Proximity Detonator, Remote Detonator: I only used these when nearing out of ammo on other weapons. They have situational usage for AOE.\n\nThe game is notoriously difficult. Normal difficulty is the equivalent of Doom (1993)'s Ultra-Violence. Weirdly, the difficulty curve is inverted with the first level being the hardest, where health pickups and ammo are always limited, and you find yourself using the Pitchfork often. For newcomers, learning how to use the Dynamite Bundle and fight hitscan enemies are the hurdle. Hitscan enemies are particularly difficult, encouraging a cautious, corner-peeking playstyle. I enjoyed the mechanics to defeat them: crouch to throw off their aim (which is a nice mechanic as crouch is often just for navigation in these games); strafe, which is faster than they can turn; stunlock them using the Tommy Gun to infinitely stagger; or have them follow you around a corner. I found myself savescumming less in this game (although I still did, due to occasionally ridiculous enemy placement or ambush).\n\nLike other Doom/Quake games, the sandbox levels can lead to sometimes confusingly oriented navigation. I ran into this the least in Blood compared to others, but still found several unintuitive in Episode 3 (e.g., hitting the vertical lever, or the arbitrary permutation to unlock the 3-lighted door, in E3M6).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Great art style to define the cultish horror. Animations for weapons and general sound effects like enemies dying are solid. Caleb's maniacal laugh. I especially love hearing it when you interact with various things or blow up a bunch of enemies with your dynamite. Destructible environments. Or seeing enemies burn. The pre-rendered 3D models in the cutscenes age poorly. Music is serviceable but not memorable.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ No mouse smoothing. Unlike other Build Engine remakes (namely, Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior's), Blood: Fresh Supply has an option to turn it off. I find this essential for precise aim, where slight movements to your mouse otherwise translate to no crosshair movement.\n+ Powerup is akimbo guns. Must be one of the earliest adoptions in a video game.\n+ Innocent NPCs in the levels.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The item inventory with, e.g., Doctor's Bag. I found managing the item inventory needless and prefer classic FPS games without one.\n+ There are three types of armor, each providing resistance to different enemy damage. I found this unnecessarily complicated.\n+ The Aersol Can's unique design and mechanics are great. However, it's not very viable, with the best role as short range AOE but is worse than the Sawed-Off Shotgun which also benefits from stagger. I only really use it for AOEing down the rodents.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Cheat codes](https://www.blood-wiki.org/index.php/Cheat_Codes)\n+ [Steam basic guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1737338388)\n\nThis entry does not include the expansion packs. I played the Blood: Fresh Supply (2019) edition. I played on normal (Lightly Broiled). Blood has a notorious difficulty over other classic FPS, and with quite a few hitscan enemies that encourage peeking. I found myself playing conservatively with movement and ammo, and savescumming, which was not enjoyable. Fortunately, this was only a major problem in the first two levels where you're not well-equipped in either weapons, ammo, or armor. Like other classic FPS, I rebinded 6-0. 6 is Grenade (G) and QR have defaults of navigating item inventory; so for 7-0, I did ZXCV.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/blood"},{"id":"322682678652473932","title":"Bloodborne","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":2040,"platforms":["PS4"],"studios":["FromSoftware","Japan Studio"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-03-15","completedDate":"2019-03-22","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Bloodborne stands out among its spiritual predecessors with its unique gothic horror theme, enriched with its own lore, rich environments, and a variety of excellent level designs and enemies suited to its theme. Gameplay-wise, Bloodborne shines most in its aggressive style---with a larger emphasis on sidesteps, parries, and rolls rather than shielding and timing enemy attacks. It sets the precedent for Dark Souls III but continues even further in aggressivity via its firearm-parrying mechanics, no blocking, and rally. Personally, I prefer Dark Souls and Nioh mechanics with the less aggressive playstyle. However, after adjusting for Bloodborne, I certainly very much appreciate the style. The game really makes you learn how to parry, especially for huge-health enemies with slow attacks like Executioners where it would be impractical to widdle down their health with normal attacks.\n\nUnfortunately, Bloodborne's major flaw is that it shares Demon's Souls-like mechanics as an exercise in tedium: required farming due to the Blood Vial and Quicksilver Bullet replenishment system, a hub that must be teleported to for any leveling/respawning of enemies without any middle-zone checkpoints, and long load times. Weapon and armor variety is also lacking, and NPC sidequests are forgettable. In addition, Bloodborne suffers from many typical Souls flaws: contrived side quest pathing, occasionally lengthy runbacks to bosses, and the upgrade system requires commiting to a specific weapon or otherwise tedious farming.\n\n__Story.__ Excellent minimalism as always. I especially love the world-changing dynamic upon killing Rom, and how Cathedral Ward changes after killing Vicar Amelia. NPC sidequests are lacking unfortunately though compared to other Souls games, where the characters are iconic.\n\n__Combat/Gameplay__. Uniquely, Bloodborne has several aspects distinguishing itself from other FromSoftware games: most notably, trick weapons, no blocking, rally, and a non-replenishible healing consumable. See discussion in details below.\n\nBloodborne inherits much from Dark Souls which I enjoy, e.g., strong/weak attacks, falling attack, jump attack, backstab, death, checkpoints, player messages on the ground, weapon variety and viability. Overall, what I really like about Souls games (and Bloodborne included) is its emphasis on combat mechanics. I suffered brutally in Central Yharnam against the villager mobs, Executioners, and Father Gascoigne. Then I adapted to the aggressivity and learning the movesets to calmly pace my action.\n\nLevel-wise, I especially love Central Yharnam which feels like a real town (IMO, even better than Dark Souls III's Undead Parish); Hemwick Channel Lane which is maddening in its excellent use of lighting; Cainhurst Castle for its derelicht medieval feeling; Upper Cathedral Ward for its perfect ensemble of lighting, horror music, and enemy sounds.\n\n__Aesthetics/Sound__. Environments are gorgeous. Enemy varieties are all haunting. Boss designs are decent---can occasionally be your generic beast trope however as is common in the Souls series.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Simplicity of stats: vitality, endurance, strength/skill/bloodtinge/arcane. I would personally do without bloodtinge to simplify further, as it's specific to firearms and 3 particular weapons. I do understand however that this removes build variety and therefore replayability, similar to Bloodborne's lack of weapon and armor variety.\n+ Trick weapons enable more weapon moveset variety and is better in my opinion than Dark Souls 3's approach of Weapon Arts, which introduces yet a third bar to manage (Focus bar). I also think it's better than Nioh's stances, which is too complex over the Trick Weapon's bimodal nature.\n+ Parry via shooting firearm followed by visceral attack (riposte). I love that parry is part of timing an offensive attack, and not like Dark Souls which requires a passive shield movement.\n+ Rally which offers health replenishment via an aggressive risk/reward mechanic of attacking immediately back. It most reminds me of Nioh's Ki Pulse, which is a similar risk/reward tactic for staying close to the enemy and being aggressive, reducing the time window when they'll attack so you can successfully dodge away.\n+ There are still some illusory walls, which requires looking up but fortunately only in Chalice Dungeons.\n+ The werewolf in the beginning and dying is a nice callback to Demon's Souls tutorial boss. Same goes with The One Reborn following the concept of Demon Souls' Tower Knight.\n+ Scurrying Beasts don't have as ridiculous hitboxes as Crystal Lizards, and can vary in size.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ No equipment or item weight.\n+ No blocking/guarding.\n+ Backstabs require a long windup. This makes them infeasible for combat outside of sneaking up on enemies.\n+ Lamps often form more as a hub point similar to Demon's Souls rather than than as checkpoints across a zone similar to Dark Souls' bonfires. This can make badly designed levels a trudge to go through. On the other hand, it forces better level design as the player only ever spawns from select locations.\n+ Blood Echoes are often taken by a nearby enemy; unlike in Dark Souls, you don't typically just pick them up from your corpse. This means you can't run through enemies to get your corpse, or trial it out with a tough enemy over many instances.\n+ Icons are in color palette with the environment unlike Dark Souls; for example, messages are not orange and Wandering Madnesses are not sparkly and blue like Crystal Lyzards.\n+ Bloodtapping to quickly gain Quicksilver Bullets at the cost of health.\n+ Unlike Dark Souls, there's only one item shortcut, on top of the healing consumable shortcut.\n+ Convenants. They're wearable to easily swap, which ultimately Dark Souls III did too.\n+ Caryll Runes serve as the passive stat boost analogous to the Estus Flask Shard and Sublime Bone Dust of Dark Souls.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Healing consumable (Blood Vial) must be farmed and only restock after death from farmed Blood Vials in your storage. Same holds for Quicksilver Bullets. I greatly prefer the Dark Souls approach which prescribes a fixed number of Estus Flasks; this essentially determines the difficulty as otherwise just farming and using 20 Blood Vials per boss makes encounters significantly easier. This combined with long load times and occasionally long runbacks to bosses make fighting them extremely frustrating. To alleviate this major game flaw, I back up my save state to a USB/Online (which has all the Blood Vials/Quicksilver Bullets); then I restore the backup if I fail. At the least, it avoids having to farm all over again.\n+ Chalice dungeons are monotonous and root versions especially not worth playing. Chalice dungeons replicate too many assets to not have nearly as much atmosphere and be diverse as real levels. They are exercises in tedium because the layout and enemies are predictable (particularly Depths 1-3). This style of loot-grindy gameplay fits an action RPG like Diablo where procedurally generated rogue-like maps is the purpose. Here, however, it significantly deviates from Bloodborne's artistic and singular direction. If it were purely for the endgame, then forcing players to go through the first deleveled zones  is especially annoying.\n+ Must travel to Hunter's Dream for leveling, going to different zones, or respawning enemies for farming. This combined with the need to farm (e.g., due to nonreplenishible Blood Vials) makes the game feel tedious.\n+ Insight as a second currency, and of a finite amount in each playthrough. Not only are there still missable items/side quests in this game, you can lose out on permanent Insight from Brainsuckers.\n+ Unlike Dark Souls 2+, there is no respeccing.\n+ Blood gems as an additional upgrade option to weapons. That's fine in and of itself, but the RNG mechanics in getting the right one, and the fact that only +% physical damage is useful, makes blood gems a pain to use.\n+ Coop requires using 1 Insight, which is a very limited-quantity item and essentially discourages its use for most scenarios.\n+ Long load times, including after dying.\n+ Times for running back to bosses can be long.\n+ Unlike Dark Souls 2+, you enter New Game Plus immediately after completing the game.\n+ Weapons have durability and must be repaired. It just feels tedious particularly as there is no blacksmith lore unlike Dark Souls. While simplifying too much can detrimentally make a game too streamlined off its RPG elements, I find weapon durability to be a poor mix as one may as well also include armor durability.\n+ No armor is really upgraded over the game. I used the Hunter set from beginning to end of the game as nothing ever beat its defensive attributes.\n+ Winter Lanterns are a broken enemy. Accumulating Frenzy even after you kill them is extremely annoying.\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://bloodborne.wiki.fextralife.com\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/bloodborne\n+ https://zkjellberg.github.io/bloodborne-cheat-sheet/\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/bloodborne/comments/3u5pdq/beginner_quality_build/\n+ lore videos from vaati vidya, itself basically copying the community-favorite Paleblood Hunt | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjWOy6ioVHI\n+ videogamedunkey | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSOuLJtDRFA\n\nI purchased a PS4 specifically for this game. (That said, there are quite a few other exclusives that I can now play given that I'm purchasing the PS4: Uncharted Trilogy+Uncharted 4; The Last of Us; God of War; Spider Man; Last Guardian; Horizon Zero Dawn; Ratchet and Clank; Shadow of the Tomb Raider; Red Dead Redemption 2; Spyro Reignited Trilogy; Batman Arkham remastered; Assassin's Creed II trilogy remastered;.) Given emulation standards for PS3 which only recently had a breakthrough in 2017, it’s unlikely we’ll see progress for PS4 until, say, 2025. In contrast, Xbox One has literally zero exclusives that I want to play; and I can get a Nintendo Switch for their exclusives later too. The only other option is PS Now, which has more limited features and can be unacceptable in bandwidth/input lag; at best, it's only a PS4 engine streamed to PC.\n\nMy total playtime according to Bloodborne is 24 hours, beating the base game in 24 hours (does not include DLC or last part of Hunter's Dream). (Note this omits hours I played to attempt boss encounters as I reloaded the game state for every boss.) I chose Military Veteran as my Origin as it allocated least stats to Bloodtinge and Arcane, Threaded Cane, and Hunter Pistol. I went for a quality build in order to utilize both Strength and Skill weapons, allocating enough Vitality/Endurance in the beginning before I could be a bit more flexible in allocations across the 4 stats. I completed all chalice dungeons and encountered only a subset of the bosses.\n\ntodos\n\n+ missed completing eileen the crow's questline; young girl and older sister\n+ all runes\n+ all messenger items\n+ use insight to purchase all armor sets and blood rocks\n+ graveguard set?","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bloodborne"},{"id":"322682678650435148","title":"Borderlands 2","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":1800,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Linux","Android","PC","Mac","Vita","X360","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"publishers":["2K Games","Sony Computer Entertainment of America","Aspyr Media"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2020-05-30","completedDate":"2020-06-08","updatedDate":"2022-03-29","notes":"Borderlands 2 is where Borderlands really defines its staples. Solid core FPS gameplay. Looting and RPG mechanics (with pistols surprisingly being top tier).  Fantastic enemy designs, both in distinctive mechanics and enemy variety. Diversity teetering on the line of SJW and cringe humor, and with colors and cel-shaded art style to enhance that. Fantastic endgame. Quirky but underdeveloped characters. Fun but shallow vault-hunting story.\n\nThere are a few flaws. First, BL2 pads its endgame content too much, dragging out it under three playthroughs and OP levels, which are unbalanced and simply scale health and damage. I enjoy BL2 but not the endgame that hardcore fans spend hundreds of hours on. Second, the storytelling doesn't go quite as much depth as western RPGs like Bethesda games do. Third, the BL series' bosses leave much to be desired: they do not have movesets that can be properly avoided given timing (e.g., nonhitscan attacks, aggressive melee and timed dodges); too many attacks are unavoidable, nor are there countering mechanics. Side missions are stale. The whole series also does little beyond the linear fetch quest structure and it's really the core gameplay loop with looter shooter progression that draws you in to compensate.\n\n__Story.__ The story is fleshed out for the better, with more involvement of the characters. It's not so overbearing or cinematic, keeping the gameplay still at the center. I love the revisiting of all the major characters of BL1, including playable characters like Lilith. Handsome Jack is a more engaging villain than Dr. Steele who appear only a few times. Tiny Tina is the embodiment of the change BL2 takes from BL1, moving from psyochtic crazy to lolsorandom and meme crazy.\n\n__Gameplay.__ BL2 clearly plays like a more refined BL1. This is most noticeable in its level design which is significantly more diverse than BL1, incorporating winter tundras, grasslands, interiors, corporate buildings, and wastelands. Missions are also more diverse in terms of tasks (including new overall types such as escorts, NPC coop, and failable missions), and dynamic in how they change as you make progress and offer reward choices. Even side missions can offer engaging storylines which make them fun to play just for them (see this top 10 list for example; no BL1 side missions come close https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwK1q0OA2uo).\n\nGear includes more statistics including elemental damage and chance, and more mechanics. Elemental weapons are now viable (in fact, necessary at endgame). Grenade mods also have more variety making them viable endgame. Shield mods include absorption, roid, and amp damage. Weapon parts are now distinguished by manufacturer, which enables even more gear optimization. When purchasing items, the compare menu is a huge quality of life. The elemental system with Fire for flesh, Shock for shield, Corrosive for armored enemies, and Slag to boost non-Slag atttacks is a great separation.\n\nEndgame content goes further than BL1. I enjoy the added complexity and item variety, but ultimately it goes a little too far. 100% completion includes max level and OP level, gear, SDUs, and cosmetics. TVHM (Playthrough 2) involves new enemies and UVHM involves unique loot (e.g., Bone of the Ancients, Pearlescent rarity). There are also many more side missions to finish, DLCs, OP levels, and raid bosses. BL2 also introduces UVHM (Playthrough 3) which starts level scaled and can be arbitrarily reset at any point. As a challenge mode, UVHM forces you to use the limits of the game (e.g., slag and Grog Nozzle for healing). Unfortunately, OP levels are poorly implemented and add to unnecessary level inflation: you should not need to complete 2-3 playthroughs, grind to level 80, and then grind 10 more Overpower levels to get max gear. OP levels would be better if they didn't offer better gear while still providing the challenge content, and like Borderlands 3, UVHM's features should replace TVHM. [OP levels are also not balanced](https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands/comments/2ncrj2/did_you_think_overpower_levels_was_a_good_idea/cmcwceq). Finally, [BL2's endgame loot grinding lacks as an action RPG](https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands/comments/1n103l/is_anyone_else_kinda_disappointed_with_bl2_endgame/ccejwpu/), based on farming chests and bosses for legendary gear with static stats: there is no incentive to fight mobs similar to Diablo 2's magic find system as the approach for dropping gear; and legendaries do not have RNG modifiers\n\nProgression is mostly the same as BL1. The new Badass Rank system replaces weapon proficiencies, which is independent of the weapon type and applies to all characters in your profile, based on completed challenges rather than BL1's approach of rewarding XP. The Black Market with Eridium currency replaces Claptrap rescue missions as a way to get backpack SDUs and ammo shops' inventory as a way to get ammo SDUs. I think this approach is a significantly better method to max out SDUs than the potential missables that Claptrap rescue missions are. In addition to a bank being core to the game from BL1's DLC, Claptrap's stash also allows you to store items to transfer across characters. However, it diminishes the value of cash as there's no use outside of restocking on ammo and the rare vendor purchase. It would be better if these two currencies just combined.\n\nCore controls and HUD are the same as BL1 and operate just as smoothly. First time series has a minimap. You can now operate ladders, and switch seats and honk in a vehicle. Vehicles feel more weighty, and they actually have survivability and sufficient DPS with their turret, not being too OP in running things over. Armored enemies have a yellow HP bar, meaning you can tell vulnerability from the three elements Fire, Corrosion, Shock by the color of the bar.\n\nBL2 introduces a hub, Sanctuary. I think this works significantly better than the barren towns of Fyrestone and New Haven in BL1, where NPCs barely served a purpose and the place was desolate. BL2 feels slightly more alive with NPCs offering quests, different shops open, and NPCs wandering around.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics look excellent for 2012; it ages well.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Only now on May 31 after completing BL1 and 7 hours into BL2 did I realize that loot chests don't require any payment to get the item. The price noted on them is the sell price.\n+ Claptrap's birthday party.\n+ Clan Wars: Zafords vs Hodunks. Nowhere near the story depth of Fallout games. But it's still hilarious how neither party suspects you started it all. I only wished they actually made the sides distinctive in development so selecting a side makes sense outside of reward incentives. I never completed the mission so I could farm both bosses.\n+ Face McShooty. Now this is BL humor I enjoy.\n+ The ridiculous DPS that Cloud Skill offers at level 22. It makes at the least all of NVHM a sudden cakewalk. That's fine for me as I want to zoom by NVHM as much as possible as I still have 2 more playthroughs, and the later the playthrough is, the better.\n+ Grooving to some of the excellent electric beat music like in Fink's Slaughterhouse or select areas of Captain Scarlett DLC. Putting music volume higher than sound effects and dialogue volume works really well. And playing Fink's Slaughterhouse arena with an SMG like it's Doom.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Unlike Borderlands 1, when class mods are attached, you can see their boost on skill levels in the skill tree.\n+ There are some outlet to spend all your money: slot machines for eridium; and tipping Moxxi. Neither is efficient in the long run for eridium/loot farming however.\n+ Upon respawn from death, you get more ammo.\n+ Bullets actually hit at the crosshair unlike in BL1 where it depends on the crosshair.\n+ Native 21:9 support. And FOV slider, which like BL1 I changed from the default of 90 to 110.\n+ Love that the opening sequence, including booting up HUD, is the same as BL1.\n+ BL1's on-use medkits no longer exist, which is good since they never worked well with the pacing anyways.\n+ Quests now offer you reward choices and optional bonus objectives.\n+ Minimap signals if you're on the wrong vertical dimension by signalling an up/down arrow when you're naer.\n+ NPC turrets are now as powerful and immediately lock onto you.\n+ The game explains more mechanics than in BL1, such as missions to teach you elemental types and E-tech guns.\n+ Rocket launchers are now viable DPS. They're in fact the best for obtaining Second Wind.\n+ Fast Travel list includes a geography map, providing a better sense that there's a world you're traversing.\n+ You can put missions on an ignore list. This makes it extremely easy to focus on just DLC quests in UVHM, ignoring all base story missions.\n+ Native 21:9 support.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Map is fog of war.\n+ Unlike BL1, fast travel locations are not preserved across playthroughs. I like that fog of war is at least, and that you do recover your fast travel spots if you enter the zone so you don't explicitly have to journey to specific spots.\n+ It's interesting playing this immediately after BL1. You can immediately tell that actions like reload speed and moving while aiming down sights feel weightier (slower) for the default weapon (assault rifle). It's not common to have a weapon take 3.6 seconds for reloading.\n+ Unlike BL1, you can't tell the distance to the mission objective.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Missions scale to the level that you accept them, not your current level. This is annoying in all 3 playthroughs: it forces you to wait until you beat the game before collecting them all, as otherwise unique mission rewards will not be max level.\n+ In the endgame, there's too much loot, where you often don't care about the green/blues because you don't need vendor money. A loot filter is a useful hotfix for this in ARPGs although the amount of loot isn't as bad as there. Ideally there's no need for all this loot though.\n+ Machine/repeater pistol, pistol, and revolvers are combined into one weapon type.\n+ The DLC may be great, but there's too many fucking DLC and microtransactions. I strongly prefer fewer and large expansions that seamlessly connect to the base game and improve the core experience.\n+ My game crashes whenever I go through The Man Who Would be Jack. In addition to the few checkpoints in the map, I've lost progress on Opportunity's side missions twice in NVHM and once in TVHM. Extremely frustrating.\n+ I don't like that in UVHM, you’re forced to slag everything. It halts the pacing.\n+ Timed missions. Kills pacing.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands2\n+ save editor | https://mentalmars.com/guides/borderlands-2-save-file-editor-by-gibbed/\n+ gibbed codes | https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1522748339\n+ maya top tier gear | https://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/t/top-gear-for-maya-the-siren/46185#grenade\n+ maya skill guide | https://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/t/ddd-guide-mayas-skills-for-dummies/466327\n+ maya endgame examples | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YWXaV2Axfk, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phAc4RXGEZ4\n+ weapon parts guide | https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands2/comments/4bhecw/infographics_for_weapon_parts_and_their_effects/\n+ manufacturers ranking | https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands/comments/8a3raq/borderlands_2_ultimate_ranking_of_gun/\n+ unique mission rewards, to save after level scaling is active | https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands/comments/1wsnks/tvhm_side_quest_help/cf51ezb/\n+ multiple bad touch per playthrough | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-Jlod49y7I\n\nI got the bundle with all DLC (Handsome Collection), including the Ultra HD Texture Pack released in 2019. This entry's evaluation does not include the main DLC (campaigns and headhunter packs; it does include updates such as new characters and the two arena DLCs). I completed NVHM in 22 hours at level 30; TVHM in a total of 44 hours; and UVHM never completely in the base game as it already scales (total as of 6/9/20 from Steam is 62 hours). Note Epic Games Launcher gave The Handsom Collection out for free in May 2020, but it doesn't come with the last DLC (Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary) and which isn't available yet on Epic Games Launcher.\n\nSimilar to BL1's ideal playthrough, I played the base game and left DLC until enemies always scale levels with you. Otherwise, you overlevel the main missions and don't enjoy the base game's side mission content. In BL2, unrestricted level scaling happens once you enter UVHM (Playthrough 3). Starting TVHM, I completed main missions, any side missions I did not already experience to level up, and DLC whenever I already experienced the available side missions. Starting UVHM, I grinded to max level of 80 and for loot, then completed remaining campaign DLCs, then raid bosses. I did not grind for OP level 10.\n\nFor classes, I chose Maya. Only two interested me in terms of action skills and specialization: Maya and Zer0. They have more unique action skills/specializations that differ from typical FPS games (Salvador reminds me of Wolfenstein; Krieg Doom; Axton and Gaige's passive ability is boring). I chose Maya as Zer0's playstyle is very much like Mordecai both in specialization and glass cannon (only a better action skill). I'd like to try a non-sniper or pistol weapon set (in particular, her gear bonuses on SMGs), an actual action skill, elemental weapons, and more survivability and movement speed. The possibility to make Maya have a fleet build for maximum movement speed also piques my interest. Maya's versatility on weapon sets in the early game lets me also experiment with all of them and complete Badass challenges. She also has a few other diverse and strong builds: Phaselock build; healing/coopbuild; and pure DPS build. With Maya, I looked at some guides to get a sense of good skills and worked my own route to experiment with them. For Eridium, I prioritized inventory space followed by my most used weapon types.\n\nMy favorite endgame build is aggressive and close-to-mid range. I build on the momentum of chaining kills for damage and health, using Phaselock on cooldown, Fleet-based, and Phaselock, Grog Nozzle, or Grenade for slag. I love Maya's SMG run and gun style; it feels hectic like Doom and Wolfenstein and not a cover shooter.\n\nBuild is here (https://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/t/slif-ones-fleeting-trickster-build/2717890, https://bl2skills.com/siren.html#055551250055055000103550510511, https://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/t/build-blurred-trickster-maya/98262). The weapon set is Fire Bitch (+Damage, Maliwan grip, Hyperion stock, Hyperion sights), Unkempt Harold (+Damage, Torgue grip, Torgue sight), Corrosive Conference Call, Grog Nozzle (+Fire Rate); and Norfleet, Fire/Shock/Corrosive Pimpernel, Shock Sand Hawk, Corrosive Butcher (+Pellets, Hyperion grip, Hyperion stock, Hyperion sight), Slagga (+Fire Rate, Bandit grip, Bandit stock), Alkaline Bee as backup. The shield is Rough Rider, the class mod is purple Blurred Trickster, the grenade mod is Slag Sticky Longbow Transfusion, and the relic is (typically Fire) Bone of the Ancients. I don't enjoy the Sand Hawk because it has slow bullet speed, is ammo inefficient, requires ADS, and does not encourage precise shots; Pimpernel because it encourages mid-long range due to low fire rate and scope. One issue with my build is that Unkempt Harold does by far the most DPS, and I tend to use it as a crutch for bullet sponge difficult areas. Even though I prefer their playstyles, the Bitch is inferior to Sand Hawk and Pimpernel, Conference Call is inferior to Interfacer, and Rough Rider/Blurred Trickster is a handicap over Bee/Legendary Cat. For bosses, I tend to switch to Bee and Pimpernel.\n\nFor grinding, I like the Snowman: you can do at the start of a playthrough, it's an easy cheese, and it's awesome levels as well as loot. I used Gibbed once I got to UVHM: only when I've already gone through the process required to loot a specific item (e.g., quest chain in previous playthroughs) and I want specific modifiers; I also used it to immediately go from 50 to 80 to avoid the XP grind (I still grind for eridium).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-2"},{"id":"322682678650437196","title":"Borderlands 2: Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":330,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","X360","XONE"],"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"publishers":["2K Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2020-06-07","completedDate":"2020-06-07","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Tiny Tina's DLC easily stands out for its engaging story. This is a meta storytelling joke I like: it's omniscient narrative over a Dungeons and Dragons style game, allowing the DLC to throw whatever at you for fun. Changing up bosses or NPCs at the flick of a switch. The characters are also revisited from the base game, but with a hilarious twist similar to having the Simpsons characters play others during Halloween episodes.\n\nTiny Tina is the only DLC that actually incentivized me to play all side missions (except for the Magic Circle of Slaughter and raid boss). I loved to see the variety in how the voice actors and quests take fun spins, and the actual engaging gameplay beyond fetch quests for mission objectives and mission progression. Like the Captain Scarlett DLC and unlike the Torgue and Hammerlock DLC, the side quests are also offered in conjunction with the main story, allowing you to complete them during your first visit rather than having to do a second visit to the area which is annoying. Some of my favorite side quests are here (MMORPGFPS, Lost Souls, Winter is a Bloody Business).\n\nNew enemies add so much more variety from skeletons to trees to knights to dragons. They're all great, although the dragon and mages can be too much of a bullet sponge (dragons in particular are not very engaging). New gear (e.g., Grog Nozzle). I like the pixie mechanic of non-aggressive that can be caught for buffs or turn aggressive.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ The opening cutscene is hilarious. Easily the best I've watched from the series' DLCs.\n\n+ MMORPGFPS and Lost Souls. Both a hilarious meta commentaries. Unlike Lost Souls, MMORPGFPS' actual quest completion is a pain though to complete specific requirements, especially if you rely on elemental damage like in UVHM and impossible with Cloud Kill.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ New vendor and resurrection messages add to the ironic fantasy spice.\n+ New to the series of distinctive (albeit generic) fantasy music. Adds more to the immersion!\n+ Pushing more on the running joke about Claptrap and opening closed doors.\n\nI played at level 80 in UVHM.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-2-tiny-tinas-assault-on-dragon-keep"},{"id":"322682678651388492","title":"Borderlands: The Secret Armory of General Knoxx","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"publishers":["2K Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2020-05-29","completedDate":"2020-05-29","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Easily the best DLC, Knoxx is the most packed: an increased level cap, new area with new NPCs, enemies, vehicles, and loot chests. Knoxx also has an interesting set of missions, more quirky characters involving for example Scooter, Moxxi, and Knoxx, and is quite challenging when you're the same level as the enemies. Unique to this DLC, Knoxx also introduces the legendary armory, opening 100 odd chests; and it has Borderlands 1's only raid boss Crawmerax.\n\nI hate that none of the DLCs have fast travel outside their initial point. It's also a shame that mission markers don't appear on the map---this must be a new feature to BL2 and not added across BL1 GOTY for the DLC.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-the-secret-armory-of-general-knoxx"},{"id":"322682678624164428","title":"Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["WiiU","GBA"],"studios":["Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Platform","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-07-16","completedDate":"2021-07-17","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Aria of Sorrow condenses and refines the ideas in SOTN. The core combat, exploration, and RPG elements are peak Castlevania. Aria of Sorrow stays challenging all the way through, and with a streamlined set of mechanics that all work well.\n\nFlaw-wise, my only gripe is that the combat with a limited player and enemy moveset and enemies don't make it as deep as titles that would come later (c.f. Hollow Knight and Dark Souls). Yet it ages well for such an old game. Soma as a character is also not nearly as interesting due to his generic high school shoe-in role without the legacy other characters have.\n\n__Story.__ There are more mini cutscenes than SOTN, and I think it works to the better as SOTN's story was surface thin. Here, the cutscenes (in addition to bosses) make you feel like you're progressing through the main story and without hampering any gameplay momentum.\n\n__Gameplay.__ All the polished and streamlining from SOTN is for the better. Instead of 8 equipment slots, sub weapons (including an extra meter of hearts to count), spells, familiars, and consumables, there are now just 3 equipment slots of weapon, armor, and accessory, and 3 power slots of two active and one passive. This makes the powers actually viable: for example, Bat provides an omnidirectional attack that's useful for low HP flying critters; Flying Armor lets you glide for jumping over slightly wider platform gaps. Aria of Sorrow also introduces a souls system where you collect monster souls.\n\nOn top of streamlining, Aria of Sorrow also includes several notable improvements. For example, weapons feature more variety in their movesets, where whip swords have an extendable range and broadswords do a vertical sweeping instead of the typical horizontal stab. A shop is readily accessible from the beginning. Boss areas are explicitly marked so you know whether to look for a Save Room before trekking in with low HP. Enemy variety remains excelletn as always and with only a handful of palette swaps.\n\nThe core controls remain the same with an attack (with different directions), jump, backdash, and map and menu button.\n\nCombat in Castlevania titles ages well as an engaging affair decades later. However, you can also appreciate just how much games like Dark Souls and Hollow Knight have advanced since then. In Castlevania, it's typically a strategy of attacking an enemy until they start their attack, then moving out of range until it's over with backdash or jump, then repeat. Strategy changes due to positioning and aiming. These improved titles introduce regular vs heavy attack, enemy stagger, parry and ripostes, dodging in any direction including through the enemy, Dark Souls' 3D letting you circle strafe, item usage which takes place in real-time which makes you vulnerable, Hollow Knight's downward swipe letting you attack and stay in the air, and with much more variety in both weapon and enemy movesets.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics are like a more colorful and lower resolution SOTN. The pixellation on all the menus for GBA doesn't age well, and I greatly prefer SOTN's graphics. It's also a shame there's no voice acting. The soundtrack is excellent.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Items can now be used (via menu) rather than equipped and then used. Unlike SOTN, this made me actually use them.\n+ Unlike Dark Souls and Hollow Knight, Aria of Sorrow has no lengthy corpse runs to boss fights.\n+ Unlike SOTN, it's always fairly easy to know where to go next with the newly gained ability.\n+ Castle entrance is designed in the same layout and enemies as SOTN.\n+ You can select the specific Warp Room to go to instead of cycling through them.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The game doesn't tell you the controls, similar to SOTN. It's easy to look up but annoying it's not embedded in the game.\n+ No Save Room next to a Warp Room. This makes Warp Rooms a slightly more tedious Save Room if you want to make the trek.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/castlevania-aria-of-sorrow"},{"id":"322682678624166476","title":"Castlevania: Symphony of the Night","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":510,"platforms":["PS3","Saturn","PS1","PSP","X360"],"studios":["Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Platform","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-07-11","completedDate":"2021-07-14","updatedDate":"2023-08-29","notes":"SOTN started the metroidvania genre, building tropes used in modern platformers, action-adventures, and metroidvanias. The art direction and sountrack is astounding. Moreover, played in 2021, the gameplay holds surprisingly well: combat is engaging with tight controls, enemies have unique and diverse designs, and levels encourage a decent amount of exploration.\n\nSOTN is [not without flaws](https://www.reddit.com/r/castlevania/comments/7s6cky/comment/dt2bxzf):\n\n1. SOTN has a poor difficulty curve largely because the RPG elements are imbalanced: in early game, every enemy can kill you and the gauntlet in Royal Chapel is a prime example, feeling difficult but fair; but by midgame, enemies will often do 1-10 HP damage while you've accumulated 150+ HP from leveling, equipment, and permanent upgrades.\n2. The inverted castle pads content with mostly redundant level design and bosses. Moreover, its traversal is tedious with the reliance on bat form to reach anywhere, and it's less interesting to explore since you already have all your powers.\n3. SOTN's level design can feature long stretched hallways that's particularly annoying for a game that encourages backtracking. Fortunately, the various shortcuts and warp rooms significantly reduce this tedium. 4. While there are many weapons, there is little difference among most weapons. Rather than weapon choice taking into account the moveset involved, all weapons have the same moveset and it’s more a question of choosing the weapon with highest stats.\n\n__Story.__ Storytelling overall is serviceable. The lore is cheesy, reminiscent of Fist of the North Stars and Jojo which must have influenced the Castlevania series. SOTN's story is also sparsely presented, where cutscenes only appear a handful of times to not interrupt gameplay.\n\n__Gameplay.__ SOTN introduced to the series (and the world) the metroidvania style: an open world with nonlinear navigation. It's a significant departure from the \"Classicvania\" games, which are relatively linear games broken into levels ending with bosses. As a metroidvania, SOTN features Save Rooms, an alternative to automatic saves after a linear sequence of Stages in the previous non-metroidvania Castlevania titles, and warp rooms as an approach to fast travel. Levels are designed well and encourage exploration, with an intuitive map to determine where you haven't yet treked. It can be occasionally confusing to know where to go next now that you've unlocked an item, but it's easily resolvable by more exploration or referencing a walkthrough.\n\nIn terms of combat, SOTN features more fluid combat than its predecessors with a backdash and downward kick. Alucard can also use Magic Spells activated with specific button combinations, learn skills after discovering relics (including creature transformations), and enlist Familiars as a companion. All these mechanics with sub weapons, spells, and familiars add a little too much bloat and weren't quite packaged cohesively (familiars have very rare use cases, and I never felt compelled to use spells). The enemy design and variety is excellent.\n\nIn terms of system mechanics, SOTN is the first in the series to introduce RPG elements: levels from experience points which boost stats and equipment. Weapon types feature some diversity among weapons, where a short hand may slightly trade off range and a 2H trades off defense. There is an overall lack of build variety compared to other games like Dark Souls, and where SOTN's replayability relies primarily on different progression routes you might take instead of changes to combat. Difficulty is surprisingly quite forgiving for such a classic game as by midgame you have plenty of HP and equipment upgrades relative to enemy stats, especially compared to early game where taking a single hit matters a lot.\n\nControls age well with a normal attack, crouch attack, and various ways to handle upwards attacks such as your sub weapon or jump attacks. The dash, core 3 meters of health, MP, and sub weapon candles, magic abilities all give a deep yet intuitive combat system. A simple map.\n\nPlaying this in 2021 for the first time, it's like a legacy Dark Souls in 2D. It has the same kind of character progression in stats. You trek to open areas, possibly going back to your Save Room to restore HP while enemies respawn. Every enemy is dangerous, and positioning is important. You find a new weapon and test its move set and damage. You fight a boss and memorize its attack patterns until you can do it perfectly in order to win. There's even secret walls that you hit for rewards.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The soundtrack is excellent. I'm always a fan of orchestral soundtracks, and SOTN's is iconic. The sprite graphics works well.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Some equipment like the Bloodstained Cloak are cosmetic. It actually affects your sprite, which is unheard of for PS1.\n+ Clock Tower has a hub where you pick up any sub-weapon.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You have to equip item consumables by going into the menu in order to use them.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Controls](https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Castlevania:_Symphony_of_the_Night/Controls)\n+ [Walkthrough](https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Castlevania:_Symphony_of_the_Night/Walkthrough), [Walkthrough Checklist](https://guides.gamercorner.net/sotn/walkthrough)\n+ [Map](https://www.finalfantasykingdom.net/sotnmaps.php)\n\n__Version.__ I played the [English patch v1.0](http://www.romhacking.net/translations/1427) of the PS1 Japanese release (ISO v1.2). The official English release suffers from a B-quality dub and script. I used the PS1 emulator: Mednafen with Beetle PSX HW (the RetroArch fork of Mednafen, which adds a GUI). For setting up Retroarch, see what I did for Tenchu: Stealth Assassins.\n\nI played the game mostly blind and without any emulator savescumming. However, I did use a walkthrough to know where to go next as I frequently found myself just wasting time wandering the unexplored zones on my map. I beat the game including the Inverted Castle but did not go for maximum completion: my rate was 183.7%.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/castlevania-symphony-of-the-night"},{"id":"322682678624177740","title":"Celeste","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["Stadia","PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Extremely OK Games"],"publishers":["Maddy Makes Games"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-05-11","completedDate":"2021-05-13","updatedDate":"2022-02-06","notes":"It's the solemn soundtrack and pixel art that really build up Celeste's atmosphere. This is coupled with tight platforming and a sufficiently descript story about angst with colorful characters. There is plenty variety in the platforming, art showcasting with its story, and things like the feather mini-game to all enhance the idea of coping and handling depression. Ultimately, the way the story interwaves with gameplay elements, like Madeline achieving the extra jump, is what truly elevates the game.\n\n__Story.__ The highly relatable story with its themes of depression and the whole journey being representative of it. It's particularly impressive how well the game blends these ideas into a platformer, not a genre that's known for its storytelling. The characters are also so charming.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core gameplay loop is like Super Meat Boy: an arsenal of handcrafted levels that are challenging but fair. And these levels all vary in design with new obstacles, mechanics, and settings. The open world level design particularly makes it unlike typical platformers. Bosses add further variety.\n\nAnother praiseworthy element of Celeste is how it handles difficulty. It works well for casual gamers while still remaining tough due its immediate checkpoints, and it has numerous side areas to collect Strawberries as well as B-worlds to offer further challenge content.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The pixel art ages well as do the character art in all the dialogue scenes, as well as the closing backgrounds for every chapter.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI only played up to Chapter 7. I didn't bother to backtrack for all the Crystal Hearts for Chapter 8, the B/C-side worlds, and the Chapter 9 DLC. That's useful content for a challenge replaythrough.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/celeste"},{"id":"322682678652524108","title":"Chrono Trigger","originalTitle":"クロノ・トリガー","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1995,"playtimeMinutes":1380,"platforms":["?"],"studios":["Square"],"publishers":["St. GIGA","Nintendo"],"genres":["Quiz/Trivia"],"startedDate":"2011-12-31","completedDate":"2011-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Love the game. It's clear that its lighthearted feel and fun gameplay innovations are its strength. Its basic characterization and story is an element to connect the gameplay. The game is so great simply because of the way it presents and ties everything together.\n\nQuoting a random GameFAQs guy in a forum, '...were these 'unique characteristics' really so unique that the characters were the best ever? Ayla's speech style had been done in another major Square game of the time... Gau in Final Fantasy 6 had a similar manner of speaking, and outside of videogames, so did Tarzan, a character well known for over a century. Robo was pretty cliche, the whole robot finding a friend and becoming more human had been done before. Isaac Asimov wrote a lot of stories involving human-like robots. The character's don't really stand out in any major way.\n\nAnd bingo, the gameplay is what made it so well known. And the graphics, some of the best on the SNES (those who think it is the best on the SNES... a Japan-only RPG called Tales of Phantasia would like to have a word with you). The soundtrack was catchy and accessible and very, very memorable, although I'd hesitate to call it one of the best videogame soundtracks ever (Earthbound, Final Fantasy VI, and Chrono Cross would like to have a word with you). Monster design was pretty good, although there were quite a few recycled sprites in there :p. Character design was great, even though the similarity to DragonBall characters was annoying, and the illustrations were really cool. It's a shame Toriyama doesn't draw like that all the time...'","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/chrono-trigger-character-library"},{"id":"c764c915-cdd6-4842-9d92-798e11b9d276","title":"Class of '09: The Re-Up","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["PC"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Indie"],"startedDate":"2023-11-16","completedDate":"2023-11-16","updatedDate":"2023-11-17","notes":"Watched Moonmoon's stream on 2023-11-26. Damn the writing is so good. Incredibly edge and yet so on-point in its critiques and hilarity. It also captures the 2009 vibes so well in its culture and various speech.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/class-of-09-the-re-up"},{"id":"322682678652548684","title":"Counter Strike: Source","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":4320,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Valve","Hidden Path Entertainment","Turtle Rock Studios"],"publishers":["Valve"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2023-09-05","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/counter-strike-source"},{"id":"322682678624198220","title":"Counter-Strike: Global Offensive","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":3300,"platforms":["PS3","Linux","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["Valve","Hidden Path Entertainment"],"publishers":["Valve"],"genres":["Shooter","Tactical"],"startedDate":"2021-03-04","completedDate":"2021-03-29","updatedDate":"2023-09-29","notes":"CSGO is a modern enhancement of CS. It emphasizes mechanics core to twitch shooting: low time to kill, positioning, intricate aim and movement complexity, and search and destroy as the competitive game mode.\n\nUnfortunately, it has:\n\n+ One of the most toxic communities (e.g., more than Overwatch, on par with League of Legends).\n+ The game can be rife with hacking as the Anti-Cheat system sucks, with only compromises to solve it (trust factor, Overwatch, VACnet, Prime Status).\n+ The economy system is a rich-gets-richer scheme, particularly for short matches of best of 16. You're often either the winner or the loser, and there's not much to enable catch-up.\n\n__Gameplay.__ CSGO is such a staple in defining key components to good gameplay: mechanics, teamwork, and game sense. It plays like Counter Strike with its dated movement and as a twitch shooter.\n\nThe aim, damage, and movement mechanics are simple but profoundly deep: low time to kill, 400% headshot damage and other limb damage multipliers, precise burst aim over spray shooting (and controlling for spray patterns), standing and movement decreases aim, slow reload time while reloading slows your movement speed, wall shot damage, movement sound, movement has acceleration, static health and armor, buy inventory, and gun damage tapers off over distance.\n\nThere's a lot of emergent mechanics from its core:\n\n+ Shooting\n  + The massive headshot damage encourages headshots as the primary target as it's the quickest time to kill.\n  + Different shooting patterns with tap, 2/3-burst, and spray depending on the range.\n  + Learning the spray pattern.\n+ Stance.\n  + Crouching is encouraged as a way to dodge headshots at high level play. It's useful for spraying or if you're standing for a longed period of time and they're shooting at you ([discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnCSGO/comments/a562z5/when_to_crouch_when_shooting/ebmdlox)).\n+ Movement.\n  + Equipped weapon affects movement speed, so using your knife makes you most fastest but also makes you vulnerable.\n  + You continue moving slightly after stopping. This lead to counterstrafing, which enables precise crosshairs at the exact moment of stopping during AD strafing.\n  + Strafe shooting makes you harder to hit by strafing, stopping to shoot, then strafing again.\n  + There are jumps in key locations that provide map shortcuts such as Mirage's mid bench to window and Mirage's vent hops.\n  + Movement speed encouraged the entire meta of bunny hopping in video games.\n+ Peeking.\n  + Pre-firing provides the fastest peek shots or for shooting through known corners during a smoke grenade or behind obstacle.\n  + Jiggle peek spams AD movement at a corner to enable select shots and make it harder to get shot.\n  + Wide peek denies enemies if they aimed at your corner, making it more difficult for them (if they already know where you are, wide peek is only effective if you know where they are; the search and movement of the crosshair adds too much time for a wide peek to be effective).\n  + Shoulder peek peaks only the shoulder in order to bait out a shot and know where they're at\n  + CSGO meta-wise gives peekers the advantage rather than campers.\n  + Distance from corners, shadows, and left vs right side have slight advantages.\n+ Sounds for movement, weapon switches, and grenades ([source](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/1z2qy5/can_enemies_hear_you_switch_weapons_to_knife))\n+ Smoke, incendiary, and flashbang grenades have important strategic usage to deny positions.\n\nSearch and destroy is the predominant game map. There aren't competitive modes outside search and destroy, and even casual mode is too casual, largely with imbalanced teams and bots---you can even switch teams. This is for good and bad as CSGO defines these simple core and forces you to master them to their limits to perform well. Team composition is also largely homogenous. The only variety is where your teammates take positions and what weapons they buy. There is no difference in health, damage stats, or abilities.\n\nCSGO features a community mode with custom maps, and there's quite a few that actually age quite well and remain highly played: surfing/bhopping maps; and training maps.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Looks like Counter-Strike but smoothened and newer models. Animations remain static.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ [1v1 warmup is a waste of time](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/mpqkrl/1v1_warmup_in_comp_is_terrible_why_isnt_this).\n+ It's more of a legacy feature that people have gotten accustomed to now that only a subset of the weapons are used at all. Most are not viable.\n+ Released prior to Overwatch, it misses the endorsement system and quick communication options to improve teamplay. They're there but not as prominent or fleshed out.\n+ Competitive matches typically last 60 minutes. I prefer Overwatch match lengths of roughly 30 minutes. You get sick of playing with the same people, particularly if there's negativity or a losing streak. Fortunately, this is addressed later with the \"short match\" feature.\n+ Casual mode is quite different from competitive in a number of ways: for example, 10 instead of 5 players on each team, refreshed armor and defusal kit every round, different economy, different timer. It also has no Overwatch, making hackers in casual not uncommon. Fortunately, this is addressed later with unranked competitive. How weird that casual mode still exists though.\n+ There is a soft cap of XP gain per week after which you get reduced week. One of many artificial incentives for regular engagement.\n+ Taking the silencer off any gun is never viable. It just reduces accuracy and reveals your shots.\n+ While you're placing, winning 2 matches puts you in a 24 hour competitive cooldown ([discussions](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/3v8h0d/needs_to_wait_before_playing_additional)). This is quite annoying with roughly 4 days in cooldown just to win your 10 matches to place. At least, it's a one time cost and it slows down smurfers and hackers who make new accounts.\n+ No option to permanently turn off \"all\" text chat. It serves no purpose and is almost exclusively used for toxicity against the opposing team. To turn it off, you have to set up a keybind for `ignoremsg` and configure its mode in every match.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [r/globaloffensive](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive)\n+ [r/learncsgo](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnCSGO)\n+ [csgostats.gg profile](https://csgostats.gg/player/76561198237203162)\n+ [Steam profile for competitive cooldown level](https://steamcommunity.com/id/nilmoe/gcpd/730?tab=matchmaking)\n+ Beginner essentials\n  + [r/learncsgo wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnCSGO/wiki)\n  + [Youtube: 3kliksphilip's CS:GO Basic Tutorial Series](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfwtcDG7LpxGeQUBNIQHTNsSBrjzi2jX0)\n  + [Youtube: CS:GO Movement Guide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGcgQEzCCrI)\n  + Counterstrafe progression: single tap against two points on a wall → single tap against single point on a wall → burst against single point on a wall (Recoil Master workshop) → against bots  → against bots peeking from corners (Aim Botz or Yprac workshop).\n  + Spray fire progression (Recoil Master workshop): 2 round burst fire → 3 round burst fire → until 5 round burst fire → full spray → adjust distance → adjust moving target. Aim for 100% hits and 90-95% head.\n+ Steam workshop maps\n  + [Steam Workshop: Aim Botz - Training](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=243702660)\n  + [Steam Workshop: Recoil Master - Spray Training](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=419404847)\n\n__Map: Mirage.__\n\n+ [Steam Workshop: Yprac Mirage Guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1222094548). Useful for practicing firing on peeking locations (with and without counter strafing) and to practice smoke and flash grenades.\n+ [Callouts](https://totalcsgo.com/callouts/mirage)\n+ [Bomb plant locations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy0EFB5KMcI)\n+ [Allen Hender's Setup playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLneOlB93ONJ8BTQGgwZ5RuTGigWGtwjqc)\n\nTop smoke grenades. The best throw locations are most relevant for advancing, are reliable with a tolerable margin of error, and have precise markers to pinpoint throw location and crosshair placement.\n\n+ T to middle\n  + Mid Window smoke from T spawn ([64-tick](https://www.csgonades.com/nades/mirage-smoke-snipers-nest-from-t-spawn), [discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/grt47i/legit_64tick_mirage_window_smoke_from_t_spawn))\n+ T to A\n  + A stairs smoke from T roof ([64-tick](https://www.csgonades.com/nades/mirage-smoke-stairs-from-t-roof))\n  + A CT smoke from T roof ([64-tick](https://www.csgonades.com/nades/smoke-ticket-from-ramp))\n  + A Jungle and Connector smoke from T roof ([64-tick](https://www.csgonades.com/nades/mirage-jungle-connector-smoke))\n  + A CT smoke from Tetris ([64-tick](https://www.csgonades.com/nades/smoke-ticket-from-tetris))\n+ T to B\n  + B right arches smoke from back alley ([64-tick](https://www.csgonades.com/nades/mirage-smoke-arches-from-back-alley))\n  + B left arches smoke from back alley ([64-tick](https://www.csgonades.com/nades/mirage-smoke-arches-from-back-alley-fbG))\n\nTop flashbang grenades.\n\n+ T to A\n  + A Ramp flash from ramp ([link](https://www.csgonades.com/nades/mirage-a-ramp-flash-2))\n  + A Palace flash from palace ([link](https://www.csgonades.com/nades/mirage-palace-flash-2))\n+ T to B\n  + B Apartment window flash from apartments ([link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiNGOgI5RGY))\n\nTop jumps.\n\n+ Mid to window. There's not a good video for this but contrary to the few there are, you don't actually need to strafe jump. Jump on the bench seat (not the top), then W straight aiming toward the step, then crouch jump.\n+ Nest to ladder room ([link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVLGhfDTKtk))\n+ Window vent hop ([link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CCjNFwgAIo))\n+ Window to cat ([link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz_IHs0MJrI))\n+ A site to palace ([link](https://youtu.be/B0pFmopmRJg?t=48))\n+ T roof to palace gate ([link](https://youtu.be/B0pFmopmRJg))\n\nOther smoke grenades.\n\n+ T to B\n  + B Plat smoke from back alley ([64-tick](https://www.csgonades.com/nades/mirage-b-plat-smoke))\n  + B Market window smoke from back alley ([64-tick](https://www.csgonades.com/nades/mirage-smoke-market-window-from-back-alley-H3z))\n\n__Playthrough.__ I picked up deathmatch and casual in 2021-03 but never got into competitive. In 2023-07, I got into competitive unranked and ranked.\n\nI played the various game modes roughly by tiers of learning.\n\n1. Deathmatch. Learn general aiming mechanics.\n2. Casual, focusing on specific map groups. Learn #1 including general movement and strategy. With the release of competitive unranked, casual is not a useful game mode to learn from. Its only benefit is shorter queue time, which is negligible.\n3. Competitive (unranked). Learn #2 including a specific map and competitive settings such as 5-players and armor economy.\n4. Competitive (ranked).\n  + I focus on short matches as it helps reduce the variance in: top and bottom fraggers, cheaters, smurfers, players leaving, morale and win/loss streaks, interruptions or having to leave the game.\n  + A variant is Faceit for 128-tick instead of 64 and a different ranked system. \n\nAfter around 20-30 hours, I swapped to 3 and 4 exclusively.\n\nMy general learning strategy:\n\n1. Basics of everything: movement, aiming, peeking, economy.\n2. Peek angles and peek strategy\n3. Smoke grenades\n4. Bomb plant locations\n5. Counterstrafing\n6. Spray fire\n7. Flash grenades\n\nBy the time I stopped playing (specifically, because the game upgraded to CS2 and ranks reset), I hovered between Silver Elite Master and Gold Nova 1.\n\n__Settings.__\n\n+ [Graphics settings for competitive play](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/1qxrw2/best_video_settings_to_see_enemies_clearer/cdhm2q4)\n+ Steam launch options:  `-novid -nojoy -noaafonts +exec autoexec.cfg` ([source](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=322206521))\n\nKeybinds.\n\n+ `autoexec.cfg` (e.g., [grenade binds](https://www.csgonades.com/blog/jumpthrow-bind), [crosshair generator](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/nhwybi/most_popular_crosshairs_in_csgo))\n\n```\nalias \"+jumpthrow\" \"+jump;-attack;-attack2\"\nalias \"-jumpthrow\" \"-jump\"\nbind \"t\" \"+jumpthrow\"\nbindtoggle m voice_enable\nbindtoggle n cl_mute_enemy_team\n\ncl_crosshairalpha \"255\"\ncl_crosshaircolor \"5\"\ncl_crosshaircolor_b \"50\"\ncl_crosshaircolor_r \"57\"\ncl_crosshaircolor_g \"250\"\ncl_crosshairdot \"0\"\ncl_crosshairgap \"-2\"\ncl_crosshairsize \"2\"\ncl_crosshairstyle \"4\"\ncl_crosshairusealpha \"1\"\ncl_crosshairthickness \"1\"\ncl_fixedcrosshairgap \"-2\"\ncl_crosshair_outlinethickness \"0\"\ncl_crosshair_drawoutline \"0\"\n```\n\nI tried bind on ignoremsg instead of cl_mute_enemy_team but it didn't work.\n\nI find \"run throw\" and \"run jump throw\" keybinds unreliable ([discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/6i8kuq/bind_run_jump_throw/dj4a51m)). So I do the running manually.\n\n+ ZXCV for HE Grenade, Flashbang, Smoke Grenade, and Molotov respectively.\n+ Mouse5 (upper left mouse button) for Use Mic.\n+ Mouse4 (lower left mouse button) for Chat Wheel 1. Main buttons used are Ping Site A, Ping Site B, Ping Middle, Yes, No.\n\nTODOs\n+ learn the jump from sniper's nest to cat\n+ master counterstrafing\n+ master peek routes from T to B and underpass to A. I can do T to A and T to mid well. But I consistently die to angles at these two.\n+ master spray\n+ master flash","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/counter-strike-global-offensive"},{"id":"322682678652551756","title":"Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PS1","PS3","PSP"],"studios":["Naughty Dog"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. (SCEI)","Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/crash-bandicoot-warped"},{"id":"322682678650389068","title":"Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Vicarious Visions"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-10-01","completedDate":"2020-10-03","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Crash Bandicoot is iconic. Creative level designs, diverse bosses, characters and art, surprisingly challenging (and mostly fair; especially Crash 1 being the most difficult), and minimal core controls. Crash 3 remains my favorite as the first I played in the series and which I still remember in 2020 trying to Gold relic certain levels and their soundtrack: Toad Village (though I remembered the first level across all three games), Orient Express, Area 51, High Time, scuba mission. I can see why the fan favorite is slightly more on Crash 2, which had the most innovations from entry to the next, had a great balance of difficulty and accessibility, and didn't suffer from too many vehicle missions. Depth perception with its fixed camera angle, the need for trial and error on some platforming (both of which are especially most comomn in Crash 1), and too many vehicle levels in Crash 3, are its flaws.\n\n__Story.__ Typically damsel in distress. The first game was the weirdest in having an almost sexualized girlfriend you were saving. Crash 2 and 3 were tamer in introducing Coco and further building on Neo Cortex.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The Crash trilogy stands out as a pinnacle of the 3D platforming genre just as it were transitioning from 2D with related games like Spyro and Super Mario 64. Levels feature excellent platforming with simple core controls and a short and sweet time to complete (roughly 2-3 minutes). In Crash 1, this is jump and spin. Because there are no movement speed moves, Crash 1 focuses most on precise platforming. Currency of fruits for lives that restart a level of checkpoints when run out is simple and works well. Aku is the only health shared across levels, along with lives, and it's minimal but a quality-of-life in the ability to assist for other levels: you don't feel this is overpowered or necessary in order to go through a level. Levels are diverse, with numerous platforming challenges. Time trial further adds replayability and challenge.\n\nCrash 2 introduces several core controls which feel like they should have been there all along: crouch (for high jump), slide as an attack and platforming move, ground pound, and some power-ups like Speedy Shoes. Platforming-wise, Crash 2 introduces the iconic Nitro box and the Nitro switch box, ice, different requirements for gems, surfing, secret warp rooms, underground mole movement. Crash 2 is also easier than Crash 1, without as many unfair platforming sections, while still remaining challenging.\n\nCrash 3 introduces a few power-ups as you progress such as double jump, longer spin, and fruit bazooka. It goes most ambitious of all games in diverse level designs with time travel as the theme: medieval, mesozoic era, egyptian, futuristic, 1950s. It also has more vehicles and introduces Coco as a playable character. Not many platforming changes: spinning crates with change in reward. Crash 3 goes most in accessibility, being the easiest.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The revitalized graphics look gorgeous and retains its cartoon style. Some of the graphics look so real that I can't believe this is 2017 and not 2020. Honestly it feels too real for the art style. A nostalgic soundtrack. This is one of the few games where a game-directed camera angle works really well. The depth perception for some of the platforming though... is still memorably bad.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Since Crash Bandicoot 1, Bonus Rounds effectively serve as mini-levels, not costing lives and which you can start over immediately after failing.\n+ Aku health starts coming automatically if you repeatedly die. Not necessary but a nice quality-of-life improvement to assist with a level you're stuck on.\n+ Crystals introduced since Crash 2 are a great way of marking progress across levels; diamonds are also less forgiving in that they're about crate completion or other secrets, and no longer require not dying in the level.\n+ Since Crash 2, you can enter individual levels in an area at your own order.\n+ In N. Sane Trilogy, you can swap to play as Coco. This is clearly the start of cosmetic skins and playable characters that Crash 4 further expands on.\n+ Checkpoints are boxes you must hit instead of auto-checkpoints. Aside from appealing further to Crash's theme, the checkpoints also serve some depth, e.g., in deciding when to avoid them or to hit certain boxes before you decide to \"save\" with the checkpoint.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ To replace the challenge of getting gems in Crash 1, where you must collect all crates and not die once, there are Death Routes starting in Crash 2.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Frame rate options are atrocious, being a multiplier of your monitor's refresh rate: for my 144hz, this is 30 and 48 FPS. I can do a hack with Alt+Enter in windowed mode to unlock FPS, but this forces me to use fullscreen mode instead of borderless.\n+ In Crash Bandicoot 1, you can't easily restart a level. You have to quit to enter the hub traversal then re-enter the level which is two loading screens and animations.\n+ Some levels are infuriating: Native Fortress with its vertical platforming that failing restarts the whole thing. Road to Nowhere is notoriously hard but at least it has fast replayability not relying on patience but precise execution; and similarly, High Road's jumping off turtles and its imprecise controls (hold Jump to jump higher, not timing it; run while falling from prior jump to do a running jump; https://www.reddit.com/r/crashbandicoot/comments/6kgrw8/jumping_and_jumping_of_turtles, https://www.reddit.com/r/crashbandicoot/comments/6l1awk/high_road_jumping_tips_from_a_not_experienced). It's not even fun because it's bad controls. Another difficult duo are Slippery Climb and Stormy Ascent. I had to farm to get 8 instead of starting with 4 lives for Stormy Ascent. Stormy Ascent is the one I spent hours on. I did experience several game overs grinding certain levels in Crash 2 (especially Ruination), but none were to an extent of Crash 1 levels with the exception of Spaced Out.\n+ Maybe 20 years later, I still remember Crash 3's underwater levels and hating them. Getting all crates in the waterskating levels is also pretty bad.\n+ I'm not sure how I feel about Crash 3's double jump. It's not necessary in almost all of the platforming sections and gives a bit more leeway than the precision of a single jum\n+ I'm not sure how I feel about Crash 3's double jump. It's not necessary in almost all of the platforming sections and gives a bit more leeway than the precision of a single jump.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nMotivated to play since Crash Bandicoot 4 just came out. Similar to Spelunky, I played Crash Bandicoot somewhat casually while watching Twitch streams. Platformers are really good video games that aren't timed or require too much concentration that you can casually watch something while you do it. I completed all levels in the Crash Trilogy, including the two DLC with Stormy Ascent and Future Tense, but with the exception of secret levels in Crash 2 and Crash 3.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/crash-bandicoot-n-sane-trilogy"},{"id":"322682678650425932","title":"Cuphead","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":630,"platforms":["PS4","PC","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Studio MDHR"],"publishers":["Studio MDHR"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Adventure","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2020-06-26","completedDate":"2020-06-27","updatedDate":"2023-09-05","notes":"Love the style, don't love platforming Souls-like games. Same reason I couldn't get into Hollow Knight (but weirdly, I was able to get into Dead Cells).\n\n__Story.__ Short premise, and that's about it regarding story. At least it's a good setup to motivate the boss run gameplay.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Excellent core mechanics, not only on the multi-phased boss designs but also the run and gun levels with plentiful enemy designs.\n\nParry is nice, but only occassionally does it provide any gameplay incentive. Oftentimes it's more to boost your score at the end rather than lead to a riposte or extra damage like in Dark Souls. Its animation also doesn't line up, making it weird to time.\n\nThe game can feel almost too hard at times, throwing too many things at you at once. I would do at least a dozen attempts on average per level, and upwards of 50 on bosses I get stuck on. This was not enjoyable for me as it ruined pacing: it was simply a matter of perfecting my execution at each phase's movesets.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Love the art style, 60s generation and characters, and bright color palette alongside a fun soundtrack. It's clear just how much painstaking detail there is to the animation.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ The default controls are a mess. I have to use my thumb to hold X, followed by shifting whenever to jump (A), and with my index finger wrapped above the controller to press Dash (Y), followed by my middle finger to Lock (RB). I swapped Shoot to RT, Ex Shoot to LT, Dash to B, Lock to LB and Equip to RB. This is way more comfortable: my index finger is held down on RT, I can use my thumb for Jump (A) or Dash (B), and I can use Lock (LB) or Ex Shoot (LT) whenever.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on controller. I played completing all of Isle 2 and then quit. I found the game more tedious in trying to perfect mechanics than really enjoying the game.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/cuphead"},{"id":"322682678651450956","title":"Dead Space","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Motive Studios"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-08-21","completedDate":"2019-08-23","updatedDate":"2022-08-07","notes":"Dead Space is a gripping third-person action horror. Atmosphere is Dead Space's strongest suit. I'm at the edge of my seat and with my gun out peeking at every corner. Sound design is excellent. Lighting is top notch; HUD is minimal and integrated into the environment.\n\nFlaw-wise, I know it's an action/shooter horror, but I think it's universally agreed upon that the horror is what makes Dead Space. I wish it tuned down the amount of action and upped the amount of suspense and thrill. The shooting mechanics are fun but not innovative in any way, building on the camera and action-style of Resident Evil 4, even the pacing of picking off limbs to kill zombies each limb of which serves a purpose. This gets repetitive after 5-6 hours of its total of ~12 hour playthrough. The story and bestiary is also only serviceable.\n\n__Story.__ Story is serviceable: landing in an unknown ship, trying to understand what went wrong while you escape. Main character is a bland silent protagonist. Backstabs and insanity reveals are all predictable.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Purposefully sluggish controls and aim, making rushing enemies leave a stronger sense of thrill. Linear level designs. Ammo crates and items incentivize exploring every corner of a room. Third-person shooter very much follows Resident Evil 4 and does it well. Enemy variety is also great.\n\nI love how all the game HUDs are rendered in-game. You can even be attacked while upgrading in the Shop or Bench. There's no pausing to stop the horror. :-) And default HUD is minimal to none. Save points feel like Dark Souls bonfires in their sense of qualm every time you reach one. THe zero gravity and no-air mechanics also add variety to the levels.\n\nProgression is via a shop and accumulated credits as the currency, as well as an upgrade bench with the finite Power Orbs. I like that the shop and benches are scattered around the game. It still feels video gamey though.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The graphics technologically are impressive for 2008. Lighting and sound is great. The logs as the primary vechile to serve story works excellently with the seamless HUD to provide an immersive experience.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ The game keeps me feeling tense. And it's not even a difficult game! There are also generous save points and checkpoints. The most difficult part is the ammo conservation vs selling it off for the longer term investment via buying Power Nodes.\n+ Items have a highlighted hue to them. In-game it makes them easier to spot. Art direction-wise, it totally works.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ The breadcrumbs mechanic may be the best compromised way to get at quest markers that I've seen. I still don't like the mechanic though.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ The stomp move is very unpredictable, both in its extremely close range requirement and in not knowing which leg you'll be stomping with.\n+ Mouse lag is really bad.\n+ The map UI is horrid. The game is also linear enough that you don't need a map anyways.\n+ I ran into two game crashes (causing me to restart all over again from a save point), and multiple game blocks like guard rails still being closed when they should be open.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/dead-space\n+ https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/840-dead-space-mouse-fix/\n\nI played on PC (max settings) and Medium difficulty. I played with controller. After dabbling with the mouse and keyboard for a while, it felt very unnatural navigating the various keybindings all of which are natural on a controller (take the Rig Inventory navigation for example; or the Weapon reloading and modules). Following tips ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/DeadSpace/comments/18e373/just_fired_up_ds1_for_the_first_time_any), [2](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/4217/what-should-i-focus-on-upgrading-first-in-dead-space)), I focused on upgrading my Plasma Cutter (primarily damage then capacity) then some in the Stasis. I deliberately used only the Plasma Cutter, and up until ~Mission 8 when I had fully upgraded everything else, I decided to keep it that way instead of diversifying. Plasma Cutter works well for all mobs except for the mobs of little crawlers. I kept a minimum of [1 node on myself at all times for node-locked areas](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/943338-dead-space/46246674?page=1). At shops, I [sell ammo as the amount of ammo drops increases](https://www.reddit.com/r/DeadSpace/comments/5aqoce/first_play_through_of_ds1_recommended_upgrade_path/) and dump all my money on Power Nodes after I get the unlocked Level Suit. I completed the shooting range but not the zero g basketball.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dead-space--1"},{"id":"322682678650423884","title":"Deus Ex","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2000,"playtimeMinutes":1380,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Ion Storm"],"publishers":["Eidos Interactive","Square Enix","Eidos Montréal","Aspyr Media","Sold Out Software"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-06-28","completedDate":"2020-06-29","updatedDate":"2023-09-05","notes":"Deus Ex helped launch the immersive sim subgenre building on ideas from Thief, enabling player agency: multiple approaches to tackle missions with less explicit goals, open-ended design, and emergent gameplay from core systems in stealth and action. Deus Ex advances the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy of the game (dungeon master) reacting to player choice better than CRPGs like Baldur's Gate. Unlike games like Thief and System Shock, Deus Ex also introduces RPG mechanics enabling build variety and replayability (something Dishonored would also further).\n\nPlaying the game in 2020, it has not aged well. So I can appreciate its innovations but can't enjoy actually playing it. The controls are awful. AI and stealth is just too janky. The graphics and voice acting have a charm, but only in the B-rated late 90s style.\n\n__Story.__  The overall story is decent in having some memorable characters. But it's not nearly as praiseworthy in depth as fans would claim. The Hong Kong triad story felt borderline racist in its stereotypes, including accents that seem exaggerated by white voice actors. To be fair, however, stereotypes appear even in the overarching story with the Illuminati creating a pandemic and a cure. It's really only the influence of killing off various characters and how the story goes on that makes the story interesting.\n\nThere are only a handful of side quests, which don't add new characters but build out the world more similar to Dishonored. I like this style of RPG (the immersive sim).\n\n__Gameplay.__ The game is truly an immersive sim (as coined by the Deus Ex creator), playing similarly to Thief and Dishonored in its stealth emphasis, first-person POV, and mission level structure. It features more RPG elements than Dishonored, blurring the line with inventory management and augmentations in addition to skill points. There are also semi-open areas that are more for NPC interaction to collect quests. Accuracy is based on skill points, and requires staying on an enemy for a while to make accuracy more precise (therefore encouraging more deliberate, stealthy takes).\n\nLevel designs feature primary and secondary goals like Thief, with no explicit objective markers. Instead you pick up scattered notes that allow you to piece up clues. I really like this approach to gameplay. Even though I would often get lost, I could still resort to a walkthrough, and I would rather this freedom be possible than were the game to be too streamlined. Levels also feature a hub. Choices can also impact the whole story: you can kill Lebedev or Anna for example.\n\nStealth. Lots of Thief inspirations but under their own spin, for example, lighting with flashlight and tech goggles; disable security camera, autoguns, reprogramming bots with the lockpick and multitool (which I'm a big fan of; +1 to environment interaction and limited uses); guard alert isn't global so you can shoot people, coupled with the fact that many enemies don't die from one hit. Unfortunately, I don't think the weapon variety is quite enough for complete stealth to be viable. The lack of one-shot melee or ranged takedowns incentivizes a more aggressive playstyle, at the least being amenable to local alerts with loud guns before alarms are sounded and one-shot melee not always working (especially for bot enemies).\n\nProgression-wise, Deus Ex features skill points, augmentations, weapon upgrades, and augmentation upgrades.  There are plenty weapon upgrades (and just a handful of skills) that it encourages commiting to certain weapons as a build. I'm okay with just how powerful the Laser mod is in perfect accuracy: it makes up for the rest of the game's poor weapon accuracy makes up, particularly in early game with few skills. It does make certain weapons effectively no longer viable (e.g., Mini-Crossbow's tranq dart which takes a while; Stealth Pistol but they do benefit from no loud sound). As a completionist, it grinds my gears that trying to maximize skill points is not viable: it's not as easy as Dishonored where there are just a handful of secondary goals; there are mini things you must do as well that aren't tracked such as exploration bonuses and side quests.\n\nThe HUD ages very well. I found it highly functional, especially the way the game automatically stores important notes like passwords. The controls are awful however. Defaults for scope, laser sight, and augmentations are bad. It's also hard to figure out the optimal control scheme because there's so many buttons, particularly with weapons ranging from 1-0 and augmentations ranging from F1 to F12.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Comparing to games like Thief and Metal Gear Solid, Deus Ex looks alright for its time. The blocky 3D models especially remind me of Metal Gear Solid, although there's more detail here. Voice acting is often so bad it's good (it seems to add to the B-rated charm of the game's jank as well as the robotic monotone nature of certain characters like JC). Also no reload animations. Ingame rendered cutscenes.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ All the save scumming, especially in the first two levels. Boy was Liberty Island a mess with its open area design. And I didn't know enemies take multiple hits and loud weapons were the actually stealthy approach.\n+ Only when I was in Mission 4 (Hell's Kitchen second visit) did I realize that with my Computers trained skill, I can hack them rather than get lost trying to find the appropriate passcode in-game or otherwise find the answer online. This includes hacking ATMs.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ You can pick up bodies, probably following Thief. Nice.\n+ Loading screens are fairly seamless (and near instantaneous with a modern PC).\n+ You can skip cutscenes on a per-line basis.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ There is no selling or storing items. You simply drop them from your inventory. That simplifies matters, but this means you must get the credits currency through other means like mission completions.\n+ Torso can weirdly sometimes do more damage than headshots, unless the weapon has a specific headshot multiplier, in which case its 8xBD instead of 2xBD. Examples include Baton and Riot Prod.\n+ If you aim at someone with them just slightly angled at you, they detect. That's ridiculous.\n+ Health system is limb-based. It actually doesn't make too much of a difference (legs make you crippled when 0). A simpler HP system may work better.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ No buffer for quick saves.\n+ No explicit button for throwing grenades. It's a separate weapon you must swap to.\n+ You have to toggle on the laser mod. It doesn't stay on automatically.\n+ There are rare underwater fights, and this is the only time mini-crossbow is necessary. Very frustrating.\n+ Scope mode is a toggle, not hold for aiming down it.\n+ You can still reload at full ammo.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://deusex.fandom.com\n+ https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Passwords/Logins/Codes_(DX)\n+ https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Deus_Ex\n+ build | https://www.reddit.com/r/Deusex/comments/4b9v1z/dx1_skills_minmax/d17av9z/\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/9j6zxl/what_order_do_i_play_the_deus_ex_games_in/\n+ damage | https://steamcommunity.com/app/6910/discussions/0/343785380898577256/\n+ weapons guide | https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=275156059\n+ setup for modern systems, using Kentie's executable and Unreal engine Direct3D 10 renderer. It enables borderless, widescreen resolutions (including 21:9), Direct3D 10 rendering, and proper mouse sensitivity/acceleration | https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=144316078\n\nI chose to play this game as my first entry to the series. I played it vanilla (Game of the Year Edition), on medium difficulty, without any mods like [GMDX or Revision which modify gameplay and level designs](https://www.reddit.com/r/Deusex/comments/as02tz/what_do_you_recommend_for_an_og_deus_ex_first/egqtrgi). But there are reasons why GMDX may be reasonable, [significantly improving the jank](https://old.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/hdqgii/deus_ex_at_20_the_oral_history_of_a_pivotal_pc/fvmld2t). I tried to play the game blind, not worrying about missables such as augmentation cannisters, augmentation upgrade cannisters, and skill points; I only made sure I got main items for my build. However, I often got lost, so I quite regularly followed a walkthrough to find out where to go next. I stopped playing the game after Hell's Kitchen Return. There are roughly 6/14 more missions to go, and I don't care enough about boring through the janky gameplay to appreciate B-rated story.\n\nConfiguration-wise, I followed the guide above using Kentie's code. Alt-Tab support is still spotty though: If I'm in Settings and Alt-Tab, I can't exit Settings without first entering another Settings; same for Inventory; and both freeze for a few seconds. I remapped Use Object in World from Right Click to E, Lean Left/Right from Q/E to Z/C, Crouch from X to Ctrl, Reload from ; to R, Activate Inventory Screen from F1 to Tab, Quick Save from NumPad + to -, Quick Load from Numpad / to =, Leg Augmentation from F6 to Shift. Light Augmentation from F12 to F. I prefer modern controls: WASD movement, R reload, right click for scope, ctrl crouch. I use E for Interact as it's used in many games like Borderlands and Fallout and F for Flashlight like in Half-Life. I would use F5/F8 for Quick Save/Load but I can't. Similarly, I would use Alt+A/D for Lean Left/Right like Dishonored.\n\nBuild-wise, I went stealth, ranged, and lethal. Favoring being a conversationalist and hacker is unique to this series (and stealth builds are rare), so you ought to try it out. I typically prefer being nonlethal, but I don't like the nonlethal options in this game (it's missing a melee chokehold as well as MGS' tranquilizer pistol and sniper rifle which are immediate on headshot). My starting skill points trained in Computer, Electronics, Lockpicking, Weapons: Rifle. I carry a sniper rifle, sawed-off shotgun, assault rifle, and Dragon Tooth's Sword. All benefit from the same skill (I equipped mods as I went but made sure the sniper had a silencer). Early levels, I also used baton and pistol with laser mod which is especially OP for its 1-hit takedown and plentiful ammo; I only swapped it until the Assault Rifle's accuracy was good enough from skill upgrades or until I got another laser mod for it. For augmentations, I went Speed Enhancement (Legs), Regeneration (Torso 1); the rest I did willy nilly. Oftentimes I never activated the augmentations though: I only really used the Flashlight and Leg Enhancement, so I binded them to keys separate from the Function row. I wish the hotkeys were more intuitive, and some were just passive benefits.\n\nI didn't find a use for many weapons: for example, Mini Crossbow, Flare, all Grenades, Binoculars, Heavy Weapons. Sawed Off Shotgun is strictly better than Assault Shotgun because Damage per Shot is more important than DPS.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/deus-ex"},{"id":"322682678624178764","title":"Deus Ex: Human Revolution","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":1290,"platforms":["PS3","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["Eidos Montréal"],"publishers":["Feral Interactive","Square Enix"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2021-05-07","completedDate":"2021-05-11","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Human Revolution is an excellent sequel to Deus Ex (2000). It retains the core gameplay loop well of stealth, exploration, and hacking---all enhanced by its writing, wonderful level design, decent enemy awareness, RPG mechanics for upgrading augmentations enabling different playstyles, and weapon and inventory management.\n\nFlaw-wise, there aren't major ones. Player dialogue doesn't enable much freedom similar to the original title, holding it back from the writing of games like Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines and Fallout New Vegas. There's too much hacking, with less need to explore to find access codes and paths beyond vents to proceed to the next area, and with less variety than the original title's lockpicking, electronics, and computers. The XP system also caters to specific playstyles, limiting other builds which are still viable albeit less encouraged.\n\n__Story.__ The main story works well, albeit stereotypical like the last game. The characters are serviceable but don't stand out. There's a handful of sidequests, and each unique in their gameplay elements and writing to ultimately better build the involved characters as well as the world in Deus Ex. The little player agency in terms of dialogue with the dialogue battles works decently well---nothing like Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines though.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I like the gameplay loop with stealth, hacking, and FPS combat. The cover system works particularly well for stealth, enabling extra camera angles to pass an enemy over a corner. Stealth makes use of line of sight, sound based on your movement controls, takedowns, and body movement. Human Revolution also retains Deus Ex's RPG mechanics such as augmentations, inventory management, and passcodes as you pick up items. Furthermore, the core systems with level design incentivizing multiple approaches, guard awareness, civilian NPCs, and sidequests work excellently.\n\nCompared to Deus Ex (2000), it's the quality-of-life features that make Human Revolution simpler to enjoy in modern times: for example, a melee takedown (including a double takedown), weapons that make nonlethal more viable, passive augmentations, no juggling of lockpicks, multitools, and keyring, health and energy regen, slightly easier difficulty with the radar and cover system to peek around corners, simpler controls, and no wonky underwater swimming with combat. These streamline the gameplay mostly for the better.\n\nI like the different playstyles of stealth with melee takedowns, stealth ranged, navigating hidden passages such as vents, and going full Rambo combat. Unfortunately, every action is gamified in order to add XP for augmentations. I do like that the game favors completing all objectives including side mission ones, hacking, and exploring. However, it overly incentivizes specific playstyles: takedowns over range, non-lethal over lethal, taking down all enemies vs ghost-ing past, and hacking even if you know the passcode. This greatly reduces the actual variety you can do, with a simple fix: just reward the mission objectives, not micro actions! To best enjoy the game, it was difficult turning off the completionist mindset, avoiding savescumming and making do with suboptimal actions. There are also dialogue battles, and some but not much dialogue options to influence quest outocmes.\n\nHacking is a central part of the game, and I find the minigame done pretty well. It achieves the core element of rushing to clearance, with datastores as optional for side rewards. It's also nice that it's done in real time. There's just a little too many areas to hack though; you're hacking at least every 2 minutes of the game! At least add more variety like Deus Ex (2000)'s trifecta of lockpicking, electronics, and computers.\n\nI greatly enjoyed the DLC as a separate set of missions right before the final ones. It's a nice change of pace, particularly in resetting your augmentations as the game felt a little stale with you being so overpowered with all your augmentations and upgraded weapons. All the backtracking in the latter half of the DLC is infuriating though.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics have aged pretty well in their textures and lighting; comparable to Dragon Age 2. The face models are clearly the most aged. The transition between pre-rendered cutscenes and in-game can also be jarring. Voice acting is great.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Gameplay dialogue options like directions and the HUD is natural in this cybernetic world, adding to the immersion. It also slightly makes up for all the interactible objects being outlined in yellow.\n+ Aside from maximizing XP and credits, the only missables are the upgrades of Praxis Kits and weapon mods. There is plenty, and none are central to the game given that you don't really need any augmentations, and most mods aren't even applicable for non-lethal weapons. New Game Plus also lets you pick up anythings you missed on the first playthrough.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The radar. Combined with the cover system and melee takedown, the radar makes Human Revolution's stealth significantly easier than the original title.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Access codes are automatically tracked as you pick up notes. It's nice for convenience, particularly when there are many notes or access codes. However, it removes any gameplay incentive to read notes. This is a common problem in video games that add such notes to build lore. They're walls of text that interrupt gameplay, not enhance it.\n+ It's not obvious which areas you're safe and which areas you're being hunted. For example, did a civilian catch you hacking a door and alert police?\n+ Boss fights. They're not something that should be designed for a stealth game, and while I like the stealth options in the Director's Cut, it's obvious they weren't designed this way. It's a good thing they're so cheeseable at least with the Typhoon or fully upgraded Revolver.\n+ Tutorials are videos, not interactive within the game. It's an aged design reminding me of Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (2005).\n+ Unlike Deus Ex (2000), you can't hack turrets or robots. This limits your options to stealthing around them or destroying them (often triggering alarms as it's rare to one-shot them).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Deus Ex Wiki](https://deusex.fandom.com)\n+ [Augmentation priorities](https://www.reddit.com/r/Deusex/comments/lg8ml/im_late_and_just_started_playing_deus_ex_human)\n\nI played the Director's Cut. I played on medium difficulty: difficulty only scales player and enemy health, accuracy, and regen making little difference for stealth. I did a non-lethal stealth/hacking playthrough, killing on emergencies rather than savescumming (I still do to an extent). I favored non-lethal takedowns for maximum XP and ammo followed by tranq rifle headshots and stun gun; 10mm pistol for distractions; and revolver or Typhoon for bosses. Augmentation-wise, I favored new options (e.g., Hacking, Heavy Lifting, Jump Enhancement, Punch Through Walls, Social Enhancer). I deliberately did not do any stealth upgrades as they lessened the challenge, particularly the more game-y ones like x-ray vision and enemy tracking.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/deus-ex-human-revolution"},{"id":"342349118351344209","title":"Diablo","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":840,"platforms":["PC","Mac","PS1"],"studios":["Blizzard North"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts","Blizzard Entertainment","Sourcenext","Square Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy"],"startedDate":"2023-03-26","completedDate":"2023-03-27","updatedDate":"2023-03-29","notes":"Diablo 1 set the standard for so much in the ARPG genre: character build system, inventory and loot, enemy variety and bestiary, procedural level generation, combat, quest system, replayability through higher difficulties and item drops.\n\nFlaw-wise, the gameplay can get somewhat repetitive particularly due to the lack of skill tree for attacks beyond the passive attack and occasional spell from the spellbook. This is excusable for 1996 given that it innovated in so many ways (only 4 years after Doom!).\n\n__Story.__\nServiceable. I like the lore books spread throughout the levels, and the occasional gossip dialogue. Nothing noteworthy.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nDiablo built so many fundamentals:\n\n+ Build. Character stats, potion slots, inventory system.\n+ Randomization in both level generation and quests.\n+ The core gameplay loop of visiting your town to profit off your loot:\n\n  1. Use a town portal to head back to town once your inventory is full.\n  2. Visit Deckard Cain to identify all items.\n  3. Visit the blacksmith to repair your items, sell your loot, and possibly browse their stock in case any rare items appear.\n  4. Visit Adria in order to sell magic items and restock on scroll of town portals.\n  5. Visit the healer to heal and restock on healing potions.\n\nGameplay feels more tactical than other Diablo titles, particularly due to its slow movement speed and lack of spells. You can easily get surrounded and don't have an option to AoE. Instead the strategy is to hole up at a doorway to prevent being surrounded, funnel enemies through narrow corridors, and/or rely on walls as line of sight against ranged enemies and lure out one or two enemies away from a pack.\n\nThe most significant difference from Diablo 2 is that there is no skill tree. Instead, you accumulate spells via spell books. Mana also does not regenerate, meaning autoattack is the primary combat loop.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nSoundtrack is iconic in both sound effects like item drops and monster deaths, and music is appropriately spooky in dungeons. Voice acting is good. Graphics surprisingly age well.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The various quality of life details that Diablo 1 standardized from the beginning:\n  + Auto-map and overlaid in the middle of screen rather than on the side.\n  + Hold shift to attack while not moving.\n  + Items like scroll of identify and and scroll of town portal.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Waypoint shortcuts are much more spread out. Unlike Diablo 2, you need to rely more often on town portals.\n+ All the permanent stat changes:\n  + Hellfire's oils to permanently increase item stats. In my own playthrough, I used them ad hoc rather than hoard to save for endgame (the minmax strategy).\n  + Elixirs you can grind gold for to purchase to upgrade your character's permanent stats by 1 (5k gold each).\n  + Shrines are dangerous for new players. You really need to know what each does before clicking on them.\n  + Black Deaths remove 1 max HP from you if they hit.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Quality-of-life features implemented in Diablo 2:\n  + Broken items disappear entirely. This is dangerous and a single error can result in a valuable item lost forever.\n  + No item highlighting. You have to move around your cursor if you can't see an item dropped which is a pain. Hellfire implements a [spell and Monk class skill](https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Search).\n  + Hellfire includes a default run (\"jog\") option. However, it's only used for towns, as the limited walking speed is a purposeful combat limitation.\n  + No item stash. At least, [items do not despawn so the ground is your stash](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/347601/do-items-de-spawn-in-diablo).\n  + In single player (that is, no LAN or multiplayer mode), you can start a new game but nothing refreshes. This means you can't farm respawning enemies or complete quests that didn't appear in your original generated games. You also can't progress to higher difficulty levels like Nightmare or Hell; technically you can with a [workaround that involves booting up multiplayer at Nightmare/Hell difficulty, but that involves needing a multiplayer character that unlocked Nightmare/Hell.](https://www.gog.com/forum/diablo/any_chance_of_being_able_to_restart_a_single_player_game_increasing_difficulty)\n  + No hotkey system for spells. This makes more variable gameplay with sorcerers more tedious.\n  + No experience bar. There's no way to track how close you are to the next level (so it's more difficult to game your health/mana bars to avoid having to use a potion).\n  + No enemy health bar. Particularly useful against bosses.\n  + No option to repair all or identify all.\n  + No shortcut to move item from inventory to your potion belt.\n  + [Restock mechanics aren't consistent across NPCs.](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/11255-diablo/44296863)\n  + Dialogue is scrolling text. You have to listen to a lot of the voiced lines and can't necessary skip it over after reading.\n+ Holy shit are the Succubi and Pit Beasts massive damage dealers. The kiting of bulky melee enemies is fine. But aggroing a group of Succubi easily spells your doom.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Shrines](https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Shrines_(Diablo_I)). These are important to know beforehand because they can have permanent effects.\n+ [Quests](https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Diablo_I_Quests)\n+ [Lochnar[ITB]'s Freshman Diablo](http://www.lurkerlounge.com/lochnar/diablo.shtml). I found this website to have the most complete build advice, such as spells to prioritize for a Rogue such as Healing, Mana Shield, and Stone Curse, and preferring full mana pots over full heal pots.\n\nI played Diablo with Hellfire from GOG store.\n\n__Character.__ I played a bow Rogue. Melee in this game seems quite challenging given the slow movement speed.\n\n__Single player vs multiplayer (LAN and online).__ I played single player and on Normal difficulty. Multiplayer offers only a limited [4 out of 16 available quests](https://www.gog.com/forum/diablo/diablo_faq/page1), and it's only more active on vanilla Diablo and not Hellfire. Plus, I like the convenience of being able to save my game.\n\n__On mods.__ There are mods like Beelzebub and The Hell 2 with quality-of-life features, but they make gameplay changes. Diablo 1 Torch apparently has quality-of-life features like item highlighting and an item stash, but I couldn't get it to work.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/diablo"},{"id":"322682678624142924","title":"Diablo II: Resurrected","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":1080,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"publishers":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-09-23","completedDate":"2021-10-07","updatedDate":"2025-07-13","notes":"Diablo 2 Resurrected is fun to play as an HD trip down memory lane. There are many elements that Diablo 2 did just right in its balance of streamlined ARPG elements and RPG complexity. It's an excellent experience across solo, coop, and playing with randoms. Both leveling and endgame are fun.\n\nFlaws:\n\n1. Diablo II's endgame, build variety, and itemization are all severely lacking compared to modern ARPGs like Path of Exile, Diablo 3, and Grim Dawn. The \"endgame\" after completing Hell where you grind MF, RF, and XP through Baal runs, level 85 areas, and the like is dull content for little reward. Itemization is also a travesty: there are so many useless unique and set gear, and certain items are so powerful they overwhelm everything else across all classes. It's patch 1.10 that truly exacerbated the itemization problem: Insight, Enigma, Infinity, Grief, Arachnid, Spirit, HoTo, Fortitude, Andariel's Visage.\n2. The lobby is a terrible experience. Zero search functionality or sorting, which in turn makes for a terrible experience for trading and farming with randoms. Games with randoms are also not designed well as its design incentivizes competition over cooperation.\n3. Gameplay is dated: for example, left/right click for skills, no item stacks requiring character mules, bad trading implementation, terrible online lobby discoverability.\n4. Hell difficulty's many damage immunities make nearly every build annoying to clear any area: it's the forced specialization to maximally farm certain areas while creating other characters to farm another area that makes end-to-end solo play rather frustrating. Fortunately, this is later fixed with D2R’s sunder charms.\n\n__Story.__ It's a fairly basic lore and not good to be honest, not unlike other Blizzard game. At least it allows for some cool character designs (especially the bosses) and cool cutscenes.\n\n__Gameplay.__ D2 reinforced all the major elements of an ARPG: isometric camera design, attributes, skill trees, equipment (and random gear generation and qualities), level design, enemy variety, a trading system based on usable items.\n\nD2 was invented prior to the concept of endgame really existing, and it shows. There is no endgame content aside from clearing Hell bosses faster and fighting Uber bosses. Itemization is bad as you're reliant on key gear such as Enigma due to just how powerful Teleport is and with arbitrary item synergies where set items aren't good. After about level 20, stamina as a mechanic is basically useless as you can run most anywhere. Attribute-wise, Vitality is always the best because Strength/Dexterity don't provide nearly enough DPS to make their stats worth it beyond gear requirements and Energy is subpar compared to mana potions. Gold is useless beyond vendor interactions. Act 2's Mercenary with Insight is almost always the best. Barbarian, Assassin, and Druid aren't as good at levels 70+ compared to the other classes. I also have mixed feelings about of the gameplay loop reliance of Teleport and spamming mana potions (all builds during Normal/Nightmare; and it lasts until kill speeds are fast enough and your merc has Insight).\n\nPlaying in public lobbies is the epitome of a dog eat dog world. The loot problem is an insane rush to spam click and pick up items before others. Similarly, people rush by going through quests but which aren't necessarily synced across a party and instead everyone has to be there, so someone can get locked out. And public lobbies for certain Baal runs are competitive to join, especially with a good sorc to get to Throne and fast killer. High level players can join low level games purely for the player count to farm a different area. There are also a number of things that provide very insecure contracts that are ripe for deception: rushes for Hellforge, waypoint requests. There's even a meta with people rushing Acts 1-2, then ask someone for a WP to Act 3 Travincal, then ask for a WP to Act 5; this makes a full game of rush much less possible as it's simply more efficient to do partway rushes and beg for the WPs. Even during lobby Chaos / Baal runs, the sorc or anyone else who teleports to the boss doesn't get any reward compared to those who just wait for the TP and similarly, those who AFK in the Throne Room while others do damage. Without integrated voice chat, there's also hardly any dialogue. In the meta, you want to join group games for: rushing, Chaos/Baal runs, and trading. You can at least safely MF/RF in private.\n\nNew changes in D2R:\n\n+ Sunder charms. They eliminate immunities which had rendered certain areas not viable for many builds such as the lightning immunity for the Javazon. Big improvement!\n+ Terror stones. An additional endgame content to add a bit more variety beyond your usual farming spots like Chaos / Baal runs, Pindleskin runs, and Cow levels.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Game is gorgeous, particularly as a modern ARPG and where the only baselines for comparison at this point are, say, Path of Exile, Diablo 3, and Grim Dawn which are all at least 5 years old.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ As Resurrected uses patch 1.14, you can now respec. That wasn't possible until patch 1.13c in 2010! This is especially important as the optimal STR/DEX allocations depends on the current gear.\n+ New to Resurrected, you can autoloot gold.\n+ All core mechanics are preserved, including even breakpoints such as for Faster Cast Speed and Increased Attack Speed which are fundamentally based on 25 FPS.\n+ New to Resurrected, you can now kill the Cow King without locking you out of the Cow level.\n+ You can now link a specific item in chat like in WoW.\n+ Light radius is a prominent lighting feature.\n+ Armor types have different effects on stamina and movement speed.\n+ New to Resurrected, there's now a shared stash with much more storage space. We need more tabs though! I still have to make mule characters for their personal tab, e.g., named Jewels, Gems, LowRunes, and LowRunes2. Please just let items like runes stack.\n+ New to Resurrected, a more advanced stat page. Not having to manually count MF, FCR, and FHR is nice!\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Diablo 2's center minimap spawned a trend in action RPGs. So functionally useful but so ugly. It's nicer to have it in the corner but it's also harder to navigate that way. I eventually got used to the corner minimap and the game is significantly more immersive!\n+ Some bugs that define meta in D2 are removed in Resurrected: STR/DEX bug to have items self-equip no longer works; and ethereal bug to boost armor defense no longer works.\n+ Managing the hassle of the Horadric cube for extra inventory space.\n+ You can recover the sockets of a weapon but you lose the runes/gems.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Lobby provides no search functionality to filter games. Similarly, remaking a game for public runs requires incrementing and hoping you can make it before the game fills.\n+ Lock outs: Getting the Halls of Pain waypoint will lock you out of farming Pindleskin via the entrance ([now fixed!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/pur6xo/info_for_all_the_pindle_portal_stays_open_now)). Hiring a new mercenary before unequipping your previous mercenary means you lose their gear. Missing the Andariel quest bug for extra loot.\n+ Shared drops based on who can pick it up quickly didn't age well, especially when playing with randoms.\n+ You must swap to the skill, then use the skill with your left or right mouse. Boy that didn't age well.\n+ Every new game you have to turn on the auto map and the always display items toggles. They're not on by default.\n+ Potions don't automatically go from inventory to potion belt. This is particularly annoying in early game when you spam mana potions for many builds and you have to juggle putting inventory potions into the belt.\n+ You can't easily buy stacks of potions. Instead, the strategy is to shift-right click to load your belt, then unequip your belt, and repeat. Similarly, there is no button to automatically repair all equipment, including those in your inventory. You have to manually repair items in your inventory.\n+ No inspect gear option like WoW.\n+ No keybind to fast equip items like right click.\n+ No WoW-like HUD to indicate what buffs are on you.\n+ It's still incredibly easy to accidentally drop a valuable item and lose it forever to a random.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Diablo Wiki](https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki)\n+ [Icy Veins](https://www.icy-veins.com/d2)\n+ [maxroll.gg's tier lists](https://d2.maxroll.gg) | It's a great summary across the key dimensions: MF, RF, Chaos/Baal runs, uber bosses, PvP, and speedruns.\n+ [d2jsp](https://forums.d2jsp.org) | The unofficial trading resource. Sadly it also does RMT.\n+ [Magic find diminishing returns](https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Magic_find_diminishing_returns)\n+ [Maxroll's Drop Calculator](https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2-drop-calculator)\n+ [Maxroll's general leveling guide](https://d2.maxroll.gg/resources/general-leveling), including class-specific ones\n+ [MF and RF build efficiency guide](https://www.purediablo.com/forums/threads/guide-build-efficiency-101-%E2%80%93-overview-resource-compilation.166)\n\n__On classes.__ My first character was an Amazon. [Javazon](https://d2.maxroll.gg/guides/lightning-fury-amazon-guide) excels most in boss clear speeds, is good at MF/RF, and scales decently from budget to BiS gear. Javazons are the best for rune runs at the Cow level (rune runs also include, e.g., base items and gems). I can also try a [ice Bowazon build](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa-pOuLu62w). However, they have notable flaws:\n\n1. They're not the best at MF: Amazons have the lowest FCR breakpoints for Teleport and can't stack much MF.\n2. Javazons at a budget are especially annoying due to the lack of Infinity to kill Lightning immune enemies, greatly restricting the areas where they're viable (including Pits, their main level 85 area).\n3. Micromanagement. Javelins require repair and semiregular switching. Once you have an Infinity and replace your mercenary's Insight, it also becomes a pain to micromanage mana potions.\n\nMy second character is a Blizzard Sorc. Sorc is truly the required ladder starter class. Every class is less efficient than Sorc without critical endgame gear—across MF, RF, and XP—and most classes still aren't better than Sorc at their optimum. Sorcs scale well from budget to BiS gear. The especially notable gear requirements are Enigma for every build as Teleport is the best skill in the game; Infinity for elemental builds as otherwise you're unable to easily run past immune enemies (especially without Enigma); and gear-intensive builds like Grief for Pitzerker. Sorcs also benefit from high tier build variety such as meteorb, frozen orb, and lightning. [Classes outside Paladin and Sorceress are restricted to only 1-2 excellent build archetypes.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/m26ci3/every_diablo_2_character_build_a_response_to)\n\nIn retrospect, a Sorc is universally better than a Javazon. It is a better budget class than Javazon as Blizzard spec, especially because Javazon can't do Pit without Enigma and Infinity. At endgame, a Lightning Sorc competes with Javazon in being just as good in terms of clear speeds (killing slightly slower but teleporting slightly faster), is better at MF as Blizzard spec, and has many viable farm areas. Sorc also doesn't have to micromanage Javelin capacity.\n\nMy third character was a Hammerdin. Unlike Javazons, Hammerdins face few magic immune enemies, can keep the mercenary's Insight for mana regeneration, and boasts the highest run/walk speed for movement (including in town). They trade off a Javazon's DPS with tankiness, can stack more MF, have better FCR, and don't have to micromanage mana potions or javelins. This is a safe, versatile playstyle. The damage pathing for Hammerdins can be annoying though, particularly without Enigma to telestomp. While Hammerdin is great at level 85 areas including Pits and Chaos Sanctuary, it's worse at Pindleskin (Eldritch and Shenk are alternatives) and Cows (Travincal is an alternative).\n\nBy the time I quit, I had all GG gear for Hammerdin excluding Enigma with 125 FCR, 75 AR, and 370 MF. I farmed Chaos Sanctuary. I ended up selling all my expensive items, resulting in 5k FG on d2jsp (gave to Danny).\n\n__On hardcore.__ I like the idea of hardcore especially as a way of spicing up the game, focusing on the overall experience and not just rushing to endgame and getting gear. However, it's hard to trust that the death is indeed your fault: you could simply die from server lag, an unlucky teleport from another player you enter, some especially frustrating mob packs, and many others.\n\n__Multiboxing.__ I purchased two accounts, with one account having my Sorceress. That way I can rush my own characters and hold games. I tried renaming and having a second copy of the client. That didn't work. I tried using Sandboxie but it didn't work, [with these same issues](https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=85481312). [Solutions.](https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=86670976)\n\n__On endgame gear.__ The grind for endgame builds is certainly something from the late 90s. Items are expensive, and MF/RF runs are grindy with low payout over hours to days, where item drop rates are significantly even more rare than, say, WoW raids and where the item pool per enemy is so large it's impossible to try to target a specific item. This forces you to do trading, and there's just no legitimate tool for this at a large scale. I grinded for a while to get a sense of the gameplay loop. Then I resorted to RMT to get an initial boost in terms of the biggest items (e.g., Titan's Revenge). Of course, RMT is effectively like cheating at a single player game: you want to only do it enough to reduce repetitive content but you don't want to go so far there's no longer any value to look forward to in the game.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/diablo-ii-resurrected"},{"id":"329481602346254913","title":"Dishonored","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Arkane Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-08-10","completedDate":"2019-08-13","updatedDate":"2023-05-10","notes":"Dishonored defines first-person stealth like none other, with powers in a steampunk world and excellent core stealth mechanics. Enemies and levels are sufficiently varied, the aesthetic unique, and the story and characters are good enough to keep the rest of the game compelling. The only major flaw is the overreliance on manual saves. I also wish levels were designed so objective markers are turned off by default, and made better usage of lighting and sound like Thief, e.g., a light indicator and more audible noises depending on the surface.\n\n__Story.__ Simple revenge and politics story. It's servicable to fit the gameplay. Establishing Corvo as an already seasoned veteran and legend is interesting. The backstab twist with the Alliance is also interseting. I did not expect it, and it significantly improves the story for adding just a bit more depth. The worldbuilding is quite good.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Dishonored has core stealth mechanics of walking, running, crouching; lethal vs nonlethal; guard warn/alarm state; save system; gadgets and powers on the left-hand. There are also light combat mechanics like parrying. With the first person view, new mechanics to the genre include leaning left/right, sliding, mantling, and hiding your weapons; this all adds to an immersive and smooth experience, especially for a game in 2012. The powers are also inventive and add to the core stealth. Progression system is currency for weapon upgrades, bone charms, and runes for unlocking powers.\n\nExploration is incentivized via finding coins, runes and bone charms which upgrade Corvo's powers, notes providing lore, and blueprints which unlock more upgrades in Piero's workshop. None of it is gamebreaking or hard to find, so you can be assured skipping the guard takedowns so that you can stealth pass is a fine approach. I do wish the game had an indication of % camoflauge similar to MGS3 and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.\n\nChaos is a great approach to player adaptivity, changing the lore and difficulty depending on how lethal you are. It makes the lethal choice have an impact where otherwise games would provide a choice and only show consequences in your resultant score.\n\nThe game has numerous viable playstyles (also see my notes in Hitman (2016)). The freedom to approach stealth is magnificent in particular. For example, to go through a streetway, you can go through front streets, alleys, windows, rat tunnels, rooftops, and waterways.\n\n+ Stealth non-lethal, where you play with 0 alerts and 0 kills.\n+ Ghost, where you play stealth non-lethal and don't even incapacitate any guards (0 knock-outs).\n+ Ghost and without even using any powers (especially Blink).\n+ High chaos with lethal, either with alerts or through stealth. A variant of this is a genocide run, where you kill everyone in a level.\n+ Speedrun.\n\nI dread this game's save system with both manual and autosaves. I strongly prefer a well-designed checkpoint system in most all genres, stealth included, and Dishonored's autosave system is bad. Quick saves encourage players to savescum by design of being optimal, and savescumming ruins pacing and learning from any mistakes beyond microexecuted problems. Relying on autosaves forces you to become more skillful and cautious as the penalty is redoing a much longer checkpoint. Consider for example Far Cry's checkpoints which are right before you raid an outpost; or Tomb Raider's liberal checkpoints after major action sequences. At most, Dishonored should only enable the quick save option for new game plus, not for the first playthrough. More broadly, as [Game Maker's Toolkit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L8vAGGitr8) and [Extra Credits](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVSgVAoUm8s) say, players will remove fun out of a game if it's not part of the optimal path. This includes savescumming. Another notorious example are missable items in a JRPG: this encourages the reliance on a walkthrough where now the fun of a game is highly impacted by the quality of a walkthrough.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The oil painting aesthetic is a great style and ages well, making any low-resolution textures feel like an artistic choice. I have no qualms with the graphics playing it in 2019. The detailed facial models and environments make it feel as if it were released this year. Steampunk setting is gorgeous. Cutscenes are all rendered ingame, and the horizontal black bars give it a nice film aesthetic.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Minimal HUD.\n+ 21:9 support.\n+ No map.\n+ No mission score, only statistics. Stealth is only necessary to go through the game, not increase an artifical rating according to some rubric.\n+ The amazing hit detection where you can lean to dodge a bullet/item thrown from an enemy, as well as crouch to dodge an enemy's horizontal slash. It's a trick I never employed but adds to the creativity in StealthGamerBR's videos.\n+ Dialogue options are navigable with WASD and F (the interaction button).\n+ The two major missable collectibles are Runes and Bone Charms which are not hard to find. You can use the heart to pinpoint their location. And ingame text signals when you're near one. Coins are also missable, as you cannot replay missions to get more of them. But there's enough across missions that you won't need to find them all to upgrade your arsenal. Blueprints, however, are missable, which is unfortunate as that forces you to use a walkthrough per mission so that you don't miss out on them.\n+ The calm, eerie demeanor of the Outsider's voice.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Subtitle font and style is on par with the oil painting art.\n+ Parts of levels are reused across missions.\n+ Bonecharms are random rather than fixed. This helps replayability.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Quest markers. Fortunately there's a setting for this in the HUD, but some objectives can be obscure without the explicit marker as the game wasn't designed for this purpose. For example, finding the NPC to talk to in the Hound Pits is annoying as they move locations often. Games without markers solve this by having NPCs always be in the same spot, and other NPCs will tell you where their location. Flooded District's objective markers are also non-obvious due to the lack of signage.\n+ There's no mid-mission stats so you can't tell you were detected until after the mission ends. This can make a ghost playthrough frustrating if you have to play a mission all over again due a minor alert that you weren't sure even happened; or if a knocked out body gets eaten by rats. Adding to this, there's no explicit approach to restart a mission: you have to specifically know to save the game at the start of each level as otherwise you can't go back. Fortunately, there's a [Mission Stats mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/dishonored/mods/17), and which is useful not only tracking stealth but also how many Runes and Bonecharms you picked up in a level.\n+ There are fewer nonlethal options than lethal. Lethal provides much more satisfying animations such as the drop-kill. Once you're in confrontation mode, nonlethal forces you to run away rather than confront (e.g., the DLCs offer Stun Mines and Chokedust; Dishonored 2 adds Combat Choke).\n+ Safes. Finding the combination can halt the game's pace in search for the mysterious 3 digit combo. I'd rather just look this up to remove the puzzle solving.\n+ Dark Vision (Detective Mode in Arkham series) is too good. It last for basically forever and it makes an obvious contrast for humans, their line of sight, and all interactable objects. and it's ugly, ruining the color aesthetic and sounds of the original game. Fortunately, you can just do without it.\n+ No native borderless setting. Fortunately, you can at least use the [GeDoSaTo application](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Dishonored).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Side Objectives](https://dishonored.fandom.com/wiki/Side_Objectives)\n+ [Bone Charms](https://dishonored.fandom.com/wiki/Bone_Charms#Dishonored_4)\n+ [Runes](https://dishonored.fandom.com/wiki/Runes#Dishonored)\n\nI played the Definitive Edition on PC (max settings, keyboard and controller), which includes all the DLC (but which will be evaluated separately in a separate entry). According to Steam, it took me 17 hours to beat the base game. I played on Normal difficulty. I unbinded the quick save/load keys, relying only on autosaves and the occasional manual save if a particular autosave was too far away (Dishonored's autosave system is bad).\n\n__Playthrough 1 (Aug 2019).__ My strategy is nonlethal and as a ghost (Dishonored's definition of undetected, not the stricter definition of zero takedowns); this tends to be a game favorite direction in the hardcore stealth genre.\n\nStealth nonlethal adds to the challenge as takedowns take longer to execute, alarms wake them up, etc. I will only be lethal if nonlethal restricts my gameplay (e.g., fall attack) and when I'd rather play through my mistakes than start from a checkpoint all over again. Zero takedowns isn't fun if you're exploring everything, especially when looting all guards; it's only fun if you know intended routes for main quest completion, ignoring 100%. \n\nRune-wise, I did Blink -> Agility -> Bend Time -> Dark Vision -> Possession -> everything else.\n\n__Playthrough 2 (April 2022).__ Was motivated after playing Deathloop. I played on Very Hard difficulty (the highest setting) and with objective markers turned off. My playstyle is stealth non-lethal. I wasn't too concerned about collecting everything: I tried to collect bone charms and runes but missed a few, and completed most sidequests. The game was significantly more enjoyable after I stopped my OCD to loot every guard's coin purse; level progression feels natural as you zip by guards over high terrain to reach the next objective. Looting every guard halts the game's pacing to a crawl and requires savescumming.\n\nMy playstyle:\n\n+ Blink for general movement.\n+ Bend Time lets you knock out multiple enemies with the crossbow's sleep darts. As a mobility technique, you can move unnoticed, where level 2 lets you even pass Walls of Light and Arc Pylons.\n+ Possession is a mobility technique. With level 1, you can possess rats to squeeze through tight spaces. With level 2, you can bypass guard patrols, especially past Walls of Light and Arc Pylons. You can also negate fall damage by casting Possess while falling.\n+ Sleep Dart for knocking out enemies I can't easily do from close range. It works well for groups in combination with Bend Time.\n+ Crossbow Bolt for distracting enemies.\n+ Grenade for rat swarms.\n\ntodos\n+ high chaos lethal","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dishonored"},{"id":"322682678651451980","title":"Dishonored 2","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":750,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Arkane Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-08-17","completedDate":"2019-08-21","updatedDate":"2022-04-20","notes":"Dishonored 2 refines Dishonored 1's stealth with new powers and nonlethal attacks, enemy AI, improved combat mechanics, and more versatile level designs. Some level even stand out in gaming history due to its dynamism: The Clockwork Mansion and A Crack in the Slab. Level-design wise, like its predecessor, Dishonored 2 balances well the fine line of linear story mission objectives and sandbox assassination. World-building through the lore scattered in the levels also remains excellent.\n\nFlaw-wise, Dishonored 2 has weak characters and story, even more paltry than Dishonored 1's. There's also not as much originality into the game, instead refining just a handful of elements like Emily as a nonplayable character, more nonlethal options to introduce a quadrant of choices rather than just a duo, and several more ambitious level designs. I don't like the new features of bonecharm crafting and masterwork blueprints which upgrade weapons. The two core flaws of Dishonored 1—save system and reliance on objective markers—are no different in Dishonored 2.\n\n__Story.__ Story's recycled unfortunately. While slightly different, there's still a hub world of the Dreadful Whale. I like the various revists of characters like Anton Sokolov and marking the DLC villain Delilah as the main villain. New characters like Meagan are also good. However, like the past game, [the overall plot is only servicable](https://www.reddit.com/r/dishonored/comments/6uhbty/probably_unpopular_opinion_i_think_dishonored_is/dltbese/). It's really the details though in the levels and notes in lore scattered around that add to it a more distinctive charm. For example, the motif of oil painters. And whale oil (even bonecharms emit a whale noise).The reveal of Meagan Foster as Billie Lurk: wow, I did not see that one coming!\n\n__Gameplay.__ As a series, Dishonored most excels in its versatility of all its moves for crowd control, navigation, and their adeptness across the quadrant system of lethal vs nonlethal and stealth vs assault. Dishonored 2 exemplifies it with new movesets. What I value most in gameplay mechanics are a minimal set of core tools which remain powerful in their flexibility and visceral in their usage. Instead of a binary decision of lethal vs nonlethal, the decisions have a quadrant of lethal vs nonlethal on x-axis and stealth vs assault on y-axis (see the stats page). There's a number of minor improvements that make stealth feel smoother:\n\n+ Picking up bodies is faster than in Dishonored 1, meaning less time to kill and remove a body.\n+ When peeking from a wall, you can both move while peeking and also peek vertically. This makes peeking feel even smoother as a control.\n+ Dishonored 1's nonlethal has simple keybinds and with a core of Blink and crouching around followed by chokes. Dishonored 2 expands the nonlethal moveset to be more on par with the lethal moveset: Combat Choke; nonlethal Drop Takedowns; Focused Strike followed by Choke when they're stunned or on the ground.\n\nIt's cool that you can play as either Emily or Corvo. Having a variant of Blink for each playable character, and with slight but meaningful differences, is a great way to add variety because it adds further depth to understanding what everyone takes as a fundamental tool.\n\nClockwork Mansion is an especially ambitious level. And so is A Crack in the Slab which was not frustrating and such an interesting idea as an additional limitation from powers. A Crack in the Slab's time travel is such a unique idea not just for the level design but as a power for stealth. I also like that the final mission Death to the Empress is a novel twist on the first mission's level as well as a level from Dishonored 1.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Love the mix of the oil aesthetic and high-resolution textures.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ There's a Stats page so you can tell if you accidentally killed someone or got detected mid-mission. No longer like in Dishonored 1 do you have to play through and not notice you were actually detected and have to restart the whole mission again.\n+ Dark Vision is nerfed. It's still in the game though. My main complaints about Detective Mode (especially pertaining to Dishonored) is that 1. it ruins the aesthetic and atmosphere; and 2. makes stealth too easy as you can see everyone through walls. I deliberately played without putting a point in Dark Vision.\n+ All of the options Dishonored 2 provides you for replayability: Mission+ mode lets you replay missions with all powers and equipment already available; custom difficulties which you can tune a huge collection of items; HUD options for better immersion. New Game Plus lets you not only replay the game carrying over all upgrades but you can also learn both Emily and Corvo's powers simultaneously.\n+ You can now Combat Choke. That makes nonlethal a bit more viable in the high chaos (although still not possible) regime where you get caught and must attack from frontal, nonstealth, melee. This is a more permanent utility over the Dishonored 1 DLC's stun mines and choke dust.\n+ Many doors are Breakable Doors.\n+ You can break into all the Black Market Shops (although you can't steal upgrades which I think is good).\n+ Guards seem more reactive. For example, opened doors. (I now close all doors when I go through them because of this: a small detail but an immersive one.) Seeing through windows that I opened.\n+ Choking is more viable. You can move forward and not just backwards while choking them. And you can stand or sprint when moving with them.\n+ There are two kinds of devices powering Walls of Lights: the regular control panel powered by a Whale Tank and windmill towers. This adds a nice amount of variety.\n+ You can restart missions in the middle of a mission.\n+ 21:9 support. FOV slider. Borderless.\n+ Pretty fast loading times!\n+ By the end of the game, you can kill both Meagan and Anton before departing for the final mission. There's some fun animations. These details are similar (and much appreciated) in Dishonored 1 when you can kill pretty much all of the Loyalists once they serve their purpose.\n+ The Dreadful Wale isn't really like a video game-y hub like Dishonored 1's base was, where you have a shop for upgrading and purchasing ammo before the next mission. Instead, Emily upgrades by visiting black market shops which appear in most (but not all) missions.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ [Leaning to peek from corners is not as all powerful as the last game](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/168516-dishonored-2/74568732).\n+ Corvo is now voice-acted and is almost retrofitted to be blood-related to Emily rather than just a father figure.\n+ Detected bodies is no longer tracked as a stat in Dishonored 2. It never mattered for the Ghost achievement anyways.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Powers are not balanced well. For Emily, Far Reach and Domino are too good. It prevents any usefulness for Shadow Walk (particularly if instead of spending the mana to go through, e.g., a rat hole you would want to explore anyways and end up arriving at that spot via another path), Mesmerized, and Doppleganger for stealth nonlethal.\n+ Bonecharm crafting and the additional finite collectible of Raw Whalebone. It sounds like a feature some business/HR person suggested because all of the modern games must have some crafting feature.. It does not suit Dishonored well. It sounds only useful for New Game Plus since Bonecharms don't carry over but their disenchanted version of traits do.\n+ For similar reasons, I don't like the weapon upgrades with Masterworks, and with a deliberate exclusive-or choice for each.\n+ The Outsider's voice actor is not as good. Not as calm and threatening. This one sounds too young.\n+ Same as in Dishonored 1, you can't hide the F to Skip button during cutscenes. It's distracting.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on PC (max settings) and beat the game in 22 hours (as measured by Steam). I played as Emily on Medium difficulty. I chose Emily to add a fresh experience after playing Dishonored 1. Apparently the story also fits better for Emily where the antagonist for example is more personally connected to her. I played nonlethal. My arsenal (ordered by keybindings) is Far Reach (my Blink and grabbing isolated enemies to knock out from above), Heart, Domino (crowd control), Shadow Walk, Sleep Darts (ranged), Stun Mines (hairy situations), Pistol (Breakable Doors). Domino and Mesmerize serve similar purposes as crowd control, and I prefer the longer range of Domino. Shadow Walk has a really cool animations but it's nothing Far Reach and close-up grabs couldn't already do (or Domino for the multiple enemies). I use it situationally. Doppelganger sounds awesome particularly in high chaos because there are no fine control movements of the doppelganger. I didn't find it useful for low chaos.\n\nI did a second playthrough on April 2022, following a Dishonored 1 playthrough. I played on Very Hard difficulty as Corvo, with a stealth lethal playstyle, and without objective markers. My playstyle:\n\n+ Melee stealth kill is my main kill choice. With Shadow Kill, bodies are removed altogether.\n+ Blink.\n+ Devouring Swarm. For crowd control, either as distraction or to set up a kill.\n+ Bend Time. For crowd control by shooting my gun or running through inescapable areas.\n+ Possession. For traversal with rats or as a human.\n+ Crossbow Bolt. For ranged stealth kills, particularly in syncing with a nearby melee stealth kill.\n+ Grenade and Springrazor. For a loud crowd control kill, assuming no one is around to hear or won't find me.\n+ Incendiary Bolt. They serve a niche for destroying Bloodfly nests from range.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dishonored-2"},{"id":"322682678651454028","title":"Dishonored: The Brigmore Witches","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","PC","X360","XONE"],"studios":["Arkane Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-08-16","completedDate":"2019-08-16","updatedDate":"2022-04-17","notes":"Redemption arc has a good ending. I like the depth of Daud. And the style of overarching narratives at the beginning and end of every mission, and the looming figure that is the stalkish Outsider. I like the idea of corrupted Bone Charms which have stronger powers but a downside.\n\nI continued my High Chaos playthrough from The Knife of Dunwall's save file. But to have some diversity, I tried to go as nonlethal as possible this time (but lethal if things get hairy). My arsenal ordered by keybinding is Blink, Void Gaze, Bend Time (hairy situations), Sleep Darts (when it's too risk to go for the melee choke) , Chokedust (great for group kills and quick getaways).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dishonored-the-brigmore-witches"},{"id":"322682678651455052","title":"Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","PC","X360","XONE"],"studios":["Arkane Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-08-16","completedDate":"2019-08-16","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"It's the same game, just more levels and with an awesome playable character: Daud. The story is quite nice. I love the betrayal, and especially how dark the story is in High Chaos. It tells the tale of a man losing his touch but still good enough to execute one of his loyal companions who betrayed him. The alternative in Low Chaos mode is also fairly tragic. Favors are a nice mechanics addition, as well as powers to use assassin summons (which I never used). I loved how the core Blink move is more powerful with stopping time. I played oppositely as I did for Corvo in the main game: lethal/high chaos. Gameplay-wise, I used sparse manual saves. My main moves are Blink, Void Gaze, and Wristbow Bolt. I basically tried to kill everyone.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dishonored-the-knife-of-dunwall"},{"id":"322682678650387020","title":"Divinity: Original Sin 2","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":3540,"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Turn-based strategy (TBS)"],"startedDate":"2020-10-08","completedDate":"2020-10-14","updatedDate":"2023-08-05","notes":"Divinity is one of the best RPGs this decade, standing out as the modern CRPG while other RPG titans are western RPGs (e.g., Elder Scrolls) and JRPGs (e.g., Persona 5). It leverages standard CRPG elements, excelling most in its deep turn-based environmental combat and build variety.\n\nFlaw-wise, there are a few.\n\n+ Source Skills/Points are the only bad new mechanic, introducing a consumable that can either be replenished too often making fights too easy or too rarely used.\n+ Like Divinity 1, the story never reaches the worldbuilding and character depth of, say, Witcher 3. It's serviceable.\n+ Divinity 2 has a weird culture of save scumming, at times discouraging it (otherwise what's the purpose of accuracy as a mechanic?) and other times encouraging it, where it's hard to get through a fight without reloading to optimize for pre-fight shenanigans like positioning; or in dialogue options.\n+ I find CRPGs outstay their welcome in slowly becoming repetitive and closer to a chore to finish. Fortunately, I think Divinity 2 compensated for this better than other RPGs by having an engaging endgame, so I kept looking forward to gear/skill upgrades and testing it out in the next battle. Divinity's many town and puzzle quests are not interesting to me though.\n+ The combat is interesting and varied. However, the strategy to deplete armor followed by CCs can make most fights feel same-y. There should be more variety where there isn't as much need for this strategy.\n\n__Story.__ I like the character origin stories as well as the various quests. The overarching story with Sourcerers is forgettable; like Divinity 1, it reminds me of a generic D&D campaign. I skimmed the dialogue to proceed more quickly to combat.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core gameplay loop follows Divinity 1 with notable elements such as a transparent turn order; high difficulty; emphasis on elemental combos; crowd control and buffs over traditional tanking, and positioning; and seamless integration of free roam and combat. Progression and party-composition-wise, it's core comprises companions; attributes, skills; consumables like scrolls; inventory management. Story/level-wise, it's core comprises quests and side quests. As a CRPG, Divinity 2 stands out from other RPG subgenres in its isometric camera angle; flexibility of controls, with options such as thievery, attacking NPCs, teleporting/attacking your own party, and pet pal unlocking optional dialogue; emergent gamplay from its many abilities (see a larger list in my Divinity 1 entry); D&D combat system; non-obvious quest objectives.\n\nDivinity 2 features several new additions to the series. The armor system adds more depth to focusing, e.g., mages vs knights with physical vs magic attacks. Source skills offer powerful, consumable-like spells which I despise; it's clearly inspired by tabletop game's attrition mechanic that encourages care around resource consumption over multiple battles. Tags replace attitudes that depend on specific dialogue choices; I like this simpler approach of defining you a priori rather than dynamically and being careful of what you say. New to character creation are Origin Story characters, enabling the flexibility of custom heroes but with the freedom of adapting to a well-written character story. Divinity 2's entrance barrier is also a bit lower as you only have to create one character, creating the other three party members soon but not immediately. Crafting and durability is streamlined, with only weapons taking durability and does not require blacksmith skills for crafting/repair. I'm not sure how I feel about this streamlining, but I do like that in Divinity 2, civil abilities are separate from combat abilities, enabling party members to each specialize in a civil role without requiring an HM-like mule as in Divinity 1. Endgame gear now includes runes, frames for runes, and Eternal Aeterfact enhancements.\n\nUnlike Divinity 1, Divinity 2 doesn't have a weird meta where low-cost skills like low-rank melee CCs and summons are easily achievable, so there isn't an encouragement of hybrid builds for each character. Divinity 2's memory stat also avoids having 3-4 skillbars worth of spells for each character. And thank god there's less meta reliance on consumables like elemental grenades and arrows, and a ranger that manages elemental arrow consumables. Consumables may be more minmax, but they require tedious inventory micromanagement. Unfortunately, Divinity 2's meta is a race to strip armor from an enemy in order to CC it: this means DPS, initiative, initial positioning, high AP, and mobility are king. This improves upon Divinity 1's immediate CC and environmental effects taking hold, but still feels somewhat shallow as a mechanic ruining build diversity.\n\nProgression-wise, I would spend hours upon entrance to a new town, overrun with new quests and feeling slightly overwhelmed in traying to coomplete them all while not forgetting to talk to someone or miss a potentially important quest. This, combined with the inventory management, skill management, and overall party composition, makes the game feel overwhelming at times. I have this feeling in all CRPGs. Other RPGs like Witcher and Elder Scrolls can also be occasionally overwhelming in the amount of quests pursued simultaneously; and JRPGs can be occasionally overwhelming in party management. However, CRPGs do both.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Honestly looks exactly like Divinity Enhanced Edition.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ You can respec. You also don't forget learned skills when respeccing. You just can't use them until you meet the requirements.\n+ If you scroll up during a conversation you can see the conversation history. I don't recall if this was also in Divinity 1.\n+ You can see NPC/enemy sight range by holding Left Shift. This is helpful for sneaking or illegal activity.\n+ Unlike Divinity 1, you can immediately see everyone's inventory. No context switching.\n+ Unlike Divinity 1 but like Divinity 1 Enhanced Edition, party members dead during fight still gain XP.\n+ You can mark items in your inventory for auto-sell.\n+ Unlike Divinity 1, you can now Examine enemies to see more details such as highlighting status effects to see their descriptions, or their immunities.\n+ Skill bar is almost twice as long as it was in Divinity 1.\n+ Unlike Divinity 1, Divinity 2 is a bit more transparent about the effect of a trader's attitude toward each party member. It's not based on the conversation initiator but which party member is buying/selling.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ You can now fast travel from the main menu. You don't have to go back to a waypoint like in Divinity 1.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ As with Divinity 1, there's a meta where killing everyone rewards more XP than the dialogue-only route. Sometimes it's even worse where the optimal XP route is passivity followed by killing after the quest ends, or killing all NPCs in a town. This is uniquely a [Divinity/Larian Studios design problem](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/j7osl9/feedback_as_a_500_hour_dos2_player_xp_gain_in).\n+ Source points mechanic. Source points require zero usage or otherwise tedious back-and-forth between a Source Fountain and the original area; teleport pyramids help with this but at that point it's OP if used every battle. Midgame I only used it for quests and endgame I maybe used it too often since the endgame skills all use it and you would otherwise get it stolen from you.\n+ The quest pathing in Act 2 is confusing. Without a level map, you quickly run into areas you're outlevelled, not knowing whether to stay the course or quit to find another area.\n+ Weirdly, weapon skills are additive while general skills are multiplicative. This means Warfare is a greater DPS increase than upgrading weapon skills even though weapon skills is more specialized.\n+ Getting close to a Shrieker for Source Vampirism is just annoying. Would be frustrating without Chameleon Cloak.\n+ You can't use a Teleporter Pyramid to or from the boat. For example, you can't easily teleport to the respec mirror.\n+ I wish it were more obvious which vendors sold which skillbook schools. For example, the minimap tracker in World of Warcraft.\n+ Final fight and Death Room are not well-designed. In the final fight, the boss always gets the initiative and teleports you to the front, so you lose any positioning power. You're immediately put in a recovery position and it's hard to recover.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://fextralife.com/divinity-original-sin-2-party-combinations-guide-magic-physical-and-mixed/ | I like the fextralife guides because they cater to a class fantasy, providing general ideas. Sin Tee's builds provides further details on what's most viable from an optimization perspective.\n+ sin tee | https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1139237003\n+ areas by level | https://divinityoriginalsin2.vidyawiki.com/Areas+By+Level\n+ sworn pros and cons | https://www.reddit.com/r/DivinityOriginalSin/comments/bkkdj1/everything_i_know_about_being_sworn\n\nI played on Classic for my first playthrough. As with other RPGs, my favored approach in Divinity 2 is to only use guides for character building/mechanics and to play blind in terms of quest pathing. I can be completionist and minmax on a second playthrough when I play Tactician or Honor mode. I have the following open when playing: all 4 builds, Area by level tab for general direction; and Vim for editing this entry as well as a skillbook list of things I need.\n\nMy party is:\n\n+ 2H warrior/berserker. Lizard male (Red Prince) with Oud. Also serves as Persuasian with Pet Pal talent, Bartering, and shovel digger.\n+ Wizard in Pyromancy and Geomancy. Human female (Lohse) with Tambura. Talents include Glass cannon. Also serves as Loremaster and has the unique Summon Inner Demon skill.\n+ Ranger. Elf female (Sebille) with Bansuri. Talents include Glass cannon. Also serves as Lucky Charm and corpse eater for memories.\n+ Necromancer. Undead human male (Fane; my main character) with Cello. Talents include Glass cannon. Also serves as thievery since undeads don't need lockpicks and is given Sworn with two new talents Torturer and All Skilled Up followed by applying Swornbreaker.\n\nOverall, this party balances physical and magic; and melee and ranged. Ideally, the leading character is the melee frontrunner, has Persuasian and Pet Pal, and is the main character; this satisfies most any dialogue requirements. Each uses Sin Tee's guide as the starting point and varies a bit to cater to my playstyle (see my October 14 journal entry; the only non-minor increment was adding more CC utility on the Wizard and Necromancer). The 2H berserker is my spin on a traditional tank role, twisted to fit Divinity's aggressive and CC playstyle over MMOs. The wizard and ranger are classic ranged DPS, playing to Divinity's encouragement of ranged to avoid elemental environments around enemies, AoE attacks, and leveraging the wizard to dip lightly into many schools to exploit such environments. The necromancer plays even further into Divinity's specialties; a thief role is not as powerful as a ranger role, and necromancers can summon for early game and stay ranged. For origin stories, I tried to fit best to the four archetypes while also experiencing the best content.\n\ntodos in future playthroughs\n+ physical damage only or magic damage only\n+ two party lone wolf build or single character lone wolf build\n+ use companions ifan, beast\n+ other magic schools"},{"id":"322682678650373708","title":"Donkey Kong Country","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1994,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["SNES","Wii","WiiU","New 3DS","SFAM"],"studios":["Rare"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Gradiente","Playtronic","Hyundai"],"genres":["Platform"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","completedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2023-08-26","notes":"DKC provides a unique take on 2D platformers, with a realism art style, unique setting with characters and enemies, an emphasis on horizontal platforming over Mario's verticality, and iconic soundtrack. I found this game very enjoyable to play in modern times: this is partially attributed to being an original Crash and Spyro platformer, already appreciating the horizontality with spin/roll attacks over speed-momentum-based jumps and power-ups; and the art just holding well (SNES games are the pinnacle of 2D platformer art). \n\n__Story.__ There's not much of a story in DKC much like Super Mario. Unlike a damsel in distress, I like that it's more simply a friendship between Donkey and Diddy Kong and the aim to restore their stolen bananas from the Kremlings.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Core gameplay shares traits with SMW: world map and level progression, Bananas and Super Coins to fill up Lives, a death penalty when running out of lives by restarting at the latest save point, secrets, and a mount. Control-wise, Small Mario and Super Mario is replaced with Donkey and Diddy Kong who each have unique traits: to highlight several, Donkey has Hand Slap; and Diddy moves slightly faster and jumps higher but cannot roll through enemies like Krusha. Roll/Cartwheel replaces Mario's Spin Jump. Holding the jump button still determines height, as well as whether one is running. There are five mounts (\"Animal Buddies\"): Rhino, Swordfish, Frog, Ostrich, and Parrot. Star Barrels serve as the approach to checkpoints within a level.\n\nGiven the new IP, Donkey Kong Country comes up with significant number of ideas in level design, emphasizing horizontality over Mario's verticality, and which reminds me of Crash Bandicoot games (especially given that Roll is like Crash's Spin). Rainy areas cast darkness on areas. Barrels enable alternative platforming to Mario's Pipes. Red light Green light. There is no timer on levels, incentivizing exploration. Unlike Mario, there aren't puzzle levels like Ghost Houses: it's always straightforward that the farthest to the right area is the end of the level, which I appreciate.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The platformer took a unique approach distinguishing itself from the Mario series with its blended 3D realism fused into the 2D environments. Environments focus on jungles and exotic creatures.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Boss fights are standalone levels. This is significant quality of life improvement over SMW, where to even do trial and error on a boss you have to run through an entire level all over again. That's even worse than the infamous Dark Souls run to bosses!\n+ Unlike Super Mario games prior to it, DKC has no timer in levels. This is a clear relic of arcades as part of a scoring system and it's not surprising that Nintendo removed it from future games.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Mine Cart Carnage is a breath of fresh air in terms of a new level and platforming challenge. The difficulty spike is pretty insane however and I'm sure I wouldn't have enjoyed it if I didn't savescum by reloading the game, effectively assuming I had infinite lives. The secret in the level to skip it is a hilarious punch in the gut.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Like SMW, the ability to save is obtuse. You have to find Candy's Save Barrel, which requires finding candy or funky in the world. Otherwise you must go back to the previous world either using Funky's Flights if you unlocked it in the level or manual traversal to get back to Candy's Save Barrel. It's at least an improvement over SMW's save point system which requires you to re-complete certain levels. Similar to SMW, I just used the emulator to save at each level so that I don't deal with this.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played various parts as a kid somewhere around 1997-2000 but never completed it.\n\nI replayed it on November 10 2020. I played on the emulator Higan as it is the most accurate SNES emulator.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/donkey-kong-country"},{"id":"322682678650354252","title":"Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1995,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["SNES","Wii","WiiU","New 3DS","SFAM"],"studios":["Rare"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Gradiente","Playtronic","Hyundai"],"genres":["Platform"],"startedDate":"2020-12-20","completedDate":"2020-12-21","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"DKC2 does everything a great sequel does: advance the core elements while stripping the weaker parts. DKC2 replaces Donkey Kong with Diddy Kong's girlfriend who's as agile as Diddy Kong, adds more experimentation to the levels and bosses, boasts an excellent soundtrack, and adds further colorful and memorable characters.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Core platforming and controls are the same, with an overworld map, bananas for lives and coins to spend (now at \"Kong Family locations\"), animal friend mounts, and bosses at the end of each stage. The biggest change in controls is the characters, with two of Diddy's agility from the first game which is a big quality-of-life improvement. Donkey Kong's advantages were just never good enough to outweigh the improved movement speed and jump distance. The second most significant change are the more varied level designs. For example, a portion of the game's theme involves sailing and pirates. There's more variety such as turn into animal for animal-only levels, Bramble Blast, honey-sticking on the ground, wind.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics and sound are largely the same as the original game.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Jumping from a sufficient height on the target at the last level provides rewards. It adds just a bit more skill similar to Super Mario World's Giant Gates.\n+ The overall difficulty is a tick higher than the original game. Just how a sequel or DLC should be.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Monkey Museum. It's nice to have the old monkey appear. But his tips aren't necessary particularly in the advent of the internet, and it's weird to add a collectible Coin currency to get them.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Saving at Kong Kollege requires two Banana Coins after the first time.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on the Higan SNES emulator. I used save states frequently, beyond the original checkpoints because I mostly played this as a casual, chill game with streams on the background. This way I don't have to deal with hard segments, Live and Game Over, and the Save mechanic requiring two Coins.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/donkey-kong-country-2-diddy-s-kong-quest"},{"id":"340403235806249552","title":"Doom (2016)","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":690,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Stadia"],"studios":["id Software"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2020-05-08","completedDate":"2020-05-15","updatedDate":"2022-08-19","notes":"Doom (2016) is a masterpiece of metal and rage. It is the best FPS I've played to date (May 2020). It overhauls elements of the shooter genre, steering a direction away from modern FPS's cover shooter in appeal to the 90s style. Doom establishes a unique stronghold with aggressive mobility, old school elements such as the lack of sprint or reloading, and old school level designs that just drop you in a zone to navigate while occasionally locked into mini-deathmatch arenas. Doom renovated the classic style by maintaining a frenetic pace with the Glory Kill system to recover health, Chainsaw to recover ammo, and excellent enemy designs encouraging a mix of short to mid range tactics. For better or worse, it deliberately removes the more puzzle and sandbox levels in favor of a linear design. It has outstanding visuals and a metal soundtrack.\n\nFlaw-wise, the arenas of enemy waves feel lazy as they kill the free-roaming flow (contrast the first few missions vs the latter half of the games' waves). Evironmental and level design can be lacking, feeling same-y as you progress through levels. Bosses could be improved and only appeared near the end.\n\n__Story.__ Some frills. Demons unleashed from hell. Sufficient.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I love Doom's mix of melee/mobility and gunplay. Doom encourages aggressivity and mobility by providing health packs and ammo across the area; powerups; melee being a powerful attack; enemy hitscan has bullet traversal, so you can dodge attacks in the open as opposed to sitting behind cover; double jump; and mini-deathmatch like arenas. Details like highlighting of when an enemy is stunned and ready for a glory kill is seamless. Particularly noticeable is its lack of scope, reload, cover-shooting, sprinting prevalent in modern FPS. Overall, I loved its strategic elements on top of its frenetic pacing: ammo/weapon management, rushing glory kill for health, rushing chainsaw for ammo, when to call it quits with BFG and grenades/AOE.\n\nThe glory kill mechanic is perhaps the single greatest invention in FPS. It pushes on the core essence of what makes Doom so interesting: aggresion. This is push-forward combat, going beyond the circle strafing in classic Doom's open areas or the corner peeking and retreating in classic Doom's closed corridors. The idea of health replenishment also bypasses two patterns in classic Doom: the sandbox level navigation in mazes with potential traps; and the hunt for health, armor, and ammo pickups by going back to previous corridors. Doom Eternal further advances this with the chainsaw (as a cooldown instead of explicit ammo), Flame Belch, and limited ammo per weapon to maximize full usage, but it all started with the glory kill.\n\nDoom reeks of old school design, which I love: no sprint; powerups; multi-level level designs. The upgrades feel the most AAA in terms of tropes.\n\nWeapons are all excellent and I found use cases for most all of them..\n\nSecrets reward exploration via gameplay incentives. For example, Doomguy collectibles and classic maps unlock weapon upgrade points. Field Drones provide weapon upgrade shops. Elite Guard corpses provide Prator tokens for suit upgrades. Rune Challenges provide rune upgrades. Argent Cells provide upgrades. Automaps mark all collectibles on the map. Miscellaneous collectibles unlock lore/art.\n\nThere's a good set of enemy variety, and introduced across the missions so they stay fresh. Bosses were rather lackluster and only appeared from Lazarus Lab (mission 9) and beyond.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Metal. And bloody animations, multiple per enemy. I love it. The detailed resolution is astounding: I could see this game being released in 2020 with its quality.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ The opening scene where an overlay provides exposition and Doomslayer just smashes the HUD.\n+ The adrenaline of opening up a gore nest and slaughtering the enemies.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ I love the classic maps. Perfectly integrated into the game. Fun throwback.\n+ Cutscenes all rendered ingame.\n+ They explicitly tell you how many of each collectible per level.\n+ Checkpoint system works well with a lack of explicit saving.\n+ I love the miscellaneous improvements Doom (2016) had over the original 1993 version: for example, Berserk powerup, where the original had poor hit detection to easily run up and whack-a-mole an enemy; easier finding of health and ammo via Glory Kills and Chainsaws; just enough handholding if you're lost in mission objectives.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ You can't skip cutscenes. Minor annoyance if you want to replay the game just for the gameplay.\n+ If you restart a mission, you lose all progress, including collectibles, challenges, and Rune and weapon challenges. I had to replay Mission 8 because the game cut me off from backtracking to get a collectible I missed. Surprisingly, I wasn't as annoyed by this as I thought I would since the game is so damn enjoyable.\n+ Missions 8 and 9 are not backtrackable, meaning you have to replay the mission if you missed collectibles.\n+ Rune trials are very linear and not very challenging, just trial and error.\n+ The map is a weird 3D mess that seems unnecessarily complicated.\n+ While I love the weapon variety, fully utilizing all 8 can be a nightmare until you master recalling all 8 keybinds to muscle memory. PC weapon swap keybinds are especially awkward for 6 (Super Shotgun), 7 (Gauss Cannon), 8 (Chaingun). I remapped them to Q, Z, and X respectively.\n+ I semiregularly ran into two bugs: clipping through the floor and falling to my death; an enemy being stuck and being forced to reload a checkpoint to continue with the mission.\n+ Startup takes way too long. Fortunately there's an advanced option to set to skip it.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ secrets guide (doesn't cover field drones, new weapons, and miscellaneous secrets like megahealth) | https://guides.gamepressure.com/doom/guide.asp?ID=35390\n+ weapon guide | https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/7bwjo4/the_fundamentals_of_doom_2016_my_tips_on_how_to\n+ upgrade path | https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/77otin/upgrade_path_for_ultranightmare/, https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/51jw11/tips_for_what_to_upgradeprioritize_on_nightmare/\n+ argent dawn upgrades. do whatever you've been struggling with | https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/83jg3a/how_do_you_guys_level_up_the_argent_cells_do_you/\n+ doom monsters comparison | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcF2KI7y3CY\n+ quick switch technique (SSG<->SSG; GC<->RL) | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S7cm8JycN4\n+ clockner's runs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72S2aAxtZOs\n\nAs I got used to difficulty (and thoroughly enjoyed learning mechanics) since delving into Souls-like games, I tried the highest available difficulty: Nightmare. Ultra Nightmare is not available, and you also end the campaign from one death(!). In mission 2 I kept dying repeatedly, with damage being unrelenting, ammo scarce, and getting only little health replenished from Glory Kills. I went with Ultra-Violent and found the game well-balanced and smoother, bordering on easy. I went with weapon and suit upgrades somewhat ad hoc as there's not really so much \"builds\" in this game. I only did research on Argent Cells and weapon mods. I used a guide to find all secrets but to avoid pacing issues I only did this near the end of each level or when there's a noticeable break in terms of exploration. My favorite Runes are Armored Offensive, Ammo Boost, and Intimacy is Best, but I used all runes to level them up as I played.\n\nMy favorite guns in my standard rotation are: Combat Shotgun's explosive for small to mid enemies followed by Super Shotgun for short range; Heavy Assault Rifle for mid to long range; Rocket Launcher and Gauss Cannon for single-target big enemies. I use the Chainsaw, grenade, and BFG when I'm overwhelmed. I never use the Pistol, Plasma Gun, or Chaingun. The pistol is infinite ammo and generally bad. The Plasma Gun has lower per-shot damage than the Heavy Assault Rifle and shares ammo with the Gauss Cannon (Heavy Assault Rifle shares ammo with the Chaingun but that's not as useful). The Chaingun isn't useful because Doom (2016) has enemies all around you as opposed to previous games (https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/96zhrk/the_case_for_omitting_the_chaingun/).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/doom--2"},{"id":"322682678624168524","title":"Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods - Part One","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch","Stadia"],"studios":["id Software","Panic Button Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2021-07-04","completedDate":"2021-07-05","updatedDate":"2025-02-23","notes":"The Ancient Gods Part 1 adds three new levels, dense with the usual mix of platforming and areans that makes Doom Eternal levels so fun. And TAG1 introduces several new mechanics and enemies:\n\n+ Support Runes.\n\nNew enemies:\n+ Turrets and Blood Makyrs force you to be precise with your Precision Bolt / Ballista combo.\n+ Spirits force you to make more usage of your Plasma Rifle with its Microwave Beam (now making it viable and more notable as a stun for advancing enemies like Possessed Demons, Barons, Hell/Dread Knights, and Whiplashes).\n+ Whiplash Spectre makes things particularly devious.\n\nThe levels are great as difficult yet fair challenges; they can suffer at times from steep difficulty curves. The increased enemy variety mostly works for the better albeit is somewhat one-trick with the Microwave Beam being the only counter to Spirits and Blood Makyrs being invincible until applying heavy attacks.\n\nOthers:\n+ I love that they threw away the Crucible so that only the BFG remains as the powerful limited-ammo weapon.\n\nThe music is fine. It's serviceable but unfortunatley no longer stands out as a defining element of the Doom revitalized titles. It's clearly a different artist than Mick Gordon, and Andrew Hulsholt's aims to replicate it just aren't good enough.\n\nPlaying Part One after I got more acquainted with the optimal quickswitch combos, you can really see the difficulty in Part One. While I felt it bordered on unfair with the amount they throw at you, I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge: I felt it was actually balanced for me, as the quickswitch combos toned an uneducated and potentially unfair playthrough with an engaging one. The difficulty spikes did feel awkward though.\n\nThe Super Gore Nest master level is perhaps the best collection of difficult fights, and without a crazy difficulty curve. It was incredibly hard throughout.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/doom-eternal-the-ancient-gods-part-one"},{"id":"322682678624208460","title":"Doom mod: Brutal Doom","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2012,"startedDate":"2021-02-16","completedDate":"2021-02-17","updatedDate":"2023-08-14","notes":"Brutal Doom is truly Doom with brutality amped up. The visual and sound enhancements attest to this as well as gameplay improvements that make shooting and level navigation more intense. It adds its own opinion of what modern Doom means: for example, reloading, grenades, and more weapons including a submachine gun that makes better use of all weapon slots. I admire Brutal Doom's interpretation as a successful approach that's different from Doom (2016)'s. I find a lot of the features unnecessary fluff though, and it's a common flaw among mods which tend to add more surface features rather than sticking with a base and improving the core gameplay.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Aside from overhauling the damage system and AI aggressivity, Brutal Doom also adds new weapons, abilities, and a few enemies. It adds arguably too many weapons, but they fit into just the 8 weapon slots, each filling as a subtype of a Doom weapon role which works well. The Submachine Gun replaces the pistol, which is excellent. Abilities include Alt Fire (e.g., iron sights), Kick, Combat Roll, Flash light, Quick Throw Frag Grenade, Reload, Offend.\n\nBrutal Doom doesn't change anything regarding level design, which is WAD-specific. It plays especially well with the official WADs, e.g., Doom 1. It may actually specifically place new enemies, friendly marines, etc. for the official WADs though it's hard to tell as they don't document this.\n\nBrutal Doom is often mentioned for its difficulty. But I don't find it anymore difficult than the original game at Ultra-Violence difficulty: it's just a different experience, where you have to play slightly more cautiously given that enemies are more aggressive and you reload and both you and enemies can kill faster. Brutal Doom in fact makes ammo management easier as pistol ammo is now viable as a main weapon rather than a last resort, and the Assault Rifle is more ammo-efficient than the Chaingun with rifle ammo being distinct from pistol ammo.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ It's even bloodier than the original Doom and I like it with its intensity: blood spatter, multilated corpses, lighting, and dramatic explosions. Color of health and armor pickups are emphasized, making it easier to spot. HUD is dynamic with blood splatter when killing enemies up close, bulletholes on screen when you get hit, etc; and it includes an enemy healthbar. It's also complemented well by the recommended sound additions. Andrew Hulshult's IDFKA soundtrack is excellent, capturing the essence of Doom (1993)'s soundtrack but removing its MIDI restrictions. Similarly, the sound effects make the weapons feel raw and powerful.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Old guns no longer become obsolete as you acquire new ones.\n+ Enemy damage no longer has RNG.\n+ Killing an enemy at near death drops a health bonus.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Spectre is now completley invisible when not attacking. The difficulty ramp is good, and if you know they're there, you can spot them somewhat from their glowing eyes.\n+ I find a lot of the abilities to be unnecessary features: Kick, Combat Roll, Stealth Takedown, Grenade. Maybe they see usage in non-base game WADs.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Multiple weapons per weapon keybind. I think it's silly to have multiple types that you swap to. Would rather just have one of each. Smells of classic mod feature creep.\n+ The dynamic ADS mode in v21, enabling both toggle and hold-to-fire for. Players usually only do one mode, and the game can often accidentally interpret the other when you're doing various actions (e.g., quickscope). So I use [Brutal Doom with ADS mode.](https://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-doom/addons/adsmode)\n+ Friendly marines as companions. They're useless. My only enjoyment is seeing their death animation.\n+ [You have to go into console to bind directly to a stacked weapon slot.](https://www.reddit.com/r/brutaldoom/comments/fav5iu/is_there_a_way_to_bind_directly_to_a_stacked) I dislike that there's any notion of memory in the weapon keybinds. For example, you always have to hit 1 several times in order to specifically get the Chainsaw out. It would be good to at least have the switched weapon to be the last one you equipped in that weapon slot rather than a fixed order.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nGiven its significant changes, I'm adding as a standalone entry in order to track and evaluate it standalone.\n\n__Version.__ I played Brutal Doom v21, using GZDoom v4.5.0, with Brutal Doom's recommended setup: [Perkristian's HD sound effects](https://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/58879-the-hi-res-doom-sound-pack-is-updated) and [the IDKFA soundtrack](https://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-doom/addons/idkfa-doom-soundtrack); and using ZDL to be able to launch Brutal Doom under an executable, to be tracked on Steam as Ultimate Doom ([renamed to `rerelease/doom.exe` given the 2020 Unity port replacing the dosbox port](https://steamcommunity.com/app/2280/discussions/0/3004430047200250657)).\n\n__Playthrough.__ I played on Ultra Violence, and with Normal (Rifle Start) which is the way it was meant to be played. Mouse sensitivity to roughly 8.5in/180 (800 DPI, 0.6 GZDoom sensitivity), mouse smoothing off, freelook, auto aim off, dot crosshair, weapons 678 mapped to ZXC.\n\nI played all episodes of Doom (1993), i.e., not the fourth. I gave up on E4M3 after savescumming on E4M1 and turning on iddqd on E4M2. I could get through E4, but not without tedious trial-and-error and watching walkthroughs. It just doesn't feel like the previous Doom episodes with its huge enemy count and map layout, being closer to Doom II. Graphics settings follow videos posted on r/brutaldoom."},{"id":"8c171497-c1b9-4fb6-bc3e-99f325d905e1","title":"Doom mod: Voxel Doom","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2022,"platforms":["PC"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2025-03-08","completedDate":"2025-03-08","updatedDate":"2025-03-08","notes":"Feels so natural I often forget it's there.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.moddb.com/mods/doom-voxel-project\n+ [Digital Foundry: Voxel Doom Tested: id Software Classic Gets A Voxelised 3D Upgrade!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-aVt77epQ4)\n\nI first saw this when seeing a RTX Doom 2 mod trailer. Unfortunately, there's no equivalent for Doom 1 as of writing (2024-09-20). There is the Voxel mod and an RTX mod PRBoom, but [no compatible combination](https://github.com/sultim-t/prboom-plus-rt/issues/89).\n\nI played Voxel Doom v1.0 on GZDoom. Default settings with the following changes:\n\n+ Always Run: On.\n+ Autoaim: 0.\n+ Default crosshair: Dot.\n+ Horizontal/vertical mouse sensitivity: 0.3.\n+ Jump and crouch turned off.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/voxel-doom"},{"id":"322682678624186956","title":"Dragon Age: Origins","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":2430,"platforms":["PS3","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["BioWare Edmonton"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2021-04-12","completedDate":"2021-04-18","updatedDate":"2023-05-10","notes":"Dragon Age: Origins is an interesting mix of ideas from an array of RPGs: D&D systems like Baldur's gate, the more action-oriented and third-person approach of KOTOR, and control and combat ideas from MMOs like World of Warcraft. It reigns as one of the best RTWP games of all time, enabling a style that would not work if it were purely turn-based or real-time. As a new IP with its own lore, DAO also performs surprisingly well across story and characters, and visuals and soundtrack.\n\n__Story.__ DAO's greatest strength writing-wise is its characters. Each companion has a unique personality, with a back-and-forth dynamic and sufficient character development. A lot of the companion's quips are funny as are the companion dialogues among themselves---found myself laughing quite a bit throughout the game. Origin stories also provide unique lore for your playable character. This adds a bit more personalization and increases replayability.\n\nThe overall narrative and locations are fairly superficial in their fantasy tropes, not going too far with them. However, I love all the two-sided choices that the game forces you to make, even if they have no important consequences (the illusion of choice). With that said, there's often little to go off of in order to make any particular choice well-substantiated. It's like a game of two parties each saying one line that the other party is at fault, and now you have to decide.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The game inherits many mechanics from Baldur's Gate (and subsequently, D&D, KOTOR, and the like). DAO introduces several new aspects.\n\nCombat is effectively KOTOR's but more tactical following Baldur's Gate.\n\n+ Abilities are cooldown-based like World of Warcraft. This greatly improves KOTOR's spamming of the single best ability, forcing diversity in gameplay. I also greatly prefer this approach to magic over the approach in Baldur's Gate (D&D 2nd edition), which limits spell usage within a day. The cooldown system combined with tactical level design makes RTWP natural for DAO---something that can't be said for KOTOR. You can do real-time combat for quite a few fights, particularly if you're just steamrolling mobs. And you can apply more tactics and pause when the fights become challenging. It's an excellent hybrid between, say, World of Warcraft and Divinity.\n\n+ Sustained abilities avoid the tedium of micromanaging buffs. In fact, if the game weren't tactical involving a party, you could almost play the game like an MMO without pausing (indeed, that's what DAO's console ports cater to).\n+ Spell combo system, effectively a predecessor to Divinity's environmental effects. These encourage synergy among party members. My favorites are Shattering and Paralysis Explosion.\n+ Threat, including threat management abilities like taunt.\n+ Injury mechanic, where party members resurrect freely after combat but incur a penalty.\n\nControls are intuitive. DAO borrows from MMOs with its action bar for multiple ability keybinds and movement---a feature I wished KOTOR had. The camera control enables both third-person and isometric and I enjoy the option: third-person for general movement; isometric for tactical combat. You can Tab highlight interactive objects: it's a great improvement from KOTOR and one I enjoyed in Divinity.\n\nCompanion-wise, the most significant addition is a tactics system to control party AI. Tactics provide if-then conditions to greatly customize AI in ways you couldn't in Baldur's Gate and KOTOR---effectively FF12's Gambit system but where the tactics don't apply to the character you're controlling so you can't automate fights. It works to great effect, although it's not great for AoE or CC's, both of which you must do manually. Companions also have a approval relationship that you build, including romance options, similar to Mass Effect. \n\nProgression-wise, DAO has standard D&D choices: classes, companions, attributes, skills, talents and spells. Fade bonuses provide permanent stat attributes (reminding me of Fallout's bobbleheads). Purchasable backpacks increase inventory capacity. I like the Fatigue effect to balance armor usage. Quest and side quest progression is standard.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ It's difficult to evaluate 2009 graphics in 2021. The detail on face models, assets, and lighting all age decently well. DAO certainly escaped the curse of PS1 era games and open empty levels. Voice acting and soundtrack is also great, although like previous Bioware games, the main character has no voice actor. Lines coming from various dialogue choices can lead to inconsistent voice acting at times, either being too high/low in emotions from one line to the next or losing a certain gruffness/personality.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can configure plot helpers (quest objective markers). I like the default of only showing for explored areas. Like other Bioware games, there aren't explicit objectives.\n+ You can skip the intro movies (startup screen).\n+ Sell price is consistently 25%. Means you don't have to travel to a specific merchant every time to clean your inventory.\n+ Enemy and item loot does not despawn.\n+ Like DAO Awakening, clicking on a party member no longer initiates a conversation with them. No accidental clicks like in DAO!\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Like other RTWP games and unlike KOTOR, you can't queue actions. There is also no auto or keyboard-based targeting like WoW: you have to manually click on targets.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ No overworld but rather instanced areas connected to others by a world map.\n+ Font size and UI is too small for modern resolutions. The [FtG UI mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/73) helps but doesn't work on everything (particularly the minimap and tooltip).\n+ Multi-town/item collection quests don't update with which ones you already completed. You have to commit progress to memory, which makes them especially tedious if you missed one and don't know which.\n+ No jumping physics. This means there are invisible boundaries when climbing up or down terrain, making the game feel more narrow.\n+ Online capabilities. There are many outdated guides in 2021. Installing the game fresh, all DLCs already came with the game. I was also able to log into the in-game servers (your password can't have [special characters](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Dragon_Age:_Origins#EA_Account_Log-In_Issues)), which is helpful for tracking achievements in-game. However, because the Bioware website is forever down, your online profile and any uploading is meaningless. It also doesn't connect achievements to your Origin account, where originally (~2015) Steam used to give you the CD Key so you can also add the game to Origin. Oh well, achievements are unnecessary, especially if they're not Steam's.\n+ Quite a few sidequests are tedious point A-B-C-D fetch quests, and further with no way to track partial progress.\n+ No borderless natively. Borderless Gaming works well though, and it's fortunate that the original game supports 2560x1440p.\n+ System issues: Random game crashes due to a known memory leak, particularly in areas/battles with lots of assets (fixed with a [4GB RAM patch](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=233222451). Console commands also aren't visible (fixed with a mod).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Dragon Age Wiki](https://dragonage.fandom.com)\n+ [Mage attributes and spells](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=769732428)\n+ [Mage skills](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/920668-dragon-age-origins/58084638)\n\nThis entry does not include any DLCs. I was originally motivated to play this as it's one of the best western RPGs apparently and the best entry into the Dragon Age series. I played on normal difficulty. I played blind, only using walkthroughs to understand build choices and when I got stuck. I completed all sidequests I came across. I didn't really look to optimize endgame gear and farm gold with Potent Lyrium Potions until planning for the Awakening DLC.\n\nMy party:\n\n+ __Main character.__ DPS and CC mage. My playstyle is a Nuker. Open with Fireball -> Cone of Cold -> Flame Blast, then apply Glyphs for CCs, Blood Wound/Wynn for more AoE, or focus single targets. In retrospect, this playstyle would better fit an arcane warrior caster. I often tank hits as I go melee range and initiate combat. 1 point in Arcane Warrior improves survivability. Male Elf Mage following the Magi origin story. All tomes go to my main.\n\n    + Attributes: Magic.\n    + Skills: Coercion, Combat Training, Survival, 1 Stealing for Denerim quest.\n    + Spells: Primal's Fire and Ice, Creation's Glyphs, Blood Magic, Mage, Spirit Healer for stats, Sleep, Mana Clash.\n+ __Alistair.__ Tank.\n\n    + Attributes: Dexterity, 42 Strength for equipment.\n    + Skills: Combat Training, Combat Tactics, Survival.\n    + Talents: Weapon and Shield, Warrior's Taunt and Threaten, Templar, Berserker for stats.\n+ __Leilana.__ Ranged DPS rogue.\n\n    + Attributes: Cunning, 20 Strength and 34 Dexterity for equipment.\n    + Skills: Combat Training, Combat Tactics, Survival.\n    + Talents: Archery, Bard, Rogue's Lethality, Ranger for stats.\n + __Wynne.__ Healer and CC mage.\n\n    + Attributes: Magic.\n    + Skills: Combat Training, Combat Tactics, Survival.\n    + Spells: Creation's Heal, Spirit Healer, Primal's Fire, Entropy's Sleep, Mage, Blood Mage for stats.\n\nOther companions I use:\n\n+ __Morrigan.__ Debilitator mage.\n\n    + Attributes: Magic.\n    + Skills: Combat Training, Combat Tactics, Herbalism for gold farming.\n    + Spell: Entropy's Hex and Sleep, Primal's Ice, Spirit Healer.\n\ntodos on future playthroughs\n+ rogue build sith dual daggers","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-age-origins"},{"id":"322682678652500556","title":"Dragon Quest V","originalTitle":"ドラゴンクエストV","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":3420,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["ArtePiazza"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2018-09-13","completedDate":"2018-09-22","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"__Story.__ DQ5 doesn't have the roaming enemies and semi-turn-based battle system of Chrono Trigger. And DQ5 doesn't have the ensemble cast of FF6. Instead, DQ5 excels most in advancing the story of one character. It defines an epic on his life, much like the Odyssey, from vast jumps in timelines and to his various tribulations (death of his father, slavery, petrification and losing his wife, not finding his mother for a long time).\n\nDQ5 feels more slice-of-life-like in focusing one character, and from the age of a child to an adult, from his relationship with his father, his childhood friends, all the way to marriage. Because of this I actually wish it even more embraced its slice-of-life nature, similar to the Mother series where it isn't so much about saving the world. Rather, DQ5 might focus, for example, on overtaking his kingdom and just end there.\n\nThe story remains a little silly as a fantasy, that there is one hero and his band to save the world, journeying from town to town with dungeons, \"boss fights\", etc. I still find this so implausible to ruin characterization and interesting developments. I only like this stage insomuch as it is set up as a stage for the rest of the storytelling (like Earthbound).\n\nWow at the child slavery for 10 years from 6 to 16. And the death of his father in fromt of his eyes. Now that’s ome way to end an era before a time skip! Even the idea of escaping a dlavery plantation by hiding in a barrel cramped with three people, whose original intention was to hide dead bodies, is shocking. The twist at the end of Part 2 is excellent as well. Just as life were about to settle on, without ever resolving the grand mystery as he simply resides as a new king with his wife and twin children.\n\nI love that it isn’t Abel that's the legendary hero. But his son. It really makes you feel for his family and noy just him as a Mary Sue character.\n\n__Graphics.__ Given that this is developed in 1992, I appreciate the sprite graphics, walls of text as dialogue, and classical MIDI music much like FF6 (1994) and Chrono Trigger (1995). I wish the sprites actually aged. This is a good sign for where graphics can help change the atmosphere, similar to the destroyed world in the second part of FF6.\n\nThe menu interface in DQ5 has not aged well. It's extremely rudimentary and takes so many navigations to organize items and visualize equipment. This is a good example of where I think open-sourced gaming could really help. If all JRPGs built on the same infrastructure, they could reuse the same menu code but of course with options for different stylings, etc.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The battle system is fairly rudimentary, with turn-based combat of attack, magic, items, and fleeing; though there are Tactics that allow monsters in your party to do their own thing, somewhat similar to Chrono Trigger's monsters.\n\nMechanics wise, I really enjoyed how they showed the gruesome death scene of his father (watch the battle go as the minions inch out his HP) and also a way for the preadult Hero to retain the same gear as his child self over 10 years.\n\nMechanics-wise, I like that DQ5 lets you pan around the map, which gives you a feeling that it's quasi 3D. It also uses it to hide certain doors.\n\nFor party construction, I followed monster recruitment rankings from the following: [1](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/942423-dragon-quest-v-hand-of-the-heavenly-bride/75581417); [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonquest/comments/2mqczm/best_dragon_quest_v_party).\n\nFor Part 2, I used: Abel, Slime Knight, Saber, and Slime. Abel is a great all-arounder (heal, AoE spells, Attack) and can equip good materials. Slime Knight is similar to Abel. Saber has a good Attack, and that's about it. Slime has poor stats but I liked his Kabuff (defense+ to all), Kasap (defense- to all) and AoE Attack with Edged boomerang; later I switched Slime with Orc King once i got him. Amazing party member for Kazing (revive) and Heal spells including Multiheal once he levels up.\n\nFor Part 3, I used: Abel, Parry, Slime Knight, and Golem. Parry functions like Abel and Slime Knight, but with absurdly better equipment due to the Zenithian equipment; he's even better by level 30 with both Kazing and Multiheal. Abel is my in-battle reviver. Orc King and Slime Knight are in my wagon for extra heals. I haven't found a good buffer/debuffer so I kept around Slime. As the game progresses, magic just isn't that good and therefore rules out Madchen and Bianca/Nera. For the wagon I typically alternated to level them all up—but the good ones were generally Madchen (for her Kasap debuff complimenting Parry's Kabuff; and Oomph which doubles a party member's attack), Sancho, Tuppence, Saber. In no parts did I really farm to look for the rarer Monsters that are really good such as Cureslime, Metal Slime, King Cureslime, Gigantes, Great Dragon.\n\nI was level 28 on Abel and could not kill Bishop Ladja. It looks like grinding for exp and gold at Knick-Knack (mudhands and liquid metal slimes in particular) helped a lot. Used a nontypical party for boss fights consisting of Abel, Parry, Madchen, and Slime Knight. [I also just used all my seeds which give stat boosts to Abel.](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/942423-dragon-quest-v-hand-of-the-heavenly-bride/48513590). I ended up beating Ladja and then Bjorn at level 32 on Abel and roughly 29-30 on the rest.\n\nAt endgame, I grinded for Gigantes and Great Dragon. They're found in Nadiria, which seems to be a good place to grind gold (Balhib) and experience. Metal Dragons also have a 1/256 chance of dropping the Metal King Helm, which is the best helm for all who can equip it.\n\nThings to grind/farm/collect: mini-medals (which offer unique items); seeds (which are permanent stat boosters); experience; gold; monsters; best equipment per party member; knick-knacks which are collectibles.\n\n## Miscellaneous\n\n+ https://www.resetera.com/threads/a-guide-for-getting-into-dragon-quest.64979/\n\nI chose this game as my first Dragon Quest. This follows [a guide](https://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-gateway-guide-to-dragon-quest); see also [2](https://www.rpgsite.net/feature/5866-the-complete-beginner-s-guide-to-dragon-quest-part-1-main-titles). I also played the mobile version (iOS), which is based on the DS version's engine; it seems like the DS and mobile versions are the best because they have an extra feature (third wife option). But they pale in comparison to the PS2 version's new 3D graphics. I don't like the mobile ports because they add intrusive interfaces with their clearer non-pixelbased fonts, and some visuals can be proportioned incorrectly.\n\nI beat the game with running gametime of 28:56 hours. Because I didn't want to spend the time, I decided not to finish the post-endgame of grinding to get the absolute best equipment, the last few knick-knacks, and the post-final boss Estark. (Neither did I actually do any of the TnT boards.) Instead, I watched HCBailey's let's play to see the content in these parts.\n\nWalkthroughs I followed: [1](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ds/942423-dragon-quest-v-hand-of-the-heavenly-bride/faqs/56092); [2](http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/snes/dq5/walkthrough.shtml). I like that it gives you prescriptive guides on what levels to be at various stages. It gives you signal on just the amount of grinding you should do (which I don't not enjoy as much as others).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-quest-v--1"},{"id":"322682678624171596","title":"Dragon Quest XI","originalTitle":"ドラゴンクエストXI","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":3390,"platforms":["PC","PS4","Stadia"],"studios":["Armor Project","Bird Studio","Square Enix"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2021-06-03","completedDate":"2021-06-20","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"DQ11 does little new. Rather, it stands the test of time by assembling all the great elements that make a classic JRPG under Dragon Quest's style: story and characters, turn-based combat, skill and equipment progression systems, level and enemy design, and visuals.\n\n__Story.__ It's a story told a million times, but it's the art, animations, soundtrack, and restraint knowing when to hold back in its tropes that make watching the story unfold so enjoyable. I also love all the various events occuring during towns, with scripted content, so that the cycle of town to dungeon to overworld to town is a theme but always different. For example, Gallopolis' spoiled prince trying to live up to his father's expectations and horse racing, and Octagonia's fighting tournament.\n\nThe detail of multiple acts---where Act 2 involves failure and rebuilding the party--- provides a nice opportunity for every party member to grow as they experience such strife. It reminds me of Final Fantasy 6. Gameplay-wise, you're also forced into new party compositions as you pick them back up which I greatly enjoy. There even mini training arcs in the good old-fashioned Dragon Ball style, and where characters unlock their full skill tree.\n\nSide quests are average, adding a tad to the overall world but are most often fetch quests.\n\nAct 3 drags on for longer than it should have, introducing a new cosmic enemy almost like a DLC. It adds unnecessary conflict to drag the story on and even reverts the characters' many conflicts and growths from Act 2, especially tragic characters like the mermaid, Miko, and Jasper. It does add more story to substantiate characters like Veronica and Mordegon so it doesn't feel like a complete afterthought, but the reuse of enemies and levels certainly makes it more repetitive. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed it treating it more like post-game with a lot of optional content.\n\n__Gameplay.__ There's something so brilliant about Dragon Quest's repeated use of classics in turn-based RPG and its style of JRPG with its universe of monsters, music, and story. Every Dragon Quest game you play feels nostalgic but also fresh with the new way you can enjoy enemy designs, a slightly new story with splendid characters, and more. It's like Pokemon this way.\n\nI really enjoy DQ's style: in-world roaming enemies, the standard level, magic, equipment, and party systems; horse and ship vehicles alongside spells like Zoom; general level navigation. DQ11 shows it really works well in a 3D environment as well. I even like some of its quirks: for example, you can attack an enemy in the world navigation as the approach to preemptive strikes, where they start with less HP; you visit a church to save, revive, or remove status effects; effectively unlimited inventory space with a max of 99 stacks per item; metal slimes as an approach to significantly reduce grind for endgame; mini medal collectibles; AoE attacks only hitting enemies of the same type; utility spells of Zoom and Evac; dying isn't game over but reloads you at a church with a gold penalty. New is a pepped up mechanic and monster mounts.\n\nMost new to DQ11's system is the Character Builder with skill points to allocate and the minigames like gambling, crafting, and horse racing.\n\nI love the forge system. In this game, forging is a crucial element that’s useful for all equipment including drops with the help of the Rework mechanic. In addition many items being craft exclusive as you play through the game, and with the potential of already having bonuses. This makes crafting not some optional system to be ignored like in many RPGs. They also have an excellent balance between materials you can just purchase and materials you must farm.\n\nHUD and controls are excellent. Controls are simple with Contextual Action, Cancel/Jump, Sprint (and with a Horse in larger areas to move even faster), and menus. I love the simple HUD with just a minimap that's easy to open up, and menus like the map and equipment appearing in real-time. Even transitions to battles are fast so you don't feel impatient waiting for actions to occur. All the small additions to the minimap are just so nice contextually as well: for example, dots signifying previous steps you've taken in case you get disoriented, red markers for doors in towns that you can enter, the map reveals an objective if you get lost.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Akira Toriyama's character and monster designs shine as well as the brilliant cute animations and colorful scenery. The face models and general detail such as lighting is lacking a bit more than it should be, but it's still quite good. Soundtrack-wise, I'm partial to orchestral music, and Dragon Quest's iconic soundtrack with new renditions is excellent. The soundtrack is great in its mix of modern Dragon Quest and NES classics. But it's repetitive, lacking stay throughout the 70+ hour campaign. Dialogue is only partially voiced. The few loading screens make the game so much more enjoyable to play than older JRPGs like, say, Grandia where even entering a house in a town prompts a loading screen.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ No missables. This makes playing blind not only viable but encouraged unlike most JRPGs. Even side quests aren't missable as you have a quest catalogue tracking sidequests and noting locations of available ones.\n+ 2D mode. Cute perspective that you can try when you get bored of the game.\n+ Finally, a sprint feature in a JRPG?!\n+ You can set battle speed to Ultra-Fast, greatly speeding up the grind. You can even spam A to skip through battle text/animations making it a bit faster just like skipping through voiced text. And you can control the camera during fights.\n+ What to vendor is relatively straightforward: old equipment (any equipment needed in a recipe can't be sold anyways) and for items, Drasilian coins and potentially any overstocking of healing consumables.\n+ Questgivers are marked on the minimap but not quest objectives. I find this the perfect mix of streamlining, where they don't tell you everything but they at least give you enough so that you don't miss out on a quest because talking to all NPCs can be annoying and it's easy to miss one.\n+ They really nailed the artwork and flashy animations of the gambling minigames, especially Slime Time slots.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Like other DQ games, benched party members get the same XP. This means you pretty much main a party instead of cycling among them to distribute XP. At the least, I do like that it encourages less grind, and I swap out party members at my own leisure.\n+ It's cheap to respec.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ All the recycled levels in Act 3. It copy-pastes so many areas such as in Drustan's trials that it's tedious reexploring everything to find chests. I used a walkthrough.\n+ While there's a Jump, there are too many invisible barriers. For example, you can't even jump over fences.\n+ Weirdly, only some equipment affect cosmetics. I'd rather they do all or none. At least you can change cosmetics without changing your equipment with the Outfits option.\n+ Party dialogue. I love party dialogue and party banter especially as in Bioware games. However, the implementation is manual rather than spontaneously appearing as you roam, making it something you have to deliberately choose to do and which is easy to forget.\n+ For a game in 2017, DQ11 still suffers from the problem of color palette swaps in order to diversify enemy designs.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [DQXI Mostly Spoiler Free Step by Step Suggested Character Builds](https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonquest/comments/cvu9m5/dqxi_mostly_spoiler_free_step_by_step_suggested), [Skill Trees](https://www.neoseeker.com/dragon-quest-xi/Spoiler!)\n+ [Fun-size forge recipe book locations](https://dragon-quest.org/wiki/List_of_fun-size_forge_recipe_book_locations_in_Dragon_Quest_XI)\n+ [Stats](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/235919-dragon-quest-xi-echoes-of-an-elusive-age/faqs/76680/stats-and-their-functions)\n\nI played the Definitive Edition. [Tim Roger's review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iTbUGItU0s) is unnecessarily ranty but it freshly combines depth, hilarity in the reviewer's own antics and persona, and importantly, it captures difficult aspects of what makes a game so good. In particular, he explains what \"chilling\" in a game looks like, as well as what it means for an really well-established battle system could do.\n\nI played the game blind. I gave seeds arbitrarily to whomever party member is most lacking in the stat but often just Hero. I did a mix of hoarding gold until I saw an upgrade from crafting or a significant one from a vendor. I used guides to track collectibles like mini medals and Pastwords and optional content near endgame. I completed gambling, horse racing, all sidequests, The Wheel of Harma, and reconstructing Cobblestone. Although I even farmed to level 99 and optimized gear, I stopped after beating Calasmos. I didn't really care for Tickington, the final bonus boss Timewyrm, or Wheel of Harma's Secret Trial. Setups:\n\n+ __Challenging fights like bosses.__ I use Hero with Quadraslash, Sword Dance, and utility heals/revives; Jade with Pink Tornado, Multifeet, and Re-Vamp; Veronica for Kaboomle, Kafrizzle, Channel Anger, Oomphle; and Serena for Divine Restitution, Divine Intervention, Grace of the Goddess, Kabuff, Acceleratle, heals.\n\n    I found they all had pretty good use cases: Sylvando and Rab as more offensive support options (although Rab is outclassed by Sylvando in this role), Hendrik for great DPS with tank capabilities, and Erik for burst damage and steal (although I found his burst potential unreliable due to both RNG and certain enemies being immune to the required status effect, and he lacks AoE).\n+ __Rare drop farming.__ I use Jade with Uniforme Chic de l'Academie (2%); Erik with Vest for Success (1%) and Pirate King's Pendant (5%), Serena with Uniformes Chic de l'Academie (2%), and Veronica with Uniformes Chic de l'Academie (2%). With 7 equipped Bunny Tails (1%), this is a total of 19% drop rate. I preferred static drop rates so you can do consistent grinding rather than following a procedure to get up to a Pep Power like Hallelujah or Itemized Kill. For rare enemy farming, I use Circle of Serendipity (2%) and Wings of Serendipity (3%). For steal-only farming, I equip two Robber Gloves (5% each) and Swindler King's Scarf (6%).\n+ __General navigation.__ I stuck with the rare drop party composition and only swapped Jade's accessories with Belle's Bow and Supplicant to improve mana sustain. The party is powerful enough and I could still get rare drops or steal.\n+ __[Level grinding](https://www.neoseeker.com/dragon-quest-xi/The_Wheel_of_Harma:_Fifth_Trial).__ I did the pep power trick. Endgame is balanced for roughly level 70s, so max level is already easy enough; I didn't go to the effort of farming seeds which just breaks the game.\n+ __Gambling.__ My roulette strategy was like in DQ8: to put all chips on [13-24+chest and savescum](https://www.neoseeker.com/dragon-quest-xi/Off_the_Beaten_Path:_Part_2). This spends 112K with a payout of 270K or 342K if it lands on 13-24 according to the edge or direct center, treasure if it lands on chest, or savescum otherwise.\n+ __[Crafting](https://www.neoseeker.com/dragon-quest-xi/Fun-Size_Forge).__ I use Sizzly Puff 2-4 times, then spam Multibash, then fill individual gauges with the finer techniques. Kaquadraslash is also situationally useful.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-quest-xi-echoes-of-an-elusive-age"},{"id":"02c17666-3b04-465c-b17f-e82a1bccd7e9","title":"Dungeons & Dragons 5e","status":"Completed","score":8,"startedDate":"2025-03-24","completedDate":"2025-03-24","updatedDate":"2025-04-02","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ Community forum: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD\n+ Third-party virtual tabletop platform: https://roll20.net\n+ Official virtual tabletop platform: https://www.dndbeyond.com/games\n\nTechnically a tabletop game. I'm recording it here because I have nowhere else. 5e technically has two subversions, both referred to as 5e: 2014 and 2024.\n\n__Rulebooks.__ There are a few main sources.\n\n+ Player's Handbook (PHB). The official digital version is interactive and accessible either via browser or the D&D Beyond app. This makes it more accessible to reference with a tablet than flipping through pages on a hardcopy. And interactive and higher quality compared to a pirated hardcopy-scanned PDF.\n  + https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/phb-2024\n+ Basic Rules. A subset of the Player's Handbook that is freely available.\n  + https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/free-rules\n+ Online community versions of the player's handbook.\n  + https://dnd5e.wikidot.com\n  + https://5e.tools\n\nOther useful rulebooks and systems\n+ https://www.adventurersleague.info\n\n__Character sheets.__ There are a few main sources for character creation and maintaining your character (e.g., abilities, inventory, health).\n\n+ https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters\n+ https://rpgbot.net/dnd5\n+ https://tabletopbuilds.com/the-myth-of-party-roles\n\n__Campaigns / Adventures / Sessions.__\n\n+ Single session on 2025-03-24 at Dogpatch Games.\n\nResources\n+ Official campaigns: https://www.dndbeyond.com/my-campaigns\n+ Third-party campaigns: https://www.dmsguild.com"},{"id":"322682678624216652","title":"Dusk","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":450,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["David Szymanski"],"publishers":["New Blood Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-02-09","completedDate":"2021-02-10","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Dusk is effectively the pinnacle of the classic FPS subgenre, taking all the elements that make it shine: health and armor system, movement speed, weapons without reloading, enemies, simple core controls, sandbox level design, quicksave system. The controls and animation work really well to make the player feel alive. Dusk also introduces a few new minor elements. Ultimately, I like that it's a different interpreation from Doom (2016) on the best of classic FPS, here closer to a highlight reel rather than creating the glorykill system for even more aggressive play.\n\nMy only nit is that like Doom and Quake (especially Doom 2), Dusk has limited ammo in a number of levels, often requiring too much ammo management across all your weapons. I find this tedious, distracting from the more frenetic gameplay of dooming. Higher difficulties also make you too squishy easy to go 100-0, making the game play more like a bullet hell than Doom.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The inheritance of the classic FPS (\"boomer shooter\") elements is excellent. Morale reduces health damage taken by 50%, taking the form of armor. The invisible enemy Wendigo as a rendition of Doom's Spectre is excellent: it combines the combat with horror having made me jump a few times as it's introduced in dark areas and creepy music. The weapons are all core Doom weapons, and all with a purpose. I also love the new aspects: dual-wielding; crouching also slides. The boss fights are spontaneous, well-paced, and generally excellent. I also prefer Dusk's approach to a sword than Doom Eternal, where it's a core weapon for melee (albeit still awkward to use) incentivized by certain enemies, rather than a one-use single-target BFG-type.\n\nDusk's level design is excellent, combining standard key/locked area and sandbox levels with horror elements from its atmosphere. It's also fairly experimental in certain levels, encouraging certain weapons in areas when you pick up a weapon and there's a sudden spawn of enemies perfect for that weapon; or the sword and crossbow-only level of E3M1.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The aesthetic follows Quake and PlayStation 1 game pixellation, which fits its era. Weapon animations is especially fluid. Andrew Hushults' music works very well.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Intruder mode, which starts every level with just the sickles. Adds to replayability.\n+ No fall damage.\n+ Monster infighting.\n+ Doom and Quake-style secrets.\n+ The Blood-like horror elements with actual jumpscares.\n+ The animation controls for fun: flip weapon, cigar, holster.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You can only block with your sword with >=50 morale and charge with >=100 health. This is easily a case of rich gets richer.\n+ Crystal of Madness. While I like the idea of forcing enemies to attack each other, it's a item you have to carry around, meaning it has marginal use.\n+ No native borderless support. Fortunately, windowed + Borderless Gaming works.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on Cero Miedo difficulty ([I Can Take it](https://dusk.gamepedia.com/Difficulty)) as apparently the game is most balanced for it ([episode 1 technically balanced for Cero Miedo](https://www.reddit.com/r/Dusk_The_Game/comments/jnejig/how_am_i_supposed_to_play/gb15894), and the two higher difficulties in fact bring up a dialogue box asking for confirmation and stating that they are not intended for a first playthrough. Like Doom, I remapped weapons on keybinds 6-9 to Q, G, Z, and X.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dusk"},{"id":"322682678651390540","title":"F.E.A.R.","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2005,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Monolith Productions"],"publishers":["Sierra Entertainment","Vivendi Universal Games"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2020-05-22","completedDate":"2020-05-23","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"This game excels in atmosphere and gunplay, with its Slow-mo mode and well-told enemy AI.\n\n__Story.__ A tropey story but told well through its atmosphere, flashbacks, and voicemail.\n\n__Gameplay.__ As a horror FPS, F.E.A.R. is a mix of walking around for the ambience as well as navigating environments to kill. And the FPS most shines with its distinguishing factor of Slow-mo mode, which completely changes the dynamic of FPS beyond typical cover shooters, and enemy AI. F.E.A.R. also encourages a more deliberate playstyle with its non regenerative health and finite collection of health packs.\n\nThe enemy AI is phenomenal with its ability to flank you and with their open-mic coms to tell you how they're reacting (often fake but to add to the realism such as \"We need more reinforcements!\" or \"He's trying to flank!\").  There are also many miscellaneous details such as feigning death and noticing flashlights. I think the restriction to a corridor shooter unlike the 2010-2020 trend toward open-world restricts the variability that enemy AI needs to respond to, and for the better. The level design is also a big contributor to this, with combat areas enabling multiple entrypoints and therefore giving not just you multiple angles to attack but also the enemy multiple angles to flank you.\n\nWeapon variety is okay as is the abundance of ammo and enemy variety---almost like a team deathmatch map.\n\nExploration is incentivized by picking up health boosters, which increase max health by 5 points, and reflex boosters which increase the length of the heightened awareness.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Sound design is most on point to lay out the atmosphere, with various objects in the environment moving about. Lighting is also decent with the flashlight to light up dark areas. Graphics-wise, it's hard to tell how good this level of detail is for 2005.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Slow-mo plus shotgun or assault rifle to the head is the most satisfying feeling.\n+ Only midway into Interval 9 did I realize you can swap your pistol slot for another weapon, so you have a total of 3 weapon slots.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ The tiny details in the environment interaction: shooting padlocks, shooting crates, breaking glass, turning on flashlight, hearing voicemail.\n+ The flashlight has a limit, making you be deliberate about its usage, but it also regenerates so you don't have to, for example, find flashlight batteries scattered in a level which can be tedious.\n+ I love the pinning-body-to-wall effect that the 10mm HV Penetrator has.\n+ Playing in 2020, the lack of FPS limit means I played the game consistently at 75 FPS at max settings and 3440x1440. Somewhat of a borderless mode is natively supported, as is 21:9 aspect ratio. The text such as the HUD, intro cutscene, and subtitles do not scale though and are extremely tiny (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=180211741).\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Both a manual save and checkpoint system. I tried to primarily rely on checkpoints and also quicksaved somewhat frequently when in tense areas due to the extreme difficulty.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ The movement speed is a little too slow for my taste. It would be better if the game had a sprint.\n+ Aim/Zoom is a toggle and defaulted to Shift, not Right Click.\n+ Aim/Zoom is not true iron sights, it's just a zoom-in.\n+ Steam overlay is buggy. Pressing E takes a screenshot (https://steamcommunity.com/app/21090/discussions/0/617320628135003442/).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/fear/Boosters\n\nThis entry does not include the expansion packs Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate. I played up to and including Interval 03 at the hardest (Extreme) difficulty as the game is not terribly difficult given the Slow-mo mode. It encourages almost too cautious of a playstyle, not letting me try run-and-gun with the shotgun in fear of repercussions. So I tuned the difficulty down to normal (Moderate) difficulty. At this level, I was always at an abundance of Med Kits, including not being able to pick up new ones. I tried following a guide on my laptop to make sure I pick up all boosters in each Interval. But I don't like the drop in pacing, so I only picked up boosters as I played the game blind. By the end of the game, I had a max HP of 190 out of a total of 22 health boosters with a max HP of 199 (I can't determine what max Reflex I have).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/f-e-a-r"},{"id":"2e3c6a2d-609d-4022-b299-20a84a532919","title":"Fallout","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":960,"platforms":["PC","DOS","Mac"],"studios":["Black Isle Studios"],"publishers":["Edusoft","Interplay Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Turn-based strategy (TBS)"],"startedDate":"2023-05-12","completedDate":"2023-05-14","updatedDate":"2023-08-22","notes":"Unlike other CRPGs, Fallout is somewhat unique in that it emphasizes actual roleplay, meaningful choices and consequences, and multiple ways to solve quests through both combat and dialogue (arguably setting the standard for western RPG tropes as seen in titles like Elder Scrolls 3+ and Fallout 3+). Compare, for example, to Baldur's Gate, which appeals to the D&D dungeon crawling spirit with a fantasy setting, parties with companions and their relationships with you, and tactical combat.\n\nPlaying Fallout in 2023, these roleplay and RPG elements have a surprising degree of complexity that age well and remain fun.\n\nFlaw-wise, controls/UI are dated, and some content can be missed particularly with the time deadlines.\n\n__Story.__\nThe worldbuilding is excellent, including enemies, towns/settlements, individual NPCs, graphic assets/sound design, and itemization. It defined factions like Brotherhood, Children of the Cathedral, Ghouls, and Super Mutants. Quests offer a good degree of choice. It really does play like a minified isometric Fallout 3 or New Vegas. The story has a level of seriousness typical of CRPGs of its time and not as much humor expected in Fallout game; this comes in Fallout 2.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nFallout features real-time movement and exploration, and turns into turn-based for combat. The turn-based combat is quite fun still in 2023, and I greatly enjoy it over Infinity Engine CRPGs' RTWP. Camera angle is isometric (technically [trimetric](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/dkxcpq/the_classic_fallout_games_are_not_isometric)).\n\nControls age reasonably well. There are various annoyances playing in 2023 noted in the details. Most annoying is a cursor mode to toggle between movement and interaction, and you hold left click to select among the interaction options.\n\nThis game started the Fallout progression systems and it’s impressive how little has changed up to Fallout 4: SPECIAL attribute system, skills, and traits and perks; VATS-style AP combat; and health system with First Aid for HP damage and Doctor for crippled limbs. Many individual traits and perks still exist in Modern Fallout titles. To a small extent, Fallout 1 even has a reputation system. Other elements exist:\n\n+ Dialogue options\n+ \"Barter\". Functionally, it's the same as traditional buying and selling as you can't negotiate. Offers are only successful if NPC's items are the same value or less than yours.\n+ Interactions including talk, use, drop; and skill-based interacts like lockpick and use science on a device\n+ You can annoy NPCs, steal from NPCs, and go into forbidden areas, causing them to turn hostile\n\nFallout also defies CRPG standards of the era. First, Fallout is solo rather than party-based. Any companions you pick up are optional and cannot be controlled. I prefer this for immersion and accessibility. Second, Fallout features turn-based combat rather than RTWP. I think this ages better. In these manners, Fallout takes inspiration from Ultima Underworld-style RPGs like Elder Scrolls: Arena and Ultima / Wizardry / Might and Magic.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nThe graphics and sound are a product of its time, relatively similar to other titles. In 1997, it released a year after Diablo, Resident Evil, Super Mario 64, Duke Nukem 3D, Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall, Quake, Crash Bandicoot; the same year as Final Fantasy 7, Blood; and a year before Baldur's Gate, Metal Gear Solid, Starcraft, Ocarina of Time. Like other CRPGs, it is partially voiced.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Earliest game I've seen with talking head animations during dialogue. Fallout 1 may have been the first to innovate this(?).\n+ Like other CRPGs, quests are dense in text and not explicit about steps to take. I find this more immersive than following a list of waypoints and tasks like generic modern RPGs.\n+ You have to be unarmed when venturing into most towns. Otherwise NPCs turn hostile.\n+ Unlike most CRPGs which are stingy and have a finite amount of XP, Fallout 1 has random encounters so you can technically grind if you wish. For non-powergaming playstyles, the finite XP matters little, but it's a great non-limit for build planning purposes.\n+ In combat, opening your inventory uses AP. I like this cost as a further RPG mechanic on top of items costing AP such as in Divinity.\n+ The whole idea that you can play a stupid character. Namely, with low intellect, you mostly speak in grunts. It reminds me of the unique playstyles in certain RPGs that offer a completely different perspective like Vampire Bloodlines’ Malkovian and Disco Elysium’s Inkand Empire, and Vampire Bloodlines’ Nosferatu.\n+ The various tool items like Tool and Crowbar. It adds to inventory micromanagement. But it enables more varied roleplay as you can perform more actions on objects.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ [Tell me about](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Tell_me_about), which comes from Wasteland. It's a cool idea of enabling free form text, like a version of text adventure games into CRPGs, and way before the time that 2020 era chatbot AIs enter into video games. It's not integrated well into the game though: in Wasteland, it's the only way to interact with NPCs, and here it's primarily for trivia.\n+ Unique to Fallout 1, there is no companion limit. You can have all 4. With that said, they have permadeath, and are dolled out over the course of the game with no armor or skill upgrades, meaning they will die easily at endgame.\n+ [In Fallout 1, vendor wares never restock](https://www.reddit.com/r/classicfallout/comments/m96eh7/vendor_restock_in_fallout_1) with exceptions like Stapleton's books which restock instantly. With that said, [merchants restock bottle caps instantly](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_merchants).\n+ Like most games of its time (e.g., Baldur's Gate), storing loot in any container is safe and a viable strategy for storage. That said, your companions already provide infinite storage.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Controls/UI\n  + Cursor mode, with right-click to toggle the mouse between movement and interaction such as looting and inspection. Yuck. Reminds me of the archaic controls in System Shock 1.\n  + Hold left click in order to select among interaction options.\n  + The game is designed with point-and-click in mind. Many common actions don't have a keyboard shortcut. For example, you have to use your mouse to hover over the weapon to use and then use it; and same for reload. For another example, you have to drag and drop items in order to loot.\n  + You have to select a skill such as Lockpick then click on the object. It's not one of the options when you hold left click on an object.\n  + You can't customize keyboard controls. For example, you can't set WASD to pan the camera; you have to use arrow keys or put the mouse to the edge of the screen. For another example, save/load is F4/F5 and quicksave/load is F6/F7.\n  + Text is tiny and takes up a small portion of the screen relative to the amount of space you have. You can only see 5 lines of dialogue at a time, and 8 on your console.\n  + In order to give/take items to/from a companion, you apply Steal on them. And to give more than their item cap, you give the items through Barter.\n  + It's unclear what you can interact with, and how. For example, I wouldn't know that you can use Science on computer terminals until I read it in a guide. Inspecting monitors and terminals doesn't give any such hint..\n  + Items can be lying on the ground, blending in the ground texture, another item's asset, or obscured by the camera angle. Other CRPGs solve this by letting you highlight all interactable objects with Alt. I don't think it's a great solution because it encourages you to have to spam it whenever exploring, but it's better than nothing, and better than, say, gamified treasure chests which are out-of-place. In modern action-adventures like Tomb Raider, this is solved by clearer environmental clues, e.g., more distinctive colors while not looking out-of-place with the artstyle.\n  + You can't inspect items in detail until they're in your inventory. Makes looking at new items from a vendor or while looting a hassle.\n  + When you get item rewards from a NPC, the log doesn't actually tell you what items you got.\n  + Although a bit gimmicky, I prefer when speech checks enabling certain dialogue lines are made clear that they're available due to reaching a certain stat cap. It makes the speech checks and stats feel rewarding as otherwise they can feel unnoticed.\n  + It's not explained that you can actually type in the [desired bottle cap number](https://www.gog.com/forum/fallout_series/is_there_a_way_to_add_money_quickly_in_fallout_1). Much better than having to spam the +/- increments.\n  + There's a good amount of quests not tracked on the Pipboy. While I like that you can't just rely on a quest log, it's inconsistent what's tracked.\n+ Time limits. You have 150 days to find the water chip (otherwise game ends) and 110 days to visit Necropolis (otherwise you miss Necropolis). The time limit doesn't prevent exploration, but you can reach the 150 cap if [you're not focused and explore too much off](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/3jguvb/is_fallout_1s_time_limit_bad), including the 3-week surgeries. After the 150 for water chip and 110 for Necropolis quest, there used to be a 500 day invisible time limit in 1.0 but is patched in 1.1 and 1.2; otherwise, the game engine has a cap of 13 years ([reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/jtskhc/question_about_fallout_1s_time_limit_on_steam), [Lilura's blog post](https://lilura1.blogspot.com/2021/02/Fallout-1-Retrospective-Review-Time-based-Reactivity.html)).\n  + Water chip's 150 day time limit can be extended with 100 days by talking to the water merchants in the Hub. In 1.0 and less, this also reduces the 500 day invisible time limit to 400 days.\n  + [Fallout Fixt mod](https://www.moddb.com/mods/fallout-fixt) removes time limits and also allows Shift to highlight items. But it introduces many mods including some gameplay ones\n+ Balance. Many things are obsolete such as most perks and skills like Sneak and Steal. It’s almost par for the course that classic CRPGs introduce a ton of systems, and a good amount of them can simply be ignored. There's a learning curve to know what you can ignore and what to focus on in a CRPG’s faux complexity.\n  + For the same reason, build variety and therefore replayability is limited.\n+ Companions die permanently instead of being knocked out as in other CRPGs. This makes for tedious savescumming especially given that in Fallout, there's no way to cast an equivalent heal spell on an ally.\n+ It's not uncommon to brick your save ([example](https://www.reddit.com/r/classicfallout/comments/84maqo/fallout_1_the_glow_keep_dying_when_trying_to_leave)) by getting radiation sickness from Glow. You have to resort to a save editor in order to get more RadAways, or reset radiation level. For example, [F12se](https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/fallout-2-savegame-editor.185130) (but don't use 2023-01-15 version; Windows says it has a virus ([1](https://github.com/nousrnam/F12se/issues/1), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/classicfallout/comments/12q0cps/is_f12se_safe_to_use))), [Falche](https://www.nma-fallout.com/resources/falche-fallout-1-editor.15) (can't change inventory or radiation level), or edit [SAVE.DAT](https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/is-there-an-inventory-editor-for-fallout-1.184045) directly.\n+ Special encounters are [one-time only](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/2tjvvw/fallout_1_special_encounters_are_they_one_time). On my first playthrough, I missed valuable loot: Red Ryder LE BB gun and Alien Blaster.\n+ There is no way to dismiss Dogmeat. Dismiss requires killing Dogmeat.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Fallout Fandom Wiki](https://fallout.fandom.com)\n+ [r/fallout](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout)\n+ [r/classicfallout](https://www.reddit.com/r/classicfallout)\n+ [Per Jorner's The Nearly Ultimate Fallout Guide](https://lemmings19.github.io/fallout-1-walkthrough). See [Reddit thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/8j30y2/at_your_request_ive_restored_one_of_the_best) for context.\n+ Builds\n  + See Per Jorner's guide.\n  + [Lilura's blog](https://lilura1.blogspot.com/2021/02/Fallout-1-Best-Builds-Sniper-Slayer-Stats-Traits-Perks-Tag-Skills-Weapons-Armor-Companions.html)\n+ Setup\n  + See Per Jorner's guide. Preparation section is mostly accurate. It doesn't know what version Steam uses so details about extra patches and uncensoring isn't relevant.\n  + [PCGamingWiki](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Fallout)\n  + Steam version already comes with latest patch (1.2) and high-resolution patch (check via settings or Ctrl+V in game). There are mixed reports ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/1n5ckq/are_the_steam_verzions_of_fallout_1_and_2_censored), [2](https://steamcommunity.com/app/38400/discussions/0/483366528910418247)) whether it has children and may indeed be US vs non-US based (similarly, violence level is affected). I didn't see censoring, but if so, you need the [Fallout 1 Child Patch](https://www.moddb.com/games/fallout/downloads/fallout-1-child-patch).\n  + Borderless fullscreen. I couldn't get PCGamingWiki's instructions to work, but Borderless Gaming on top of windowed mode works.\n  + [Error troubleshooting: \"Failure Initializing Input Devices\"](https://steamcommunity.com/app/38400/discussions/0/846960481979919103). Setting BackgroundKeyboard to 1 in ddraw.in worked.\n+ Fallout.one: [Controls/UI](https://www.fallout.one/pages/fallout-1-controls.html) and [How to Play](https://www.fallout.one/pages/how-to-play-fallout-1.html). It's not explained in-game outside of F1 for a one-pager help screen.\n\nMotivated to play as one of the most prominent CRPGs, and as the original titles to what started Fallout 3 and beyond.\n\n__Difficulty.__ As recommended by Per Jorner's guide, I played on Normal difficulty. Combat became trivial once I reached midgame with Energy Weapons and decked out companions. However, I didn't feel like making the combat more difficult, which would just make combat and hit chances more tedious.\n\n__Playthrough style.__ I followed Per Jorner's guide and read online for character setup, build research, and combat tips. I played blind in terms of playing the actual game though. I significantly enjoy CRPGs and video games overall this way, as otherwise it feels like you're completing a list of chores and your enjoyment is highly dependent on the walkthrough's quality rather than the video game itself.\n\n+ From a powergaming perspective, it's best to rush for STR and INT increases as these affect HP and skill point gain per level up. This is also true for later Fallout games like Fallout 3 and New Vegas. I opted not to do this to appreciate my first playthrough blind and at my own pace. \n+ Like usual, save using multiple slots (in Fallout 1, all 10). At minimum, 1 save at the beginning of an area and quicksaves percolated before combat encounters or dialogue.\n+ I played a magnanimously good person. This is usually the best route for RPGs because quests are always about helping people (evil playstyles just reduce content by rejecting things), and I sought to have maximum positive Reputation.\n+ Money: Loot everything (due to infinite weight limit). Always get all bottle caps from vendors. Prioritize spending on skill books such as in The Hub and stat surgeries such as in The Brotherhood. I generally sell items to a merchant in the latest town, as they restock bottle caps instantly and carry the most in each trade instance ([discussion](https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/rich-merchant-at-f1-warning-stupid-question.166750); Jacob in The Hub carries 2517; Zack in Boneyard has 3856).\n\n__Build.__  Sniper.\n\n+ Initial stats (including traits): ST 6, PE 8, EN 4, CH 2, IN 9, AG 9, LK 9.\n+ Developed stats: ST 10, PE 9, EN 5, CH 3, IN 10, AG 10, LK 10.\n+ Traits: Gifted, Finesse.\n  + Small Frame is another top-tier choice. However, since it's my first playthrough, I don't know what I don't need to pick up and when I'll get my infinite carry companion (answer turns out to be almost immediately).\n  + Finesse is made obsolete at level 18 with the Sniper perk. [Sniper perk and 10 Luck already provides 100% critical chance](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/63576-fallout-2/55998731). With that said, I only got to level 16 at the end of the game anyways (I did no grinding).\n  + Fast Shot with pistols/SMG/shotgun is strictly superior to Aimed Shot with sniper rifles. With Sniper perk and Luck 10, Fast Shot also already has 100% critical chance bypassing the need for eye/headshots. Aimed Shot provides a [higher crit damage multiplier](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Aimed_Shot), but it's surpassed by Fast Shot's AP. I omitted Fast Shot to experience Fallout 1's VATS-style gameplay ([reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/classicfallout/comments/739uq6/comment/dnpg7mh), [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/classicfallout/comments/egx2oo/is_fast_shot_sniper_a_good_combo/fcc17rs))\n+ Tag skills: Small Guns, Lockpick, Speech.\n  + Prioritize these skills to 100%, then Energy Weapons to 150%.\n+ Perk progression: Level 3 Awareness, level 6 Bonus Move, level 9 Bonus Rate of Fire, level 12 Better Criticals, level 15 Action Boy, level 18 Sniper, level 21 Action Boy.\n  + Level 6 More Criticals is a top-tier choice. However, [Sniper perk and 10 Luck already provides 100% critical chance](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/63576-fallout-2/55998731).\n  + Level 21 Mutate is an alternative in order to swap Finesse to Fast Shot or Small Frame post-Sniper perk.\n+ [Weapon progression](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_weapons)\n  1. 10mm Pistol with 10mm ammo (start)\n  2. Shotgun with 12 gauge shotgun shell (Junktown) or Hunting rifle with .223 FMJ (Vault 15)\n  3. Sniper rifle with .223 FMJ (Glow)\n  4. Plasma rifle with microfusion cell (Glow) or Plasma pistol with small energy cell (Glow)\n  5. Turbo plasma rifle with microfusion cell (Boneyard) or Alien blaster with small energy cell (Alien ship encounter)\n+ [Armor progression](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_armor_and_clothing)\n  + Unlike most CRPGs and future Fallout titles, there are no downsides to heavier armor (aside from weight, which is negligible). So I wear the highest armor class.\n\n__Companion loadout.__\nThe idea is to give each companion a primary weapon that doesn’t burst (which can cause lots of friendly fire), and secondary melee and heal options.\n\n+ Ian's progression\n  1. Extras: 2+ Stimpacks, Knife (start) → Spiked knuckles (Hub) → Power fist (Brotherhood)\n  2. 10mm Pistol with 10mm ammo (start)\n  3. 14mm pistol with 14mm AP (Junktown)\n  4. .223 pistol with .223 FMJ (Hub)\n\n  I dump all ammo and extra items to Ian. To ensure these extras don't affect my intended path above, I omit certain items, then tell Ian to equip his best, then put them back.\n+ Tycho's progression\n  1. Extras: 2+ Stimpacks, Spear (Shady Sands)\n  2. Shotgun with 12 gauge shotgun shell (Junktown) or Hunting rifle with .223 FMJ (Vault 15)\n  3. Sniper rifle with .223 FMJ (Glow)\n  4. Red Ryder LE BB gun with BB ammo (Bob's Pre-Owned Car Mart encounter)\n  \n  I personally carry items I intend to vendor. However, if I reach the limit, I dump extra vendor items to Tycho in order to easily pick them up later.\n+ Dogmeat progression (none)\n+ Katja progression\n  1. Extras: 2+ Stimpacks, Ripper (Brotherhood)\n\nThere are a few disadvantages to keeping all the companions:\n\n+ They follow you and have collision. So they can block doors and make items harder to pick up.\n+ The more there are, the more likely there is to be friendly fire.\n\nBy endgame, I abandoned all companions and didn't loot much as the only use for money after the surgeries and books is ammo.\n\ntodos on replaythroughs\n+ stupid build\n+ melee build. Fallout 1 is especially good at a melee / unarmed build because Fast Shot includes melee and unarmed, enabling significantly more hits per turn. This is nerfed in Fallout 2.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallout"},{"id":"322682678651458124","title":"Far Cry 3","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":930,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Ubisoft Montreal"],"publishers":["Ubisoft Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-08-09","completedDate":"2019-08-10","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Far Cry 3 works well as an RPG-like open world with a \"stuck on a deserted island\" theme, decent story, and great core gameplay of combat, stealth, and exploration. The game's core flaw is repetition, quickly repeating the cycle of liberating outposts, going up radio towers, killing animals in some zone, and moving to the next waypoint for story missions and side quests. There is enough variety however in approaching combat, and in exploring/upgrading your arsenal, to keep it fun for most of the game. From research, Far Cry 3 is apparently the pinnacle of the series. Future titles attempt to emulate it with much of the same and no innovations of its own, only minor gameplay tweaks.\n\n__Story.__ I like the premise of a group of friends being raided by pirates, and the goal of the protagonist being to save his friends. The pirates vs natives set of characters is a little too cliche for my tastes however, greatly simplifying the dynamics of the open world island. So is the white savior fantasy. The infinite numbers of pirates and natives is dumb. Vas is a great psychopathic villain. His scenes are a lot of fun and clearly exhibit passion. Buck too. Willis, Dennis, and Sam are also not bad. I like the idea of disguising as the enemy in the last 1/4 or so of the game, and already giving you fast travel. It changes up the style a bit so it doesn't become \"explore yet another island\".\n\n__Gameplay.__ Gameplay consists of FPS firefights, stealth, exploration incentivized by improving your gear. Enemy variety consists of animals and humans which I greatly enjoy. The core gameplay gets repetitive halfway through the game, and I wished they reduced the ~15 hour playtime to 10 hours for a more packed game. Health bar and regeneration work well.\n\nThe FPS firefights is generic.\n\nStealth is very good. Consider for example my strategy to liberate an outpost. First, I scout the area, using my camera to pinpoint all the targets. I then either snipe the alarms or manually go in to deactivate them. Then I take out isolated targets at the periphery or higher elevation with my knife or from a distance with my bow (sometimes I throw a rock to distract and temporarily reposition enemies), hiding their bodies, and slowly inch towards targets in the center. If things go haywire, I take out my Assault Rifle with silencer. I never use Grenades, C4, or Mines.\n\nProgression system consists of skill points via XP, crafting via an inventory of hides, and money for purchasing weapons and ammo from stores.\n\nExploration is done pretty well. The crafting system incentivizes hunting and exploration in the open world. So does climbing radio towers for map access and liberating outposts for fast travel and removing enemy patrols. It's neat to also see enemies, allies, and animals alike engaging with each other. I could care less about the side quests, Relic and Loot Chest collectibles which pollute the map, and redundant Wanted Dead and Hunter quests which are just not good.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Facial models are surprisingly detailed for 2012. Environment graphics look standard for 2012. Environments are sufficiently varied with outposts/minitowns, jungles, water (including a ship level), and caves/tombs.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Fast travel. The ability to teleport to waypoints, and as long as you're not in combat, works very well for the pacing of this game.\n+ Money is abundance. And because the wallet has limited capacity, it encourages you to spend.\n+ Supernatural hallucinogenic story sequences.\n+ There is no requirement to play stealth. Rambo is fully viable. However, stealth gives 3x XP per kill (along with combos that have flash animations and even more XP). So the indirect incentive is nice.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Because of the vast open world, the minimap has to be obvious in where chests and plants lie. It's also explicit about enemy locations which I find awkward because it pushes too much of a reliance on the minimap than the first-person view.\n+ Vehicles. I think it's cool that there are multiple land and water vehicles to manuever with. I didn't use them often though as fast travel and walking in a straight line (rather than following a road and referencing a map about which turn to take) to be more convenient.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ The biggest stealth flaw is that when one enemy detects you, all enemies are alarmed in the area and somehow know where you are. This makes stealh unforgiving and unrealistic when detected.\n+ The HUD clutter, especially early game when there are tutorial HUDs, is bad.\n+ 21:9 support is atrocious. It's so bad that I stuck with the closest 16:9 aspect ratio (2560x1440p). It's native supported, but the screen is cropped, making the FOV zoomed-in and the HUD (e.g., minimap) way too large. Some pieces of the HUD even overlap such as the XP bar and minimap (4:00 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hscjYs0Ibr8).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/far-cry-3\n+ Gmanlives' review | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqMBvk_lwtE\n\nI played the original game on PC (max settings), keyboard and mouse, and normal (Survivor) difficulty. It's better in graphics than the Far Cry 3 Classic edition released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, which is a PC port on high settings (https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-far-cry-classic-is-a-barebones-pc-port). I did not play the DLC (see the Deluxe Edition). This entry does not include the standalone expansion Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, which if I play will be evaluated standalone.\n\nMy playstyle and build is stealth (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/632849-far-cry-3/64988164). I went hunting for quite a bit in the early game to build up my gear, and continually did so as I played the main story getting effectively max crafted gear (excluding gated items from Path of the Hunter quests) by 1/3 of the way into the game. From there it was smooth sailing, main mission after main mission, stopping only to climb radio towers for minimap access and liberate outposts for fast travel. My main four weapons are Bow, Assault Rifle, Sniper Rifle, RPG.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/far-cry-3"},{"id":"322682678652515916","title":"Final Fantasy VI","originalTitle":"ファイナルファンタジーVI","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1994,"playtimeMinutes":2100,"platforms":["Wii","PC","PS1","SFAM"],"studios":["Tose","Square Soft"],"publishers":["SCE Australia","Square Soft","Sony Computer Entertainment Europe","Square Soft","Square Enix","Nintendo"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2016-12-22","completedDate":"2016-12-31","updatedDate":"2023-08-12","notes":"What an excellent game. I love the lore and buildup only for the world to collapse. Fighting Kefka the god was a great experience. I really enjoyed that the second half was so different, and that it was about rising again with heavy character-building. My only complaint is that relative to other mediums, this character-building is incredibly shallow, with only 5-10 minutes worth of scenes that do such building. Granted, this is far more than a typical JRPG but not nearly big enough.\n\nThe gameplay, while not necessarily innovative, was solid. Magicite, and the ability to use all playable characters well, are fun.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI completed everything excluding the addon content with Dragons' Den. Given that my experience with Kefka's Tower was Ultima spamming, and having read the Dragons' Den walkthroughs, I feel it'd be more or less mechanical without a tangible reward (in terms of plot thickening or characterization).\n\n1. http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VI\n2. http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Walkthrough:Final_Fantasy_VI\n3. http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/ff6/walkthrough.php?chapter=1-37\n4. https://www.gamefaqs.com/snes/554041-final-fantasy-iii/faqs/59823\n\n [1] is most useful for general information about the game such as its historical context, synopsis, and high-level gameplay info. I used both [2] and [3] as I played through the game; both were terrible in that they tried to crack terrible jokes all the time (it's obvious they were written by teenagers) and varied in detail, e.g., [2] often described specific directions to get chests and [3] was more comprehensive at times when [2] simply did not mention something such as specific side quests. I love that the wiki has the AI script and also that the other has the specific encounter rate and formation. They also miss certain details that the other covers (I do not know if both missed something!); for example, [2] details Shadow's dreams and [1] details some chests and key items to steal such as for the Colosseum. The order I went through also departed drastically at times from theirs during the second half. In retrospect, I think the true ordering is based on bestiary levels, e.g., [link](http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/554041-final-fantasy-iii/64065632).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/final-fantasy-vi"},{"id":"322682678652573260","title":"Final Fantasy VII","originalTitle":"ファイナルファンタジーVII","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":2160,"platforms":["Switch"],"studios":["Square Enix"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Excellent story and characters, solid gameplay mechanics. I loved the Chocobo racing games. The endgame bosses with Ultima Weapon and Ruby Weapon were great. FF7 has some of the most iconic music in the whole series. This was my first Final Fantasy game.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/final-fantasy-vii-and-final-fantasy-viii-remastered-twin-pack"},{"id":"322682678650415692","title":"Ghost of Tsushima","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":1470,"platforms":["PS4","PS5"],"studios":["Sucker Punch Productions"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-07-28","completedDate":"2020-08-04","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Ghost of Tsushima is an excellent polished AAA title, compiling standard elements in open-world games like Assassin's Creed Origins and Horizon Zero Dawn. It stands out in its unique combat elements: for example, lethality of player and enemy attacks, multiple enemies at a time, moveset variety, standoffs, duels, and ghost stance. Its aesthetics also have a cinematic appeal, particularly towards Samurai cinema, and the game benefits all the more for this vision.\n\nIts weaknesses is its lack of story and character depth like a blockbuster film. It also digs too deep into the open-world formula with uninteresting side quests and minigames, and basic genre elements such as crafting, platforming, and build variety.\n\n__Story.__ Blockbuster movie-level of quality here in the storytelling. It's full of standard tropes but polished in its cinematics and just character backstory. The beginning and end are particularly done well. It dives a little too much into the melodramatic and suffers from its reliance on tropes like any other blockbuster movie. I wish characters had more open flaws, e.g., if Sakai displayed overt racism or viewed peasants as lower. The conflict of samurai honor is hamfisted and just boring to be honest. I like that characters like Sensei Ishikawa and Masako are clearly flawed, although it's a bit one note in the storytelling across the sidequests. Regardless, all the character-based sidequests have end on a great note.\n\nWorldbuilding in terms of the environment feels a bit soulless to be honest. The large open areas feel empty, and there isn't much of a density in content. The content that does exist aside from the excellent scripted quests are pretty standard formulas in content.\n\n__Gameplay.__ For a AAA open-world title, there are typical lite elements from an arsenal of genres: combat, stealth, open world questing and crafting, platforming. Ghost of Tsushima stands out in its polish as well as its innovations, particularly in combat.\n\nCombat. The most distinct element of Ghost of Tsushima's combat is its lethality: both you and enemies can be felled by only a few strikes. I really like this system: it adds to the realism with the deadliness of combat and encourages gameplay with precision (timing, positioning, deflecting and dodging). Combat also involves multiple enemies at once rather than one-off like Soulsborne titles. Standoffs are flashy and build on the parry system, which is excellent. I love perfect parry and perfect dodge, which build on the cinematic style of minimal and swift ripostes. The moveset is also quite large (arguably too complex), with swordplay, ranged attacks, and stealth kills. Enemy variety is not outstanding but sufficient. Bosses (duels) further push on the lethality, bordering on the need for a perfect execution as they typically one-shot.\n\nThe controls are excellent: incorporating seamless modern improvements that are now mainstream like sliding if you crouch after sprinting, mantling, and the analog stick intensity affecting crouch's movement speed. The moveset features light attack, heavy attacks which inflict stagger damage and do more damage, charged heavy attack (typically a stab), jump kick, guard, dodge (particularly for spears and arrows), and parry which are quite complex in moveset. There are also stances similar to Nioh, additional Mythic Technique moves, and situational Ghost Weapons. Horse is convenient and doesn't require monitoring just like in Witcher 3. Health replenishing is limited based on the Resolve meter, which accumulates as you kill enemies and parry, which is a great limiter.\n\nThere are light stealth and platforming elements following other AAA titles. For stealth, enemy AI have a white marker that increases to yellow and red, one shot stealth melee kills from behind (and with nice story behind it going against the samurai code), plenty of vantage points and bushes for perfect invisibility, and focused hearing to track enemies. I like the enemy AI's basic system which captures the core of alerts (and that they alert locally, unlike many games where a single enemy alert immediately signals everyone). It's basic in its stealth arsenal, corpse detection, enemy detection variety, lack of sound/visibility grades, and tendency toward linear levels unlike immersive sims. The platforming is also light, with simple movement to climb and jump to areas and white markers to clearly delineate where you can move; taikanawa (grappling hook) like Sekiro. Platforming is most prominent to complete shrines.\n\nProgression system involves techniques, mythic combat arts, stances by killing mongol leaders, building your legend to unlock ghost weapons, and evolving tactics unlocked over the story.\n\nTons of collectibles, gameplay upgrades, and minigames (bamboo cutting, haikus, bathing, fox den, shrine platforming, etc.) to incentivize exploration. I like the way they encourage exploration while enabling immersion: guiding winds, yellow birds, and inari. The map also makes it easy to tell what areas you completed or have not discovered. There is in fact no HUD as you move through the game! Tracking in this game's quests relies on environmental details: this is a huge improvement to Witcher 3 and Horizon Zero's detective mode, which always felt like a lazy and less immersive experience. There are also Mongol territories to liberate similar to Far Cry's outposts.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Clear Kurosawa influences, and I love the explicit references and attribution to his work. Graphics are clearly top of this generation, including face models and facial animations. Ingame cutscenes of face models can be Yakuza 0 level of quality though, which is not great. Lip syncing is noticeably bad for Japanese audio. The amount of Fashion Souls and sheer variety in cosmetic choices is awesome. Costume details like mud and blood on your armor is great. Soundtrack does the highlights of Edo period feudal Japan well---nothing that stands out but it complements the game's direction.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Bamboo minigame. Badass game of cutting through bamboo. Engaging to try to execute a button combo within a short window.\n+ Wind as your navigating compass rather than a HUD option.\n+ Haiku minigame. Relaxing similar to the bath scenes.\n+ Unlike Witcher 3, you can now call and ride your horse from a running position instead of sacrificing movement to get on your horse.\n+ Checkpoints are very frequent, which balances well with the lethality of combat so you can immediately try combat again.\n+ \"Challenge Remaining Enemies\" prompt is a quality of life bonus to clear out enemies in a cleared outpost.\n+ Items you loot persist across reloaded checkpoints. So there is at least some progression if you have to constantly retry an area: at least you're partially grinding for mats!\n+ Open world is segmented into a linear progression of zones similar to Witcher 3, so before you move to the next zone, you know how much you can comfortably explore before moving on with the main quest.\n+ There's an incentive to liberate everything first. That way you don't have to go through the tedious process of unlocking all fog of war to make sure you didn't miss something.\n+ There's more than enough crafting materials to get most upgrades by the time you complete the first area, let alone all three.\n+ With Safe Landing, you need to roll to avoid damage when falling from certain heights. It's this interactivity that I enjoy in more involved platforming like the original Tomb Raider.\n+ Kurosawa mode. It's a little lazy as a filter, but I like the appeal of a black and white, with film reel age, no enemy HUD, and muffed audio. It especially works in the snow area of Act 3. Trying it combined with the Japanese dub and expert HUD style keep the game fresh as you complete the open world missions and explore. The lack of enemy posture bar and red glint for unblockable attacks (relying purely on the sound) makes the game just a tad harder.\n+ No romance, just mature-aged characters.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Heals are instant with 0 animation time.\n+ You can fast travel from any area and to many areas.\n+ Ingame cutscenes are not talking heads but feature NPC movement too.\n+ Looting is instantaneous and animation-free like Witcher 3.\n+ You can both observe and kill some leaders to get bonus points to unlock your stances. I don't like that this encourages optimal vs suboptimal play, where playing optimally limits the fun zone. Fortunately, stances are all very quick to acquire.\n+ Flute, Respect, and Sheathe are nice RP options but you're never rarely encouraged to use them.\n+ Expert HUD is another excellent option for improved immersion. I don't like how it's difficult to find merchants/questgivers however.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Focus hearing is way too overpowered in clearly seeing all enemies in your vicinity, including through walls. Like all detective modes, it would be better off not existing.\n+ If you die to a random encounter, the random encounter disappears.\n+ Can't change FOV.\n+ Tutorial still pops up mid way into game; there's no way to turn it off.\n+ Constantly needing to swap between Traveller's Attire and my main armor.\n+ Side quests are all broken up in bite-sized pieces rather than allowing them to take variable length. Breaks up pacing, particularly in having to travel to the next point if you just want to go through a full quest.\n+ You can't skip cutscenes or dialogue line by line. This combined with the inability to turn off tutorials ruins replayability. Lack of skipping also means you can't cruise through quests.\n+ Camera can be awkward at times, particularly during standoffs. Contrary to others, I found the automatic camera angles during duels worked well.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ charm loadouts for each armor (either emphasize the armor's style or offset its weaknesses) | https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/226261-ghost-of-tsushima/78875352\n+ https://www.powerpyx.com/ghost-of-tsushima-all-mongol-territories-locations-occupied-areas-outposts\n\n I started on hard difficulty, which is the second highest; I swapped to lethal (highest) a few hours into the game. Lethal is punishes mistakes more and stealth detection is higher. I especially love the idea of further increasing the player's lethality, upping the game's realism and one of Ghost of Tsushima's most distinct gameplay elements from any other video game with a rich combat system. The punishment difficulty is still nowhere near as hard as Sekiro for example: Sekiro bosses like Genichiro and Corrupted Monk took me a few hours, and I enjoyed the whole time; Ghost of Tsushima's Kojiro took me about 15 tries.\n\nI tried to use Japanese audio for the authenticity, but the game is clearly developed with English actors in motion capture and lip syncing: there are noticeable issues such as Japanese lip-syncing completely off, English subtitles based on the English script rather than the Japanese dialogue (which even I can tell, who only knows common Japanese phrasing), and you miss out on unsubbed idle NPC dialogue. I chose the black horse (Kage) as it seemed to fit the aesthetic better; later I went with the white horse (Nobu). I liberated all areas, completed all sidequests, and got most (but not all) collectibles, upgrades, and visited question marks on the map. Ending-wise, I decided to kill Shimura: I felt abiding by his honor was like an olive branch; and in practice, he would live the rest of his life in shame and ultimately force seppuku.\n\nBuild-wise, I did the following.\n\n+ Equipment. I use Samurai Clan armor, Charm of Okuninushi and Inari as major charms; and did minor charms ad hoc. With lethal difficulty, everything dies in 1-2 hits so more survability than damage is needed, and I like playing with minimal movement, encouraging a reactionary gameplay with parries and dodges. The two major charms improve utility outside of combat, and I prefer the nerf due to being overpowered from exploring and upgrading: I only swap if I'm having difficulty such as in duels. Midway into area 2, I completed most crafting needs so I swapped Inari with Mizu-no-kami (Amaterasu's health boost isn't as useful on Lethal). I also played with Gosaku armor, complemented with stagger charms, which plays offensively to chain stagger enemies; Sakai armor which has both survivability and offense; and Ghost armor for stealth missions and the RP since it's the coolest. In terms of Fashion Souls, I liked all black or all white palettes.\n+ Technique points. I prioritized in rough order the Deflection tree, Evasion tree, Water and Stone stance. I allocated to other stances, Ghost Weapons, and Evolving Tactics ad hoc.\n+ Crafting upgrades. I prioritized my Katana, Kunai, and Traveler's Attire, and did the rest ad hoc (Tanto, Bow, Arrows, other Ghost Weapons, armor). For Ghost Weapons, I prioritized Kunai and Smoke Bomb.\n+ The only exploration item I actively prioritized was the Traveller's Attire, Charm of Inari, and Charm Of Amaterasu; otherwise I explored and completed quests at my own pace.\n\nPlaystyle-wise, I stealth until detected or just start full frontal if I like the challenge. I don't focus too much on stealth as the game shines more in its rich combat. For stealth, this is the Tanto and occasionally the Wind Chime. For combat, I use the Katana, Kunai to break defenses, Black Powder Bomb for AOE, and Bow for ranged enemies if I prefer to keep my positioning. I never use Flaming Arrow, Smoke Bomb (it's already easy to retreat without the bomb, and full retreats to restealth are rarely needed), Sticky Bomb, or Blowdart. Moveset-wise, I start with standoffs or Mounted Strike from my horse. I use all stances but otherwise default to water. Other moves include Sprinting Strike. I never really use Heavenly Strike or Dance of Wrath (except duels), kicks, Shoulder Charge, Delayed Strike.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ghost-of-tsushima"},{"id":"322682678624141900","title":"Grim Dawn","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":1290,"platforms":["PC","XONE"],"studios":["Crate Entertainment"],"publishers":["Crate Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-10-07","completedDate":"2021-10-12","updatedDate":"2025-07-24","notes":"Grim Dawn is an excellent action RPG building on elements from titans of the genre. Its unique twists on action RPGs---for example, emphasis on leveling over endgame, a dual class system, devotion mechanic, and fixed level design---all work excellently to make a polished game with a high amount of replayability.\n\nCompared to Titan Quest, it's a much more polished game overall with animations, game speed, enemies, and level design, and environment variety; and features new mechanics including devotion, challenge dungeons, dialogue choices, factions.\n\n__Story.__ Serviceable. I enjoy the RPG elements with dialogue options as well as the minor ways you can affect the story.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Grim Dawn largely builds on prior ARPGs like Titan Quest and Diablo 2: multiple game playthroughs each of increasing difficulty, health/mana, XP, and the death penalty, stat attributes, skill tree, taxonomy of damage types and resistances, and item stats with affixes and rarity. I particularly like the additional challenge that Elite and Ultimate have over Normal, where Normal is closer to the tutorial. Enemies don't nearly melt as easily in Elite and Normal so you have to be more considerate about survivability gear, skills, kiting, positioning and enemy awareness.\n\n[The new mechanics in the ARPG genre are quite interesting](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vCn3DlRuvapxItysOLweSGFbjIvVJ2fKP43J_Svpbss/edit). In terms of builds:\n\n+ Unlike ARPGs like Diablo 2 and PoE, the campaign with leveling is the main content and any endgame content are side filler. I greatly prefer this approach as Diablo and PoE largely encourages players to rush through the campaign in order to proceed to endgame.\n+ Mastery system of dual \"classes\" per character. This enables quite high build diversity as you mix-and-match classes, sometimes using one as your main class or otherwise doing a full hybrid.\n+ Devotion, where devotion shrines provide challenges rewarding a devotion point. These devotion points are then allocated to a devotion tree. Devotion shrines are particularly nice because they encourage exploration as ARPGs otherwise optimize for point A->B for quest completion.\n+ A simplification of stats to just physique (health/defensive ability), cunning (physical damage but primarily physical gear), and spirit (magic damage but primarily magic gear).\n\nIn terms of gear:\n+ Armor system based on body parts, where body part armor only contributes to that area.\n+ Crafting system. It's a significant improvement from the Horadric Cube with built-in recipe system, blueprints to discover, crafting materials can be stored in the stash, and more thorough crafting materials.\n+ A built-in loot filter.\n+ Components serve as Diablo's gems and runes.\n+ Actual usage of currency (iron): stash space, faction writs and mandates for faster reputation gain, faction blueprints, and crafting.\n\nIn terms of level design:\n\n+ Fixed level design, focusing on a well-crafted campaign instead of procedural level generation.\n+ Constitution quickly regenerates health out of combat. This avoids any tedium in potion management, something both Diablo 2 and Path of Exile could learn from.\n+ Quest tracking with multiple quests, side quests included.\n+ Illusion of choice in quest dialogues to influence the story.\n+ Factions and reputation. It's particularly interesting to see their importance in an ARPG as a way of obtaining augments (components) to improve resistances at higher difficulties.\n+ Material blockers such as Scraps, Dynamite, and Skeleton Key.\n+ Skeleton Key challenge areas.\n+ Level scaled areas up to the area's level cap.\n\nBoss fights are mediocre. ARPGs have badly designed bosses in general: they result in either kiting, facetanking, or with the occasional bullet hell. The overall gameplay loop in ARPGs is about being overpowered enough to spam a few abilities, quickly wiping out mobs under your desired style (e.g., caster, ranged physical, and melee). Combat would be more mechanically involved if they borrowed elements from 2D soulslike/metroidvania games: dodge and block/parry system as well as telegraphed attacks.\n\nIn Grim Dawn's meta, close range and movement is key. There are many mobs that either shoot from range or close in on you quickly so standing to shoot is often not a good amount of DPS; and there is a large amount of mobs, often in closed areas, so you can't just snipe. This incentivizes builds around melee, including mobile casters. I like this change in meta over, say, Diablo 2 where melee is highly underpowered and ranged such as Sorceress or Javazon reign king.\n\nGrim Dawn has many nice additions that improve replayability with new characters. For example, after reaching Act 2 Ultimate, you can have any additional character immediately start on Elite or Ultimate and unlock the associated backpack and stat/skill point rewards from Normal and Elite quests. You can also purchase Mandates from characters achieving Revered on any faction in order to accelerate faction reputation on new characters. The additional game modes of Crucible and Shattered Realm can serve as alternative forms of leveling so you can coast through much of the initial Acts.\n\nGrim Dawn's endgame is standard. Replayability is primarily about playing through the campaign with new builds. However, the two game modes of Crucible and Shattered Realm do add an endless set of randomized encounters to test your optimized endgame builds. Like any ARPG endgame, this can be fun for a while but quickly becomes repetitive.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I like the dark gritty aesthetic. It's what Diablo 3 should have looked like. The dialogue is only partially voiced, which is a shame. The cutscenes are also clearly budget.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ So many quality of life details over Diablo 2: no stamina meter; skills are immediately activated from the keybind rather than swapped to for left/right click; you can auto-sort the inventory; inventory and stash space; stack items; right click to equip gear; ranged weapons don't require tedious ammo micromangement; no need for identify and portal scrolls; dying doesn't make you naked to recover your corpse; you can recover either the component or the item; you can see the (de)buffs you have; autoloot materials option.\n+ Destructible objects shine when they have an item of rarity. That way you don't have to spam interact with everything.\n+ Mod support.\n+ If you complete certain quest objectives like killing a boss prior to being given the quest, then the quest is automatically completed. No need to redo it.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ I dislike the ARPG trend of loot filters to deal with the fact that later on, all items below a certain rarity are automatically useless. Instead of this manual tedium, have the item drops upgrade with us and just don't include these bad drops. In the case of Grim Dawn, you can safely ignore whites after your character has all equipped slots, yellows at level 20-30, and greens at level 50.\n+ When progressing through a voiced NPC's quest dialogue, it doesn't skip lines and go to the next wall of text. This makes reading the quest text annoying at times.\n+ Multiplayer scene is largely dead. I greatly enjoy its single player and occasional mix of coop with friends. If multiplayer were better incentivized such as a real trading economy, then the game could be kept more alive and active.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Grim Dawn Wiki](https://grimdawn.fandom.com), including [quests](https://grimdawn.fandom.com/wiki/Quests)\n+ [Farming Routes Compilation](https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/farming-routes-farming-guides-compilation)\n+ [Patch 1.1.8.1 and 1.1.9.0 Tier List](https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdawn/comments/jqg0p6/patch_1181_class_tier_list)\n\nThis entry includes all expansions. I played on Normal instead of Veteran difficulty as the XP and slower clear speed isn't worth it: just move onto Elite and Ultimate. I played according to the release order: Normal Act 1-4 -> Ashes of Malmouth's Act 5-6 -> Forgotten Gods -> Elite -> Ultimate -> Shattered Realms + Crucible. In Normal, I explore everything and do all side quests. In Elite and Ultimate, I optimize for fast completion and XP. I stopped playing after roughly Act 2 in Ultimate. I got burned out of ARPGs after having played Diablo 2 Resurrected previously and feeling the content get rather stale on Ultimate, which is effectively a third (but more challenging) playthrough. My first character was a Spellbinder ([1](https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/caster-beginners-nephrite-spellbinder), [2](https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/1-1-8-0-albrecht-the-leech-super-tanky-aether-aar-spellbinder-3-versions-ravager-killer-very-easy-sr-80), [3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jY7_Ix-mS4)).\n\nTODOs to try\n+ shattered realms and crucible\n+ dual wield pistol build\n+ melee build\n+ pet build","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/grim-dawn"},{"id":"322682678624161356","title":"Hades","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1995,"playtimeMinutes":1290,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Ablex"],"publishers":["LG Software"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2021-07-23","completedDate":"2021-07-27","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Hades is like a greatest hits collection of ideas from the roguelike genre and isometric action games like Bastion---most reminiscent of Dead Cells and Binding of Isaac. It excels most as an engine builder, relying on the addictive nature of progressively unlocking the story and power creep than a precisely addictive gameplay loop like other roguelike titans. The combat work well with tight controls and well-designed enemies and levels. Boons are balanced and enable high build variety. The high amount of progression mechanics motivate the next run and add further challenges. \n\n__Story.__ Hades is one of the few roguelikes with a decent story. It's a basic one, but I like how the story takes advantage of the ensemble cast of Greek mythology. The dialogue lines percolated throughout runs is particularly good.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core roguelite mechanics are all excellent: the random power ups, level designs, enemies and bosses, weapon movesets, and merchants. The isometric combat is not unlike Bastion and Transistor, but improved most in terms of the system mechanics with all the roguelike elements. There's a good variety in the randomization, and a surprising amount of viable builds as well as balanced abilities.\n\nThere's a good amount of progression shared across runs via currencies, story progression, and additional difficulties. Charon's Obol provides per-run gold currency. Nectar and Ambrosia provide gifts for characters which increases their bond and gives you a keepsake. Darkness provides permanent upgrades, and Keys unlock upgrade options and weapons. Gemstones and Diamonds repair the Underworld adding new furnishings. Titan Blood upgrades weapons.\n\nThe endgame after you complete a run has high replayability. Story keeps appearing until the main ending after 10 completed runs. Heats amp up the difficulty with new mechanics (including new boss attacks), with the reward of a bount which may be a Diamond, Amborisa, or Titan Blood. You also get a bounty for each weapon per heat, as well as Dark Thirst applied to a random weapon every run, encouraging you to play all weapons. After enough runs, you start delving into weapon Aspects and Companions, which add additional movesets. In fact, while weapon aspects are passive, they make Special usage viable so your playstyle isn't just spamming Dash and Attack: for example Chiron Bow's Attack -> Special for homing; and Zeus Shield's Special to zip around the map.\n\nReplayability is good but ultimately not as high as the roguelike titans of the genre. Boons combos, levels, and enemies all start to feel same-y after a while as you've beaten the game after, say, 10 runs and unlocked near everything. Compare to, say, Binding of Isaac or Dead Cells where the game really only begins when you've completed multiple run.\n\nControls are tight and responsive.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Follows the iconic style of other Supergiant Games. Voice acting is stellar, especially for an indie game.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Your highest heat for a weapon is shown, as well as additional stats before and after a run.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ It takes quite a few hours to get accustomed to what all the icons mean.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Duo Boons](https://hades.fandom.com/wiki/Duo_Boons)\n+ [Infernal Arms](https://hades.fandom.com/wiki/Infernal_Arms)\n\nTook me 26 escape attempts to finally complete a run and 40 total attempts to beat the game with 10 completed runs. I had gotten to Hades 4 times beforehand but kept dying to him.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/hades"},{"id":"322682678652589644","title":"Half-Life","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Valve"],"publishers":["Valve","Sierra Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2002-12-31","completedDate":"2002-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I think I played the original version. Reading online now in 2020, Half-Life: Source is apparently inferior in all regards to the original. Its only usefulness was enabling the Black Mesa fan remake.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/half-life"},{"id":"322682678651449932","title":"Her Story","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":120,"genres":["Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-08-24","completedDate":"2019-08-24","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Her Story excels in both its story and its experimental gameplay. The idea behind gameplay is intriguing: search and watching nonlinear clips at your own pace, building up a picture through threads of intrigue through an extremly fine control of inquiry as opposed to other mystery games often involving just a handful of choices via dialogue options. There's something strangely alluring about finding new videos and marking them as watched. You also pick up a lot of the story piecewise in a manner that's substantial: certain queries like \"tattoo\" lead to the most natural question you would ask and therefore reward you for feeling like a true detective; the script has specific themes which incentivize you to search for keywords like a person's name, occupation, \"twins\", \"pregnant\", \"throat\", \"attic\". The chronological ordering of results and top-5 limitation really adds depth by encouraging you search for more specific terms to find the later interviews.\n\nOn the plot itself, the story is unsettling and works well patch-wise. Many clips are just goosebump-wrenching. That clip where she sings a ballad on guitar for example. I'm impressed they could do an entire video game well purely on one-sided interview clips, all brimming with depth in metaphors, ambiguity and contradiction, and subtlety. The ambiguity of whether two twins or all a story with intentional fabrication for the case of split personality is so subtle and interesting. And that's so unsettling because it starts at the very beginning. After beating the game, I watched the rest of the clips by the search term cheat of \"BLANK\".\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/HerStoryGame/comments/3bo88n/spoilers_my_understanding_of_her_storys_story/","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-sych-story-deds-story"},{"id":"329779160870290001","title":"Iron Lung","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["PC","PS5","Switch"],"studios":["David Szymanski"],"publishers":["David Szymanski","DreadXP"],"genres":["Puzzle","Simulator","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-04-28","completedDate":"2022-04-28","updatedDate":"2022-04-29","notes":"It's a great short experience, excelling in its sound effect design to create a tense atmosphere. The minimalist controls and assets work wonderfully where the limited visuals can play to your imagination. It's like an experience in sensory deprivation.\n\nI was motivated to play if only because it's David Syzmanski and the atmosphere in Dusk is largely cultivated from his experience building atmosphere in walking simulator horror shorts.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/iron-lung"},{"id":"322682678650426956","title":"Journey","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["PC","Mac","PS4","XONE","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Maxis"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-06-25","completedDate":"2020-06-25","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I'm surprised by how well I enjoyed Journey, an excellent take on the walking simulator genre. The story is simple: a pilgrimage that suits the playtime. Across the journey are lovely creatures (and dragon monsters) alike, building on a motif of red cloth, along with minimalistic landscapes of deserts, ruins, and snow. Gameplay-wise, I'm most surprised by how well the jump and chime mechanics work together. Sliding on the dunes and snow, as well as flying in the climax, especially feel smooth. Exploration is also incentivized by boosting your jumping capacity. THe communication-limited multiplayer also works really well: mechanics such as chiming restoring each other's jump, chiming to signal the location of glowing symbols, and the coop objectives encourages working together. Finally, the game features sumptuous colors and a serendipitous soundtrack.\n\nFlaw-wise, there is light stealth that's arguably clunky in how to hide, and the game doesn't explain what the failure penalty is. But this is okay given that it only appears in two areas.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played the June 2020 PC release on Steam. There was only one other person around at times, half the time no players.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-sims-4-journey-to-batuu"},{"id":"322682678650392140","title":"Left 4 Dead 2","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":570,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["Turtle Rock Studios","Valve"],"publishers":["Valve","Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2020-09-25","completedDate":"2020-09-30","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"It's fun as a fast-paced linear coop shooter, with players able to jump in at any point. Enemies, level designs, weapon variety, and tight core controls keep the game replayable. It gets repetitive after a few games, but I still find it quite fun to pick up once in a while. Very low barrier to entry.\n\n__Story.__ A loose string of standalone campaigns. Basically nonexistent.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I always thought the game was a zombie defense. Turns out it's an awesome linear shooter moving from safe house to safe house rife with zombies. The linearity gives variety in environments. It's constantly fast-paced, encouraged to keep you move, and with various mechanics encouraging cooperative play. The variety of special zombies keeps the game on your toes. I love that the characters each provide audio cues, suggesting items to pick up, areas to go to, etc. Keeps the game feeling alive.\n\nL4D2 was an interesting time for coop shooters: no aim down sights with slower movement speed; no movement penalty on strafe or backpedal; no sprint with a stamina bar; and infinite secondary weapon ammo. Floaty acceleration based movement with strafing and backpedaling not that much of a movement speed penalty. This encourages a nice run and gun playstyle as opposed to the tactical style that Call of Duty popularized later. This style ages surprisingly well, holding up even in 2021.\n\nThe difficulty grades add increasing levels of challenge as you master the game under different playstyles, position and manage your ammo, and how to handle the special zombies. Playstyles include machine gunner, shotgunner, sniper, and supporting role (e.g., medic).\n\nThe versus game mode where you can play campaigns as the zombie elevates the game at an even higher bar of replayability. Matchmaking for PvP is awful however as quick matches drop you into losing matches. There's no skill-based match making.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Surprisingly aged well playing in 2020 with a nice horror movie aesthetic. The level design has great variety, and with a good use of both lighting and sound design. The audio cues to signal the presence of enemy specials, especially when they're not in your POV, is excellent.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The satisfying feeling of shooting all zombies from the safety of the safe house.\n+ All the visual effects such as the acid obscured vision and when you pop adrenaline.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Revisiting L4D2 after playing Back 4 Blood, there are a few things that Left 4 Dead 2 is missing. The only major one is a lack of ping to spot special enemies or any other notable area. The Z and X communication tools could be greatly simplified and also be part of the HUD and not just the character's voice. Another is an explicit timer for when horde arrives so you can spend the time to find a good position before it starts instead of continuing to run. B4B also adds more items, weapons, enemies.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nFor the first time in years, Left 4 Dead 2 came with an update for The Last Stand this weekend, leading to a peak of 100K concurrent players and 50K on average. I don't even care about the expansion per se; it's great to just see the online scene populate again, similar to what Warcraft 3 Reforged did. This made an excellent time to start playing the game having missed the hype almost a decade ago. Like any online play, I tried to play the campaigns in rough order, selecting lobbies based on campaigns I haven't started yet to maximize completing missing content. I typically played Normal difficulty.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/left-4-dead-2"},{"id":"322682678652448332","title":"Mark of the Ninja","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["Klei Entertainment"],"publishers":["Microsoft Studios"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-07-11","completedDate":"2019-07-13","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Mark of the Ninja excels as a 2D stealth platformer rife with core powers and freedom to stealth-kill or go full non-lethal. The story is not remarkable but it serves its purpose in adding to the lore behind Marks and the individual powers. Enemy variety is good but not great.\n\n__Story.__ Serviceable. Great ending though, particularly with the way new powers actually make a gameplay difference. Ora being a hallucination the whole time, and the idea that going against Azai could purely have been through the evils of the Mark.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Stealth is very slick with features including interactive lighting, expanding circles to capture enemy and your own sound, vents to hide, walls to mount, areas to hide. It's a linear platformer but with excellent stealth elements that appeal to its core art and ninja vibe. I especially love the kill animations and the need to execute an additional quick command to succesfully silent kill; it adds to the tension and skill. There are a handful of core tools to assist but are in no way required. Parkour freedom is seamless with the Jump button which easily becomes Drop and other animations as you tilt the D-pad.\n\nThey also nailed the checkpoint system. I greatly prefer this over Quicksaves/Quickloads.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I love the art style both within the gameplay and in the cutscenes. It feels like I'm playing in Jackie Chan Adventures or Gargoyles.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ I love A Bottomless Chasm as it's a pure 2D platforming level. It's a nice break from what could start to get repetitive in the stealth.\n+ I love the teleport mechanic in the later levels. It's so OP, but a refresher in adding to the game mechanic as well as the lore of the final Mark along with hallucinated enemies.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played the Remastered version.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mark-of-the-ninja"},{"id":"322682678624175692","title":"Mass Effect 2","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":1470,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["BioWare","BioWare Edmonton"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-05-15","completedDate":"2021-05-21","updatedDate":"2023-09-05","notes":"Mass Effect 2 is quite the improvement as a sequel. It improves combat in several ways such as animations, ammo capacity, and tactical enemy health; streamlines away elements such as the inventory which was unnecessary in Mass Effect 1; improves galaxy map navigation (albeit still repetitive); and features a more immersive HUD. Most importantly, the writing quality across the main story and companions greatly improved.\n\nFlaw-wise, the shared cooldown limits ability usage and streamlined RPG elements limit build variety. Combat can get fairly monotonous by endgame when you've seen all the game has to offer; enemy variety is low and level design is near. Mass Effect 2 also continues Mass Effect 1's lack of player agency, with few approaches to tackle missions like in immersive sims, and with sparse quests to give life to individual worlds favoring quantity over quality.\n\n__Story.__ I like the overall story, particularly in siding with the Cerberus organization. Mass Effect 2's companions are also more distinguished here, complemented by loyalty missions which not only add more depth to each squad member but also the overall world. For example, Mordin's quest expands on the dilemma with the genophage to stabilize Krogan population, otherwise leading to a genocide or total domination. Grunt's expands on Krogan culture on the home planet of Tuchanka. Thane and Garrus' loyalty missions give C-Sec spotlight time. Tali's expands on Quarian military law. Their lack of input is still rather paltry compared to the Dragon Age series, especially Dragon Age 2. I love Mordin especially. Beyond his quirky cadence and fervent scientific thinking, he has a ton of hilarious quips (like singing).\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core gameplay is the same but with improvements across combat, progression systems, and the galaxy map overworld.\n\nCombat-wise, animations are much smoother making the move to take cover more seamless as well as shooting and new animations like vaulting. The new mechanic of reloading for ammo makes the game just a little less brainless which I greatly enjoy. There is also no manual heal or grenade consumable; you auto-heal.\n\nThe enemy health system is more tactical with armor, shields, and barriers, and with weapons and abilities being good at a subset of them. It makes for a rock paper scissors similar to Borderlands and Doom. I like this design because it forces you to be more aware of the enemy type and therefore to adjust the weapons and abilities you’ll be using for the encounter. Playstyle is no longer just determined by weapon range. I hate the shared cooldown however. It limits ability variety.\n\nTalent tree is much more streamlined with much less diversity for different playstyles. I do like the addition of ammo types, which further the rock paper scissors tactics; but it's a shame we lose so many other talents. No equipment mods further limit diversity. On the plus, the inventory and loot is replaced with [upgrades](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Upgrade_Guide), including new weapons, swappable armor, and permanent upgrades on weapons, shields, bio-amp, and more. I like that it makes for an actual use of spending credits and other resources throughout the game, and you can easily keep track on your Private Terminal. Mass Effect 2's lack of loot works to its strengths whereas it otherwise have subpar loot like Mass Effect 1 or be a looter shooter like Borderlands.\n\nMass Effect's galaxy map also has notable improvements. Galaxy systems finally notate quests in them as well as progress on planets you've explored. I also like the mini-RPG elements of fuel resources, probes, and ship upgrades. The planet scanning minigame for mining minerals is fairly tedious: [My strategy](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Planet_Scanning#Scanning_Tips) is to only mine Rich planets, which helps curb this problem. The overall idea of more interactivity in planet exploration is quite good. Most notable is the mechanic of detecting and searching for anomalies, which provides an additional way to spontaneously generate sidequest content.\n\nThere's more variety in the minigames, which helps break the usual game flow: hacking, firewalker, killing pyjaks. Lair of the Shadow Broker has a chase scene. Arrival has a control mech scene.\n\nControls and HUD are mostly the same as Mass Effect 1, keeping what works well. Most significant, the HUD is even more immersive now which I greatly enjoy. Gone is the minimap radar, only appearing contextually. This combined with the lack of map in combat areas makes navigation far more immersive as you focus on your main camera to explore all corners.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics are a notable improvement from Mass Effect 1. It's hard to tell with the Legendary Edition making general textures have equal parity across the titles. What's most noticeable are the more fluid animations, lighting, and less asset reuse.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Mass Effect Genesis. What a fun way to recap.\n+ Mass Effect 2 is among the modern RPGs that continues the CRPG trend of importing previous title's save game.\n+ Logs you pick up are audio-based. They're no longer text walls or things you just grab and ignore. You have to stay nearby to listen.\n+ You can respec.\n+ No more overlapping voices when skipping dialogue lines. Thank you!\n+ Hacking has more variety with a card flip memory, target code segment. Less cheesable than the previous title.\n+ No more lengthy elevators.\n+ Kelly is next to the Galaxy Map console and tells you whenever there are any new messages or if a squad member wants to speak with you. This is such a nice quality-of-life feature so you don't have to frequently check up on each squad member.\n+ The instanced-based loadouts mean you avoid having to spend time in the middle of combat managing loot or new levelups. I love how it keeps pacing.\n+ Like Mass Effect, there are no quest markers for objectives or questgivers. Areas are small enough that it's sufficient to explore.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Interrupt QTE. On one hand, it's QTE which is annoying. On the other hand, it's a nice way of injecting Paragon/Renegade choices during animated cutscenes and not just dialogue.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ No save file editor for changing your imported save. We'll get a mod for this, but I wish there were an official tool like Dragon Age Keep.\n+ Heavy weapons. While there's a lot of them, none stand out to a degree that you'd incorporate them in a regular playstyle. Their limited ammo further makes them nonviable.\n+ The formulaic way you acquire loyalty missions. Everyone's lining up for their turn for drama!\n+ I enjoyed the Lair of the Shadow Broker campaign. The base however is subpar with its time-constrained rewards. I just hacked my Windows' date to get the delivery shipment rewards.\n+ Zero companion banter. This makes for less camradarie.\n+ The sequencing required to do all loyalty missions while still saving your full crew, including squadmates.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played the remaster Legendary Edition on PC which includes all DLC. [Manually turned off mouse acceleration.](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Mass_Effect_Legendary_Edition) Like Mass Effect 1, I played on Veteran difficulty. I leaned toward Paragon. I completed all sidequests and got all upgrades.\n\nI played Infiltrator. I enjoy its aim-heavy high-damage playstyle, reminding me of Ana in Overwatch; and its ability to complement almost any squad composition. My playstyle is to go to cover and line headshot after headshot. I rarely need to send the squad or control their abilities.\n\n+ Talents: Assassination Cloak for movement and damage bonus, Incinerate Blast for AOE and armor, Heavy Disruptor Ammo for shields, Heavy Warp Ammo for barriers, and Assassin for burst passives.\n+ Weapons: Mantis/Widow sniper rifle. I swap to the Carnifex heavy pistol when out of ammo.\n+ Armor: Kuwashii Visor, Off-Hand Ammo Pack, and Stimulator Conduits are essential.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mass-effect-2"},{"id":"322682678652624460","title":"Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["Konami Computer Entertainment Japan"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Shooter","Tactical","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2002-12-31","completedDate":"2002-12-31","updatedDate":"2023-12-16","notes":"MGS2 is one of the best PS2 games of all time. It greatly improves MGS1's core gameplay: most notably, aiming, nonlethal playthrough, and more tactical controls. Its ending plot and Raiden as the protagonist are controversial, but I generally enjoyed the story.\n\nThere are no major flaws, except arguably the controversial repetition in the gameplay, plot, and less interesting supporting cast than MGS1. There are also some infamously bad sections: the escort section with Emma; the Fatman boss fight; and the bomb-finding areas like Fatman's C4 bomb in Strut A and the Shell 1 - 2 bridge.\n\n__Story.__\nIt's the meta storyline (see below) that most defines MGS2. It starts with the usual military tactical plotline of MGS1 and Kojima's zaniness in enemy design and set pieces. And it features the whiniest characters in the whole series: Raiden, Rosemary, and Emma. In addition, there's the multiple storylines with Snake in the Tanker as well as Snake progressing effectively simultaneously with Raiden during the Planter (e.g., Snake beating Fortune, meeting and colluding with Cyborg Ninja).\n\nMost prominent to MGS2 is the meta reveal with Big Shell being a recreation of the Shadow Moses incident, Patriots being AI, and Raiden being trained through VR (\"video games\") as a beginner to effectively be the lens of the player unlike Snake. All the details with Colonel overelaborately explaining all the controls. The references to the simualtion. I remember having nightmares and thinking about the ending scene with the warped Colonel often as a kid. Something about its strangeness stuck with me even today. Not unlike NGE and Kare Kano’s ending sticking with me I suppose. I like the meta plotline of effectively emulating MGS1 (which itself emulated MG1/2) under the guise of training a new Snake and testing the new Patriot AI. MGS2 is where Kojima goes off the rails in ideas and concepts over coherency.\n\nThe supporting cast in terms of the codec allies and villains are not as memorable as MGS1’s. Fortune is inferior to Sniper Wolf, Harrier is inferior to Hind, Olga is inferior to Gray Fox. There’s also no introduction of notable new characters during the mission like Otacon and Meryl. The lore explanation is the S3 simulation, but as a story the characters become less grounded and appealing.\n\nDetails:\n\n+ [Ocelot's quadruple agent shenanigans](https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/u44r5i/how_many_levels_of_betrayal_ocelot_was_really_on) never fails to amuse me. Truly Kojima.\n+ Directional mic to make cutscenes more interactable.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nMGS2 builds on the core essentials in MGS1. Major gameplay innovations:\n\n+ Aiming with the first person mode. Additionally, there is locational damage: headshot or crouch shots with the tranq gun is an instant sleep; shooting a guard's radio makes them unable to raise alert.\n+ Nonlethal as a viable playthrough. Nonlethal weapons include the M9 tranquilizer pistol, PSG-1 T, and High Frequency Blade. This goes beyond MGS1's melee knockout from chokeholds and combo moves, and there are no longer forced kills. MGS2 offers no in-game reward, only the final score (for example, stealth camo is obtained by collecting all dog tags; in-game rewards are added in MGS3). But I greatly prefer nonlethal as a player-chosen difficulty constraint.\n  + MGS2 established MGS' iconic gameplay loop of a tranq gun with headshots to take down most guards. Melee, grenades, and other weapons are used situationally.\n+ More tactical controls. You can sneak peek from a wall and for cover fire by aiming while leaning or tip-toeing. Roll. Mantle. Hang off walkways. Hide in lockers. Walk slowly over metal grates to avoid making noise. Swim.\n  + You can drag enemies while chokeholding them. You also have to drag enemy corpses or knocked out enemies to avoid enemies spotting them and raising alert. Enemies no longer despawn when dead.\n  + You can drag and drop bodies in the ground in order to drop 1-2 items.\n  + You can hold up an enemy. Certain enemies are aggressive and will slowly move into an attacking stance. You can wing enemies or shoot near them to scare them.\n+ Expanded environmental effects: in cold temperatures, you sneeze which guards can hear; if a cloud of flies swarms you, guards can smell you beyond their vision cone.\n+ Improved AI, especially with strike team enemies that spawn in during an alert who attempt to flank you.\n\nThe aiming works well, although the controls are different for its time and somewhat clumsy. You hold Square to aim, with R1 also held to use first person view, and releasing shoots the weapon. L2/R2 leans left/right and both tip toes while aiming. To unholster your weapon, it's also awkward in that you need to let go of first person view, then quick weapon switch with R2. L1 autoaims to their chest. A hard press to Square instead of light press is an immediate shot. The pressure sensitivity—along with the difference between button with analog stick for throwing an enemy vs button without analog stick for chokehold—is what makes old MGS controls dated.\n\nThe gameplay can be repetitive taken from MGS1 (mostly the same boss fights, the Nikita to take out electric flooring, torture section, etc.). The in-game plot explanation is not a good excuse.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nPolygon count and details like lighting are significantly improved from MGS1. Codec faces are rendered as 3D models and no longer art portraits. Soundtrack is excellent.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ No longer instant alerts when spotted. If you take down an alerted enemy immediately, nothing is raised. This especially helps as a quality of life for close quarters encounters as MGS1 and 2's chokeholds are tricky.\n+ Before getting the Soliton radar, you need to access the node for an area. I like that it adds to the difficulty and incentivizes exploration.\n+ More tactical options: guards can be blinded by steam or distracted by a flying piece of fruit or hit in weak spots. All the improved controls mentioned above.\n+ You can set the radar setting different from the gameplay setting. In MGS1, this lack of distinction is what made me choose Normal instead of Hard.\n+ While they're knocked out, you don't need to headshot them with the tranq gun to sleep them.\n+ MGS2 debuted the magazine item along with lockers with pinup girls.\n+ You no longer need to equip the security keycard to open doors.\n+ A map to orient yourself on how the overarching areas connect together.\n+ First time in the series that you can wear disguises. Wearing the enemy disguise to go through Shell 1 Core was such a cool moment when I played this as a kid. That social deduction was not done in stealth games before until Hitman Codename 47 (2000).\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Soldiers give a status report at regular intervals. This makes it more difficult to sleep all enemies in an area if you're staying there for a prolonged period of time, for example, looking for Fatman's C4 explosives. To do so, you need to sleep the enemy with the radio and hide them so that backup comes and goes without waking everyone up again.\n+ Some people dislike the \"backtracking\" for Fatman’s C4 bombs. They're nowhere as tedious and lengthy as in MGS1 (not significantly a problem even then). And they're arguably not even backtracking given that the level design is a hexagon of areas, and most all areas you tackle to disarm bombs are new.\n+ While enemies are harder to bypass due to the radio and need for status reports, you can safely destroy sentry cameras and turrets as long as no one is around to hear or see.\n+ The scripted moments with time limits: taking pictures of Metal Gear Ray in the tanker mission; two Fatman time limits.\n+ Some guards are listening to music. You can even shoot and he won't hear any noise.\n+ Metal Gear Ray is the hardest boss fight. Took me an hour to master the mechanics and juggle usage of Ration/Body Armor and Chaff Grenade/Stinger. The Stinger takes some learning: you can shoot then lock on later, and you can shoot while another shot has locked on. In the end, turns out Chaff Grenade is not all that necessary. The frequency of Rays you have to kill is pretty [arbitrary](https://www.metalgearspeedrunners.com/wiki/doku.php?id=mgs2_boss_mg-rays).\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Still no way to reload to a checkpoint. You have to reset the game (a hard reset or [soft reset](https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/j6dd0w/in_case_you_didnt_know_mgs123_all_have_an_in_game)). This makes going for 0 kills or 0 alerts somewhat tedious, both in having to reset to reload and in having to save after every new area. A slightly easier approach to reload and not need to save after every area is to run into enemies and die in order to hit Continue. But any alerts and kills will be saved.\n+ The puzzle-finding in locating the bomb at the Strut A Pump Room, and in locating all [Semtex triggers](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/561508-metal-gear-solid-2-substance/43265347) at the Shell 1 - 2 connecting bridge. I resorted to a walkthrough for both. This are tedious if you don't know the solution.\n+ Like MGS1, melee knockouts with the chokehold is still finicky. There's a certain number of chokes you have to do, they can't be spammed, and you may have to release them, then choke them again.\n+ Like MGS1, there's still no way to check kill count or alert count until you get the score card at the end of the game.\n+ Like MGS1, you can't pause during cutscenes. Pressing Start will skip the cutscene.\n+ Enemies spawned during alert can spawn behind you or right at the exit you're trying to leave from.\n+ Fatman as a boss fight is challenging on Hard difficulty. The bomb timer for 4 bombs often feels like barely enough time to get them, and failure means instant game over. The lack of time is especially the case if you mess up and can't find the location, whether it having to go first person to check the back of a container, or crawling down to search for underneath a container. Combine this with draining HP from his occasional shots at you while you spray the bombs, and the need to stunlock him to knock him down and shoot at his head. I had to use everything in my arsenal: Socom to knock him down, tranq gun to headshot him, claymore and mine detector to knock him down, and rations to heal.\n+ Emma escort section. Like much of MGS1 and MGS2, the sniper section is more about memorization than skill. you need to destroy the claymores at the beginning and end, then guards and sentries, then the respawning guards and sentries as Emma gets close to the corresponding area.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://metalgear.fandom.com)\n  + [Walkthrough](https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid_2_Walkthrough)\n  + [Plot summary: Tanker Incident](https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/Tanker_Incident)\n  + [Plot summary: Big Shell Incident](https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/Big_Shell_Incident)\n+ [Moonmoon playthrough: 2020-01-25](https://youtu.be/BYEHh664xYQ)\n\n### Second playthrough\n\n__Version.__ As of 2023, there are [several versions](https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/8cmxft/best_versions_to_play_the_series_for_the_first/dxg6df7). The HD collection on PS3 is best.\n\nI played with RPCS3 (version 0.0.29-15480-219ee76b Alpha | master, 4.90 firmware). I used default settings followed by the RPCS3 wiki's game-specific settings ([link](https://wiki.rpcs3.net/index.php?title=Metal_Gear_Solid_HD_Collection)) and a resolution scale of 2x (from 1280x720p to 2560x1440p).\n\n__Playthrough.__ I played on Hard difficulty. I kept the game options as default (e.g., Type-2 radar, not game over if discovered).\n\nI went nonlethal but played through any alerts and accidental kills. I found it too tedious to reload the game. For the same reason, I didn't collect dog tags as you effectively have to hold up every guard.\n\ntodos on future playthroughs\n+ first person mod\n+ third person mod","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/metal-gear-solid-2-sons-of-liberty"},{"id":"322682678652625484","title":"Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":960,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["Konami Computer Entertainment Japan"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Shooter","Tactical","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2004-12-31","updatedDate":"2023-08-31","notes":"Flaws:\n\n+ Managing camouflage (see below).\n\n__Story.__\nThe story is grounded and with excellent characters, and with better writing than the previous titles. It plays like a classic spy movies with tie-ins to iconic movies like James Bond, Rambo, and The Great Escape. Standouts:\n\n+ The origin story for the Big Boss, therefore having little necessary ties to previous titles but rather benefits from any such writing as references and easter eggs.\n+ Starting with a betrayal from the Boss and therefore the plot being an apprentice-boss relationship. The most important and powerful character the series. And the story in discovering the Boss' motivation.\n+ Ocelot being more developed as a character here. For example, the origin of his revolver. And his more or less rookie status as he eventually works with the Big Boss.\n+ Eva as a double (triple) agent. Her femme fatale role works better than Meryl.\n\nThe anime-esque villains of the Cobra Unit follow the usual tricks of the trade, along with the codec allies and the tendency for Metal Gear tropes and exposition dumps.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nMGS3 builds on the core essentials in MGS1 and MGS2.\n\nInnovations:\n\n+ Camouflage system. It redefines the discrete vision cones to be a percentage system similar to Splinter Cell. Collecting the camos is also fun, like collecting Pokemon.\n+ Level design is outdoors and more open, being less corridor intensive.\n+ A third-person point of view with an interactive camera rather than MGS1 and MGS2's top-down point of view with a fixed camera. This would set the trend for MGS4 and MGS5. The switch reminds me of the same switch in Resident Evil from the PS1 era (RE1-3) to the PS2 (RE4).\n  + Technically, the original release uses a top-down point of view following MGS1 and MGS2 (e.g., [gameplay footage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZywBXQ4aOGo)). You can only tilt the right analog stick in the four directions to see more of your surroundings. Subsistence expansion adds the third person point of view like modern third-person games. This point of view is especially helpful in MGS3 because there's no Soliton radar with obvious guard positions and vision cones, and areas are more open.\n+ Hunting with food consumables. This replaces rations. Like camouflage, there's encouragement to eat everything so you know what it tastes like and its recovery performance.\n+ Medical treatment with body part damage. Furthers MGS2's bandage to treat the bleeding status effect.\n+ Slightly more tactical controls. CQC provides more melee controls in particular. You can grab an enemy and hold them up with your knife against their neck, you can grab an enemy then throw them to the ground, and you can hold up enemies on the ground.\n\nOther new details:\n\n+ Soliton radar is gone and replaced a simpler motion detector. No longer are there obvious vision cones. The minimap displaying the area is also included as part of the map during the menu.\n+ You have to slow your run speed when close to an enemy. No longer do they not hear you.\n+ Silencer has limited usage. It breaks, and you need to find another one. This nerfs the infinite spammability of MGS2's tranq gun.\n+ There's a separate backpack with the weapon and item equip menu. This streamlines scrolling through the items.\n+ First time nonlethal and no alert option is rewarded beside a higher score as in MGS2. Specifically, defeating a boss nonlethally rewards you with their camo. Some of them are quite powerful like The Sorrow's Spirit camo to muffle Snake's footsteps. You also get the stealth camo for no alerts.\n+ More new game plus rewards: the infinite ammo Patriot gun.\n+ You can climb trees.\n+ Game progresses by the console's timer. If you save and wait a few days, you're naturally rested and can even recover from injuries. And you can skip the Old Man boss fight.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nA slightly more detailed graphics than MGS2. The soundtrack is especially famous: for example, the \"Snake Eater\" song. Playing in 2023, I'm surprised how many cutscenes are powerpoint slides with static screenshots. For example, even the codec is just portraits unlike MGS2's character model renders.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can shoot hornet nests to drop down on a guard who then run around frantically and possibly bother other guards.\n+ You can finally see a guard's knock out status while holding them. This helps immensely with holding an enemy and only choking them a few times to knock them out as in MGS1 and MGS2. Here, you can freely spam the choke button.\n+ More interactive camera options during cutscenes. It's in MGS3 where the R1 button to go first person during a cutscene really becomes a staple in the game.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ [Tip to farm suppressor spawns at Ponizovje West.](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/632694-metal-gear-solid-hd-collection/61506477) Namely, pick up the suppressor, then go 2 areas away, then go back and it respawns. In principle this works for [all areas it spawns](http://www.tentenpro.com/muni_shinobu/mgs3/suppressor.html).\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Swapping camouflage requires going through the menu. Tedious. MGS4 solves this by autoswapping camo when you stay stationary while leaning against a wall or going prone. I don't like this solution either though because while it streamlines swapping camos, the individual camos aren't at all prominent leave out the sense of recognizing and collecting the camos.\n+ CQC controls rely on [pressure sensitivity](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/632694-metal-gear-solid-hd-collection/61675478). It's particularly annoying trying to do a chokehold to knock an enemy unconscious only to accidentally hold the button too long or too hard and trigger a throat slice. And you now have to walk to creep up on an enemy, which is analog-sensitive.\n+ Kerotan frogs are the new collectible over MGS2's dog tags. I like that it incentives exploration and not simply holding up every guard. However, there is still no way to keep track from finding all Kerotan frogs in an area to tracking your total count.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://metalgear.fandom.com)\n  + [Plot: Virtuous mission](https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/Virtuous_Mission)\n  + [Plot: Operation Snake Eater](https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/Operation_Snake_Eater)\n+ [Walkthrough](https://www.ign.com/wikis/metal-gear-solid-3-snake-eater/Walkthrough)\n+ [Moonmoon playthrough: 2020-01-23](https://youtu.be/umsFiF52AX8). He also started a playthrough on 2020-01-13 but only got around 13 hours in and the save corrupted around fighting Old Man.\n\n## Second playthrough\n\nI played on 2023-08-15 but stopped at The End fight.\n\n__Version.__ As of 2023, there are [several versions](https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/8cmxft/best_versions_to_play_the_series_for_the_first/dxg6df7). I played the HD collection on PS3 (BLUS30847). I used the emulator RPCS3 (version 0.0.29-15486-01a05502 Alpha | master, 4.90 firmware). I used the default settings followed by the RPCS3 wiki's game-specific settings ([link](https://wiki.rpcs3.net/index.php?title=Metal_Gear_Solid_HD_Collection)).\n\n__Playthrough.__ I chose [\"I like MGS3!\"](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/632694-metal-gear-solid-hd-collection/6199158) and Hard difficulty. Extreme and European Extreme is not normally available until completing the game once.\n\n+ Nonlethal setup: Mk 22 pistol, Mosin Nagant, Cig Spray, Handkerchief. Grenades and others are used for utility.\n\nBoss strategies:\n\n+ [The Pain](https://mgsforums.com/the-pain-non-lethally-on-hard-mode-t16977.html)\n+ [The Fear](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/928437-metal-gear-solid-3-subsistence/48755421)\n+ [The End](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSgAnrLOo2Y)\n\ntodos on future playthroughs\n+ first person mod","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/metal-gear-solid-3-snake-eater"},{"id":"322682678650422860","title":"Minecraft","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":4140,"platforms":["PC","Android","iOS"],"studios":["Mojang Studios"],"publishers":["NetEase Games","Xbox Game Studios"],"genres":["Simulator","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-06-29","completedDate":"2020-07-01","updatedDate":"2022-06-08","notes":"Minecraft's sandbox and excellent core systems makes it the king of emergent gameplay: so many individual elements combining together to create awesome techniques.\n\nThe actual endgame is not great, as exploring the world is tedious with the lack of movement options, and combat is bad.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Minecraft seamlessly integrates so many interesting elements in its sandbox: crafting, building, equipment, mining, dungeon crawling, health and eating, vast biomes, dimensions, and mobs, and mod community. The core idea of blocks that can be destroyed, upgrade to improved blocks, and replaced works so well. There have been so many emergent gamplay techniques: mining techniques such as the staircase, branch mining (https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutorials/Mining); making a huge flag so you know where your homebase is from afar, and with a ladder near the bottom so you can catch it before taking fall damage after building it; infinite water source; optimal ranching for infinite food production; optimal farming plantations; standing on trees as a vantage point; traimming just the top of the bamboo; jumping up to build a vertical pole; using XYZ coordinates to keep track of key locations liike your home base.\n\nI love the crafting variety. From all the fundamental building blocks such as wood, coal, cobblestone, etc.; to the higher-order items such as the table for crafting, furnace for smelting, chest for storing, anvil for repairing, table for enchanting, and brewing.\n\nEnemy variety is fairly lackluster. Combat is especially plain and not fun.\n\nXP levels are spent, rather than accumulated to improve stats or skill points as in RPGs.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Timeless blocky style, especially praiseworthy of an indie game. I like the occasional soundtrack. Adds to the sandbox gentle vibe.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Falling in lava with full diamond gear and losing everything. Happened in two playthroughs!\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Game auto-pauses when you alt tab. But you can work around this by opening the world to LAN.\n+ Death penalty drops all your items in player inventory at the location of death, as well as some XP orbs. It's like an aggressive version of Diablo, as your items are not ensured to stay there (especially if you die in lava).\n+ Save system is automatic.\n+ Simple, intuitive control scheme. The mouse press shortcuts are power shortcuts that are not necessary for a beginner but easily speed up the monotony.\n+ Recipe book makes crafting extremely accessible, where you would otherwise have to reference a wiki alongside the game.\n+ Achievements capture per playthrough's progress.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ No real repair functionality. It's typically better to just craft new items. The anvil technically solves this, but the XP costs are so high that the XP grind is not worth the grind to remake the item.\n+ You can't destroy items from inventory, just dump items in a hole or throw them into lava. Mending is the best enchantment for this reason.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Farming is required if you want a permanent home. Animals go extinct as they don't reproduce by themselves for infinite respawn. But for some reason fish do.\n+ Rain doesn't extinguish torches.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://minecraft.gamepedia.com\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft\n+ https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutorials\n+ priority list | https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/41ju2r/question_survival_priority\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/6ck165/how_do_i_get_a_specific_enchantment/\n\nI played the Java Edition 1.16, which is recommended and has more features like modding and hardcode mode. I played survival mode on normal difficulty for my first playthrough for several hours but then switched to hard mode. Combat isn't the best, but the game feels more thrilling with the danger. The game is honestly best early to mid game when you're building out rather than late game where all resources are fully automated and it's a grindfest, so hardcore is a better bet later, but completing mid game already takes 10+ hours. To organize my quickmenu, I use Suggestion 3 of https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutorials/Organization. I prefer Y12 for strip mining as you never get lava on the ground, only when you encounter crevices. I always use the highest level upgrade (e.g., diamond pickaxe): my prediction is it mines faster and therefore also lets you find diamond faster to make it worth (https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/24rugw/psa_using_iron_pickaxes_to_save_diamonds_doesnt/).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/minecraft-china"},{"id":"322682678652459596","title":"Mother 3","originalTitle":"マザー3","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2006,"playtimeMinutes":1500,"platforms":["WiiU","GBA"],"studios":["HAL Laboratory","Brownie Brown"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Turn-based strategy (TBS)"],"startedDate":"2011-12-31","completedDate":"2019-05-03","updatedDate":"2023-07-31","notes":"Mother 3 is iconic in its touching yet hilarious story and characters, charming soundtrack, and beautiful pixel artwork. The game ages very well even when playing this in 2019 (GBA pixel art and turn-based combat generally does much better than, say, 3D action-adventures from the PS1-2/Xbox (360)/Gamecube era).\n\n__Story/Characters.__ Mother 3 presents an ambitious tale of sorrow and coming back from loss. Unlike Mother 1 and EarthBound's fantastical slice-of-life story, Mother 3 centers on select characters from the family. Standard to the series, the characters stand out in their unique personalities. Items, equipment, status ailments, enemies are all silly by design. The game is rife with jokes (often meta ones) and cultural references. And the story has deep undertones and social commentary.\n\nCharacter-wise, I didn't actually find them very in-depth beyond the superficial character profile. There aren't unique (or any) dynamics between any of the characters or details that make you appreciate a character.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I'm a big fan of the simplistic combat with core stats and just a handful of unique elements: namely, the combo system (\"Sound Battles\") and HP going down gradually rather than instantaneously (enabling heals to avoid KOs). The fights are actually quite challenging assuming you don't do any grinding as you play through the game.\n\n__Aesthetics/Sound.__ Even more masterful than Earthbound's in polish. Mother 3 is at the pinnacle of pixel art games, aging well in 2019.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ No-nonsense character stats. They're all core mechanics: HP, PP, Offense, Defense, IQ, Speed.\n+ Time shift and the introduction of currency.\n+ Feeling feverish (and being unable to run when any party member has a fever or is dead) before learning a spell.\n+ GBA is the perfect console for enabling variety in sprite animations. They're loss blocky and more fluid in moving limbs in cutscenes for example.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Running mechanic of a dash you have to build momentum for and can stop when colliding with wall. I prefer the convenience of running as usual (e.g., Pokemon), but I can appreciate this different mechanic too. It especially allows for different interactions such as dashing into doors or debris to take them down.\n+ Death penalty does not exist for first four chapters. From Chapter 5 on, you lose half of your DP but you can also put it all in the bank.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ I don't know if the Happy Box is a flagrant social statement against television. But that does seem a bit backward, almost as if Mother 3 is incredibly idealistic about a perfect communal village society without currency and locked doors, and then in reins capitalism.\n+ The sequence of Needles to pull felt a little redundant and plainly boring to be honest. I feel like they could have cut down a few to keep the game more packed.\n+ The grind at end of Chapter 7 to fight the Masked Man is unreal. I didn't need to grind at all in the game before, only gaining EXP from enemies as I progressed the story. Here, Masked Man is level 65 and I came in at level 45. I grinded 10 levels.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Starmen.net walkthrough](http://walkthrough.starmen.net/mother3)\n+ [WikiBound](https://wikibound.info/wiki/WikiBound)\n  + [Status ailments](https://wikibound.info/wiki/Status_ailment)\n+ mGBA settings | https://github.com/mgba-emu/mgba/issues/461\n\n__Version.__ I played the Japanese ROM patched with the [Mother 3 fan translation](mother3.fobby.net) (v1.2 updated on 6/9/14). I used the mGBA emulator. \n\nOn emulators, I used Visual Boy Advance long ago, but it is no longer maintained, last updated in 2004. VBA-M is a recent fork and not as updated as mGBA ([discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/52n6ky/whats_the_difference_between_vbam_and_vbarr), [GBA emulators](https://emulation.miraheze.org/wiki/Game_Boy_Advance_emulators)).\n\n__Playthrough.__\n\n+ I originally picked up the game on 2011-12-31 and stopped at Chapter 5 after beating Fearsome Pig Mask.\n+ I picked it up again on 4/28/19 and started from scratch. I took advantage of the GBA's emulator for fast-forward (useful for grinding) and save states (useful for saving within fights).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mother-3"},{"id":"331041990436192833","title":"Murder House","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Puppet Combo"],"publishers":["Puppet Combo"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-05-07","completedDate":"2022-05-07","updatedDate":"2022-05-08","notes":"Puppet Combo really defines the VHS style of low poly horror. The sound design is excellent in both its effects and soundtrack.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The Resident Evil inspirations such as health meter, third-person with tank controls and fixed camera angles, door opening animations, Ink Ribbon-style saves, sparkling items.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Sparse saves, especially at the beginning and with unskippable credits when you die. This makes deaths frustrating.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2266459839)\n\nI played with default settings (VHS video, no CRT) but changed from Dolly (tank controls third-person perspective) to a FPS camera.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/murder-house"},{"id":"322682678650340940","title":"Overwatch","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":3900,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"publishers":["Blizzard Entertainment","Square Enix"],"genres":["Shooter","Strategy"],"startedDate":"2021-01-22","completedDate":"2021-02-06","updatedDate":"2022-09-08","notes":"Overwatch most innovates in defining RPG roles of tank, support, and DPS in a multiplayer FPS game; and with novel game modes of Capture Points, Assault, and Escort the Payload, going beyond the standard of typical deathmatch or search and destroy to incentivize teamwork and disincentivze twitch shooting. Overwatch requires mastery of map awareness, positioning, ability timing, and team coordination.\n\nLike all multiplayer games, what I can't stand most is the toxic culture. This is particularly an issue in competitive play. Further, the RNG of teamplay in solo queue can make games quite frustrating as the best you can do is washed out by the variance of the other 11 players you play with and against. I much prefer games determined only by your own play, so you know what you did well or poorly. The game's meta causes many steamrolls instead of close fights, which is not fun to be on the winning or losing side as you don't feel like you learned much from the game. It also has too much of an emphasis on DPS roles (partially caused by more than half the roster being DPS, and with DPS queues sometimes being even 20 minutes); and lacks further incentives for players to have selfish rewards to play as a team (e.g., overextending to kill people which is more fun than staying in position; no rewards for adapting to another hero when hard countered).\n\nOther issues:\n\n+ The significance of turtling due to 6v6 games, where a group can easily beat any single one or two. This makes teamwork so vital which is challenging in solo queue. It's a rollercoaster where you steamroll or get steamrolled, especially in lower ELOs due to staggering and less team tactics.\n+ Tanks define the meta. Not all tank comps are great, and many times you can lose because neither tank wants to go main tank. This worsens the solo queue experience for non-tanks even more.\n+ King of the Hill maps. Symmetrical maps and single area cluster fucks are not fun. I'm an Ana main and Ana is also terrible at these maps, so this means 5/21 maps I automatically don't enjoy playing.\n+ Visual clutter.\n+ Griefers, either someone on your team or the other team purposely losing the game. Or doing dumb hijinks. Or a person suddenly leaves.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The tank, support and damage roles work very well, with team composition have a key importance (e.g., shields, flying characters/hitscan, flankers). Overwatch goes against the multiplayer FPS standard of twitch shooting and deathmatches, instead placing more emphasis on teamplay, positioning, game awareness, ult timing, prioritizing objectives. It works well with the MOBA approach of a select number of abilities that define each hero, and with no progression-based upgrades saved across games.\n\nI like all the highlights and encouragment of sportsmanship: endorse player (both giving and receiving), voting on players after a game (both giving and receiving), play of the game, no viewing of team stats which causes team trash talking, career profiles are private by default. Games are quick so if you're overwhelmingly losing there isn't much an incentive to leave like in Call of Duty. Leaving games reduces your endorsement level.\n\nDespite all the sportsmanship additions mentioned above, like any multiplayer gaming community, the culture is toxic---particularly in the competitive scene. Teams are sweaty, quick to blame, and overenthusiastic from a single game's outcome. Both chat and voice chat is toxic.\n\nDuring the season I played Overwatch, timing and proper execuion of ultimates had a significant sway on team battles: they one-shot enemies and often can lead to a double or triple kill. I dislike that it's so reliant on this and would rather ultimates be slightly nerfed to emphasize the rest of gameplay.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The cartoon, Team Fortress, and Warcraft-like art style ages well. Colors are excellent. THe sound design is top notch: you can really feel shots as well as enemy footsteps.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ All the incentives to encourage diversity of roles. Support and tanks are often rewarded with shorter queue times and a handful of credits. The Flex role enables priority passes.\n+ Minimum queue time is perfect to do a quick bathroom break.\n+ After each death, you see a short replay of how you died. It's a great way to keep the game's rhythm as you wait for your respawn timer.\n+ Like other competitive FPS games, you can customize your reticle.\n+ Skill Rating for each of the three roles is separate.\n+ You get notifications if someone got suspended later when you (and enough others) report them. Lets you know the system actually works.\n+ Game replays. Lets you save entire games and review it from multiple viewpoints.\n+ The custom games, although they're not nearly as various as Warcraft III or Starcraft custom games.\n+ Sound design. For example, you can hear footsteps, which is important gameplay to catch flanks. And ults like McCree which is important for dodging.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Lootbox approach to a huge amount of collectibles. At the least, you can use credits you gain ingame to buy specific skins you want.\n+ The conseuctive game XP bonus only applies for quick play, and if you let the game auto-queue. You can't skip the Play of the Game and commendation voting parts which ideally you'd like to wait again in the queue.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.overbuff.com | Includes average damage/healing stats per hero and league\n+ [ml7, top ana youtuber](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCejVlAl2kUwBgSHtQeBoKhQ)\n+ https://www.twitch.tv/sleepy\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/OverwatchUniversity\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/AnaMains/comments/kpbfgn/ana_guides_and_resources\n+ [Surefour aiming tutorial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YS3dPWf6Xw)\n+ [ana aim drills](https://www.reddit.com/r/OverwatchUniversity/comments/5icina/overwatch_ana_aim_tutorial_guide_8drills10m_tips)\n\nI was never interested in playing Overwatch when it first released. I disdain both multiplayer FPS (I can't get into Call of Duty, CSGO, Halo, etc.), and MOBAs, which this game combines both. However, watching Twitch streamers, some of who originated as Overwatch players makes me want to play the game to appreciate their origins: Moonmoon, Roflgator, Surefour, XQC, m0xy, and several people who play it casually (e.g., Sodapoppin, Vigors)---particularly when they all started to play together on Jan 21-22 2021 streams.\n\nSettings-wise, I followed eDPI similar to the most conventional pro setting: 3200 eDPI (800 DPI/4.0 sensitivity, equivalent to 17.05in/360 or 43.30cm/360). There are [slight differences](https://www.reddit.com/r/OverwatchUniversity/comments/8fjdrq/whats_the_reasoning_behind_low_dpi_and_higher) with DPI vs sensitivity due to mouse sensors for sufficiently high DPI (it's a hardware vs software difference) but negligible for common ranges. Similarly for my reticle, I use a green dot. It doesn't matter much, but green helps with the contrast of red enemies, dot is the most important for targeting headshots, and crosshairs only make slight difference to help with lining up at the cost of minimalism where you can concentrate more on your target.\n\nI use default keybindings and with push-to-talk set to mouse-side button up. I use low settings for all FX, high settings for model and textures, and low music volume. I chose to play support (Ana main with primarily Baptiste as side) as I wanted to switch up my playstyle from other RPG-style games. Ana has the highest skill cap, and I like the emphasis on aiming, hybrid damage/healing, crowd control, and map positioning/situational awareness. Other support are useful when I need to play closer to my team (e.g., control maps, bad line of sight maps, flanks) or more aggressively. For tank, I play Roadhog or Reinhardt. For damage, I play McCree, Genji, Tracer. I'm not good at these heros, but I do like playing characters that force you to improve your fundamental aiming and are the most iconic and influential DPS. From my Overwatch profile as of 3/26/21, I played a total of 193 hours.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/overwatch"},{"id":"7343508c-ebaf-4da2-8669-26abd6aeeca9","title":"Path of Exile 2","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":2920,"platforms":["PC","Mac","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Grinding Gear Games"],"publishers":["Grinding Gear Games"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"startedDate":"2026-05-29","completedDate":"2026-06-30","updatedDate":"2026-07-01","notes":"A slower variant of PoE and with some new opinions. A bit lacking in endgame content.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n+ A slower, more methodical pace. For example, WASD movement. Dodge roll. Sprint. Bosses have telegraphed attacks.\n+ Skill gems are dedicated slots you equip for your player and not socketed into gear. This greatly improves gear variety: you’re no longer locked to gear choices in builds until you can find equivalent swaps in other gear to fit all your gems. Skill gems level up by tier drop and no longer XP.\n+ Support flasks are now charms.\n+ Gold as a catch-it-all currency.\n+ Smaller details.\n  + New gem type of spirit gem which uses a new stat called Spirit for abilities like summons or powerful buffs.\n+ The environments affect gameplay: high bushels obscure where enemies are. Verticality in traversing a ritual village. Act 3's Matlan Waterways has water you need to drain to access areas. Rising waves in Act 4's Solitary Confinement.\n+ Maps. Traversal mechanics feel way better.\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\n+ Gorgeous, varied environments and meaningful sound. \n+ Varied enemy design.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The Hooded One provides mass identify like Deckard Cain.\n+ Much larger maps with checkpoints to fast travel between areas in a map.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Town portal is free and not a scroll. Identity scrolls are still a thing.\n+ Death penalty follows the Dark Souls trope of a checkpoint and enemy respawn.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Hard to tell whats a safe zone in boss fight. A red circle, do I go inside it or outside it? It is not always clear.. Arbiter of Ash is the perfect example of ARPG bosses being inherently flawed.\n+ [World map](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1ts5rx6/world_map_appreciation/) understanding is obtuse.\n+ It's unclear that if you teleport during your Altar of Ascendancy, you can't come back. Had to do a run all over again because I teleported after beating final boss.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [poe2wiki.net](https://www.poe2wiki.net). This is better than Gamepedia (now Fandom) which is less up-to-date and filled with ads.\n+ [r/pathofexile](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile)\n+ Builds\n  + For the latest meta, see [poe.ninja](https://poe.ninja), filter to day 1-2, then look up the builds on Reddit and YouTube.\n  + [r/pathofexile2builds](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile2builds). They have a League Start Build Index every league. It's curated at the start of the league, targeting beginners, and may not be the best league starters or endgame builds.\n+ Trading\n  + https://www.pathofexile.com/trade\n  + [poe.ninja](http://poe.ninja). Price checks.\n+ External tools\n  + [Path of Building](https://pathofbuilding.community)\n  + [AutoHotKey](https://www.autohotkey.com). Essential to remove the need to piano finger spam potions and skills like warcries on cooldown. You can enable a script to automatically refresh pressing a skill upon cooldown, or have it simply spam multiple potions/buffs upon a single press like mouse click.\n  + [Exiled Exchange 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExile2/comments/1hg7icm/awakened_poe_trade_for_poe_2_called_exile)\n  + [Better PathOfExile Trading](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/better-pathofexile-tradin/fhlinfpmdlijegjlpgedcmglkakaghnk). Improves trade website by providing bookmarks to save trade searches and additional currencies when seeing trade offers.\n+ Miscellaneous\n  + [my armory](https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/nilmoe-6632/characters)\n  + [Campaign area order](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/irf8bx/badgers_leveling_guide_for_newer_players), including [passive Skill Points quests](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ws3oc1/here_is_a_list_with_all_passive_point_quests_and). Can check which you completed with \"/passives\".\n  + https://www.poelab.com. Lab map is fixed every day, so you can use it for optimal pathing.\n  + Item Filters: Follow them in [Path of Exile's account](https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/nilmoe-6632/item-filters). You no longer have to manually download them from https://www.filterblade.xyz.\n  + https://www.craftofexile.com\n  + [Settings guide](https://maxroll.gg/poe/getting-started/options-keybinds)\n  + [Hideout Showcase](https://hideoutshowcase.com)\n  + [Timeless Jewels](https://vilsol.github.io/timeless-jewels/tree)\n\nMechanics\n+ [Trial of Sekhemas boons/afflictions tier list](https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExile2/comments/1n24e0d/trial_of_the_sekhemas_boons_and_afflictions_tier/)\n+ [Trialmaster priority](https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExile2/comments/1hl38k2/trial_of_chaos_modifiers/)\n\nOther strategies\n+ Atlas\n  + [Rolling maps](https://maxroll.gg/poe/getting-started/atlas-progression-guide). As of 3.26, I only [chisel T14+ maps](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/90ghvk/struggling_to_get_past_t11).\n  + [Map modifiers to avoid](https://maxroll.gg/poe/getting-started/how-to-roll-maps#map-modifiers-to-avoid-header)\n+ Gems: Fill empty slots on your weapon swap with gems you can purchase from a vendor and can level to 20 with your stat allocation. Check market value for the most expensive gems.\n+ [4 vendor tabs of varying tiers](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/15g77pd/previous_player_coming_back_what_do_i_do_with/juh2lft): 1 divine, 100c, 50c, 10c. It's the simplest and most practical way of selling items without having to look up each one such as jewels.\n\n### Return of the Ancients League (0.5)\n\nI dropped the game while consistently doing T15 maps. Found it a bit grindy and gave up on the final Tower push. Also didn't get the last Ascendancy points.\n\n__Build.__\n\n+ [Fubgun: \nIce Shot Deadeye Full Build Guide - 0.5 League Starter - Path of Exile 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9KwGyBDjUc)\n+ [Build guide](https://mobalytics.gg/poe-2/builds/ice-shot-deadeye)\n+ [Leveling guide](https://mobalytics.gg/poe-2/builds/ice-shot-deadeye-leveling-guide)\n+ [Atlas tree priority](https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExile2/comments/1tusnkx/people_requested_it_so_here_is_my_early_endgame/): Waystones, Rare mobs, Shrines, Essences\n  + https://mobalytics.gg/poe-2/atlas-trees/fubgun-atlas-tree-strats?ws-ngf5-f7d82102-7e77-4a44-ad24-33b67e8ae7bf=activeVariantId%2C1\n+ Mapping strategy: Blue T1-10, Yellow T10+. Tablets anytime. Rush fortress for points, then Atlas Master + individual mechanic trees.\n\ntodos (crit hybrid -> uber endgame)\n+ https://maxroll.gg/poe2/resources/vaal-temple-basics\n+ atlas spec list + map league mechanic prioritization strategy\n+ crit bow\n+ crit quiver\n+ amulet +30 spirit (2+ div)\npathofexile.com/trade2/search/poe2/Runes%20of%20Aldur/zbXBQ9Wvc4\n+ against the darkness double gain as extra (20+ div)\nhttps://www.pathofexile.com/trade2/search/poe2/Runes%20of%20Aldur/pJ8j9JRWH0\n+ rite of passage charm (20+ div)\nhttps://www.pathofexile.com/trade2/search/poe2/Runes%20of%20Aldur/7nWK8363H5","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/path-of-exile-2"},{"id":"322682678624138828","title":"Payday 2","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":1440,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Linux","PC","X360","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Overkill Software"],"publishers":["Starbreeze Studios","505 Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Tactical"],"startedDate":"2021-10-22","completedDate":"2021-10-30","updatedDate":"2023-09-18","notes":"Payday 2 is a unique class-based PvE shooter with objectives, which is one of my favorite game subgenres. It adds a lot of interesting ideas to the mix including its setting, ranged hitscan enemies, enemy variety, level and objective variety, build variety (along with new mechanics like armor vs dodge), and many difficulty settings. These all add to give the game a significant amount of replayability.\n\nFlaw-wise:\n\n+ There is too much waiting in the game. You achieve many objectives by simply waiting in a room for a drill, a helicopter/boat to come back, or more information. In Overkill, you can AFK for minutes on end and not hinder progress.\n+ The game is defense-heavy not unlike Killing Floor 2. I greatly prefer Left 4 Dead and Vermintide's approach of dynamically moving through a level rather than camping. The occasional horde spawn forces you to hurdle into a defensive position, but it's the movement across a level that makes this interesting as defense is not always in the same location. There are only a handful of such heists in Payday 2.\n+ Balance across builds and difficulties. Shotguns, LMGs, and akimbo style reign supreme. There's less need for sniper rifles as many weapons already work so well against specials like Dozers, and higher difficulties are primarily about crowd control rather than prioritizing specials. Similarly, LMGs suck. Payday 2's specials just aren't as threatening as they are in games like Left 4 Dead 2.\n+ Stealth as a tactical option feels largely tacked on and unreliable. Loud is the better designed playstyle.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Payday 2 is basically a defense game, like Killing Floor 2 where you defend against waves of mobs and special enemies, but also where you complete objectives. There's casing mode, then the tactical option of combat or stealth, then escaping. This core gameplay loop greatly benefits from enemy variety; level variety with 66 unique maps as of 2016; objectives with huge variety including bank heists, chase sequences, escort missions, cooking meth, driving, and multi-day jobs; and additional game modes such as Crime Spree and side jobs. All this adds to a high degree of replayability. Heck, it took me 30 hours just to go through Career Mode which plays through all levels once and excludes roughly 10 heists, holdouts, and crime sprees. It takes significantly longer to play through each level multiple times in order to master their routes, sometimes with differing objectives, and at the highest difficulties.\n\nPlaying Payday 2 in 2021, it's certainly a unique defense game. At the base Overkill difficulty, you largely ignore enemies who do poke damage and only need to kill specials and enemies in your way. The common mobs are also ranged hitscan as opposed to your typical melee zombie. Mechanics like armor vs dodge and a focus on weapons balancing for ammo pickup rate are unique.\n\nThere's significant build variety including a choice of weapon/damage style (such as assault rifle, SMG, shotgun, sniper, melee, pistols, akimbo style), defense (armor, dodge), and enabling other playstyles (stealth, technician which is objective and utility-focused including C4 vs Saw). There are a lot of choices here that can make each playstyle slightly different: armor, weapons, throwables, deployables, skill tree, perk decks.\n\nProgression system includes cosmetics, weapons to purchase alongside weapon slots and attachments, skill tree, perk deck, and safehouse. Grind currencies include XP, cash, and continental coins (for safehouse upgrades). Infamy system effectively allows for an infinite prestige, tracking your total XP. With the Infamy 3.0 system, only Infamy Rank 1 has a gameplay effect and the rest are for cosmetics and bragging rights.\n\nDifficulty options provide 7 grades. Normal, Hard, and Very Hard are for casual playthroughs. Overkill is the most popular for general play, and Mayhem, Deathwish, and Death Sentence are for challenges requiring more knowledge of the meta.\n\nThe objective mechanics encourage teamwork well. For example, moving bags, doing one thing in two different locations, or jobs that benefit from a certain build whether it be C4/Saw, faster drills, or additional manpower to find mission items like keys and keycards.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The graphics are still reasonably good playing the game in 2021 although you can see its age. The game benefits from its huge amount of cosmetic items such as characters, masks, armor skins, and weapon skins.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Mod support, including an active modding community.\n+ You can turn off the music so you can just play your own Spotify playlist (or with effort, put custom music in the game itself). It's a good way of listening to new albums while playing a video game.\n+ Heat system encourages playing a variety of levels. It boosts XP on levels you haven't played recently and decreases XP rate on levels you've played recently. This is indicated by +% or -% when selecting a heist on Crime.net.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The tutorial is bad. There are so many mechanics not explained, including weapon stats, ammo pickup, enemy pinging, the playstyles of armor vs dodge vs regen, focusing on headshots, what enemies to prioritize vs ignore, where [exactly to saw](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=213666332), the [basics of stealth](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=198446139), how to find Gage packages.\n+ No ability to ping interesting locations, items, etc. You can at least ping special enemies.\n+ Host kick is too powerful. Hosts can be assholes and kick you right before a mission ends, and you get no rewards effectively wasting the past 20 minutes.\n+ The game pauses whenever someone joins. This ruins immersion.\n+ No way to tell how many downs you have left.\n+ No ability to set the default of lasers or fire mode. You have to turn lasers on for example at the start of every game.\n+ No stats at the end of a game displaying kills, deaths, etc.\n+ Joker AI is bad at pathing to follow you.\n+ You can't see if your converted companion is still alive or if it's a teammate's.\n+ The matchmaking UI is unnecessarily complex. There's also no good mod to compensate. For example, Fast.net provides a straightforward list, but it doesn't remember your filters, can't sort, and doesn't show XP bonuses due to the Heat system.\n+ No mantling or sliding mechanic.\n+ Awkwardly, you can easily respec skill points but you can't respec perk decks.\n+ [Alt-tab functionality is buggy.](https://www.reddit.com/r/paydaytheheist/comments/n1vryh/payday_2_stops_me_from_using_my_mouse_on_other)\n+ The animation for sprinting while you have the skill to be able to hip fire is very confusing. You can't even tell if you're sprinting anymore.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Payday Wiki](https://payday.fandom.com)\n+ [PD2 Builder](https://pd2builder.netlify.app)\n+ [Mod Workshop](https://modworkshop.net/game/payday-2)\n+ [The Long Guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=267214370)\n+ [Heists sorted by XP/min](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1637070354)\n\n__Builds.__ I played through non-Infamy with an Armorer build, initially starting on Hard/Very Hard and then Overkill since Reputation 50. I generally played on Mayhem or Death Wish since then. My experience with different builds:\n\n+ [Shotgun Dodge build](https://pd2builder.netlify.app/?s=1I3I10xc610-90w7l000g100&p=3&a=0&t=4&d=3), using Izhma and Judge. It's clear why this build is meta. It has strong DPS for both mobs and HP-heavy specials like Dozers, high magazine, and high ammo pickup. Shotguns also have quite the range in this game, clearly too overpowered with few flaws as a weapon type and with a powerful skill tree to back it up.\n+ [Sniper Dodge build](https://pd2builder.netlify.app/?s=1I1GnE00b0-900w7t0-7&p=h&a=0&t=4&d=3), using .308 Concealer and Micro Uzi modded for accuracy and stability up to 25 concealment. They're not good. High damage low fire rate snipers like .50 cal and Desert Fox are not designed well for this game as there's only one special you need high DPS for, Dozers, and there are many other viable DPS solutions. As a low fire rate sniper, you must rely on your secondary for all other scenarios, a tradeoff other high DPS builds don't face. On the other hand, high fire rate snipers like .308 Concealer are effectively worse Assault Rifles against mobs, and you need more than an entire magazine to kill a Dozer. The Grazer skill is also not good enough compared to other weapons and their skills.\n+ [Akimbo Pistol Dodge Build](https://pd2builder.netlify.app/?s=1I1G0010b0-900xcl0Bq0-4&p=h&a=0&t=e&d=3), using Akimbo STRYK 18c and 5/7 AP. Extremely good DPS from close to medium range, with the single fire killing mobs even in their chest and doing massive DPS against Dozers within a single magazine. The secondary is also excellent to swap to against shields and snipers, and pistols feature an extremely fast swap speed (compared to, e.g., swapping a Judge in a Shotgun build). The pistol skill tree is also clearly among the best.\n+ Akimbo SMG build, using Akimbo Krinkov. Akimbo SMGs are a worse version of high fire rate akimbo pistols. Auto fire mode can only be used situationally as you cannot sustain its ammo, and SMGs do not benefit from DPS skills like pistols do.\n+ Assault Rifle build.\n+ Akimbo Shotgun build, using Akimbo Goliaths. Just as good as the Dodge Shotgun build but with even more DPS. The ammo pickup for shotguns overall is astounding compared to Akimbo Pistols and SMGs which can easily run out.\n\n__Mods.__ None are essential but they do add quality of life features:\n\n+ WolfHUD is busy but useful after removing the bloat. It has timers for ECM, drills, and even mission equipment that don't natively show a timer. It displays a down counter, pager counter, weapon damage, amount of loot on the map (and amount delivered), stamina, and which jokers are yours. As an interaction, you can avoid having to hold the key which is more casual letting you take a sip from your drink or spam the key as an interactable starts to appear during a mission. It auto-skips reward selection, and for hosts, it auto-skips the blackscreen intro and provides instant restart instead of a 5 second delay. It auto-enables lasers. You can see your crew's setup in more detail, including skills and weapon/item names.\n+ Reconnect to Server avoids losing games where you get disconnected due to server instability or you want to change your loadout.\n+ Simple Crosshairs provides a crosshair in the center without relying on lasers. This is my preferred aim style (and ideally with a dot reticle).\n\ntodos\n\n+ hacker. health regen build. stoic.\n+ Deathwish all levels.\n+ Crime spree.\n+ DSOD.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/payday-2"},{"id":"16fecb89-2105-4b59-9be5-8891a3671062","title":"Portal","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2007,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["Linux","PC","PS3","X360","Mac","Android"],"studios":["Valve"],"publishers":["Valve","Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Puzzle"],"startedDate":"2021-02-05","completedDate":"2021-02-06","updatedDate":"2023-09-07","notes":"Revolutionized the idea of first-person puzzle games. Building on the Half-Life engine for its unique twist of portals and physics (e.g., momentum) to solve puzzles. Quite a few puzzles require somewhat precise timing. Portal 2 does away with this which I think is for the better.\n\nFor a long time I could never get into Portal. I found puzzle games more tedious as I get more taxing intelligence tasks from actual work in academia. It wasn't until playing with Danny in Portal 2 coop, and playing Portal 1 while watching a stream for idle content, that I found a use case for puzzle games.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/portal"},{"id":"322682678624215628","title":"Portal 2","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["PC","PS3"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-02-10","completedDate":"2021-02-11","updatedDate":"2023-09-05","notes":"Portal 2 is truly an enhanced version of Portal 1, with more level variety including environments beyond synthetic testing facilities, characters, jokes, and cinematic set pieces to add to the story.\n\n__Story.__ The story acts like the first game but adds much more lore midway into the game. Portal 2 also pushes further on the cheeky robotic character, here with Wheatley. GlaDOS is no longer just an evil mastermind, with more of a personality that also acts as your ally at times.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Core portaling is the same. Portal 2 adds new areas that go beyond the typical test facility, as well as new ideas such as the gels: Repulsion, Propulsion, Conversion, and Cleansing; and excursion tunnels. The story makes it possible to add constant throwbacks, including how to fight Wheatly as a final boss compared to GlaDOS.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics are astounding for 2011. The combination of realism and some cartoon textures is classic Valve.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Movement speed is low, even lower than in Portal 1.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Quite a few puzzles are about shooting at an obscure location.\n+ Weapon swap is actually faster than the swap animation. I like that this means you can swap and fire instantly, making swapping viable in the combat pace. But the fact that it doesn't align with the swap animation makes it weird to actually do.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n[Wiki, including guide](https://theportalwiki.com)\n\nI initially tried playing in 2012 but didn't get far.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/portal-2-in-motion"},{"id":"328263988411368001","title":"Prey: Mooncrash","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Arkane Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-04-07","completedDate":"2022-04-08","updatedDate":"2022-04-08","notes":"+ Core gameplay loop borrowed from the base game remains excellent, with the immersive sim tactics of exploring, looting, combat, stealth, and ugprading.\n+ Stealthing by enemies is actually viable in this game. Without the ability to savescum, combat can often not be worth it in terms of spended ammunition+healing (and the possibility of death!) and for little recycling potential. It also feels more intense as alert can lead to death.\n+ Instead of dillydalling in sidequests, there's pressure to stay on the main path versus explore.\n+ Combat feels more tense due to permadeath.\n+ Some new items and enemies. Oxygen is a new mechanic. Weapons have an integrity condition and randomized stats, including a few affixes like +10 fire damage bonus. Status effects are permanent and require specialized items to remove them. Typhon barriers add an extra degree of strategy as you have to bypass it by destroying all Typhons around, using Burrow, or shooting Disruptor at it.\n\nFlaws\n+ Upon completion of the final KASMA order, the game blocks you out of that save file. This means you have to start all over again, and this doesn't work well because a part of Prey's roguelite is the grind.\n+ Skill cap is somewhat low as it's largely based on grinding for neuromod progression, then farming Delay Times.\n+ I found little use for the GLOO gun and Huntress Boltcaster. They were way too situational (and rare for those situations to happen, like an entrance gated by broken electricity or a blocked Typhon gate and a targetable button) and took too much inventory space.\n\nClasses\n+ Character classes encourage different playstyles of psi, engineer, and gunning.\n+ The idea of multiple party members each doing their own run before doing a full reset is so interesting for a roguelike. It's a form of temporary persistence, and incentivizes decision-making such as party member order as going first you can unlock areas that make it easier for other party members. Or you can pick up the corpse of a previous party member.\n+ I enjoyed each character quite well:\n  + Volunteer: Strongest early game due to powerful Psi abilities of Superthermal and Kinetic Blast. Even has Burrow to bypass Typhon barriers. I like him especially for killing Moon Shark early so you can more easily pass through Crater entrances with other characters.\n  + Engineer: Strong even early game due to wrench skills and Turret power, which costs no Psi. Reverse Engineer is fantastic for covering necessary fabrication plans you don't yet have like Delay Time Loop. Has Repair for warp exit and can Dismantle for extra loot.\n  + Director: Psychoshock as a staple Psi skill and has stealth skills. Has Necropsy for extra loot.\n  + Security Officer: Has mobility and gun skills. Combat Focus is their powerful Psi skill.\n  + Custodian: Has stealth, stealth attack, mobility, psychostatic cutter skills. Phantom Shift is a decent Psi skill. Has Hack for warp exit.\n\nProgression\n+ Roguelite elements for progression across runs: neuromod upgrades, chipsets, fabrication plans. I'm ambivalent about this feature.\n+ Sim points earned from runs lets you spend them as a currency for starting loadouts.\n+ Progression path is: Unlock all characters -> accumulate fabrications (especially neuromod and delay time), neuromod upgrades, and chipsets -> complete per-character story objectives -> finish a run with all 5 characters.\n+ Completing all objectives locks you out of playing more simulations. This is intentionally designed so as to encourage to restart the game over, so meta progression is part of the overall loop. I think this is badly designed given that much of Prey Mooncrash's meta progression is a bit grindy.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Global timer. It adds to the pressure to complete objectives and explore quickly, making runs feel faster-paced than the base game. However, it makes certain gameplay elements like reading e-mails useless.\n+ There's a mule companion. This means you don't need to strategize item placement to share across characters, you can just leave them all in the mule before a character escapes. While convenient, it reduces complexity. For example, say you have a rare pistol and encounter another rare pistol. Without a companion, you might leave the pistol there so other characters can pick it up, or pile items at major intersections like the tram entrances.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/prey-mooncrash"},{"id":"322682678624149068","title":"Psychonauts","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2005,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["XBOX","PS3","PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","X360","XONE","PS2"],"studios":["Double Fine Productions"],"publishers":["THQ","Double Fine Productions","Majesco Entertainment","Xbox Game Studios"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-09-01","completedDate":"2021-09-06","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Psychonauts is a wonderful action-adventure disguised as a 3D platformer collectithon. It stands out in its story, characters, unique psychic setting, and creative level design. The gameplay features standard collectithon elements but also strings it along in an adventure form as you use combat abilities, explore areas with multiple routes, dilly-dally to pick up story elements like reading signs or talking to NPCs, and complete story objectives.\n\nGameplay is not great by any means, and what to do next can be obtuse. But the story adventure is enough to keep you interested to play to the end.\n\n__Story.__ The characters and the script's overall humor is charming. It's like watching a Rugrats, Invader Zim, or other cheeky Nickelodeon animation. So many lines across character dialogues, even sidechatter, is so cute. But it's also grounded in a lot of truths, such as various dilemmas in evil characters being rooted in something more sinister.\n\nI also love how the story uses mental worlds as a way to provide deeper characterization, with levels each depicting a person's internal struggles in abstract form.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Platforming is a collectithon, involving figments, emotional baggage, vaults, arrowheads, PSI cards, cobwebs, and PSI cores. Many of these collectibles increase your Psychonaut's current rank which in turn provides new powers or power upgrades.\n\nLevel design is excellent, from the hub with the campgrounds to the mental areas that are more abstract. I love the creativity of certain levels which are so creative. For examples: Lungfishopolis has you playing as a kaiju destroying buildings in a city like a Rampage game; Milkman Conspiracy with the suburban conspiracy; Gloria Theater requires interacting with a stage that can change from mood lighting; Waterloo World requires going big and small as you recruit and move pieces; Black Velvetopia involves navigating narrow alleyways with paintings and a bull; Meat Circus is a fusion of Oleander and Rasputin's minds.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The art style ages well. Voice acting is also excellent. I'm particularly surprised just how much voice acting goes on in this game.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The main Figment collectible features unique drawing figments instead of just the same art asset.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The moving figments. Adds more variety but also can be annoying to try to catch, especially given the figments are 2D planes.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The transparency of Figments can make them hard to see at times.\n+ Milkman Conspiracy level. I love the idea of the level. The clues to complete an objective can be annoyingly obtuse; at the least, it's inconsistent with the clarity of all other level's objectives.\n+ The final level proceeds automatically and is a point of no return. No exploration to pick up everything else remaining before you end the game.\n+ All PC settings are through .ini files and not an ingame HUD. You also have to use Borderless Gaming for borderless.\n+ PC port supports widescreen resolutions, but the assets are stretched. Fortunately, there's a [fix](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Psychonauts).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI was originally motivated to play this after seeing Psychonauts 2 at E3 2019. Go Tim Shafer and Erik Wolpaw. I played on PC. I played blind and didn't care too much about trying to capture everything as it would slow down the pace every level.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/psychonauts"},{"id":"322682678652800588","title":"Psychonauts 2","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":870,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Linux","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE"],"studios":["Double Fine Productions"],"publishers":["Double Fine Productions","Xbox Game Studios"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2026-03-19","completedDate":"2026-05-19","updatedDate":"2026-05-20","notes":"Love the story, comedic writing, artful visuals, soundtrack. The studio sounds like a great place to work.\n\nThings I like:\n+ Artwork. Writing. Characters. Story. Themes. Soundtrack. Voice actors. The goofy Nickoledon style charm of kid humor anchored in adult themes and adult jokes.\n\nThings I don't like:\n+ Ability hotkey swapping is annoying.\n+ Combat is OK.\n+ Progression and the pins are not all that critical.\n\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/PsychonautsGame/s/591uyPDt9o\n\nPsitanium purchase priority:\n\n1. Psifold Wallet (75; increase to 1000 capacity to purchase 750 pins)\n2. Mental Magnet pin (rank 8 / 200; magnet quality of life)\n3. Astral Wallet (750; increase to 5000 capacity)\n4. VIP Discount pin (rank 50 / 750; 15-50% discount)\n5. Psimultanium pin (rank 52 / 750; 2x drop rate)\n6. Mental Tax pin (rank 40 / 200; Mental Connection has chance to drop psitanium)\n  + [Best way to grind psitanium](https://www.reddit.com/r/Psychonauts2/comments/pcs21d/easy_psitanium_farming_method).\n7. Mental Connection pins: Heavy Thoughts (28 / 200; hold enemy in place), Brain Drain (56 / 400; HP loss) \n  + Best combat method with Mental Connection and Time Bubble. PSI Blast for early game.\n\nIntern credit purchase priority:\n\n1. Levitation Ball: lv 3 high jump (quality of life access)\n2. Mental Connection: lv 4 Dark Thoughts (rank 30 req, access unavailable areas)\n3. Clairvoyance: lv 4 Limitless (rank 102 req, no cooldown)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/psychonauts-2"},{"id":"322682678652852812","title":"Red Dead Redemption","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":1080,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Rockstar North","Rockstar San Diego"],"publishers":["Rockstar Games","Take-Two Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2023-07-01","completedDate":"2023-07-04","updatedDate":"2025-12-28","notes":"Red Dead Redemption is an excellent open-world title with action-adventure elements. It stands out in its spaghetti western setting, writing, and quests. The core gameplay with movement and combat and the progression elements are solid.\n\n__Story.__\nGrounded characters. Believable world of outlaws, settlers, and a looming federal government alongside general change with Manifest Destiny and technology. I particularly enjoy its spread across cultures covering not only the typical spaghetti western west but also Mexico, city life, and features a Native American from a reservation. And there's an epilogue act so it doesn't just end after Dutch.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nLike the Grand Theft Auto and Mafia series, Red Dead Redemption is open world and with select waypoints in order to start up story missions and sidequests. Gameplay across main and side quests are generally varied although somewhat repetitive. It's the unique writing and characters (particularly the change in setting and characters across acts) that make them enjoyable.\n\nThere are actual choices in this game, bringing up honor and fame. It's a simple good/bad alignment like Star Wars KOTOR, but the aspect of meaningful choice is quite nice in a GTA open-world style game. This ranges from avoiding straight murder by shooting your gun in the air, shooting their hand or leg, or using the lasso. Bounty and wanted system.\n\nCombat is shooter-based. Dead Eye slows down to assist with aiming, along with different targeting modes to configure the level of autoaim. Cover system. Duels. The [core combat](https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Weapons_in_Redemption#Tips) involves a nice albeit simple playstyle of positioning the enemy roughly in the center while not aimed, then immediately holding aim and firing, then repeat.\n\nHorse and carriage riding is fun. It has a simple control system of holding A to maintain speed and tapping A to sprint along with a stamina bar.\n\nAs an open-world action adventure, there is not many progression elements. It's weapons, outfits, certain kit items, horses, safehouses, and [challenge rewards](https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Single-player_Challenges_in_Redemption). Currency is money, fame, and honor.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics in terms of asset and texture details, engine lighting and effects, etc. are all quite good for 2010. It's better than other titles at this year like Fallout: New Vegas and Heavy Rain. Voice acting is excellent.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Playing this game after playing open world titles like Assassin's Creed Origins, Amazing Spider-Man, and Elden Ring, I'm deeply grateful that RDR doesn't aim to fill its open world with busywork in order to fulfill a fake notion of density. The areas are somewhat bare here, but I much prefer this as the lesser of two evils in an open world.\n+ Like GTA games and unlike RPGs, RDR uses the pattern that you can only accept and complete one quest a time. I like that this forces you to commit to each quest rather than a have a backlog of busywork common in open world RPGs. It forces the sidequests to each be more meaningful and fewer, and feels more appropriate lore-wise.\n+ The cinematic controls. Hold A to move at the same pace as an NPC. Hold B to focus camera on certain moments.\n+ You move faster on roads. Nice tiny encouragement to ride on civilization than the wilds.\n+ There is unique dialogue during the riding portions of missions. This is especially nice when you fail a mission because you're not hearing the exact same thing every time.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Like older titles, saves are done at select checkpoint areas: safehouses beside your bed and campsites. Fast travel also requires the campsite.\n+ Health is regen-based.\n+ Inventory management is streamlined. There is no separate storage, and you can equip one of every weapon type rather than only, say, two weapons at a time.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The animation wait time and campsite restrictions in order to Save or fast travel. The animation time to loot a body. It's particularly a hassle as you can fail missions at times by accidentally shooting the wrong person and not following your desired alignment for honor.\n+ Challenges have to be completed in sequence. If you don't complete skinning cougars in the early game, then any hunting and skinning for later animals in the game aren't counted yet.\n+ In many quests, the nonlethal option with shooting their hand during duels or using the lasso is not allowed. It's not clear when this happens, so you're often better off always following the lethal option.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://reddead.fandom.com)\n+ [Treasure](https://www.ign.com/wikis/red-dead-redemption/Treasure)\n+ [Cheats](https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Cheats_in_Redemption). Helps for quality-of-life such as obtaining money to avoid the grind.\n\n__Version.__ There are three versions.\n\n1. Xbox 360 on Xenia is the best version. Xenia supports arbitrary [rendering resolution scaling](https://github.com/xenia-canary/xenia-canary/wiki/Options) and 60 FPS. The base game on Xbox 360 is 1280x720p. All gameplay features including camping and horse whistling work correctly, and there are anecdotal reports of folks playing the game well ([Xenia's issue tracker for Red Dead Redemption GOTY Edition](https://github.com/xenia-project/game-compatibility/issues/108), [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/13l0v5g/i_completed_red_dead_redemption_1_and_undead)).\n2. Xbox One X with the 4K patch pushes the native resolution from Xbox 360's 1280x720 to 3840x2160 with 30 FPS ([DigitalFoundry video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK-eya5qGUU)).\n3. The PlayStation 3 has a a lower native resolution of [ 1152x640 and more frame drops](https://www.reddit.com/r/reddeadredemption/comments/6d80sh/does_rdr_perform_better_on_ps3_or_the_xbox_360_or).\n\nI played Game of the Year Edition on Xbox 360 using Xenia Canary. I played with 2560x1440p native resolution and 60 FPS. [I followed these settings](https://youtu.be/hRkChADh5sM?t=433) which apply minimal changes. I got the ISO from r/Roms. Issues I ran into: I played with controller, sometimes keyboard and mouse for the aim-intensive sections.\n\n+ Game has frame rate drops and stuttering semi-frequently.\n+ Game can freeze once in a while.\n+ [Infinite loading screen on the mission \"You shall not give false testimonu, except for profit\"](https://www.reddit.com/r/xenia/comments/ipjltj/infinite_loading_screen_in_red_dead_redemption). Reloading the game and starting mission under windowed mode and sped up time worked.\n\n__Difficulty.__ I played Normal and with Normal for the targeting mode (autoaim). Expert targeting mode (autoaim off) would be good if it weren't a controller and on 30-60 FPS. It's too difficult to shoot moving targets such as enemies on horseback or animals.\n\nI completed all sidequests I encountered and did them as soon as they appeared. I didn't go searching for sidequests I didn't complete on the wiki.\n\n__Setup.__\n\n+ [Weapons](https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Weapons_in_Redemption):  Henry Repeater (Rifle), Mauser (Pistol) ([1](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/957922-red-dead-redemption/54965050))\n  + In this game, Shotguns, Scoped Rifles, and other weapon types like knives and fists are not that useful.\n+ [Outfit](https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Outfits_in_Redemption): Deadly Assassin Outfit (and swapping to Elegant Suit for gambling/duels)\n  + It doesn't matter too much since Dead Eye is not used that much in this game (autoaim is just as good). So I often pick one for the cosmetic.\n+ [Mount](https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Mounts_in_Redemption): War Horse\n+ [Kit](https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Kit): Rabbit's Foot, Bandolier, Improved Campsite, Bandana, Pardon Letter(s)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/red-dead-redemption"},{"id":"df1a338f-77cc-4c32-bdf0-0bb5ebe11d82","title":"Resident Evil 4","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":960,"platforms":["PC","PS5","Series X"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2026-04-01","completedDate":"2026-04-19","updatedDate":"2026-04-20","notes":"An excellent remake of one of the best games of all time.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nPlays just like the original. Major changes:\n\n+ Knife durability, parry.\n+ Spinels are separate currency from pesetas.\n+ Stealth kills.\n+ Deactivate traps by getting close rather than wasting ammo.\n+ Ashley doesn’t share heals with you.\n+ Shooting gallery awards tokens usable to collect charms for case. And attache case.\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\nLooks great, like RE2 remake.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Just like in RE4 original, ammo drops are dynamic. You never really have to worry about ammo drops. Still, it's good to not use too much as you can otherwise get pesetas as loot.\n+ You can’t store everything. Prevents hoarding tactics.\n+ You don't lose knife durability smacking random things in the environment, including barrels. In fact, it's a faster animation to melee barrels still instead of kicking. A small advanced tactic that's a quality of life.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Any shot can crit, you don't have to hit weakpoints like you did in the original, and crits are no longer automatic kills, they're just triple damage.\n+ [Number of shots to stagger an enemy is not as predictable as RE4](https://www.reddit.com/r/residentevil4/s/d3q6rHWASv). This especially nerfs TMP and makes stagger damage a useful stat and therefore certain weapons more viable.\n+ Red9 got nerfed in aim, still best damage per ammo but accuracy is impractical vs other handguns.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Charm can be dropped duplicate. Very tedious to collect the ones you’re looking for, typically at least 5 playthroughs to get all 30.\n+ Unlike RE4, weapon upgrades don't fill your empty clip anymore.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Steam: Gemstone guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2956317077)\n+ Ammo during upgrades https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2954407106\n+ High level guide https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=352506145\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/residentevil4/comments/1kvc8uu/i_figured_out_the_drop_rates_in_resident_evil_4\n+ Collectibles: treasure, small key, clockwork castellan, [puzzles](https://game8.co/games/Resident-Evil-4-Remake/archives/407517). I just find these as I go.\n+ [Reddit: Weapon stats](https://www.reddit.com/r/residentevil/s/T2KdfYGPzy)\n\nI purchased Gold Edition for Separate Ways DLC and treasure map expansion, and I separately bought gold attache. I didn’t purchase exclusive tickets.\n\nI played on Standard difficulty. Hardcore and Professional I can leave for a second playthrough.\n\nIn most survival games, I prefer damage per ammo rather than damage per second as I often don't spam shots in favor of making each bullet count. In this game, it's not critical since ammo (especially handgun ammo) is plentiful and dynamic. Instead of being completionist, I collected all treasure explicitly marked on my map and while navigating; but I didn't use walkthroughs if, e.g., I missed a spinel treasure or yellow herb.\n\nTactics\n+ Generally (e.g. basic zombie): Aim for head, not knee. Head is more guaranteed stagger, does more base damage, and has criticals on certain handguns. Heads can spawn Plagas, but it's still worth it.\n+ Knife downed enemies, make use of full stage and environment, ladders, doorway funneling.\n+ Treasure maps: You can find them all online following a guide, but I find this tedious. Better to use the in-game method of buying treasure maps.\n\nLoadout:\n+ Blacktail: Best all rounder with highest DPS. 3.60 damage vs 4.0 for Red9. Including crit chance and headshots, it is `3.6*3*0.04*1.2+3.6*0.96*1.2=4.67` and SG-09R is `2*3*0.35*1.2+2*0.65*1.2=4.08`. I prefer this higher damage over SG-0R/Sentinel Nine's laser sight benefit.\n+ SR M1903: single target DPS strong enemies like Plagas, riot shields, bosses from a distance\n+ Riot Gun: space clearing when blocked\n+ Killer7: bosses\n+ 2 Flash grenades: AoE one-shot plagas\n+ 1 Incendiary grenade: for emergencies\n+ 0 Frag grenades: I find the shotgun and roundhouse kick sufficient\n+ Attach case: Gold. I prefer the simple Pesetas increase. Black is best for NG Professional speedruns for rifle ammo.\n+ [Attache case charms](https://www.ign.com/wikis/resident-evil-4-remake/List_of_Attache_Case_Charms): Equip top 3 in this order: Striker (+8% movement speed) > Cute Bear (-1 Gunpowder used when Crafting) > Iluminados Emblem (+20% Melee Critical Hit Rate) > Ashley Graham (+50% Health Recovery for Green Herbs)\n  + Merchant discount, crafting, and health charms, e.g., Merchant\n(5% Off All Weapon Upgrades), Ada Wong (30% off Body Armor Repairs), Leon w/ Handgun (30% off Knife Repairs), Leon w/ Rocket Launcher (saves 400k from Infinite RL purchase), can be swapped out of combat.\n\nOther weapons I like:\n+ TMP: Not that viable to replace a handgun in Leon’s playthrough unless you sell all handgun ammo, buy SMG ammo, and can be scarce at times. Especially nerfed in remake as stagger for melee is not predictable with only 1 headshot. A good overall hybrid of handgun and shotgun’s crowd control.\n\nNew game plus weapons / unlocks\n+ Infinite Rocket Launcher: used in new game plus only\n+ Cat Ears: newly makes a new tier list with Matilda, CQBR Assault Rifle, Killer7 \n+ Chicago Sweeper w/ infinite ammo\n+ Handcannon w/ infinite ammo\n+ Primal Knife\n+ Ashley’s Armor\n\nPlaythrough order for unlocks\n1. NG\n  + Got Clockwork Castellans #2, #4, #7, #9, #13, #14.\n  + I stopped here. Got burnt out after 18 hours for the first playthrough and playing RE9 just before. Not even motivated to do Separate Ways immediately after.\n2. Infinite Rocket Launcher & Primal Knife: NG+ treasure hunting and [Clockwork Castellans](https://www.ign.com/wikis/resident-evil-4-remake/All_Clockwork_Castellan_Locations)\n3. Ashley Armor: NG+ Hardcore A rank (under 10 hrs)\n4. Chicago Sweeper: NG+ Professional A rank (under 7 hrs)\n  + Chicago Sweeper, Ashley Armor, and Infinite Rocket Launcher / Primal Knife can be combined into one playthrough if desired.\n5. Chicken Hat: Hardcore S+ rank (NG under 5.5 hours)\n6. Cat Ears: Professional S+ rank (NG under 5.5 hrs with 15 manual saves or less)\n  + Primal Knife, Ashley Armor, Chicago Sweeper, and Chicken Hat all help this run but are not strictly necessary. Professional S+ unlocks all Professional A, Hardcore S+, and below rewards.\n  + This will also unlock:\n    + Wolf Tail: Assisted S+ rank (NG under 4 hours)\n    + Deer Antlers: Standard S+ rank (NG under 5 hours)\n    + Gas Mask: Professional\n  + In Chapter 7, unlock infinite ammo on Chicago Sweeper or Handcannon with first exclusive ticket. Alternatively, buy exclusive ticket DLC (or more simply, mod) to unlock infinite ammo in Chapter 2. Other payable bonuses that apply include the Gold or Classic attache case and Handgun Ammo and Green Herb attache case charm.\n  + [Save points](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2957459597)\n6. Can be done any time\n  + Handcannon: Mercenaries S rank in all 3 stages or NG Professional without bonus weapons\n\nPeseta purchase priority:\n1. Case, knife durability, knife power\n2. Power\n3. Ammo capacity, Reload speed, Rate of fire as needed\n\nSpinel purchase priority (roughly 100 in a playthrough):\n1. Treasure map (1, 3, 5)\n2. Weapon attachments (e.g., Laser Sight 10, Red9 stock 9)\n3. Exclusive tickets (30, 40)\n4. Attache case: Black (8)\n5. Yellow herbs (3) & gems (3)\n\nHealth item usage priority:\n1. Large bass (takes up too much space)\n2. Chicken egg\n3. Green/red/yellow herb combo (increases max HP)\n4. Triple-green herb combo & first aid spray\n5. Green/red herb combo (wait for yellow herb if applicable)\n6. Gold egg (most space-efficient)\n\nCrafting:\n+ Always craft healing (see above) to save space. Don’t craft ammo unless needed or to save space as ammo drops dynamically.\n+ Handgun ammo = Gunpowder + Resources (S)\n+ Shotgun/rifle ammo = Gunpowder + Resources (L)\n\n[My save's attache case charm order](https://www.reddit.com/r/residentevil/comments/12hlxxx/re4_remake_charm_farming_and_shooting_range_tokens/):\n\n+ SSS: Junk x3 -> Ashley Graham -> Ada Wong -> Leon w/ Handgun -> Junk x6 -> Merchant [here] -> Junk x1\n+ SSG: Junk x2 -> Leon w/ Rocket Launcher -> Junk x1 -> Ashley Graham -> Junk x1 -> Ashley Graham -> Junk x3 -> Ashley Graham -> Junk x1\n+ SGG: Junk x4 -> Leon w/ Handgun -> Junk x1 -> Ashley Graham\n+ GGG: Junk x1 -> Leon w/ Handgun [here] -> Junk x4","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/resident-evil-4--1"},{"id":"322682678624191052","title":"Resident Evil 7: Biohazard","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Stadia"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-04-05","completedDate":"2021-04-07","updatedDate":"2022-04-22","notes":"RE7 is a unique mix of the first-person horror and survival horror genres. It's an excellent return to form after the action focus of RE4-6, and with its own interpretation as a modern survival horror. Gone are the campy elements and in favor of serious, brutal scenes. Its main flaw is pacing, where the game changes somewhat abruptly from horror to survival horror to F.E.A.R.-style horror, and I wish it stayed on the family the whole game. Still, RE7 is a great experience from start to end. Towards the end of the game, I actually enjoyed the action-heavy elements where they throw all enemies at you; it's a great way of finally using all the weapons and ammo you saved up. It's only missing a good enemy variety to add replayability to the action.\n\n__Story.__ The use of hillbilly works well, and they're all crazy enough to make it crazy. I wish there were more character development as you progress in the story so you can learn even more about the family and gave personalities a bit more unique than they currently are. The switch to Evelyn as the main focus in the last chapters seemed unnecessary. It's when the game had to tie everything back to Umbrella that it went more tropey and less original than the rest of the game. The happy ending is too happy for being canon.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I love the blending of first-person horror and survival horror elements. It's not just the first-person viewpoint, but picking up of clues as you navigate a 3D environment, the sound cues with stalker enemies, and scripted scares. Survival horror elements are also enhanced. Most notable is stealth as a prominent gameplay element to dodge enemies while conserving ammo. The fight or flight mechanic with enemies (namely, should you use up your resources or just run?) is back and core to the gameplay. Crosshair aim also varies widely with recoil, healing requires an animation, you can move while reloading, and the grid inventory with items being different sizes is brought back and with new item combinations. A Guard mechanic is also used as a more deliberate paced alternative to a dodge mechanic, and where you still take damage (just significantly reduced), and where it limits your FOV and movement speed to hold it. There's sufficient although not amazing enemy variety.\n\nThe setting is excellent. I love the use of closed corridors by exploring certain houses, room by room. It not only harkens to the days of RE1-3 but also appeals to the gameplay elements set in first-person horrors like Amnesia, Alien: Isolation, and Outlast. Particular highlights in the game: early when you're still in the house; and Wrecked Ship. Old House was scary but not nearly as threatening as neither the bees nor Madeleine did much damage; and Lucas is not very imposing.\n\nStealth in horror games is a crucial gameplay element. But it's never done that well. There's ultimately a tradeoff. Good stealth games have transparent enemy alarm notifiers and other line-of-sight/hiddenness indicators, possibly more integrated into the game such as guards stating \"What was that noise?\". This bypasses the problem of inconsistency, where you can't always perfectly on just line-of-sight (and even with that, it's not clear if the sound from crouch vs walk vs run is noticed). On the other hand, horror games do benefit from some mystery around the stealth as otherwise an indicator ruins immersion and is too video gamey.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ A focus on realism, particularly with the horror immersion and uniqueness of a first-person view. The graphics are astounding for 2017, and I'm particularly impressed by the facial models. I love all the dynamic animations, seamless integrating cutscenes and gameplay/interactivity. This goes way beyond the previous titles with QTE.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ UI is minimal and immersive, with mission objectives and map relegated to the status screen and which happens in real-time.\n+ All the immersive cutscenes with seamless transitions between gameplay and cutscene. Truly adds to the tension in a way indie horror games just don't have the budget for.\n+ Replay value. Madhouse difficulty for a second playthrough, which has slight changes to item and enemy placement among other differences. You also unlock Albert-01R, which combined with Enhanced Handgun Ammo greatly speeds up early game. Like the rest of the series, there's even Madhouse+ with infinite ammo.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ They stifle your movement speed, especially when moving backwards. On one hand, it increases tension as it's much harder to kite enemies and further encourages facing head-on with just some ability to kite, or to run away. On the other hand, it's stupidly slow.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Psychostimulants. Not only are they a limited resource but also optional and discourage the more typical approach of exploring every crevice of a level. To better find things, there should be better clues if someone were to get stuck rather than needing to rely on a consumable that you then sprint around the map to find what's missing. I never used Psychostimulants.\n+ Last boss was anticlimactic. You would expect it would be gameplay-intensive given the last sections of Molded.\n+ The choice between Mia and Zoe. I'm fine with choices have little gameplay consequences as the illusion of choice is enjoyable. That said, the good vs bad ending from that choice is fairly arbitrary.\n+ [Steam overlay is bright, with brightness changing drastically between windowed and fullscreen; and you can't take screenshots](https://steamcommunity.com/app/418370/discussions/4/133255708301201140)\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Resident Evil 7 Weapon Damage Charts](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1754350187)\n+ [Resident Evil 7 walkthrough](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1870735014)\n\nThis entry does not include the DLCs (two story DLCs and Banned Footage volumes' minigames). I played on Normal difficulty. Madhouse has limited saves like the original games, and I find that mechanic more frustrating in repeating areas than tension-building. It seems more appropriate on a second playthrough, where you're not getting punished (whether it be deaths or consuming more health/ammo resources) for exploration. Key item, resource, and enemy placement also differ slightly, suggesting the game still has some novelty and which is best appreciated in that second playthrough (including the Albert 01-R).\n\nI didn't use a walkthrough unless I was stuck, but I did use it to make sure I got [all stabilizers and steroids](https://samurai-gamers.com/resident-evil-7/steroid-stabilizer-locations); I also research weapons and enemy tactics. My playthrough choices:\n\n+ Prioritized the M19 pistol over the M21 shotgun. Shotgun ammo is less frequent early game and it's a waste to use it on Molded unless you have to. On the other hand, (enhanced) handgun ammo is plenty.\n+ My Antique Coin economy was Steroid -> Stabilizer -> MAG99 (useless until endgame given scarce ammo, and Fat Molded can already die easily from Grenade Launcher or Remote Mines).\n+ I used Strong Chemic Fluid almost exclusively for Enhanced Handgun Ammo. I also frequently use Gunpowder + Handgun Ammo. Enhanced is a 3x multiplier while halving the # of bullets and using up a Gunpowder; so it's worth it if you chalk up the resource cost as equivalently 5 vs 15, and a single enhanced bullet replaces the need to hit 3 normal bullets consecutively while also incurring heavier stun.\n+ Weapon loadout is M19 handgun and M21 shotgun. More situationally: burner, P19 machine gun, remote bomb, grenade launcher.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/resident-evil-7-biohazard"},{"id":"322682678652738124","title":"Resident Evil Village","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-04-20","completedDate":"2022-04-23","updatedDate":"2022-04-23","notes":"Resident Evil Village is an excellent sequel to Resident Evil 7, leaning toward action and fantastical elements more than its horror. It largely works thanks due to its enemy variety, level design, aesthetic, and core survival horror gameplay.\n\n__Story.__ It's a contrived plot with Ethan randomly getting kidnapped so he's stuck in a new setting to escape from. I enjoy the characters more than the story itself (especially the character designs).\n\nDuke is a charming merchant. He's a great spiritual successor to RE4's merchant in staying cryptic but with his own personality.\n\n__Gameplay.__ RE8 largely builds on RE7's gameplay with its first-person view, crafting system, core weaponry, and attack styles including blocking. Unlike RE7's more horror gameplay (especially in its beginning), RE8 is visibly more action-based with more plentiful ammo and killable enemies as well as a more precise crosshair. Enemy variety is much higher, compensating for a fault in RE7's action sequences as the game used the same enemies throughout.\n\nThe weapon variety is not unlike RE7 but unfortunately nowhere near the diversity of the action RE games like RE4. RE8's weapons have an RPG-like progression where there's simply strict upgrades with new guns of the same type as the game progresses. This is unlike most Resident Evil games where you just accumulate new types of guns. RE4 had multiple guns of the same type, but they all tailor to different strengths and choosing your weapon set would determine your playstyle for that run. This limits RE8's replayability.\n\nNew to the progression with weapon upgrades and ammo purchases is the Duke's Kitchen, in which one permanently increases stats by finding ingredient collectibles.\n\nLevel design is excellent, encouraging exploration and with intriguing art design and story to keep the main campaign going. It's the same as RE7's level design but diversified to capture multiple different environments. I even enjoyed Beneviento's dungeon as a nice change of pace toward more horror elements.\n\nA second playthrough is encouraged with new content: 8 new weapons on top of the first playthrough's 10, infinite ammo, and Village of Shadows difficulty. Village of Shadows seems balanced for infinite ammo with the amount of enemy health. For example, a Lycan can take 2 body hits from a fully upgraded M1851 Wolfsbane. This means RE8's replayability is through playing the game a few times so you can unlock infinite ammo and New Game Plus guns, and then finally jumping into Village of Shadows difficulty.\n\nMercenaries mode adds fun content in the form of the shooter and progression gameplay. I especially like the ability roguelike element as your character gets progressively more power. Level design is also varied given the excellent variety in the campaign. Unfortunately, enemy and item placement is fixed, making the mode far too reliant on knowing the optimal route. Getting higher ranks doesn't make you feel like you got better at the game; you just got better at knowing the correct route. Upgrades are also not well-balanced: it's best to just stick with one weapon (V-61 Custom, SYG-12, or F12) and always get damage and speed abilities.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nIt's RE7's engine and with new assets recast to fit a fantastical theme. I quite like it, especially with how seamlessly cut scenes are blended in with the gameplay. I don't know if it's the voice acting or the lines but Ethan is a cringey character with the way he exclaims for Rose and his wife.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Guard now includes a parry-like attack where you can punch an enemy to stagger after you block their attack.\n+ True to other RE games, you can upgrade a gun's ammo capacity to refill its ammo as a side effect.\n+ The sparkling treasures from RE4 are brought back.\n+ You can buy back guns you sell, and they preserve all the upgrades you made on them. This makes selling guns effectively like a loan so you can make immediate purchases, and later you might buy back the gun with interest.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Crafting and valuable (sell-only) items no longer take up inventory space. This is clearly to make the game less survival horror and more action. There's also significantly more inventory space and no item box.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Obscure missable items and areas you can no longer search after progressing through the game. The cutoff points are often not obvious, so 100% completion is effectively impossible without following a guide. For example: 1. missing the Reservoir Tunnels catfish means you miss out on one dish; there's not an overabundance of fish locations unlike meat and poultry. 2. previous dungeon areas are also artificially gated once you leave. 3. Luiza's house cannot be searched after it collapses.\n+ The beginning survival objective is stupidly difficult.\n+ Like RE remake games, the HUD should display the item you picked up for a few seconds as you can't see what the item is if you loot quickly (especially during boss fights). There's not even a looting sound effect.\n+ Due to the console limitation, on PC you can only quickswap among the keybinds of 1-4 despite it easily scaling to higher (and would greatly make using grenades more seamless).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Evil Resource](https://www.evilresource.com/resident-evil-village/maps). It's especially useful for searching for remaining items in a location.\n+ [Goats of Warding locations](https://www.ign.com/wikis/resident-evil-8-village/Goats_of_Warding_Locations)\n+ [Weapon tier list](https://www.reddit.com/r/ResidentEvilVillage/comments/rfue6a/weapon_tier_list) which I agree with\n\nMy first playthrough was on Hardcore difficulty. Upgrade-wise, I always went for damage and then ammo capacity aiming to reach 0 for a weapon so I can effectively get free ammo. For Duke's Kitchen, I prioritized blocking upgrades. I play conservatively with ammo, prioritizing pipe grenades and mines to kill groups of enemies and always take advantage of explosive barrels. For bosses, I generally used Shotgun, Grenade Launcher, Magnum, and the occasional Sniper Rifle shot when they're far away. The Handgun is typically only for weak single targets that I can easily kite. All items had their use; even flash grenade is useful against the Soldats so you can get a safe shotgun hit.\n\nFinal weapons for first playthrough:\n\n+ Handgun: V61-Custom. I had 4/4 Power by the middle of Heisenberg's Factory and 4/6 by the end of the game.\n+ Shotgun: SYG-12. I had 4/4 Power by the beginning of Heisenberg's Factory and 4/6 by the end of the game.\n+ Sniper Rifle: F2 Rifle. I had 5/5 Power by the end of Heisenberg's Factory and 6/6 by the end of the game.\n+ Grenade Launcher: GM 79.\n+ Magnum: M1851 Wolfsbane. I had 2/4 Power and the Long Barrel upgrade; the upgrades are actually suboptimal since it'll be replaced by STAKE anyways. Same goes for upgrading fire rate on other weapons since I can save up until 6 Power slots is unlocked.\n\nOther playthroughs with New Game Plus in order:\n\n1. Casual difficulty. To finish challenges like Heretic (all Goats of Warding), Bookworm (read all files), and boss kill time challenges. To finish playthrough completion challenges: Slob, Dense Dad, Frugal Father, Don't Trust That Snake Oil.\n2. Village of Shadows difficulty. With Dashing Dad. It's actually too easy if you just spam the STAKE. There's a notable difficulty spike when you don't have your arsenal, namely, against Heisenberg and in Chris' section. It's not too bad once you learn enemy movesets and know when to use grenades.\n\nI completed all challenges except Knives Out and Mercenaries mode challenges. If I wanted to, I could get the last few challenges by completing all Mercenaries in S stage and then doing a playthrough on Casual Difficulty with only the LZ Answerer. Neither of these sound fun however; it's just tedious.\n\nFinal weapons for New Game Plus, and assuming infinite ammo:\n\n+ Assault Rifle: WCX.\n+ Magnum: STAKE.\n+ Sniper Rifle: F2 Rifle.\n+ Grenade Launcher: GM 79.\n\nMy infinite ammo progression was GM 79 and F2 Rifle (unlocked from beginning of second playthrough) -> SYG-12, WCX, and V61 Custom (unlocked after Beneviento) -> STAKE. To unlock a gun's infinite ammo early, I did a [trick of selling all my other gear so I can fully upgrade a weapon and then reload](https://www.reddit.com/r/residentevil/comments/n97str/a_quick_tip_for_getting_all_infinite_ammo_weapons). This is also a useful tactic for the farming-type challenges such as kill X enemies or craft X items.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/resident-evil-village-and-resident-evil-7-complete-bundle"},{"id":"322682678652472908","title":"Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":1740,"platforms":["Stadia","PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["FromSoftware"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-03-22","completedDate":"2019-03-27","updatedDate":"2022-02-12","notes":" Sekiro stands out among its Souls predecessors with combat innovations, easily as the most refined in Souls-like games. Most notable are verticality of environments, stealth, and agile movements with guard vs deflect vs jump vs sidestep; poise and deflects overhauilng stamina and parries; integration of many mini-bosses; and a duality of HP widdling vs posture-breaking.\n\nI think Sekiro's biggest flaw is its lack of good enemies outside (mini)bosses. With the ability to both (re)stealth and escape to higher ground, I would expect enemies in Sekiro to be even tougher (e.g., hard hitting) than in Souls/Bloodborne. That's not the case, which makes most of the challenge only really appear at minibosses---not emphasizing the core Dark Souls mechanic where you're in the middle of a zone, running out of Estus Flasks, unsure of when's the next bonfire, and you cautiously trek forward.. The second major flaw is lack of atmosphere: most all enemies are humanoid (lacking the unique mob and boss designs of Souls) and levels are well-lit outdoors with many reused assets (e.g., tree branch). Gone overall are the foreboding elements, e.g., rounding a corner and grabbing loot only to be ambushed by an other worldly creature. This is possibly due to the emphasis on parry and stealth, but I think even with those aspects preserved, the game could add non-humanoid and dungeon-like areas as Nioh does. It was a conscious design effort. It also lacks replayability due to lacking build diversity.\n\nCompared to other Souls games, Sekiro just doesn't stand out in its atmosphere and lightning (c.f., Demon's Souls and Bloodborne), enemy variety, story, and not nearly as iconic NPCs and sidequests (e.g., Solaire, Siegmeyer, Patches). Mechanics-wise, the death penalty system is a major step back. Sekiro fortunately does avoid the common flaws of Souls games, which I appreciate: tricky pathing of sidequests; occasionally mediocre covenant system; occasionally lengthy runback to bosses; and lack of systematic PvP.\n\n__Story.__ Unlike other Souls games, storytelling is explicit. Unfortunately, quality-wise, it's only serviceable as if it were any other AAA title. There's a dozen of Legendary Items constantly referenced in the conversations (e.g., Dragon's Oath, Iron Rule of Shinobi, Mortal Sword, Divine Child of the Rejuvenating Water), and it feels B-rated given its simplistic treatment. This also occurs in Dark Souls to an extent, but fortunately the lack of explicit storytelling and ambiguity lends a bit more credence to the many primordial concepts Dark Souls discusses. I do like certain elements of Sekiro's approach, perhaps inheriting from its diegetic roots: for example, illusions of previous conversations with Kuro; eavesdropping to hear about upcoming bosses. \n\n__Combat/Gameplay.__ Sekiro clearly has the most refined mechanics of the Souls series. Most notable are its timed attacks with a controlled aggressive and passive style; and verticality. I love the Perilous Attack trio of thrusts, sweeps, and grabs, and the appropriate response of deflects (R1) (or Mikiri Counter (O with no directional)), jumps (X), and dodges (O). This makes fights much more complex than Dark Souls/Bloodborne, which almost entirely involves just dodges (O) and the occassional guard and circle-strafing. Other unique elements stand out such as stealth, posture replacing stamina, parry/riposte with enemy posture bars, and enemies having the opportunity to change the rhythm of fights by deflecting your attacks (see below). Gone are the meta of circle-strafing as in Dark Souls 1/2 or I-frame rolls as in Dark Souls 3/Bloodborne, and in with the parry system!\n\nOverall, Sekiro plays as an action-adventure without RPG elements such as stat distributions (and therefore builds), levels, and weapon or armor sets. They're replaced with Skill and Prosthetic upgrade tree. Because there are no upgradeable stats (aside from Prayer Beads, Memories, and Gourd Seeds), damage doesn't increase over time, meaning earlier zones won't be trivially easy later in the game or through farming. (This is a significant gameplay influence on other Souls games where if you accidentally go through zones in an improper order, certain zones can be too easy or too hard. Sekiro establishes a difficulty standard universal across all zones.) At the same time however, there's a lack of replayability due to the lack of builds. This reduces versatility of gameplay (and the ability to play fashionsouls). However, it also keeps the game minimally core to shinobi prosthetic-and-sword style. There are no balance issues with strength builds, magic builds, faith builds, etc.\n\nOther elements inherit from Souls/Bloodborne: for example, block (closer to Nioh via sword, and no damage taken, just poise), single target lock-on, deflects (parries), poise/stagger, backstabs, Sculptor's Idol (bonfire), replenishing gourd (Estus Flask), hub, storage box, consumable Spirit Emblem ammo that replenishes over kills/exploration (effectively Bloodborne's Quicksilver Bullets). Like Bloodborne, there is no equip or item burden.\n\n__Boss and enemy design.__ I love the integration of mini-bosses and bosses in the environment. Rarely are there just doors that lead to a boss zone. (Mini)bosses I especially like: Genichiro, who taught me to deflect and took me around 4-5 hours of straight attempts (I got to the third stage around 10 times before I completed it); Ape if only for its creepy undead second stage; Emma and Isshin as an additional shining example of Sekiro combat. The Ape only took me ~10 tries particularly as I found out the Umbrella worked on the second stage; it's mostly a battle of sprinting, hugging his butt, and pulling the occasional flurry of attacks. The Headless Ape only took me 2 tries, the second attempt being perhaps lucky in that I zerged down the brown Ape first without interruption.\n\nI personally found Genichiro to be as difficult and spent as much time on him as I did for the most notorious Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Nioh bosses: Onryoki and Hino-Enma and Father Gascoigne (these ones particularly mirror as most difficulty was adjusting), Artorias, Friede, Nameless King, Gael. Juzou the Drunkard was not difficult: fighting large-sized Dark Souls bosses taught me how to sprint to circle strafe to hug and attack butts, and dodge sweep attacks. Even on New Game Plus, I found fighting Genichiro extremely difficult. He seemed to do far more posture damage, which kept killing me. After watching LobosJR, I tried two different approaches to his moveset and they drastically changed the dynamics so that I beat him on my first try the next day! (The two movesets: 1. On Genichiro's flurry of attacks, instead of deflecting all of them, just jump away after the first two strikes. This lets you recover posture as well as get a free hit once he terminates the flurry. 2. On Genichiro's jump attack possibly followed by a Perilous Attack, instead of deflecting and then trying to do the appropriate Perilous Attack response, sidestep away, avoid the Perilous Attack by distance, and run (not sprint) back in.)\n\nUnfortunately, while Sekiro has great boss and miniboss fights, it suffers greatly in standard enemy variety. I would much prefer the consistency of all other Souls games. Throughout all of Ashina Outskirts/Castle for example, there is only one soldier type---with a few variations such as shooting---as well as the occasional dog and ogre-type enemy. This base soldier is easy to sprint to them and R1 spam, the same going for the base soldier in Senpou Temple (Monks), Sunken Valley (soldier), and Sunken Valley Passage (Monkeys). In addition, it's easy to hide from enemies and/or renenter stealth by retreating to higher vantage points. This makes progressing through zones is significantly easier than any of the (mini)bosses as they're the only ones that introduce new mechanics.\n\n__Level design.__ The verticality of levels and its incentivized gameplay with stealth make level progression so much more environmentally involved than in Souls. The game feels 3-D and real. Rather than point A to point B, it's all about the approach in moving through levels, exploring to find items/paths, eavesdropping, and targeting isolated enemies. Detection is seamless with dots and arrows signaling yellow and red for caution and alert. You can see the flaw with Souls' point A to point B in Souls speedruns, where it feels weird that you can essentially beat the game by running through all the enemies except bosses; fighting enemies is only necessary insofar as to explore without dying and looting, so you may as well incorporate stealth explicitly to give a better control on this. This is what I praise Dark Souls games for: it incentivized exploration via loot, shortcuts, and bonfires. Stealth is a great addition to it. (With that said, stealth is not perfect---for example, escaping to higher ground and/or reentering stealth can trivialize encounters, and is almost incenvitized in the game as this is the most efficient way to traverse zones without losing Healing Gourd stock.)\n\nAn especially impressive level is Ashina Castle. I was mindblown just how the subzones were interconnected as I opened shortcuts. My jaw dropped when I opened the secret human-shadow door at Ashina Castle only to arrive at the Dilapidated Temple. Other examples are Ashina Castle's Old Grave and Ashina Outskirts; and Ashina Reservoir and Abandoned Dungeon.\n\n__Aesthetics.__ Beautiful environments, face models, enemy designs, level designs. However, speaking technically for the engine, it's not at the top compared to AAA titles like God of War, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and Devil May Cry 5. Music scores are also only servicable and ultimately forgettable. Atmosphere does not really exist as most gameplay occurs in well-lit outdoors.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Freedom of movement with jump and its interactivity with walls and hook shot. Exploration feels a lot tighter, particularly as these movements feel seamless with the interactions with the environment through simple \"dots\" as cues. The dots indicate talk ability for NPCs, eavesdropping, open/close entrances, and locations to grapple hook.\n+ This is parry done right, better than the original of Demon's Souls, and better than the previous best iteration which is Bloodborne. Missing deflects are more forgiving, getting deflects is easier, and chaining deflects to increase enemy posture gets at a parry system far more complex than any of the other parry-then-riposte games.\n+ Eavesdropping is seamless where you press a button to on-demand listen, not have to wait a while which can be more realistic but tedious as in MGSV.\n+ No endurance bar; poise is upgraded to be a core bar. Instead of attack-then-dodge, the core mechanic is effectively parries where you make opportunities to attack by timing precisely when they attack, not after they finish attacking.\n+ Combat Arts are excellently done as it's only one additional move. This lets you perfect the minimalistic mechanics while still being able to utilize situational attacks like the Combat Arts, Prosthetic, and holding down R1.\n+ Deathblows feel extremely satisfying and well-animated as part of the combat.\n+ Aside from the ending choice, there are no missable and awkward pathing for NPC sidequests and items like Dark Souls dragon tails! This, and no illusory walls, makes the game so much more of a joy to play without a guide.\n+ When you pick up items, the game pauses and you see the item description. This lets you take the time to read what you pick up. This avoids two situations that frequently happen in Dark Souls: you pick up an item, but are too lazy to go to the inventory to read the description (it involves ~5-7 keypresses); you're in the midst of battle and frantically picking up items and forget what you picked up.\n+ Native language for voice acting is Japanese!\n+ Certain (mini)boss encounters enable situational use of your grapple, which complexifies gameplay.\n+ Love the idea of Demon Bell. Perhaps I'll try it in addition to New Game Plus on an additional playthrough.\n+ Runbacks to all bosses are short.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ No multiplayer.\n+ Prosthetic tool, most similar to Bloodborne's situational left hand weapon.\n+ Currency system of both gold and experience. Only experience is lost after death, and cannot be regained.\n+ Strong attack is relegated from a core button (R2) to a very situational thrust (hold down R1).\n+ Fast travel at all Sculptor's Idols, similar to Dark Souls 3.\n+ There are limited-time buff consumables based around Sugars, similar to previous Souls games' lightning/fire weapon buffs. (I never use them as they both require farming and reduce the difficulty of hard encounters.)\n+ You can't fall to your death (most of the time). You only take damage.\n+ You can't accidentally or otherwise harm NPCs in the hub.\n+ For the first time in a Souls-like game, the menu pauses the game(!).\n+ You can swim!\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Resurrection and half XP/Sen taken upon death. Resurrection seems unnecessarily player-friendly, and Unseen Aid so unlikely even with zero Dragon Rot that it's unreliable to rely upon, let alone have in the game. I prefer Souls/Bloodborne's death penalty of finding your corpse or killing the enemy who took your Blood Echoes. Enemies camping your corpse is especially a bad mechanic. I do like the lore for resurrection though.\n+ Rot. Rot is unfairly punishing---it doesn't cause NPC storylines to be permanently missable, but there's only a finite number of times to heal from it. Due to the expensive rot system, I just treat resurrection as a permanent way to not lose out on XP and Sen by calling my Homeward Bone item everytime I die (this works for everything except bosses). I also explicitly must choose not to pursue NPC sidequests and restore Dragonrot until after bosses when I'm on a trek to complete a slew of NPC sidequests.\n+ Unlike other Souls games, you manually hold X to pick up Sen instead of getting it automatically like you do with Souls and Blood Echoes. And it has an animation of a vacuum, which feels out of place.\n+ Few (if any!) enemies punish you for broken posture. You only get punished by taking an attack if they're in the middle of one. This incentivizes deflects/blocking even more as the punishment is not that bad.\n+ Locking out bosses (and an entire zone!) due to the choice of ending is a cheap incentive for players to replay the game.\n+ Treasure Carp don't respawn. It's Demon's Souls' Crystal Lizards all over again.\n+ You need a limited-quantity Divine Confetti consumable (limitless only late in game, and restricted to certain ending choices) in order to fight two mini-boss classes: Headless and Shichimen Warrior. This limits the number of attempts you do, which is tedious.\n+ Sekiro is almost too obvious in being prescriptive, from tutorials to redundant exposition to make sure players recall previous events, and a few too many hints on where to go next. In addition, Memos and items passed to NPCs which only trigger a lore reaction don't age well given the internet. In previous games, completionists are incentivized to complete NPC sidequests in order to get unique items such as armor sets. Not many NPC sidequests offer such uniques.\n+ No borderless. No ultrawidescreen support.\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/Sekiro/\n+ https://sekiroshadowsdietwice.wiki.fextralife.com\n+ http://www.wsgf.org/dr/sekiro-shadows-die-twice/en\n+ stealthbr | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPDmyO4oqq4\n\nMy total playtime according to Steam is 33 hours, beating the base game in 32 hours (I unknowingly chose the Shura ending, which adds two unique bosses Emma and Issin Ashina in replacement for Owl, real Corrupted Monk, Fountainhead Palace, Sakura Bull of the Palace mini-boss, Great Colored Carp, Shichimen Warrior mini-boss, Divine Dragon, Shigekichi of the Red Guard mini-boss, Demon of Hatred, and Isshin the Sword Saint. That omits ~10-15% of the game!). I played it near release date (March 22), which means no walkthrough or cheat sheet for most progression. As fextralife updated its walkthrough, I did browse it to go back and grab items or fight mini-bosses I missed.\n\ntodos\n\n+ Exhaust inventory of Pot Noble Harunaga of Hirata Estate and Pot Noble Koremori at Fountainhead Palace: specifically, Mask Fragment: Left and Right, and Floating Passage Text.\n+ Upgrade all Skills and Prosthetic upgrades.\n+ Collect all 40 Prayer Beads.\n+ Collect the final 9th Gourd Seed in Fountainhead Palace.\n+ Headless (5 of them; requires Divine Confetti)\n+ Shichimen Warrior (2 of them; requires Divine Confetti)\n+ Sculptor's Idol at Abandoned Dungeon (the one that goes to Ashina Depths).\n+ Skipped: Tokujiro the Glutton; O'Rin of the Water; Ogre in Ashina Castle; Lone Shadow Masanaga at Serpenthead Shrine; Loot at ponds excluding Mibu Village, Hirata Estate, and Sunken Valley Passage; Loot at Ashina Castle.\n+ Rice for Return Ending.\n+ Ashina Castle | Owl.\n+ Ashina Outskirts | Shigekichi of the Red Guard; Demon of Hatred.\n+ Fountainhead Temple | Sakura Bull of the Palace; Great Colored Carp; Corrupted Monk; Divine Dragon; Isshin the Sword Saint.\n+ Follow steps for Purification Ending to have two minibosses for Prayer Beads at Hirata Estate.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/sekiro-shadows-die-twice"},{"id":"322682678652655180","title":"Shadow of the Colossus","originalTitle":"ワンダと巨像","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PS3"],"studios":["Team Ico"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2006-12-31","completedDate":"2006-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Shadow of the Colossus is the icon of artistry in video gaming: sumptuous environments, character and bestiary models, atmosphere, rich audio (not only in the puzzles, but the fights!), minimalist archetypal story. But it's not without its flaws: poor controls and occasionally tedious gameplay as it can feel like a horse-riding simulator at times when moving from one boss fight to the next puzzle zone. Boss designs are certainly not as strong as games like Dark Souls.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/shadow-of-the-colossus--2"},{"id":"323071364946723409","title":"Sifu","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Sloclap"],"publishers":["Sloclap","Kepler Interactive"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-02-07","completedDate":"2022-02-10","updatedDate":"2022-02-13","notes":"Sifu stands out most in its core combat loop with an excellent moveset of fighting attacks, parry, and dodge; enemy design encouraging timing, positioning, and knowing what move to use; and a unique death system that's part roguelite part classic arcades.\n\n__Story.__ A prototypical revenge story like any martial arts film. It's simple but works especially with its secrets to get the true ending: unlock the detective board and make game decisions against the bosses.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core combat loop is excellent. The moveset is a mix of Soulslike with its weak/strong attacks, dodge, and deflect; and fighting games with move combos. The closest game I can think of with a moveset like this is Devil May Cry 5, and it's only barely. I'm not generally a fan of combo moves in video games, but I found that Sifu had a small yet sufficiently diverse variety that encouraged their use cases: for example, Strong Sweep Focus as the focus attack; Push Kick to stagger enemies against walls; Sweeping Kick (run+Y) to start fights; Crooked Foot (hold Y) after parrying; Snap Kick (forward+forward Y) to close distance; Spin Hook Kick for AOE; and defensive moves like Ground Counter, Pushback Cancel, and Weapon Catch. This is on top of the basic weak and strong attacks, ground strike, post-parry attack, sweep, and palm strike. Even parry has a direction with up/down as a type of \"parry dodge.\"\n\nThe health and guard system follow Sekiro.\n\nIt's an interesting approach to roguelite design, carrying only its redo system without save points as a usual game and with unlockable moveset and shortcut progression. There are no randomized elements though, where the game benefits from a great handcrafted level design albeit which can become repetitive when replayed multiple times like a roguelike.\n\nReviews of this game are completely unwarranted about the unfairness of \"difficulty\". It's like a speedrun, asking for perfection within a run and where failure compounds in adding even more age to your death penalty. This attests to the spirit of the game: which is practice makes perfect like any martial art. The life system is like an arcade game: there's a limited amount, and it's best to save as many lives a possible while making it as far as possible. The parry window is also much more unforgiving than Soulsborne games, but once you master the enemy moveset timings, you can really get into the rhythm and coast through levels in a single run.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The blocky texture style is a typical art choice. I feel this game would actually look much better with a more realism-based style, but that would be more costly for production. The presentation at times is wonderful (e.g., the prologue, its 2D frame of reference switching during long corridors). Voice acting is its only clear weakness.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The lack of a lock-on camera, where the manual camera movement and moves are automatically directed toward the nearest enemy. This not only streamlines one of Dark Souls' mechanics but also works wonders in crowd fights. Fighting multiple enemies with the lock-on camera is always a pain in Soulslike games.\n+ The lack of a healing consumable in Soulslike games, replaced instead with health generation on each enemy takedown. This encourages Sifu to be more aggressive not unlike Bloodborne's rally mechanic.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The directional parry for parry dodging isn't signaled well. It's not clear when you need to parry up vs simply parry down (eg you can even parry down sweep attacks if far away enough). Sometimes your character even parry dodges left or right and you don't know if holding a direction was required for that.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Shrine locations](https://www.theloadout.com/sifu/shrine-locations)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/sifu"},{"id":"322682678652773964","title":"Silent Hill","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PS2","PSP"],"studios":["Climax Studios"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-04-23","completedDate":"2022-04-26","updatedDate":"2022-04-27","notes":"Silent Hill is a masterpiece in terror. Originally intended as Konami's answer to the Resident Evil series, Silent Hill has become one of the most profound games of all time. It rules in a dark, disturbing atmosphere standing out even when played in 2022 due to its sound design, lighting and visual aesthetic, and exploration-based level design.\n\nWhile Silent Hill largely ages well, its wonky control system and camera are major annoyances. You're often fighting the game to move your character accurately and manipulate the camera so you can see enemies properly. While the controls and camera unintentionally are part of Silent Hill's tension (not unlike the fog to limit the player's LOD distance), it makes Silent Hill a hassle to play and I find it more often to be immersion-breaking. Obscure puzzles also harm the game's pacing, and combat is fairly simple as most enemies fall by the same tactic of kiting.\n\n__Story.__ It's a more homely setting than Resident Evil, where instead of fighting zombies as a soldier infiltrating a mansion, you're a regular person trying to find their daughter in a mysterious town. This is also instantiated in the various household items Harry picks up as wepona.s The creatures that come out of the story reveal are otherworldly.\n\n__Gameplay.__ With its open level design, combat is even more subdued than Resident Evil. On top of this, enemies can respawn on area re-entry, meaning in the open areas especially it's better to save ammo and simply dodge enemies. Here, gameplay involves trying to not alert them by walking silently when nearby, turning off your light, and turning off your radio (for enemies that hear them). It's in the buildings with especially narrow corridors where you use up your limited resources.\n\nControls are tank movement, run, slow sidestep movement with L1/R1, and quick turn with L1+R1. I greatly dislike the clunky movement directions as I find it much harder to be precise than with strafe controls: it's more difficult to walk in a straight line, turn accurately, or shoot accurately. While I appreciate that this adds to the classic survival horror tension, clunky controls are not a good design choice if done intentionally. Watching playthroughs of the game with a first person mod with strafe controls, it's clear that the game could be just as terrifying if it was designed without such a control scheme.\n\nCamera is a mix of fixed camera and dynamic movement. The dynamic movement has some wonky angles where you're often battling the camera to shift so you can aim properly at an incoming enemy. This is part of the wonky controls adding to the suspense.\n\nThe UI is intuitive. Perhaps not a surprise for such an old game, you have to go to the menu to equip different weapons, reload, or use healing items. Interestingly, there is no limited inventory space.\n\nSave system is the same as Resident Evil's typewriter, which is standard in its time (e.g., JRPGs). Fortunately, I like that there's no Ink Ribbon-like item that makes saving part of the limited resource experience.\n\nHealth system is the same as Resident Evil, with different colors indicating your overall health condition.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics age surprisingly well. Fog and darkness is used to limit the level of detail distance due to performance limitations, but it adds to the atmosphere. The same goes for the grainy textures that add to a dilapidated, film-like effect. While the polygon textures are clearly outdated, the low poly aesthetic feels like a style choice that wouldn't be surprising for an indie game released today. Interactable notes have a realism background style that's iconic to the old Silent Hill and Resident Evil games. Environment design is also  fantastic, with subtle lighting to indicate what items you can pick up among otherwise drab colored backgrounds.\n\nThe sound design is horrifying. I get goosebumps whenever the radio activates its white noise, then the soundtrack turns loud, and you start to hear a monster's groaning. The soundtrack is like a grating metal punk.\n\nVoice acting is cheesy. It's stilted in clearly being voiced line by line without the actual context in a conversation with the other voice actor. But it's also fairly cheesy in just the line executions.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The radio is an iconic of Silent Hill's sound design. It adds to the suspense far above jump scares when you hear that a monster is around and you tense up until you kill them.\n+ You can stomp enemies when they're on the ground to finish them off instead of wasting an extra bullet.\n+ The in-game map is a real physical map. You even mark it. This makes the experience more immersive and imprecise as it's less video-gamey as an exact HUD-like map (c.f., Resident Evil remake maps have not only clear directions but also explicit notations such as if an area is fully searched).\n+ Like Resident Evil 1, there are bonus weapons you obtain after beating the game and depending on certain requirements (here, it's based on the ending you achieve).\n+ Controller vibration to signal lower health and as a proxy for the character's heartbeat.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Instead of having to go into your menu, you can simply re-ready your gun to reload. This is a nice mechanic to effectively reload in real-time. If only they told you this!\n+ The opaque respawning rules. Sometimes an enemy will respawn upon re-entering an area and sometimes it won't. If it doesn't respawn, it stays dead but if it does respawn, it may have a chance to respawn yet again (repeated ad infinitum). Of course, there's also scripted respawns but those are fine.\n+ Levels have noticeable reuse across the game, especially in the nightmare version of an area. I didn't find it to restrict variety that much and found its implementation artfully done not unlike A Link to the Past's shadow realm.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ I'm not sure if it's just my emulator or the game, but the D-Pad has noticeable input lag where it can take half a second to a second at times for my Up key to trigger moving forward. Sometimes when I'm holding the Up key while holding Square to run, I'm simply halt running.\n+ Extra options that are essential are hidden, requiring a shoulder button to access. It's particularly essential to turn on auto-run.\n+ The map is illegible both in terms of text and in understanding the legend. A simple legend would explain that blue has save rooms and red is interactable. Or that squiggly means never enterable while a line means not enterable at the moment but can be unlocked.\n+ Some obscure puzzle solutions. For example, the music room puzzle and the turnstile valve puzzle in School, the Astrology puzzle in Nowhere.\n+ Sewers are a terrible level. Just nauseating in trying to navigate the maze not only in a poor map but also with the left/right sides of each pathway leading to different areas.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Silent Hill Memories walkthrough](https://www.silenthillmemories.net/sh1/walkthrough_en.htm)\n+ [Aris playthrough in April 2021](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rrt8s9O9-Ls)\n\nI played using a PS1 emulator: Duckstation. I used to use Mednafen with Beetle PSX HW (the RetroArch fork of Mednafen, which adds a GUI) for Tenchu: Stealth Assassins and Castlevania SOTN. However, I've always disliked RetroArch due to its confusing UI, feature bloat as a jack of all trades ruining standalone emulator development, and complicated set up. In reading drama (e.g., [Feb 2022 post between Libretro/RetroArch team and Duckstation developer](https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/siaegs/libretro_regarding_duckstationswanstation), [Feb 2021](https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/lnzpnt/can_someone_explain_why_people_hate_retroarch_now), [2020 post](https://old.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/c8cyjl/what_do_emulator_developers_think_about_libretro)), I greatly prefer Duckstation's philosophy of a easy-to-intuitive UI emulator borrowing philosophy from Dolphin; it's a common design choice seen in other emulators too like RPCS3, PCSX2, and Cemu.\n\nBack around 2003, I played a bit of Silent Hill 1 as a kid among other PlayStation burned copy games. This time, I played on Normal difficulty. I played blind but resorted to walkthroughs when I got stuck, particularly on puzzles. The game gives you a lot of ammo, plenty for both the handgun and shotgun. I typically reserved shotgun for heavier enemies that I can't quickly kill with the handgun in close range (e.g., Nurse and Doctors take 5-6 handgun shots and that's not always possible if they spawn in close proximity). Hammer is extremely powerful in close range corridors; Nurse, Doctors, and Hanged Scratchers  are downed them in 2-3 hits and with push back so you can hit them infinitely. Rifle is used exclusively for bosses.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/silent-hill-origins"},{"id":"322682678652501580","title":"Slay the Spire","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Mega Crit Games"],"publishers":["Humble Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure","Indie","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2018-09-08","completedDate":"2018-09-13","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I really enjoy the unique ways it takes advantage of PvE to invent new card mechanics. For example, because you know what the enemy is going to do, it drastically changes up your play on that turn (defends vs pure attacks vs preparation for a massive debuff). I love its combination of Roguelike in Bind of Isaac style as well as energy-cards such as Magic and Hearthstone. For guides: Silent (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eq6nKX_czmxEgV06YSsrl3qAukGa3Z3BtXBWarDdLWA/edit#gid=0, https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1331551053), Ironclad (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1270902550, https://spirelogs.com/stats/ironclad/tierlist.php). I also watched quite a few of JoINrbs's \"overexplaining X\" guides on Youtube.\n\nFor play styles per character, I like to first, play the game without any guides; second, follow set-in-stone guides first to get an understanding of the basic metagame; third, follow tier lists to get a basic understanding of the cards and follow my own wisdoms; fourth, learn more in-depth the metagame of what the viable styles are.\n\nMy favorite part of roguelikes is the ability for games to be so varied, and sometimes hilariously ridiculous based on catapulting on one really amazing event (e.g., Necromancer tome) or one really amazing relic (e.g., Snock Eye has 2 extra cards with confusion, which makes you then prioritize the most expensive-energy cards as well as as many Plunder Strikes which do damage and draw 2 cards) or one deck-defining card (Searing Blow). Some events are really worth gambling such as the Knowing Skull which you can spend literally all of your HP to get as many relics and colorless cards as possible.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/slay-the-spire"},{"id":"322682678652470860","title":"Spyro Reignited Trilogy: Spyro the Dragon","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Toys for Bob"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-04-05","completedDate":"2019-04-06","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The game is effectively a meticulous collectithon of Gems, Dragons, Dragon Eggs, and Skill Points. This makes it sound tedious, but it works well with its level design, diverse fun enemies, lush aesthetics, colorful characters, and cartoonish story. The levels are particularly well-integrated with the mechanics, incentivizing exploration to collect, and revisiting areas once you get new mechanics like flying. I love the soundtrack. It playing as you progress a level is so tone-setting. Also the enemy sounds like the Egg snatcher who taunts you. It's also an early successful attempt at ``open world'' gameplay: Spyro offers a collection of hub worlds feeling like an open world but without feeling like there's no open direction.\n\nCore mechanics are simple, and overloaded in uses: battling enemy varieties, chests, and exploration (e.g., gliding around hidden areas).\n\nI generally dislike puzzles in games, but Spyro does it well. They're part of the exploration, and mechanics to leran how to beat enemies or traverse a level are directly integrated into the mechanics, e.g., super charge to get higher jumps to areas, super flame to destroy metal doors or the impossible enemies.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ I love the idea of petrified dragons as checkpoints (equivalent of bonfires). They not only enable exploration to get them all but they also serve the dragon captured lor and add quips of dialogue for Spyro.\n+ The Sparx radar newly introduced in Reignited is a lifesaver. I can't imagine going through a whole level and then trying to find the one gem you missed..\n+ Cheat codes including cosmetics. Clearly a PS1-style generation trope.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ I hate the flight levels. It's a speedrun executing a perfect route, requiring knowing an often intuitive route and an unforgiving execution (take Sunny Flight for example).\n Wow at the convoluted two jumps in Tree Tops. That's rather difficult to see without knowing a priori.\n+ You can exit levels from the menu after reaching 100% instead of having to run all the way back to the exit. However, this does not work in Gnasty's World where there seems to be a trigger for opening the next level after you properly exit. That's inconsistent.\n\nSome memories:\n\n+ Entering the top outer boundary of Stone Hills. As a kid, I remember being so surprised at being in an area I thought was out of bounds of the game (like Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow).\n+ Arriving at Magic Crafters at the first time, hearing that music, and the arid landscape. So nostalgic.\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/spyro-reignited-trilogy\n\nThis entry includes all games, of which includes Spyro the Year of the Dragon which I played the first time. The recorded date is when I played and completed the first game, Spyro the Dragon. My total playtime is about 7 hours, getting 100% on all levels except for the flight levels and Skillpoints. I got 100% excluding Skillpoints later.\n\nThere's a high probability the game will be ported to PC just as Crash Bandicoot did a year after its release date. However I decided to play it now purely for the nostalgia (and because I'm home with Danny).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/spyro-the-dragon-reignited-trilogy"},{"id":"322682678652660300","title":"Spyro the Dragon","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PS3","PS1","PSP"],"studios":["Insomniac Games"],"publishers":["Universal Interactive Studios","Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","completedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/spyro-the-dragon"},{"id":"322682678624189004","title":"Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":1740,"platforms":["XBOX","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["BioWare"],"publishers":["LucasArts","Activision","Aspyr Media"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-04-08","completedDate":"2021-04-10","updatedDate":"2023-05-01","notes":"KOTOR is an excellent mix of CRPGs in its mechanics and quests, and MMOs in its controls and UI toward gameplay that leans more toward \"real-time\" than \"tactical\" in the RTWP system. Further, by doing this all in the Star Wars universe with decent story and characters, it's not surprising to see why KOTOR is such a fan favorite. Flaw-wise, I was not impressed by the fairly superficial story, not going deeper than it could be in its character development; and I found the RTWP combat system bothersome, not aging as well as a core MMO system embracing full real-time combat with keybindable actions would.\n\n__Story.__ The world-building is perhaps the most satisfying, alongside all the details in various quests that goes into building out the main story's progression. Characters all have intriguing personalities although they serve standard archetypes for the Star Wars franchise. HK-47 is really the only memorable character. Each planet is fairly barebones in fairly linear levels with the typical main and sidequests though, not really standing out in quest stories like Bethesda games.\n\n__Gameplay.__ KOTOR extends the Baldur's Gate combat system of D&D and real-time with pause combat with the star wars universe and MMO controls. These MMO controls and UI remain intuitive, aging well. There are even many keyboard shortcuts for most its action keys, even switching a given slot's feat/power/item and the generic interact key. I like KOTOR's mix of CRPG and MMO as it's single player third-person, and you can Tab-toggle to swap to different party members while letting the rest be controlled by AI. I find the RTWP unnecessary in the game however as KOTOR plays to its strength where you can focus on real-time for most all the combat, with less need for party micromanagement for maximal tactics. In fact, KOTOR would be better with World of Warcraft's combat, where all action choices are in real time, and you can further move while attacking to give the game a further sense of dynamism. RTWP is too weird a compromise between real-time combat (favoring dynamic reactions) and turn-based combat (favoring strategy and positioning).\n\nProgression-wise, I'm a fan of the single class -> advanced class choice combination. 3 classes of each is simple enough to enable different archetypes while still enabling replayability with different pathways. The stats of attributes, skill points (non-combat based), and feats (combat-based) work well alongside weapon upgrades for customizability. I'm also a fan of the alignment system, with the light vs dark working particularly well for the Star Wars universe, and is a mechanic I thoroughly enjoyed in Jade Empire.\n\nCompanions add to the complexity of battle, and with their own customizable progression with attributes, skills, and feats. It's not as deep as Bethesda games however, as you don't really maintain a companion relationship that has a lasting influence on dialogue choices. In Fallout: New Vegas, for example, one companion causes a whole faction to automatically attack you. There are companion quests, but they don't go very far. Gameplay-wise, the AI is extremely stupid and barely uses any feats, with limited preset scripts.\n\nI love KOTOR's force powers. They're all so powerful, and you even regenerate force points quickly as soon as you're out of battle. Force Jump is like a flashier and cooldown-less Charge from World of Warcraft. Flash Lightning not only does massive ranged DPS but is AOE. Crowd control powers like Fear not only incapacitate a target but also are cooldown-less and even let you hit them while incapacitated. If only the party AI had more scripting functions!\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Overall detail shows its age as a 3D game, but the soundtrack and voice acting for all lines remain great. Most obvious in its age are the very linear levels, with flat traversal in terrain and largely empty areas with sparse assets and NPCs.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The meta of delaying levels so you can accumulate them under your secondary class. It's great that you still gain XP while not saving levels. Adds a bit of extra challenge if you want to min max that way.\n+ Quests and levels are linear enough that it's easy to see how to complete the various missions. You never felt lost without an explicit waypoint.\n+ No enemy respawn (in most areas).\n+ The various minigames to give gameplay a change of pace: in particular, Pazaak and swoop racing.\n+ There's more than enough XP to reach max level. No need to worry about micromanaging XP gain like in Divinity.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ You can quick travel to your hideout in most areas in order to swap party members or upgrade items. It even heals you, so with the quick reload times on PC, it's easy to go back and forth in order to heal.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The game barely functions in 2021, without proper Windows 10, widescreen, or borderless.\n+ While most of the MMO-style controls have keyboard shortcuts to quickly navigate, several aspects (particularly menus like looting) still require mouse clicks.\n+ You can't see the specific buffs you have on in-game, only Up symbols. This means if you have 2+ buffs, you can't tell which one to reapply.\n+ There was never an incentive for me to buy items with my credits, or even start selling items given the infinite inventory space until endgame. Equipment is too easy to get from drops and quests.\n+ CON and Toughness retroactively increase your VP depending on previous level ups, but INT doesn't for skill points. Be consistent!\n+ No indicator that once you enter the Star Forge system, you're prevented from ever going back to the other worlds.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Playing KotOR in 2021](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1283127504) | [2560x1440p HUD correction files](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/3yqt0h/knights_of_the_old_republic_2560x1440_hud_files). I also followed [PCGamingWiki](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic) to enable borderless and [High Resolution Menus](https://deadlystream.com/files/file/1159-kotor-high-resolution-menus) to scale the menu resolutions. I was occasionally unable to move; I had to change my monitor settings to 60 hz and vsync on. Issues I still have: occasional game crashes; map size is too small; subtitle text is so small it requires squinting.\n+ Builds | [In-Depth Guide to Character Optimization](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=179329091), [REAPER511 Kotor Guide - Characters, Classes, and Mechanics Tutorial](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1772544091), [Optimized Consular and Guardian Builds](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/fv1j0f/kotor1_fully_optimized_consular_and_guardian)\n+ [StrategyWiki's walkthrough](https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic)\n+ Companions | [Guide 1](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1279740677), [Guide 2](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=840236617)\n\nOriginally, I was motivated to play because it's not only rated as a great game, but because it builds on BioWare's CRPG predecessors of Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, Deus Ex, and it influenced other strong BioWare RPG series like Mass Effect and Dragon Age.\n\nI didn't play any mods on my first playthrough, deliberately not using the [KOTOR restoration mod](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/52a86o/kotor_1_restored_mod_worth_it) as Bioware likely cut the content for a reason. I tried played blind, only using a walkthrough for builds and when I got stuck. But I kept falling into the trap of resorting to a wiki to see all dialogue options to confirm alignment, optimal pathing for rewards, and for any missed quests. As always, in retrospect the game would probably be more enjoyable if I left much of that enshrouded in mystery, and where I have to spend more time analyzing the dialogue text to make choices rather than rely on meta.\n\nBuild-wise, I went 2/18 Scout/Guardian, female, and dark side. I played on Easy difficulty while on Taris as level 2 and then swapped to Normal. By the time I advanced to Jedi, I immediately leveled up to 10. My early party was Carth / Mission, and I eventually settled with Mission / Jolee. I served melee DPS, tank, and force buffs, Mission served ranged DPS and non-combat skills and Jolee served force ranged DPS, crowd control, and heals. Endgame I was so OP I just went by myself, and only with Bastila for the convenience heals.\n\ntodos on future playthroughs\n+ jedi consular\n+ jedi sentinel","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic"},{"id":"322682678652662348","title":"StarCraft","status":"Completed","score":8,"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"2011-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Totally revolutionary in its time and still incredibly well-balanced now. It defined real-time strategy with so many difficult decisions with a constantly growing learning curve over years: macro, micro, unit and building control given constraint of 12 unit selection and 12 hotkeys, map domaination, minimap monitoring, beginning to late game play, rushes, abilities, the incredibly varied tactics.\n\nFor me personally, Use Map Settings has a soft spot in my nostalgia part of my brain having played this when I was in middle school. Custom mapping was so hugely popular in SC1 that it spawned several genres and game types. Long after non-hardcore competitors tired of the game's core RTS gameplay, they were able to log onto Bnet and sample arguably the widest variety of user-made content in the history of PC gaming. The highly varied, player-involved customization both in making new maps and playing them has lead to so many creative and amazingly fun games: Cat and Mouse, Dragon Ball Z (and similar) RPGs, tower defenses such as Poker D, Tarpit D, Maze D, Nazi D, and Build Your Own Lurker D, Dragon Ball Budoaki fighting games, Snipers, Helms Deep, Evolves, Rescue the Hostages vs Terrorists, Who's the Murderer, Bounds, RP maps, Cops and Robbers, Nuke the Whale, Kings and Knights, Dodge the Rapist. They would exploit game mechanics such as zergling burrowing to escape walls, gathering minerals for workers to glide against each other, how even the AI in movement such as with valkyries would lead to changes to the meta, scarab pathing, using allied enemies to make up sniper games, using dying units to define bound paths, beacons for powers, hacking mpqs to get new music.\n\nLots of minor annoyances: mission objective people not pressing start; lagged games; no speaking during 'Drop Players'; sometimes when players lose UMS, they are forced to leave under failed mission, which makes it difficult for them to rejoin the same game rehosted; no chat log to see text before it disappears; incredibly steep trial and error or 'host tells everyone' learning curves; leaving a lobby too early which forces list of games not to refresh for a while (this was fixed in the remastered/2017 updates).\n\nHonestly, I find it surprising that Starcraft could become such a defining eSport in the millenium. It's more like Chess than a team game such as Lol analogous to football. That there are so many people fascinated by Starcraft skills means there truly is potential to intelligent game-playing (combined with an amazing amount of actions per minute).\n\nPlaying the Remastered version on Mac. I love the map editor for learning intracies of use map settings games (especially hidden secrets). The native map editor isn't available on Mac. I used a Wine port of SCDraft 2 (http://www.stormcoast-fortress.net/cntt/software/scmdraft/wine-example)."},{"id":"322682678652735052","title":"Stardew Valley","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":3150,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","Switch 2","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","WiiU","Vita","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["ConcernedApe"],"publishers":["Chucklefish Games","ConcernedApe","505 Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Strategy","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-05-21","completedDate":"2022-05-30","updatedDate":"2025-08-21","notes":"Stardew Valley takes the essence of Harvest Moon and amplifies it with a significant amount of new features enhancing the core gameplay loop. I love its ideas for farming and all the events that keep the game feeling alive and that encourage you to participate in its diverse activities.\n\nFlaw-wise, the game is fairly grindy by nature. The crafting grind works well as you progress through content, but it can be annoying when you need to do the same monotonous activity multiple times. Combat is also superficial.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Gameplay loop of farming, foraging, fishing, mining. You progress with more money, skill levels (including profession specializations); building your farm and its efficiency under the array of crops, animals, and refinery-style crop tools; tool upgrades; NPC relationships; bundles to upgrade the community center; and cosmetic farm upgrades.\n\nI love settling into Stardew Valley’s routine and which you slowly progress to encounter new gameplay mechanics.\n\n+ On a normal day: wake up, interact with items in your house (e.g., coffee machine, Statue of Perfection), harvest any crops, attend to your animals, and check up on your equipment and tree harvests.\n+ On Fridays and Sundays, check the Trading Cart for items to complete your bundle or any other rare items. Friday evenings also have all villagers hang out at the Tavern, making it easy to talk to everyone at once.\n+ On Sundays (and Wednesdays for reruns), check the Cooking Channel to learn a new recipe. Or later in game, ready all your gift items to give to everyone now that it's reset.\n+ On days you’d like to mine, check the luck channel.\n+ Then you branch into multiple options such as expanding your farm (e.g., planting new crops, adding a building), fishing for quick cash and fish ingredients, foraging for wood resources, traversing the mine depths for ores, minerals, and artifacts, completing [quests](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Quests), and befriending villagers.\n\nThere are also special days with day-long events,[bookseller](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Bookseller) visits, and refreshed special order quests.\n\nThere's [plenty of goals](https://stardewcommunitywiki.com/Perfection) to achieve for the endgame. Roughly, I'd organize them under the following categories.\n\n+ Main goals\n  + [Community center bundles](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Bundles)\n  + [Quests](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Quests)\n  + Ginger Island, which is effectively a DLC-like expansion.\n  + Obtain [perfection](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Perfection) for the [Statue of Perfection](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Statue_Of_Perfection) and the [Statue of True Perfection](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Statue_Of_True_Perfection).\n+ Character goals\n  + Maximize all skills, including [masteries](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Skills#Mastery).\n  + Collect all permanent buffs, including stardrops and [power books](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Books).\n  + Optimize your gear, including [enchantments](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Forge#Enchantments).\n  + Optimize and personalize your farm in its crops, animals, trees, and Artisan Equipment. Examples of endgame goals include Greenhouse, [Obelisks](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Warp_Totem), [Return Scepter](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Return_Scepter), Horse Flute, [Statue of Endless Fortune](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Statue_Of_Endless_Fortune), Furniture Catalogue, Community Upgrade, and the [Gold Clock](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Gold_Clock).\n+ Side goals\n  + Complete Mines and Skull Cavern.\n  + Maximize villager relationships, including a spouse and kids.\n  + Donate all items to the Museum.\n  + Collections: catch every fish type including legendaries, cook every recipe, craft all items, all Golden Walnuts.\n\nOn the top of the hundreds of hours to 100% complete a playthrough, there's endless replayability through multiplayer, multiple farm layouts, and mods.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nIt's a simple cute 2D style you'd see in just about any indie RPG, not really that different from even Harvest Moon on the SNES. It ages well for Stardew Valley's purpose.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Every object can be repositioned. You can always readjust, say, scarecrow and sprinkler placement as you progress through upgrades or adapt to the seasons. Even buildings can be freely rearranged.\n+ The randomized fetch quests on the bulletin board encourage you to hoard most everything, so it all has a use. This also means in any new season, while one activity may be the minmax best, you’re still incentivized to pursue other activities.\n+ The Stable farm building. Having a mount makes so much sense for this game, leveraging the animal synergy and the improvement to movement speed.\n+ Movie Theater is such a nice addition to help reduce the grind in maximizing villager relationships.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ In the early game, I actually don't find this game to be relaxing due to trying to be efficient. Like Harvest Moon, there are seasonal events, and time of day matters. Stardew Valley even includes an energy meter so you have to consider what actions to perform on a given day wisely. It does become relaxing after you learn the mechanics and fall into a routine though.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ There's no visible radius for the area tools such as scarecrows and sprinklers. You effectively need to resort to an external planner or tediously count the full circle.\n+ The horse requires 2 spaces to move vertically, not 1. Thus makes arbitrary paths not crossable.\n+ You can't easily take hay out of silos. The workaround is to get hay from the feeder when your hay line isn't full on a coop or barn. However, this no longer works when you upgrade your coop or barn with an autofeeder. You then have to [use a bomb to destroy the hay line](https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/miq9gb/how_to_remove_hay_from_silos_when_you_have).\n+ The gift settings for each villager is arbitrary. You need to a fairly tedious rote memorization of what gifts you have work best for each villager.\n+ Artifact and Minerals obtained are most often done from geode-type items, and these sample with replacement. This means tracking down the last few is a huge pain, requiring an exponential number of geodes.\n+ The Windowed Borderless setting doesn't work well with Window's screenshot functionality. Pressing PrntScrn seems to trigger a screenshot at the last time you alt-tabbed out of the tab and not the actual moment. Fortunately, setting to Windowed + Borderless Gaming resolves this.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://stardewvalleywiki.com), including the [Bundles](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Bundles) page that I always have open\n+ [Stardew Planner](https://stardew.info)\n+ [Stardew Valley Checkup](https://mouseypounds.github.io/stardew-checkup). It's useful for checking detailed progress such as a checklist of what Golden Walnuts you may be missing instead of referring to the Parrot to find them one-by-one.\n+ [Stardew Predictor](https://mouseypounds.github.io/stardew-predictor). This is particularly helpful for hunting the last few Artifacts or Minerals.\n+ [Stardew Profits](https://thorinair.github.io/Stardew-Profits). Tells you the most profitable crop to buy, taking into account remaining days in the season, fertilizer, etc.\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/FarmsofStardewValley\n\nGeneral notes.\n+ [Getting Started wiki](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Getting_Started) provides the open objectives to build momentum in the early game. [Reddit: Year One guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/5ewiqk/year_one_guide) is a minmax guide which can be helpful to narrow decision-making, though it makes gameplay more limiting and is also slightly dated.\n+ [Best crops for each season](https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/rn4db6/what_are_the_best_crops_for_each_season). See also the [crops](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Crops) wiki article for the statistics.\n+ [Farm copper on level 20, iron on level 40/60, and gold on level 80/90](https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/5p1d30/whats_your_guys_best_way_to_farm_copper_ore)\n+ __Farm layout.__\n  + A [15x15 layout](https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/ponj0c/consider_using_a_15x15_layout_for_your_farm_plots) scales perfectly in progression for 1x3 Watering Can -> 1x5 Watering Can -> Quality Sprinklers -> Iridium Sprinklers -> Iridium Sprinklers + Jumino Hut  -> Iridium Sprinklers with Pressure Nozzles + Jumino Hut. 6 Scarecrows cover the full area when placed on the middle left and right edges and 4 corners; and for the late game layout with a Jumino Hut, 1 Deluxe Scarecrow or 4 Scarecrows can fit in the center. [Quality Sprinkler example](https://stardew.info/planner/13-soft-owls-played-merrily)\n  + To handle Trellis crops before the Jumino hut, stagger rows of Trellis crops so there's always a row of crops you can step over.\n+ __Greenhouse and Ginger Island Farm.__\n  + The optimal layout for Greenhouse and [Ginger Island Farm](https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/rhhpad/having_a_full_ginger_island_farm_of_ancient) is a crop at every tillable soil tile. Deluxe Retaining Soil replace the need for sprinklers.\n  + [The optimal crop setup for Greenhouse](https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/5rd3cz/whats_the_best_crops_for_the_greenhouse) uses Hops followed by Ancient Fruit. However, this requires tending to the greenhouse every day and almost 400 Kegs. Using Ancient Fruit provides roughly 25% less but only requires a weekly harvest and 120 Kegs. In any case, you can place 18 Fruit Trees on the walls of the Greenhouse as free space (of the fruits, Bananas are the most profitable but can also be kept for variety as they provide little money).\n  + You can sync your Greenhouse and Shed harvests so that you only visit them on the same day of a week. Have an extra keg next to the door so that once it pops, it's time to harvest.\n+ __Coops and Barns.__\n  + There's no downside to leaving the door open for Coops and Barns. The possibility of a wild animal attack only occurs if the door is in fact _closed_, and the animal can't get back in. Mood is not affected by leaving the door open either.\n  + With a fully upgraded Coop and Barn, there's 24 animals. To last winter's 28 days, this is 672 hay. Each Silo can store 240 hay, so you need [3 Silos](https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/4agb99/how_many_silos_do_we_need). You can technically do with 1 Silo and a chest to store hay, but Silos automatically fill up and don't require micromanagement.\n  + I carry around Mayonnaise / Duck Mayonnaise (which work for everyone except Caroline, Jas, Sam, Sebastian, and Vincent) and fruits (which work for everyone) I picked up in the morning as gifts as I wander around town doing whatever I'm doing. Alternatively, [diamonds](https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/4e5ibd/what_is_the_single_best_gift_to_give_everyone) but I prefer setting Crystalariums to Ruby or Jade.\n  + If all your animals are at max hearts, you don't need to pet them. You lose 5 points, but they get 8 for eating grass outside so this balances in the end, even compensating for rainy days. You will need to pet them during the winter or otherwise farm Skull Cavern for the Auto-Petter.\n+ For tapper trees and wood farming, I prefer the aesthetic of a [grid](https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/16pidzk/is_my_tree_tapper_farm_bad_never_done_this_thx). You can use a [checkerboard offset pattern](https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/4fqezp/has_somebody_done_a_tapper_farm) not only for maximum space efficiency but it also makes the tapping notification readily visible. Without the offset pattern, you have to go underneath each tree to see the tapping notification as they don’t all bear items at the same time. [Add flooring in the tree spacing](https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/hgi9wr/if_i_put_paths_around_all_the_other_tree_will) to prevent new items like seeds to appear and interrupt pathing. You can also [plant trees in the railroad and quarry](https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/7srxwt/planting_trees_for_tappers_spacing), albeit without the ability to add flooring requiring more maintenance.\n+ Set Crystalarium to Jade in order to trade for Staircases with the Desert Trader, effectively obtaining 1 every 2 days. This is vital for Skull Cavern to skip monster infested floors and annoyingly large floors. Set another to Ruby to trade for Spicy Eels as a buff during Skull Cavern. Diamonds are gold optimal, offering 150g/day (4200/season) which is helpful in early game. It is negligible later as your crop profit significantly outpaces that value.\n\n__Equipment.__ I use the following [clothing](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Clothing).\n\n+ [Ring](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Rings): [Lucky Ring](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Lucky_Ring) x  [Burglar's Ring](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Burglar%27s_Ring), [Lucky Ring](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Lucky_Ring) x [Iridium Band](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Iridium_Band). Other alternatives are [Napalm Ring](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Napalm_Ring).\n+ [Footwear](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Footwear): [Mermaid Boots](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Mermaid_Boots)\n+ [Trinket](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Trinkets): \n[Perfect Ice Rod](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Ice_Rod). Its best feature is it [prevents knockback](https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/1hvx89r/which_trinket_is_your_favorite/m5wnh67), which dramatically reduces kill time.\n\nI use the following hotkey order. See also [weapons](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Weapons), [tools](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Tools), [enchantments](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Forge#Enchantments).\n\n1. Weapon: [Galaxy Hammer](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Galaxy_Hammer) with 3x Weapon Speed, Artful\n2. Pickaxe: Iridium Pickaxe with Swift\n3. Axe: Iridium Axe with Shaving or Swift\n4. Scythe: Iridium Scythe\n5. Fishing Pole: Advanced Iridium Rod with Preserving, 1x trap tackle 1x cork tackle, [Challenge Bait](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Challenge_Bait) (not easily farmed) or Deluxe Bait (farmed via Deluxe Worm Bin). For optimal fishing, use [Seafoam Pudding](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Seafoam_Pudding).\n6. Hoe: Iridium Hoe with Archaeologist or Reaching\n7. Pan: Iridium Pan with Generous\n8. [Return Scepter](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Return_Scepter)\n9. [Horse flute](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Horse_Flute)\n\nOther equipment that aren't dedicated hotkeys.\n\n+ Trash Can: Iridium Trash Can\n+ Watering Can: Iridium Watering Can with Bottomless\n\n__Buffs.__\nThere are many permanent buffs to obtain. My favorite to actively prioritize are the following. See also [books](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Books).\n\n+ [Special Charm](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Special_Charm): +0.025 daily luck\n  + Get [Magnifying Glass](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Magnifying_Glass) ASAP to find secret notes.\n+ [Way of the Wind pt. 1](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Way_Of_The_Wind_pt._1) and [pt. 2](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Way_Of_The_Wind_pt._2): +0.5 player speed\n+ [Horse: The Book](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Horse:_The_Book): +0.5 horse speed\n+ [7x Stardrop](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Stardrop): +238 max energy\n+ Mine Carts, [Obelisks](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Warp_Totem), [Return Scepter](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Return_Scepter), [Horse Flute](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Horse_Flute), [Mini-Obelisk](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Mini-Obelisk): Fast travel\n\nI use the following daily buffs. See also [masteries](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Mastery_Cave).\n\n+ [Statue of Blesings](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Statue_Of_Blessings)\n+ [Statue of the Dwarf King](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Statue_Of_The_Dwarf_King)\n+ [Horse](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Animals#Horse) with Carrot\n\n__Dungeons.__ For Skull Dungeon especially, the best inventory is the following.\n\n1. Weapon. Bring one with Crusader for Mummies and Insect Killer for Armored Bugs.\n2. Pickaxe\n3. 150+ [Bomb](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Bomb): Buy from Dwarf.\n4. 20+ [Staircase](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Staircase): Buy from Desert Trader on Sundays using Jade from Crystalarium or craft.\n5. 100+ [Salad](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Salad): Buy from Saloon.\n6. 15+ [Triple Shot Espresso](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Triple_Shot_Espresso): [Coffee Maker](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Coffee_Maker) or buy from Saloon. The minmax is [Ginger Ale](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Ginger_Ale) or [Shrimp Cocktail](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Shrimp_Cocktail) with [Qi Seasoning](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Qi_Seasoning) but they are not easily farmable.\n7. 15+ [Spicy Eel](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Spicy_Eel): Buy from Desert Trader using Ruby from Crystalarium. The minmax is [Magic Rock Candy](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Magic_Rock_Candy) bought from Desert Trader on Thursdays using Prismatic Shards from [Statue of True Perfection](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Statue_Of_True_Perfection).\n8. Return Scepter\n\nGo on a neutral-to-high luck day and use [Desert Obelisk](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Desert_Obelisk). The food & drink buffs provide [+2 speed (max)](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Speed) and [+1 luck](https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Luck). Don’t worry about passing out: a max of 1000g penalty is cheap.\n\n### Playthrough: 2022-05-21 to 2022-05-30\n\n__My skill profession choices.__\n\n+ Farming: Tiller -> Artisan.\n+ Mining: Miner -> Prospector. Miner is key for the early rush to Quality and Iridium Sprinklers, and it's much needed as you farm Copper and Iron Ore for Kegs. Late game, I can always switch to Geologist -> Gemologist which is useful for profits on a Lava Eel fish pond. Grinding for ore and coal is unnecessary late game as it's more efficient to buy non-Iridium ore and coal from the blacksmith. A single run through Skull Dungeon accumulates hundreds of ores (Iridium included).\n+ Foraging: Gatherer -> Botanist.\n+ Fishing: Fisher -> Pirate.\n+ Combat: Fighter -> Brute.\n+ Cave: Fruit Bats.\n\n__Farm layout.__\n[My midgame layout plan (Year 1 Fall-Year 2 Summer)](https://stardew.info/planner/16-free-peafowl-felt-jovially)\n+ The right shed contains chests.\n+ The left shed contains Kegs and 1 Preserved Jar.\n+ In the open space, I have equipment that only consume a short amount of time and require frequent usage: furnaces, recycling machine, seed maker, crystalarium.\n+ The coop houses 1 Duck, 1 Rabbit, 1 Void Chicken, and 9 Chickens. It has an Auto-Grabber and Auto-Petter. For ease of access, I put 11 Mayonnaise Machines and 1 Loom in there so I can attend to it at the same time I pick up the new items.\n+ The barn houses 1 Cow, 1 Sheep, 1 Goat, and 9 Pigs. It has an Auto-Grabber and Auto-Petter. For ease of access, I put 18 Oil Makers, 2 Cheese Presses, and 1 Loom in there so I can attend to it at the same time I pick up the new items.\n\n[This is roughly my endgame layout (Year 2 and 3)](https://stardew.info/planner/18-happy-crows-engaged-cordially).\n\n__Miscellanea.__ I hoard roughly 5 of each item and sell otherwise. According to the in-game counter, Year 1 took me 44 hours and Year 2 took me 88 hours. In Year 1, I completed every bundle with the exception of Bulletin Board. I stopped playing the game during Spring Year 3. I played for 97 hours. I did everything except for the collection achievements and only did a few of Mr. Qi's quests.\n\n### Playthrough: 2025-07-20\n\nI played coop with Marisa and on Meadowlark Farm, the latest map layout from 1.6.\n\nMods\n+ [SMAPI](https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/2400)\n+ [NPC Map Locations](https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/239)\n+ [Lookup Anything](https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/541)\n+ [Automate](https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/1063)\n+ [Better Junimos](https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/2221)\n+ [Deluxe Grabber Redux](https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/20799)\n\nChoices\n+ Cave: Mushrooms.\n\nDustin's professions\n+ Farming: Tiller → Agriculturist\n+ Mining: Miner → Prospector\n+ Foraging: Gatherer → Botanist\n+ Fishing: Fisher → Pirate\n+ Combat: Fighter → Brute\n  + TODO: Respec to Acrobat.\n\nMarisa's professions\n+ Farming: Tiller → Artisan\n+ Mining:\n+ Foraging:\n+ Fishing:\n+ Combat:","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/stardew-valley"},{"id":"322682678650363468","title":"Super Mario 64","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["N64","Wii","WiiU"],"studios":["Nintendo EAD"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-11-29","completedDate":"2020-12-03","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Super Mario 64 (SM64) set the precedent for the 3D platformer genre. Controls with analog stick in a 3D world were innovative, and Mario's moveset significantly increased in complexity with the ability to express personal style. Played in modern times (2020), Super Mario 64's moveset remains one of the most nuanced of all time, favoring momentum over precision. Levels are also well-designed to take advantage of the 3D, and there's a wide variety of enemies and platforming challlenges. The core theme of a platforming world teeming with secrets was executed perfectly.\n\nCon-wise, the game's camera does not age well, being wonky with the lack of proper manual control. I also prefer more direction in knowing the objective where each star is instead of wandering haphazardly. It can be quite annoying overcoming a platforming hurdle but the star is nowhere to be seen.\n\n__Story.__ Typical of Super Mario games.\n\n__Gameplay.__ New to the series, SM64 introduced the concept of a collectathon: a hub world with a core collectible, Power Stars, scattered throughout 15 stages, with a requirement of 70/120 to beat the game. This paved the way for a whole subgenre including games like Spyro, Banjo Kazooie, and Jak and Daxter. HP is renamed the Power Meter with 8 HP, with Coins and Spinning Hearts replenishing them (no longer do you need 100 to do so!). Death means forcible removal of a stage with Game Over returning to the Title Screen. Fortunately, because each level is fairly short, and you forcibly exit the stage and save after every Power Star, SM64 makes for the most forgiving Mario game during its conception.\n\nSuper Mario 64 introduces a myriad of moves to its moveset, placing emphasis more than ever on momentum as king: higher jumps and faster movement at the sacrifice of quick turns and precise air control like its SNES titles. The moveset inherits the usual tap vs hold Jump, Run, Crouch, Ground Pound, Pick Up. And it introduces Double Jump from timing the second jump (Single, Double, and Wall Jumps of which can be made higher by holding the Jump button and/or running), Triple Jump (timing after Double Jump and while moving at a certain speed), Punch with B (Dive with run+B followed by Rollout with A as you land, Kick with jump+B, Slide Kick with run+crouch+B, Sweep Kick with crouch+B), Backward Somersault (a more animated and backwards-moving version of 2D Super Marios' crouch-jump), Long Jump (run+crouch+jump), Wall Jump (jumping toward a wall), Sideflip (run then halt, then choose a direction and Jump), Crawl (with crouch+movement), Ledge Grab.\n\nWhile not all these moves end up being part of a regular gamer's toolkit, they enable emergent patterns. For example:\n\n+ Dive+Rollout for fast ground movement.\n+ Long Jump for far stationary jumps and accelerating from a standstill.\n+ Kick+Double+Triple Jump for highest jumps.\n+ Backward Somersault or Sideflip for high stationary jumps.\n+ Kicks for jumping up slopes.\n+ Rollout off cliffs to circumvent fall damage.\n\nI love the open-endedness of the compactly designed levels. The fast iteration loop with collecting each star is excellent. Most of the time it feels very rewarding to start a new stage and start to pick up all its Power Stars. Each has a sufficiently diverse objective to not feel redundant. Some also have quirks, such as where you enter determining the amount of water in the world, Tiny vs Huge, or Tick Tock Clock.\n\nTerrain includes standard, slopes (with slope areas), hang climbing, snow, sand, water. Power-ups are unlocked by going to certain areas after unlocking enough Power Stars, including Wing Cap, Metal Cap, Vanish Cap.\n\nSM64's camera control is its worst element. Super Mario 64 helped the idea of a manual camera control and is often touted for setting the precedent. But its implementation is not the right one: there are only two buttons to move left and right in the camera, and the camera defaults back to the original view making you feel like you're fighting against the camera as it's stuck to mostly the game's prediction at the best camera angle. In reality, Super Mario 64's camera control is more like Super Mario World's where you can use pan a bit farther to the left/right of a level but you always default back to the game-directed camera. In addition, SM64 features two camera modes: Mario and Lakitu view; and a zoomed-in, normal, and zoomed-out view. You almost always want to stay at the zoomed-out view with Lakitu.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Holding no nostalgia for this game, Super Mario 64's graphics are at the 3D console era where they don't age well. The character models and environments are blocky and pixelated, lacking the pixel precision of its SNES parents and the artistry of succesors like Super Mario Galaxy.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Each Red Coin you collect highlights the current number Red Coins you've collected. No need to count to 8!\n+ There are so many variations given Mario's moveset to be able to obtain a Power Star. Tons of replayability.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Cutscene dialog takes up the whole screen instead of the bottom.\n+ Super Mario 64's underwater stages: fuck Jolly Roger Bay and Dire Dire Docks. Swimming is bad in almost all games (see also, e.g., Banjo Kazooie's Rusty Bucket Bay and Ocarina of Time's Water Temple).\n+ Some stars would be infuriating without the benefit of emulator savescumming. For example: Snowman's Lost His Head, Big Boo's Balcony, Free Flying for 8 Red Coins, Over the Rainbows.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n+ [Super Mario 64 movement guide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyu1KO3x5Ps)\n\nI played the remake on the DS via a Nintendo DS emulator (DeSmuME). The remake adds more content with stars, palyable characters, and polished graphics; but the DS lacks an analog stick which even with the 3DS' Circle Pad does not fix. I originally played the game in April 2019 but did not get far. Picking it up again, I replayed the original on Project 64. I got almost all Power Stars (95) except for the ones in each stage requiring collection of all Coins. I found those ones too tedious. I followed the Mario Wiki to find out where all the Power Stars and Secret Levels are as I didn't have the patience to go searching myself.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-mario-64--1"},{"id":"322682678650376780","title":"Super Mario Bros. 3","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1988,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["WiiU"],"studios":["Nintendo R&D2"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Nintendo"],"genres":["Platform"],"startedDate":"2020-11-07","completedDate":"2020-11-08","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"SMB 3 is the first true sequel in the Super Mario series: it's unlike the Lost Levels which are more like an SMB expansion pack, and SMB2 which is a reskin of Doki Doki Panic. SMB 3 introduces a few new mechanics and stands out most in its stellar and diverse level designs. It feels most like a complete game.\n\n__Gameplay.__ SMB 3 notably introduces a world map for the first time in the series with fortress and enemy levels, and also features several new power-ups: Tanooki (Racoon), Frog, Hammer. Power-ups also enable a health pool of 3 (attacking turning you back to Super Mario, then back to Small Mario). Hill-sliding can be an attack. Course cards at the end of a level enable stocking more lives.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Colored and revitalized graphics over SMB1 and The Lost Lives.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ You can cheese quite a few levels by exploiting the P meter and P wing mechanic to zoom by many areas.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ You can exit levels you already beat by holding down Start + pressing Select.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Death penalty-wise, SMB 3 makes a huge quality of life change in the death penalty: you have an unlimited amount of continues after running out of lives, where the death penalty is starting the world again and resetting your score to 0. There are some persistent elements like Locked Doors being unlocked (enabling shortcuts to persist as well as fortresses, Enemy Courses, and items. This is an improvement but still not enough. This is coming 2 years after the first Legend of Zelda game, which featured a save. SMB3 should have had this too. I personally did not have the patience still so I ended up savescumming in order to treat the platformer more casually. (Note infinite continues is also only true in the USA version; JP still has only 2 extra continues.)\n+ 7-Fortress #1 is stupidly contrived and difficult to land the vertical pipe.\n+ 7-6 has a terrible design in never teaching you how to orient the moving platforms.\n+ Some levels look insanely difficult to try without savescumming.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on the emulator Higan because I already set it up as the most accurate SNES emulator. I did many optional levels but not all of them.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-mario-advance-4-super-mario-bros-3--1"},{"id":"322682678652465740","title":"Super Mario Galaxy","status":"Completed","score":8,"startedDate":"2019-04-14","completedDate":"2019-04-17","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Super Mario Galaxy is a masterpiece in the franchise. It innovates with gravity-based level designs which are sprawling with connected mini-worlds and innovative concepts (e.g., blasting through a zone with blue and orange stars; using the Wiimote to collect Star Bits and perform other interactions; fusing 2D and 3D platforming); beautiful, diverse environments; an orchestral soundtrack; and an overall refinement with its Spin move, powerups, and enemy variety. The overall cohesiveness of Super Mario Galaxy as a grand, galactic adventure is executed very well. Like Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy is also a pinnacle example of its console generation, where here SMG integrates the Wii's sensor bar and Wiimote accelerometer. The story is not as minimal as 2D-style Mario games, and for the better.\n\nCommon among many games in the series, I find Mario's major flaw is threefold: sluggish controls which favor acceleration and momentum over precision (replaying in 2021, I've gone to appreciate it more); lacking camera control; and jump scenarios as a staple challenge. The first flaw is subjective: I just can't stand the momentum. The imprecision is objectively bad at times in Super Mario Galaxy however; for example, the underwater controls are too difficult to move to a specific location and get an item. I do like that unlike other platformers like Crash, Mario has much more complexity in its jumping moveset, enabling advanced players to express themselves under more nuance. For the second, a directed camera can be great, but Super Mario Galaxy's often warps depth perception and can lead to incorrectly timed jumps/attacks. Third, I'm just not a fan of Mario-style platformers, as one core element is jumping from one platform to the next. The challenge of landing such jumps, and often punishing failure with death, feels artificial: jump challenges are not something I look for in a video game unless they're more immersed as part of the video game.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Mario games have always been collectithons, primarily focused on Stars and with a few secondary collectibles: here, Star Bits, Coins, and 1-Ups. I love how in Mario games overall that collectithons have never really been tedious as, for example, Spyro can sometimes be. Because the goal is only the maximum number of Stars, you can still zoom by levels and not enter every crevice in fear of missing on one item as you can in Spyro. Mario does not incenvitize full exploration, and for the better. This is especially important for Mario games where the pacing and rhythm of constant moving momentum is important.\nDifficulty-wise, the game is surprisingly hard for a modern Nintendo games. It harkens back to the SNES era as I would die (and occasionally Game Over) quite often in timing the right mechanics. I like this level of difficulty.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ I love the feeling of collecting Star Bits with the Wiimote scrambled across the screen.\n+ The movement of blasting off from world to world feels fantastic. It adds a sense of rhythm and to the lore that more ad hoc platformers like Super Mario 64 doesn't do.\n+ Challenge runs. Although they repeat content, I like the sense of rhythm they add. Fore example, bosses are easy once you know the tactic. But Daredevil adds an additional sense of fun by forcing you to execute it flawlessly.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ The dialog during gameplay pauses the pacing and feels almost too slow. Signposts still exist. I'd much rather faster text scrolling and/or the ability to move while conversing.\n+ Saving the game pauses the rest of the game, so you have to wait for it. This is a few seconds but it adds up with the rest of the cutscenes to ~10-20s to go from completing one galaxy and selecting the next. Very tedious.\n+ Underwater is an especailly notorious example of how bad the inflexible camera can be.\n+ There are too many bosses with only slight deviations.\n+ There's no indicator when you should be applying Spirit Vision. This makes it often impossible to know unless you spam it or look up how to progress specific quests.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/super-mario-galaxy/Walkthrough\n+ https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-super-mario-galaxy-1-hd-texture-mod, https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-how-to-install-texture-packs-custom-textures-info\n\nI played on a Wii emulator (Dolphin) with the HD texture mod. The HD textures signicantly help in making the game feel more modern with 1080p/4K resolution; it is a jarring experience however that cutscenes and certain areas are not re-textured. I would use a Wii sensor bar and Wiimote for the optimal vision of the game on modern hardware. However, for convenience I ended up using Keyboard and Mouse (used default layout, and switched for Roll/Surf levels); see this for Xbox One controller (https://www.reddit.com/r/DolphinEmulator/comments/7m5h2m/what_is_the_best_control_setup_for_mario_galaxy/). I don't have enough games to warrant owning the Wii equipment. The Keyboard and Mouse combo does lead to a noticeable difference in experience as you have to change controls for certain levels, and certain mechanics are just harder/easier on the Wiimote (I think the mouse cursor is much more precise than the Wiimote sensor, which makes Bubble Breeze easier to control.) I beat the game with 100 stars. I missed some of the 120 stars possible with Mario: 2 Luigi hidden stars, the 3 Trial Galaxies, and all 15 purple stars after you beat the game."},{"id":"322682678650371660","title":"Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1995,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["?","SNES","SFAM"],"studios":["Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Hyundai","St. GIGA","Playtronic"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-11-12","completedDate":"2020-11-14","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Yoshi's a great advance building on the level design of SMW but with some of its own creative flair: its art style, its playable character of Yoshi and its unique mechanics.\n\n__Story.__ The same old save the kidnapped. At least with this time, it's to save Baby Luigi, and with the Yoshis as the main character. Beginning cutscenes are beautiful. I think the idea of a relay system between Yoshis is cute.\n\n__Gameplay.__ As the first in a whole new series, Yoshi's Island adds a bundle of new mechanics for Yoshi: for example, hover jump, punch, creating and throwing eggs, groundpound (in some Mario games). There is no run. Health is defined by moving too far from Baby Mario for a total of 10 seconds, and which slowly refills. Levels no longer have a timer. There are still power-ups, e.g., helicopter, Poochy, Super Baby Mario, mole, car. There is no climbing platforming, replaced with mini-platform stairs. Bosses are all uniquely designed and creative.\n\nDeath penalty-wise, Yoshi's Island is one of the earliest games adopting the modern trend of auto-saving, enabling permanent completion of a level (~2000-2020 at least). Here, the death penalty simply means restarting the existing level and at the latest checkpoint. Game Over after running lives means losing checkpoint progress, but not multiple level progress as in all previous titles. I'm so grateful for this as it makes me less reliant on emulator save states: I can finally play the full game with minimal frustration regarding deaths (though I can still be frustrated, and sometimes for good reasons a game should make one like this, but constrained to only losing progress within a level).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ THe handdrawn style makes it look even better than SMW in defining a unique style, and is just as colorful.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The 3D obstacles are sooo weird. They have zero detail and look out of place.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on the emulator Higan as it is the most accurate SNES emulator.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-mario-world-2-yoshi-s-island"},{"id":"330244326572425807","title":"Super Metroid","originalTitle":"スーパーメトロイド","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":1994,"playtimeMinutes":450,"platforms":["SNES","Wii","WiiU","New 3DS","SFAM"],"studios":["Nintendo R&D1"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Playtronic"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2023-08-25","completedDate":"2023-08-30","updatedDate":"2023-09-05","notes":"Super Metroid is the most iconic Metroid game, founding the metroidvania genre alongside Castlevania Symphony of the Night which arrived 3 years later. Super Metroid excels most in level design, exploration, atmosphere, and power-up abilities. Compared to Metroid 1, it is more polished and features newer content involving power-up abilities, enemies, level variety, and bosses.\n\nWhile the world is tightly interconnected, Super Metroid often gets you lost and encourages lengthy backtracking and exploring areas without necessarily a goal in mind beyond visiting unvisited areas. It's particularly annoying due to the lack of quality of life features present in modern metroidvanias: notably, a more feature-filled map indicating what is blocked and by what; and fast travel. I found this a significant detractor to the game's pacing. AT the least, a walkthrough to guide me greatly assisted in pacing.\n\n__Story.__\nMinimal and standard for a (S)NES game. Story is not Metroid's appeal.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nThe core gameplay loop of exploring open areas, accumulating new abilities, and unlocking gates is the same as in Metroid.\n\nSuper Metroid has more power-up abilities. These power-up abilities really are at the apex of Metroid games, showing what a true Metroidvania is like. Power-up abilities like Rocket, Ice Beam, and Hi-Jump fundamentally change the way you play the rest of the game and don't solely act as keys to progress through ability-gated areas. Power-ups stack, so attacks go from a normal single beam -> triple Spazer beam -> triple Spazer beam with Ice Beam -> double Plasma beam with Ice Beam; and jumping goes Hi-Jump Boots -> Space Jump -> Screw ATtack.\n\n__Level design.__\nSuper Metroid's world is expanded over Metroid 1 and 2 with more zones. The interconnectedness of the world is what makes the level design particularly strong.\n\nProgression through areas and backtracking can still be unintuitive, particularly in the first third and last third of the game (until you reach Norfair and after you reach Wrecked Ship respectively). You have to backthrough whole areas, and it's not clear where to go next: for example, Speed Boost -> Ice Beam in Norfair -> Power Bomb in Brinstar -> Grappling Beam in Norfair, destroying the water tunnel in Maridia with a Power Bomb. Sometimes you also have to spam mines or shoot something something in order pass through hidden tiles. The map greatly assists in providing direction over Metroid 1, but a lot is left to be desired.\n\nAs an [article puts well](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-invisible-hand-of-super-metroid), Metroid's design philosophy is to leave the player at their own curiosity to explore the maze of areas and to backtrack as needed to visit unvisited areas that might be new unlocked with a new ability. The idea is to not guarantee progression but at minimum to find something cool or obtain a new item (e.g., missile expansions and energy tanks). I much prefer the path of modern metroidvanias, including Symphony of the Night itself, where it's generally clear where to go next, and blocked areas are marked clearly are by what ability so you can always decide to revisit the area at specific times once you unlock the ability rather than have to remember everything.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nPixel graphics are at its peak in the SNES era. The sprites, color, and soundtrack age well.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ An in-game map. No longer do you get completely lost in the mazes that define the NES games.\n+ Energy / missile stations to replenish health and ammo.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Map could be significantly improved. Doors aren't marked. Gated areas aren't marked by the obstacle (or even that there is an obstacle), so you have to explicitly remember where to revisit after you unlock a power-up. You can't switch maps to another area beyond the area you're in. There's a dot indicating an item that can be collected, and there's no distinction between items you already collected and items that you haven't collected.\n+ No fast travel given the backtracking across areas of the map (e.g., after collecting Ice Beam in Norfair, you go to Brinstar to collect Power Bomb, then back to Norfair to fight Crocomire and get the Grappling Beam).\n+ X-Ray Scope is useless. It has limited FOV and requires active usage. In the time it takes to scan an area with the X-Ray Scope (which is already tedious), you could just spam mines and other attacks at the walls.\n+ The timing for [space jump](https://www.reddit.com/r/Metroid/comments/wmo6wn/how_do_i_space_jump_in_super_metroid) is finicky and can be frustrating if you don't get the rhythm. There's no ingame explanation for any of your power-up abilities, so you're stuck trying things to learn how to use them yourself.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [VideoChums walkthrough](https://videochums.com/article/super-metroid-walkthrough). I found this walkthrough the easiest to read given its screenshots of maps with indicators of where various power-up abilities are located.\n+ [Map](https://metroid.retropixel.net/games/metroid3/metroid3_map.gif)\n+ [Obstacles guide](https://metroid.retropixel.net/games/metroid3/obstacles.php)\n+ [Analysis article: The Invisible Hand of Super Metroid](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-invisible-hand-of-super-metroid)\n+ [List of all items](https://www.reddit.com/r/Metroid/comments/ajeqbd/super_metroid_item_collection_percentage_question/)\n\n__Version.__ I played on the emulator Higan as it is the most accurate SNES emulator. Plus, I already set it up on my PC for NES/Sega/ Genesis/SNES games in the past: Super Mario Bros. 1-3, Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog, Metroid, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong Country 2, Harvest Moon.\n\n__Playthrough.__ I generally used the emulator quicksave at the beginning of areas in order to deal with the tedium at recollecting supplies or reloading the game from the save room after dying to a boss. The game is generally quite easy and forgiving in damage, so I think the quicksave helped streamline the game while not making it trivial.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-metroid"},{"id":"330563936086655568","title":"SWAT 4: Gold Edition","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2006,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Irrational Games"],"publishers":["Sierra Entertainment","Vivendi Universal","Activision"],"genres":["Shooter","Strategy","Tactical"],"startedDate":"2022-05-02","completedDate":"2022-05-03","updatedDate":"2023-07-09","notes":"SWAT 4 is arguably the best example of a tactical FPS steeped in realism. Your goal is to arrest the suspects and rescue civilians, and your performance is graded from 1 to 100 including how you take on suspects (lethal vs incapacitated vs arrested).\n\n__Gameplay.__\nTactical elements:\n\n+ Compliance. There are both suspects and civilians. You order everyone to surrender, tie them down, report, and confiscate evidence including weapons.\n+ Handling locked doors with lockpick, C4, or breaching shotgun.\n+ Less-lethal options of punch, sandbag shotgun, taser, flashbang vs gas vs stinger grenade, and pepper spray.\n+ Headgear including NVGS, Gas Mask, Ballistic Facemask, and Anti-Flash Goggles.\n+ Controlled movement options affecting your sound with run, walk, and crouch.\n+ Accuracy is much like Counter-Strike where you're incentivized to stand still before shooting. Moving greatly reduces your accuracy and crouching increases it.\n+ Low time to kill.\n+ Lighting options: flashlight, night vision, lightsticks (also important for signalling a room is cleared).\n+ Mirror gun (optiwand) for checking traps on doors or around corners.\n+ Magazines, not per bullet ammunition.\n+ Freelean.\n+ There's a briefing for preparing before a mission, such as displaying the map's blueprint. Reminds me of Payday 2.\n+ Shoot through doors.\n+ Gear system is balanced by weight. You can stack up on as many magazines and effectively a ton of grenades if you'd like. And you can unequip your secondary and other items to reduce weight.\n\nLevel design is stellar in this game. Levels feel lived in and reveal a lot about the story beyond the existing briefing. This is something I appreciate even more after playing Ready or Not, which has none of this as it's closer to a sandbox roguelike.\n\nYou control 4 fellow SWAT NPC AIs. Commands vary who you talk to and the specific action. Most notably, voice control lets you look at a door and say \"Red, C2, gas, clear\" and they'll blow up the door, throw a gas can, and clear the room; or you can say \"Restrain all\". When splitting up a team you can use their viewport to see what's going on. This enables an unprecedented level of immersion where I felt using squad AI was actually a fun part of the gameplay and not something I would play assuming their worst like companions in an RPG.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Clearly dated.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Getting shot in the leg is annoying and not fun. You're nerfed the whole rest of the level walking too slowly. You may as well restart when this happens.\n+ Aim down sights is toggle-only.\n+ The game is janky at times where it's unclear how an NPC can see you through obstacles or sometimes NPCs don't see you at all.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [SWAT 4's speech grammar](https://www.moddb.com/mods/speech-recognition-improvement/features/speech-grammar)\n\nThis entry includes the base game and its expansion The Stetchkov Syndicate. Reading online, I played with the [Elite Force](https://www.moddb.com/mods/swat-elite-force) mod, which provides support for widescreen resolutions among other quality of life improvements. No other mods are described as essential for a first playthrough. I had to follow [PCGamingWiki](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/SWAT_4)'s fix to prevent my resolution from resetting on startup. I could also get windowed mode working following its changes but could not get borderless working. I played without its music to better immerse myself and hear suspects.\n\nI played the single player campaign on Hard difficulty. My playstyle:\n\n+ Sandbag shotgun.\n+ Breaching shotgun.\n+ Gas grenade.\n+ Mirror gun under most all doors.\n+ Lean to peek around corners.\n+ Squad commands: Fall in, (C2 or unlock) (gas or move) clear, cuff (all), search, and with the team directives of all, red, or blue.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/swat-4-gold-edition"},{"id":"322682678652766796","title":"Terraria","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":5640,"platforms":["Stadia","PS3","PS4","Linux","3DS","Win Phone","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","WiiU","Vita","X360","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Re-Logic"],"publishers":["Headup Games","Re-Logic","505 Games"],"genres":["Platform","Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Strategy","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-09-30","completedDate":"2022-10-12","updatedDate":"2023-11-26","notes":"Terraria excels in its massive amount of content under a simple core gameplay loop of gear progression and base building. Day-to-day involves exploring deeper underground or across the world's lands, finding new items and unlocking NPCs. Longer term, it's about unlocking an event to fight the next boss.\n\nFlaw-wise, combat is mediocre and progression is too grindy. This is what consumes both the majority of playtime as well as the core gameplay loop (the next item).\n\nTerraria's biggest appeal is its sandbox level design. You can progress through a number of biomes, gated only by their difficulty scaling in damage/armor/HP of enemies or other missing tools like the ability to mine certain ores without the appropriate pickaxe power. It's also astounding how much player influence causes the world to change. There's corruption/crimson, and there's hard mode which is effectively a binary switch on the world which will not only change the world but also add biomes like the Hallow. There are also events like meteorite landings.\n\nAnother unique element of Terraria's progression system is its emphasis on crafting. There is no XP or level, where you simply kill monsters in order to become stronger. Instead, stats are only determined through items, and the strongest items are variable, some with excellent combat stats and some with other usages such as environmental information, mining speed, fishing power, and building. These items can have complex crafting trees that incentivize searching for drops in most every biome.\n\nCombat is fairly mediocre. At its camera size and mechanics, combat is effectively a bullet hell. It could take cue from 2D metrovania games if it wanted more interesting tactics on top of its gear progression.\n\nTerraria offers high replayability through its mix-and-match of characters and worlds. Characters have four build playstyles of melee, ranged, magic, and summoning, and with difficulty options of Journey to Hardcore. Worlds are all randomly generated, have a choice of size, can feature Crimson or Corruption, and have difficulty options of Journey to Master. The world difficulties of [Expert](https://terraria.wiki.gg/wiki/Expert_Mode#Expert-exclusive_items) and [Master](https://terraria.wiki.gg/wiki/Master_Mode#Master-exclusive_items) also include exclusive items. The game progresses effectively in two phases, the original world and the hardmode world after beating Wall of Flesh. Finally, there's even fixed world seeds for specific world mechanics.\n\nI like the idea of biome spread, especially with the craziness that it becomes in Hardmode. However, I dislike how much it can destroy entire biomes if you take the game too slow between the beginning of Hardmode and Plantera, and it never even stops. There’s effectively four solutions:\n\n+ Ignore biome spread. It takes hundreds of hours for a world to be taken over. You can quarantine NPC housing particularly close to corruption/crimson or just spray the Clentaminator once in a while. You can do the same for biomes which you may want for loot and Angler quests. [TEdit](https://github.com/TEdit/Terraria-Map-Editor) helps if you want to purify large areas without having to dig massive and ugly hellevators.\n+ Use the [begone evil](https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/begone-evil-disable-corruption-spread.72285) mod to deactivate biome spread. \n+ Quarantine the evil biomes in pre hard mode and the V in hard mode. This isolates biome spread (now possible in 1.4.4 thanks to altars no longer corrupting a random tile). But it’s a tedious process.\n+ Fully purify the world after you're rich enough with the Clentaminator or post-Moon Lord with the Terraformer. Fully purifying is not desirable as you lose out on enemies and items from the evil biomes. Purifying requires creating ugly hellevators every 120 tiles or so; just use TEdit.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nThe style is quite endearing. It reminds me most of Maple Story in its 2D and cartoon style, but obviously with survival mechanics borrowing from titles like Minecraft for its base building and assets.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can [favorite items](https://terraria.wiki.gg/wiki/Game_controls) in your inventory, so they won't get accidentally thrown or deposited such as when using Quick Stack.\n+ The ruler. An essential tool for building bases. I use the planner tool in RimWorld just as much.\n+ The 1.4.4 update finally enables autofire/autoswing. Way better than having to spam left click to attack enemies.\n+ Multiple loadouts. This is particularly helpful to swap back and forth to your fishing gear as otherwise you have to (re)equip armor and accessories. Or mining gear.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The 1.4 update changed NPCs so you make them distant in different biomes instead of purely clustered all in your home. This enables using pylons to teleport to biomes as well as cheaper prices.\n+ Chest loot is predetermined on world creation based on the seed. But crates aren't, so you can still savescum a bit for particularly annoying loot including angler quest rewards.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Crafting doesn't show potential items you can craft, only the items you can craft with the items on hand. This is extremely annoying to know what items you've unlocked that you can even begin to start crafting towards. You have to resort to the wiki. I'd prefer a system like any other survival game, e.g., show potential items you can craft given the items you own regardless of their quantity. The Guide can show potential items based on a single ingredient but this is too tedious.\n+ Given the amount of backtracking especially in Hardmode with, say, altars and biome chests, it's a shame there's no notetaking features on the map. I used this in Elden Ring greatly to mark areas I haven't yet explored, places to revisit once I unlock something, and key NPCs to complete a quest for.\n+ The amount of [ore tiers](https://terraria.wiki.gg/wiki/Ores) makes for confusing loot for beginners. I have to resort to the wiki to know what ores are upgrades so I can craft their bars and find what items to craft next.\n+ Copper, silver, gold, and platinum coins have nothing to do with their ore counterpart. It's also confusing in that platinum is 100 gold coins, but their ores are equivalent in tier.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://terraria.wiki.gg)\n+ [The Ultimate 1.4 NPC Happiness Pylon Infographic](https://www.reddit.com/r/Terraria/comments/gppkmd/the_ultimate_14_npc_happiness_pylon_infographic)\n+ [Map viewer](https://terramap.github.io)\n+ [Terrariw wiki.gg redirect userscript](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/448671-terraria-wiki-gg-redirect)\n+ [Terrasavr](https://yal.cc/r/terrasavr). I find this particularly helpful for annoying items to farm that I would have to spend hours to grind otherwise such as Picksaw after using all your cells already.\n\nI heard about it ever since TotalBiscuit released his video. I also watched streams of it from Sodapoppin, Roflgator, Moonmoon, and 39daph. The graphic and 2D zoom-out camera style never piqued my interest.\n\nMy first playthrough was Classic, Medium world, and it randomly generated with Crimson. I played v1.4.4. The hardmode ores I got were Palladium, Orichalcum, and Titanium, breaking 26 altars at the start of hardmode. I savescummed for particularly rare loot drops that I found too tedious to farm such as crate drop rate for Lava Charm and Sandstorm in a Bottle. For biome spread, I took the approach of ignoring it. My playstyle was mixed depending on the weapon. I mostly stuck with melee or ranged, particularly with the Zenith progression swords as they're effectively ranged melee weapons.\n\nTODOs\n+ ufo mount or drill containment unit\n+ ankh shield\n+ luminite hamaxe\n+ honey absorbent sponge\n+ rod of discord\n+ permanent stat increases: gold worm, pink pearl, advanced combat techniques 1 and 2, peddler's satchel\n\nTODO playthroughs\n+ master mode, large world, corruption, copper/iron/silver/gold ore, cobalt/mythril/adamantite ore\n+ [Magic Storage](https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/magic-storage.56294), the biggest quality of life mod for Terraria to minimize storage micromanagemen\n+ zenith seed\n+ mods, especially all the quality of life such as hellavator and platform construction and potentially even turning off corruption spread","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/terraria"},{"id":"322682678652569164","title":"The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":2670,"platforms":["XBOX","PC"],"studios":["Bethesda Game Studios"],"publishers":["ZeniMax Media","Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2004-12-31","updatedDate":"2023-03-12","notes":"Morrowind carries out the core vision of the series: environment interaction; open worlds; quests with a main story, faction, and miscellaneous; and a deep progression system. Unlike other games in the series, Morrowind stands out with its world-building with unique, sometimes alien landscapes and cities; weird and wonderful creatures (but bland humans); the best progression-system with attributes and spell variety (including spellmaking); and excellent quests across the board: the main quest is decent, guild quests comprise routine jobs and ascending ranks which feels very believable, and side quests are well-told and with a wide variety of gameplay objectives and styles. The scale of impact is also far-reaching, where joining factions locks you from another, the books and dialogue add huge depth and realism, and NPCs can love or hate you depending on your actions. It's the ultimate game with consequences, limitations, and rewards.\n\nFor the first time in the series, Morrowind introduced refined 3D environmnents, the iconic item sets, bestiary, and a main quest that interweaved with side quests.\n\nFlaw-wise, like all Elder Scrolls games, Morrowind has mediocre combat; a significant amount of bugs; and lazy level designs with asset reuse across towns, houses, and dungeons. Unique to Morrowind (and which carried over to Oblivion), the attribute bonuses system causes an unintuitive leveling experience where you must artificially level up certain skills in order to get attribute bonuses during the next level up.\n\n__Gameplay & Combat.__ The variety is great. The non-leveled system was perfect. I liked having characters become so broken after many hours of playtime that they're gods. For example, I have fond memories of leveling up acrobatics so high that I effectively fast travel by jumping from city to city; or jumping still so high that it takes minutes to fall down.\n\nIconic to the game's gameplay is first-person clunky combat, following quests through descriptions (i.e., no quest markers), paused menu healing with potions, deliberate travel without fast travel, and constant saving in order to be ambitious in attempts and experience different reactions.\n\n## Second Playthrough\n\nI played on OpenMW and with essential mods. This is the most recommended approach.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-elder-scrolls-iii-morrowind"},{"id":"322682678652457548","title":"The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":2040,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Bethesda Game Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-05-04","completedDate":"2019-05-11","updatedDate":"2023-03-26","notes":"Elder Scrolls games excel most in their environment interaction, open worlds, build variety with a deep skills-based progression system, and quests across a main story, factions, and cities. Skyrim is the most streamlined Elder Scrolls game of its time. There are no significant innovations. Rather, there are improvements (or sometimes, just modernizations) with its first-person combat system; questing system with branching dialogue options; progression system with levels and skills that no longer use attribute bonuses; guilds/factions; diseases like vampirism and lycanthropy; viable builds across melee, stealth, and spells; crime; crafting; lore; and music. Skyrim also features one of the best modding communities of all time.\n\nFlaw-wise and common to all Elder Scrolls games, the first-person melee and magic combat is mediocre; many designs like dungeons and inns are only servicable and not stellar, particularly reusing assets and being fairly generic in linearity and aesthetic; a significant amount of bugs; a mediocre main quest; and an occasionally tedious menu navigation/UI. Unique to Skyrim, many RPG elements are too streamlined---including attributes (removed altogether), weapon conditions, spell variety, guilds, faction reputation, and dialogue options. Quests are also mostly linear. In addition, outside environments aren't especially unique across their woodland, mountain, and snow terrain.\n\n__Story.__ Standalone, I think Skyrim lore like all of Elder Scrolls is mediocre. Cities are microcosms of their actual size and depth; NPC AI limitations are clear after a few hours with their neutral manequine-like expressions, dialogue, fighting, and pathing; and many more. With that said, I think its ability to enable a nonlinear pacing, and to do so well, speaks volumes for its story in the video game medium where paths branch and substories fork according to player decisions. Relatively speaking, the NPC AI is also among the better of video games.\n\nWhat I find most disappointing about the questlines is that they don't intersect, making them all feel like isolated games with no world impact. In Morrowind, for example, the Thieves Guild questline would have you end up stealing from the Fighters Guild guildmaster in which you get all the endgame Fighers Guild loot without having to actually be in it. Questlines would more often lock you out of others. In addition, essential NPCs can die, completely locking you out of a main quest.\n\nI did like certain questlines in Skyrim: for example, Dawnguard involves vampire attacks across the region, vampire-themed areas, and Serana and her family relationship; the Dark Brotherhood has always been good in Elder Scrolls for having quests that interact with NPCs and towns, and the quest this time involves a mad jester with a perverse relationship with the Night Mother; and Thieves' Guild which involves non-lethal persuasions via sneaking, pickpocketing, lockpicking, and more. Even with these however, the biggest flaw in Skyrim’s plot remains. Namely, every quest chain revolves around the player being a chosen one, and solving some grand dilemma. I much prefer Morrowind's route of simply rising in ranks via routine activities. Let guilds act like guilds, not glorified questlines.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I love the various common Elder Scrolls mechanics: environment interaction of stealing/pickpocketing and killing NPCs; ingame time with NPC behavior; diseases like vampirism and werewolf; crime system of tresspassing, theft, murder, bounties, witnesses, dragging bodies, bribes, and jail; dialogue of persuasion, threat, and bribes; leveling via dialogue; NPC friendship. I also like the companionship mechanics: house, follower, marriage, adoption. Unlike other RPGs where magic MP serves like another HP, Skyrim's MP bar replenishes fast and more similar to the endurance bar. Think that's an interesting choice.\n\nFollowers are a fun mechanic but mediocrely executed. Their pathing is especially bad (common among all NPCs). I constantly have to look behind to make sure they're not stuck, I have to manage their inventory and their auto-equip system, they ruin sneak attacks, and they often trigger dungeon traps.\n\nSkyrim's UI is in need of improvements. The UI with clicking via mouse and keyboard compete to select an option (solved with a mod). The quest log is unstructured and hard to follow, especially the miscellaneous category. The inventory system is clunky for PC (solved with SkyUI's color-coding and column-format).\n\n__Combat.__ Elder Scrolls combat is redundant and clunky. \"Wack it until it dies.\" It's clear Skyrim's combat is not as refined as more dense action RPGs which require a mastery of weak/strong attacks each with different striking motions (e.g., thrust, vertical, horizontal, diagonal); a dodge mechanic; enemy attacks that don't immediately track your strafes; enemy attack variety in their mechanics; landed hits don't feel weighty, e.g., enemies not always reacting to blows; and anything else in fight mechanics beyond spongy enemy HP and spamming melee attacks (c.f., Chivalry). In addition, Skyrim's combat often requires you to go in menu to, e.g., drink healing potions; this ruins pacing. Take dragon fights for example. The moveset is tail stomp, fly around, dragon blast. There's little tactic involved.\n\nSee the combat mods below for what an improved Elder Scrolls combat system could look like. See also reddit posts [one](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/7qhwqq/fixing_skyrims_combat_system_a_not_so/) and [two](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/8l24ol/guide_sse_guide_to_all_the_various_combat_mods/). Note installing these mods won't fix Skyrim. The issues are fundamental, and fixes would require widespread changes for balance across for example enemy animations, attacks, locations/patrols, and damage scaling. For example, Sekiro and Chivalry-style parry sytems with complex maneuvers of attacks and defenses.\n\n__Aesthetics/Sound.__ The art direction is good but not stellar. Textures and characters can be a bit blocky. More blatantly, asset reuse can be a huge problem as aesthetically many dungeons and buildings look all too much the same---it seems to stretch out the game in quantity of content rather than quality. That said, I'm still pleasantly surprised by the level of depth max settings can give you for a 2011 game. I do love the orchestral soundtracks. They suit the atmosphere really well. The best zone by far is Apocrypha: lovely atmosphere, interesting design closer to a curated action-adventure, unique enemies albeit few.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Minimalistic HUD.\n+ New to Skyrim, I appreciate the smithing skill to craft your own equipment. I never really took advantage of it though as I never found a way to integrate it into my leveling experience. It is necessary for best-in-slot gear at the end though, so there's at least some incentive to have it.\n+ New to Skyrim, I appreciate the smithing skilll\n+ Seamless integration of quest-finding and quest rewards through dialogue options (e.g., no artificial markers over a questgiver's head, or color outlines). Same goes for services like blacksmiths, lumber mills, houses, and inns.\n+ No distinct class options, only race. Builds are varied through stat and perk choices. In fact, I wish they automated even further to be build-variable: namely, remove any universal level and explicit stat allocation to health, stamina, and magicka. This would make it truly Elder Scrolls-core in specific skills over the use of classic RPG stats.\n+ If it weren't for console hacking and saves, having followers and NPCs die (and with exceptions you have to know about) is inconvenient. The mechanic is interesting theoretically, especially with the permanence. Fortunately there are enough NPCs and followers that having a few die in a world is not a game-changer. Dragon and vampire attacks in a city also only happen in your vicinity, so it's easy to reload an autosave upon a quicktravel.\n+ You go to innkeepers to hear rumors. I like this approach of Morrowind and Oblivion's approach of every NPC having a Rumors option. This feels more immersive in that the first thing you do in arriving at a city is sleeping for the skill bonus and also chatting it up to get local quests.\n+ Although the reward is a bit too game-y, becoming Thane of each city is a fun incentive to try complete each cities' core quests.\n+ Combat finishing moves (like Fallout) are fun to watch although weird in animations.\n+ Dialogue volume is proximity-based.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ No armor/weapon durability.\n+ Map as fog-of-war in dungeons. I prefer Dark Souls' no map for the immersion, but this is a very different game with its own direction. I don't know how I feel about this specific choice in the full context of Elder Scrolls.\n+ Radiant questing system. It's more dynamic but also harder to track.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Bugs. So many bugs. I've had to reload a save file more than a few times because I'd get stuck, a follower would get stuck, I'd lose all my followers following me, quests would halt (particularly in Alduin's Wall and Paarthunax), and many more.\n+ Fast travel, the same flaw as Oblivion.\n+ Spell variety is largely neutered over Morrowind and Oblivion. Clothing has also been made obselete over Light or Heavy Armor for any class. Unlike Oblivion's spell effectiveness mechanic, there is [no advantage with the exception of -flesh spells with a perk](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/6qujca/what_are_the_benefits_of_using_robes_over_light/dl0b24d/).\n+ I prefer Morrowind's (and maybe this includes Oblivion?) dialogue depth. Instead of just a Persuade, Intimidate, and Bribe option, Morrowind has Admire, Intimidate, Taunt, and Bribe under multiple gold options.\n+ Enemy scaling. I don't think dragons should be killable at low levels. This is one of the issues with level scaling, where I think it would be more of an accomplishment if it was delayed to later in the game. Certain areas should be barred to later levels.\n+ No location damage.\n+ Non-universal difficulty setting, and the ability to change the difficulty on the fly (same as Oblivion).\n+ Cities and many houses have a loading screen and are not open-world like Morrowind.\n+ You can join all guilds simultaneously. It's a ridiculous fantasy that a stranger can walk into each guild and become the leader of all of them through a series of quests. A two-handed melee can be leader of the Mage's guild for crying out loud. Morrowind restricted to one and that forced you to choose according to the class fantasy you're specializing as. There's also no ranks in a guild, which makes guilds feel closer to quest chains than as true membership with any perks or bonuses.\n+ Weapon variety. I would've liked to see polearms and stabbing weapons.\n+ Dialogue can cut off abruptly or repeat, which ruins the immersive experience as it feels clunky. Similarly, two NPCs can say their dialogue line at the same time.\n+ The lore of being a special Dragonborn, and the gameplay mechanic of Dragon Shouts. This uniquifies the builds when one of Elder Scrolls' core strengths is the significant build variety, most with class fantasies that have nothing to do with dragon abilities.\n+ Opening an instance and having some NPC face stare at you. It stuns me everytime.\n+ The grind to enable Thieve Guilds' last quest for Guild master is unreal: 25 radiant quests, and within specific cities; then 125 for full upgrade. The main questlines for the other factions are nowhere this grindy.\n+ It's not clear which containers are safe to store items.\n+ Many followers are not essential and can actually die.\n+ It's tedious to keep track of which books you've already read.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [r/skyrim](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim)\n+ [r/skyrimmods](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim)\n  + [r/skyrimmods/wiki/essential_mods](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/wiki/essential_mods)\n  + [Choosing a mod manager](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/wiki/choosing_a_mod_manager)\n+ [UESP Wiki](https://en.m.uesp.net)\n  + [UESP: Quest Timing guide](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Quest_Timing)\n+ [Nexus Mods for Skyrim Special Edition](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition)\n+ [Lovers Lab for Skyrim Special Edition](https://www.loverslab.com/forum/72-skyrim-special-edition)\n+ [Youtube: Skyrim guides by william strife]( https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn7CSjAPE5FNg4YaQD8oazGSyIbRV7nUx)\n+ [reddit: Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim comparison](https://www.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/2gat22/a_rational_analysis_morrowind_vs_oblivion_vs)\n\nThis entry includes all three DLCs: Dawnguard, Hearthfire, Dragonborn. I played Skyrim: Special Edition on Steam (PC). I first played the game on 10/1/12. However, I never made more than an hour's progress, ending in the middle of the Golden Claw quest. \n\n## First Playthrough (2019-05-04 to 2019-05-11)\n\n__Mods.__ I only used core essentials in order to appreciate the original experience: (and Widescreen Fix for 21:9 support)\n\n+ __System settings/miscellanea.__\n  + Mod Organizer 2 for all mods except those noted with exceptions\n  + configure display options through native launcher (set all settings to Ultra quality)\n  + edit SkyrimPrefs.ini ([note MO2 uses its own ini file](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/rcmrve/how_to_play_in_borderless_windowed_mode)): [bAlwaysActive=1](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_V:_Skyrim_Special_Edition#Continue_rendering_in_the_background) to have a cursor and keep the game active while tabbed out. [Set resolution via iSize H and iSize W, bBorderless=1, bFull Screen=0](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_V:_Skyrim_Special_Edition#Widescreen_resolution). fMouseHeadingSensitivity=0.0075 ([can experiment in console](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/615805-the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/65414864)). I prefer between 0.00 and 0.01 similar to Overwatch's 4.0 sensitivity, but Skyrim rounds (unknown if specific to console or the setting overall).\n+ __Essential mods.__\n  + Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch\n    + Fixes bugs.\n  + [SKSE](https://skse.silverlock.org) (prerequisite for many mods, requires manual installation)\n  + SSE Engine Fixes\n    + Fixes things, including re-enabling Steam achievements.\n  + [Address Library for SKSE Plugins](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/32444) (prerequisite for many mods)\n+ __Quality of life mods.__ \n  + SkyUI\n    + Makes the inventory more PC-friendly than console-friendly (otherwise managing item burden via [value/weight](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/3t20dk/tip_for_pc_players_skyui_has_an_option_to_show); left/right hand combos is tedious; buffs aren't visible on HUD so you can't tell, e.g., if a summon's duration is ending soon)\n  + Run for Your Lives\n    + Prevents quest-giving NPCs to die from vampires and dragons (the most common way for NPCs to die).\n\nAfter 50 hours playtime within my first playthrough (completing all factions, and just about to start main quest), I added quality of life mods and graphics mods for a grand total of 40 mods. Graphics mods are inspired by [Belmont Boy's Ultimate Skyrim playthrough (hugely modded Skyrim)](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1voIHcG_XV6smOhCfJX-gbdf9ihw8lb0).\n\n+ __Quality of life mods.__ \n  + A Quality World Map\n    + An improved map.\n  + Immersive HUD - iHUD Special Edition\n    + A more minimal HUD.\n+ __Aesthetics mods.__ \n  + ENB is most dramatic improvement in changing the rendering engine.\n    + Intrigued ENB with Stronger DOF; see [ENB comparison video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPmgxuPK8aw) (requires manual installation)\n    + [ENBSeries](http://enbdev.com/download_mod_tesskyrimse.htm) (prerequisite, requires manual installation)\n    + [ENB Helper SE](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/23174)\n  + Weather and sky.\n    + Obsidian Weathers\n    + Ethereal Clouds\n    + Skyrim Textures Redone - Enhanced Night Sky\n    + Smooth Sky Mesh\n  + Grass, trees, and mountains.\n    + Skyrim 3D Trees and Plants\n    + Every Tree 3D Different\n    + Verdant\n    + Skyrim 3D Landscapes\n    + Red Rocks 4k\n  + Lighting, water, and special effects.\n    + Enhanced Lights and FX (overwrite SMIM)\n    + Unofficial ELFX - SMIM FPS Patch\n    + Realistic Water Two\n  + Textures (I order these after QOL mods and before lighting/etc. mods).\n    + [Static Mesh Improvement Mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/659)\n    + Ruins Clutter Improved\n    + Enhanced Textures Detail\n    + Skyrim Realistic Overhaul\n    + Noble Skyrim Mod HD-2K\n  + Specific locations.\n    + Solstheim Landscape Overhaul HD\n    + Forgotten Vale HD Ice Textures\n    + HD Lava for Dawnguard\n    + Just Ice\n    + Soul Cairn HD\n    + Sovngarde HD.\n  + Audio.\n    + SSE High Quality Music\n\nFor minimalism, I did not touch mods specific to: dungeons; LOD files; one item; weapons; armor; or NPC, player, or monster appearances. If I wanted a super-aesthetic experience, see Ultimate Skyrim. There's no way I could do enough research that a mod pack expert could do. See also [Predcaliber](http://www.predcaliber.com/skyrimsetut) and [MxR Mods](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IIiYOBG8KM).\n\nIn future playthroughs, mods I'd like to try are:\n\n+ __Improvement mods.__ Open Cities Skyrim for fewer loading screens; Immersive Citizens for improved NPC AI; Immersive Armors for more armor variety; Immersive Weapons for more weapon variety; Immersive Audio for more audio variety; Immersive Creatures for more enemy variety; Diverse Dragons Collection for more dragon variety; Ordinator for new perk system; Skyrim Souls for unpaused game menus (including loot and pickpocketing); Alternate Start for replayability by starting in a new zone without lengthy intro; JK's Skyrim for more expansive cities.\n+ __Combat mods.__ Player mechanics: dodge (TK Dodge; note I didn't find this that useful in a first-person game, and without telegraphed attacks like Dark Souls enemies); spell variety (Apocalypse, WitchHunter, Lost Grimoire); melee abilities like Sunder, Rupture, and Blink (TK Combat). Enemy mechanics: improved enemy AI, lethality, injuries, poise, stamina costs, timed blocking, locational damage (Ultimate Combat, Wildcat, Skyrim Revamped - Complete Enemy Overhaul); enemies' attack aim don't perfectly autotrack (Mortal Enemies). Systems: balanced perk system and new mechanics (Ordinator); Witcher's toxicity to discourage potion spamming (Chasing the Dragon). \n+ __Realism mods.__ See MxR Mods' [video 1](https://youtu.be/uO85lzzh1P0) and [another](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TmydPvNpk4). SkyDie - Prepare to Cry Edition for disabled fast travel, health and stamina regen tweaks, diminished potions, enemies doing lethal damage, armor reduction; INeed for hunger, thirst, and fatigue; Bathing in Skyrim; Alive Peeing; Simple Taxes; Religion; Enhanced Camera enabling a visible body; Realistic Ragdolls and Force.\n+ __DLC-sized mods.__ There are many.\n\n__Playthrough.__ My total playtime is 58 hours according to Steam (as of 5/12/19). Progression-wise, I did the main quest in Whiterun and prioritized quests that can lock out via NPC deaths: Thane of Falkreath, Dawnguard DLC, Thane of Hjaalmarch. I then completed College of Winterhold, Companions, Dark Brotherhood, Thane of Riften, Thieves Guild, the main quest, and the Dragonborn DLC. I deliberately postponed the main quest to motivate me to complete the other sidequests; Imperial Legion until after main quest for the Season Unending quest; and Dragonborn until after the main quest for lore and unique dialogue.\n\nThings I did not do: Imperial Legion questline; level 100 everything; best-in-slot everything including followers; Divine quests; Daedric quests; all Thanes; all quests in all cities; optional faction quests; all bounty quests; all dungeon quests; all word walls; all collectibles (https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:100%25_Completion).\n\n__Build.__ Conjuration Warrior (\"Bound Weapon Necromancer\", \"Death Knight\", \"Undead Rogue\"), inspired by Solo Leveling. Race is Nord with the old man preset. Lover Stone. Serana and Berlyna Maryon as followers (two with the permanent trick in UESP's Touching the Sky quest). Quest-wise, I chose for the lore/perks: Empire, Battle-Born, Forsworn, and Dawnguard. Stat ratio is 7:2:1 health:magicka:stamina. Skills are Two-Handed, Light Armor, and Conjuration; and secondary in Archery, Restoration (no perks, just spells), and Smithing. I hold my own as a offensive melee DPS with only bound (conjured) weapons: a two-hander and occasional bow. I can also [summon an undead army: 2 Thralls and their 2 Frost Atronachs, Brelyna Maryon and her Storm Atronach, Serana and her Reanimated Corpse, Shadowmere, and Durnhevier via shouting](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/3f1nag/i_want_to_try_a_summoner_build/ctkg8o6/). The build is designed with inspiration from Dark Souls, Solo Leveling, and to pack as many unique/best Skyrim mechanics in one build. In particular:\n\n+ Weapon-wise, I like two-handed which I’ve been fond of since Dark Souls.\n+ Armor-wise, I chose light armor for the class fantasy of fast but squishy: no movement penalties, quieter footsteps, minimal equip burden, low armor rating. Meta-wise, it also seems optimal over Heavy Armor at both early and endgame (https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/3uiziy/why_do_most_people_like_light_armor_over_heavy/cxf9s2o/). That said, I think Skyrim most stands out aesthetics-wise in its heavy armor (for example, the iconic Daedric Armor); the only exceptions in my opinion are Nightingale Set and Vampire Set. By endgame, I played Fashion Scrolls by going full Vampire (Royal) Set, Serana with full Nightingale, and Brelyna with full Ebony.\n+ For magic schools, Elder Scrolls most stands out from other games via its illusionism and conjuration. Every RPG has an elemental mage, but illusion and conjuration magic are always more creative.\n+ Vampirism and lycanthropy are uniquely Elder Scrolls but I won't play them this playthrough (weakness to sunlight, killing NPCs permanently, and automatic NPC hostility are cool but inconvenient).\n\nOther builds I really like: Stealth Archer, Illusion Thief/Assassin Vampire, Paladin, Destruction Mage, Werewolf.\n\n## Second playthrough (2023-02-25)\n\nThis is the Anniversary Edition released in November 2021 on Steam. This is patch 1.6+, not necessarily the Anniversary Edition purchase that is a bundle of Content Creation mods.\n\nEarly game, I played at Expert difficulty as it generally feels the most balanced. Higher difficulties, enemies are too spongey. Later, I swapped to higher difficulties as I got increasingly overpowered.\n\n__Mods.__ Same mods as my first playthrough with some changes.\n\nGraphics mods are roughly inspired by [Zero Head Productions' Turning Skyrim Into a Next Gen Game in November 2021](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AfN6hGtRi0).\n\n+ __System settings/miscellanea.__\n  + Mod Organizer 2 for all mods except those noted with exceptions\n  + configure display options through native launcher (set all settings to Ultra quality)\n  + edit SkyrimPrefs.ini ([note MO2 uses its own ini file](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/rcmrve/how_to_play_in_borderless_windowed_mode)): [bAlwaysActive=1](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_V:_Skyrim_Special_Edition#Continue_rendering_in_the_background) to have a cursor and keep the game active while tabbed out. [Set resolution via iSize H and iSize W, bBorderless=1, bFull Screen=0](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_V:_Skyrim_Special_Edition#Widescreen_resolution). fMouseHeadingSensitivity=0.0075 ([can experiment in console](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/615805-the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/65414864)). I prefer between 0.00 and 0.01 similar to Overwatch's 4.0 sensitivity, but Skyrim rounds (unknown if specific to console or the setting overall).\n  + To alt tab properly, use Shift+Tab to open Steam overlay first so your mouse escapes the game, then alt tab.\n+ __Essential mods.__\n  + Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch\n    + Fixes bugs.\n  + [SKSE](https://skse.silverlock.org) (prerequisite for many mods, requires manual installation)\n  + SSE Engine Fixes\n    + Fixes things, including re-enabling Steam achievements.\n  + [Address Library for SKSE Plugins](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/32444) (prerequisite for many mods)\n+ __Quality of life mods.__ \n  + SkyUI\n    + Makes the inventory more PC-friendly than console-friendly (otherwise managing item burden via [value/weight](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/3t20dk/tip_for_pc_players_skyui_has_an_option_to_show); left/right hand combos is tedious; buffs aren't visible on HUD so you can't tell, e.g., if a summon's duration is ending soon)\n  + Run for Your Lives\n    + Prevents quest-giving NPCs to die from vampires and dragons (the most common way for NPCs to die).\n  + [Immortal-Essential Followers](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/6278)\n    + Sets all followers to Essential status. So they can't accidentally die which can happen.\n  + A Quality World Map\n    + An improved map.\n  + Immersive HUD - iHUD Special Edition\n    + A more minimal HUD.\n  + Better Dialogue Controls\n    + Avoids the annoying highlight selection when using keyboard to select a dialogue option.\n  + Better Jumping SE\n    + Enables jumping while sprinting. Otherwise it's awkward getting over minor obstacles.\n  + Classic Sprinting Redone (SKSE64)\n    + Enables hold sprint rather than toggle sprint. Toggling is particularly annoying because you can stop sprinting for a variety of reasons (e.g., backpedal, collision). This is especially the case when on a horse as it's difficult to tell if you're sprinting. Holding sprint is more intuitive.\n+ __Aesthetics mods.__ \n  + ENB is most dramatic improvement in changing the rendering engine.\n    + [Lucid ENB for Cathedral](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/27481) (requires manual installation)\n    + [ENBSeries](http://enbdev.com/download_mod_tesskyrimse.htm) (prerequisite, requires manual installation)\n    + [ENB Helper SE](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/23174)\n  + Environment (Lighting, weather, sky, water, etc.).\n    + [Cathedral Weathers and Seasons](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/24791)\n    + [Obsidian Mountain Fogs](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/13539)\n    + [Cathedral 3D Rocky Shores](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/33474)\n    + [Cathedral Landscapes](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/21954)\n    + [Cathedral Plants](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/26104)\n    + [Luminosity Lighting Overhaul for Cathedral](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/16830)\n    + [Realistic Water Two](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/2182)\n    + [Better Water for Realistic Water Two](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/28221)\n    + [Blended Roads](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/8834)\n  + Textures (I order these after QOL mods and before lighting/etc. mods).\n    + [Static Mesh Improvement Mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/659)\n    + Ruins Clutter Improved\n    + Enhanced Textures Detail\n    + Skyrim Realistic Overhaul\n    + Noble Skyrim Mod HD-2K\n  + Specific locations.\n    + Solstheim Landscape Overhaul HD\n    + Forgotten Vale HD Ice Textures\n    + HD Lava for Dawnguard\n    + Just Ice\n    + Soul Cairn HD\n    + Sovngarde HD\n  + Audio.\n    + SSE High Quality Music\n\n__Build.__ Stealth archer and Illusion dagger build. Khajiit. I varied the two for some playstyle diversity. \n\n__Playthrough.__ I did the main quest up to completing Whiterun, then Bards College quest for Gift of the Gab (+15% speech level increase), then expanded from quests in Whiterun including guilds and other settlements. I used Anise's Cabin (basement) as my free early game storage. I prioritized Thieves Guild for access to a fence to sell stolen goods and Thieves Guild Armor Set. I delayed The Way of the Voice (meet the Greybeards).\n\nI dropped the playthrough near the completion of Thieves Guild, beginning of Dark Brotherhood, middle of Companions, beginning of College of Winterhold. I didn't ally with Empire vs Stormcloaks yet, nor did I meet the Greybeards.\n\n## Miscellaneous\n\n__On ENBs.__\n\n+ Intrigued ENB. I like the detail. Although more realistic, I find it too dark especially at night or in caves.\n+ [Lucid ENB for Cathedral Weathers](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/27481). The brightness is a noticeable step for me from Intrigued ENB.\n\nbAllowScreenshot=0 to turn off Skyrim's screenshot utility (saves in game folder as ScreenShot0.png); I prefer Greenshot. You also have to unbind the screenshot key in  ENB. However, it still save a screenshot.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim"},{"id":"322682678623078988","title":"The Forgotten City","originalTitle":"忘れられた都市 - The Forgotten City","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE"],"studios":["Modern Storyteller"],"publishers":["Dear Villagers","Plug In Digital"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-01-27","completedDate":"2022-01-27","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Forgotten City is an excellent story-intensive mystery.\n\n__Story.__ The writing is excellent, both in how it introduces tiny mysteries in its overall story and in its rich characters each with their own personality. The lore in weaving in Roman, Greek, and Egyptian mythology surprisingly works.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Forgotten City's main innovation is time travel mechanic. It works well in terms of both the gameplay, where you can pick up items such as gold too accumulate wealth or steal an item that can be used to cure someone later on, and the story. It also makes \"failure point\" significantly more generous as you can always redo conversations if you permanently worsen someone's mood in a given cycle. Dialogue is more flexible in being branching with story consequences as it's a short cycle to relive new ones. It's such an interesting idea to make dialogue carry interesting gameplay---in contrary to, for example, the skill check systems in Fallout New Vegas and Disco Elysium.\n\nLevel design is excellent. It feels realistic in just sprawling the routes are across horizontal and vertical axes.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Decent graphics, standard for a low-budget indie game. Visuals are overly polished. Mostly talking heads. The voice acting is decent though.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ After completing some objectives, you can simply talk to Galerius so you don't have to redo various quest completions to alter the current time cycle.\n+ Narrated scripts continue like an audio log so you can continue navigating while listening to them.\n+ No quest was difficult to complete. I found pretty much everything by myself simply through exploration. There was the occasional difficulty in finding a certain NPC or a door given that the waypoint markers aren't consistently added.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The light combat mechanics. I didn't find them take much away from the experience. It's clearly a part of its Skyrim roots.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Quicksave creates a new save file, and there is no rotating buffer of a finite set of quicksaves. This means quicksaving just adds a massive amount of saves over time that you have to manually delete.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played as Architect as it provides the most lore.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-forgotten-city"},{"id":"30754fbf-6784-4752-b8a8-14e259d37669","title":"The Last of Us","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["PS3"],"studios":["Naughty Dog"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-06-08","completedDate":"2020-06-09","updatedDate":"2023-08-23","notes":"The Last of Us' greatest strength is its well-developed characters, each with various motivations and mannerisms. On top of this is an excellent cinematic presentation that seamlessly incorporates storytelling with gameplay. Unfortunately, the zombie story is trope-y, falling into standard conflicts that I feel like I've seen a million times particularly as the game released at the height of the zombie genre craze. And the core gameplay is mediocre: clunky third-person FPS and stealth, poor enemy variety and enemy design (particularly the zombies).\n\n__Story.__ Clearly one of the better stories in the medium. It tells of a single father carrying forward after the death of his daughter. And it tells it so well through the cinematic cutscenes and various interactive elements in the gameplay. Very well-paced.\n\nZombie apocalypses are a tired trope. I still enjoy the characters, but the story premise and scene-to-scene of traversing through tired America did not pique my interest. I can't tell if it's a particular deja vu from The Walking Dead or because I watched The Last of Us many years ago: the hunters. The overarching cure story and its failures. Cannibals and kidnapping. A black man and his son or younger brother as a temporary companion.\n\nI'm hesitant about the diversity elements in the story. I'm totally fine with them existing, but they appear so regularly that it feels off in term s of realism: the first companion Bill they run into is in fact gay; so is Ellie; and the Pittsburg companions are black.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Platforming, stealth, some gunplay just like Uncharted. Unique to this game is the survival element with limited resources for healing and ammunition, crafting system, and level designs encouraging one to being more methodical in action and stealth. I especially the increased amount of stealth actions, and the ability to do nonlethal (default with strangling) or faster lethal but limited action. The game doesn’t fully allow nonlethal takedowns through the game, and the stealth mechanics are fairly rudimentary (limited environment interaction, guard alerts).\n\nThe most clunky part of the gameplay is easily its aiming and weaponry. They all feel forgettable, and it’s terribly annoying aiming for headshots. Easy difficulty’s lock on aiming made the game so much more comfortable. Melee takedowns is also just a button mash. Listen/hearing mode is a cheap Batman-style detective mode, and I hate it so I simply don’t use it for the immersion. Clunky gameplay can be fine in an action game like Uncharted but I find it too constraining in a quasi-horror action stealth game. I also detest the water sections.\n\nEnemy designs are also forgettable.\n\nLike the Uncharted series, Last of Us is checkpoint-based which I greatly enjoy over manual save points for cinematic games. Collectibles encourage exploration and are typically not necessary for the gameplay: the one exception are training manuals which are used to upgrade crafting items, gears which upgrade weapons, and supplements which upgrade skills. They’re not strictly necessary to beat the game but I dislike having to find them.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\nBig fan of the fluid animations. Even various deathscenes are uniquely animated. Graphics look pretty good (I played the Remastered version). The drab colors work.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ The L3 control to zoom onto occasional visuals. Adds to the game’s direction.\n+ The Triangle control to hear extra dialogue when you occasionally get close to a character.\n+ The Restart Encounter option tells how long ago the checkpoint was.\n\nDetails I’m ambivalent about:\n\n+ Cover system is automatic instead of manual.\n\nDetails I don’t like:\n\n+ I hate clicker enemies. They can only be killed stealthily with Shivs and are therefore something you should avoid rather than take down like other enemies.\n+ You can’t stealth or silence enemies from the front. Once an enemy sees you, it’s instant alert for the full area like a MGS1 PlayStation game; no room for silencing the enemy first.\n+ Your flashlight can be seen by humans but not runners.\n+ Ellie’s face model resembling Ellen Page despite not getting the copyright.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://thelastofus.fandom.com/wiki/Training_Manuals\n\nI played the remastered version on PlayStation 4. I previously watched a full cinematic playthrough in 2015. Playing this in 2020, I’m reminded of some details through the game when I watched it. I ended up playing until Escape the City part of Pittsburgh where you meet Henry and Sam. I'm getting too much of a deja vu playing the game, and recalling bits and pieces of dialogue as well as high-level plot points. I feel like I have a good understanding of the game now. Similar to Uncharted, I played on normal difficulty. This is what the game is most designed for, and it’s really about the story and not so much the challenge of gameplay. I ended up switching to easy difficulty as the gameplay felt tedious. Since I played Easy, I prioritized Weapon Sway and Maximum Health as my skills; and just upgraded weapons randomly.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-last-of-us"},{"id":"322682678650358348","title":"The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":1740,"platforms":["NGC"],"studios":["Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-12-16","completedDate":"2020-12-18","updatedDate":"2023-08-14","notes":"Wind Waker is an excellent synthesis of the Legend of Zelda series' strengths: storytelling with rich characters and world, exploration, dungeons, combat, and progression elements. It stands out most against other titles in its timeless cel-shaded graphics and seafaring theme. It is also the first to use a second analog stick, greatly benefiting over previous titles like Ocarina of Time with better aiming.\n\nFlaws:\n\n+ The overworld's sailing is more tedious than fun, making the world feel disconnected.\n+ I've always had mixed feelings with Legend of Zelda's use of so many items and with so few keybinds, constantly needing inventory management to swap them as you need them. The game would be better overloading the D-Pad like Dark Souls, or on PC with a keyboard. At the least, provide poweruser shortcuts based on modifier+key.\n+ As with all Legend of Zelda games, the difficulty is too forgiving, with too few health containers lost when attacked; infinite replenishment of ammo over respawning jars. The optional Piece of Heart collectibles are unnecessary from a gameplay perspective. And the classist, sexism, and racism: Hylian's fair-skinned, blue eyes, light hair whose pure-blood is necessary for max magic power; and Gerudo coming from more the Gerudos with origins like the Middle East or Southeast Asia. \n\n__Story.__ I like the slight changes to the save Zelda the princess formula, with Tetra as a non-traditional Zelda closer to Sheif's role. This time, the story builds on an ancient Hero legend as well as Link departing from a rural area in an attempt to save his sister. Tetra and King of the Red Sea are the cloest replacement to Na'vi, but otherwise the fairy doesn't exist. And a pirate theme!\n\n__Gameplay.__ Core gameplay remains the same with exploration, combat, RPG elements, and puzzles in dungeons, and musical soundbites. New to the combat is a parry system. This all works excellently. Most new to Wind Waker is its world environment with exploration through a 7x7 grid of sea, using bait to fill in each square from a Fishman, and tons of Treasure Chart rewards to find after collecting Treasure Charts. I like the overall idea of it. However, the world is too empty (this is realistic to sea navigation, but doesn't mean it's necessarily good gameplay) and the mechanic of directing wind via a song before you can ever make a turn. The sea in practice makes for a disconnected world, traveling from point A to B. Typical overworlds are on land, benefitting from changes in terrain, trees/bushes/etc., enemies in the overworld, and much more. Nwe to the HD remake, Swift Sail is a crutch upgrade in the midgame that no longer has the second flaw.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Cel-shaded graphics are timeless. I love Wind Waker's orchestral soundtrack.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ [Not any major missable items: only figurines in the Nintendo Gallery sidequest which only rewards a gallery.](https://zelda.gamepedia.com/Permanently_Missable_Items)\n+ The Grappling Hook also serves multiple purposes beyond its initial one of latching onto certain obstacles. As a combat purpose, you can steal a power-up/item, which is guaranteed as opposed to relying on drop rates. On the boat, the Hook serves as a crane to pick up sunken treasures.\n+ Like Majora's Mask and other titles, [Wind Waker's fastest movement speed is rolling](https://www.zeldaspeedruns.com/tww/general-knowledge/movement-mechanics).\n+ There are sufficient places to dump Rupees that you accumulate to avoid reaching the wallet limit: Auction House, Beedle Shop, translate 3 Trifoce charts with Tingle (~1200), Legendary Pictograph for Nintendo gallery (150 each), Guru Statues from Zunari for cosmetics (500 each).\n+ Using a conductor's wand as the instrument.\n+ Forbidden Woods' flower-boost and Leaf item as an approach to Majora's Mask's Deku.\n+ In Wind Waker HD, the tedium in collecting all Triforce Shards is greatly reduced.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Having multiple bags to carry things: monster loot, bait, letters.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Weather time-based system. This overcomplicates the simplistic nature of exploration as now you must also trigger events within certain timeframes.\n+ Fuck 500 hits for Orca's sword training game.\n+ No musicbook to remember the song notes. I have to keep a wiki page open.\n+ Unlike Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, Wind Waker finally benefits from the Gamecube controller's right analog stick for aiming (e.g., bow, manual camera control). However, the mirror shield aiming still uses left analog stick for some reason. I liked the overall idea of using two Mirror Shields in the Earth Temple. But the Mirro Shield's aiming and required switching to Medli is tedious.\n+ It's RNG which parry attack you'll perform against Darknuts. This is particularly annoying when you're fighting multiple, and the roll-backstab against one Darknut's attack immediately runs you into another. Dark Souls doesn't have this issue by either parrying, then hitting a second attack to do riposte which in most titles is an invincible animation.\n+ On Cemu, pressing Tingle Bottle while using the Picto Box softlocks you. It's probably supposed to connect to the web but stops.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played the HD remaster on the Wii U with the Cemu emulator. I played with the Resolution and Shadow Resolution graphics packs, boosting to 2560x1440p from the original 854x480p resolution; the 30 FPS is locked because of its game speed. I played blind for the majority of the playthrough, using a walkthrough when I get stuck and to pick up all the major upgrades. According to Cemu, I beat the game in 25 hours.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-legend-of-zelda-the-wind-waker"},{"id":"322682678651420236","title":"The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":930,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["CD Projekt RED"],"publishers":["CD Projekt"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2020-01-10","completedDate":"2020-01-13","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"More ambitious addition than Hearts of Stone with a new setting of Touissant culture of knights, colorful fairy tales, vampires, bestiary, Gwent, and more quests. Minor gameplay addition of mutations, dyes (I like grey as black doesn't fully blacken the Cat School Gear's chest armor), grandmaster crafted witcher gear with set bonuses, Corvo Bianco house, and Hanse bases (like Far Cry outposts and any other game). It aims at more than a single narrative as Hearts of Stone but rather Touissant itself as a main character, with exploration and a variety of gameplay enhancements alongside that core story.\n\nStory-wise, the setting is great as well as the sleuthing mystery involving royalty and vampires. Anna Henrietta is a strong character as is Regis and her spicy sister Syanna. Supporting characters remain strong here too like Bootblack the shoemaker. The overall narrative is rather plain though---roughly comparable to Hearts of Stone in my opinion in not fleshing out the characters as well as they could. Dettlaff for example completely fell flat without any backstory for his angst. Also disappointing that Geralt flies solo, without bringing on any of the characters.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Vampire city invasion!\n+ Place and Hill quest. What a different setting that I would not expect in a Witcher 3 medieval Polish fantasy. Love that even the noticeboard has fairy tale characters with postings.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ The bureaucracy trailing of Paperchase: lines, forms, redirecting to other clerks, disinterested customer service.\n+ Aerondight scales to your level, and levels up with you. Lets you pick it up whenever without metagaming.\n+ The Gwent collect em all DLC quest tracks all players!\n+ The parodying with protesters outside the Gwent tournament.\n+ Portrait of a Witcher as an Old Man quest where you pose nude. Equine Phantom where you talk to Roach. These sidequests are Yakuza-level in silliness.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Some stale sidequests made to artifically increase playtime: repetitiveness of Wine Wars, Big Feet to Fill, Knight for Hire, Vitner's Contract.\n\nMy total playtime is 31 hours according to Steam, ending at level 53. I completed all main and sidequests but not treasure hunts. I went down the path of finding Syanna (and giving her the ribbon) instead of seeking out Orianna, as it seems more canonical and fleshed out. I did what I could of Orianna's path, so I only missed the main quests What Lies Unseen, Burlap is the New Stripe, and other endings which I watched on Youtube. The good ending seems too goody and less appealing to Witcher's core dubious morality theme: I think even the most tragic ending like Dettlaff and both sisters dying being quite a good conclusion.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-blood-and-wine"},{"id":"9614680a-fc3f-458c-ac8f-5cfe861aefbb","title":"Tyranny","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":1200,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Obsidian Entertainment"],"publishers":["Paradox Interactive"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2023-08-14","completedDate":"2023-08-18","updatedDate":"2023-09-07","notes":"Tyranny encourages roleplay and player consequence more than most all CRPGs. There are so many choices, each with different consequences on the story (and followup choices) and faction reputation, and they have roughly equal gameplay reward. It's a short and highly replayable game where each playthrough takes you through different slices of story. The spell creation system is also neat rather than rely on a static set of spells, and the core game builds on Pillars of Eternity's foundations.\n\nFlaw-wise, the game can feel by the books at times with its side quests and simplistic combat system. Act 3 is also somewhat rushed: it's linear, and there are interesting ideas with artifact items, edicts, companion quests, and showing Kyros that are left on the table.\n\n__Story.__\nThe premise of one where evil takes over is a unique one for RPGs. It allows for interesting worldbuilding such as separate factions within Kyros' empire, The Disfavored and The Scarlet Chorus. You play as a fatebinder, who is a judge and executioner of Kyros' will. Notably, you can play an evil playthrough which is not just about acting like an ass in most games (e.g., KOTOR). The endings also vary significantly from your allegiance choices and whether you submit fealty or dominate others.\n\nSide quest design and the characters outside your companions and faction leaders don't really stand out. It's the details in the individual dialogues that can really make the core gameplay loop so fun and build the world (e.g., NPCs in Fallout New Vegas quests, or dialogue in Lisa). No characters or quests stick out to me as memorable.\n\nThe dialogue trees in this game are often [too long and deep in their pathing](https://www.reddit.com/r/TyrannyGame/comments/5v6bod/what_do_people_think_about_the_long_dialogue). It can lead to some insufferable pacing where you're stationary and wading through an NPC's entire set of questions and response. No engagement not just in terms of gameplay but from a storytelling perspective as nothing else happens; it's a bunch of exposition and character thoughts dumped on you.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nIt's pretty remarkable how much player choice matters in the game. This goes against the majority of RPGs where a single playthrough can see everything with the exception of minor quest consequences like in Pillars of Eternity. The quest trees are sprawling, with your allegiance choices in particular taking you through different sets of quests. In Act 2, [you also visit only 3 of 4 areas](https://www.reddit.com/r/TyrannyGame/comments/8bqhi2/getting_the_most_out_of_act_2): Lethian's Crossing, Burning Library, Blade Grave, and Vellum Citadel. There's also the option of [New Game Plus](https://tyranny.fandom.com/wiki/New_Game%2B).\n\nGameplay systems:\n\n+ Spell creation system is one of the more unique elements. Instead of accumulating a static set of spells, you accumulate sigils, expressions, and accents in order to customize your own spells for each character. Each character is limited by spell slots and Lore which acts as a  maximum capacity on the strength of a spell. I found this system quite enjoyable to experiment with.\n  + If only this had the emergent and interactive gameplay elements of, say, Divinity Original Sin's environmental effects or Nethack. The compositionality could lead to engaging combat beyond the spell creation!\n+ [Character system](https://tyranny.fandom.com/wiki/Character_system) uses a threefold system like in Pillars of Eternity), skills (effectiveness in combat, persuasion, and other applications), and talents (active abilities and specific passives). Damage system also follows Pillars of Eternity with a defense type for each attribute and damage types being critical hit, hit, graze, and miss, and with a wound system after being knocked out.\n+ Classless system where skills level up from experience, similar to Elder Scrolls games. You can also lock your skills to prevent XP gain and therefore more carefully control your level XP gain, which enemies scale off of, and where events like quest rewards would be more equally distributed among the skills you actually use.\n+ Talents are unique for the protagonist and each companion.\n+ Favor/wrath reputation system with factions (and equivalent companion system with loyalty/fear). Wrath provides gameplay benefits. This enables true roleplay unlike typical RPGs (including Pillars of Eternity), where you're incentivized to appease and help everyone at all times.\n+ Spires serve as the gameplay hub and have an upgrade system following Pillars of Eternity's Caed Nua.\n+ Missives are a mechanic to receive letters from other prominent NPCs such as Tunon the Adjudicator. It's not really a system per se but just a handful of letters; replying doesn't seem to have any effect except for flavor text.\n+ The edict system unlocked near the end of the game is so cool. It's devastating in their power, and it's something built up throughout the game as the key demonstration of Kyros' power. As it's integrated today, the system is more for lore than as a gameplay device. I could see its potential however had the developers had time to expand the game.\n+ Game can feel unfinished. Like the edict system, the same goes for artifact items, linearity in Act 3, lack of companion quests, and no story delving into Kyros.\n\nGameplay is poorly balanced. Tanks are not useful since enemy aggro focuses on the party member with least armor. Ranged is not useful either ([1](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2499884748)). It’s best if everyone takes up magic for self buffs at minimum, and there are only two key roles: melee with magic or mage. Heavy and light armor are strictly worse than leather armor's deflection for all roles. Lore is strictly too powerful, where instead of [mages specializing in schools](https://www.reddit.com/r/TyrannyGame/comments/61b2rq/lore_is_poorly_designed), a character with high Lore and Wits can get all nuke spells. The power of spell creation reminds me of Morrowind's unbalanced spell creation, which is extremely fun albeit overpowered.\n\nThe dungeons and combat get stale closer to the end of the game as it's all roughly the same. It's a good thing the game is short for a CRPG.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nGame engine is the same as Pillars of Eternity and many assets are reused including character models, textures, and sound effects. The art style, assets, and UI age well. Dialogue is only partially voiced. A neat addition to Tyranny is that more NPCs have portraits, and the portraits have different frames indicating reactions and moods rather than a static portrait.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ A setting for Big Heads. Cute.\n+ No companion permadeath. The idea of it in PoE is cool, but it's so devastating that unless you're playing an extreme difficulty, it simply forces you to reload the game.\n+ Sigils learned for spell creation are party-wide and not specific to a companion. Makes using spells across the party much more accessible.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ You can still slow and fast forward the game's speed with -/+ keybinds. It's not as obvious with a dedicated button like in PoE though.\n+ You can select in the settings to know whether dialogue options grant a certain reputation.\n+ Like Baldur's Gate and unlike Pillars of Eternity, traversing in the world map can trigger random  encounters, both scripted events and battles.\n+ Unlike Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny brings back the prebuffing strategy prevalent in BG2.\n+ Spell AOE only target enemies. It's unlike Pillars of Eternity and BG2 in having lots of opportunity for friendly fire.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ UI scaling is basically nonexistent. It looks awful on 2560x1440p resolution. The font scaling works, but only to 125% which is not enough. And the rest of the UI isn't proportionally scaled.\n+ Level scaling.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://tyranny.fandom.com)\n  + [Quests](https://tyranny.fandom.com/wiki/Quests)\n\nMotivated to play as one of the more prominent CRPGs in the 2013-2020 era revival.\n\n__Version.__\nI played the base game without the DLCs:\n\n+ There is only one major DLC, Bastard's Wound. It's a standalone story that has mixed reviews. It's also a detour in Act 2 not unlike Pillars of Eternity's The White March, and I greatly disliked how PoE's pacing suffered.\n+ The DLC Tales from the Tiers adds some extra content integrated to the base game. Given that I want to enjoy a short concise experience with minimal padding on the length of CRPG side, I find these DLC not mandatory.\n\n__Playthrough.__\nI played on [Hard difficulty](https://tyranny.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulties). It’s the highest difficulty that can still be configured while in game. I played mostly blind and completed all sidequests available to me.\n\n__Build.__\nI played a mage. In this game, mage or melee with magic seems to be the most encouraged. Lore is the most important skill for persuasion checks and is itself a magic-centric stat. The arsenal of spells is excellent, including the ability to construct spells from Sigils, Expressions and Accents you find and learn. Tank and physical ranged are not that good.\n\nI mostly followed [Steam: Quick-Start Primer Guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2499884748) (see also [here](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=814845354)). [Character creation](https://tyranny.fandom.com/wiki/Character_creation) choices:\n\n+ History: War Mage.\n+ Primary and secondary expertise: Frost spells x2 with Energy Shield talent. This is better than a Frost / Shock hybrid because you get an extra talent ([discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/TyrannyGame/comments/d4756d/how_to_spec_mage_build_newbie_here_advice_for_sub/f092u79)).\n+ Attributes: Might 8 / Finesse 14 / Quickness 10 / Vitality 8 / Wits 18 / Resolve 10.\n+ Skills: 4 into Lore (max), 16 into Control Frost (max).\n+ World mode: [Conquest](https://tyranny.fandom.com/wiki/Conquest). Lethian's Crossing → Vellum Citadel.\n  + Ability: Warrior's Respite. You can pick up Searing Palm later in the game, and Warrior's Respite is the better defensive ability for mages as you can still CC when it's active ([discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/TyrannyGame/comments/5ehdca/concealing_shadows_or_warriors_respite)).\n\nDuring progression:\n\n+ Attribute priority: WIts to 19, then Finesse to 19, then Quickness to 19.\n+ Talent priority:\n  + Agility tree: Lightfoot → Arrow Shield ([discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/TyrannyGame/comments/5f73kz/comment/dahy3yy)).\n  + Leadership tree: Mark Enemy → Will of Command → Arbiter of Knowledge.\n  + Magic tree: Magical Prodigy → Expanded Mind I → Expanded Mind II.\n+ Weapons: Javelin and shield. ([discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/TyrannyGame/comments/134als4/question_about_staff))\n+ Armor: Medium (leather armor).\n+ Choices: I generally got favor for The Scarlet Chorus and got wrath for The Disfavored. This is a unique roleplay in RPGs so I had to do it. I tended to loyalty for all companions but defaulted to my choice for their faction otherwise. For the ending, I had Tunin submit fealty to me and sacrificed Sirin (with max loyalty) to Voices of Nerat mostly for the storytelling intrigue and laughs.\n+ Locations: Lethian's Crossing, Burning Library, Stone Sea.\n\nCompanions all follow the same strategy written above and vary only on whether they're melee or magic. All non-relevant skills for a party member are locked. Ability hotkeys are grouped by DPS abilities, heal abilities, then buff/debuff abilities.\n\n__Party composition.__\nI generally picked my party as I went for the lore and to experience them all. I gravitated to Lantry, Sirin, and Eb.\n\n+ Verse: Dual-wield.\n+ Barik: Two-handed.\n+ Lantry: Javelin and shield.\n+ Kills-in-Shadow: Never used.\n+ Eb: Javelin and shield.\n+ Sirin: Javelin and shield.\n\nThe strongest party is 4x mage ([discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/TyrannyGame/comments/5f5heu/all_spellcaster_party_doable_viable_crazy)), with access to the highest AOE, single-target DPS, self buffs for maximum defense, and heals. Each mage effectively cycles through 5-6 damage spells that nuke a target with some AOE and CC status effects.\n\ntodos on future playthroughs\n+ melee with magic build\n+ path of the damned difficulty, expert mode, trial of iron\n+ side with the disfavored\n+ side with the rebels\n+ side with the anarchy path","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tyranny"},{"id":"322682678652443212","title":"Uncharted 4: A Thief's End","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["PS4"],"studios":["Naughty Dog"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-07-19","completedDate":"2019-07-20","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Uncharted 4 arrives as the best in the series: with an actually good, less trope-heavy cinematic story about Nate's childhood, his relationship with his brother Sam, wife Elena, and longtime friend Sully. Gameplay is improved with more stealth elements, exploration in vast spaces, and platforming opportunities across beautiful landscapes.\n\nFlaw-wise, Uncharted has always had just serviceable gameplay. It's clear what features it lacks when compared to the extreme of the best games of the third-person shooter stealth genre like Metal Gear Solid and Gears of War; as well as platforming from Tomb Raider. Uncharted also delves into histrionics and over-the-top narratives. Nate will be dangling from cliffs, on the verge of death multiple times, and every scene will have some action-packed deathgripping scenario as if they're worried the audience has a small attention span and will lose interest. Unique to Uncharted 4, the title has large open wilderness but unfortunately squanders its potential by not offering any incentive exploration like Tomb Raider (2013).\n\n__Story.__ The story is polished and more artistic this turn around with real drama, building from a longstanding relationship with Nathan's brother Sam as well as his dynamic in suburban family life with Elena. The drama is actually pretty good---exceptional for a video game. That scene with Elena after Madgascar is tense! The reveal about Sam's debt was surprising to me too. There's an ongoing list of lies: from Sam to Nathan; and Nathan to Elena. I liked the final reveal about their Drake surname. It adds a lot of depth this way rather than being an actual heir.\n\nVillains remain one-dimensional, but they do exhibit the most character compared to other main villains of the series. For example, you actually get to play with Rafe in the prison break; and Nadine Ross actually plays out like a mercenary. Plot-wise, there are too many plot holes to treat the story verbatim. The fact that Elena never knew about Nathan's brother. And that Nathan would be known (in the mercenary world) as discovering ancient cities as a legend, and yet that has zero ramification on his job opportunities. And most iconic to the series, that Nathan could kill hundreds of enemies each game and yet have slivers of humanity in sparing people when it's the actual cutscenes. Sam also should have died by the end. It makes the game's death defying moments have less impact if there are no tangible consequences.\n\n__Gameplay.__ New to the series is that at times there is actual freedom to approach combat. This greatly enhances the ability of stealth for example, which now in the series actually feels like it exists in the game. In particular is the addition of new elements: an enemy HUD bar that fills up to detect caution and alert; marking enemies; tall grass; multiple entry points. It further takes cues from MGS5 in the Madagascar levels when one drives up to a settlement and must take out all the guards. That said, it's still fairly primitive compared to games for example that are the pinnacle at this, e.g., MGS5, Hitman 2016.The paths to approaching enemies, and the arsenal that allows you to take different approaches---select toolset like melee-only, nonlethal tranquilizer-only---are not possible in Uncharted 4.\n\nI like all the details in refinements to interactivity. For examples: steering while sliding on a cliff; throwing rope so you can swing on it; holding L1 to climb up/down/repel a rope; dialogue options; no arcade-style Square/Triangle options when in melee; moving your hand at times and usingn a piton in order to grab loose positions you can platform and scale up walls on.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ A new console generation, and the effects on the aesthetics are clear. Facial expressions have more detail and therefore more nuance. Environments have greater detailing. Lighting and shadows. Gunplay feels a lot more real. There's recoil, there's a little recepticle within the cross hairs that adds to that feeling. Interestingly, there are fewer set pieces in favor of making a more cohesive (and coherent) storyline. Level designs are varied and gorgeous as usual. This time, it's an orphanage, prison, Scotland, Madagascar, King's Landing city, island expedition, New Devon. (I do like the few that are there: e.g. beauty shot of Madagascar wilderness, town of King's Bay in Madagascar, a collapsing clocktower.).\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Love the Crash Bandicoot cameo and actually playing a level.\n+ You get to play as young Nathan again. The environments are the most beautiful I've seen among video games, along the lines of God of War and Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice. I got chills during that one scene in New Devon when Nate and Elena drive up a path with Avery's statue in the background and among island forestry.\n+ You get to play as Sam.\n+ I like the addition of the grappel to add to the platforming mechanics. It's very Lara Croft. There's also a lot more moveable crates, and you even grappel to move crates sometimes.\n+ Wandering around Nathan and Elena's house.\n+ Uncharted 4 did a better in medias res than Uncharted 2 or 3. Namely, silent and flashback cuts to replay the first scene is significantly better than what 2 did of literally replaying the intro for a bit.\n+ As with all titles in the series, I like all the cooperative animation mechanics (and the cycling of companions across chapters). For example, boosting someone up to get a ladder slightly out of reach. Or cooperation to operate switches to open doors.\n+ As with all titles in the series, hints to avoid getting stuck are in this game. They're even more improved with verbal cues signalling when you can't make a jump; your companion telling you the right way after a while. Only rarely is there in-game text as the hint telling you a solution.\n+ The lost city is not yet another boring temple dungeon. This time it's a pirate settlement which adds more of an urban environment that I find interesting.\n+ I like that there's an independent strong figher woman, and also that there's a scene of him getting his ass kicked by her.\n+ The scenes where you just wander around a well-designed room and interact with the different assets there. For example, when wandering around Nathan's house; exploring the mansion as young Nathan with young Sam.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ story recap (Uncharted 1-3) | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PDCJVhxB-4\n\nI didn't play with auto aim assist or any of the other accessibility options (aside from subtitles). I don't think the assist is intended as it seems like it would make gunplay __too__ automated. Gameplay is actually decent enough that unlike other games I decided to play this one on Normal difficulty. I did not play multiplayer.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/uncharted-4-a-thief-s-end"},{"id":"322682678624181836","title":"Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":1350,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Troika Games"],"publishers":["Activision","Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2021-04-25","completedDate":"2021-04-30","updatedDate":"2023-05-15","notes":"VTMB is the symbol of a flawed masterpiece. It does so many elements that stand the test of time: player agency and replayability with diverse playstyles; writing around the story, worldbuilding, and characters with excellent main and sidequests; and deep RPG mechanics such as clans, vampire disciplines, and ground rules. The flaws cannot be ignored though: jank with bugs, model pop-ins, camera positioning, and animations; combat-only areas at its final third and Chinatown and Hollywood being much more empty than earlier hubs; and the mediocre combat with a weird imbalance of guns being very weak early game and overpowered endgame.\n\n__Story.__ VTMB stands out in its writing, uniquely positioning itself not only in video games but fiction more broadly in its urban-vampire world, one crafted with precision. Here, it's not the vampirism itself that takes focus but the social contracts with responsibilities and relationships around vampires. Worldbuilding with the laws of the masquerade, the urban cities, and the clans work excellently. The characters are also stellar, with even side characters having their own charming personality.\n\nThe subtlety in the storytelling is also what adds much of VTMB's charm. For example, never directly talking about the split personality of Jeanette-Therese until after the reveal; the medical resident selling blood at the hospital; the security guard stalking his apartment residents in Skyline Apartments; the e-mails explaining why the guy is even there at an Abandoned Hospital to have encountered a vampire.\n\n__Gameplay.__ VTMB is an RPG with unique gameplay elements for its vampire setting. There's typical mechanics like stats affecting combat, environment navigation, and social; and dialogue with choices around allegiances for player agency. There's a range of interesting mechanics around vampirism. For example, there's health regeneration because you're a vampire, increased regen when you feed, and decreased regen when when you sustain aggravated damage like fire and supernatural attacks. Quality of blood also matters, and blood must be filled by feeding which is the resource for vampire powers. A stealth meter is much appreciated as opposed to Elder Scrolls' more opaque approach.\n\nDialogue also takes front seat with multiple approaches to navigate a conversation not unlike the multiple approaches to break into a place. A quest might involve finding a passcode by hacking, persuasion, or just going in and killing everything.\n\nThe stats feature quite the depth following the tabletop game with Attributes, Abilities, each in combinations contributing to Feats that improve combat, covert operations, and social abilities, and with Disciplines for vampire powers. Humanity and masquerade violations are important to track. Instead of levels, you directly spend experience points as a second currency to cash for material items. Balance is decent across the stats, enabling diverse playthroughs with different opportunities:\n\n+ Malkavian's ravings being its own fun\n+ Nosferatu's forcing stealth in sewers to hide from humans at all opportunities\n+ Tremere's blood magic\n+ male or female\n+ choices to effectively go with combat, stealth, or social\n\nControls and HUD are intuitive with WASD movement, E interact, shooting/melee and vampire powers as mouse buttons, and other actions like reloading, feeding, and inventory/quest management. You can fast swap to specific weapons by setting up your hotkeys (K). You can toggle between first and third-person view. The health and blood bar work great.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Face models and overall details see their age. The soundtrack is pretty decent. Voice acting is superb. The atmosphere, particularly in certain areas like the Ocean House Hotel is phenomenal. Built on the Source Engine, the physics simulator in the game is arguably unnecessary, adding to a bit of the jank such as you getting stuck behind doors as they open/close too slowly.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ No explicit quest objectives.\n+ You gain no XP for fighting enemies, only by completing mission objectives. It's a great way to balance combat and pacifist playstyles.\n+ The feed mechanic as a way to restore blood. It really makes you start treating all the humans as walking blood bags, resources for you to consume at your will.\n+ Elysium ground means you can still attack important NPCs.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The closed but dense level design of its areas, similar to Deus Ex. This is in direct contrast to open world games like Elder Scrolls and Fallout. The closed design enables more curation of the content but a lot of tedious backtracking, requiring you to remember closed off zones due to high lockpicking for example.\n+ No map. I like the full immersion in needing to know where you go. However, it can be fairly irritating to memorize all the locations: the wiki's pointer for where each named place is sufficient.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n+ The little things that make the game dense for a beginner: letting folks play Malkavian or Nosferatu without warning, planning the character sheet, skill books and trainers have point ranges for them to remain useful, knowing to use a cab to travel between areas.\n+ The weapon stats are arbitrarily opaque: the idea of weapon types performing differently based on your skill is great, but the stats themselves are unintuitive. Damage potential is all that matters, calculated as a function of the rest.\n+ Aiming with the gun is terrible. The crosshair aim decreasing accuracy as you move is clearly borrowed from Half-Life/Counter-Strike's Source Engine. It doesn't work in a game where the enemies and you are highly mobile. Add to that that early game guns have useless damage and guns cost money per bullet compared to melee.\n+ No option to limit the number of quick saves. Quick saves always make a new save.\n+ Bloodbuff is unbalanced. With 5 to all physical stats, you can bypass a large portion of lockpicking areas without investing a single point. The idea of using your blood to temporarily increase your capability to do so is good, but 5 is too much.\n+ Fuck the Warrens sewers. A navigating maze of unintuitive level progression combined with annoying enemies and only rats for feeding.\n+ Your haven is unnecessarily far away with many loading screens (Downtown -> Skyline Aparmtents -> Elevator up and down). There should be an easier way to access e-mail quests and your lockbox.\n+ You have to walk into every building to know if the doors are even interactable. Makes it easy to miss a location.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Gun guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/vtmb/comments/ee9rv1/vtmb_firearms_guide_basic_patch_version)\n\nI was originally motivated to play VTMB by hearing about its modern sequel, and because it's one of the most underrated yet highly praised games---a flawed excellent work like [Dragon's Dogma](https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/09/02/dragons-dogma-the-most-influential-game-no-one-ever-copied) and on par with titans like Dragon Age: Origins, Fable, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and Witcher 3.\n\nFollowing the community, I played with the Unofficial Patch (Basic version, v10.9) which makes minimal changes to fix bugs and support modern settings (2560x1440p, 92 FPS cap, and borderless with -window option and Borderless Gaming). I played blind, only looking up for my build, skill books, occult items, teachers, and when I get stuck; I didn't care too much if I missed sidequests as future playthroughs can get them.\n\nBy the end of the game, I got tired of the combat-intensive areas so I just turned on `debug_infinite_ammo 2` and occasionally `noclip`.\n\n__Build.__ For my first playthrough I wanted to focus on speech as the writing is VTMB's strength. My character sheet is the following.\n\n+ Clan: Toreador\n+ Gender: Male\n+ Stats: 8 Persuasion (Charisma / Scholarship), 6 Seduction (Appearance / Subterfuge), 6 Research (Intelligence / Scholarship), 7 Lockpicking (Dexterity / Security), 10 Ranged (Perception / Firearms), 10 Defense (Wits / Dodge), 7 Hacking (Wits / Computer by virtue of upping Wits and 2 Computer skill books). \n+ Disciplines: 3 Celerity, 5 Auspex.\n\nTodos on future playthroughs\n+ Malkavian\n+ Nosferatu\n+ Tremere’s blood magic\n+ unofficial patch plus version. hd texture mods, enb, and other mods","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines"},{"id":"322682678652876364","title":"Warhammer: Vermintide 2","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":1290,"platforms":["PS4","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Fatshark"],"publishers":["Fatshark"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-10-15","completedDate":"2022-11-01","updatedDate":"2024-06-23","notes":"Vermintide 2 is like a melee L4D2 in a fantasy setting. It excels most in its core gameplay loop with melee FPS, enemy design, diverse levels and level objectives, and progression system.\n\nFlaws:\n\n+ Peer-to-peer matchmaking. Without dedicated servers, there's significant lag and very unreliable games that drop semi frequently. The host can also leave at any time which breaks up the whole game.\n+ Griefers and the occasionally toxic community. I've run into a handful of players that would either friendly fire on purpose, be a host that would kick you at the end of a game, or spit out vitriol when the game isn't going their way blaming others. There shouldn't even be a kick feature.\n+ Loot box system. There's not even many good cosmetics.\n+ Opaque weapon stats and lack of easy testing. You have to rely on community spreadsheets to find out information like breakpoints.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nCore gameplay loop is excellent. You navigate across a level with some incentivized exploration (grimoires, tomes, salvaged art) and with plenty to kill: raids/hordes, patrols, elites, specials, bosses. Combat involves defensive tactics of dodging, blocking, and positioning especially during hordes. Then there are various offensive tactics like ranged playstyles, AoE horde playstyles, boss killers, elite killers.\n\nVermintide 2 is one of the rare games where melee FPS is satisfying. It implements simple mechanics of dodge, block (including block attack and some special attacks), weak attack, and strong attack alongside various cooldown abilities. These work wonders for its heavy action-based hack and slash style unlike, say, the Chivalry style which works primarily for human vs human combat. First person view makes melee significantly more different than the Dark Souls style in 3D or metroidvanias in 2D, particularly due to limited field of view and the inability to dodge roll. This is the melee FPS combat that Elder Scrolls should have.\n\nI enjoy Vermintide’s progression. You increase a hero's level with XP, your average item's power level as you loot more items, and unlock new careers and skill points. Progression also translates to higher difficulties, with Champion starting to feel like the \"true game\" as even normal mobs take noticeable chunks of your HP and there's friendly fire. By endgame, you're playing levels at the highest difficulty for Emperor Vaults, which have a small chance at dropping items of red rarity. The biggest difficulty jumps from Veteran to Champion and Champion to Legend are noticeable and rewarding to master. You further dismantle your junk items so you can re-roll item properties and traits. Damage taken is the best indicator of well you can handle Champion and higher difficulties. I particularly like the weapon tradeoff of cleave weapons vs armor pen.\n\nThere are 5 characters each with 4 class choices (career). Each have a leveling system and inventory, with shared loot for accessories but not weapons. There's quite good diversity in each career, talent trees, weapon types, and item modifiers.\n\nTo showcase the diversity of playstyles, here are a handful:\n\n+ Sienna as Battle Wizard with Famished Flames. DoTs with your fire and massive stagger and THP regen with your fire sword.\n+ Kerillian as Waystalker with Hagbane Shortbow or Briar Javelin. Effectively infinite ammo with your poison arrows due to your ult refreshing ammo capacity.\n+ Kruber as Mercenary or Grail Knight with Bret Longsword. A beast of a versatile weapon with moveset combos including horde sweeps and vertical strikes for destroying elites by landing headshots.\n+ Bardin as Ranger Veteran. He's the closest to a support/utility character due to his stealth, horde killing melee, special killing ranged, and drops like ale for buffs.\n+ Saltzpyre as Witch Hunter Captain with a Rapier and Brace of Pistols. Headshot and crit heavy. Extended dodges. Both iconic weapons. The rapier has massive headshot damage, excellent spread, and a special gun attack that's particularly useful while blocking against Berserkers.\n\nThere's a microtransactions shop, loot boxes, dailies and weeklies, and you have to claim rewards. Yuck. This is all part of artificial engagement in a AAA game's monetization strategy today.\n\n__Other game modes.__ There are two additional game modes to the campaign: weave and chaos waste. Weave adds only a few modifiers to a map and requires a whole separate grind for weapons. It is meant to be endgame content with infinite scaling of difficulty as one completes higher ranked weaves, which increase in difficulty and reset to level 40 in order to go higher and reach the highest on the scoreboard. However, it is least played by the community due to a number of problems:\n\n+ Nothing carries over to or from the base game. It is effectively its own game due to a separate progression system: why split the already niche community's matchmaking?\n+ Every melee and ranged weapon per hero requires its own grind. That's a lot of essence to farm, [21750 per weapon](https://steamcommunity.com/app/552500/discussions/0/1642045003581249416) (I also verified this number when I leveled up my own weapons; it starts from 50 and increments by 50 until level 30, so `(1+...+29)*50=30*31/2*50=21750`.\n+ There's hardly any new content. It reuses levels and enemies, and only has a handful of objectives. For a while it even had seasons which reset your ranked weave to a maximum of 40, but it only lasted 2019-2020 and was abandoned.\n+ You have to do ranked weaves in exact order. This makes it difficult to find premade groups or even play with friends unless everyone's at the exact same rank (rare) or is willing to play lower ranks for others to catch up. At least open up, say, 10 new ranks that you can complete in any order.\n+ Ranked weaves offer too little essence (~400). You can get more from quick play weaves or regular games. It should at be more than quick play weave so that others are incentivized to play it due to its increased challenge.\n\nChaos Waste has roguelite progression as an expedition across a few new locations. This adds some replayability, although there's not that much randomization to be honest that would lead you lean into various builds as you roll. You can stick with a specific weapon combo from start to end.\n\nOne of Vermintide’s biggest problems is its peer to peer networking. It’s not uncommon to play games with 100-300 ping, especially when at an uncommon time for your time zone. Host migration is also a joke, and games always end when the host leaves. This game should have had dedicated servers.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics are quite detailed particularly for a 2018 game. It’s astounding how good the frame rate is during hordes.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ End of game scoreboard. So many games these days are afraid of showing stats.\n+ You want to reach an average item power level of 300 as soon as possible so loot always drops at max level (and for all heroes, not just that one hero). However, you don't need to focus on one hero to do this.  [Average item power level is taken from the max of each slot and is shared across all heroes.](https://vermintide2.fandom.com/wiki/Loot) This means, for example, a high item power level for melee on one hero is counted for everyone.\n+ Crafting is incentivized in the early game and not just endgame. The item’s power level has the same -5/+10 chances, so it gives more drops outside opening loot boxes. You can also target increasing your average item power level by crafting the item type with the lowest level.\n+ Illusions (weapon skins) are easily interchangeable. Once you unlock a skin, you can use it on any of that weapon type.\n+ I really like the grimoires, tomes, and ravaged arts percolated in every map. It provides a sense of exploration so that every game isn't just point A to point B as it tends to be in L4D2 games.\n+ You can use Steam's Shift+Tab followed by View Players and Recent Games to make friends with people you played with before.\n+ You can use [sanctioned mods](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/9gt57l/psa_please_use_sanctioned_mods/) on the official realm. This helps quality of life, such as Numeric UI displaying allies’ ammo counts and wounds. With that said, most quality of life mods like Numeric UI have already been incorporated into the base game.\n+ The hero's height actually affects gameplay. It's most noticeable with the dwarf as he has a lower point of view and a smaller collision box. The dwarf can also go under smaller crevices than the others such as something that is slowly opening up.\n+ The advanced techniques that emerged from the core mechanics: for example, dodge dancing for positioning, animation canceling for weapon combos, finger rolling for faster charged fire rate.\n+ You can favorite equipment. This also prevents accidentally dismantling them.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ You must own the DLC levels in order to quickplay into them ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/a4v23e/psa_the_back_to_ubersreik_levels_cannot_be_played), [2](https://steamcommunity.com/app/552500/discussions/0/1744479698815616241/)). If you don't own the DLC, you would only join into them at the start of a lobby that hasn’t yet selected a level and with players that own the DLC, e.g., a premade lobby with friends or the lobby with randoms after a level. This makes sense for monetization, as people wouldn't really buy the DLC otherwise. On the other hand, it splits the matchmaking lobby for a somewhat niche game (as of Oct 2022, roughly 4K players online at any time).\n+ You block while reviving. This makes reviving downed or captured players that much easier because you don’t have to aggro all the horde or elites attacking them if you think your block can hold for the few seconds. Weirdly, the game never tells you this. It’s a carryover from Vermintide 1 as the main strategy and was originally a bug.\n+ As of patch 4.7.3, an unintended bug is to activate the deed and then use quickplay. You can get both deed and QP bonuses. [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/f7baxw/deed_exploit_coming_back)\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You can't skip through the mission completion screen. You have to wait until everyone clicks through all the loot popups and XP leveling, then hit Return to the Keep. This is roughly a minute wasted after every game. I don't get why you even have to click to return to the keep. Do it automatically and let people see the previous game's stats with a separate button.\n+ Item rarity drop rates are deliberately made unknown for each chest type, as something the dev team can tweak for artificial engagement. [The development build's datamined drop rates are the closest to how calculations are made in production](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/84tmn1/drop_values_from_datamined_loot_table_for_red_gear). It confirm things found empirically in the community: for example, item rarity drop rate scales with level and the level is based on the opening hero's level, not your highest attained level ([open an emperor's vault on a level 1 character and you'll see whites/greens](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/o24pw5/when_will_i_start_getting_red_items_consistently/h24hwi6/)). Here’s an empirical [drop rate table](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1m-93NoKPATGH8hTPlVGAxXJ_YJYjho3pJ6hmlFQ-Uz4/htmlview).\n+ It’s advantageous to save chests until you hit max level/hero power, particularly vaults and emperor chests in order to maximize the drop rate of a red item. There’s mixed information on the minimum for a red to drop (some say it’s level 25, some say you need to be able to attain hero power 300 first). From empirical information and the datamined table from the dev table, red drop rate at least scales with the opening character’s level.\n+ There’s no incentive to stay in the same group after completing a level. It doesn’t have to be a loot reward either. I liked Back 4 Blood’s approach, where levels auto-advance and the next loading screen after beating a level is the next level, not thrown back into a lobby. (It also helps that Back 4 Blood has progression across levels.) Deep Rock Galactic has beers to add to the social element.\n+ Heroic deeds are meant to be a challenge level where you earn a consumable that you then spend to play the map with random modifiers that add difficulty. However, it's restricted to premade lobbies as you can never quickplay join into such a game. Furthermore, the rewards are not worth the difficulty.\n+ You can’t select what maps to quickplay into—something you can do in L4D2 and Back 4 Blood. This is annoying if you'd like to complete challenges such as all Helmgart maps for each career. You can uninstall DLC, but this doesn't work for Curse of Drachenfels, and it also disables the DLC features like weapons or weave rewards.\n+ You want to complete Ranked Weaves as soon as possible, especially rank 1 ([requires Dark Omens, which in turn requires completing the base Helmgart campaign](https://support.fatshark.se/hc/en-us/articles/360033522054-How-Do-I-Unlock-Weaves-#:~:text=To%20unlock%20Weaves%2C%20the%20map,completed%20(on%20any%20difficulty)). This enables [essences as a reward on regular maps](https://support.fatshark.se/hc/en-us/articles/360033821953-How-Do-I-Earn-Essence-in-Regular-Maps-). The amount of essence obtained linearly scales with the highest rank you have (and resets to lowest of 40 every season). It's effectively required that you find a group, getting lucky with randoms in order to obtain the highest ranked weave possible. They don't even enable bots in ranked weaves which is necessary given how few even play weaves.\n+ No voice line for the emote actions like Thank You! and Come Here!.\n+ Games are hosted via a peer-to-peer system. This means if the host disconnects or leaves, the game simply ends without any reward. The \"host migration\" feature is a joke and simply tries to put everyone in a fresh lobby rather than continue the existing game without the host.\n+ You can't drop an item in order to give it to someone with their slot full. For example, give a potion to someone with a tome.\n+ There's no notification if someone picked up the key in various levels. This can be annoying as some keys are difficult to find and you don't know if anyone picked it up yet in order to unlock the grimoire. This is solved with the [Notice Key Pickup sanctioned mod](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1502859403).\n+ There is no mission timer. This solved with a [sanctioned mod](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1421155919) for this.\n+ THP (temporary HP) generation talents are poorly balanced. THP on cleave and THP on stagger is significantly better than any other talent. Classes like Bounty Hunter suffer from bad THP generation as they're restricted to THP on kill (only 1 THP per horde enemy) or THP on crit/headshot.\n+ Some poorly explained mechanics and area design. For example, in Garden of Moor's last section you need to break the chains one at a time as a horde spawns each time. This isn't the case with others like Screaming Bell. Convocation of Decay is the worst.\n+ There's no way to host a game and do quickplay. [You have to do a trick.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/8vlxgf/psa_you_can_easily_and_reliably_host_in_quickplay) This is particularly problematic during events such as Geheimnisnacht as most folks will spam the same maps, and activating the ritual event provides no rewards for players that have already done it. This means it's needless difficulty (and often results in failure for Legend players, as they don't realize the event is effectively one extra difficulty in upgrade).\n+ You can't view your inventory during the map screen of Chaos Wastes. This is important because you have no other time to really look at the boons you accumulated and do any planning. You're often upgrading in the midst of battle.\n+ There's no indicator for who's speaking. Something that's so easy to implement but it isn't.\n+ When joining in the middle of a game, you're thrown immediately into the thick of it, replacing the bot. This can be wildly disorienting if you join in the middle of a horde or battle. Back 4 Blood lets you spectate as a bot for a while until you press to join.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://vermintide2.fandom.com). It's not detailed though.\n+ [Legend difficulty strategy](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2750079293)\n  + [Elites guide](https://youtu.be/KEzBWJAQXWQ)\n  + [Monsters guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1723437775)\n  + [Dodging specials](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj-L7zpUuS4)\n  + [Optimal melee weapon combos](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1821186836)\n   + [Movement Tech](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/kk6yqu/a_comprehensive_spreadsheet_about_movement_tech), that is, weapon combos you can spam that actually increase your movement speed.\n  + [[4.9] Save Some Time. An Advanced Guide to Shortcuts, Grabs, and Skips](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1582301151)\n+ Build information\n  + [Royale w/ Cheese’s build guides](https://steamcommunity.com/id/dylanrong/myworkshopfiles/?section=guides&appid=552500): [all Legend careers](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2034609078), [Cataclysm Kruber](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2034609078), [Cataclysm Bardin](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1832306381), [Cataclysm Kerillian](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1833337461), [Cataclysm Saltzpyre](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1833338040), [Cataclysm Sienna](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1833925976). I find them informative as references on top of the builds on the wiki and reddit discussion. Importantly, Royale w/ Cheese is detailed about breakpoints.\n  + [Optimal properties & traits](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/8zacw4/optimal_properties_traits_guide)\n  + [Breakpoints calculator](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QW6zatxQ5wnbtOq6Nu6MVM7c0VgiFpaInW3AUo7tLnA/edit)\n  + [Finesse multipliers](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/xtlmhb/list_of_all_melee_weapon_finesse_multipliers_with). Finesse is the headshot and crit damage multiplier. It's particularly useful for determining whether to build a weapon for attack speed or crit chance ([crit chance if multiplier is >=2.3](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1834952691)).\n+ [Tier List for v4.6](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/uhbdxq/class_tier_list_for_46/). This roughly matches my experience for v4.7.3.\n+ Mods I use: Mission Timer, Notice Key Pickup, [Neuter Ult Effects](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1384066089), particularly useful for disabling the grey visual filter after being downed, [Scoreboard Tweaks](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1393343095) for friendly fire stats (it's [unsanctioned though with [no workaround solutions](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/12h77h1/is_there_a_way_to_use_scoreboard_tweaks_or)).\n\n__Loot strategy.__\n\n+ During leveling. I only open commendation chests, emperor chests, and vaults on level 35 heroes in order to maximize the chances of red items. Once I hit level 35 on my first hero (Kerillian), I had roughly 10 commendation chests and 15 emperor's chests, and I received 3 reds. For Sienna, I stocked up 18 commendation chests, 5 general chests, 7 emperor chests, 4 soldier vaults, and 2 emperor vaults; I received 1 red from an emperor chest.\n+ Unless there's a specific red weapon I want, I prioritize opening chests on the character who has the most non-DLC red weapons that I like using and am still missing.\n+ I prioritize red crafts for DLC weapons. These can only be crafted as they do not drop from chests.\n+ I only salvage red duplicates of >2 items.\n\nI play every career. My favorites generally for each hero are: Kruber (Mercenary, Huntsman, Grail Knight), Bardin (Ranger Veteran, Slayer), Kerillian (all of them), Saltzpyre (Witch Hunter Captain, Zealot), Sienna (Battle Wizard).\n\nTODOs\n+ non-DLC red weapons to still loot (and therefore the characters to open chests from): Bardin (Axe, Crossbow), Kruber (Repeater Handgun, Longbow), Kerillian (Longbow, Glaive)\n+ DLC red weapons to still loot: Bardin (Cog Hammer), Kerillian (Moonfire Bow), Saltzpyre (Flail and Shield, Reckoner Great Hammer), Sienna (Coruscation Staff, Flaming Flail, Ensorcelled Reaper, Soulstealer Staff), Kruber (Spear and Shield)\n+ all skins, reds especially\n+ [get this good](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/1710c3n/what_4000_hours_of_elf_maining_looks_like): perfected boss moveset and navigation, able to treat it as yet another thing to manage while killing off specials; has headshotting specials to a tee; and can manage dozens of plaguerats without getting hit.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/warhammer-vermintide-2"},{"id":"322682678650434124","title":"World of Warcraft Classic","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":15000,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Activision Blizzard"],"publishers":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2019-08-25","completedDate":"2020-06-08","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"WoW Classic excels most in its social element. It excels so well that people would commit their lives to the game like no other video game can. There are many details that add to this. For examples: no flying mounts so you always encounter others as you travel (and can get ganked/helped with during quests and mining); no sharding so you see the same people everytime as you play within a realm; no LFG and teleportation so if you join a group and your tank sucks, everyone must bear through it as the time investment to get there is so much more. WoW Classic also excelled in its open world, lore details, inventing a decent cooldown-based combat system, popularizing the endgame system of PvP world/duels/arenas/battlegrounds and PvE dungeons/raids, auction-based currency system, professions, and gear and talent tree.\n\nIts flaws are its grindy leveling with the major focus on endgame; itemization; world buffs; aged cooldown-based combat; basic PvP system; and easy raid difficulty in 2020. The most controversial change on top of Classic is layering (sharding). While this stabilizes servers and enemy spawns, this ruins the community as effectively everyone is an NPC. There's no chance you'll see the same random again whereas it was much more common in vanilla, and that was part of the experience: acquaintances. Apparently this will only happen temporarily for the launch. Fortunately, this was removed later into the game.\n\nIt’s been maybe since January 2020 that I've just been raid loggin, but now with the main tank Csmash leaving (and offtank Lanski saying he'll leave in 2-3 weeks last week), I feel no longer interested in playing the game. Every week feels like clocking in the hours: roughly 2 hours for world buff preparation, 1 hour for maintenance such as enchants and consumables, and 4-5 hours of raiding/monitoring discord. I think modern classic WoW is too overoptimized, with the community focused on optimal itemization and parsing (especially world buff preparation). I also didn’t really enjoy the social community: WoW and perhaps as with all internet communities is filled with unintelligent, unemployed spergs that enjoy raging and degeneracy. I’m just not a fan of online play, hence why I never really even delved into classic WoW PvP. if I were to play, I’d much prefer people like my coworkers in terms of intellience and social aptitude (this plays a role particularly in raid management and guild leadership). New content since the first launch is too incremental and really not mechanically interesting: a new raid every couple of months and a few items; that’s it. Ultimately, I’d rather spend my weekly time to other obligations (e.g., work, other video games).\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ No cross server. One of the highlights of WoW for me is not necessarily friends, but acquaintances you see appear again as you roam about in the world (https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/cz7fld/the_beauty_of_not_having_crossserver/). I saw this particularly in seeing over and over again people I grinded dungeons with at level 30/40 with SM/ZF again in 60 dungeons and comparing how far they've gotten in their gear.\n+ Keys. People get known on servers/guilds for having keys to open, e.g., UBRS.\n+ I like that weapon speeds actually matter. For example, Mortal Strike scales with weapon damage, so warriors should get slow but high damage weapons so their abilities do more DPS. I completely agree with Asmongold however that it only really worked in favor of slow but high damage weapons and no weak but slow damage weapons (10:15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yunGdyoz5_s). The one exception are fast offhands for Rogues for poison application. C.f. Dark Souls where both were viable.\n+ Weapon skills. You also have to go to major cities to learn them.\n+ For best-in-slot gear, you need get a total of 9% hit cap. This reminds me of PoE's elemental resistance caps in that there isn't a universal best-in-slot per say. Rather, you adjust your items according to reaching certain global stats, which makes equipment more meaningful as they factor in globally.\n+ Utility items like Skull of Impending Doom enhance PvP (including duels). I love the idea of questing/crafting for otherwise random items, and accumulating all these gadgets through the world, and having them be viable for end-game content. This captures what makes MMOs unique from other competitive genres as grinding/preparation is a part of the competition itself.\n+ There's only three main ways to level (e.g., no leveling by PvP): grinding, questing, dungeon grinding. Questing also forces you to visit every zone. It's not enough and even then you'll need to grind mobs.\n+ Best in slot gear. That's what's sorely missing from the RNG of titan/warforged items in modern WoW.\n+ To buy other racial mounts, you need to be exalted to train a specific skill in riding the mount type. This adds a lot more identity to races similar to how classes actually have an identity in classic WoW. Same with getting your rings, then shoulderpads, then helmet, then trinkets as you level. And having a weapon upgrade path for warriors as you level.\n+ The best way to find people is not necessarily through world but by doing \"/who priest 56-59\" and whispering them directly. Feels more personal!\n+ You can Fear people's mobs if they steal from you so they get even more. :) https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/czgync/lpt_use_fear_to_punish_players_who_behave_poorly/\n+ No resilience stat. PvE gear applies to PvP gear and vice-versa.\n+ In classic unlike vanilla, raid BoPs are tradeable until they are equipped. This avoids the middle man of having to raise a ticket when there's a mistake during master looting.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Zone hopping is very much a thing (https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2417681-Zone-Hopping-For-Quests). In more modern versions, zones are self-contained and can be completed in one go for leveling. In classic, a zone has such wide level ranges and not enough quests that I had to change often between Barrens and Silverpine Forest, and Ashenvale, Stonevalley Mountains, and Thousand Needles.\n+ All the consumables required to raid, slowly whittling your gold. It's more immersive, but it's also a nuisance to maintain.\n+ Disnenchanting has no level requirement unlike in TBC.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ COD is up to 30 days. https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/1869252044\n+ It's WoW just starting out, and you can see it in how wonky the itemization is. Tier pieces for pre-raid and Phase 1 raid are not BiS. It's often miscellaneous rare items.\n+ You look like a clown when wearing a number of bright color items. Guild Wars 2 does this best.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/character/faerlina/Neural\n+ classic content plan | https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/classic-pvp-content-plan/146049\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/ | community and news\n+ https://worldofwarcraft.com/ | armory\n+ http://www.classic.wowhead.com/ | guides and items\n+ https://wow.gamepedia.com/ | wiki\n+ raid parses | https://classic.warcraftlogs.com\n+ http://www.wowprogress.com | raiding and progress\n+ https://www.wow-professions.com | profession guides\n+ https://www.curseforge.com/wow/ | addons\n+ https://www.worldofwargraphs.com | statistics\n+ https://realmpop.com/ | realm statistics\n+ https://www.avoidstreamers.com/\n+ class tiers in vanilla | https://www.reddit.com/r/lightshope/comments/9n7fb9/new_to_classic_wow_is_there_a_class_tier_list/e7n4w02/\n+ class guides (https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/b5mh0e/wow_classic_class_guides_resources/, Kargoz's guide (all classes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0OMrgWBNK4), WoWHead (https://classic.wowhead.com/guides/warrior-leveling-classic-wow))\n+ average /played time to level 60 is 10-15 days | https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/biytnm/how_long_does_it_take_to_get_to_level_60_in_wow/, https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/a5d07v/xphr_benchmarks/\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/biyekn/what_small_or_seemingly_insignificant_thing_are/\n+ warrior dueling guide | https://www.wowhead.com/forums&topic=15459\n+ rogue dueling guide which I think I actually followed long ago | https://www.ownedcore.com/forums/world-of-warcraft/world-of-warcraft-guides/124867-guide-rogue-dueling-guide-proper.html\n+ how to link item in macro | https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/13686809451\n+ item restoration | https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/34576\n+ people to follow | madseasonshow, asmongold, sodapoppin, bellular, hirumaredx\n\nI deliberated on whether to make this its own entry. I decided to for several reasons: 1. so I don't forget to start playing this in summer 2019 and when there's all community and Twitch hype; 2. I can make long comment contents about a separate entry; 3. I can evaluate it as a standalone expansion.\n\n## On Class and Faction to Play\n\n(When actually playing WoW Classic, watch PvP videos and duel guides to finalize decision. This gives the most informed opinion of mechanics as team pvp will be micro instances pf duels; and PvE are all simple rotations with occasional cooldowns.) I decided to play an Male Orc Warrior. Below were my considerations.\n\n__Rogue.__ I love the class. PvE-wise, I like the simple-but-fun DPS rotation and topping DPS charts. PvP-wise, I like the ability to run solo in BGs for top killing blows and 2v2/3v3 arenas with mages and priests. Burst damage and cooldowns/CC management is one of the most fun and complex classes: Sap, Cheap Shot, Kidney Shot, Gouge, Garotte, Blind, Vanish, Stealth, Sprint, Evasion, Poisons, Distract (see Mute, creater of World of Roguecraft https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FEqw2rkgE4 and Grim in the Total Annihiation video; similar goes for Mages with Engineering for their kite ability). It's defined my WoW career. Specialty classes like Rogues and Mages are also better than hybrids for both PvE and PvP (\"hybrid tax\" with the exception of Fury/Protection Warriors). I also love the ability to zoom through quests by stealthing through mobs to get at the elite or specific items. Con-wise, rogue is just more of what I already know (although spun for vanilla rather than the non-scripted TBC that I played); and there's no leadership tank/heal role so I'll never have the chance to lead dungeons/raids if I want to.\n\n__Female Human/Male Orc Warrior.__ The meta-appeal of best DPS and best tank is hard to get away from; not only are you really good at a specific specialization, but also have the hybrid variety of two roles. It won't be difficult to find a role in raids/dungeons or battlegrounds/arena sans being the most popular class. Appealing to the meta is critical for vanilla WoW as players must actively decide whether to play with you; it's a power dynamic. PvE-wise, it offers top DPS, the ability to lead dungeons as a tank with friends or offtank raids, and extra loot for an offspec. PvP-wise, a tank is bad (and boring) unless you have a healer in battlegrounds; Fury can be fun but is not as bursty as rogues (which to me is a con, but also a different playstyle to experience). One con is very bad leveling. I decided on Orc for the top or near top PvE DPS, PvE tank, and PvP. You get Axe Specialization for DPS and threat generation; Blood Fury for active DPS racial; and Hardiness for 25% stun resist. I used Arms for leveling. This video has a good detailed breakdown (https://youtu.be/u83izVZzFvE).\n\n__Mage.__ 1. novelty as I haven't played the class before (negated with my experience on Atlantiss Netherwing private server); 2. best ranged DPS with a bursty damage and CC role like rogues.\n\n__Night Elf/Tauren Druid.__ 1. Novelty as I haven't played the class before; 2. PvE group variety as I can also play a healer in raids (and even off tank), but as a Restoration healer you're worse than in HPS than Priests, Shamans, and Paladins but needed for the strongest HoTs in the game, and nobody wants Feral DPS (non-bursty sustainable damage swapping between forms); 3. lackluster arena PvP but good flagrunners in battlegrounds (https://www.reddit.com/r/Nostalrius/comments/5of9e6/are_druids_really_that_worthless/dcj3woh/). Best DPS is Warrior spamming Execute and Mage spamming Ignite.\n\n## On Professions\n\nI chose Engineering and Mining. Engineering is a must-have for the utility and luls variety (I have fond memories of Dozer, the undead Protection/Fury Warrior from WoWCrack, and who would fuck around a lot with miscellaneous Engineering items). Mining is for making gold and synergizes well with Engineering (e.g., grenade mats). I did Mining and Skinning while leveling to 60 but did not get either very high as I dungeon spammed for leveling. I dropped Mining for Enchanting just to disenchant so I could sell mats on AH in cases it goes for more than the item vendor price. I dropped Skinning and powerleveled Engineering via auction house and hoarding mats I collected in my bank (https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/agzy7e/what_will_be_the_most_popular_professions/).\n\nMMOs are a dying genre, and WoW Classic may very well be the last mainstream MMO of all time. I better appreciate it as much as I can!\n\n## On Addons\n\nThird-party tool-wise, I used Twitch to manage my addons.\n\nFor leveling, I also used the Zygor client. I tried to keep my addon setup minimal (such as the default UI and bags), only adding items as must-haves for quality of life during leveling. This tries to maintain the classic experience and where I can optimize later with addons at endgame. Following are roughly ordered by importance.\n\n+ Change interface/keybindings for larger camera view, strafe left/right, no backpedal, toggle autorun, numbers in player/enemy frames.\n+ atlas classic wow (dungeon maps)\n+ atlasloot (ingame loot for easy look-up and equip comparison)\n+ auction faster (buy/sell based on stacks, sort by buyout price)\n+ classiccastbars (see enemy's cast bar)\n+ deadly boss mods classic (vital for pve)\n+ details (vital for pve)\n+ mapster (fog of war removal, non-fullscren map)\n+ prat (chat to include timestamps and repeating last message)\n+ quartz (includes time on cast bar and weapon swing timer)\n+ questie (to point out quest locations)\n+ real mob health (see target HP)\n+ selljunk (manual install)\n+ vendor price (see item vendor price)\n+ xptracker (to track efficiency of xp for quests/dungeon grinding)\n+ zygor (quest guide, manual install)\n\nFor endgame, my addons are similar to my Battle for Azeroth setup:\n\n+ atlas classic wow (dungeon maps)\n+ atlasloot (ingame loot)\n+ auction faster (buy/sell based on stacks, sort by buyout price)\n+ classicthreatmeter (threat meter)\n+ deadly boss mods classic (damage/heal/etc. meters)\n+ details (vital for pve)\n+ elvui (ui, includes autorepair, autosell junk)\n+ gearmenu (for managing on-use gear and trinkets)\n+ inflight (flight timer)\n+ itemrack classic (equipment manager for dps vs tank gear)\n+ questie (to point out quest locations)\n+ mikscrollingbattletext\n+ real mob health (see target HP)\n+ vendor price (see item vendor price)\n+ gtfo (dungeon aoe areas)\n+ inflight taxi timer (taxi estimated time)\n+ mapster (fog of war removal)\n+ spy (stealth)\n+ tomtom (set waypoints for map coordinates)\n\n## On Leveling Guides\n\nLeveling guides are desirable over quest waypoint addons and vanilla leveling. Quest waypoints only show paths for existing quests, not an optimal route for completing a zone and what quests to skip. Leveling guides as addons are the best version: unlike a text website, an addon benefits from no-alt tabbing, dynamically changing dependent on where and what level you are, waypoint arrow with a taxi system (the arrow tells you to use Hearthstone, Flightmaster, Boat, running, etc.), and 3D model viewer to find the quest giver. Leveling guides also show you when to grind and when to make locations your new home for hearthstone. One con is that the more popular a leveling guide, the more likely it will be camped and therefore harder to go through the quests (paid guides will actually make this easier). This is also true for reputation. This is not true for profession guides (you either do it while leveling or just level via purchasing all mats from the auction house) or gold and build guides (all the good ones are free).\n\nAmong the popular leveling guides, all are roughly equal in terms of pathing. I'm okay with paying; I care most about features. Joana's is most popular, but it's $5/mo. as of Aug 2019 and is text with a poor website design. Zygor's is $7.99/mo. as of Aug 2019 and has an addon. Dugi also has a leveling addon and is $37 as of Aug 2019 (https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/cul6qk/dugizygor_classic_guide_costs_37/). See http://dugi-vs-zygor.com/. I chose Zygor only because it's more popular. I used Zygor (and dungeons) for 1-30, then grinded Scarlet Monastery (SM) to 44, then grinded Zul'Farrak (ZF) until 53 (there were no good/consistent ST groups/BRD arena groups; too much downtime), ST until 55 (I got lucky with some guildies), Lower Blackrock Spire (LBRS) until 58, LBRS and pre-raid bis gear grind until 60.\n\nI found Zygor a huge quality-of-life improvement over Questie-style addons in prescriptively telling where to make my inn hearthstone, what zones to go to, which quests to take and how to path them. And miscellaneous things like Auto-Equip leveling items and Auto-accept/complete quests. One major flaw however is that Zygor only works well with Zygor. If you deviate from the path by removing certain steps (e.g., a step is too costly because everyone is trying to farming the spawn point of an elite; or you want to try dungeons for content/gear/asking a mage for food), then it screws up the rest of your guide. Many of the quests are based on chains, and the guide doesn't update when you try to abandon a chain. What I found is that you're better off using those extra steps you took as replacements for any necessary grinding and to continue with the quest chains even if they're a little too low-level for you.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/world-of-warcraft-burning-crusade-classic"},{"id":"322682678652489292","title":"Yakuza 0","status":"Completed","score":8,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":1860,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio","Sega Games"],"publishers":["Sega Corporation","Sega Games","Sega"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-01-16","completedDate":"2019-02-02","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Yakuza 0 excels in its urban realism, from Japanese culture absurdities to NPCs just living their lives to Yakuza badassery. It has a surprisingly good story: it's a simple tale but one rife with great main and supporting characters, and a sleu of interesting reveals that connect the two protagonists together (owner of the Empty Lot, Oda). The story and cast is complimented extraodinarily well by Yakuza 0's environment: roaming NPCs and sprawling buildings in Kabukicho of Tokyo and Dotonbori of Osaka, 1988. There are also a variety of sidequests which lend Yakuza 0's fictional city (and inhabitants) a layer of depth.\n\n__Story.__ The story is simple but stands out with its main and supporting cast. I also particularly enjoy how Yakuza 0 starts with a \"rank-and-file\" Yakuza and as it touches on higher tiers of the organization. I also liked how the various threads started to branch---showing the abilities of each of the 3 Dojima clan lieutenants, as well as weaving the story back to Majima's tale in Sotenbori.\n\nMajima's introduction is amazing. I was smiling the whole way through. First, a cliche but fun scene of a newbie entering a club with yakuza tendencies, an abrasive guy breaking cabaret rules. Then Majima with his utmost respect for customers (even to an eccentricity), then his fighting skill, then his ability to navigate a social situation by revealing his underlying plan: have the abrasive customer pay for the night from all customers. He is not below begging---dignity is just not a concern. That's what makes him awesome as a character that can only exist in Yakuza. Yakuza 0's ending makes it clear that Yakuza 0 serves not only to give a gentle introduction to Kiryuu, but an in-depth character growth of Majima, a previous fan favorite across the Yakuza series for his quirkiness.\n\n__Environment/\"Levels\".__ I like the level design focus being a closed-open-like world environment. Unlike other JRPGs, the advantage is maximum content usage out of a given zone, really pushing the depths of one's appreciation of it. I especially love that by the end of the game with playing many substories and overarching minigames, I have a good understanding of the street name locations and where bars/restaurants are located. The converse is to simply traverse certain zones such as low leveling areas only once. It's reminiscent of Dark Souls 1, where combat has a handful of options, but you're really tested to master and appreciate all of them as you're pitted against a variety of boss mechanics and environment situations forcing you to use them all (e.g., you cannot circle-strafe at Anor Londo but must learn to parry).\n\n__Gameplay.__  I like its interactive RPG elements going from point A to point B ranging in monotony (\"Find a payphone\"), absurdity (\"Sing a Karaoke song\"), action badassery, even the variety of cutscene interactions (hitting a button at the right time) and variety of gameplay missions. Yakuza 0 feels more like a visual novel with a variety of disconnected gameplay elements. The combat and various minigames together make Yakuza enjoyable but aren't individually very interesting.\n\nMinigames can be a hit or miss, where it's mostly the variety and underlying story that makes many substories worth playing (otherwise they're often glorified fetch quests). With that said, there are certain really good gameplay elements. In particular, Cabaret Club is not only a unique mix of quirkiness that would only exist in the Yakuza series and also a refreshing set of gameplay elements. You recruit girls off the street (some of which also intersect from the substories), level them up, provide special training, and interact when running the club---including having to learn the cabaret girl signals for bonus points. The Real Estate Royale and Dragon and Tiger's Equipment Search on the other hand are boring. Gameplay is stale (click a few buttons, wait 5 minutes for results). The only saving grace is the ability to expand your empire, along with minigames of each area as you battle the Four Billionaires, which also already exists in Cabaret Club. The nail in the coffin is that farming Mr. Shakedown and Real Estate Royale are the most profitable even if they're not very fun. Also notable are Karaoke (mediocre / serviceable), Dance Battles (fabulous idea), Telephone Club (fabulous idea although FPS is annoying), Catgirl Battles (funny idea but poorly executed with its RNG mechanics and unpredictable battles), Pocket Cars (quirky otaku fun).\n\n__Combat.__ The combat is good but not outstanding enough to play Yakuza just for it. With that said, I do like the variety of fighting mechanics, especially in its outlandish actions when you use the Heat Bar and pick up objects. I also like that the RPG skill tree does not just upgrade stats/numbers but enables new mechanics themselves. In terms of combat, I only wish the game were a little more explicit in having players fully realize the potential of all the fighting mechanics. For example, you can certainly grow into mastering each of Kiryu's fight styles, where Beast is good situationally against groups especially if there are objects around in the scene, and where you don't need to evade often; Brawler is great for 1 to 3 and generally versatile; Rush is great against slow enemies, typically 1-on-1, where you need the evasion tactics. For Majima, I liked Thug as a generally versatile style; Slugger works well for dodgy enemies like the Sera boss, but it's also generally versatile; Breaker only really has a role for stunlockking groups but its damage is very low. Mastering each of the fight moves per style however is complicated. There are certain mechanics that just aren't available in other styles, and so there's a lot to memorize.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Dialogue. It's comprised of cutscenes interspliced with visual novel scenes (i.e., without moving mouses, mostly wallpapers) interspliced with static engine movement (i.e., same as in gameplay but you watch the scene move) interspliced with gameplay scenes where the dialogue happens as you move. I love it all. The variety keeps the viewer absorbed into the story.\n+ Universal currency for both experience and in-game usage.\n+ No(t much) content is missable. This is a huge problem I have with the Souls series' sidequests, and with JRPGs' genre standard of missable loot. With Yakuza 0, you don't really miss out on anything: you can always pick up on the substories at any point or move on to the main story. The only thing missable are trophies which I don't care about. The biggest one I do hate is that you can miss rewards if you select the wrong dialogue. This prevents you from picking your favorite dialogue reaction to elicit, for example, the most hilarious dialogues.\n+ You can pause cutscenes. You can even replay them from the main menu.\n+ You can replay boss battles. This is something I always wished for from the Souls games as bosses are a highlight of the series. I would love to just boot up the game and recall fond memories as I retry battle and boss mechanics, especially ones that I breezed through the first time if only for sheer luck or via a specific tactic.I get that this breaks lore however and is unfit culturally for Souls. That's no stopping Yakuza 0 however, which is more self-aware.\n+ You can throw a wad of cash in the air to distract people in your way..\n+ No penalties for dying, including having to run back from save point or anything; you just restart the mission.\n+ Swap narratives between two characters (both of which are likeable) every two chapters.\n+ The Yakuza back tattoos are all fantastic.\n+ Unintentionally, the meta for farming currency is farming Mr. Shakedown with a Shock Gun. The fight is actually still skilled and reminds me of Dark Souls 3 boss fights where you have to dodge battle mechanics and whittle down HP while avoiding getting 1 or 2-shotted.\n+ Marina is a goddess as a secretary. I like her rapport with Kiryu and other NPCs (e.g., the help wanted sidestories). Her face also came from a JAV actress.. Same rapport dynamics also go with Goro and Yuki.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ No autosave.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Weapons in this game have such low durability that it's not worth the inconvenience to ever regularly use them. They run out after ~50 hits, which is maybe 2-3 fights. At most, it's useful situationally during boss fights, but it's not worth that trouble in considering it.\n+ Majima's send-off fetch quest missions in Dragon and Tiger. Similarly, Kiryu's real estate missions. I hate these waiting mobile-game-type missions.\n+ While I like the novelty of dine-in eateries and the variety of food options, there's nothing in the gameplay mechanics to incentivize consuming this variety aside from completion points. The best option is always the Stamina bottles. I wish there were better incentives.\n+ While I like the RNG element of not knowing the girl (and possibly getting duds) in the Telephone Club, it's very difficult to achieve all 7 substories. Even if you narrowed down the selected girl by bikini color, RNG chooses one of 3 different girls (Sakura, the specific girl, an older trap version; all with subtle distinctions based on voice). It would be nice to remove already completed substories until you have all of them.\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/yakuza-0/Walkthrough\n+ Mr. Shakedown farming guide (I did this in combination with Real Estate) | https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/816306-yakuza-0/74980815\n+ Cabaret Club Czar hostess signals | http://www.gamersheroes.com/game-guides/yakuza-0-sotenbori-cabaret-club-czar-guide/\n+ Cabaret Club Czar outcomes for each action | https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/241144-yakuza-0/faqs/74451/basics-of-a-cabaret-club\n+ Cabaret Club best makeover combinations for platinum hostesses | https://www.reddit.com/r/yakuzagames/comments/6e5v6a/yakuza_0_cabaret_club_czar_girls/\n\nI played it on Windows. My total playtime (as measured by Steam on 2/3/19) is 61 hours. I beat the game in ~50 hours. I completed the base game, most but not all substories, Real Estate Royale, and Cabaret Club Czar. The only things I missed are 100% completion points and various trophy achievements such as New Game Plus/Legend difficulty.\n\nFollowing suggested play order for the Yakuza series, I played this one first (https://www.reddit.com/r/yakuzagames/comments/8zeg4i/yakuza_game_order_and_remakes/). I played it blind, without a guide. This seems to be the best approach for this style of gameplay. I only consulted guides for confirming that I select the right dialogue options, typically during substories; I also consulted them when I get stuck in the main story. As for balancing main story and substory progression, I played the main story and completed substories as I encountered them on the way. I also completed substories if I got bored with the main story. After the main story, I went ahead to complete all substories.\n\nGTA is a description although not quite apt in terms of its urban environment and sprawling sidequests over the main quest---Yakuza is plainly Japanese in culture, and not a true open-world. It's closer to a RPG (note: not \"JRPG\" which is arguably its own genre more than a category) and beat-em-up hybrid.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/yakuza-0"},{"id":"2fa1ca2b-fb01-44a7-8d9d-cb1ffdcbc85a","title":"007 First Light","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2026,"playtimeMinutes":1011,"platforms":["Series X|S","Switch 2","PC","PS5"],"studios":["IO Interactive"],"publishers":["IO Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2026-05-28","completedDate":"2026-07-23","updatedDate":"2026-07-24","notes":"Excellent sandbox core gameplay of Hitman, based in James Bond universe, with good cinematic storytelling, James Bond spy equipment. The sandbox environmental interactions where you stumble your way to try to beat up everyone that detected you is incredible. Fun stuff that other stealth games miss due to their global alert systems.\n\nFlaw-wise, the story and gameplay get a bit stale midway through. Action sequences especially.\n\n__Writing.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Melee is too simple and can be cheesed.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/007-first-light"},{"id":"322682678652480076","title":"A Dance of Fire and Ice","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["7th Beat Games"],"publishers":["7th Beat Games","indienova"],"genres":["Music","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2019-03-02","completedDate":"2019-03-02","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Played as I saw Sodapoppin's stream playing it for the first time. Super low price and low commitment, so why not. Great game. LLove that it set ups core rhythms, and then tests your skill. All failures are your own. You're proud as you learn mechanics as the game progresses. Unlike other rhythm games which give a score, the requirement of (roughly) perfect execution requires that you really master the mechanics. It reminds me of speedruns and Dark Souls boss fights/level progressions, where you just have to finish the zone once perfectly. God damn that lsat level 6-X Pulse. It's not only long but with all sorts of tricks that just have to adapt to: the square in the beginning, the 3 consequetive squares at the end.. I literally have to play the beginning sequence (including the square) blind so I can follow the beat.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/a-dance-of-fire-and-ice"},{"id":"322682678650400332","title":"Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth","originalTitle":"逆転検事","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":1380,"platforms":["Android","iOS","NDS"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Puzzle","Simulator","Adventure","Visual Novel"],"startedDate":"2019-06-19","completedDate":"2020-09-06","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The only Miles Edgeworth spinoff released internationally (noted as of Feb 2019).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ace-attorney-investigations-miles-edgeworth"},{"id":"322682678652529228","title":"Advance Wars","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":840,"platforms":["WiiU","GBA"],"studios":["Intelligent Systems"],"publishers":["Nintendo","iQue"],"genres":["Simulator","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Tactical"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2024-12-25","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/advance-wars"},{"id":"322682678652530252","title":"Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":1650,"platforms":["WiiU","GBA"],"studios":["Intelligent Systems"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Tactical"],"startedDate":"2002-12-31","completedDate":"2002-12-31","updatedDate":"2024-12-25","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/advance-wars-2-black-hole-rising"},{"id":"322682678624199244","title":"Aim Lab","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["Linux","PC"],"studios":["Statespace"],"publishers":["Statespace"],"genres":["Shooter","Simulator","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-03-04","completedDate":"2021-03-29","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I like that Aim Lab is based on actual research, and it provides such info as you play game modes. There's a variety of tasks, each under different categories. There are really only certain mainstream tasks, but the variety is excellent. Performing well across a targeted collection is like performing daily physical exercises where you target individual body parts. Here, it's flicking, tracking, speed, and precision. You can further make a playlist to cycle the set of exercises instead of overoptimizing for one repeatedly.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Just enough detail to make the UI and gameplay feel modern in textures. Also tons of customization with weapon models, animations and sounds, and backgrounds to make the trainer feel more immersive as if it was within the video game you're practicing for.\n\n__Details I dislike:__\n\n+ While there's a leaderboard for every task to compare performance to top performance globally, there is no understanding of real-world comparison to the general population. This can be done by simply showing the score distribution of every task and giving you a percentile rank.\n+ The idea of Insights is cool, but the specific higlighted strengths and weaknesses don't seem accurate. For example, it's very easy to get Flickmaster.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nNot really a game, but I'm adding it here in order to provide my comments about aiming trainers. Aim trainers are perfect for idling such as watching a stream or while you want to relax a bit after playing a bunch of intense Overwatch matches or are waiting in queue. I never practiced seriously on Aim Lab like a regular exercise that you would for physical activity or learning a language---only casually during idle time. I'd rather just grind the game I'd like to improve on itself as it's all-encompassing and more fun. Kovaak is another popular aim trainer, but I dislike that it's paid and I found the game felt even less polished than Aim Lab when I tried it for roughly an hour. From Steam stats as of 2021, Aim Lab is also 3x more popular with roughly 6k daily players. FPoSu is another excellent contender which Surefour recommends, and while it's 2D and less realistic and diverse than aim trainers, it's fun.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/aim-lab"},{"id":"322682678652783180","title":"Amnesia: Rebirth","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":510,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Linux","Switch 2","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Frictional Games"],"publishers":["Frictional Games"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-04-30","completedDate":"2022-05-05","updatedDate":"2022-05-06","notes":"Amnesia: Rebirth is like a higher budget vision of Amnesia The Dark Descent and with a focus on tension and atmosphere. It doesn't depict terror and horror as much. Puzzle design and story remain good.\n\n__Story.__ It's a well-told story, made more explicit through the beginning sequence and the narrator's voice-overs. The game is a slow burn, with nothing early that's scary as it sets up the story.\n\nLike Amnesia, lore is told through flashback/hallucination triggers as you hear blips of a person's interaction or thoughts, and through notes you pick up.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nIt's typical of horror games, with a walking simulator and like Amnesia, features light stealth mechanics and limited item supplies like matches. New to the game is the Traveller's Compass, which provides an explicit guide on where to go next while unlocking areas as you point the compass at blue walls.\n\nSanity and health are combined into one system called Fear. It increases as you linger in darkness or look at monsters, and it decreases as you stay near light. I much prefer Amnesia's sanity mechanic as its effects were more subtle than simply tendrils appearing on your screen, including not only fully blurred vision but slower movement, enemy hallucinations, and collapsing and shouting to alert enemies once you reach low sanity. I do like that Amnesia: Rebirth does away with an explicit sanity meter.\n\nExploration is a bit like swimming underwater. You navigate from one light source to the next, subsequently diving deep and going back to catch air.\n\nLevel design is linear. This makes the horror noticeably weaker as there's an obvious designer intent to guide you on where to go next. I much prefer the open levels in Amnesia and horror games more broadly where you're able to explore multiple different areas in order to find the key items to unlock the next. This makes the horror moments more natural and all that more terrifying.\n\nThe game's difficulty is fairly easy. It's generous in supplies and when all else fails, you can still use the belly mechanic to decrease Fear and the darkness will still be illuminated.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nIt's a fantastic upgrade since the time of Amnesia. The colors and water-like detailing remind me of Dishonored 2.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Unlike TDD, Rebirth has inventory limits for matches and oil. This encourages their use instead of hoarding.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played blind but used a walkthrough when I got stuck on the puzzles.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/amnesia-rebirth"},{"id":"322682678650390092","title":"Among Us","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2018,"startedDate":"2020-09-29","completedDate":"2020-10-01","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Watched Sodapoppin play for quite the many hours since the start of the trend (7/20/20-7/23/20). I only actually started playing to play with friends: first Hitago, Kuiper, and lpf; then Dalton and Danny.\n\nAmong Us stands out in its accessibility, with anyone easily being able to pick it up, and with quite a bit of depth through social intelligence (but not much aside from that). Mechanics-wise, the one thing that stands out from Town of Salem, Terrorist Town in Garry's mod, etc. is the ability to finetune gameplay settings in order to balance impostor vs crew."},{"id":"322682678652478028","title":"Ape Out","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["PC","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["Gabe Cuzzillo"],"publishers":["Devolver Digital"],"genres":["Fighting","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2019-03-02","completedDate":"2019-03-03","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Love the style. Clearly keeps the spirit of Hotline Miami. Simple, brilliant core mechanics: WASD movement, mouse cursor, left/right click.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ape-out"},{"id":"5c34498f-2ee5-4984-b8eb-21646d3f2eb0","title":"Aperture Desk Job","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":38,"platforms":["Linux","PC"],"studios":["Valve"],"publishers":["Valve"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2026-01-18","completedDate":"2026-01-18","updatedDate":"2026-01-27","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/aperture-desk-job"},{"id":"337660020737966672","title":"As Dusk Falls","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["INTERIOR/NIGHT"],"publishers":["Xbox Game Studios"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-07-19","completedDate":"2022-07-20","updatedDate":"2022-07-24","notes":"Watched Moonmoon's playthrough of it.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/as-dusk-falls"},{"id":"322682678624140876","title":"Back 4 Blood","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Turtle Rock Studios"],"publishers":["Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2021-10-12","completedDate":"2021-10-21","updatedDate":"2022-10-19","notes":"Back 4 Blood is a great spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead 2. It's like L4D2 meets the progression mechanics of Killing Floor 2, attachment system of Apex Legends, and roguelites. It has great core mechanics, enemy variety, objective-based level completion, and build variety. Class-based PvE shooters with objectives is a niche subgenre, and I love them all (others with these elements include Team Fortress 2, Vermintide, Overwatch, Deep Rock Galactic, Payday 2, and Killing Floor 2). While B4B doesn't reach the heights of L4D2, I don't think it deserves its largely negative reputation.\n\nFlaw-wise:\n\n+ A difficulty spike from Recruit to Veteran. The increased spawn rate for specials as the form of difficulty can be mindboggling. You can just be unlucky at times when a horde is called and they spawn multiple Bruisers and Hockers. Ammo dumps aren't a fair challenge. As I played mostly in October and November 2021, this has been apparently fixed several months after release.\n+ Specials. Their sound and visual design is lacking. For example, Hockers can be unnecessarily tedious in their ability to snipe people and you can't find them if they're not in your POV, especially as you're bombarded with other specials. It's also difficult to [distinguish the Special's variant](https://www.reddit.com/r/Back4Blood/comments/nz79v4/why_did_they_have_to_make_the_ridden_so_samey), which is important in knowing how to approach them. Compared to other PvE coop shooters like L4D2 and Vermintide 2, specials are also generally spongier where it may take more than a full clip to down them.\n+ The game lacks built-in methods to better coordinate. Matchmaking to a larger extent is pretty bad.\n\n__Gameplay.__  It's very much like Left 4 Dead 2, and I greatly enjoy the core gameplay loop. The enemies are all designed well with a decent variety: specials like Reekers disincentivize huddling in one area whereas specials like Hockers disincentivize lone stragglers. Special variants can also spice up how you tackle them. \n\nNew to Back 4 Blood, cards add customizability and randomness in each run, and characters each have different perks. Builds include general DPS (Assault Rifle, SMG), frontliner and scavenge hunter (melee, shotgun, SMG), special killer (sniper rifle, shotgun), and support. Money and cards add persistence across rounds. This encourages playing with the same people over the course of multiple levels. It's a nice way to make friends with strangers.\n\nOther new mechanics include: extra lives to revive downed players and the ability to save cleaners in the middle of a round; trauma damage; mutation weak spots; and horde callers like crows, car alarms, and snitches. Weapon mods serve similar to Apex Legends as a way to upgrade your weapon along with their item rarity.\n\nMatchmaking with randoms is a mixed experience. It's rare to play a game with a full set of players for more than 10 minutes, and it's rare for anyone to backfill. There are also communication challenges when playing with randoms: for example, signaling weapon types/builds during character selection, signaling for an ammo type, and calling for a vote to restart the level or kick a player. There's also no option to change characters and decks after a round in order to adapt to your party.\n\nDifficulty acts as a form of progression, where Acts must be unlocked per difficulty. Recruit serves similarly as a Normal difficulty. Veteran is a steep difficulty curve from Recruit, feeling closer to Nightmare than just \"Hard\". The special's spawn rate and lack of cues signaling their presence can be frustrating at times. Left 4 Dead largely fixed this issue by making all the specials still deadly but with low HP, rewarding quick reactions and game awareness; in B4B you can dump an entire magazine and not kill them. At least, after spending dozens of hours to master Veteran, you can start to appreciate all the game's mechanics. Now you're conscious about so many elements that could be ignored on recruit: positioning during hordes, checking behind you and on the lookout for specials, every copper and health kit purchase, grenade usages, and how to kite enemies.\n\nInnovation-wise, the characters and levels are forgettable, having all been done many times in previous games. It's a shame the developers took no risks on these fronts. The level variety is also not nearly on par with Left 4 Dead 2. The campaign is artificially extended as areas are copy pasted and objectives such as \"destroy the nest\" are added yet again. We need more levels like Bar Room Blitz.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Great graphics and rendered cutscenes. Compared to Left 4 Dead, the game most lacks in sound and visual design of enemies. There aren't clear audio cues to signal the presence of specials (especially each  variant). There are some audio cues, but the obfuscation is caused by both general noise pollution and the fact that there's so many Specials at any one time. Enemy special variants can't even be easily distinguished visually, let alone audibly. This is important in knowing the difference between, say, a Bruiser who grabs vs a Bruiser who does an AoE attack vs a Bruiser who is armored, or a Reeker who spits acid vs a Reeker who explodes without acid. [The zombie art and animations also aren't nearly as good as Left 4 Dead's, as well as the lack of breakable environments.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdRLNUGmFC8)\n\nRealism is a popular criticism made against the game due to Left 4 Dead expectations: for example, the characters are designed as cliches, say banal quips, and levels are somehow teeming with fresh weapons and attachments. This is some big nostalgia goggles. Left 4 Dead's setting is also quite generic.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can see what items your teammates are carrying. Useful to sync on, say, Toolkit uses.\n+ They kept Left 4 Dead 2's mechanic of being able to melee while reloading.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Back 4 Blood's addition of Call of Duty-like elements. For example, aim down sights with slower movement speed along with a sprint with a stamina bar encourage tactical gameplay rather than Left 4 Dead's arena shooter style of run and gun.\n+ You can't remove weapon attachments. This makes it a more conscious decision when you find your weapon of higher rarity in the wild but it doesn't have the attachments you necessarily want.\n+ I like all the mechanical changes to Veteran difficulty. For example, sleepers spawn mini-hordes. Health stations are only 1 instead of 4. I wish they told us about them though explicitly.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Quick play doesn't save Act progression unless you find a game on the specific stage that you need to advance. This could easily be remedied by saving all Act level progressions but gating the next Act on completing every stage, but not necessarily that all stages must be completed in sequence. This is likely a contributing factor to the lack of people backfilling a match.\n+ You don't get supply points when losing. This makes grinding higher difficulties to overcome them fairly annoying.\n+ Only one Continue. That's not much time to improve over camradarie under the same team. Why have a finite number of Continues in the first place? This is likely coupled with the issue that levels are quite long, and so defeat (particularly with zero rewards) is demoralizing.\n+ The wait time for preparation for a new round is 3 minutes. This is too much waiting. Overwatch only spends 1 minute.\n+ No option to mute all by default.\n+ When you hit a car alarm or break a nest, the zombies instantly know where you are rather than go in alert and explore mode.\n+ No specific stats page like Left 4 Dead's.\n+ No solo progression or offline play, with a connection to online servers at all times.\n+ You're forced into a hub world and not just interacting with a menu. The hub world is also way too large (c.f., Deep Rock Galactic).\n+ It's unintuitive to new players whether triggering an alarm such as destroying a nest during a horde will spawn extra specials and horde enemies.\n+ [Breaker uses a dumb AOE if you go too far away. I greatly prefer L4D's tank who can throw items.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdRLNUGmFC8)\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Card Compendium, including Supply Lines](https://www.reddit.com/r/Back4Blood/comments/p1wsd1/b4b_card_compendium)\n\nI beat all of Normal and Veteran difficulty's campaigns. It took me roughly 80 hours.\n\nThis entry does not include the Tunnels of Terror DLC released on April 12 2022. It's disappointing that the game adds no truly new Ridden, just yet more Ridden variants that are hard to visibly and audibly distinguish among the already existing 3 variants per base Ridden. There's also no new campaign levels, just a \"Hive encounter\" that can randomly appear in the existing campaign levels. There's also no new weapons.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/back-4-blood"},{"id":"322682678650424908","title":"Baldur's Gate","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":2640,"platforms":["PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Beamdog"],"publishers":["Beamdog"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-06-26","completedDate":"2020-06-28","updatedDate":"2024-08-18","notes":"Baldur's Gate is the epitome of computer RPGs (CRPGs), also known as isometric RPGs. It made a significant impact on the RPG genre as a whole and especially the CRPG subgenre's direct predecessors: action RPGs like that of Diablo, RTS like that of Starcraft, and open-world western RPGs like that of Elder Scrolls. Other game influences are Deus Ex, KOTOR, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Divinity. Playing in 2020, I'm most impressed by the depth of its mechanics, introducing many ideas hold well today and I think would improve modern RPGs: for example, simple stat/damage formulas; strong class identity encouraging balanced party compositions; miscellaneous deep mechanics (e.g., Thief's Detect Traps); and quests without explicit objectives.\n\nFlaw-wise, BG lacks an engaging story and characters; in-depth side quests either story or gameplay-wise; generally higher quality content over featuring expansive but empty worlds; and obtuse UI. \n\n__Story.__ The story is pretty forgettable. Just enough to build a convincing world.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Building on D&D, boy is Baldur's Gate deep in mechanics for a video game. Character creation is particularly impressive, going beyond mainstream RPGs in 2020: race; class and class kits including dual and multi-class options; alignment (similar but different from BG's reputation); ability scores; and mage book and weapon proficiency slots. Mages and clerics have spellbooks, where similar to Dark Souls (which probably copied D&D), spells are limited by use in a day rather than MP, and you must memorize a subset from your spellbook before being able to use them. Thieves detect traps, pick locks, pickpocket NPCs, and have a stealth mode. Bards have Bard Song. Classes have Special Abilities, e.g., druids have Shapeshift, rangers have Charm Animals, Paladins have Lay on Hands and Cure Disease.\n\nOther examples of deep mechanics:\n\n+ You can listen to rumors by buying a drink for someone at an inn.\n+ You rent a room for healing, reducing fatigue (which increases by the number of hours the party plays without rest), and passing time.\n+ Morale can cause party members to flee combat (you can increase this with bards or becoming intoxicated, which has a tradeoff of increasing luck penalties).\n+ There are status effects such as poison, diseases, and confuse.\n+ Inventory has a carry capacity for each party member. \n+ Day and night cycle, where merchants have hours.\n+ Identify enchanted items.\n+ Cutscenes when you occasionally rest. \n+ Party members die permanently at higher difficulties; at lower difficulties, you must visit a church to resurrect them (similar to Dragon Quest).\n+ When moving across maps, you can get waylaid by enemies.\n+ At temples, you can purchase spell services as well as donate.\n\nThere are plentiful main and side quests. A lot of the side quests are fetch quests however and not nearly as much depth as, e.g., Fallout: New Vegas. There is some player agency here that's impressive: you can often kill or not kill as two dialogue choices, and you can pickpocket NPCs when if caught lead to fighting them alongside guards. It does not extend beyond this local interaction however, not affecting large quest chains or affecting long-term aside from a global reputation. The dialogue is just not as intricate to feel engaging: it lacks, for example, Fallout 3/NV's skill checks and quest chains that intersect depending on prior choices; as well as Witcher 3's story feeling of quests having consequences.\n\nLike other CRPGs, Baldur's Gate features a real-time with pause system rather than D&D's turn-based system. Unfortunately, the system is not good. The idea of allowing you to steamroll through encounters, but also enabling you more precision by giving commands during the pause, is intriguing. Pause just seems like tedious micromanaging though, making the RTWP system a compromise that does neither real-time or turn-based best. AI script options enable automating away of this micromanaging.\n\nLike other 90s games, the controls and UI have not aged well. There are too many unnecessary options (e.g., Return to Game, Party AI toggle). There is map, quest journal, inventory, character stats, mage book and priest scroll, rest, character selection.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The graphics and dated UI can make it tough to stomach Baldur's Gate. It feels even dated for its time, coming out at the same time as Metal Gear Solid and 3D games. I found it a bit easier by thinking of the game as a step up from D&D and tabletop games rather than a step down from modern video games. Having voice acting for (the major) lines in the game is quite praiseworthy.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ The abrupt soundtrack shifts when moving from level to level. The abruptness of combat music, the fast speed in which it's over, and then back to normal world state. This is an RPG vibe I've had for a long time, particularly in the unpolished 2000s games like Oblivion and Witcher 1-2. Interesting to see that style last since Baldur's Gate.\n+ Trying to detect traps. It's a mess. Even with Imoen having Detect Traps automatically on when idle, you have to take a few paces, wait until a trap is detected, and continue onwards. This is too tedious and it's simply easier to spam Quicksave, reload once you trigger a trap, and find and remove it.\n+ Spending most of my time on inventory management.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ BG's reliance on D&D mechanics makes damage formulas easy to calculate. Games like WoW make it exceedingly more complicated, making it harder to determine which stat combinations for a particular item are better (amd certainly not with a back of the envelope calculation).\n+ You can show map coordinates.\n+ Quests do not have explicit objectives.\n+ Tab highlights interactable objects.\n+ You can force open locks if your party members can't pick it open.\n+ Quick save has a buffer size of saved games.\n+ Fast travel exists, where once you enter the world map you can travel to any already seen location.\n+ Your party still moves when you zoom out to the map screen.\n+ EE has native 21:9 support, borderless, and higher resolutions.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ You manually hit a separate screen to level up.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ The hotkeys and movement commands for each party member is too much micromanaging. It's tedious even getting in and out of buildings. In addition, unlike Starcraft, you can't click to move to an area that's within the fog of war. This means you must make more myopic decisions when moving your character, requiring more micromanaging. Party pathfinding can also be infuriating.\n+ Movement speed is way too slow for the size of the world. To fix this, I raised the frame rate from 30 to 60, which also sped the game by 2x (https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/4w6atn/raising_frame_rate_bgee/). This makes for a bit more frantic combat, so I turned on the option to pause at enemy sighted. I also made regular use of Ctrl+J's teleportation for backtracking.\n+ [D&D2e's ruleset of THAC0, Saves, and AC are confusing.](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/3au0ie/thac0_origins_and_context)\n  + Contrary to other stats, lower is better.\n  + Your base armor is at 10, and items set the base armor level lower than this value (but don't necessarily stack, e.g., bracers and armor); further armor with minus modifiers can lower this even further, and AC can be negative.\n  + Equipment may have +1 AC or Saves, which actually means one AC or Saves better not worse.\n+ The amount of companions for partying is impressive. But it's a shame they have so little story behind them. It would be better with quality over quantity.\n+ No real bank to store items. As a workaround, I used the barrel outside the Jovial Juggler in Beregost.\n+ Item descriptions don't tell you their sell value.\n+ Loot icon is very small, smaller than just clicking on an enemy's corpse. There is also no loot over multiple corpses.\n+ The color backgrounds on scrolls are never explained, and I had to figure it out myself: red means the (current) character cannot use it, green means the (current) character can learn it, blue means the scroll is unidentified.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Baldur's Gate wiki](https://baldursgate.fandom.com)\n+ [Forgotten Wars walkthrough](http://www.forgottenwars.com/bg1)\n+ [Best mage and cleric spells per level](http://www.forgottenwars.com/oogi/index.htm)\n+ [Best class for first timers](https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.834797-Poll-First-time-Baldurs-Gate-player)\n+ [Berserker weapon proficiencies](https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/30919/bg1-berserker-weapon-proficiency)\n\n__Version.__\nI played Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition on PC (Steam). This entry does not include the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion or Siege of Dragonspear expansion, which I did not play (as of this entry date).\n\n__Playthrough.__\nI was motivated to play BG as a classic. It's been extremely difficult motivating myself to get into Baldur's gate though: the long playtime, dated UI and gameplay, and graphics turn me off. To streamline the game a tad (especially party micromanaging) so I can focus more on the story, [I played on easy difficulty which is one below normal](https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/14tlzm/is_it_okay_to_be_playing_on_the_lowest_difficulty). I did most side quests up until around Chapter 4 when I was more selective, looking at the loot first and otherwise proceeding directly with the main quest. I beat the game in a total of 15 hours (2X speed, easy difficulty, and focusing on Chapters 4+'s main quest contributed to the low playtime; I easily spent roughly as much time researching builds and strategies for the game).\n\nThe walkthrough I followed is generally recommended and with visuals and plentiful hyperlinks unlike more classic text-only GameFAQS-style walkthroughs. It doesn't include EE additions however. For example, only some merchants can Identify everything (I resorted to Thalantyr in High Hedge until I figured out Dynaheir can learn it, and for all magic-related sells; I used the armor merchant in Carnival otherwise). Unlike its recommendations, I also did not go immediately for Manual of Bodily Health for the Constitution increase at level 1; it applies retroactively (at least in EE); I also only picked up party members along the way, and declined any that weren't part of the canon party.\n\n__Build.__ I chose Dwarf, Fighter (Berserker), Chaotic Good, STR 18/DEX 18/CON 18/INT 18/ WIS 18/ CHA 18 (via Ctrl+8 cheat), and 2 two-weapon style / 2 war hammer proficiency. Long sword is also highly recommended, but I chose war hammer for novelty (not many games feature hammers as strongly as swords). Mage/spellcasters fare poorly at the start due to squishiness and magic variety, so they're not great for beginners. I also avoided Thief because you'll quickly pick up companions that are Thieves and Mages (particularly Imoen). Ranger (Archer) was the other alternative, but the [CC immunities from Berserker and high health pool make it easier to steam roll](https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/8h3qpx/questions_about_building_the_best_fighter).\n\n__Party.__ I went with the canon party. This is not because I care most about canon (it seemed arbitrary, particularly on companions to travel with along the way) but because it simplifies decision-making. Party-wise I went:\n\n+ Minsc: Ranger (role as melee DPS), 2H Sword\n+ Jaheira: Fighter/Druid (role as melee DPS/healer hybrid), Quarterstaff\n+ Dynaheir: Mage (role as ranged DPS), Sling\n+ Imoen: Thief (role as ranged DPS), Shortbow\n+ Khalid: Fighter (role as ranged DPS), Longbow\n\nWith my character as the primary tank, this balances out to 3 melee, 3 ranged, and with utility from thievery, magic, and druid. Formation is 3x2. Relevant threads ([1](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/75251-baldurs-gate/51835218), [2](https://sorcerers.net/community/threads/a-weapon-for-jaheira.21375), [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/631y5a/how_to_keep_the_tank_in_front_and_the_best)).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/baldurs-gate-and-baldurs-gate-ii-enhanced-editions"},{"id":"322682678650405452","title":"Banjo-Kazooie","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["N64"],"studios":["Rare"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Gradiente"],"genres":["Platform","Quiz/Trivia","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-08-19","completedDate":"2020-08-23","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Soundtrack and artwork are iconic. Core platforming mechanics are excellent. Each world is vibrant and diverse. I love the game show and final battle.\n\nFlaw-wise, camera controls. The game can also be a bit too tedious in its many collectibles, especially with Music Notes resetting if you die which can happen instantly in certain areas (e.g., Rusty Bucket Bay). I could not tolerate that without save scumming. Some areas are especially bad without save scumming that makes it annoying to replay: Rusty Bucket Bay, the crocodile minigame. Some puzzle solutions are also convoluted.\n\n__Story.__ Simple plot, but there is notable character to how the characters responds. The snappy Kazooie and straight man Banjo. The hilarious insults from Brentilda. The rhymes of Gruntilda.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Solid gameplay mechanics like Super Mario 64 and Spyro as a 3D platforming collectithon. There's a surprising amount of depth in the variety of platforming mechanics: jumps (jump, double jump, and standing jump); attacks (roll, swipe, Kazooie jump-attack, shoot attack and behind, Beak Barge), invulnerability, swapping to Kazooie or transforming to creatures to climb steep hills, and environment interactions (Shock Spring Jump, Flight Pad using red feathers, invulnerability using gold feathers, swimming, Wading Boots for dangerous areas like swamps, cold water, and quicksand, Turbo Trainers).\n\nLevels are varied in platforming, enemies, and artwork, brimming with opinion. I love how every level is nonlinear in its approach, allowing you to tackle them at your pace. The season switches of Click Clock Wood are especially ambitious. It seems tedious to play without a walkthrough however, knowing how to sequence each event, but it was fun following a walkthrough and seeing the progression of each mini-puzzle.\n\nIt's the Nintendo 64 generation, and camera control is notoriously bad. At least with Banjo Kazooie, you can control it somewhat with horizontal movement. But it's via buttons rather than analog stick, and has restricted movement near walls. To pan vertically, you have to enter a clunky first person view.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Colorful, diverse environments. I love the artwork in the characters. Game's graphics age quite well in 2020. Soundtrack is iconic. Frame rate is noticeably skippy and drops.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Unlike Super Mario 64, you don't just use your collectibles to unlock doors. You have to find the portrait with missing jigsaw pieces first, and then find the door.\n+ All the sounds Banjo makes: jumping sounds like Super Mario 64's jump; Bottle's noise when you interact with him like Crash Bandicoot's sound picking up a mask.\n+ Like other 3D platformers at its time, there are cheat codes.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ How to get some of the Jiggies are convoluted. I don't have the patience to figure out the right move to use without resorting to a guide.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Notes and Jinjo collected in levels are not preserved across levels. To be completionist, you'd have to try to collect them all on your first entry as subsequent entries start from scratch.\n+ You need to collect 882/900 Music Notes (and 94/100 Jiggies) to get all Note Doors. That basically means you can't skip a single level in getting 80/100.\n+ Draw distance is low. This actually makes a difference gameplay wise when you try to determine whether an area is worth pursuing (e.g., underwater corridor). Fixed apparently in Xbox 360 version.\n+ Swimming mechanics. Annoying as always.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played the Nintendo 64 version on the Project 64 emulator (Banjo-Kazooie (U) (V1.1) set to use Glide64 video plugin). The best version is technically the Remastered version on an Xbox 360 emulator (Xenia). It involves HD sprites, native widescreen support, analogue camera controls, and 60 FPS. However, I couldn't find the Xbox XBLA ISO/ROM for the full game and not the trial. This is a rare case of a game having exclusively the best version on Xbox One (similar to Red Dead Redemption remaster). I played blind but looked at a walkthrough near the end of a level in order to get anything I'm missing or stuck on. I got all Jiggies (except one in Gruntilda's Lair), Honeycomb Pieces (except one in Spiral Mountain), 885/900 Music Notes (I was lazy on 8 in the last level), and most Mumbo Tokens (19 extra). I save scummed for parts that felt tedious, or I didn't know if it was dangerous, e.g., swimming underwater for Music Notes in Clanker's Cavern.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/banjo-kazooie"},{"id":"322682678651463244","title":"Bastion","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","iOS","Mac","Vita","X360","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Supergiant Games"],"publishers":["WB Games","Supergiant Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2010-12-31","completedDate":"2019-08-03","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Colorful action platformer with a narrator and solid combat mechanics. In terms of variety, Bastion excels most in its arsenal: weapons, special moves, and passive skills. Enemy variety is decent. Music is excellent. Unfortunately, Bastion is also quite repetitive as each level is effectively the same.\n\n__Story.__ Love the Stranger narrating the story and adding lore via audio to the items picked up.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Core combat is solid with two weapons among an arsenal, upgrades under a currency, special move, dodge, block. Weapon-specific Proving Grounds. HUD uses a health bar, health potions, and special move potions.\n\n The pitfall level designs that build as you move are interesting. I don't think I personally really like it, but I appreciate its style. I think my problem with it is that the paths are often narrow, making one move carefully and lacking dodge except in pre-written large rooms with many enemies. I really liked the last few levels for example as this wasn't so much a problem, and isntead skill was on the pure combat. The levels are not very diverse, which can add to the repetitiveness of the game. I do like some levels: for example, the swamp, the forest.\n\nThe Bastion hub accumnulates in buildings and characters over the game.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Colorful aesthetics work really well. Animations are solid. I love the character art.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI did not complete all Proving Grounds. I also did not use Shrines to up the difficulty for extra bonuses. I used Cael Hammer almost the entire team, and used Breaker's Bow then the Military Rifle then Calamity Cannon. My playstyle converged to holding the shield, shooting anyone I can to kill them before I aggro, and taking advantage of the Cael Hammer's strong attack after holding Shield. Aside from some wonky platforming at the last level and occasional aiming issues, I actually didn't have any trouble using a touchpad. It's clear this game was designed with an analog stick in mind however. This probably translates to Transistor also being a game on PC/controller instead of iOS too.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bastion"},{"id":"322682678652438092","title":"Batman: Arkham Asylum","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["PS3","Ouya","PC","Mac","X360","Switch"],"studios":["Rocksteady Studios"],"publishers":["Eidos Interactive","Playcast-media","Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-07-26","completedDate":"2019-07-27","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Batman: Arkham Asylum is an action-adventure in similar spirit to superhero titles like Spider-Man (2000). It features a combination of decent gameplay ideas: stealth, beat-em-up melee combat, gadgetry, and exploration in semi-open worlds---a combination inspiring many future video games. Most of these gameplay features are particularly great (with the exception of its simple yet fun beat-em-up moveset). Rather, it's the combination that keeps the game fun. In addition, the Batman theme and the story against iconic Batman villains grounds the game's design choices. And the boss fights are all excellent.\n\nThere is only one major flaw: detective mode. This significantly hampered my experience, ruining atmosphere and appreciating the aesthetics of the game. Other flaws are more minor such as having only decent stealth mechanics and exploration within a limited setting. I found stealth lacking and plain frustrating at times.\n\n__Story.__ Simple story (get people out of Arkham Asylum and back in control; thwart whatever Joker is up to). But it works well given the colorful characters and the setting. Voice actors are top notch, e.g., Batman, Mark Hamill as Joker.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Gameplay comprises combat with stealth and gadget and melee confrontations, and exploration in semi-open world and semi-linear environments.\n\nCombat is a beat-em-up with stealth elements and ranged attacks via Batman's gadgets. There are one-button melee combos, one-button counters, one-button dodges, combo moves/finishers, Cape Stuns that's fairly standard. Gadgets are ranged attacks and offer some pretty cool choices in tackling enemies and appealing to the Batman fantasy. The gadgets used for both exploration and stealth/combat are all excellent, e.g., the code sequencer for hacking; explosive gel; batarang for eliminating/stunning ranged enemies. Stealth is decent: grappling to higher ground allows for repositioning and there's a few options to take down enemies. Nothing fancy. Stealth can be extremely frustrating on certain areas however as guards (particularly with guns) can cluster when they find one dead body (you can't hide dead bodies). And Joker signals to them when you're in an area and a guard's suicide collar rings when one is out.\n\nExploration is incentivized by Riddler challenges and the semi-open world. Gameplay also includes Forensic Analysis and Environment Analysis. And gliding. Like Mario/Zelda, jumping and climbing walls is done automatically as you move toward them. Interestingly, crouch is manual though which is more for stealth controls than platforming. Progression system is simple (just a set of skill points and an unordered array of available skills) and works.\n\nBoss designs are excellent. The appeal of the Arkham setting is that each boss gets to feature a main villain within the Batman series as well as subvillains for minibosses and cameos. And they all have pretty good boss fights. E.g., the platforming and hiding in Scarecrow's, which is a good chance of pace away from the beat-em-up action. Croc's ambush and hiding around to collect spores. Enemy variety (i.e. not bosses) is okay but nothing special. They're all forgettable beat-em-up mobs.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The grungey blacks fit the game well. The setting is mostly forgettable however. This is particularly exacurbated given that Detective Mode is on 90% of the time.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Collectibles which fit into the lore via Riddler's challenges. I didn't go into collecting them all, but the option is nice. I don't know about collectibles literally just for the trophy achievements on PSN/Steam. There's no in-game benefit except for unlocking extras such as profiles. One advantage of not trying to collect them all in a playthrough is that I don't have to follow a walkthrough. I also don't have to leave Detective Mode on all the time (https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/989bf1/batman_arkham_asylum_so_are_you_expected_to_just/).\n+ Audio tapes. It adds character to all the villains. And it continues playing after you leave the menu! (Similar to MGS5 but not as ridiculously lengthy.)\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Health bar.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Arkham Asylum popularized detective mode/vision in video games. I don't like it. It promotes lazy level design and environment art where you spend your time in a completely different aesthetic from the original art, following highlighted item after highlighted item. The implementation in Arkham Asylum is especially problematic because there's no incentive to ever turn it off. It helps for exploration to find Riddler challenges; for combat in sensing enemy location and which have weapons; and general movement to find the next path via the interactable objects.\n+ A game like Arkham would improve from a minimap HUD. It's not Dark Souls where you effectively memorize the entire layout because you painstakingly spend time in each area because of its difficulty. See, e.g., Marvel's Spider-Man (2018) for a minimap HUD in a similar game. I hate being lost, taking a step in a direction, and pressing pause to look at the map yet again.\n+ Riddler challenge maps are impossible to use because they don't deactivate icons if you already got the riddle.\n+ X button is for Sprint. This is awkward to hold down while moving the camera with the right analog stick.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/batman-arkham-asylum\n\nI played the remastered version, Batman: Return to Arkham (2016) on PlayStation 4. See DigitalFoundry's video analysis comparing to PC (https://www.vg247.com/2016/10/27/how-does-the-arkham-city-remaster-stack-up-against-original-pc-release-on-max-settings/). I played on Normal difficulty.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/batman-arkham-asylum"},{"id":"322682678652455500","title":"Bayonetta","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["Switch"],"studios":["PlatinumGames"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-05-23","completedDate":"2019-05-24","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Bayonetta revels in its stylishness: excellent orchestral music, sexual innuedos and fanservice, seamless transitions from cinematics to fights, film cuts, boss designs, and lovingly animated movesets and finishers. Like creator Hideki Kaimya's other well-known series Devil May Cry, Bayonetta's direction is over-the-top and comical, fitting the hack-and-slash genre well. Core combat is excellent. The plot is fun B-rated nonsense and characters are one-sided yet quirky. Bayonetta is also a surprisingly challenging game at times, toning down the otherwise aggressive pacing of the fight in favor of control and timing.\n\n__Story.__ Not great but serviceable. The characters are fun.\n\n__Combat.__ Combat is smooth with core punch/kick, weapons, temporary items, and stylishly animated action moves. I love the sequences with Wicked Weaves to provide satisfying combo finishers, Witch Time which provides a statisfying reward to dodging an enemy attack, Torture Attacks as finisher moves, quick time events (QTEs), and Beast Trigger. Health replenishment is rare. I prefer this hack-and-slash combat over Devil May Cry's. The moveset is not as deep as Devil May Cry, and I love Bayonetta all the more for it: I was never into Devil May Cry's confusingly huge moveset not unlike fighting games. I also like that there isn't an SSS-like rating system for chaining combos, in favor of more a little bit more pacing instead of pure aggression.\n\nThe minigames are a nice change of pace. For example, the Angel arcade bullet time; motorcycle sequence; Chapter 14's aerial combat.\n\nGear variety is somewhat standard with enough variety for a hack-and-slash: hand and feet weapons; accessories; items; new movesets.\n\n__Aesthetics & Music.__ The aesthetics keep the game fresh alongside its stylish animations and music. On the other hand, the level designs are mediocre. And the film cuts can be annoyingly cheap after a while as it's not fully animated.\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\nInspired to play this from its general positive reception, integration into Super Smash Bros as an iconic game of video game history, 11 hour playtime according to howlongtobeat.com, and a recent personal marathon of action-style RPGs: Dark Souls series, Devil May Cry, Nioh, Bloodborne, Sekiro. I played it on Windows, which is an enhanced port of the original (Digital Foundry's PC port analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVbQF0Ubz48).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bayonetta-and-bayonetta-2-digital-bundle"},{"id":"322682678650396236","title":"Binding of Isaac: Rebirth","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":330,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","3DS","PC","iOS","Mac","WiiU","Vita","New 3DS","XONE"],"studios":["Edmund McMillen","Nicalis, Inc."],"publishers":["Nicalis, Inc."],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2020-09-12","completedDate":"2020-09-18","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Binding of Isaac features the highlights of the roguelite subgenre: emergent gameplay from item stacking; strong enemy and boss variety; replayability in RNG and autogenerated levels; and simple but fun core combat mechanics. The game is fast-paced enough room-by-room, and generally forgiving (at least in Normal difficulty) that it doesn't feel frustrating. There are also no progression mechanics like stat upgrades, only character and ending unlocks, so you're not forced to grind. I generally find the bullet hell genre to be fairly stale as you just point in a direction and dodge projectiles; and Binding of Isaac is the exception that I thoroughly enjoyed.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Upgrades come in the form of active items, passive collectibles, unique trinket, cards, and pickups like health, currency, and bombs. Room-by-room completion with a boss per level. Core gameplay is inevitably a bullet hell but it features enough variety that it's not _just_ a bullet hell.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Ages well. It's a shame that it doesn't render natively to resolutions, subscribing to a fixed one..\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Having the most fun when the game is effectively broken with an enormously overpowered character: fast tear shots, max damage, and ridiculous movement speed.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Stacked item mechanics affect your character's appearance.\n+ Rebirth's analog controls with a controller are so much better for movement and aiming than mouse and keyboard.\n+ Hard difficulty isn't an enemy damage and HP scaling, instead making mechanics like curse more prominent (https://bindingofisaacrebirth.gamepedia.com/Hard_mode).\n+ You can't save in the middle of a session, but you can in Rebirth. It helps that games are roughly 20 minutes total, but still.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Default aim controls are four directions without any diagonal. This makes shooting less flexible focusing even more on movement.\n+ Pixel resolution is surprisingly bad for a remake..\n+ In the options, you only see a thumbnail of all items you stacked. You can highlight them to see more details like in Risk of Rain 2.\n+ Item and card mechanics are poorly explained.\n+ You need to beat the game 12 times to get to the true endgame. Way too much grinding to beat Mom's Heart so many times.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://platinumgod.co.uk\n+ https://bindingofisaacrebirth.gamepedia.com/Items\n\nI played the original game awhile back but did not get very far, not really getting into the groove of enjoying 2D isometric combat. Level-wise, I rushed item room then boss room. It only took me 3 hours to beat Mom (Ending 1) followed by a lucky run immediately after in which I beat Mom's Heart (Ending 2). From then on, I installed the two DLCs Afterbirth and Afterbirth+. I tried playing Hard mode and felt with more hours I could get used to it. But I found the pace of completing the game roughly every 5 games was great at Normal difficulty.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-binding-of-isaac-rebirth"},{"id":"322682678652794444","title":"Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night","originalTitle":"ブラッドステインド: リチュアル オブ ザ ナイト","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":810,"platforms":["Stadia","PS4","PC","iOS","WiiU","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["ArtPlay"],"publishers":["505 Games"],"genres":["Platform","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2023-09-13","completedDate":"2023-09-19","updatedDate":"2023-09-19","notes":"Bloodstained plays like the best of Castlevania, merging mechanics from Symphony of the Night and the Sorrow series. It also has a few improvements, particularly in its slightly more complex build variety.\n\nFlaw-wise:\n\n1. Bloodstained mostly plays by the book and does not innovate, and many standard Castlevania elements can feel somewhat dated. This includes cheesy writing, a fairly limited moveset, a static and relatively uninteresting level design within a castle, and standard boss encounters. I can't stop but compare to Hollow Knight which surpasses Bloodstained in all these elements.\n2. The CGI graphics simply pale in comparison to pixel-perfect graphics and the ability to define a specific atmosphere. See also its graphics compared to Blasphemous or Hollow Knight.\n3. The side quests and gear are grindy. In Bloodstained, you have to complete arbitrary tasks for several questgivers, and for build progression, you need to farm both equipment and shards (effectively taking both grindy elements from Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow).\n4. Bloodstained could also have made builds even more in-depth (e.g., stat allocation upon level up, class archetypes like magic, melee, ranged). Pushing on complexity here is one way Bloodstained could have stood out.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nThe core gameplay is Castlevania, specifically like the era of Symphony of the Night and beyond games. This is seen in its moveset including abilities, level design including save points and fast travel waypoints, enemy design, RPG elements and progression, and even its corny story. Some notable elements:\n\n+ Weapon variety is higher than SOTN and Aria games.\n+ Shards are similar to Aria's Souls, where enemies provide different power-up attacks that expend mana. In this game, there are multiple shard types providing slightly more variety.\n+ Moveset is roughly the same as you move under a relatively static 2D landscape, with classic Castlevania level design, and with stock animations with relatively limited aiming beyond standing, crouching, and jumping. It feels limited in a modern 2D metroidvania (c.f., Hollow Knight). There's no vertical attack to strike enemies above or below you, angled strike so you can make your aim more precise, or forward dash.\n+ Exploration is incentivized both with all the various chests and map completion, as well as breakable walls granting rewards such as HP and MP boosts.\n\nI love the map and overall level design in Igarashi games. They're intuitive and designed well for backtracking, where it's very clear areas that you need to revisit based on marking explicit chests and parts of an area that you have yet to visit. Many metroidvanias, 3D ones especially like Dark Souls and God of War, forget this and rely on you memorizing specific areas to revisit which is a pain to keep track of if you care about completing optional content.\n\nBuild is deeper in its RPG progression:\n\n+ Crafting supplies to craft new items, gear, shards, and upgrade shards.\n+ Gold currency to purchase items and gear.\n+ Cooking dishes where eating a dish for the first time provides permanent stat bonuses.\n+ A side quest system which is mostly about completing errands with minimal story. There are multiple NPCs for this based on killing monsters, obtaining certain items, and cooking certain dishes.\n+ Journals found and read through the game provide new weapon move combos.\n+ Borrow books from O.D.'s library in order to increase certain stats.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nI have mixed opinions about the CGI 2.5D graphics. It looks like a 3DS or a soulless mobile game with computer models that stand out too much relative to their environment, poor lighting, and generic colors. The soundtrack is great like any Castlevania game at least.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can set the voice language to English or Japanese.\n+ [Rank 9 passive shards become permanent passives as skill shard toggles](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bloodstained/comments/c2osga/psa_fully_upgraded_passives_become). You can further still equip the shard which stacks.\n+ Extra modes for replayability, including boss rush, speed run, and randomizer.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Certain unlocked abilities don't become part of your core gameplay loop. Rather they're equippable shards that you have to equip on/off instead of being able to immediately use. For example, Reflector Ray to reflect off surfaces and teleport based on the ray, Masterwork to move large objects. The equipping itself is tedious, and it's not as immersive in now being part of your everyday movement and combat like Metroid or Hollow Knight. They're certainly not like Double Jump, SOTN's Bat transformation, or Super Metroid's Ice Beam to freeze enemies so you can jump on top of them.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Fandom wiki](https://bloodstained.fandom.com), [Fextralife wiki](https://bloodstainedritualofthenight.wiki.fextralife.com)\n+ [Map](https://bloodstainedritualofthenight.wiki.fextralife.com/file/Bloodstained-Ritual-of-The-Night/world-map-bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night-wiki-guide.png)\n+ [Area order](https://www.polygon.com/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night-guide/2019/7/11/20690600/area-order-walkthrough-abilities-bosses-endings)\n+ Tip: Item priority is hoard for quests > sell > dismantle ([source](https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/b1yept/should_i_be_dismantling_everything_or_selling)).\n+ Tip: At high luck at endgame, 2x Plunderer's Ring is superior to 2x Gambler's Ring ([source](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/158368-bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/77809929)).\n+ Endgame farming spot: Forbidden Underground Waterway. Uses Accelerator shard (beat Harrier in Den of Behemoths), Augment Gold shard, MP regen, luck ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bloodstained/comments/c3i123/the_best_place_i_have_found_for_farming_money)). A poor man's substitute for Accelerator shard in midgame is Spiked Breastplate.\n+ Quests: [Lindsay](https://bloodstainedritualofthenight.wiki.fextralife.com/Lindsay), [Abigail](https://bloodstainedritualofthenight.wiki.fextralife.com/Abigail), [Susie](https://bloodstainedritualofthenight.wiki.fextralife.com/Susie)\n\nMotivated to play as it's a spiritual successor to Castlevania, made by Igarashi.\n\n__Playthrough.__\nI played on Normal difficulty, which is the only difficulty available on a first playthrough. I got roughly 90% map completion and was not motivated after beating the game to collect the rest.\n\n__Build.__\n\n+ Overall weapon progression: Flying Edge (sword)→ Carnot's Rebuke (greatsword) → Gram (greatsword) → Beast Killer (whip) → Encrypted Orchid (sword) → Oracle Blade (sword) → Rhava Velar (sword).\n+ Purple (Directional) Shard: True Arrow\n+ Red (Conjure) Shard: Welcome Company → Summon Hellhound\n+ Blue (Manipulative) Shard: Healing\n+ Familiar Shard: Silver Knight\n+ Yellow (Passive) Shard: Optimizer or Expertise\n  + Rank 9 passive shards enable a permanent upgrade, so I also prioritize the shards that increase damage.\n+ Dishes are cooked as they're made available. To ensure availability, I also purchase roughly 5x stock of all cooking ingredients from Dominique.\n\ntodos on future playthroughs\n+ play as zangetsu\n+ play as aurora","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night"},{"id":"322682678650442316","title":"Borderlands","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":1350,"platforms":["PS3","PC","Mac","X360","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Gearbox Software","Feral Interactive"],"publishers":["2K Games","CyberFront","Take-Two Interactive","Feral Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2020-05-24","completedDate":"2020-05-29","updatedDate":"2022-03-29","notes":"Borderlands popularized the looter shooter market. It excels as a challenging, semi-open-world action FPS with RPG elements. Most unique is its looting system and other RPG elements like leveling and quests. It has tight controls and a great execution across weapon/item variety and enemy variety. The endgame is particularly fun as your build finally starts to take shape.\n\nFlaw-wise, Borderlands can suffer a bit from balancing in terms of levels and difficulty, heavily reliant on your level and your RNG loot. The story and characters also barely exist. The semi-open-worlds are fairly barren and the same wasteland. The several bosses also don't require much strategy and are bullet sponges.\n\n__Story.__ Simple and barebones. Nothing stellar in terms of protagonists, supporting characters, or villains as they don't really exist. NPCs also only exist in the game as machine outposts handle most all services. Quests have no real story like Fallout.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core FPS loop works wonderfully, and assaulting a group of enemies enables a variety of approaches from sniping to SMG to melee. Most distinguished from other FPS are the loot mechanics, action skill, and Fight for Your Life mechanic. Non-regenerating health along with a regenerative shield follows the partial regeneration health system of predecessors like Halo and FEAR. Death penalty is fairly generous, losing just a little cash, and saves are checkpoint-based.\n\nRPG elements include RNG loot system, currency, four character classes, skill trees, inventory management, missions and side missions, weapon proficiency, SDU ammo capacity, artifacts, class mods, and challenges. Weapon variety overall is excellent, ranging in core stats like damage, fire rate, accuracy, rarity, ammo/reload speed, elemental damage, status effects, and weapon types including Eridian which have infinite ammo. I love how deep the loot system is: item rarity, manufacturers, modifiers, different weapon parts, and legendaries having unique effects.\n\nEndgame as in Playthrough 2 is really where the game picks up in pace, with endgame loot and builds really showing their diversity. Playthrough 2 however only scales loot and enemy levels and doesn't do anything new. It's only with your gear and build fleshed out that you proceed at a faster pace. Playthrough 1, especially the first half with Arid Badlands, is slow-paced and more methodical in how you approach enemies.\n\nDifficulty is quite high, particularly at the beginning when you have no good gear and no build. It's less of an issue later in the game as missions easily make you overlevelled by 1-2 levels for a given mission, which is enough to make it more palpable. Overall, however, the level balancing and careful sequencing is very important, and it's a shame that the player has to keep this in mind often. One good weapon can carry you for a very long time. I don't see why the level scaling has to be gated until Playthrough 2.5, and still not consistent as the Knoxx DLC is an exception to the scaling.\n\n Controls overall are responsive and intuitive. There's Sprint, Crouch, Jump, and numbered hotkeys for weapon swaps. Vehicle controls are also tight. The HUD is sufficiently minimal and self-explanatory (although I find the compass unnecessary; the minimap, apparently an Enhanced Edition addition, serves its job with more detail such as going around things, and the main screen points to your quest objective anyways). Auxiliary screens are also intuitive such as the inventory, quest logs, and map.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The cel-shaded graphics state an opinion, and it ages very well. I also like the wasteland setting and modern rock and punk elements.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Lining up headshots by letting enemies right in a straight line toward me, or ducking behind cover and waiting until they're more still in motion.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Autoloot. For manual loot times, holding E also acts like a vacuum. Soundtrack did not stand out.\n+ Game of the Year Enhanced Edition natively supports 21:9. With max settings and 8x antialiasing, I was able to play smoothly at my monitor's maximum 75 FPS.\n+ Single universal difficulty level.\n+ You can respec, and it's very cheap. This lets you both play without committing initially as well as explore and finetune builds at the end game.\n+ There's projectile velocity rather than immediate hitscan.\n+ Even the shield is an item, not some permanent upgrade based on a collectible like many AAA games.\n+ You can sprint and reload while sprinting. It adds to the faster pacing.\n+ Fast travel, available later on in the game for convenience once you leave Arid Badlands. I like how Catch-A-Ride is similarly an unlockable as part of the main quest line.\n+ You can spawn a vehicle at booths and automatically spawn in the driver or gunner seat.\n+ In the game menu, you can disable launcher and disable startup movies. And some HUD elements are toggleable too!\n+ The fast travel menu points out which location is the closest to the tracked mission objective (but sometimes it doesn't work).\n+ There is little to no fall damage. With the fun pacing of the game, it's nice to just jump off random things.\n+ No missable sidequests.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Bullets have travel time.\n+ Weapon types (except Eridian weapons) don't affect movement speed.\n+ It can often be faster to reload the game to reload at a checkpoint than to trek backwards.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ You can't track multiple missions at a time, making it a nuisance to recall where all the mission objectives are so you can complete them in batch as the game encourages you to do.\n+ Backpack SDUs are missable. The first five Claptrap rescue mission's rewards in Playthrough 2 are randomly Backpack SDUs which are finite in number, or a Grenade mod. This means you have to Ctrl+Alt+Delete the game if you don't get the SDU (https://borderlands.fandom.com/wiki/Claptrap_Rescue_missions). It would be better to be consistent! To get max capacity, you also need to play the DLC on the first playthrough (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=173045786).\n+ The default mouse sensitivity was way too sensitive and default FOV of 75 felt too zoomed-in. I set it to 110 (https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands/comments/4qh6go/what_fov_do_you_use/).\n+ Audio logs can occasionally cut off in the middle for no reason.\n+ Backpack SDUs in Playthrough 2 are very inconsistent.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands\n+ https://borderlands.fandom.com\n+ youtubers | vinylicpumagaming, joltzdude139, ziggyd, derchlands\n+ [Ideal playthrough, including level sequencing for dlc and playthrough 2 but which is suboptimal by 2 backpack sdus](https://web.archive.org/web/20150308090351/http://oldforums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?t=112350)\n+ [Max backpack sdu guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=173045786)\n+ https://borderlands.fandom.com/wiki/Mission\n+ [class guide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8u10f4Gmz8)\n+ [mordecai build](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H-sO1u04mA)\n+ [mordecai gear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aZTXI9Qhao)\n\nI played the remastered version, Borderland: Game of the Year Enhanced Edition (2019), on PC. This entry does not include the DLCs. I played including Playthrough 2 as it seemed like a core part of the game (https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands/comments/y5mk7/second_playthrough_worth_it/). I beat Playthrough 1 in 16 hours and Playthrough 2 in a total of 22 hours according to Steam. I got all Backpack SDUs (57 capacity) excluding 3 from Playthrough 1's DLCs and 2 from Playthrough 2's DLCs. I followed the ideal playthrough, e.g., skipping side missions in Playthrough 1 after Dahl Headlands. After I beat Playthrough 2 at level 51, I completed Knoxx. Then I grinded at Eridian Promontory to get max level and loot along the way; and Knoxx's armory farming (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlR_EUYu2_g), vault farming, and Robolution's hyperion gift shoft farming for loot. Then I completed the remaining 3 DLCs in release order: Zombie Island -> Moxxi -> Robolution.\n\nThe cons to the ideal playthrough are threefold:\n\n1. You miss out on 2 Backpack SDUs from Playthrough 2's DLC which no longer appear once you enter Playthrough 2.5; \n2. By leaving out DLC from Playthrough 1, you must go through an arsenal of the same content before you experience DLC (so you must be patient);\n3. You miss out on 3 Backpack SDUs and 2 skill points from Playthrough 1.\n\nFor Playthrough 2's missing SDUs, you can only enter Playthrough 2 by joining a host who is on Playthrough 2, which is effectively impossible in 2020. You can revisit Playthrough 1 once you enter Playthrough 2, but Playthrough 1's DLC will be underlevelled; so you trade that off vs Playthrough 2's starting area. I could technically deviate from the ideal playthrough by starting Zombie Island (DLC 1) followed by Robolution (DLC 4) once I hit level 42 (around when I meet Crazy Earl). The DLC is appropriate at this level, and I still benefit from 2 Backpack SDUs: the trade off is no longer having content left for Playthrough 2.5 and being overleveled for the main missions; I can ultimately mod if I care about those 2 backpack SDUs.\n\nI chose Mordecai for my class. As of May 25 2020 I really like the idea of a sniper build. Unfortunately, it's apparently not great in Borderlands 1 ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands/comments/bax11m/playing_mordecai_solo), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands2/comments/atsowp/sniping_in_borderlands)), but I also like the secondary idea of revolver if it doesn't work out which I plan to swap to for more diversity anyways. Masher revolvers and Thanatos or Torment machine pistols synergize very well with Mordecai's Gun Crazy, encouraging a significantly more aggressive pacing, along with Equalizer and Protector for Ammo Regeneration. I played all of Playthrough 2 with a Masher and Equalizer combo I got from Playthrough 1's Destroyer loot drops. I generally like high single shot damage over high fire rate as it makes me more deliberate about aiming and consequently positioning and understanding enemy AI as I aim or reload. I'm okay with his glass cannon nature and his commitment to Revolvers and Sniper Rifles meaning I won't be able to experience other guns (but all classes encourage this specialization to weapon types, and there's weapon proficiency). I don't like Bloodwing as its passive nature makes it the least interesting of the action skills; at least it serves as a healer/crowd control in later games rather than cheap damage boost. The only alternative I was considering is Lilith, who's generally recommended for survivability and movement speed playing solo, but I'm not really into SMGs which her class best synergizes with (Phasewalk for melee aggression/retreating; and hit proc rate skills). Joltzdude139's two endgame videos of [Mordecai](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aZTXI9Qhao) and [Lilith](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMhVhMMJn0c) helped seal the deal. I'm not interested in melee (Brick) or turrets (Roland). In hindsight on choosing classes, I would go for Lilith as movement speed is king for more quickly rushing missions and reaching from point A to point B, thereby minimizing downtime. Mordecai is also very fragile so you can't always go in guns blazing.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands"},{"id":"322682678650440268","title":"Borderlands 2: Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PC","PS3","X360"],"studios":["Gearbox Software","Triptych Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2020-06-04","completedDate":"2020-06-05","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Story is barebones. I like the quirky characters in this one: Shade, Captain Scarlett, and Herbert especially. Areas are sufficiently varied. Enemies are mostly reskins. No new gameplay mechanics. The strafe mechanics of the Hoverboat make it so fun to ride. I like the newly introduced Sand Hawk and Pimpernel.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ In general for all DLC, I like that there are multpile fast travel locations instead of only one like in BL1. This makes entering/exiting DLC much more convenient (e.g., greater than one sitting, farming).\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ All TVHM DLC start at the level you first enter them. There is unnecesary level gating. It should always be at your level like in UVHM.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ sand hawk variants | https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands/comments/1ca00m/which_sand_hawk_to_get\n\nI started the headhunter packs while in TVHM to accomodate levels for the base story's main missions when having already played side missions in that level range. ","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-2-captain-scarlett-and-her-pirates-booty"},{"id":"322682678650431052","title":"Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":1080,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Linux","Android","PC","Mac","X360","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["2K Australia","Gearbox Software"],"publishers":["Aspyr Media","Take-Two Interactive","2K Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2020-06-11","completedDate":"2020-06-13","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Borderlands TPS is like a standalone expansion pack to Borderlands 2 with new areas, classes, enemies, and story---and stylized like an Aussie spinoff. BL TPS introduces a few new additions but otherwise is the same game: Cryo replaces Slag as the fourth elemental effect (the lack of needing a second weapon to swap and apply Slag is a quality of life improvement); O2 with double jump from moon-like gravity and ground pound (these new mechanics are great, but the O2 gauge is a pain to monitor); laser weapons replace BL2's e-tech and are finally a viable weapon type; and playable characters actually have a personality.\n\nFlaw-wise, the lack of innovation in gameplay or major refinements, trite level design, lackluster story and characters, and endgame content made this a lesser entry in the series.\n\n__Story.__ Playing on the villain side with Jack as a primary character again is a great story pitch, although not advanced very far. Jack's progression from hero to villain just isn't substantiated well enough; there are no clear motivations or reasons why he must make the actions he does and no lack of regret. And no Angel! One addition I really like is that in the base game, the character you choose actually does have unique interactions and dialogue, and it goes much further than the occasional line introduced in BL2's DLCs. The Australian characters and their heavy accents are also hilarious although not quite as memorable on a per character basis as BL's main staples when they were introduced in BL1.\n\n__Gameplay.__ BL TPS plays pretty much like BL2. O2 is introdued as one of the new main mechanics, and while I liked its effect in terms of moon jumping and ground pounding, I found that monitoring O2 to be tedious. Areas feel even more linear in this game than previous, similar to the way areas are sequenced in a DLC.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Engine is the same as BL2. Really only new assets. Environment variety is also less, and areas often feel more or less indistinguishable from one area to the next. One thing I don't like about the gravity is the lack of responsiveness in any movements; the game felt less responsive, and I think they could have combated this better with, e.g., increased sound and mroe exaggerated animations.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ UVHM doesn't require the equivalent of slagging which ruined BL2's pacing compared to previous playthroughs.\n+ Moonshot (the equivalent of BL2's Eridium) has a much higher drop rate.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ TVHM automatically scales from the get-go (although still with a level range cap per mission). Hardly an improvement.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Not all available missions show up on the quest log as (undiscovered). I think it may exclude Bounty Board missions. I had to reference a mission flow page to find out what side missions were now unlocked after I beat a main mission in order to keep my levels on pace. The same issue may also have appeared in BL2.\n+ Fewer fast travel spots than BL2 (not necessarily one per area). This forces more travel and seems to unnecessarily pad the content.\n+ Moonstone chests in non-hub areas. I've accidentally paid to open the chest multiple times. That's just bad game design if previous series and the rest of this game encourages spamming E to open up every other chest.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/t/guide-top-gear-for-nisha/2091\n+ https://github.com/gibbed/Gibbed.BorderlandsOz\n+ https://imgur.com/user/presequelcodes\n\nI got the bundle with all DLC (Handsome Collection). I beat the base game in 15 hours (according to Steam), and at level 27. From there I used Gibbed to level to 30, added some items and moonstones, and proceeded to Claptastic. TVHM/NVHM isn't worth the time in PreSsequel given the lack of extra content (DLCs/Headhunter packs, or a wide array of side missions).\n\nFor classes, I chose Nisha. My only other main consideration is Jack. I'm a fan of aggressive run and gun gameplay with SMGs, pistols, or shotguns, active action skills, huge DPS, and some survivability. I like Nisha's dual wielding option with One for Each of Ya, wall ricochet, and tons of kill skills. Jack's action skill is more interesting to me though as aimbot for criticals and damage boost feels like easy mode, and he has better survivability with Leadership.\n\nAt endgame, my preferred loadout is Luck Cannon as default of close to mid range, Flayer for another close range when ammo constrained, Shock Pitchfork for shield bullet sponges and occasional long range, Kaneda's Laser for escaping Fight for Your Life; Haymaker for shield; Celestial Lawbringer class mod; Cryo Transfusion for grenade; Tranquility Oz kit for Oz kit. As a character up to around level 30, I prioritized Fan the Hammer. One for Each of Ya's only major con is its ammo inefficiency and the massive single target DPS of Luck Cannon helps balance that (and Fistful of Bullets' ammo capacity increase makes it OP).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-the-pre-sequel"},{"id":"322682678650432076","title":"Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel: Claptastic Voyage","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","PC","X360","XONE"],"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"publishers":["Take-Two Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2020-06-13","completedDate":"2020-06-13","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I like the spin of levels and enemies designed around Claptrap's internals. It's like a mechanical Osmosis Jones. And the story is actually pretty decent this time for a DLC. I especially like the psychology elements, enabling reactive worldbuilding in its missions similar to Tiny Tina's DLC to keep the game more dynamic. Even the same music from BL1. New weapons such as Luck Cannon and Flayer are also amazing.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Revisiting Fyrestone, but based on Claptrap's memory.\n+ The quest around unsuppressing what happened at Overlook.\n+ The platforming with jump pads and tunnels with automatic travel is much better here than in some of the space levels in the base game. None of them feel frustrating like trying to target patches of land each with a jumppad. Claptastic levels sometimes feel like Doom/Quake.\n+ The illusions in END OF LINE from the sub-subconscious area. It goes even further in Tina Tina's DLC of dynamic worldbuilding and illusions, which is one of the DLC's greatest strengths.\n\nI played the game on NVHM around level 30.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-the-pre-sequel-claptastic-voyage--1"},{"id":"322682678650388044","title":"Braid","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2008,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["PS3","Linux","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["Number None Inc."],"publishers":["Number None Inc.","Microsoft Game Studios"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Strategy","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-10-04","completedDate":"2020-10-06","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Braid helped launch the success of the indie scene as a viable business strategy. As a standalone game, Braid stands out in its platforming innovation of time travel as a core mechanic. Braid clearly attests to indie standards: a clear directorial vision, minimal core controls, budget yet artistic graphics.\n\n__Story.__ Some exposition dumps at the beginning of each world as a sort of reward. THe prose is actually quite good and works well with the soundtrack. I found this balanced mystery/intrigue and depth.\n\nBraid's overall message is too purposefully obfuscated, leaning to pretention. The biggest pretention is the hackneyed core analogy to the Atom bomb, where scientists are so intrigued by the scientific challenges that they're horrified of what they eventually made, not considering long-term impact. I think this is an overly romanticized cliche about technology. However, I still like its core theme of obsession and how the overarching story wrapped around it. The game is clearly auteristic in demonstrating Jonathan Blow's vision of what a video game should be: adult, presenting themes he's passionate about, and having it all conveyed by video game mechanics. I wish the core gameplay loop with individual levels connected better to this overall story. Otherwise it's only the mechanic that lasts, not the levels themselves.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Braid's biggest innovation is time. It balances being a challenging platformer while also very forgiving with the ability to retry according to time. Health and lives are also overhauled by this excellent mechanic. Time travel is infinite up to the area, not based on a cooldown or limited. Each world has different time travel mechanics. As an example of depth, you can even use the speed multiplier to pause time. This is helpful for enabling the green items to still move while the world is paused such as any obstacles. World 1 blowing minds with its time reversal and its reversed music. And the ending that you discover by reversing time one last time.\n\nCore controls and enemies are strongly inspired by Mario. It has a decent amount of puzzles to complement the platforming, more than I would like so I often resorted to walkthroughs as I can't stand puzzle games. Puzzles aren't my thing, but I can appreciate the expanded depth on the same mechanic.\n\nThe game makes a fantastic use of asset reuse, reusing certain levels to emphasize certain ideas, using familiarity with the pre-existing puzzle solutions as the building block. This isn't done for lazy asset reuse to save production time/costs, but to build on player knowledge.\n\nFailures in this game are truly the video game version of ground hog day, with a finer controlled form of it.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Love the soundtrack. The indie art style clearly ages well.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Fast travel is immediate, allowing you to easily enter a specific level in each world.\n+ It doesn't support borderless out of the box, but it does support arbitrary resolution unlike many pixel indie platformers; and it wasn't difficult to get Borderless Gaming to work with it.\n_ The amount of puzzles per level followed by arranging a puzzle makes for good pacing.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Certain actions are completely irreversible, making you restart the entire game to complete it.. (level 3-6). Fortunately they just unlock a different ending, so they don't black content. I believe level 3-6 is the only one that locks you out.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ guide | https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Braid, https://braid.fandom.com\n\nMotivated to play after a recent indie/roguelike marathon I got into in September 2020 with Undermine, Binding of Isaac, and Spelunky.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/braid"},{"id":"7f76ea6a-830b-4fec-98b6-c21c89df2be8","title":"Bramble: The Mountain King","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":270,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Dimfrost Studio"],"publishers":["Dimfrost Studio"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2024-09-08","completedDate":"2024-09-09","updatedDate":"2024-09-10","notes":"Generally great storytelling, variety in environments and level design, many fun boss mechanics.\n\nMuch of the fairy tale story writing is done for edginess sake, without a moral or theme behind them. I think this could have really advanced the fairy tale vision and made the story much stronger. For example, something about eating as a theme behind King Nils. The boss fights also started to run their patience as they’re 1 HP fights.\n\nPlayed with Marisa. We swapped off. We even did some scenes each holding one side of a controller to make it fun.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bramble-the-mountain-king"},{"id":"322682678651389516","title":"Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Win Phone","Android","PC","iOS","X360","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Starbreeze Studios"],"publishers":["505 Games"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-05-24","completedDate":"2020-05-24","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The gameplay controls with two thumbsticks is so intriguing and works really well for each of the platforming ideas the developers have in mind. Like a single-player coop, there's a funny cognitive dissonance going on as you try to navigate two characters at once. Platforming is puzzle-lite, and I prefer games like this and Journey where it's more about the atmosphere than the puzzle challenge. The occasional enemy and NPC adds interesting angles to the coop mechanic.\n\nThere's not much depth in its story that really makes it shine outside its trope.\n\nThe theme of loss is portrayed very well, particularly at the end where you're at half capacity with just one brother, and the way the lost brother's spirit can help you really emphasizes the loss and contribution. I love the approach of conveying story elements through gameplay mechanics.\n\nGraphics are forgettable. The atmosphere is a standard soft soulful journey atmosphere. The brothers' different responses to various things gives them character.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/brothers-a-tale-of-two-sons"},{"id":"322682678652539468","title":"Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2007,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["Mobile"],"studios":["Glu Mobile"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2006-12-31","completedDate":"2006-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I spent so many hours on different builds for this game.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/call-of-duty-4-modern-warfare--1"},{"id":"322682678650367564","title":"Castlevania: Rondo of Blood","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1993,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["Wii","PSP","?"],"studios":["Konami"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Platform","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-11-25","completedDate":"2020-11-25","updatedDate":"2023-08-26","notes":"Rondo of Blood is arguably the earliest encapsulation of Castlevania's staples. Released in the era of games such as Doom (1993), Mega Man X (1993), Donkey Kong Country (1994), and Super Mario World (1990), Rondo of Blood features demanding platforming and action, unique enemies and boss designs, exploration, stunning music, and timeless 2D graphics. It's astonishing how good it is.\n\n__Story.__ Forgettable. Cutscenes are corny.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Core controls are minimal and excellent: jump, whip, sub weapon attack, item crash. You accumulate hearts which allows you to perform sub-weapon moves. Each enemy has a unique moveset, requiring you to understand and master how to react. Core gameplay is pretty brutal: you don't restore any health over the course of a Stage unless you find secret walls. Game over after losing all your lives means restarting the Stage.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ 2D sprites age well. Soundtrack is great.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI decided to play this as my first entry to the series. It's the earliest game that's also hallmarked as one of the best in the series. I played a bit of Castlevania games as a child but never a full playthrough.\n\nThis game requires quite the patience: I savescummed on the emulator just to experience the game but tried to restrict saving to at the beginning of every zone (unless I started to get frustrated, which was often).\n\n__Version.__ There are several versions:\n\n+ The original PC Engine release. It is Japanese-only, but there is a fan-patched copy taking the English translation from the PSP remake (\"Rondo of Blood (v1.4) win32\" by paul_met).\n+ The SNES remake Dracula X changes the art style and level design.\n+ The PSP remake Dracula X Chronicles (DXC) is 2.5D overhauling the 2D sprites with mixed reception. [Additionally, DXC stretches the original PC Engine resolution of 256x224 into 296x224](http://blog.hardcoregaming101.net/2010/03/castlevania-dracula-x-chronicles-pce.html).\n+ The Castlevania Requiem rerelease on PS4 is an upscale of the PC Engine, but I prefer playing on PC.\n\nI played the original PC engine release with the fan patch.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/castlevania-rondo-of-blood--2"},{"id":"322682678650399308","title":"Chivalry: Medieval Warfare","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":840,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","X360","XONE"],"studios":["Torn Banner Studios"],"publishers":["Lace Mamba Global","Activision","Torn Banner Studios"],"genres":["Fighting","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-09-06","completedDate":"2020-09-06","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Chivalry is arguably the first game featuring deep melee combat in an FPS view. It's a shame this game is multiplayer instead of single player!\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__ The combat depth is easily the most unique factor of this game, spawning others like Mordhau, Mount and Blade: Warband, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Melee strikes feature swing, thrust, overhead blow, and backswing from a combo. There are also techniques like kick, feint, dodge (for certain classes), crouch, sprint. Weaponry includes one-handed and two-handed swords, blunt weapons, shields, polearms, bows, fire bombs. I wish all melee FPS games like Elder Scrolls and Shadow Warrior adopted this depth!\n\nHUD system is minimal and includes only health and stamina. Classes are basic but core in diversity: varying in movement speed, weapons, and armor. Multiplayer games consist not only of deathmatches but siege.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Serviceable.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nMotivated to play this in October 2019 for its deep combat like Dark Souls, cult classic, and inspiring other popular games like Mordhau and the upcoming Chivalry 2. I didn't play for very long due to it showing its age in graphics, jank, and focus on multiplayer.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/chivalry-medieval-warfare"},{"id":"322682678652549708","title":"Crash Bandicoot","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["XONE","Switch","Series X"],"studios":["Toys for Bob","Beenox","Vicarious Visions"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Platform","Racing","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/crash-bandicoot-crashiversary-bundle"},{"id":"fd638503-42ae-4268-941e-f8e3c169ae62","title":"Dark Messiah of Might and Magic","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2006,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Arkane Studios"],"genres":["Fighting","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2023-04-17","completedDate":"2023-04-22","updatedDate":"2023-05-10","notes":"Dark Messiah is like a mishmash of Thief, Arx Fatalix, and classic western RPGs with an emphasis on more action. Looking Glass Studio's influence clearly shows in its level design (albeit here it's linear), enemy/guards, ample environmental interaction, and sound/visual atmosphere. I most treat Dark Messiah as if it were a combat-oriented Thief title, with more linearity, light RPG elements, and particularly compounding on the environmental interaction and exploration. It has a slow pace in level navigation and has some puzzles, particularly once you get the rope arrow.\n\n__Story.__ Standard fanfare for a fantasy.\n\n__Gameplay.__ It's the environment where Dark Messiah's gameplay truly shines. You can kick enemies off balconies, throw items to topple them over and then impale them while they’re on the ground, kick enemies into wall spikes, kick them over a fire, break ledges above enemies, kick enemies down stairs, take corpses and throw them at enemies. There are also secret areas with loot, incentivizing exploration.\n\nSome advanced controls for an old game: interact (including moving objects), crouch, sprint (with stamina), kick, mantle. Kill animations such as impale enemies on the ground or one-hit kills during Adrenaline. Light indicator, stealth attacks, noise.\n\nCombat is surprisingly deep given the hit detection. Moveset in swinging matters for weak and strong attack, and the area that you’re parrying in. The primary combo is [two weak attacks followed by a strong attack](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=145380971), achieved by holding the mouse button during the second swing.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nPerformance is janky with skippy audio during loading, artifacts popping in. Audio lines overlap leading to chaos in triggered lines at times. The polygon graphics. After resolving the game-breaking performance issues, I find all these elements somewhat charming in its B-tierness.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ No XP in killing enemies. You're rewarded to traverse the level and explore, not necessarily kill everyone.\n+ At low health, enemies start limping and run away, calling for help.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The kick is a fun mechanic combined with all the various environment ideas. It's a bit too overpowered to instant kill anyone by kicking them to spikes, but the jankiness of ragdoll physics is fun regardless.\n+ No merchant. There's no point in hoarding all items to pick up. So you have to throw away items.\n+ Only crates marked with a dragon have actual loot. Others are just for environmental interaction.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Much of the game is dark, so you have to rely on Night Vision. It's blinding at times. I would much prefer a dark game but was still illuminated enough that you can wander around and appreciate the dark. This would keep the atmosphere not unlike Thief games.\n+ Wonky hit detection. Impales aren't always triggered, hits and blocks can fail.\n+ Heal spell is basically mandatory. Items heal too little, and your HP doesn't natively regenerative. However, MP does.\n+ Head bobbing and camera tilt when strafing is too significant and disorienting. Fortunately you can turn it off.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [PCGamingWiki](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Dark_Messiah_of_Might_and_Magic): Settings to skip intro vids, console, borderless windowed, Large Address Aware to increase the 2GB RAM limit, and Higher Corpse limit from 2-4 to 9.\n  + [-heapsize 1048576 +fps_max 60](https://steamcommunity.com/app/2100/discussions/0/558755529567704936)\n  + [+datacachesize \"128\"](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=307579490) to increase data cache\n  + You need to save the mat_setvideomode setting across game sessions. Using [autoexec.cfg](https://steamcommunity.com/app/2100/discussions/0/3466109393862047690/#c5312592307018858755) didn't works. Same goes with `sv_rollangle 0` in order to turn off camera tilting.\n  + My final full launch command is `+exec autoexec.cfg -novid -heapsize 1048576 -console` and with the following in autoexec.cfg:\n```\ndatacachesize \"128\"\nmat_setvideomode 2560 1440 1\nfps_max 60\nsv_rollangle 0\n```\n  + With all these changes, my game still crashes every 30 minutes or so.\n+ [How to fight in melee combat](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=145380971)\n\nOne of the rare immersive sims in a fantasy setting. Motivated to play when I have an itch for action RPG that has Ultima Underworld elements like Arx Fatalis but more action like Soulslikes and Vermintide.\n\nI played a fighter archetype, only investing in Heal. Stealth in this game is not all that great: direct combat seems more rewarding than being patient to land instant kills. Bow route is apparently underpowered early game.  Magic is also a viable route, particularly by casting freeze on the ground to cause enemies to slip and then you can run over and impale them. I wanted to experience the melee and kick mechanic most.\n\ntodos on future playthroughs\n+ mage build. Freezing the ground is a particular new ability core to its playstyle\n\n","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dark-messiah-of-might-and-magic"},{"id":"322682678652493388","title":"Dark Souls II","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":2640,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["FromSoftware"],"publishers":["FromSoftware","Bandai Namco Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2018-12-14","completedDate":"2018-12-29","updatedDate":"2023-09-07","notes":"I think Dark Souls II excels most in its combat mechanics. I actually prefer its slowest, more methodical approach than the other games which are faster. While I didn't like the quantity of levels, I did find certain ones to especially fun: the open world feeling of Majula; Iron Keep; the general level design of Shulva Sanctum City; the verticality of Brume Tower. Apparently it also has the best PvP, but I didn't get into it.\n\nIn terms of major weaknesses, Dark Souls II just doesn't have as great lore---feeling like a video game fanfiction---and while it has the most areas and bosses, they tend to be very forgettable. It also suffers from the general weaknesses of Souls games: tricky pathing for sidequests, mediocre covenant system, lack of systematic PvP.\n\n__Lore.__ It's unfortunate Dark Souls II does not build much story-wise from Dark Souls. Unlike Dark Souls, DS2 lacks an overarching theme (e.g., madness) with an excellent supporting cast of sidequests and their devolving madness to the very same theme. This is one of Dark Souls 1's greatest strengths: a minimalistic, diegetic story rife with interpretation. There's no such analog in Dark Souls 2's various characters you see as you journey through it (https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comments/25na3j/i_feel_like_dark_souls_2_is_completely_lacking_in/, https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comments/25na3j/i_feel_like_dark_souls_2_is_completely_lacking_in/chizjf6/). Lucatiel of Mirrah is closest. DS2 feels closer to a Legend of Zelda game in that you're exploring dungeons without a particular motive in mind---the story is more sandboxy than minimalistic. \"In the first souls the context in which you met various characters told you something about their personalities. Solaire staring off into the amazing view of the sun, Quelena looking sadly at her sisters chambers, fat old Siegmeyer standing by some sort of barrier. In Dark Souls 2, NPCs are often met at random, in places that have little to do with their back story, personality, etc.\"\n\n__Setting/Level Design/Graphics.__ They're as great as you would expect. But the primary is a generic royalty setting which isn't pulled off well. In fact, even primary places like Drangleic Castle are mostly filled with empty boring rooms---nothing like the overhead cathedrals of Anor Londo or the prisons and libraries of Duke's Archives.\n\n__Combat.__ There are some great monsters such as Bel Keeper, Ogre, Giants; and boss fights such as Pursuer, Lost Sinner, Royal Rat Authority, Looking Glass Knight. But the majority of them are uninspired, obviously taking from fan tropes or original game: Scorpioness Najka, Smelter Demon, Duke's Dear Freja.\n\n__DLCs.__ I agree with the consensus. Their level designs are all excellent. Sunken King reminds me of the Abyss' Oolacile with its great variety and lighting. The Brune Tower is a bold and successful attempt at a main area achieved via verticality more than horizontal map movement. Frigid Outskirts is just as infuriating as Shrine of Amana. It's an admirable idea but it's so annoying to run to the boss.. It's not so much a challenge area as much as it's a question of constant repetition.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can join any covenant without breaking sins for joining another. This makes it easier to experiment with all of them rather than do intensive research studying to find the right one.\n+ Backstabs no longer have invincibility frames---only rolls.\n+ Respecs are now available. However, they're a limited consumable, which is unfortunate.\n+ You can kill NPCs and revive them, so you're not permnanently out of their features in the same way in DS1 you can absolve sins if you accidentally attack an NPC or offend a covenant.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Parries are harder than in Dark Souls 1 and 2 due to parries having startup frames and attack animations being faster overall. Due to the startup frames, you have to anticipate when an enemy's attack will hit and that requires knowing not only each new enemy's moveset but predicting which move it will be from the early windup frames.\n+ Backstabs are harder in face-to-face combat and are 'nerfed' in general over Dark Souls 1. I can understand the realism. But this also greatly changes the combat playstyle as a very viable playstyle I did in Dark Souls was to constantly strafe-rotate around an enemy while holding my shield up until I could backstab. This was a very safe option assuming the shield could take infinite-damage and you had enough stamina. (For example, parry's on the other hand are risky as you can risk and there risk getting hit.)\n+ Fewer Estus Flasks in beginning and more healing Lifgems/consumables. With that said, as you accumulate Estus Flask Shards, it's extremely easy to be liberal with your 7+ Estus Flasks by midgame. This is unlike Dark Souls 1 where you only ever had 5 except in rare scenarios when you would invest the Humanity at specific bonfire locations.\n+ Teleportation is available from the get-go, and to any bonfire. I can see tradeoffs for and against having instant teleportation. I personally prefer Dark Souls 1's idea, which is to enable it only after mid-game, and to only select bonfires. This forces you to still travel in the world to get to certain areas.\n+ All items are repaired at a bonfire. This makes it much less of a concern to consider your equipment status as it's almost guaranteed you'll repair by the next time you hit a bonfire.\n+ Not hitting wall with weapon for illusory walls. By just hitting A, you can spam this on any wall. With weapon attacks, you take more time and also risk durability. Finding these are impossible without a guide anyway. I would prefer them to be slightly more visible and to require something like hitting so it wastes your durability.\n+ You can use Humanity without being at a bonfire. This makes it always possible to traverse to the end of the boss area and then always use the NPC summon. You don't have to risk Humanity as you get there. This is more convenient, but there was also something to the risk of using Humanity through a route as in Dark Souls 1.\nAged feather as a convenience tool to avoid constantly buying Homeward Bone.\n+ DS2 introduced the Soul Greatsword spell, making melee sorcery an option beyond enchantments. With that said, it wasn't until DS3 that can you more reliably spam it due to the new FP bar instead of a finite number of casts, as well as the Farron Flashsword spell.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Torches. I like the idea of controllable lighting, and the general tradeoff with holding a shield. However, the playstyle mechanic itself as a time-duration consumable is lacking. In particular, other than drops from enemies (all of which are also finite) there's a finite amount of torches in game. This makes you seriously consider using them, which for a collectionist like me is rarely. I also like following a walkthrough to be completionist. The Torch timer makes one avoid pausing. Quoting https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/160467/is-there-any-benefit-to-lighting-the-torches-in-the-game: \"In early trailers of the game, some areas were completely dark and it was necessary to hold a torch in one hand and your weapon in the other in order to battle enemies in that area. In the end it seems that From Software backed off from that game mechanic but left the torch and sconces in, but as far as I can tell no such areas remain.\"\n\n  That's very unfortunate. I could see controllable lighting being a very powerful idea in the mausoleums for example of DS1. There are instances of it being interesting such as to help against darkstalkers.\n+ Being invaded while hollow. I prefer playing Dark Souls mostly as a single player experience. There's not even an option to log off while playing unless you manually turn off your internet. But if you log off, you can't get Steam achievements.\n+ You're matched up in invasions with people based on your accumulated souls, not your soul level. This means if you die a lot but don't always pick up your souls, you're matched with people who could have used all their souls for their soul level and equipment.\n+ Draining maximum healthbar upon death. This discourages exploration and discourages using effigies/human status unless you're confident you can effectively use the full health. For me, this locked one of my ring slots to be Ring of Binding.\n+ Passages are gated by limited-quantiy and expensive-souls consumables: Pharros' Lockstone and Fragrant Branch of Yore.\n+ Agility stat. Unnecessary idea, too many stats.\n+ Enemies after roughly 11 disappear permanently. This is supposedly to discourage farming. I think even to ease players who keep on dying, I'd prefer to always have the enemies. This makes the game about skill, not endurance---you're always pitted to the same challenge and it's your skill that's being tested without a finite NPC limit.\n+ You have to go revisit Majula in order to level up.\nSkeptic's and Simpleton's Spices are too good. They encourage farming so that you only need 10 INT/FAITH to cast everything.\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wikidot](http://darksouls2.wikidot.com)\n+ [Cheat Sheet](https://smcnabb.github.io/dark-souls-2-cheat-sheet)\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comments/5ozqxf/best_order_to_level_up_a_4040_quality_build\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comments/2dhr9a/best_class_for_quality_build\n+ Backstab tips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IZytuxAVdI\n+ Strength weapons: https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comments/3ount2/best_weapon_for_pve_strength_build/cw0ngi1/\nWeapon scaling statistics: https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comments/20qjf2/guide_weapon_scaling/\n\nI played the Scholars of the First Sin version on the PC. This version is a strict upgrade on the original. I killed Creighton (because I get his mask which I'm not sure would be given otherwise). As of this writing (12/30/2018), my playtime is 68 hours.\n\nI started with a quality build to get the best of playing all weapon styles but eventually transitioned into a 40/15/20 STR/DEX/FAITH. I generally like playing with sword-and-shield followed by a bow for ranged attacks/aggroing from afar. I would love to use spells if only for buffs but that would spread me too thin for a third damage stat (there are already three additional stats to maximize for function; maybe if I do it minimally, or only raise one of STR/DEX to reach a certain requirement). From discusisons, it seems like a quality build with third stats allocated to either intelligence or faith also works. Faith seems generally agreed upon to be better for melee builds (https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comments/2efo4r/faith_or_int_melee_build/cjz0vtf/). If I did want to try out DEX, Faith, or INT, I could respec---fortunately there's not so few respec consumables that it's impractical to use. I don't care much for PvP.\n\nFollowing above, I started as Bandit which has the lowest in attunement and intelligence. For starting weapons, I used a mace as it scales well for both STR and DEX (https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comments/86w1vw/good_early_game_weapons/). I then picked up the Craftman's Hammer which seemed like a natural next upgrade in Lost Bastille. This and a Tower Shield is just amazing offense+defense. Since Drangleic's Castle, I picked up the Great Club and immediately upgraded it to +10. I combine that with a Tower Shield and pieces of Havel's Set to hit and take damage like a tank. I never intended to focus on strike weapons, but they stun enemies well which synergizes with the generally slow attack speed. I think this works overall with Dark Souls 2 which is slower and more methodical in its combat than other Dark Souls games. At end-game, I eventually switched to the Greatsword +10 (it has better durability and looks than the Great Club; I also prefer its horizontal swing as a weak attack with vertical as the strong attack) and a Gyrm Greatshield for best physical defense.\n\nOther playstyles I should consider (e.g., to try out): offensive mage, ranged bow-and-arrow, tanky paladin with faith and shields, keep oneself out of reach with long-reach weapon, two-handed dexterity katana.\n\nMy progress route closely followed Dark Souls 2's fextralife walkthrough:\n\n1. Things Betwixt\n2. Majula\n3. Forest of Fallen Giants\n3. Heide's Tower of Flame\n4. Cathedral of Blue\n5. No-Man's Wharf\n6. The Lost Bastille\n7. Belfry Luna\n8. Sinner's Rise\n9. Huntsman's Copse\n10. Undead Purgatory\n11. Harvest Valley\n12. Earthen Peak\n13. Iron Keep\n14. Belfry Sol\n15. The Grave of Saints\n16. The Pit\n17. The Gutter\n18. Black Gulch\n19. Shaded Woods (level 120 so overleveled)\n20. Doors of Pharros\n21. Brightstone Cove Tseldora\n22. Lord's Private Chamber\n23. Shrine of Winter\n24. Drangleic Castle\n25. King's Passage\n26. Shrine of Amana (even at SL 130 after 41 playtime hours this place kicked my ass as a primarily melee build. But it was a good ass-kicking like Sen's Fortress where I learned the ambushes and ranged mechanics. I particularly love the feeling of managing my stamina well to sprint to an Amana Priestess to DPS her down. What I don't like is the tricky and stupid pathing; if there are multiple homing missles at you simultaneously; and fighting in water. At times my hand was just forced to take the safer but very slow route of sniping individual targets (the last part next to fog wall is not only risky but with a significantly larger density of melee, ranged, and a healer). This single strategy-focusing is an example of bad level design.)\n27. Undead Crypt\n28. Aldia's Keep\n29. Dragon Aerie\n21. Dragon Shrine\n22. Memories of the Ancients\n23. Throne of Want\n24. Dark Chasm of Old\n25. Crown of the Sunken King\n26. Crown of the Old Iron King\n27. Crown of the Ivory King\n\nThings to do (ignores unnecessary things like unlocking Pharros Lockstones that don't do anything):\n\n+ Missed: Lucatiel of Mirrah's item set. Talking to Mifanitos for their rewards. I released Navlaan, so I don't get the Unleash Magic sorcery and Forbidden Sun pyromancy only obtainable by completing his assassination quest line. Kill Darklurker (tedious to have to run through dungeon again) Carhillion (requires >=8 INT to talk to him). Convenant maxing. Illusory Ring of the Exalted. Illusory Ring of a Conqueror.\n+ Huntman's Corpse: Minimum INT and FAITH to talk to Felkin and get the Sunset Staff/Hex Set.\n+ Earthen Peak: Pharro's Lockstone which has a small poison healing pool.\n+ Iron Keep: Lava chests: Humanity, Bonfire Ascetic, Phoenix Parma Shield, Fire Seed, Chaos Storm.\n+ Grave of the Saints: Pharris' Lockstone to get a bridge shortcut and poison traps.\n+ The Gutter: Light all Sconces in order to get invaded by Gutter Denizen who drops the Black Witch Veil Set.\n+ Shaded Woods: Petrified Lion hiding connection to bridge (useless). Petrified Lion carrying Warlock Mask.\n+ Brithstone Cove Tseldora: Ring of Resistance from Cromwell the Pardorner if FAITH>=35.\n\nBalancing completionist walkthroughs and experiencing the game in its mystery and glory without handholding is difficult. I like walkthroughs because it ensures you learn about every mechanic and missable feature (e.g., items)---especially finite ones that you can't go back to get before. I like experiencing the game without walkthroughs because it's how the game was intended: your enjoyment of the game is otherwise significantly dependent on the quality of the walkthrough, and can be spoiled (e.g., ambushes behind corner, Mimics, the mystery of a level before understanding its full design). When a game is first released, there is no walkthrough. From Things Betwixt to Iron Keep, I closely followed the walkthrough as I went through routes. Since Iron Keep, my policy is to now play through each dungeon blind, consulting a guide if I get stuck (e.g., am in dire need of a bonfire) or am about to interact with an NPC. After a dungeon is completed, I go back and sweep through it to collect all missing items. I of course still liberally use a walkthrough for guides on builds, items, and other one-off things. I think this is a good tradeoff as spoilers only occur dungeon-by-dungeon.\n\nMy favorite areas: No Man's Wharf, Shulva's Sanctum City, Frozen Elyeum Loyce. Worst areas: Shrine of Amana, Frigid Outskirts, Iron Passage. My favorite bosses: Pursuer, Looking Glass Knight, like the design of Lost Sinner (battle was okay).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dark-souls-ii"},{"id":"322682678652454476","title":"Darkest Dungeon","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":3480,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Red Hook Studios"],"publishers":["Red Hook Studios"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-05-25","completedDate":"2019-06-01","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Darkest Dungeon is unique in its direction: a harrowing roguelike with innovative mechanics such as the torch lighting system, affliction system, provisions, quirks, diseases, Curios, Death's Door, camping, and town events; as well as a strong art style with its visuals, wordsmith narrator, and music. It's famously difficult. Learning to mitigate and tilt randomness in your favor is the name of the game. Every encounter can lead to close calls: for example, you can be teetering on death over heroes at Death's Door and 100% stress; all attacks have a chance of miss via accuracy and stat resists; characters can die from RNG crits and afflictions (and often do over the course of a campaign); and enemies can call reinforcements if you take too many turns to end an encounter. Characters die permanently. Quests can fail or be abandoned.\n\nFlaw-wise, Darkest Dungeon is too grindy in its repetition: campaigns require too much progression time in its 50-100 hour campaign playtime via leveling up characters and buildings before proceeding to each boss. Rather than entirely new content, higher-level dungeons reuse existing areas, with the same enemies with scaled stats, and occasionally feature a new enemy. I would also prefer Darkest Dungeon tone down the long RPG progression system in its interesting combination of roguelike---namely, have campaigns be shorter and more standalone much like any other roguelike (e.g., Slay the Spire). This makes the game a lot more pickup-able and replayable than having to continue or restart a 50+ hour campaign.\n\n__Combat.__  It builds well on core mechanics in the roguelike dungeon crawler genre such as procedural dungeons, positioning, stats, and statuses.\n\nI love the dungeon meta where each fight is about damage mitigation. It's a race to destroy the ranged, typically stress damage dealers, followed by a recovery phase in which you stunlock the 1-2 remaining trash mobs while HP/stress-healing. Bosses are a race to avoid dying from HP or stress where ideally your party composition has enough DPS against the boss' positioning.\n\nThe game is too grindy. Here's a good example: \"Kind of starting to feel grindy already, in the sense that in order to do Veteran quests, I need level 3's, but by the time my guys get to level 3, they have a bunch of diseases/afflictions/quirks so they need a week each to get healed, and a ton of money is required to do that... so I need to recruit some fresh fodder to go do some more beginner quests to get some money to heal up my vets, and then I need fresh fodder to make money to heal up my new vets, and so on.\" (https://steamcommunity.com/app/262060/discussions/0/458604254459963335/)\n\n__On difficulty.__ I personally found the difficulty scaling from Apprentice to Veteran to Champion to Darkest really well done. Apprentice gave me the first Darkest Dungeon feeling where every encounter felt perilous as I didn't know how to play the game. I would lose a character or two, get huge stress on the rest, and/or even party wipe. That was also a lot more rewarding in its risk as it felt even more likely that I could die from each encounter. Then it was steamrolling as I understood the mechanics and did my research by studying town buildings, class movesets, party compositions, quirks, provisions, and curio interactions. Veteran was a little more challenging but still quite manageable---only in boss encounters do I get at Death's Door or close to 100 stress. Starting Champion, my first dungeon had a hero die after the second encounter, leading to abandon it. Every encounter with my level 5 heroes with only a weapon upgrade felt close to abysmal.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The visuals have a striking gothic crowquill art style. The soundtrack and narrator add to the atmosphere.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/Expeditions_Guide (I always have this up when playing)\n+ https://darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/Curio (I always have this up when playing)\n+ https://darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/Quirk (I always have this up when playing)\n+ Yewb's beginner guide | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjEYqeG-4sc\n+ FilthyRobot's beginner and class guides | https://www.youtube.com/user/FilthyRobotChannel/playlists?view=50&sort=dd&shelf_id=53\n+ party composition guide | https://www.reddit.com/r/darkestdungeon/comments/9vyql7/beginners_guide_to_party_composition_and_supplies/\n+ class role tiers | https://www.reddit.com/r/darkestdungeon/comments/7mwupc/rank_the_class_from_best_to_worst_including_dlc/\n+ FilthyRobot's quirk guide | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9mQCuMvwvw&lc=UgyX-fxFxMvZ1Vs27kl4AaABAg\n+ playthroughs | https://www.reddit.com/r/darkestdungeon/comments/6n0ffg/any_good_playthroughs_people_would_recommend/\n\nI played it on PC. My first playthrough was on Darkest difficulty without any DLCs. This entry does not include DLCs. Darkest is apparently more grindy, where the major differences in Radiant is less time to uipgrade buildings, heroes receiving more XP, and heroes can go back to lower-dungeons that they would otherwise refuse on Darkest. Darkest feels closer to a crushing rogue-like dungeon-experience where learning comes at the price of a __lot__ of dead characters and frustration. I'd rather play the true experience once I have an idea of everything in the game---monsters, traps, conditions, etc. To do so, I'll play campaigns, fail fast, and try again within the same campaign (namely, continuing the campaign always keeps more progress than restarting).\n\nMy roster composition is:\n\n+ 1 Abomination (Blight DoTs / Stunner)\n+ 1 Antiquarian (Money)\n+ 1 Arbalest (Direct Damage Dealer)\n+ 1 Bounty Hunter (Direct Damage Dealer / Stunner)\n+ 1 Crusader (Direct Damage Dealer / HP Healer / Stress Healer / Stunner)\n+ 1 Grave Robber (Direct Damage Dealer)\n+ 2 Hound Master (Direct Damage Dealer / Stress Healer / Stunner)\n+ 2 Hellion (Direct Damage Dealer / Stunner)\n+ 1 Highwayman (Direct Damage Dealer)\n+ 2 Jester (Bleed DoTs / Direct Damage Dealer / Stress Healer)\n+ 1 Man at Arms (Direct Damage Dealer / Guard / Stunner)\n+ 2 Occultist (HP Healer, Stunner)\n+ 2 Plague Doctor (Blight DoTs / Stunner)\n+ 3 Vestal (HP Healer / Stunner).\n\nTo simplify my roster and party compositions, I typically never use Leper and Antiquarian; rarely use Buffs, Clean Corpses, Guard, Mark, and Pull; remove the worst quirks (dangerous forced interaction quirks, Damage, Stress, Bleed/Blight/Stun resist); lock in good quirks (Accuracy & Crit vs specific enemies but not specific areas, Damage excluding specific areas, Speed, Bleed/Blight/Stun resist); and I use at least one of each class, typically two unless they're mediocre. (Above, I only have 1 Abomination. This is done by process-of-elimination as I find his beast form only useful for race battles like bosses, which is rare; otherwise his human form's Stun/Blight is worse than Plague Doctor.) Party composition-wise, I select based on lowest level and stress in my roster, 1 HP healer, and everyone else situationally based one who's available, their existing negative/positive perks, and available dungeons. I only do bosses when my party is at the highest available resolve levels for them. City-wise, I started by Stagecoach until roster of 20 or 24 and 4 recruits; Guild and Blacksmith; then Treatment Ward. I neved spent heirlooms on the Abbey or Tavern (heirlooms spent elsewhere mean larger roster, better recruits, and better combat all of which translate to lower stress), Nomad (use trinkets you pick up), or Survivalist (I don't rely on camping).\n\n7 low-levels: 1 arbalest, 1 bounty hunter (done), 1 crusader (done), 1 grave robber (done), 1 grave robber, 1 hellion (done), 1 highwayman, 1 leper (done), 1 man at arms (done).\n\nI played a total of 43 hours (according to Steam). I played up to Champion dungeons and killed 1 Champion boss.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/darkest-dungeon-the-musketeer"},{"id":"322682678652805708","title":"Darkest Dungeon 2","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":1470,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Red Hook Studios"],"publishers":["Red Hook Studios"],"genres":["Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Tactical","Indie"],"startedDate":"2024-02-09","completedDate":"2024-02-15","updatedDate":"2024-08-21","notes":"It alleviates some of the grinding and streamlines the per-run feeling. The core mechanics and build variety is fun albeit a bit limited and repetitive.\n\nStrengths:\n\n+ Less grinding than DD1. The roguelike structure makes it feel far less punishing, and where the grinding elements are permanent upgrades (e.g., spending time to level a party to 6 can still have wipes leading to hours of wasted progress in DD1).\n+ Same strong core mechanics with level progression, combat, abilities, character traits like quirks, and health/stress mechanics. The mechanics are also improved with character relationships.\n\nWeaknesses:\n\n+ Gameplay lacks more variety and is fairly repetitive across act difficulties. There's not much to the game.\n+ Caravan traveling.\n\n__Story.__\nI found the various monologues such as the beginning, end, and during the hero reflections to be a chore. They were too little and did not serve an overarching story to be worth listening to.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n+ Tighter campaign with a set of 4 party members over the course of a 5-6 hour journey. No long 100-hour grind with leveling a party. This also means no bailing as a tense decision during a dungeon crawl: you only go forward or abandon your run.\n+ Relationships between party members with friendship/rivalry. It's like the individual stress mechanic but done with group dynamics.\n+ Varied progression currencies. Permanent progression includes candles (permanent upgrades), paths, quirks, hero skills, and memories. Per-run progression includes relics (purchase currency), baubles (purchase currency for trinkets), mastery points (to upgrade skills and which reset per run), items (inn, stagecoach, trinkets).\n+ Traveling with the caravan is meant to be immersive but the gameplay is rather monotonous. All you do is swerve left and right to hit debris for the chance of loot. The gameplay loop would be tighter if you simply traversed on the map selection. DD1 did it better by having you control your resources more specifically with torches and food.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nThe color palette and overall art style is iconic. So is the narration in its eloquent vocabulary and deep voice. And excellent soundtrack. 3D models. A bit too colorful and comicky compared to the first.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ No more resource management with food (camping supplies) and torches (light).\n+ No penalty for dying in the middle of a run. Therefore there is no gameplay advantage to ending an expedition early aside from saving time.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI completed Act 4 and did not complete Act 5.\n\nParty compositions:\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/darkestdungeon/comments/184obbr/what_is_your_best_dd2_party_composition/kb49t0n\n+ Individual heroes:\n  + [Flagellant](https://www.reddit.com/r/darkestdungeon/comments/16bk4el/dd2_flagellant_skill_help)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/darkest-dungeon-ii"},{"id":"298fb62e-ef0d-46d6-b146-134761b4aeac","title":"Dave the Diver","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":1440,"platforms":["PC","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["MINTROCKET"],"publishers":["MINTROCKET"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2023-07-25","completedDate":"2023-07-28","updatedDate":"2023-07-28","notes":"It's a cozy game comprising a mix of two game modes: diving to catch fish and explore ruins, and serving sushi. It's not very innovative in level design or gameplay concepts. But its writing and fun core gameplay loop with progression makes it a blast to play.\n\n__Story.__\nThe writing is funny in capturing tropes and also wholesome in how friendly and good-natured folks are.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nThe game is a fun mix of two game modes: diving to catch fish and explore ruins, and serving sushi. Days consist of a simple cycle with morning and afternoon slots spent on diving and night on serving. Later, you can spend 1/3 of your night away from serving to do night diving.\n\n+ Diving has underwater movement and guns to explore, collecting items and hunting fish. Mechanics include star quality of fish, preferring tranquilizer; camera spots; catching small fish in a nest; and grabbing interactable objects to overcome environment obstacles. Quests provide incentives to collect specific items for rewards and to unlock upgrades. I also enjoy the exploration and level progression being gated by item upgrades and quests. It gives me Subnautica vibes.\n+ Serving is a queue management system. The novelty is that the menu is determined by items from your diving. Progression includes enhance, Cooksta ratings, staff, and recipe research.\n\nLater features include fish, vegetable, and seaweed farm, the Sea People village, and seahorse races.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Colorful pixel graphics. I like it. And smooth vibe music. The game even has cutscenes which is impressive for an indie title.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ No major time limits aside from the occasional [VIP side quest](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1868140/discussions/0/3805027459316350096).\n+ The phone as the tool for your shop and other menu interactions. Simple and immersive.\n+ All the cutscene rewards you get for completing something. I especially love Duff the anime and gun otaku.\n+ All the minigames to encourage variety in gameplay.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ [Autosupply feature](https://www.reddit.com/r/DavetheDiverOfficial/comments/14yiv39/7_things_i_wish_i_knew_sooner) reduces the overhead and risk of specifying the quantity of menu items to prepare. Only items sold will ever be used, so there 0% items are discarded.\n+ The puzzle section in the glacier area. It's a change of pace. But it's also a departure from the exploration core loop and too linear and long.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Pouring beer is unintuitive and not reliable.\n+ The cosmetic interior items and ship cosmetics don't provide in-game benefit. Makes you not want to spend gold on them until endgame.\n+ You can't undo adding items to the menu. It's a weird setting where any fish not on the menu are fair game and can be stockpiled infinitely. But once you put it on the menu, it must be served or discarded.\n+ The mount is annoying to use to assist in the long travel times in the Sea People Village. It costs Bei, it triggers a cutscene for both mounting and dismounting, and whenever you dismount, you have to resummon it.\n+ The GYAO! minigame has no ingame connection such as rewards. There's no incentive to play it.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Steam: \nComplete Guide to Staff Hiring, Training and Assignment](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2999262558)\n  + [Steam: Full Staff Table](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3001614898)\n  + [Steam: Staff list by Cooksta level](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2889257254)\n+ [Steam: Bei farm with Shark minigame](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2997429249)\n\n__Settings.__ I played with controller. Keybinds and certain events like QTE feel more naturally designed to be for controller, and analog stick movement is more comfortable. The only cost is slightly worse aim.\n\n__Loadout.__ I beat the game on Day 26. I didn't try to be optimal, but I generally did complete a lot of main and side quests as soon as possible since you have so much oxygen to do so.\n\n+ Gun: Hush Dart. Optimal for 3-star fish and at max level, it can take down large fish with 2 shots. For bosses and large fish before obtaining max level Hush Dart, I usually look to loot a gun, but Death Rifle is best.\n+ Charms: None are significant. Endgame, I use Eco Health Bracelet (10% damage reduction), Eco Gemstone Bracelet (more minerals when mining).\n+ Staff\n  + Kitchen: Maki, Charlie\n  + Serving: El Nino, Raptor\n  + Dispatch: Davina, Masayoshi, Yusuke, Pai. Yusuke serves kitchen early game until there are enough in the kitchen. Anyone else hired can also do dispatch.\n  + Branch\n    + Manager: Raul. Drae for early to midgame until >level 15.\n    + Kitchen: Yone, James\n    + Serving: Raul/Drae, Billy, Itsuki\n+ Menu: My favorite dishes are the following, roughly in order by progression.\n  + Seagrapes Jellyfish Sushi (1 bowl each): 1x Sea Grape, 1x White Spotted Jellyfish, 1x Salt. And many other assorted dishes. This is before you get any farm.\n  + Tropical Fish Sushi Set (6 bowls each): 3x Titan Triggerfish, 3x Harlequin Hind, 3x Coral Trout (fish farm), 3x Rice (vegetable farm).\n  + Vegetable Sushi (1 bowl each): 1x Rice, 1x Carrot, 1x Eggplant (vegetable farm).\n  + Tomato Egg Soup (8 bowls each): 2x Grade A Egg, 2x Cherry Tomato (vegetable farm), 1x Black Pepper (dispatch).\n  + Seasoned Waptia Fieldensis (5 bowls each): 3x Waptia Fieldensis (fish farm), 2x Cucumber (vegetable farm), 3x Black Coral (seaweed farm), 1x Black Vinegar (dispatch).\n  + Standalone shark sushi for the deepest tier you have is always good too.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dave-the-diver"},{"id":"322682678651400780","title":"Dead Cells","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":840,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","Android","PC","iOS","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Motion Twin","Evil Empire"],"publishers":["Playdigious","Motion Twin"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-05-01","completedDate":"2020-05-08","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"\n\n__Gameplay.__ Core battle mechanics work very well with a collection of melee, ranged, and defensive weapons and builds separated under a threefold of brutality, tactics, and survival. Parry is especially an important skill to master at higher difficulties: it's an expert skill as it requires timing each enemy's mechanics and exploiting its animation-cancelling ability.\n\nI love its mix of persistence and roguelike elements, persistence coming through both the Collector's upgrades as well as the increased difficulty, enemy variety, and gear once you \"beat\" the game. The levels have a diverse set of enemies and level design. The rally mechanic similar to Bloodborne is a great way to keep up with an aggressive pacing.\n\nMy one main issue with the game's progression is the discontinuity in weapon upgrades. It's too reliant on finding the right weapon with the right affix, and you having to spend tons of gold until you get there. In contrast, in Risk of Rain 2 for example, RNG is always present but this is adjusted for by the significant amount of items picked up across the run. In addition, the game feels overly grindy in being stingent with Cells (it should at least grow much more as difficulty scales). After 18 hours in, I'm only 40/100 on Legendary Forge.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Pixel art that ages well. Sound is relatively forgettable.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Constantly going through the Slums, Promenade, and Toxic Sewers. Boy do I most know those levels. It seems like the amount of times I enter a level decays exponentially with how many areas it requires to get there.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ With custom mode, you can reduce RNG variance by restricting the item and mutation pool.\n+ You can break pay-to-open doors at the cost of a curse.\n+ All the secret tips such as being able to bypass the Collector's door to save all your Cells for the Legendary Forge, not for the Collector.\n+ Seamless integration of time mechanic and lore/vendor areas.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ I wish the resolution rendered at high resolutions rather than simply upsampled.\n+ Malaise could be better promoted as an important debuff to be aware of. It only matters in niche scenarios at the moment.\n+ Custom mode doesn't let you practice against bosses. I so wish this were possible to improve my gameplay at enemies I don't see often.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://deadcells.gamepedia.com\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/deadcells\n+ What a shame | https://www.reddit.com/r/deadcells/comments/axp2aa/can_we_draw_attention_to_how_bad_all_melee\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/deadcells/comments/99f0a1/what_upgrades_should_i_prioritise\n+ cell farming guide | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyJGqAa65Yc\n\nThis entry includes the Bad Seed DLC. Motivated to play this as it's a pixel art roguelike with melee/platforming, and I really enjoy roguelikes like Risk of Rain 2. I played with controller. I may have gotten lucky as I got my first Boss stem cell after roughly 10 runs. I first started with melee brutality, playing it like Dark Souls. It turns out that the mechanics encourage ranged however as the damage is only a tad less than melee but much safer. And survival can offer just as much DPS while being also significantly more tanky with parries, HP pool, and damage reduction passives. Boy did I feel its unforgiving nature once 1BC started, with a limited health replenishment pool across biomes, significantly more enemy damage, enemies much tankier and would not die in seconds (leaving them room to respond). My preferred route is in terms of scrolls and not always timed doors: Promenade of the Condemned (option of 3 minute timer) -> Ramparts (option of 8 minute timer) -> Black Bridge -> Stilt Village (option of 15 minute timer) -> Clock Tower -> Clock Room.\n\nAfter 29 playtime hours, I reached a roadblock on 2 BSC and felt the game didn't offer enough new content that's worth playing.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dead-cells"},{"id":"322682678650416716","title":"Death Stranding","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":2430,"platforms":["PS4","PC"],"studios":["Kojima Productions"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment","505 Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-07-24","completedDate":"2020-07-27","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Death Stranding is a flawed video game artpiece. Its strengths are in its abstract imagery, traveling mechanics, multiplayer, environmental level design, and soundtrack. The main story connecting all the concepts is not good is often an exposition dump; the story would honestly be better if it was not explained. Its weaknesses are its character depth, clunky combat, stealth, enemy variety, boss fights, side quests, and world building outside of the main story itself. Despite all this, I enjoyed my time experiencing what the game offered, and both the artistic moments and the gameplay loop of traveling kept me engaged.\n\n__Story.__ I enjoy the abstract imagery: for example, fast-forwarding rain; invisible creatures that age the world and with hands as feet and whose form take on floating people with umbilical cords, babies connected to people, eating maggots, crying, multiple organizations at large, and skull face masks, aquatic creatures, strands and tying knots. There are also numerous concepts you face early in the game and which are slowly revealed: DOOMs, BTs, Beach, timefall, chiralum, necrosis, repatriate, Strand.\n\nOutside of its abstractness, the story is not good. Some scenes are mindbogglingly cringy in tropes: a damsel in stress wearing a red dress, \"I'm Fragile, but I'm not that fragile\", Higgs being punched and finally losing his powers, running on the beach, \"All that matter and anti-matter should have cancelled itself out\". The characterization in each chapter is decent but not stellar: it's a surface depth that isn't as engaging as, say The Last of Us where there's more background, understanding of motivation and emotional turmoil. I do like it if you treat it like an episodic adventure, each playing on a theme of life and death and social bonding (e.g., Sam's aphenphosmphobia). It could do really well as an TV series. Higgs has a cool design, but I wish he had an actual story to provide background. All the exposition dump (particularly at the end), and the twist after twist in the main story after Higgs, is also boring: classic Kojima not knowing how to write. The game would be better if it were like the trailers: cool abstract ideas and nothing explained. First, it's Higgs as the mastermind, then Unger, then the director, then Amelie.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I admire the game's choice to purely innovate on traveling mechanics like a realistic platformer, and with an emphasis on a \"social strand game\". Everything else is lacking but I thoroughly enjoyed the platforming. Regarding platforming, new mechanics are balance, momentum, and terrain, inventory management and backpack customization, maps and route planning, platforming tools, and PCC structures. It's like a AAA version of Getting over It. It takes the idea behind a fetch quest and makes it so involved in mechanics that it's actually interesting enough in variety from mission to mission. The compass is also a great way of navigating without having to regularly pull out the map. In no game has the terrain affected gameplay so much: rocky crags, mountain slopes, rivers, rain, slopes, snow, whiteouts, tumbling rocks. There's also a World War I/II setting, albeit disappointing in that it's only a linear arena for poor boss fights.\n\nI'm a big fan of Death Stranding's approach to nonintrusive, cooperative multiplayer. Players' structures benefit your gameplay but aren't overpowered: they aactivate only once the area is established in the chiral network so it helps more in mid-to-end game of that area rather than on first visit. Giving likes and donating materials to get likes mutually benefits yourself as well. Other multiplayer mechanics appear in terminals with free cargo and vehicles.\n\nThe little combat and stealth that exists in the game is surprisingly clunky and primitive. It's made to freshen up the main gameplay of platforming, but it would be better if it had at least been at the level of Uncharted/AAA games in stealth/third-person shooting, if not completely without it. Stealth detection and enemy AI is too awful that it's not viable against MULEs and terrorists. And boss fights are gorgeous but mechanically boring: for example, you fight Unger three times all of which are the same and not even fun the first time. So is the weapon arsenal and clunkiness of melee combat. The combat and stealth are a disappointment: it would have been fine even if it even matched MGS5's mechanics 5 years ago. Many pieces of the weapon arsenal are strictly worse than others. For example, EX grenades are better served by the Bola for stunning BTs if no blood grenades are available, which also works as the best weapon against MULEs.\n\nQuests outside of the main missions are lacking. I don't like standard orders (the variant of side quests). They are literally fetch quests with no story and the equivalent of Bethesda's radiant quests with their infiniteness, done purely to maximize a certain metric (here, area stars).\n\nInventory management is not just about carry capacity which is the extent of most games, but cargo attached to parts of your suit/back and affecting your balance, movement speed, and vehicle battery consumption. The HUD and health, endurance, and BB systems are also great. I like all the many aspects that you need to replenish based on gameplay elements such as visiting the hub, Crater Digestive Baths, resting, and drinking Monster.\n\nI like the multiple points as hubs, with a private room that you're encouraged to visit for gameplay reasons: story reasons; replenishing stamina, ammo, canteen, and BT; showers/excretions for blood pouches and grenades; fast travel; and backpack customization. Enemy variety (and boss variety) is also bad: BTs, MULEs, and MULEs with guns. For BTs, the easiest is simply to get caught, then run away, and the BT encounter is now gone allowing you to pick everything freely: much faster and resource-efficient than killing the spawned giant BT.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I'm a big fan of Kojima's industrial aesthetic, and with a focus on abstract concepts percolating the world. Face models and environmental graphics are certainly the best in this generation, at the same level of The Last of Us Part 2. Despite all the gorgeous pre-rendered cutscenes, it's a shame however that most ingame character interactions are at the terminal with stocky animation. The soundtrack with all the music artists, especially Low Roar, is amazing.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Can't Be So Serious. Damn, what a banger as the opener. Low Roar has a lot of emphasis in this game, and they play my favorite genre: melodic pop/electronic.\n+ The void out scene when you first meet BB.\n+ The tedium of the first two Chapters, with the game really hitting its pace with item variety and exoskeletons in Chapter 3: as a redditor put it, from walking sim to civil engineer sim.\n+ Boss enemy designs are awesome: the whole idea behind squid ink/tar and aquatic creatures is a great horror theme different from your typical slasher or Lovecraft. Giant BTs are surreal.\n+ The Gullimero Del Toro-Sam shower scene.\n+ The music playing and the zoom-out as you traverse areas.\n+ Waiting 3 minutes in real time as Heartman is on the beach. True Kojima, like when you're stuck waiting in prison cells in MGS.\n+ Higgs-BT fight. That was such an annoying boss fight. It wasn't difficult because of the infinite ammo and blood bags. It was just tedious trying to hit him with rocket launchers that often miss, or assault rifles that don't much damage.\n+ The ending's two hour length of cutscenes. It surpasses even MGS4's record. Classic Kojima. It's high quality, but with so little gameplay it teeters on the edge of cinematic video games toward full-on movies: Kojima clearly would prefer being a filmmaker.\n+ The surreal feeling with Norman Reedus and Mads Mikkelsen feeling like a father-son relationship, and at the end they reveal BB is in fact you. Actually good surrealism.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Nothing is missable. I can play the game blind and not worry about missing anything or following optimal builds form the get-go.\n+ Like Metal Gear Solid, you can move the camera during the in-game cutscenes.\n+ Game does not pause when you alt-tab.\n+ \"Bridges hereby enters a contract with Sam Porter.\" I'm a big fan of repeated sayings (motifs?). Adds a rhythm and symbology to the world.\n+ Instead of going through the system options for a manual save, you can save by resting.\n+ Carrying on MGS' legacy of nonlethal combat.\n+ The concept of a boss fight where the boss has a gun and you're fighting him with cargo.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Private locker storage is specific to each site and not universally shared.\n+ Product placement taken to an entirely new level with it affecting gameplay: drinking Monster energy as a consumable to boost stamina.\n+ Autonomous bot-deliverable Standard Orders. Feels like something from a mobile game. It was weird in MGS5 and it's still weird in Death Stranding.\n+ So many cutscenes! Definitely the same as Metal Gear Solid.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Too many recycled micro-animations, and with such a frequency for even the mundane tasks like sleeping in the private room or recycling materials. I don't know of anyone who played the game and didn't skip through all the private room cutscenes for example.\n+ The backtracking missions at the end of the game. Clearly they ran out of content. The game should have just ended earlier. It's not so redundant since there's still things to do, and I like that Order 68 involves relying on your friendly porters for equipment as you lose access to the chiral printer.\n+ You're traveling through America, but the landscape is clearly Scandinavia.\n+ For a game so careful about its aesthetic, the deliveryman cargo box aesthetic when Sam is stacked is laughably bad.\n+ You can't play music freely while traversing, only in the private room.\n+ BB cutscenes are recycled after a while.\n+ Mail. I think it's useless and lazy exposition similar to MGS5's audio tapes.\n+ The tips tab is way too many.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/death-stranding/Connection_Level_Rewards_-_List_of_Upgrades_and_Unlocks_for_Knot_Cities,_Facilities,_and_Preppers#Spiritualist_-_Connection_Level_Rewards\n+ https://old.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/dy6zqy/death_strandings_open_world_design_no_spoilers/\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/dz7yab/death_stranding_dunkview/f867r72/\n\nI played this near its PC launch date of July 14, 2020. I played with controller as it was designed that way. I played on normal difficulty. I only completed standard orders that were along the way. I only cared about maximizing stars for my preferred items: Bola Gun (Engineer), Power Skeleton (Craftsman), Speed Skeleton (Junk Dealer), Backpack Cover (Collector), Extra Battery (Philip North), Non-lethal Assault Rifle (Lockne), All-Terrain Skeleton (Roboticist), Monster Energy talisman (First Prepper).\n\nMy default loadout is no items, only a filled out Blood Punch and Boots on my Boot Clip; I equip Speed Skeleton (Power Skeleton for missions with large loads or mountainous terrain; later replaced with All-Terrain), Bridges Boots, Power Gloves; and once I got the backpack, I use 2x Extra Battery, Monster Energy talisman, Backpack Cover. Situationally, I add Ladder when traveling to new areas (for climbing steep terrain or rivers); PCC when using vehicle, low battery legs, or traveling to a new area without immediate chiral network setup; Climbing Anchor when traversing down mountains; container repair spray for snowy areas with long routes; floating carrier or long range truck for especially large loads; Bola (later, non-lethal assault rifle) for MULE missions (otherwise I just run from humans and BTs; in forced giant BT fights, players give you items like quadruple rocket launcher); 4x armor plates when preparing for MULE or boss encounter; Oxygen Mask for poisonous gas. I prefer the reverse trike for general movement except rocky/mountainous terrain.\n\nI never used most other items: for example, Smoke-Emitting Decoy, Smoke Grenade, Stun Bomb, Floating Carrier, Anti-BT Handgun, Sticky Gun, Heat Pad. On skeletons, I like Speed the most. It gives a strict movement speed and jumping distance increase. Unlike Power, you can still attach two items to your legs (Suit). I also like the balance mechanic as it adds skill to movement; the advanced technique is to sprint straight and hold L2/R2 whenever you need to steer. Grenades are better than other anti-BT weapons because they take up no extra space with grenade pouches. But BTs are rare enough during general encounters that you never need them; during boss encounters, players give you items. For humans, the non lethal assault rifle is the best ranged when melee with strand is not sufficient; it also doubles as a BT weapon.\n\nSome advanced techniques: minimal inventory; full item variety usage; cancelling MULE scanner pings with your odradek or jumping to evade, jumping with a bike.\n\ntodos\n\n+ Speed Skeleton level 3 (Junk Dealer)\n+ Backpack Cover level 3 (Collector)\n+ Extra Battery level 2/3 (Philip North)\n+ Monster Energy talisman (First Prepper)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/death-stranding"},{"id":"322682678652723788","title":"Death's Door","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":510,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Android","PC","iOS","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Acid Nerve"],"publishers":["Devolver Digital","Netflix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-05-06","completedDate":"2022-05-07","updatedDate":"2022-05-09","notes":"Death's Door is a Zelda-like metroidvania with a humorish yet somber story and tight controls. The combat is actually quite fun in the numerous enemies to battle compared to the easy difficulty of most Zelda games. It also nails exploration through rewards and the metroidvania level design. It does nothing particularly new or that stands out but is an overall great game.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nCombat is challenging but fair. Exploration has numerous secrets rewarding new weapons and max HP/magic similar to Zelda.\n\nControls are responsive and intuitive. Weak attack, charged attack, and ranged attack work well alongside a health tick system like Zelda. The isometric perspective is actually quite good.\n\nSimple progression system of accumulating souls to purchase upgrades.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nStylistically nice with the classic Unity soft textures and color palette. Assets are cutely designed. Soundtrack is Zelda-inspired.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ All the humor such as Frog King and especially his title card during the boss fight.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ They never explained that the sewer grates are interactable from the beginning. I didn't realize this until I looked them up by Castle Lockborne.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/deaths-door"},{"id":"322682678624172620","title":"Deep Rock Galactic","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":3870,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Ghost Ship Games"],"publishers":["Coffee Stain Publishing"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-06-02","completedDate":"2021-06-02","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The coop experience is superb---even with randoms---ranking among the best of games like Left 4 Dead 2 and Killing Floor 2. The community is one of Deep Rock Galactic's best assets due to their overall friendliness, including to greenbeards. The core gameplay loop is fun with mining, resource management, and gunplay. With many mission types, difficulty levels, and an arsenal of progression systems and cosmetics, Deep Rock Galactic is a a blast to play casually.\n\nFlaw-wise, it doesn't feature very deep gameplay, particularly lacking in enemy variety as most enemies are just spiders that run at you. I also only really enjoyed the Scout class as I felt while the others had interesting mechanics such as platforms and drilling, they lacked a lot of mobility which made the gameplay in exploration much slower-paced compared to Scout.\n\n__Gameplay.__ It's objective-based with various mining and combat. The combat features a variety of playstyles, particularly encouraging coop. It's not quite as in-depth as modern shooters or games like Overwatch, particularly due to a limited enemy variety (both in design, e.g., not just spiders, and in enemy moveset). It's no surprise that the mining mission type is closest to the \"spirit\" of the game: a relaxing experience with friends as you go spelunking and that occasionally has the rush of adrenaline in staving off enemies.\n\nAssignments provide a canonical list of mission types to play through, each with quite the variety in objectives. There are also Deep Dives (and Elite Deep Dives) available after Promotion, serving as later endgame content where it is effectively 3 missions back-to-back. These Deep Dives refresh every week alongside Weekly Assignments.\n\nBuild variety includes class choice, perks, equipment loadouts, cosmetics, and during endgame, overclocks as an added weapon upgrade. Upgrade currencies are obtained through exploration and mission rewards, as well as specific accomplishments for perk points. You can further promote characters to unlock more cosmetics, similar to Call of Duty prestige ranks---enabling a nice badge that incentivizes you to keep playing. Since 2019 unfortunately, it doesn't do anything aside reset your level; I feel like also capping your weapon upgrades would at least making game progression more dynamic.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Quite good for an indie title. It particularly ages well as the blocky texture is a deliberate art style.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Rock and Stone! Something you can spam that's not annoying and inspires camradarie.\nThe hub, especially the bar and jukebox. It's a great way of encouraging camradarie through complete strangers, often without even text chat or voice chat.\n+ After a game ends, you're in a lobby with the people you just played with. Incentives keeping playing with them!\n+ Scout's grappling hook. Reminds me of Doom Eternal's meathook and Apex Legend's Pathfinder which greatly improves movement capabilities. Here, you can use it for example to: climb vertically (particularly synergizes well with Engineer's floors so you can comfortably mine wall resources), dodge away from enemies such as bosses that aggro, move faster horizontally, and hooking the floor in midair to prevent fall damage.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ You get the same XP whether you join a game late or at the beginning. It encourages a meta where you only join late games to maximize XP.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Scout build](https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepRockGalactic/comments/j5omvm/optimal_build_loadout_for_scout)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/deep-rock-galactic"},{"id":"324648040218493521","title":"Demon's Souls","originalTitle":"デモンズソウル  ","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":1410,"platforms":["PS3"],"studios":["FromSoftware"],"publishers":["Atlus","Namco Bandai Partners","Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-01-12","completedDate":"2019-01-26","updatedDate":"2023-09-07","notes":"You can really see how Demon's Souls started it all. For examples: levels, bosses, difficulty, atmosphere, checkpoints and respawning enemies, online system, weak/strong attack balanced with stamina and staggering/poise, nexus with NPCs, stats and STR vs DEX vs quality vs INT vs faith builds, souls as a universal currency, illusory walls. Even tiny details originate here: the iconic You Died message; the souls-gathering sound effect; Stray Demon design; ambushes; large enemies doing a butt stomp to avoid you always hugging them; Valley of Defilement (5-1) as the beginning to all mandatory poison zones in a Souls game, especially resembling Blighttown with its verticality and wooden plank pathing; the puzzle boss battles inspiring Dark Souls 3's; Red-Eye Knight as the precursor to Black Knights.\n\nCompared to other Souls games, Demon's Souls excels most in its atmosphere. Tower of Latria (3-1) is an excellent example, filling you with a sense of dread. The level design also feels authentic and not video-gamey.\n\nIn terms of weaknesses, I find compared to other Souls games that Demon's Souls lacks the interesting sidequests of Dark Souls 1, the larger variety in armor sets of all future Souls games, the feeling of world connectedness of Dark Souls 1, the more polished combat mechanics of Dark Souls 2, the boss fights of Dark Souls 3, and the music of Dark Souls 3. However, its fatal flaw is its reliance on healing consumables, where the finite capacity of Estus Flasks in future Souls games gives a constant state of pressure as you manage your heals for a given run; here, it's simply an exercise in farming. With 20+ full grass, any boss can be done on the first try. Its second major flaw is World Tendency and Character Tendency, which are vague mechanic barring content and which are difficult to achieve even with the knowledge of how they function (this is similar to how I hate the vague and strict requirements necessary to progress sidequests in future Souls games).\n\n__Lore.__ It's a separate descent towards madness than the Dark Souls series. And it's so much darker. Instead of each story being about the renewal of the cycle of fire and darkness, this is about understanding a medieval setting onset with Demon Souls. It's unfortunate there's less diegetic storytelling in this game. It just feels a lot more minimal with less interconnectedness of stories among all the bosses in a given area.\n\n__Combat.__ I'm surprised how this is even clunkier than Dark Souls 1. I think what makes it feel clunky is the lightweighted feeling of landing a hit. Every enemy recoils (or just doesn't) with the phantom-like effect rather than feeling like you're striking actual flesh. The recoil action is also fairly generic. Footstep sounds don't exist (at the very least when you're in Souls form which is pretty much when I always play); same for rolls; the idea of Hollowing/Undead in future Souls games is better than the corporeal state. The combat pacing is about the same.\n\nAside from maybe Tower Knight and Flamelurker, the bosses were not very challenging compared to the difficulty in other Souls games (especially Dark Souls 3).\n\nThe game relies on healing consumables instead of bonfires replenishing Estus flasks. This is fine by itself, but during the game you end up having so many heals that many enemies and zones aren't challenging unless they kill you before you're able to use a grass. This leads to a one-sided understanding of difficulty in contrast to other Souls games where you had to better monitor your Estus flask usage (https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls/comments/no1xd/wheres_my_estus_demon_souls_after_dark_souls_is/c3amsxv/).\n\nI like that the idea of bosses not just being difficult encounters but set pieces (possibly puzzles) all originated here. Some of the fights are great. None are particularly challenging however.\n\n__Setting/Level design/Graphics.__ The levels themselves feel like actual locations in the real world though. This presents a level of authenticness that the Souls series doesn't do in other games---feeling more video-gamey in their designs. I found Tower of Latria (3-1) in particular to be astounding in atmosphere. I felt a growing feeling of anxiety playing it all the way through---the dim lightning, the constant groans by prisoners, the bell sound by patrolling Mind Flayers, the prison cells filled with torture devices, the Iron Maiden openings.\n\nBecause of the teleporting between Worlds, Demon's Souls feels less interconnected than Dark Souls where the Nexus feels game-y similar to Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3.\n\nManipulating and managing World Tendency is a pain. I don't think it's a good mechanic in any sense.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ There is no difference between vitality and vigor like in other Souls games.\n+ What I hoped the boss battle would be for Gwyn.. They did it for King Allant! Hurray! :-)\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ World tendency as the form of Humanity/Ember.\n+ Female vs male exclusive armor.\n+ You can't sell items, only store them.\n+ Item load includes carriage rather than just equipped, with a storage NPC. Fortunately it doesn't affect anything such as movement or roll speed; it only affects the maximum amount of items you can carry at once.\n+ When near a slightly large step, your character automatically performs a move to get up it. Unlike the rest of the Souls games, this lets your character traverse higher ground than what you would expect from just walking/running on slopes. It is effectively replaced by an explicit Jump move in future games.\n+ No gauge bar to tell how much poison capacity (and other status ailments) you're currently taking.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Like Dark Souls 1, Demon's Souls has notorious running paths back to an endgame boss. They're frustrating. Dark Souls 3 learned to do this better.\n+ Grinding. You have to grind. A lot. This includes healing consumables, upgrade materials, Souls, you name it.\n+ Unforgiving in the few-to-zero shortcuts in most maps. If you die you really do start over again.\n+ Rings (and armor in general) is just lacking in variety and awesomeness. They nailed the weapons the first time in Demon's Souls pretty well though.\n+ The opening animation is a bit verbose and feels cheap in sound effects. Dark Souls successors all did it better.\n+ No Homeward Bone. There's technically Shard of Archstone, but it's a rare drop and costs 5000 souls, which makes not a frequent usage.\n+ No jump or plunging attack!\n+ Unlike other Souls games, you can't reset aggro of an NPC, let alone still use their functions after they die (as you can in Dark Souls 2).\n+ Crystal Lizards don't immediately respawn. They also take forever to kill with much more health/defenses.\n+ Can't use multiple of the same Soul. I have to spam the item usage if I have, say, a dozen. At the very least, quickslotting it and spamming the use item is faster than having to go into your inventory every time.\n+ The subtext messages below You died, You acquired X soul, etc. I like the minimalism that they kept in future Souls games. Fewer words better emphasizes the messages.\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wikidot](http://demonssouls.wikidot.com), [Souls lore wikidot](http://soulslore.wikidot.com/demons-souls)\n  + Wikidot for Demon's Souls is more up-to-date, including a detailed zone walkthrough, than fextralife. Following my playthrough with the Dark Souls 3 cheat sheet, this one feels too detailed in telling me all the directions (it doesn't even tell me all items so it's not like it's even 100%). I just want something to make sure I don't miss a skippable item or make a mistake in dialogue/encounters. I converged to playing mostly blind but checking to make sure I don't miss anything crucial.\n+ [Build Guide: SL125 Power and Versatility](http://demonssouls.wikidot.com/character-builds:166)\n+ [Reddit discussion: Demon's Souls vs Dark Souls](https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls/comments/1ybul4/demons_souls_compared_to_dark_souls/cfj5c9x)\n\n__Version.__\nI played via the RPCS3 emulator on PC, following a guide ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/demonssouls/comments/8ejkbx/guide_for_setting_up_demon_souls_on_a_ps3_emulator)); ISO from r/roms.\n\nI ran at 1440p (rescaled from native resolution at 1280x720p) at 30 FPS. While this is not ideal from 60 FPS, it's still better the lower resolution and locked FPS in a PS3. See, e.g., the resolution comparisons in RPCS3 video demos. As of my playthrough, certain textures were missing (e.g., Soldier Shield is invisible). I also experienced flickering (https://github.com/RPCS3/rpcs3/issues/4857) and sudden frame rate drops and slowdown when loading areas.\n\n__Build.__\nI chose Soldier and went with a quality build. Like other Souls games, I go (great)sword and shield. I used the Broadsword for 1-1 and 1-2, then the Bastard Sword for 2-1, 3-1, 4-1, 5-1, 2-2, then the Meat Cleaver for the rest of the game due to its excellent S scaling on both STR and DEX. My progress route is: 1-1, 1-2, 2-1, 3-1, 4-1, 5-1, remaining of 2 (2-2, 2-3), remaining of 3 (3-2, 3-3), remaining of 4 (4-2, 4-3), remaining of 5 (5-2, 5-3), remaining of 1 (1-3, 1-4), end game. Following discussion online, it seems the numbered levels in each world are the same difficulty.\n\nIn the early game I ended up using almost all my grass to defeat Tower Knight. I'm not up for farming in this game (especially as it's on an emulator). Therefore I used the dupe trick to get infinite Crescent Moon Grass, Hero's Souls, and upgrade materials (including Demon Souls so I don't have to get just one trade-in option). These are small enough consumables to be convenience-savers rather than overpowered; for example, if I'd like to repair after a death where I have 0 souls.\n\nThings I missed:\n\n+ In general: World Tendency specific things. Things that require revisiting (e.g., Pure Greystone given by Scirvir if you show up with the Dragon Bone Smasher). Various item sets from vendors that require Boss Souls or many souls. Friend's Ring from Monumental (requires Pure White Character Tendency).\n+ 1-3: Ostrava. He didn't appear, which makes me assume he died somehow in 1-2. Old King Doran optional boss.\n+ 2-1: Great club (scaffolding collapsed; not sure if it respawns on coming back).\n+ 3-1: Venerable Sages armor (requires White world tendency). Fluted Armor. Mercury Rapier +1 (can buy for 3K souls in any case).\n\n2-2: Crystal Lizard Nest, including a Pure Hardstone and Pure Sharpstone. Lava pit with Pure stone and 4 chunks. Go through the shortcut, meeting Scirvir and the Ring of Disease Resistance.\n+ 4-2: Magic Sword Makoto (requires White tendency).\n+ 5-2: Various loot in the poison swamp.\n+ 5-3: Various loot in the poison swamp next to all the babies.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/demon-s-souls"},{"id":"322682678652466764","title":"Detention","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["Red Candle Games"],"publishers":["Coconut Island Games","Red Candle Games"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-03-30","completedDate":"2019-04-14","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Cultural aspect is great, particularly with Taiwanese style horror. This is clearly what sets it up from other indie horrors. I love how the story is teeming with family problems, government, and subtly told over the course of the game vai cultural-based clues, horror, and cinematics. I also like the 2-D paper Mario-like graphics. It's a fairly simple puzzle game, and puzzles aren't really my style so I immediately looked at the walkthrough if I was the tiniest bit stuck after exhausting all options; some of the puzzles are convoluted. I liked the minimalist controls of only left and right-clicking. The amount of unsettlingness I feel is a great indicator of just how good Detention sets the mood. For example, I would walk into a room full of mirrors and just mutter to myself \"Fuck\" about what could happen with such a device. Similarly goes for the Marionette theater.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.oneangrygamer.net/2017/01/detention-gameplay-walkthrough/22837/","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/detention"},{"id":"322682678652475980","title":"Devil May Cry 5","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PS4","Switch 2","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Capcom Development Division 1"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-03-06","completedDate":"2019-03-07","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Devil May Cry 5 may very well be the best in the series, defining the iconic themes that make the series so successful. Over-the-top action, rock music, stylistically playful. Cheesy dialogue. Fanservice bitches. Even the the simple but in medias res, multiple perspectives storyline is great. Excellent core mechanics for a hack and slash. Devil May Cry 5 newly features the overly cool, apathetic, gothic Vie. He suits the series really well while remaining a distinct character: love that he acknowledges whenever he won't beat someone; clearly more humble than the cocky Dante and Nero. Excellent visuals with face models and rendered urban and hellish environments. Even the supporting characters are hilarious: the mechanic Nico, Vie's bird.\n\n__Combat.__ While a very different style, I personally prefer Dark Souls' combat mechanics. Each fight is more meaningful as every enemy has the possibility to kill you in a few hits (therefore requiring you to understand each enemy's mechanics). I also like its pace, although I can appreciate DmC's style of learning fight move abilities which you can slowly start to master. DmC's combat is more brainless, as part of its arcade roots: scores, loot randomly in a map, and instanced fights. Scores in a fight encourage the core of Devil May Cry combat, which is variety, utilizing as many unique moves as possible.\n\nI personally prefer Vie > Dante > Nero. Vie is just unique in managing multiple players, and fully utilizing its combos without D-pad mastery: Shadow and the bird to combo attacks, Vie to finish attacks, read book for Devil Trigger, and to launch Nightmare. I didn't like Nero's consumable Devil Breaker and could fold it into a natural gameplay.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Pre-viz live action cutscenes as an option. I've never seen this in a game before. It's both hilarious and a fascinating view of behind-the-scenes.\n+ Subtle sign of co-op which is nonintrusive but still a fun detail.\n+ Dante's Jackson Five dance randomly in the latter half of the game.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ No ultrawidescreen support.\n+ I got A and S ranks for all missions. I don't think I deserved it since I failed combos and button-mashed many times. It should be harder.\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\n+ story recap | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKIHxYsUCM. The history detail in the actual game is also serviceable, but it lacks graphics from previous games, and it moves at a lightning pace that can't be paused.\n\nI played it on release date. I beat the base game in 8 hours (as recorded by Steam). I didn't go comprehensive in finding (and completing) all secret missions or unlocking all abilities.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/devil-may-cry-5"},{"id":"322682678652483148","title":"Devotion","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Red Candle Games"],"publishers":["Winking Skywalker Entertainment","Indievent","Red Candle Games"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-02-21","completedDate":"2019-02-21","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I didn't play it but watched Sodapoppins 4-5 hour stream. Atmosphere is on par with just a handful of jump scares, concentrating on a few horror elements, e.g., dolls, body contortions, water. Puzzles are nice in following through with the story (put various house items where they belong) and not obscure. Love the culture depiction of the darkness of an otherwise good family.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/devotion"},{"id":"1cf2673f-7c22-456a-b1b7-789934ec31ac","title":"Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2026,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"publishers":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2026-05-13","completedDate":"2026-05-19","updatedDate":"2026-06-01","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/diablo-iv-lord-of-hatred"},{"id":"3ad0b49d-8cf3-46a4-87c5-2fa9d4417d8c","title":"Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2024,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"publishers":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"startedDate":"2026-05-07","completedDate":"2026-05-13","updatedDate":"2026-05-14","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/diablo-iv-vessel-of-hatred"},{"id":"322682678650420812","title":"Divinity: Original Sin","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":4020,"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Turn-based strategy (TBS)"],"startedDate":"2020-07-03","completedDate":"2020-07-13","updatedDate":"2024-08-18","notes":"Divinity stands out in its innovative mechanics and combination of elements to make CRPGs an excellent RPG subgenre in the modern setting. This is particularly in its battle mechanics such as the combinations for elemental effects and general environmental navigation integrated into the combat.\n\nDivinity's greatest weakness is its pacing. The first area takes half of the game, and the beginning hours of Cysael do not reflect the gameplay-intensive areas later in the story where it shines. Divinity also suffers from introducing too many mechanics, particularly on ensuring viability, and without ease in having players master their mechanics before progressing: you're inundated with the whole slew from the start. The story is also serviceable but not thrilling.\n\n__Story.__ The story is generic fantasy and with a campy feeling in its light hearted dialogue. They're fairly boilerplate in walls of text. Nothing in-depth in both the story or the player agency like Witcher 3.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Building on CRPGs, Divinity most stands out in its elemental combinations, affecting environments across ground surfaces, clouds, and weather; enemy weaknesses; and status effects. The challenging difficulty further encourages mastery. With Enhanced Edition, versatility is also better encouraged than specialization (namely, spreading skill points rather than 5 points into any magic school; you spend X amount of talent points for a given talent level instead of all levels being equal). There are so many viable spells that wizard's hotkey bar spans to 3 bars of commonly used spells; others are 2. Combine this with the CRPG depth in mechanics, including attributes, abilities, talents, traits, equipment, resistances. Dialogue follows an RNG system but is still rooted on stats (charm specifically). Gold comes from looting, stealing, and crafting; and D&D damage mechanics like Saving Throws and weapon types such as slashing, crushing, and piercing damage have varying effects. There are also crafting/identify/repair/weapon improvement mechanics, categorized as crafting, blacksmithing, and loremaster, and with ample recipes to discover.\n\nA notable gameplay element is the seamless integration of free roam interaction and combat interaction. Many combat abilities  still apply during free roam, and is part of the game such as to handle environmental dangers like poison clouds. Examples include healing (which makes the game effectively a soft reset after every battle), haste for faster movement, attacking NPCs/chests, teleport spell and crystals. The party members can also free roam asynchronously, allowing for strategies like talking to an NPC with one member to move his line of sight, and then another member proceeds to steal.\n\nRegarding Divinity's craftmanship, I initially found the mechanics intimidating as they're never explained and not transitioned into the game. But once I learned it by reading online, I really enjoyed it. Crafting includes not only creating new equipment, but also consumables such as special arrows, potions, and skill books; repairing; identifying items; upgrading weapons; and even telekineses for being able to pick up items from afar. I particularly appreciate its simplicity regarding ingredients: instead of farming mats and trying to craft for a specific RNG skill, you only need 1-2 ingredients; and after crafting, you can melt it back down to recover the original raw materials to craft again until you get the desired outcome (but it only works for swords and axes, not daggers or bows..; at least save scumming helps). Crafted gear is at your level, which combined with melting, means crafted gear effectively levels with you.There are also ample assets in the world that add to the crafting experience: anvils, forges, whetstones, barrels, many things that you can assemble by yourself. Meta-wise, crafting is encouraged because it's both the most efficient way to make money and typically better than loot or merchant gear.\n\nI wish I enjoyed Divinity as much as it excelled from purely a technical and gameplay loop perspective. I didn't like all the micromanaging I had to do with consumables and the hybrid classes' many spells that I had to work with. In retrospect, I prefer specialist roles, and ideally, explicit tank and healer roles even though Divinity does not incentivize this. CRPGs just don't abide by the tank-DPS-healer trinity of MMOs. I like it because it simplifies class roles, forcing characters into specific abilities/use cases; an alternative party composition of specialized roles may also work.\n\nUnfortunately, many mechanics are actually not very useful, and should be practically ignored: PER attribute; because dialogue uses a rock paper scissors game with RNG instead of hard-thresholded skill checks, Personality's Charisma is bypassed by save scumming; Lucky Charm is not optimal gold-wise; Craftmanship's Telekinesis; all of Nasty Deeds; most talents; henchmen. Like Pokemon, it's better to stock up a single companion with one-off abilities as the equivalent of an HM slave inbetween quests: Bartering, Blacksmithing for repairing and crafting, Crafting, and Loremaster for identifying; reputation mechanic only affects default NPC attitude, no story (e.g., dialogue) consequences. With Walk-in-Shadows, you can safely steal from NPC locations.\n\nEnemy variety is fresh throughout the game. I also love the many \"world bosses\" that aren't tied to a quest but rather free roaming with loot rewards. This encourages exploration.\n\nStarting with Cyseal's massive quests in the beginning kills the game's combat pacing. The ratio of time spent in town for quests vs pure gameplay in later parts of the game are not nearly similar. Proper sequencing of Cyseal's interconnected quests is impossible without a walkthrough.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The isometric and Unity-like graphics remind me of Shadow Tactics, which is serviceable but not stellar. Divinity is fully voice acted: it wasn't until playing Pillars of Eternity (2015) that I came to appreciate this feat.\n\n__Specific memories:__\n\n+ The first game where I'm managing 20-30 skills per character on my hotbar (sometimes even going to the fourth bar!), and they're all actively used! At times I don't like it because it requires so much managing. But I do like the idea that you've got a tool for every situation.\n+ Taking advantage of a Hail Attack cast right before some battles start. Not only is Hail Attack massive damage AoE, but also CC and can be done without of line of sight.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Unlike Baldur's Gate, there are only 4 companions instead of 25. Quality over quantity: each are fully voiced with some (although not that great) backstory.\n+ Like action RPGs, you can hold mouse click to move instead of spam clicking like Baldur's Gate. You can't hold mouse while having the map open though, or click on the map to move.\n+ You're encouraged to read books as they add to recipes and XP.\n+ Like Baldur's Gate, quests do not provide explicit objectives.\n+ Quick save works during all of free roam, combat, and dialogue.\n+ Merchant buy/sell prices are a function of their your bartering skill and their attitude towards you. It doesn't depend on merchant type though.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ You can fast travel from anywhere.\n+ Merchant items including spellbooks restock every hour and every level. This adds some realism. But it's inconvenient in picking up fundamental skills that you want for all four party members.\n+ You walk if you click close to your character. You run if you click farther away. Adds immersion and realism but is also slow.\n+ Repair and identify are effectively free if you have the hammer and identify magnifier and allocated skill.\n+ No day/night or weather cycle.\n+ Hilariously, you can kill NPCs for XP. Love the flexibility, though it's a mean outcome for minmaxers.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ NPCs repeat their line every 5 seconds! This is grating, particularly if you're in town managing your inventory and vendoring.\n+ You can only respec main characters, not companions. You also lose all learned spells and skills, making it inconvenient.\n+ Starting Divinity by creating two characters from scratch is intimidating to say the least.\n+ You can sort your inventory, but you can't keep it auto-sorted.\n+ Loot is randomly generated instead of predetermined.\n+ I do like the depth in needing various items for certain mechanics such as repair hammer, mining pickaxe, identify magnifier. However, they can be difficult to come by unless you're explicitly paying attention to it. They should be stock in a merchant inventory so it's easy to get once you know that you need it.\n+ Quest dependencies are not documented well, and progressing one can block progress on another.\n+ Immunities are counterintuitive. Status effect immunities like burning mean immunity to the burning status effect, but you can still take fire damage. Elemental immunities bring immunity to that elemental damage, but you can still get fire damage from teh burning status effect.\n+ Unlike WoW, it's shift drag to split an item stack, not shift click.\n+ There's no way to tell which books you already read.\n+ Keys take up bag space. With the absurd amount of keys in this game, it's a nuisance to manage.\n+ Madora's southern US accent is ingratiating for a medieval European game.\n+ All the tiny switches you have to find as the \"puzzle\".\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://divinity.fandom.com)\n+ [Tihie builds](https://www.tihie.com/divinity-original-sin-ee)\n+ [Level zones](https://imgur.com/a/uK4zS)\n+ [Crafting guide](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1skVuINeNSoqDYqn7FzufVtXS3sxUK-cp1Zgb73uV6lI/edit)\n+ [Level reqs (8/11/19) for crafting +1/2/3 speed dagger/bow](https://www.reddit.com/r/DivinityOriginalSin/comments/506o24/how_would_i_make_a_1_speed_dagger)\n+ [Save scumming for merchant inventory](https://www.reddit.com/r/DivinityOriginalSin/comments/76549m/vendor_restocks_savescumming_and_you)\n\nBefore playing this, I played its influential predecessors first in order to deepen my experience: isometric CRPGs like Baldur's Gate series, Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights; and games like Deus Ex, KOTOR, Mass Effect, Dragon Age. If I like Divinity enough, I can also delve into Disco Elysium and Pillars of Eternity, other high-profile modern takes on CRPGs.\n\n__Playthrough.__\nI played on classic mode (normal difficulty). I completed almost all side quests (effectively required to stay on level for the main game), and I completed secrets based on if I encountered them blind. I used default controls but with: party member selection to Shift+number keys; center camera to H; select party member prev/next as Q/E. I found 12 of 17 blood stones.\n\nWalkthrough-wise, there are no good ones. There's no canonical wiki or list of popular builds. The existing wiki's are sparse in detail. I found the GameFAQs guide the most detailed as a beginner learning the game and deciding how to build out characters (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/170514-divinity-original-sin-enhanced-edition/faqs/72764). Tihie's guide is the most informed in metagame but obtuse. Gamepressure's walkthrough is helpful for figuring out how to sequence side quests (particularly on any ones you're missing to stay on level).\n\nMerchant-wise, I used the fish trader in Cysael early game, then the smith after I saved him in Silverglen midgame, then the Immaculate Trader in The End of Time endgame.\n\ntodos\n\n+ maradino's lair for slaves and masters and frederick's blood stone\n+ forge of souls\n+ well wish for free loot\n\n__Build.__\nI used Tihie's to simplify decision-making:\n\n+ Elemental ranger (main)\n  + I mucked around with appearances but kept default names (Scarlett and Roderick).\n  + Scarlett is an expert marksman with water magic.\n+ Dual-wielding grenade wizard (main)\n  + Roderick is a battlemage: he not only has mastery in ranged DPS via water and air elements (early game, grenades) but also in melee DPS via scoundrel and man-at-arms.\n+ Shadowblade (Jahan)\n  + Jahan is like the battlemage but with increased emphasis on scoundrel, where dual daggers enables +6 SPD.\n+ Two-handed leadership knight (Madora)\n  + Madora is a knight with strong melee DPS (particularly early game) and the leadership party buff.\n\nBairdotr served in base as a mule; Wolgraff is never used. I also followed the optimal traits. Most party members have at least 1 point in the elemental schools, man at arms, and scoundrel for increased utility. Formation-wise, I did a T sequenced as Madora (center), Roderick, Jahan, Scarlett; and I free-roamed with Scarlett as the active member for perception, charisma, and pet pal talent.\n\nOverall, I appreciate that the build makes effective use of all consumables and skills in the game, requiring a comprehensive understanding of the full mechanics. The build generally worked well:\n\n+ Unfortunately, early game was messy. It needs both elemental arrow and grenade consumables, it needs early game crafting of +SPD daggers on both the wizard and shadowblade, AP is dreadfully low due to mostly no CON/SPD allocation.\n+ Midgame, I did not find any knives to make crafted speed daggers, which is essential for Roderick and Jahan's DPS as their stat allocation doesn't involve speed; I didn't know their role early game to keep any I found (unlike knives, Roderick's axe and Madora's two-handed axe is recycleable; and Scarlett's bow requires branch and bowstring which I found enough). Fortunately from this tip, I was able to pick up 12 knives off the dining table in Homestead ([1](https://steamcommunity.com/app/230230/discussions/0/45350245096753459), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/DivinityOriginalSin/comments/4576mz/knives_location_question)).\n\n    As I got to level 8, I got a better grasp at what the \"Spells Specific\" guide was recommending in terms of [early-to-mid-to-late game playstyles](https://steamcommunity.com/app/373420/discussions/0/357284767244750359).\n\nI modified some aspects as I never used food or potions for short-time buffs. To compensate, I got Glass Cannon earlier for Ranger and prioritized Bow, Expert Marksman, and Witchcraft to summon Armored Undead Decapitator and then pick off enemies. For skillpoint books and Mystical Tome, I put them into weapon stats I would get later; endgame I used remaining skillpoints for Bodybuilding and Willpower. I gave Death Knight Bane to Scarlett.\n\nThe build's crafting is not explained well. The major crafts are the weapons, explained in thetrueavatar's comment:\n\n```\nRanger: +1/2/3 speed bow\nShadowblade: 2x +1/2/3 speed dager\nDual Weilding: +1/2/3 speed dager and +4/6 crit one handed axe- buffalo or planet sword past level 22\nLeadership= +4/6/8% crit two handed axe\nLevel to start/change are 7/14/22\nEverytime add tormented soul and improve damage\nAdd tenebrium at level ???\nAdd elemental damage at ??\n```"},{"id":"322682678652758604","title":"Dominion","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2020,"platforms":["PC","Android","iOS"],"studios":["Temple Gates Games"],"publishers":["Temple Gates Games"],"genres":["Strategy","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2024-06-04","completedDate":"2024-07-06","updatedDate":"2024-07-06","notes":"Very fun. So much card synergy. The computer is really tough..\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://dominion.games\n\nMotivated to play as it's the 5th most popular on boardgamegeek (as of Jan 2021).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dominion"},{"id":"322682678624206412","title":"Doom 64","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["N64"],"studios":["Midway Studios San Diego"],"publishers":["Midway Home Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2021-02-19","completedDate":"2021-02-20","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Released in the same year as Quake 2 under the rising trend of 3D shooters, Doom 64 did not garner much of an audience. It presents little new to the series: no major enemies, weapons, or approaches to level design. Instead, Doom 64 is like a refined Doom game, putting a final close on what Doom 1 and 2 did well under a new set of levels, all comprising new assets developed for the Nintendo 64. For this goal, Doom 64 achieves it quite well. The game does get slightly repetitive because of this, and quite a few levels are too nonintuitive.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Core gameplay remains the same with the same weapons and anemies. Enemy variety is in fact slightly less than Doom II's due to Nintendo 64's memory limitations. The weapon arsenal overall is excellent, leveraging the best of Doom 2 (Super Shotgun); and one new weapon is the Unmaker (described later). Level design is noticeably more consistent without the contrived levels that Doom II offers. Doom 64 thus enables the best of both worlds: Doom 2 weapon and enemy arsenal, and Doom 1 level design.\n\nThe Unmaker is an interesting new weapon. Because the Unmaker is a third weapon using cell ammo, it serves closer to an upgrade to the Plasma Rifle instead of an entirely new weapon, with better damage per shot with zero Demon Keys to also higher DPS after attaining one Demon Key. It's also an overall more versatile weapon than the BFG9000, eventually even better when you attain 3 Demon Keys. The Unmaker brings Doom 64 to an excellent diversity of weapons: Super Shotgun for shells; Chaingun for bullets; Rocket Launcher for rockets; and Unmaker for cells.\n\nSome level progression is nonintuitive. For example, MAP08's access to the yellow card by pressing Interact on a yellow light, MAP17's random running around tiles to trigger the blue skull key spawn, MAP18's shooting the switch for the blue skull key and pressing Interact on a bookshelf for the yellow skull key (neither mechanic has been done in previous Doom games or is a frequent one that gamers can expect), MAP27's notoriously stupid keycode puzzle at the end of the map. The spawning of quite a handful of big enemies also gets rather repetitive and dumb, e.g., seven hell knights, three Pain Elementals. This is also common in Doom II, and generally a pit trap in Doom endgame where there's not much else you can do to ramp up the difficulty.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Doom 64's engine is distinct from previous games, including new textures and sprites. Sound design is excellent with a distorted grungy soundtrack, chanting, and other horrific atmosphere---almost reminiscent of Quake 1 rather than Doom 1 and 2's rock soundtrack. It's more colorful overall, and lighting is more pronounced with general darkness. There aren't weapon animations like the iconic super shotgun cocking due to Nintendo 64's memory limitations; that's a shame! Weapon sounds do feel strong as always, and not like Doom 3's muffled ones. For the PC rerelease, I'm thoroughly enjoying the game at my native widescreen resolution (2560x1440p), borderless, 144hz, and with precise mouse aim.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ That satisfying feeling of one-shotting a pinky demon with the Super Shotgun.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Movement is floaty, with slow deceleration making it very momentum-based.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Homing rocket traps and Mother Demon's homing rockets. They move way too fast, just slightly below your strafe-and-move-forward speed.\n+ The flashing lights in certain areas (e.g., MAP04). My god does that hurt to see.\n+ Fuck Lost Souls. They're even more aggressive in this game.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [How to Remove Intro Videos](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2146176046) | Boy, and I thought Doom 3's with both Bethesda and id Software was annoying!\n+ [How to use the keybind menu](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2038529533) | Specifically, how to unbind keys.\n\nI played the 2020 PC rerelease. This entry does not include the Lost Levels. I played on Watch Me Die! (hardest) difficulty as reading online, it's the equivalent of Ultra-Violence as Doom 64 omits a Nightmare difficulty. No mouse smoothing, no mouse acceleration, 8.5in/180 mouse sensitivity, mouselook but no freelook, no crosshair, autoaim on, always run, filtering (default) to mimick Nintendo 64 rendering, no antialiasing. I prefer freelook, crosshair, and no autoaim in my classic Dooms, but the option isn't available in the rerelease; and I may as well experience the vanilla setup first. I saved intermittently during levels as they're fairly long.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/doom-64"},{"id":"322682678652768844","title":"Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods - Part Two","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch","PS5","Series X","Stadia"],"studios":["id Software"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2025-02-23","completedDate":"2025-02-25","updatedDate":"2025-02-25","notes":"+ Sentinel Hammer. I like the ability to daze, get more ammo beyond the chainsaw and pickups, and extend Marauder and Armored Baron's vulnerability window. And its combo with Ice Bomb and Flame Belch for health and armor respectively. Although too many buttons now.\n+ Meat Hook for both level traversal and in arenas.\n+ I generally like the new enemies: Armored Baron, Stone Imp, Cursed Prowler, Riot Soldier, Demonic Trooper. They all require more diversity in tool usage (e.g., Armored Baron's timing, Stone Imp encourages auto shotgun or sentinel hammer, Cursed Prowler's movement effects and Blood Punch, Riot Soldier's invincible shield encourages remote detonate).\n+ Maybe it's because I played it at its final state with many patches. But I found the DLC to be as difficult as TAG1.\n+ The Dark Lord fight blows. Pushing further on vulnerability windows is not good here. I much prefer Icon of Sin. This greatly diminished my enjoyment of the DLC.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The new Retical Ability Indicator improves the UI so you can more easily see cooldowns being available like Blood Punch, Chainsaw, and Flame Belch. I especially find this helpful for Blood Punch which I never keep track of. This improves even the base game and previous DLCs.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/doom-eternal-the-ancient-gods-part-two"},{"id":"deee0286-599d-4939-894b-70cbc01bd5de","title":"Doom: The Dark Ages","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":1155,"platforms":["PC","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["id Software"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2025-06-07","completedDate":"2025-06-19","updatedDate":"2025-06-20","notes":"Doom: The Dark Ages is a medieval Doom and does it well, albeit with many major flaws.\n\nFlaws:\n\n1. Combat pales in many ways to its predecessors: simplistic parrying mechanics, overlapping guns with way too much ammo, lackluster weapon progression, lack of glory kill emphasis and animations.\n2. There is an emphasis on \"cinematic\" gameplay that is wide in variety and superficial in complexity: levels interlaced with cutscenes, encouners with mecha, dragons, turrets, underwater, and boss fights.\n3. The level design is a giant open world that ruins pacing due to its size, grindy collectibles, and unrewarding exploration, compared to Doom's traditional excellence in linearity.\n4. Writing is bad and takes too much of a front seat.\n5. The music is serviceable but ultimately forgettable. \n\n__Writing.__\nI can't believe they doubled down on the writing and cutscenes. It's bad.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nThe emphasis on parrying and shield usage is its biggest innovation. It feels simplistic however, with little depth as many enemies use the same parry-able attack. For example, there is no precise positioning required along with dodges and endurance such as in Dark Souls.\n\nGunplay favors you sticking to a main weapon. Weapon swap is slow, there is plentiful ammo per gun, and all guns perform similarly rather than incentivize specific weapons for specific needs. I dislike this variety as it reduces the game's complexity. The weapon swap slowdown especially includes swapping weapon classes, as you have to not only swap to the weapon but also switch out its type. It disincentivizes weapon swapping to use specific weapon strats for specific enemies unless you have the window, and otherwise stick with your favorite weapons until you run out of ammo. Gun upgrading progression overall is simplified, with less complexity including a secondary ability and mastery challenges to unlock the ultimate upgrade.\n \nShield mechanics are fun and an interesting alternative to the grenade and Flame Belch loadout of Doom Eternal: here, there's shield block and parry, shield charge, shield throw, and melee. Shield runes are fairly simplistic in design, with all doing some sort of AoE or damage based on parrying. I'd much prefer more varied shield runes in the same way runes could upgrade significantly more in Doom Eternal.\n\nThere's too much varied gameplay with mecha, dragons, turrets, underwater, and boss fights. They're superficial and unnecessary in variety. Plausibly fun on a first playthrough but a distraction from the core gameplay loop.\n\nEnemy variety and enemy design is good.\n\nIt is obvious overall that the game is designed for console players: less reliance on aim, poor graphics, more cinematic / console action FPS tropes.\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\nA serviceable and forgettable soundtrack. Visuals still feel a bit arcade-y like Doom Eternal, also due to its reliance on the same engine. Graphics are sometimes a downgrade so they can perform well on console.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ [There's enough gold and rubies. You don't need to 100% every level to max all upgrades](https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/1kmzcst/do_you_need_all_the_gold_to_get_all_upgrades).\n+ Customizable difficulty sliders.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Slowdown during parry. It happens too often and starts to affect the gameplay rhythm.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Glory kills are lackluster.\n+ Too many gold collectibles which impedes gameplay flow, especially as you pause to look at your map. It feels like a collect-a-thon platformer at times.\n+ [No fast travel.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/1kljwrn/does_dark_ages_really_not_have_fast_travel) This combined with the significantly larger levels and grindy collectibles makes exploration tedious.\n+ [Can't disable Life Sigils.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/1kmgrqg/life_sigils_are_handled_poorly_in_this_game) I don't like to use them in Nightmare.\n+ [You can only bind weapon classes and not specific weapons](https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/1kqdbdh/is_there_a_way_to_disable_switching_weapon_type), so pressing the keybind while you have the weapon equipped will unintentionally swap its type. I hate this misclick.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Powerpyx: All Collectible Locations YouTube playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRr5L69yg_kF0a5o1Vfh__mvjZlGZWKUT)\n\nSettings I changed that are somewhat key:\n\n+ Auto-Sprint on.\n+ Auto-Switch Weapon Empty off.\n+ FOV 110.\n\nStrategy:\n\n+ Single target: Impaler or Super Shotgun followed by melee.\n+ AoE: Shield Throw and Shield Bash. [Compared to Pulverizer](https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/1lbgmyg/anyone_else_feel_like_the_weapons_in_tda_have), it doesn’t take time to weapon swap, doesn’t require ammo, and is more precise.\n+ Shield Rune: Auto Turret for health.\n+ Melee: Flail for armor and faltering or Dreadmace for DPS.\n\nI played on Nightmare difficulty. I love the Doom series, but all the tedious elements and fairly simplistic gameplay mechanics don't make me want to replay the game or aim for Ultra Nightmare. Or even go for 100% completion.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/doom-the-dark-ages"},{"id":"3fbc3303-f839-430d-818f-289debee4ea1","title":"Downfall: A Slay the Spire Fan Expansion","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2022,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Table 9 Studio","LLC"],"startedDate":"2024-07-13","completedDate":"2024-07-15","updatedDate":"2024-07-16","notes":"Boss decks are true to form to Slay the Spire heroes.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/downfall-a-slay-the-spire-fan-expansion"},{"id":"322682678624183884","title":"Dragon Age 2","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":1590,"platforms":["PC","PS3","X360","Mac"],"studios":["BioWare"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts","Spike"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-04-20","completedDate":"2021-04-24","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Dragon Age 2 is a flawed improvement to DAO. I greatly enjoyed its real-time battles, feeling more streamlined and movement-oriented with stylish animations; it's a change of pace from DAO's slower and methodical combat. Companions are also given greater depth, reinforced with new mechanics to provide them more input in your journey including input during dialogue, more companion quests, and more spontaneous conversations.\n\nFlaw-wise, areas are so often reused that the game feels redundant, exacerbated with the disconnected world design. By Act 2, you've seen every level multiple times. Enemy waves are also a lazy design choice to make fights artificially more hectic and difficult. It not only ruins proper positioning for the sake of it but makes encounters feel artificially video game-y where you can't even get a sense of the difficulty of an encounter you'll commit to until you beat it.\n\n__Story.__ Story is less universal than DAO's save the world trope, focusing instead on a single person's journey after the Fifth Blight over 15 years. I greatly enjoy the idea of a focused area and the development of Hawke and his friends over a lengthy period of time. It puts more emphasis on the characters than the grand scale of typical fantasy stories. Hawke is much more pronounced as a personality than DAO's Grey Warden, and the companions all shine in their dialogue and larger role in everyday activities. I also love the consequences with how the companions can leave you (sometimes even betray you).\n\n__Gameplay.__ DA2 continues the action/MMO + RTWP hybrid of DAO and past games like KOTOR. It makes quite a few overhauls---some for the better, some for the worse.\n\nDA2's combat focuses more on real-time than tactics: for example, there is no delay shuffling to a new animation when selecting an ability as in Origins, positioning is less important due to movement abilities (e.g., warrior and rogues automatically close space with autoattack, rogue's Backstab teleports you to their back), potions are quick slots, and enemy waves from any direction mean it's difficult to strategize positioning. Other elements reign: adapting to enemy reinforcements, particularly in target prioritization, threat management (especially if Hawke isn't a warrior), and CCs. I greatly enjoyed the real-time combat and flashier animations, but the enemy waves are clearly one of DA2's worst elements.\n\nMechanics-wise, DA2 streamlines DAO. Combat by default shows no damage numbers and relies on visual indicators of status effects. There are no origin stories or race selection. There are fewer spells and talents. There are no non-combat skills. Almost every area has fast travel. Quest indicators are more prominent, including area indicators for quest objectives instead of referencing your journal to track down a quest. I enjoyed these streamlined elements for the most part. It's more a sense of taste, bringing DA closer to action RPGs with a tighter toolbox than CRPGs.\n\nTraditional heal and tank roles are nerfed in DA2. Anders is the only companion with a group heal, heal cooldowns are lengthy, and Aveline has no threat generation abilities. Instead, DA2 emphasizes more DPS and CC party compositions, with companions freely using health and mana/stamina potions. I quite enjoyed this meta. However, while full DPS in a party is exhilarating, it can be extremely risky at higher difficulties where Anders is almost essential.\n\nMirroring Mass Effect, DA2 introduces a dialogue wheel which I despise: not having the explicit dialogue isn't a dealbreaker, but dialogue wheels make replies reductive by shoehorning them into three personalities. The idea of indirectness by appealing to personalities rather explicit dialogue options is interesting, but it should keep track of your personality similar to companion approval, and/or be even more vague so that future playthroughs can have different personalities all be viable from a role-playing perspective.\n\nCompanions are easily DA2's unrefutable strength, not only in their story but their mechanics. DA2 gives the impression that you're playing more of a solo game, with Hawke living his own life, making choices, and with any picked-up armor to be used only for himself. Anders isn't waiting outside Hawk's house like DAO's party camp, waiting to be chosen to go adventuring. Instead, companions live their lives and you simply have a few tag along. In particular, each has a unique specialization and armor. The approval system is now friendship and rivalry on opposite spectrums. I like the principle of no longer about always pandering for +100 approval, and with rivalries actually inducing companions to change mindsets. Companions also have more explicit dialogue as you wade through dialogue choices, and there is significantly more companion quests.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics are a minor improvement to DAO, with most noticeable in textures and lighting; face models still see their age. Due to rushed development, DA2 reuses many areas and it shows. Main character is voice acted. Dialogue more often has a more dynamic camera than talking heads.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can use a keyboard shortcut to target enemies, open chests, and loot corpses. This is something I greatly missed in DAO and which forced unnecessary pausing.\n+ There's finally a tactic for when enemies are clustered. This enables automating AOE. DAO required you to micromanage companions for this. Further, 20 slots for everyone makes their AI significantly smarter.\n+ Spells and talents are acquired under a web and no longer linear. This mitigates a bit of DAO's issue in commiting to waste many skills just to get a certain high-tier one.\n+ Junk is now an isolated category and with an easy \"sell all junk\" option.\n+ Unlike DAO, the minimap HUD is finally of proper size on high resolutions to be useful.\n+ Attack misses aren't as prevalent. There's less RNG than DAO here, and especially less RNG than the dice roll D&D systems in KOTOR and Baldur's Gate.\n+ Only one injury type. The RNG of getting injury types didn't make much sense to me. I like the health cap here; reminds me of Dark Souls 2.\n+ In merchant trade menus, you can select the party member to compare equipment to. Beats exiting the window to go to their inventory to manually check.\n+ The fewer potions and injury kits you have, the more likely they are to spawn. This encourages freely using them, including in everyone's tactics.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Crafting. Crafting was already barebones in DAO and this game streamlined even the materials and never made it core to the gameplay loop. I never touched it until endgame. Things like runes being unremovable just encourages hoarding them. Only later did I realize that the resource varieties you acquire are actually just requirements to craft items; they aren't used up. So runes, potions, and poisons are infinite and fairly cheap.\n+ Missable permanent items: backpacks and tomes if you don't purchase them in the corresponding Act. I like permanent missable companions because they have story consequences. Missing out on upgrades however is plain dumb.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n+ [DW Assassin - One-Shot Overkill (Nightmare Guide)](https://fextralife.com/forums/t300245/dw-assassin--oneshot-overkill-nightmare-guide-updated-for-102103-check-bottom-of-op-july-24th)\n+ [Solo Shadow DW Build (Nightmare) (Updated)](https://fextralife.com/forums/t274966/solo-shadow-dw-build-nightmare-updated)\n+ [DW Rogue endgame equipment](https://fextralife.com/forums/t304315/best-daggers)\n\nI played on Hard difficulty. Nightmare requires more build optimization (not ideal for a blind playthrough), restricts party compositions, and tactical decision-making (pausing). The biggest change is friendly fire which makes pausing to position and aim that much more important---even your party members' AoE requires manual aim as it's no longer viable in Tactics. I played blind. After playing through a quest, I often looked it up to see different scenarios, including 100% rivalries, Carver, companions leaving you, and siding with templars. I completed all sidequests and got everyone to 100% friendship.\n\nI didn't touch any DLC item packs as they're too strong, beating any equipment in the main game which removes a core part of the gameplay loop and its difficulty. There's also so many.. 6 Item Packs, Black Emporium item chest and item shop, Signature Edition Rewards, and a handful of promotional items.\n\nIn selecting a class, I wanted a change of pace from my DAO mage playthrough, and which involves much pausing to position and aim spells. 2H Warrior is viable as a frontliner, particularly due to highest DPS and threat as a manually controlled party member. However, I prefer more innovative Warrior mechanics from games like Dark Souls, Dragon’s Dogma, and Kingdom Come Deliverance (I find CRPG/MMO/ARPG ability cooldown-based warriors are less interesting). In contrast, only CRPGs, MMOs, and ARPGs do DPS rogues justice (the closest action version of Assassin's Creed/Thief/Horizon Zero Dawn aren't actually rogues).\n\n\nParty-wise, I frequently swapped companions unlike in DAO. I enjoyed everyone's dialogue, particularly the spontaneous conversations from companion combos and their input in the dialogue wheel. In addition, everyone's unique specialization and weapon type made it fun to experiment with diverse party compositions (e.g., pure physical, 3 mages, tank, all DPS). Unique companion armor also makes it less tedious than DAO to manage good equipment for your party: simply give each companion the best weapon of their type, and keep 2 sets of magical accessories, 3 sets of physical.\n\n+ __Hawke.__ DW DPS rogue. My playstyle is to focus high priority targets or enemies near my ranged DPS.\n    + Attributes: Cunning, Dexterity until 95%+ crit chance.\n    + Abilities: Assassin, Shadow, Dual Weapon.\n + __Anders.__ Healer and CC mage.\n\n    + Attributes: Magic.\n    + Abilities: Vengeance, Creation.\n+ __Aveline.__ Tank warrior.\n\n    + Attributes: Strength, Constitution.\n    + Abilities: Guardian, Weapon and Shield, Warmonger.\n + __Bethany.__ DPS/CC mage.\n    + Attributes: Magic, 20 Constitution.\n    + Abilities: Elemental.\n + __Fenris.__ DPS/Offtank warrior.\n\n    + Attributes: Strength, Constitution.\n    + Abilities: Tevinter Fugitive, Two-Handed.\n + __Isabela.__ DPS/Offtank rogue. Works decently as a duelist with defense bonuses when surrounded and with escape abilities for emergency.\n\n    + Attributes: Cunning, Dexterity until 95%+ crit chance.\n    + Abilities: Swashbuckler, Dual Weapon, Specialist's Speed.\n+ __Merrill.__ DPS mage. Her AOE damage is particularly strong alongside Keeper-like damage for enemies around her.\n\n    + Attributes: Magic, 20 Constitution.\n    + Abilities: Dalish Pariah, Primal.\n + __Sebastian.__ Ranged DPS rogue.\n\n    + Attributes: Cunning, Dexterity.\n    + Abilities: Royal Archer, Archery, Scoundrel.\n + __Varric.__ Ranged DPS rogue.\n\n    + Attributes: Cunning, Dexterity.\n    + Abilities: Marksman, Bianca, Specialist's Speed.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-age-ii"},{"id":"322682678624185932","title":"Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":810,"platforms":["PS3","Linux","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["BioWare Edmonton"],"publishers":["Spike","Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy"],"startedDate":"2021-04-18","completedDate":"2021-04-19","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Awakening is what you'd expect from an expansion: core gameplay is the same, just more content. This content comes in the form of new quests, locations, enemies, companions, specializations, weapon/armor runes and shield heraldry to make the enhancement system more prominent, and combat skills. I like that the dialogue involves more decision-making, particularly as you rule the domain as Warden-Commander. Even if the consequences have little impact, the illusion of choice is strong and influences enjoyment in a blind playthrough. Nothing substantially innovative here, but still fun.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The ability to import a character or even start one afresh. Importing characters to start a separate campaign is very much a D&D thing.\n+ You can respec, and it's cheap and infinite. With that said, yuo can even respec companions from scratch. This is nice for flexibility, but pretty much diminishes the value of whatever they started with or what they're known for.\n+ Multi-objective quests finally now have a tracker.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [The Ultimate Guide to Arcane Warriors](https://fextralife.com/forums/t93492/the-ultimate-guide-to-arcane-warriors)\n+ [My Paladin & Spellsword Arcane Warrior Builds For Origin & Awakening](https://fextralife.com/forums/t99402/my-paladin--spellsword-arcane-warrior-builds-for-origin--awakening-updated-122410/)\n+ [Arcane Warrior GameFAQs discussion](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/984879-dragon-age-origins-awakening/54081288)\n+ [Dragon Age Wiki: Arcane Warrior Spellcasting](https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Arcane_Warrior_spellcasting)\n\nTo switch things up from Origins, I respecced and selected a melee party composition that favored morally ambiguous decisions. I also played on Nightmare difficulty. Arcane Warrior basically breaks the game; I played quite a bit of the game solo with a Sigrun set to Wait in tactics for lockpicking; and possibly with Oghren and Anders for the party buffs and companion dialogue.\n\n+ __Main character.__ Melee DPS Arcane Warrior mage. The playstyle involves autoattack, sustained buffs, CCs, and Mana Clash to focus fire elite mages.\n\n    + Attributes: Magic, 30 Dexterity for attack, 16 Cunning for Coercion.\n    + Skills: Coercion, Combat Training, Vitality, Clarity.\n    + Specializations: Arcane Warrior, Blood Mage, Battlemage.\n    + Spells: sustained buffs (Combat Magic, Shimmering Shield, Arcane Shield, Flaming Weapons, Rock Armor, Haste, Spell Wisp, Spell Might, Miasma), CCs (Blood Wound, [maybe Blood Control], Hand of Winter, Glyph of Paralysis, Glyph of Repulsion), Mana Clash, support (Glyph of Warding, Force Field, [maybe Heal, Regeneration]), passives (Fade Shroud, Stoic, Arcane Mastery, Fade Shield, Attunement).\n\n    + Equipment: +17.25 mana regeneration with Cailan's Arms (+5.75), Stormchaser Gauntlets (+2), Evon the Great's Mail (+1), Andruil's Blessing (+2), Nature's Blessing (+3), Combat Training rank 2 (+0.5), Fade Shroud (+1), Attunement (+2). This totals to +18.75 with base regen (+1.5), +19.25 with <50 mana (+2), and +21.75 with <25 mana (+4.5). Other equipment: Toque of the Oblivious, Fleet Feet, Lifegiver, Golden Cog, Legion of the Dead heraldry, Intensifying runes, Paragon Stout runes.\n\n        This adjusts for Shimmering Shield (-10), Haste (-3), and Spell Might (-4). Elemental Chaos (-20) would require its own meme build. Other options: The High Regard of House Dace (+1), Wade's Superior Dragonbone Plate Boots (+0.5), Longrunner's Cap (+0.5).\n+ __Oghren.__ Melee DPS two-handed warrior. Made to be automated with tactics. Rarely, I manually take control for the emergency bubble.\n\n    + Attributes: Strength.\n    + Skills: Combat Training, Combat Tactics, Vitality, Clarity.\n    + Specializations: Berserker, Champion, Guardian.\n    + Talents: sustained buffs (Rally), support (Guardian's Shield, Fortifying Presence), damage.\n+ __Sigrun.__ Melee DPS dual-wield rogue. Automated with tactics.\n\n    + Attributes: Cunning, 24 Strength and 50 Dexterity for equipment.\n    + Skills: Combat Training, Combat Tactics, Vitality, Clarity.\n    + Specializations: Assassin, Bard, Legionnaire Scout.\n    + Talents: sustained buffs (Song of Courage), damage.\n + __Anders.__ Support mage. Stacks sustained buffs and automated with heals. Rarely, I manually take control for emergency heals.\n\n    + Attributes: Magic.\n    + Skills: Combat Training, Combat Tactics, Vitality, Clarity.\n    + Specializations: Spirit Healer, Blood Mage, Keeper.\n    + Spells: sustained buffs (Haste, Frost Weapons), heals (Group Heal, Revival, Heal, Rejuvenate, Regeneration), miscellaneous support (Force Field, Mana Clash, Death Hex).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-age-origins-awakening"},{"id":"322682678651436620","title":"Dragon Quest VIII","originalTitle":"ドラゴンクエストVIII","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":3720,"platforms":["3DS"],"studios":["Tose","Square Enix Business Division 6"],"publishers":["Square Enix","Nintendo"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-11-09","completedDate":"2019-11-16","updatedDate":"2022-07-18","notes":"Dragon Quest VIII stands out as a core entry of the series, outlining its strengths: fantastic art and soundtrack, bright atmosphere and characters, and well-done classic RPG/combat mechanics and story. On flaws, Dragon Quest 8 has quite a bit of gold and experience grinding, which dilutes its content. To enjoy this game, I had to treat it like Pokemon and any comfy game like Harvest Moon. This still did not serve my patience for the 60 hour game content. Story is serviceable but not great.\n\n__Story.__ Prototypical story but filled with a few colorful characters. I especially like Yangus, King Trode, Morrie. Fortunately there's also not much drama or cringey dialogue as, e.g., Final Fantasy games. The story isn't really memorable and certainly does not stand out compared to the likes of stellars in the genre such as Dragon Quest V, Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy 6. The villain after Dhoulmagus is Final Fantasy-levels of generic cosmic villain. Dhoulmagus also isn't as indepth as the other infamous clown: Kefka.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Dragon Quest 8 plays the same as the rest in the series but with two newly introduced mechanics: Skill Tree and Alchemy System. Levels provide stat boosts and skill points to upgrade via skill tree system. Like the rest of the series, Churches provide save points, resurrection, and status effect removal. New to this game in the series (3DS version), there is roaming enemies instead of random encounters, and Quick Save. Stat attribute and status effect system is fundamental and works well, without complicated other stats. The 3D turn-based combat reminds me most of Pokemon Stadium. I like the unique perks of battle mechanics in Dragon Quest games: Defend, Psyche Up, and number of enemies going up to 10s in a battle and with specific group formation patterns that determine your multi-target abilities, and where multi-target DPS outshines single-target in most all encounters.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Love the orchestral soundtrack. Visuals are colorful and varied, loving Akira Toriyama's character and monster design especially. Bestiary builds on the excellent one from the series. Voice acting is excellent (Takehito Koyasu's Dio and many more as Dhoulmagus!). Wonderful atmosphere overall.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ The ol' Dragon Quest workflow of exploring a new town by entering every house, breaking all their vases and jars, and scouring their drawers.\n+ Puppeteer enemy CCing your party members by telling them a funny story. So wholesome.\n+ The classic JRPG style of a story/gameplay length that outstays its welcome and the reliance on color palette swaps for novel enemy variety as the game progresses.\n+ The combat rhythm of Psyche Ups, Attacks, and Multiheals during boss encounters.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Enemies appear on-screen on map to select battles (in DS version). This is such a huge quality-of-life improvement, particularly a dozen or so hours into the game where you'd like to avoid random encounters. At this point, it's more optimal to appreciate the game content without the dilution, and to grind any missing experience/gold efficiently through Metal Slime means.\n+ While I don't like the general idea of grinding to unnecessarily elongate a game's playtime, I do like some of the habits you get into with grinding in Dragon Quest. For example, finding the optimal strategy and spending an hour or two in Slime Hill.\n+ Difficulty curve. The hardest bosses are also lore-wise the hardest: Dhoulmagus, Empyrea, Rhapthorne. I game over-ed a few times making these fights feel challenging but not enough that they become frustrating (boy it must have been so much tougher without a walkthrough!).\n+ Day night cycle. Not many changes in the NPC/world event patterns  but I like the ones that do.\n+ I liked all the modes of transportation on the world map: Sabrecat, ship. They all had simple movement operations and mount/unmount. Except the bird which automoves and takes forever to pivot..\n+ The use of photographs for Cameron's Codex as the collectible. I don't collecting these as intrusive as other collectibles in games (certainly ones in open-world RPGs). They aren't extremely gamey but rather immerse you well into the details of the world.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Items go into a bag which must be then put into character-specific bags to equip or use them. I don't know of modern games beside Dragon Quest that does this: extra degree of nuisance but extra degree of mechanics complexity.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Camera navigates with L/R shoulders and Up/Down D-pad rather than right stick.\n+ Unfortunately, cutscenes and text don't scale as the engine does. So on a 1440p monitor, the game's cutscenes are super blurry and in clear contrast to the upscaling of the rest of the game. Draw distance is also pretty bad.\n+ If you're not careful in the save options, you can quit the game __without__ saving (https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonquest/comments/7xpea8/dragon_quest_viii_3ds_why_would_you_ask_the/).\n+ Only partial voice acting. Common for games at the time.\n+ Citra does well most of the time. Frame rate drops when monsters pop in though. And game is capped at 30 FPS.\n+ You can lines of dialogue to speed it up, but certain lines wait on a particular animation, which makes it awkward to hear silence while the animation is played out. I'd much rather have those lines just not be skippable.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/3ds/160146-dragon-quest-viii-journey-of-the-cursed-king/faqs/77496/\n+ liquid metal slime grind and respawn trick in trodain castle | https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/160146-dragon-quest-viii-journey-of-the-cursed-king/74893054\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/3dshacks/comments/6kuwmc/the_orchestra_restoration_and_undub_mods_for/\n\nI played it using the Citra 3DS emulator, USA ROM with undubbed (Japanese voice acting and English everything) and orchestra restoration mods. Quoting https://www.rpgsite.net/feature/5866-the-complete-beginner-s-guide-to-dragon-quest-part-1-main-titles:\" The Mobile version has performance issues, so it's better to skip that version. The 3DS version is considered the definitive version with new playable characters, a turbo speed mode, and extra content including a new optional ending. However, the PS2 version is quite fine on its own and has a full orchestral soundtrack which the 3DS version lacks (although the orchestral soundtrack can be added to the 3DS version of the game through unofficial modification).\" The PS2 version apparently is prettier via its upscaling on an emulator and with a better menu system and no censoring, but it's not as complete as 3DS (e.g., quality of life changes such as quick save, on screen encounters, sped up battles, instant alchemy; and extra content such as playable characters, endgame content).\n\nMy total playtime is 32 hours (according to save game data). I followed the skill tree recommendations from the walkthrough. The walkthrough does not include a guide on how to allocate Seeds. Following discussion (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/583527-dragon-quest-viii-journey-of-the-cursed-king/64734374), I give Strength and Skill to Hero; HP (Life), Defense, MP (Magic), and Wisdom to Jessica as she's most glass-cannony; Agility to Angelo for faster healing. The Speed option for battles can quickly be abused and make you not appreciate the animations. I deliberately only turned it on when grinding or running from point A to B where I've already been in the region before but ended up keeping it on after about 20 hours into the game (many enemies are palette swaps or offer not-so-unique animations). I did not complete all Sidequests, including the treasure hunting sections of the guide, the Baccarat Casino, and the last optional section before the final boss (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/3ds/160146-dragon-quest-viii-journey-of-the-cursed-king/faqs/77496/treasure-hunting-magic-key). I also did not use the two playable characters or do the endgame which are new to the 3DS version.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-quest-viii-journey-of-the-cursed-king--1"},{"id":"322682678650412620","title":"Fall Guys","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["colecovision"],"studios":["Fox Interactive"],"publishers":["Fox Interactive"],"genres":["Platform","Racing"],"startedDate":"2020-07-31","completedDate":"2020-08-07","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"This is like an online Mario Party/Warioware, and done in a battle royale style to get many online anonymous in and out to play with. And it works wonders. Very casual in winning, not so much skill cap but RNG. Music and its simplistic art style with animations are great. Game is very low setup and lots of fun per second with its high paced minigames. It gets old very quickly as the skill cap isn't high and the minigame variety is limited.\n\nStarted by watching Sodapoppin play for a long time during its prerelease as well as Clint.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fall-guy"},{"id":"6856e9b2-0cc5-4b0b-b700-f18d86dd76f2","title":"Fallout 2","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":1830,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["Black Isle Studios"],"publishers":["Interplay Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Turn-based strategy (TBS)"],"startedDate":"2023-08-19","completedDate":"2023-08-22","updatedDate":"2023-09-05","notes":"Fallout 2 is to Fallout 1 in many ways like Baldur’s Gate 2, KOTOR 2, and Fallout New Vegas to their predecessor. The game engine and gameplay mechanics are exactly the same with only incremental improvements. The change is more content. Fallout 2's writing and new tonal approach still make for a fun adventure, but I prefer Fallout 1 both in atmosphere and in its innovation.\n\nFlaws:\n\n+ Fallout 2 inherits Fallout 1's same UI and controls flaws with not too many improvements. It misses quality of lifes due to its tedious inventory micromanagement and turn-based combat which can be fairly slow and grindy at later parts of the game when combat is trivial but time consuming.\n+ Incremental improvements.\n+ Too long and repetitive. I was 20 hours in during New Reno and felt burnt out. You've basically seen all that the game has to offer, and it's already been seen in Fallout 1 anyways.\n\n__Story.__\nTone is more campy and comedic. There are also more pop culture references. I think it's generally written well and suitable to Fallout's style (albeit a different departure). It reminds me a bit of a semi-common tone difference in sequel titles such as Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1 vs 2.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nNew elements:\n\n+ [Companions](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_2_companions)  are expanded in Fallout 2. There are more of them, they level with your player, there's a dedicated trade menu that doesn't involve janky stealing to transact with them, and there's configurable companion AI. The number of companions you can bring along is also limited by the player's Charisma.\n+ No longer a main quest time limit. Only a handful of sidequests have time limits.\n+ No major radiation area where you have to pop Rad-aways like in Fallout 1. I prefer this.\n+ [Karma](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Karma_(Fallout_2)) which is a good, neutral and evil character alignment system to complement town reputations.\n+ Certain weapons are upgradeable.\n+ You can shove companions to move. This is particularly helpful as quality of life when they block a door.\n+ [Drivable vehicle](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Highwayman). It improves movement speed on the world map and uses microfusion cell as fuel.\n+ Quests are a bit more varied, involving inter-city travel and aren't usually exclusively solvable within each city.\n\nThe beginning of the game until the Den is quite a slog. There’s limited ammo, making one rely on melee or unarmed which is especially problematic if you don’t spec into these. I had to rely crucially on the tactic of using AP for attacks, then moving sufficiently far away so that the enemy wastes all their AP to reach my new position. And I savescummed and regularly used rests.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nGame engine, visual assets, and soundtrack are largely from Fallout 1.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Stupid build is a bit more varied and viable. For details, see Per Jorner's guides for both games.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Unlike Fallout 1's never-restocked vendor inventories, Fallout 2 vendors [restock periodically](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_2_merchants).\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Fallout 2 vendors do not restock money instantaneously. Combined with the companion weight limit, this makes selling bulk items tedious. To circumvent this, I just use the [F12se](https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/fallout-2-savegame-editor.185130) save editor to increase my money count and delete any items I intend to sell. From midgame to endgame, I gave stopped looting vendor items altogether and increased my carry weight to 999\n+ Like Fallout 1, companions die permanently instead of being knocked out as in other CRPGs. This makes for tedious savescumming especially given that in Fallout, there's no way to cast an equivalent heal spell on an ally.\n+ Like Fallout 1, time passing isn't instant. It's somewhat slow waiting for time to rest until healed unlike any other CRPG.\n+ Companion weight limit. While more realistic, the inventory UI is tedious (you have to go through multiple actions in order to access a companion's inventory). The weight limit adds more micromanagement. This wouldn't be a problem with modern CRPGs like Pillars of Eternity and Divinity Original Sin, where an inventory key displays all companion inventories at once.\n+ 10x beer and 10x booze is used in a sidequest for Lydia in Vault CIty. 1x Jet is used in a sidequest for Troy in Vault City. It's never clear what consumables and miscellaneous items are needed for quests. So it's annoying not knowing what to sell and later having to reacquire them.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Fallout Fandom Wiki](https://fallout.fandom.com)\n+ [r/fallout](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout)\n+ [r/classicfallout](https://www.reddit.com/r/classicfallout)\n+ [Per Jorner's The Nearly Ultimate Fallout 2 Guide](https://lemmings19.github.io/fallout-2-walkthrough). See [Reddit thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/8j30y2/at_your_request_ive_restored_one_of_the_best) for context.\n  + Preparation section remains accurate, namely game versions and game settings.\n+ Builds\n  + See Per Jorner's guide.\n  + [Lilura's blog](https://lilura1.blogspot.com/2020/07/Fallout-2-Best-Weapons-Small-Guns-Big-Guns-Energy-Weapons.html)\n+ Setup\n  + See Per Jorner's guide. Preparation section is mostly accurate. It doesn't know what version Steam uses so details about extra patches and uncensoring isn't relevant.\n  + [PCGamingWiki](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Fallout_2)\n  + Steam version already comes with latest patch (1.02) and high-resolution patch (check via settings or Ctrl+V in game; [discussion](https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/fallout-1-2-on-steam-patching-required.770091)).\n  + I separately installed the [Unofficial Fallout 2 patch](https://github.com/BGforgeNet/Fallout2_Unofficial_Patch).\n  + For borderless windowed, set the game to windowed mode (a graphics setting in the unofficial patch version) and use Borderless Gaming.\n  + Skip launcher via \"Set Launch Options\" to [\"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\Fallout 2\\fallout2.exe\" %command%](https://steamcommunity.com/app/377160/discussions/0/496881121380016176).\n  + [Error: \"Failure Initializing Input Devices\"](https://steamcommunity.com/app/38400/discussions/0/846960481979919103). Setting BackgroundKeyboard=1 and BackgroundMouse=1 in ddraw.ini worked.\n  + [Error: Freezing when fighting Geckos alongside Sulik in Klamath](https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/freezing-when-fighting-geckos-alongside-sulik-in-klamath.214440).  Setting EXTRA_WIN_MSG_CHECKS=1 in f2_res.ini worked.\n+ Fallout.one: [Controls/UI](https://www.fallout.one/pages/fallout-1-controls.html) and [How to Play](https://www.fallout.one/pages/how-to-play-fallout-1.html). It's not explained in-game outside of F1 for a one-pager help screen.\n\n__Difficulty.__\nLike my Fallout 1 playthrough and as recommended by Per Jorner's guide, I played on Normal difficulty. I could make the combat more challenging, but I feel like that would only make it more tedious, not rewarding in a mechanically difficult way that requires any skill curve.\n\n__Playthrough style.__\nI followed Per Jorner's guide and read online for character setup, build research, and combat tips. I played blind in terms of playing the actual game. \n\n+ I didn't install the Restoration Project which adds content removed during development. Fallout 2 is already quite long, and the Restoration project includes content written by community members in order to tie things together. This is something likely to explore in a second playthrough while not affecting the vanilla experience which is already complete. In contrast, for example, KOTOR 2 was far more rushed than Fallout 2, and the game simply feels incomplete without the restoration.\n+ My strategy was the same as in Fallout 1: a magnanimously good person; loot everything; and prioritize spending on [skill books](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Skill_book) (specifically, wait before manually leveling skills that can leveled from them).\n+ I completed most sidequests but skipped a handful. I started to get burned out around mid to endgame during New Reno. I also skipped Redding as an optional area.\n\nI dropped the game once I arrived in New California Republic. I felt I had seen enough of the content to give a complete rating and felt burned out of the game.\n\n__Build.__ I played a gun build, building on Per Jorner's \"Gifted gunfighter\" and Lilura's. I would choose a melee build for my first playthrough since I did a gun build in Fallout 1. However, unarmed/melee build is weaker in Fallout 2 (for example, Fast Shot is no longer applicable which enables up to 13 attacks per turn). It requires to sacrifice damage for survivability or rely on stealth to deal with Enclavers and other epic-level enemies.\n\n+ Initial stats (including traits): ST 5, PE 7, EN 4, CH 6, IN 7, AG 10, LK 8.\n+ Developed stats: ST 10, PE 8, EN 4, CH 6, IN 8, AG 10, LK 10.\n+ Traits: Gifted, Fast Shot.\n+ Tag skills: Small Guns, Lockpick, Speech.\n  + Prioritize these skills to 100%, then Big Guns or Small Guns to 180-200%. Ideally you'll also want Doctor at 75% and Traps at 60-70%. Others like Science at 81% is done with skill books.\n+ Perk progression: Level 3 Awareness, level 6 Bonus Ranged Damage (1), level 9 Better Criticals, level 12 Living Anatomy, level 15 Bonus Rate of Fire, level 18 Bonus Ranged Damage (2), level 21 Action Boy, level 24 Sniper.\n  + Action Boy x2 can be used instead of Bonus Ranged Damage x2. It enables H&K P90c to do 4 bursts using up both item slots and no reload per turn (`4*3=12` AP); 3 bursts and reload per turn (`3*3+2=11` AP) is possible with Action Boy x1. And it enables Bozar to do 3 bursts using up both item slots and no reload per turn (`3*4=12` AP); 2 bursts and reload per turn is possible without (`2*4+2=10` AP). I prefer the sustainability of Bonus Ranged Damage x2.\n+ [Weapon progression](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_2_weapons)\n  1. Spear\n  2. Sharpened Spear\n  3. Pipe rifle with 10mm ammo (Arroyo)\n  4. 10mm pistol with 10mm ammo (Rat Caves)\n  5. .44 magnum revolver with .44 magnum ammo (Den)\n  6. .44 magnum revolver with speed loader and .44 magnum JHP (Gecko or New Reno)\n  7. H&K P90c with 10mm ammo or Bozar with .223 FMJ. H&K P90c has higher total damage output against unarmored and medium-armored \n foes. Bozar works at longer range and its ammo has higher damage penetration, leading to higher damage output against heavy-armored foes.\n+ [Armor progression](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_2_armor_and_clothing)\n  + Like Fallout 1, there are no downsides to heavier armor (aside from weight, which is negligible). So I wear the highest armor class.\n\nFor companions, I brought the following.\n\n+ [Sulik](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Sulik)\n  + Weapon progression:\n    1. Sledgehammer\n    2. Super sledge\n  + I dump all ammo and situational items.\n+ [Vic](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Vic)\n  + Weapon progression:\n    1. Combat Knife\n    2. 10mm Pistol with 10mm ammo\n    3. Sniper rifle with .223 FMJ\n    4. M72 Gauss Rifle with 2mm EC\n  + I personally carry items I intend to vendor. However, if I reach the limit, I dump extra vendor items to Vic in order to easily pick them up later.\n+ [Cassidy](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/John_Cassidy)\n  + Weapon progression:\n    1. H&K CAWS with 12 ga shotgun shells (enemy drop)\n    2. M72 Gauss Rifle with 2mm EC\n\ntodos on replaythroughs\n+ finish playthrough from new california republic\n+ stupid build\n+ unarmed/melee build\n+ restoration project","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallout-2"},{"id":"322682678651422284","title":"Fallout 3","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2008,"playtimeMinutes":1350,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Bethesda Game Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2019-12-20","completedDate":"2019-12-27","updatedDate":"2023-05-12","notes":"Fallout 3 stands out as an open-world RPG with opinions: chuck full of humor vibe; desolate scifi apocalypse setting; and first-person shooter+VATS combat system. It otherwise sticks to the staples of Bethesda western open-world RPGs: large worlds with numerous choices across quests and hubs; progression system; memorable characters and sidequests.\n\nFlaw-wise, the FPS combat is clunky. The inventory is also mindbogglingly dense. Bugs.\n\n__Story.__ Stringed together in an Elder Scrolls-like fashion but with even more theme park towns. Main story is mediocre. I think the sidequests are generally better.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Like Elder Scrolls in its RPG mechanics of dialogue, perks/skills, stats, open world, encumbrance, clunky combat, pause-based healing, followers; console; theft via lockpicking and hacking; fast travel. Unique additions like: limb health; environment with tunnels from the metro and Washington, D.C. area; karma; VATS auto-targeting; CND durability and repair; radiation. There are no guilds/factions, a core part of Elder Scrolls' best quest chains and mechanics.\n\nI love that sidequests are few but quality unlike oblivion and Far Cry-style missions, where many side quests end up being redundant (e.g., fetch and quest, or kill a certain elite). Here, side quests are all handcrafted to fit the narrative. This makes it more possible to 100% the side quests, and also not feel like they’re as redundant (they still can be however because of the stale gameplay or sometimes dullmwriting,but even that is still better than what the formulaic side quests in typical open world rpgs have).\n\nEnemy variety is lacking. Combat is mostly a stand-and-shoot affair, waiting on numbers for you to beat your enemies. There is not much for cover in gunfire, interesting enemy AI, weaving in/out of melee, etc.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Roughly similar to Oblivion, but the colors aren't as washed out. And there are not as many obvious asset reuses in the level designs like in Oblivion (all dungeons and Oblivion gates are the same and clearly feel more empty). Voice acting is more varied.\n\n__Specific memories:__\n\n+ The iconic Megaton town in Fallout, a desert hub built with an active nuke at its center.\n+ The satisfying kills after VATS and also from the Bloody Mess perk.\n+ Little detailed quests like the unmarked quest from Andales, a quaint town where everybody has human meat in the refridgerator.\n+ Tranquility Lane, where an old man RPs as a little girl and you're stuck in a small town utopia.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Lighter armor and holstering your weapon makes you move faster.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ VATS system in targeting limbs is largely pointless. The head or chest is the only really viable option. It's never incentivized to disable body parts like it is for example in Horizon Zero Dawn.\n+ There are many partially destroyed objects as part of the aesthetic, and they're unreliable in terms of peaking out to shoot an enemy. It's hard to tell if there's an invisible wall, which is especially punishing with the Gauss rifle where that one blocked shot forces several seconds of reload.\n+ Full of bugs, janky AI movement, lip syncing off, game crashing.\n+ No modern game elements like sprinting, waypoints on map, vehicles, grenade hotkey rather than as the primary weapon, quest indicator and minimap on the main HUD rather than constantly looking at the Pip Boy.\n+ Bad inventory management.\n+ The odd zooming-in and talking heads during dialogue like Oblivion.\n+ No native 21:9 support, but some config changes (http://www.wsgf.org/dr/fallout-3).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Fallout Fandom Wiki](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki)\n  + https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_3_quests\n  + https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Fallout_3_character_builds\n+ [Steam: setup/troubleshooting guide](https://steamcommunity.com/app/22370/discussions/0/828937546147175081)\n\nI played this as the [first entry into the series](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/8uu3ru/which_fallout_game_should_i_play_first/). All other contenders for\"best\" game in the series are sequels: as of 2019, Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4. I tried this out for an hour a long time ago in 2008. I never got into it like Danny and Dalton. Note I'm evaluating as if Fallout 3 were a completely new IP, and not evaluating based on predecessors' already existent innovations. For posterity, however, I hear that Fallout 3 took the series from its turn-based gameplay to RPG elements with first-person shooter (\"Oblivion with guns\").\n\nI played the Game of the Year edition on mouse and keyboard. This entry's evaluation does not includes the 5 add-ons (DLCs). I beat the base game and Operation: Anchorage with a total playtime according to the game save of 30 hours. After playing New Vegas I got a reappreciation of Fallout 3, so I decided to play all DLCs and the memorable quests.\n\n__Mods.__ I played with essential mods which only improve performance or fix bugs: Fallout Script Extender, Fallout Mod Manager, BOSS, 4GB RAM Patch, UPDATED Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch, CASM (autosaves), OneTweak (borderless).\n\nStarting the game up again after New Vegas, I added more mods (sorted roughly by importance and/or load order).\n\n+ UI: Immersive HUD (+Adjustable HUD).\n+ Gameplay: Sprint mod.\n+ Textures: NMC Texture Packs.\n+ Lighting/ENB: Fellout, Realistic Interior Lighting, Fallout Street Lights, Megaton Lighting Overhaul, Enhanced Camera, Dynavision.\n\n__Build.__ I played a stealth/sniper build, [the equivalent of Skyrim's stealth archer](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/3f1kxi/what_fallout_character_build_is_equivalent_to). My playstyle is snipe from afar, or otherwise rely on VATS to conserve ammo, including kiting when close distance. I followed an [old build](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/939933-fallout-3/46511507) and a [description for Near-Perfection builds which accounts for the Game of the Year Edition's changes like Broken Steel addon with Almost Perfect perk](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Fallout_3_character_builds), and which prioritizes Educated and Comprehension perks. With Broken Steel, there's a lot more room for error in topping all skills to 100, and getting all 10 SPECIAL stats by simply waiting until the Almost Perfect perk at level 30 and then getting each bobblehead (and if not, you can just use the console). For the SPECIAL starting allocation, I did 9 intelligence, then agi/miscellaneous, and got the Intelligence bottlehead straight from Vault 101.\n\nEarly game, I did Wasteland Survivor Guide, then Operation: Anchorage to get the Chiense stealth armor, Gauss rifle, and Jingwei's Shocksword as my main staples. I capped certain skills at 60 or 80 due to e.g. item boosts like Chinese Stealth Armor (+15 stealth) and Shady Hat (+5 stealth) as skills are capped at 100, and also to account for skill books.\n\nStealth ranged is typically the best in all Bethesda games because it bypasses Bethesda's persistent flaw of clunky combat (e.g., no dodge, no clear enemy AI on signalled moves, no melee moveset variety). You may as well try to avoid combat by stealthily killing folks from afar, taking advantage of kiting/cover, and conserving resources.\n\ntodo\n\n+ extended dialogue\n+ inventory","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallout-3"},{"id":"322682678651431500","title":"Fallout: New Vegas Dead Money","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":330,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Obsidian Entertainment"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2019-12-23","completedDate":"2019-12-23","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I love the aura. It's a nice DLC isolating it from the main game by trapping you in an endurance to find allies and then open Sierre Leone. New enemies, items, etc. Characters are memorable: Father Elijah; Dog/God. Starting from scatch makes you more aware of your limited ammo/arsenal and incentivizes you to explore. The traps make you take a more deliberate pacing. The story overall is engaging.\n\nI enjoy its difficulty and linear-but-with-corners-for-exploration design (as with, e.g., Souls and platformers). But it's unnecessarily frustrating at times, where even with savescumming, the radio/speaker bombs, traps, clouds, resurrectable enemies, holograms can all get on your nerves. The radio/speaker bombs were just the worst. I thought the survivalist approach is a breath of fresh air to Fallout, bringing it closer to the likes of horror shooters like Half-Life, Resident Evil, Dead Space. But it grows old even within its 5 hour playthrough.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallout-new-vegas-dead-money"},{"id":"322682678651430476","title":"Fallout: New Vegas Honest Hearts","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Obsidian Entertainment"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2019-12-24","completedDate":"2019-11-24","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Love the start: the idea that you can bring some but not much of your old equipment (including no previous companions), and that a group you just assemble immediately die. Joshua Graham is the most memorable. The overall story and the tribes and other characters felt largely forgettable though. Plays it almost too safe.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallout-new-vegas-honest-hearts"},{"id":"322682678651456076","title":"Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":270,"platforms":["Stadia","PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Ubisoft Montreal"],"publishers":["Ubisoft Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-08-13","completedDate":"2019-08-13","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"What a great and stylish \"DLC\". It's effectively a reskin with the same core gameplay. But the story and self-awareness keeps the 4 hours of playtime really fun. I love the cutscene graphics. The amount of cheesy lines is hilarious. I like the new enemies (e.g., blood dragon) and weapons (the turret, killstar).\n\nFlaw-wise, the in-game graphics feel a little dingey in overused lights. I can't stand them. There is also no crafting, so there's no point in having animals around the map. For what's more of a linear game, it would improve by not having an open world map altogether. Stealth is also worse in this game it seems as there are fewer enemy cues and the environments all look so alike it's hard to go vertical or stealth around. I played this game Rambo style, and it seems like this game especially encourages it (e.g., all the confrontation scenes, and also the last few missions where you just destroy shit). The last two missions which are purely linearly show the best of the game, not the open-world and stealth stuff.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/far-cry-3-blood-dragon"},{"id":"322682678652464716","title":"Final Fantasy IX","originalTitle":"ファイナルファンタジーIX","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":2340,"platforms":["Android","iOS"],"studios":["Guild Studio Inc.","Silicon Studio","Square Enix Business Division 3"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2018-09-26","completedDate":"2019-04-20","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I love how true Final Fantasy IX is to its comic-esque almost Pixar-ish feel (I only call it Pixar-ish because I can't find a better name for this polished, cute, universal appeal.) It really plays true to FF's roots of Moogles, Chocobos, and the larger fantasy narrative of a medieval setting, a princess and an old hag ruler, and a dashing pirate to steal her away. The Active Time Events are lovely vignettes as a device to peek into the other characters.\n\nIn terms of flaws, Final Fantasy IX fails most in becoming mired in melodrama, sticking almost too closely to a standard fanfre combat and leveling system, and with a forgettable soundtrack.\n\n__Story.__ I love that all the characters have a strong personality, even Zidane who even grabs Garnet's butt as they're climbing a ladder. And Zidane being protective of Vivi. The story can veer too wildly in comedy and melodrama unfortunately, but for the most part I enjoyed its archetypal plot.  I especially don't like that every character in Final Fantasy series must have some grand role in the overall story of cosmic proportions. Here, the reveal that Zidane too is a clone much like Vivi, and brother to Kuja is a classic example of B-rated melodrama. Winning through the power of friendship. Final boss of Necron and the additional cosmic proportions are even more unnecessary. I wish it ended at Disc 2.\n\n__Aesthetics/Music.__ Gorgeous backgrounds and color palette, an OST that resonates vibrance.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I like that each character has a designated role. It fits their archetype and plays well into the story. The AP gauge and abilities attached to weapons makes the process far more streamlined than, say, the convoluted Junction process of FF8 which requires leveling up to target specific stats, abilities and attachments via Guardian Force summons. Overall, FF9 plays it safe in terms of the turn-based combat.\n\n__Aesthetics/Sound.__ The comic-y character models suits the game well. The soundtrack was forgettable though.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ The mechanic of obtaining permanent Abilities and Magic via leveling them up via AP given certain equipment.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ There are many missable \"Key Items\" which don't serve any purpose aside from as an accomplishment trophy. I don't like that these exist, and also that they're missable.\n+ There are too many missable items overlal, whether it be sidequests requiring you to complete them in a precise order as you progress through the store, or Stealing from bosses. There's not nearly as many of these in other Final Fantasy games. For example, of 23 total according to a walkthrough, there is Tetra Master, Jump Rope, Mognet, Friendly Creatures, Ragtime Mouse, Frog Catching, Stilzkin Shopping, Stellazio. Some sidequests are incredibly convoluted and detract from the game's intended pacing, e.g., Nero Brothers. By the time I hit Disk 4, I just gave up and rushed to beat the game.\n+ I prefer FF8's Triple Triad card game over FF9's Tetra Master. There's more variety in card conditions and win types, and special A and S cards like all the playable characters. I also prefered the single-number mechanics in each direction, as opposed to 4 numbers including physical/magical defense and directions that the card attacks. There's probability in this game too which adds to the confusion.\n+ There's quite a bit of grinding to stay in level range of the enemies.\n+ Tents only restore half HP.\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\n+ Until Lindblum, I followed the guide https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/197338-final-fantasy-ix/faqs/36844. It was recommended from generally googling for a good resource. Then I followed the guide https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/197338-final-fantasy-ix/faqs/71891. It's the most up-to-date in GameFAQs, and it also has HTML so images and links!\n+ plot summary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMY_tpvGF-Y\n\nI played it on IOS. The iOS port is lauded compared to, e.g., FF7's: better controls, optional quality of life cheats such as frame-skip for faster grinding, cloud saves. The frame-skip, and the auto-battle button (which may be available in the original version too), makes grinding very easy: just wander around until a battle encounter, then have auto-attack just work for you. In general for versions, I would prefer the original in order to best appreciate it at its time (and only rarely go for the remastered if it's a strict quality improvement). However, this isn't always convenient.\n\nI lost my saved state when I played it on my iPad Air 2 but did not save it on the cloud when I moved to the new iPad Pro (2018). I had just finished Madain Sari near the end of Disc 2 and was onto Journey to the Iifa Tree. Instead of starting over, I changed to play on Steam which is the best version. The closest 100% game Steam game save I found is from https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/184962-final-fantasy-ix/74882812, which is level 1 and no Abilities. I played at 1920x1440 4:3 aspect ratio; with my 1440p monitor this benefited from playing with the walkthrough side-by-side. Following the new game save, I decided to just beat the game. I did not complete all sidequests, e.g., Chocograph, Friendly Creatures, Ragtime Mouse, Mountain Cracks. I did not 100% complete some sidequests: Stiltzkin.\n\nPlaying this, I realize so much why JRPGs require playing with a walkthrough. One aspect is finding every hidden chest/item (especially missable items and optional sidequests). Another aspect are the mechanics tips. For example, in FF9 you should not sell off all your old equipment—later, there will be a synthesis shop for creating special equipment from them. This differs from other JRPGs like Dragon Quest. Another example is a guide on what level you should be, and when you should grind vs not. That significantly determines the game's pacing. Another example is what to Steal from enemies, if at all.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/final-fantasy-ix--1"},{"id":"322682678652804684","title":"Final Fantasy VII Remake","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":1980,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Switch 2","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Square Enix Creative Business Unit I"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-06-17","completedDate":"2022-06-24","updatedDate":"2022-06-28","notes":"I admire FF7R's take on the original classic, with a great progression system based on materia and weapons upgrades, real-time combat, and with a longer story. The cinematics also serve the game well, not unlike like the audiovisuals in Advent Children, particularly due to an iconic soundtrack and smooth animations.\n\nFF7R's most significant flaw is that there's too much filler content, including unnecessary parts in the main story as well as forgettable sidequests that do little to build Midgar's culture or characters. It hampers any sense of urgency in the story. Second, the game is too linear with a large amount of restricted corridors, scripted slow movement speeds, and to the extent that it's even broken up into chapters. The real-time combat is mostly good, with a management of both real-time combat with abilities and party member ATB usage, but mechanics like guard and dodge are not that useful. \n\n__Story.__\nIt's a decent story albeit with too much padding, including not only the forgettable sidequests but also parts of the main story such as visiting Jessie's parents to get a bomb (with the introduction of a quickly forgotten Soldier antagonist) and going into the sewers with Leslie. At least it has the corniness that you expect of the Final Fantasy games. The plot is hard to take seriously when people easily just run off or you fight a boss and they suddenly just escape on helicopter.\n\nCharacters are generally quite memorable, including Cloud's angsty self. Tifa is the most bland of the party members with no distinctive personality trait or flaw, reacting like you'd expect from any nice idol-type character. The childhood background persona and most skimpy of the girls isn't enough. Aerith is the wild pixie girl, self-driven and teasing of Cloud. Barrett has his relationship with Marlene, an ecoterrorist mindset, and a brutish yet loving cliche. Jessie obviously stands out here. The few new characters like Chadley, Leslie, and Kyrie feel too obviously FF13-like design that I couldn't care less about them.\n\nThe game can't stop reminding you that Sephiroth is in the game. Please, leave all these unnecessary PTSD-like flashbacks alone.\n\n__Combat.__\nThe battle system is real-time but with pausing for selecting abilities, spells, or items, along with shortcuts to perform them in real-time. With the ATB system, you're encouraged to use normal attacks to boost your meter and due to low capacities, you want to use your ATB bars as much as possible for DPS. This includes managing your party members' ATB bars and with a stagger mechanic.\n\nTo start with the good, I really loved how the party members all play under different mechanics. This is thanks to the emphasis on Abilities for a lot of the combat.\n\n+ Tifa is easily the most complex in terms of mechanics due to her variety in fighting moves and chains in order to build up ATB and stack Chi levels.\n+ Cloud is second in terms of melee combat.\n+ Aerith is your magic user.\n+ Barrett is the most lacking, focusing on ranged attacks but doesn't have much aside from Overpower and Focused Shot. He's useful early game to shoot down ranged enemies but only when Aerith isn't in your party and you're trying to conserve MP.\n\nMicromanaging your party members' ATB bars for abilities can be inconvenient, but I do like the emphasis on switching party members. Default party member AI is just too bad that they do little than a basic attack and guarding. Pausing the game to use ATB also interrupts the pacing, an issue that has similarly plagued CRPGs with RTWP combat systems: the modern CRPGs following Divinity's style work significantly better in staying turn-based and being more tactical. For a real-time game with party members, the best implementation is FF12's gambit system so that you can automate your party members' abilities through if-else chains.\n\nThe dodging and blocking are also pretty much useless. This game isn't designed with enemy movesets or levels in mind to be a Soulslike. There are no i-frames on dodging, so you may as well just run to cover any distance. Timed attacks aren't really a thing so there's no advantage to blocking.\n\n__Other gameplay elements.__\nThe linear level design, side quests, and open town maps with NPCs that trigger conversation when you get nearby reminds me of Yakuza. The open town areas are much preferred over the linear areas, but unfortunately they're empty filled only with the occasional shop and forgettable sidequest. All areas also feel same-y.\n\nProgression includes gil, materia magic system, equipment, weapons which upgrade with SP, and with weapon proficiency for mastering unique weapon abilities. There's the main quest, side quests, and Chadley's Battle Report.\n\nImmersive HUD with only a compass or minimap taking up the UI. This is done quite well.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nThis music is so nostalgic. It clearly carries a lot of the game's atmosphere, even accounting for its various modern CGI jank. The first person perspectives to a lot of the camera cutscenes can feel cringey at times due to the girl fanservice, as it's usually reserved for Tifa or Aerith's mannerisms; but I liked it overall as a way to be slightly more immersed in the story (and thank god it's not _just_ for fanservice).\n+ All the various minigames. Like Yakuza, it helps keep the variety up as otherwise the core combat is not all that interesting standalone.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ While uncommon, Moogle Medals aren't missable collectibles. They're easy to farm.\n+ They kept minigames like squatting as well as the iconic Colosseum (and Shinra Battle Simulator) for arena-based gauntlets.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Unlike most JRPGs, there's nothing inherently missable in this game. You can always do Chapter Select, but it's tedious replaying a whole chapter to reobtain an item.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ All the scripted areas where you're forced to follow someone, walk at a glacial pace, or squeeze through narrow corridors. It even has the annoying out of bounds animation where instead of just closing an area off, you have to watch an animation where you turn around and walk back, and you don't know what the soft boundaries are until you trigger them.\n+ They butchered memorable scenes like the roof when you escape with Aerith in the church due to hamfisted platforming.\n+ No out-of-combat heal like in Dragon Quest 11 as a quality-of-life.\n+ Barrett and Tifa's final weapon are very easy to miss in Chapter 16. You have to get them again through Chapter Select after beating the game, fortunately not having to finish the chapter in order to keep the items.\n+ Among the worst designed bosses: Motor Ball. No heals. Lots of waiting. You can't even control your speed, motorcycle driving feels too artificial.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Steal guide](https://www.ign.com/wikis/final-fantasy-7-remake/Steal_Materia_Guide_-_Everything_You_Can_Steal). The only essential is Bladed Staff from Eligor in Ch. 11. The other non-item drops are armor and accessories that can purchased or found elsewhere, and none are useful to have multiple copies at endgame.\n+ [Post-Play Survey](https://na.finalfantasy.com/topics/207)\n\nI waited to play until its Steam release. I played the Intergrade version with Japanese voice. I went the [Madam M route for Chapter 9's side quests](https://game8.co/games/Final-Fantasy-VII-Remake/archives/286191) and got Aerith for Chapter 14's resolution. I didn't find the game interesting enough to replay on Hard mode. It makes for redundant content in a game already filled with redundant content, and there's little new in New Game Plus: more skill point manuscripts, new challenges in Shinra's Combat Simulator, and a secret boss Pride and Joy. At least you can even do the secret boss using Chapter Select without having to do all of hard mode, but I didn't bother as it requires playing Hard mode quite a bit to max all your materia's AP and accumulate weapon skill points.\n\nMateria I generally use, ordered by usefulness:\n\n+ 2x First Strike, for Tifa and Cloud\n+ 1x ATB Assist / Skill Master, for Tifa\n+ 2x ATB Stagger, for Tifa and Prayer caster\n+ 2x Steadfast Block, one for each passive party member for faster ATB generation\n+ 1x Healing / 1x (2-3x for endgame) Revival. Healing is later replaced with Prayer\n+ 1x Magnify / Barrier or Time\n+ 3x (6x for endgame) HP Up, one for each party member\n+ 2x MP Up, for Aerith\n+ 2x Magic Up, for Aerith\n+ 1x Fire / Ice / Lightning / Wind\n+ 2x Elemental, for use with elemental Materia\n+ 2x HP Absorb / MP Absorb, for use with elemental Materia\n+ 1x Chakra, for solo fights\n+ Early to mid game, I prioritize leveling up all 12 Green Materia and used Assess generously as they're necessary for Chadley's Battle Report.\n\nParty setup at endgame.\n\n1. __Tifa.__ Purple Pain, Cog Bangle, Champion Belt.\n\n    1x Wind / 1x HP Absorb, 1x Revival.\n\n    Passives: 1x Skill Master, 1x ATB Assist, 1x ATB Stagger, 1x First Strike, 2x HP up.\n\n    Tifa is my party leader. I really enjoy her combos and synergy with ATB materia. I start with stacking Unbridled Strength (L1+A) x2 for the passive damage bonus. I use Overpowered (L1+X) to build pressure. Then I use Focused Strike (L1+Y) until staggered, sometimes even using it to build ATB if there are multiple enemies I'll hit. Once staggered, I unload my ATB with True Strike (L1+B), then Rise and Fall-Omnistrike-Uppercut, then I unload my ATB again with True Strike. Chi Trap is situational, for stationary enemies like turrets and for magic damage. Late game, I only use Starshower for trash mobs as well as before Limit Breaks to boost their damage by 70%.\n2. __Cloud.__ Hardedge, Cog Bangle, Champion Belt.\n\n    1x Lightning / 1x HP Absorb, 1x Barrier / 1x Magnify, 1x Revival.\n\n    Passives: 1x ATB Stagger, 1x Steadfast Block, 2x HP up.\n\n    Physical DPS. I only switch to Cloud to spend ATB, typically Triple Splash for damage or Focused Thrust for stagger. I also use him to start any long battles with Barrier + Magnify.\n3. __Aerith.__ Reinforced Staff, Chain Bangle, Healing Carcanet.\n\n    1x Fire / 1x Elemental, 1x Ice / 1x Elemental, 1x Prayer.\n\n    Passives: 2x HP up, 2x Magic Up, 1x MP Up. Situational uses: 1x First Strike, 1x Steadfast Block, 1x MP Up.\n\n    Magic DPS. I only switch to Aerith to spend ATB using elemental materia or heal with Prayer.\n4. __Barrett.__ EKG Cannon, Cog Bangle, Healing Carcanet (he serves as my party healer when I can't use Aerith as my 3rd party member).\n\n    1x (Fire or Ice) / 1x Elemental, 1x Prayer.\n\n    Passives: 1x First Strike, 1x Steadfast Block, 1x HP up, 2x Magic Up, 1x MP Up.\n\n    Ranged physical DPS. I only switch to Barrett to spend ATB (particularly for DPS against flying enemies) or heal. His Overpower ability is clutch to quickly build ATB for Prayer.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/final-fantasy-vii-remake"},{"id":"335385905522016848","title":"Final Fantasy VII Remake: Episode INTERmission","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":320,"platforms":["PS5"],"studios":["Square Enix"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-06-24","completedDate":"2022-06-25","updatedDate":"2022-06-26","notes":"Yuffie as a playable character is among the most fun mechanics-wise. She has a nice variety:\n\n+ Ranged using Ninjutsu that can be turned elemental.\n+ Triangle -> Triangle lets you teleport to an enemy and air combo them, then hold X to dash away.\n+ Brumal Form is a more rewarding dodge and with greater distance coverage, spending ATB to gain more ATB back on successful dodges.\n+ Synergy mode with Sonon to build stagger.\n\nStory is inconsequential and while I enjoyed the character interactions, the writing for the plot was forgettable.\n\nThe Condor minigame is fun albeit somewhat random in your success rate. It depends on both enemy spawns, your turn list's spawns, and where your units move and what they target.\n\nThis is an entry only for the Intermission DLC. I didn't do Shinra Combat Simulator post-game, Hard mode, or fight the secret boss Weiss.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/final-fantasy-vii-remake-episode-intermission"},{"id":"322682678652575308","title":"Final Fantasy X","originalTitle":"ファイナルファンタジーX","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":2760,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["Square Product Development Division 1"],"publishers":["Square Electronic Arts","Square","Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I liked the story and characters. I thought the spirit stuff with Auron and Tidus was a little unwieldy though. I'm ambivalent about the Sphere Grid. Loved the sidegame as one of the best of the series (Blitz Ball). For the first time in the series, pre-rendered backgrounds are replaced with real-time visuals and characters are voiced. Battle system used the full cast instead of just a fixed 3 within each battle (e.g., use Wakka's ball to handle flying enemies as physical players will miss often). Status effects were particularly a big part of the game.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/final-fantasy-x"},{"id":"322682678651403852","title":"Final Fantasy XII","originalTitle":"ファイナルファンタジーXII","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2006,"playtimeMinutes":3660,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["Square Enix Product Development Division 4"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-04-10","completedDate":"2020-04-23","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Final Fantasy 12 excels in its worldbuilding, real-time battle system with Gambits, License Board customization, semi-open world design, and soundtrack. However, its story or characters don't stand out, and the largely autopilot combat can feel less engaging than the most fun part of the game which is building the characters. Like many Final Fantasy games, it tends to overstay its welcome particularly an overly bombastic, hugely scaled climax.\n\n__Story.__ Not a cosmic conflict of unviersal proportions? Yes please. The story is politically-stylized, playing out like a space opera like Star Wars. World-wise, I love that it builds on the same world as the Final Fantasy Tactics series, from job systems to roles/races like Judges, Viera, and Bangaa. The ensemble cast is decent but do not necessarily stand out in their roles or dynamic with the other characters. This includes the main villain of Vayne and the Empire who are largely forgettable. Vaan feels like (and was actually developed as) the titular Tidus, the young angsty teenager.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Final Fantasy XIII stands out in its active, 3-dimensional combat system. I love the ambition in going further beyond quasi-real-time (ATB) turn-based combat. It encourages a tank/healer/DPS setup with an aggro system. Additionally, the Gambit system allows the player to script condition-specific character actions. Battles are more about the preparation than actually fighting the enemy. I think this mode plays quite well with the game as you sort of go on autopilot for random encounters and instead focus on map navigation. It helped for speeding through the grindy parts of the game as I just navigated through areas on 4x speed: the combination of Gambit system and 4x speed works wonders. The Gambit system is especially good at automating away all the tedious status effect benefits: Decoy, Haste, Regen, Bubble, Protect, Shell; and for enemy status effects, Esuna, Dispel, and others Esuna doesn't heal.\n\nQuickening system as the approach to Limit Breaks / Trance / Overdrive. It uses a combo party system similar to Overdrive, where you need to keep track of each person's Mist Charge so you maximize Mist Charges. I found this approach forgettable.\n\nCharacter customization via the License Board system, with a choice of job to specialize each character (and later, a second job choice). Subject to a choice of class per character, it proceeds like a simplistic form of Final Fantasy X's Sphere Grid. It's one of Final Fantasy 12's strengths.\n\nI have mixed feelings about the Hunts, which provide a fun optional set of sidequest content in the game not unlike Monster Hunters (but much much more distilled). But the chain of events before the individual fights largely feel too formulaic. This includes the optional Espers.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ It's difficult to assess the graphics playing in 2020, and on a 2016 remake. With that said I'm impressed at the 3D models; it's decently playable and not as pixelated as, e.g., Oblivion, but it does suffer from blockiness, smoothing, and lack of detail such as facial expressions. I love that encounters don't spawn an additional loading screen, although the game does have quite a few for loading all the subareas/maps. Level designs feel especially barren. Soundtrack is excellent as usual for the Final Fantasy series.\n\nOther mechanics are standard: Technicks, Magick, bestiary, bosses, Cartographer's Guild. Unfortunately, the Technicks fell by the wayside as the physical characters do most DPS with autoattack.\n\nI miss the lack of a world map and actual piloting. For the first time in the series, it's hard to get a sense of geography.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Dying frustratingly to Trickster as I don't have Bio and can't figure out how to kill him when he goes immune and starts doing powerful AoE with comet.\n+ Zerging Zeromus.\n+ Doing Hunt after Hunt and getting incredibly bored.\n+ Spending most of my time maximizing my License Board considerations.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ The first Final Fantasy to not feature random encounters like Dragon Quest? Fuck yes.\n+ Zodiac Age includes LB button to turn on \"Speed Mode\" for 2x/4x for grinding/movement. Amazing quality of life element, particularly since these games are in the era without a sprint mechanic.\n+ You can sell items in bulk, and with the Y button to go down to 0 or the max; otherwise you have to hold the Up key.\n+ You can pause during cutscenes.\n+ 21:9 and borderless support (although you can't change many settings once you start the game).\n+ Like Dragon Quest, instead of just accumulating Gil, you typically get it by farming loot which you then vendor.\n+ Like most all FF games, party members must be in the active party in order to gain XP. This encourages using all of them as you swap in based on whoever has the lowest level. LP is gained equally which I like.\n+ The enemy chaining system provides a fun incentive for grinding.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Save system is both automated via checkpoints (whenever you enter a zone) and with manual save points.\n+ Multiple map interfaces: Select to take up the full screen; minimap; and L3 to turn on a Diablo-like map that overlays a larger portion of the HUD.\n+ You can't respec for the License Board.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Loot from common treasure chests and their location is random. This discourages exploration. On the other hand, this does mean there are much fewer missables as most items appear from the Bazaar system.\n+ You have to keep track of items you sell because the Bazaar resets on each new item unlock, so you can get locked out of powerful items if you don't sell in the right order.\n+ This game has way too many status effects to manage, especially mid to late game.\n+ Unlike any other positive status effect, decoy is missable.\n+ Giza Plains has a weather cycle that shifts between two maps each with their own gated content for rain and dry seasons.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ walkthrough | https://jegged.com/Games/Final-Fantasy-XII\n+ https://brightrockmedia.com/2020/02/02/ff12-job-combos-and-best-jobs-for-each-character\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasyXII/comments/6mdbi2/quick_guide_to_12job_party_optimization\n+ on the outdatedness of shikari/foebreaker | https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasyXII/comments/crgkex/shikarifoebreaker\n+ english and japanese voice comparison | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFTl-l3AIbo\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasyXII/comments/ayobpp/what_to_get_first_on_a_license_board/\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasyXII/comments/87qf7s/need_advise_in_quickenings_and_esper_allocation/\n+ should you sell all loot items? everything except teleport stones and great serpentskin | https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXII/comments/6mvman/are_most_of_the_loot_items_salable\n+ grimoire purchasing order (canopic jar included) | https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/191202-final-fantasy-xii-the-zodiac-age/75605961\n+ ally=any and foe=any | https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasyXII/comments/6nxjhk/allyany_gambit_is_a_smart_universal_gambit_thatll\n+ retrospective review, including development history | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG9Ta3-Rsfo\n+ skip quickening 2 for shikari | https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasyXII/comments/6m5yst/shikari_question/\n\nI played the high-definition remaster (The Zodiac Age) on PC, with a controller, and Japanese voice acting (FF12's English voice acting is argued among the best in the series, particularly suited for its western setting; but I still prefer catering to the creator's original direction and given that the setting is still a Japanese-fantasized western setting rather than a true western one). It seems the definitive port as it supports higher display resolutions 60 FPS, multiple soundtrack versions (e.g., \"Reorchestrated\" is the remake with higher sound quality; and \"OST\" is the official soundtrack with minor variations), and the International Zodiac Job System's expanded features.\n\nI played with Battle Mode as Wait and Battle Speed as its fastest setting. I deliberately tried to play without following along on a walkthrough as I have a tendency in JRPGs to follow line for line, and this ruins enjoyment because it plays like a manual to follow and can also spoil plot. Walkthroughs best serve as builds, tips and tricks, and a missables checklist. I especially tried to lean more towards missing things by not looking at a walkthrough until I really needed than, than leaning towards doing everything (which I fall into in all my JRPG playthroughs). For FF12, I still use it for sidequests and meta-building, but I deliberately avoid following the walkthrough for plot as one journeys through areas, knowing precise item locations, engaging with enemies, bosses, etc. As a hard-restriction I only examine these after I complete the area.\n\nMost builds are viable, particularly now with two jobs. Reading through guides, I chose: Vaan as Bushi/Monk (Masamune I + Genji Gloves user), Penelo as Black Mage/Monk, Balthier as Shikari/Time Battlemage (Yagyu Darkblade user), Fran as White Mage/Machinist, Basch as Knight/Bushi (Excalibur + White Robes user), and Ashe as Red Battlemage/Archer (Burning Bow + Ardor user). I chose Quickenings and Espers somewhat adhoc to get any extra slots. For Hunt Club, I went the route of Genji Gloves/Ribbon instead of Zodiac Spear/Zodiac Esutcheon (the latter has a respawnable 1% chest).\n\nThing I didn't complete as I found them unnecessary filler:\n\n+ Hunts: 31, 32, 40-45\n+ Espers: Chaos, Ultima, Zodiark\n+ Hunt Club\n+ Omega Mark XII\n+ Trial Mode\n+ Ann's Letter (no meaningful rewards)\n+ Fishing (too much effort for Wyrmhero Blade)\n+ Cockatrice Round-up (too much effort for Defender)\n+ other sidequests","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/final-fantasy-xii"},{"id":"322682678651469388","title":"Firewatch","originalTitle":"ファイアー ウォッチ ","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Campo Santo"],"publishers":["Panic"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-07-29","completedDate":"2019-07-29","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I like the backstory in the beginning. It sets the mood and characterization well. The dynamic between Henry and Delilah is excellent---good riffraff for 30-40 year olds. Henry sounds like Vince Vaughn. Mystery is a slow-burn. First it was the drama and romance that piqued my interest; and then the spookiness. The bush crackling as you go to Bushwood Creek gave me goosebumps the entire time I was navigating. It's a good length. Walking became rather fetch-quest-y the last hour or two. Somewhat anticlimactic ending.\n\nGame proceeds linearly and with mostly linear paths. The map gives the illusion that there are more paths to reach a destination and explore than there actually are. And I think that's an excellent design choice for a linear story. Supply caches and new items keeps the mechanics and exploration fresh.\n\nLove the aesthetic of soft colors and Colorado wilderness.\n\nI played it on MacOS. I played it blind on a flight. Looked up a walkthrough afterwards to see what I missed. Fortunately it's a very straightforward walking simulator with little deviations from the main path.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/firewatch"},{"id":"322682678650404428","title":"For the King","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Sierra On-Line"],"publishers":["Sierra On-Line","Imagineer","Activision"],"genres":["Puzzle","Strategy","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-08-28","completedDate":"2020-08-30","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Excellent core mechanics for a turn-based medieval roguelike, with high difficulty with every battle mattering, item and level progression, and decent worlds for navigation. I have mixed feelings about the timed turns, forcing you to micromanage every decision you make particularly at the higher difficulties.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Roguelike with replayability due to random level generation, several campaigns, and unlockable assets (classes, encounters, locations, items). I like the RPG elements building on Dungeons and Dragons, with classes, high RNG, damage types, status effects, and basic equipment management. Difficulty is also quite high, with Chaos and Scourge as excellent mechanics to make each turn be deliberate during navigation and the displayed turn order to make turns be deliberate during combat. Focus mechanic is excellent for resource management. Damage formulas are transparent with enemies displaying their physical and magic armor as well as status immunities.\n\nBecause the difficulty is so high, the game unfortunately focuses a little too much on micromanaging turns and the many consumables. There's an optimal path and the game often tunnel visions you into it with less build variety. For example: optimizing buying Godsbeard as they're limited to 3/shop and Tinder Pouches, not buying most equipment as it's easier to pick them up, almost always going for Reduce Chaos in sidequests.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I like the mesh-textured artwork. It ages well for an indie game.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The perilousness of combat. You can die easily. Items including equipped ones can be destroyed. Certain status effects like poison persist after battle. Items can be stolen.\n+ The occassionally hilarious way enemies topple over and die.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You can save scum in this game. This matters especially because a specific turn or RNG can screw you over, so you're compelled to reset. In my own philosophy, I'm only okay with save scumming if it's an action that I realized shortly after making it that I could have made an alternative/more optimal one. This doesn't change RNG, only that it allows me to play a little faster without having to be take too much time every turn because a game already takes very long.\n+ When you highlight an enemy in the world map, it's inconsistent when it's able to show you available hexes.\n+ Pushing further on the transparency of all mechanics, I wish the game made even more ones clearer. For example, at what distance can you pick up party at a boat?\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nWatched Sodapoppin play several games since around 8/22/20. Having seen at least a dozen of hours of gameplay, I strolled through Apprentice diffiulty on my first playthrough with not too many difficulties, learning certain mechanics that I didn't when watching (though I did save scum quite a bit when I didn't know mechanics like using Life to revive enemies without having to go to inn, which I had ample; the unlucky RNG can easily end a game or force you to exhaust enough resources that you're now at a big disadvantage playing catchup on Chaos for the rest of the game).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/king-s-quest-viii-the-mask-of-eternity"},{"id":"322682678650362444","title":"FTL: Faster Than Light","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":750,"platforms":["Linux","PC","iOS","Mac"],"studios":["Subset Games"],"publishers":["Subset Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Strategy","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-12-04","completedDate":"2020-12-05","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"__Gameplay.__ I like the board game-esque gameplay with turns, resource management, and upgradeable parts. The micromanagement is similar to a strategy game, which is not my personal taste, but I appreciate the engaging mechanics.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Typical indie pixel style.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Hotkeys 1-4 let you more easily attack specific enemy targets without using just mouse click. Ctrl also automates across the multiple charges.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ No borderless support. Borderless gaming does work.\n+ Fixed low resolution due to pixel art. Anything else is upscaling.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ftl-faster-than-light"},{"id":"322682678624187980","title":"Gears of War","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2006,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["X360"],"studios":["Epic Games"],"publishers":["Microsoft Game Studios"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2021-04-11","completedDate":"2021-04-17","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Gears of War plays like a \"What if Doom was a third-person shooter?\". As a third-person shooter, it innovates on responsive movement controls such as the cover mechanic that first-person shooters can't compete with; and an active reload mechanic that keeps staying in cover more dynamic. The campaign also plays well with enemy AI, with level designs encouraging strategic play with positioning. Like Halo and other console shooters, Gears of War is also great at different levels of play: solo, local coop, and coop with strangers.\n\nFlaw-wise, the game plays overall like a streamlined console shooter, never going much beyond its linear levels, fast-paced shooting, and serviceable story. It's fun to enjoy its mechanics and drop-in to play chapters online, but doesn't go much beyond that (c.f., Left 4 Dead 2). The weapon and enemy variety also isn't there nor is the friendly AI's pathing, where your coop companion often gets stuck or just runs into crossfire.\n\n__Story.__ Serviceable to give the linear level playthrough reason. Not stellar by any means. I do like the 4-person squad camradarie.\n\n__Gameplay.__ As a third-person shooter, Gears of War uniquely identifies the genre with its most inventive mechanic of cover, complemented by its dynamic and responsive movement controls (e.g., active reload, FOV-restricted sprint, weapons like the Hammer of Dawn). Other games have tried to emulate it, but do it poorly without the level design complementing strategic gameplay with ample cover areas, destructible cover, enemy AI that similarly take cover and/or try to flank you, and sprinting and dodging actions to rush to a new cover. As an action game, levels are linear, mission objectives are clearly marked, and there is plenty ammo. Enemy variety is decent. My main complaint is that heavy enemies are simple one-shots (revenators and rocket guys), without the forced change of player tactics like in Doom games.\n\nThe health system is regenerative which I'm less enthusiastic about. Weapon swapping is only twofold alongside grenades, which like Halo is due to console limitations; weapon variety is also lacking. I used the Lancer Rifle all game as all others were too situational and the two weapon slots didn't make sense to keep one for that purpose.\n\nControls are intuitive and responsive. Beyond the standard ones for shooting and movement, there's a single button for run (which restricts movement angles), cover, and dodge. An interact button for context-sensitive actions. The active reload mechanic is excellent. I like the \"aim toward objective\" to observe scripted content. HUD is also minimal to maximize immersion.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics are incredibly detailed and age well. The destroyed terrain is pretty. I prefer the original's darker lighting and slightly more grungy details. The Ultimate Edition is a little too colorful and with more cartoony character models.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The path choices. Especially with the coop system and Insane difficulty, this makes for ample replayability.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ You can change the launch settings to enable 60 FPS cutscenes. But it's buggy, once in a while making you unable to move in the game. I found this inconsistency in effectively having to relaunch the game was too big to ignore for 30 extra FPS.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ On keyboard and mouse, you can't separately change your look vs aim sensitivity, the default has aim lower than look, and the overall sensitivity has a slider that's hard to be precise. You can only change these separately on controller.\n+ All the ammo crates for refilling is too video game-y, looking out of place.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played the Ultimate Edition (2015) remake on PC. It has better controls and supports modern resolutions, although sacrifices the gritty visuals of the original. I played on Hardcore difficulty. I played on keyboard and mouse, and to get my preferred aim sensitivity, I had to use in-game of near lowest on slider at 800 DPI.\n\nUltimately, both input methods of keyboard and mouse vs controller are compromises in third-person shooters. Controllers have more flexible diagonal movement and button placement. All the non-aim actions are just more intuitive with a controller as most third-person shooters (Gears included) was designed for console. However, mouses have more precise aim and camera control. I often can't settle on one universal choice for third-person shooters (c.f., my entries on Dead Space and Resident Evil games).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gears-of-war"},{"id":"030d2628-334d-41d0-a894-74c1beb967da","title":"Ghost of Yotei","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":2850,"platforms":["PS5"],"studios":["Sucker Punch Productions"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"startedDate":"2026-07-24","completedDate":"2026-08-08","updatedDate":"2026-08-09","notes":"Plays too much by the books as Ghost of Tsushima. Incremental with few novel changes. Due to the staler gameplay and also average story, it plays as a good but forgettable RPG. Overall it feels less cinematic than Ghost of Tsushima, likely attributed to its poor Lethal difficulty balance, more game-y nature like multiple weapons, and lack of novelty.\n\n__Writing.__\nServicable, slightly worse possibly than even Ghost of Tsushima's. It gets especially tiresome as the story drags on.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n+ From weapon stances to new weapons including dual katana, yari, odachi, kusarigama. And more ranged options.\n+ Onryo's howl.\n+ Painting instead of haikus.\n+ Throw fallen enemies’ weapons.\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Fast travel loading screens are almost instantaneous.\n+ Zen Hajiki.\n+ Featuring Ainu in the story.\n+ Like Ghost of Tsushima, a golden bird guides you exactly in the traversal path (vertically, through crevices, etc.) to a nearby location you have not yet discovered. Every open world game needs this.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ They ruined Ghost of Tsushima’s Lethal difficulty: https://www.reddit.com/r/ghostoftsushima/comments/1nz8ikg/yoteis_lethal_difficulty_feels_worse_because_atsu. Now it’s just an extra hard mode.\n+ Throwing weapons is a bit too OP. Can instant kill an enemy with really fast animations.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on Custom difficulty where everything is Lethal except Hard on Enemy Damage. I more or less beat the game, stopped 3-4 missions beforehand after capturing the Spider.\n\n__Build.__\n\n+ Armor: Undying (general), Bounty Master (duels), Crimson Kimono (stealth)\n+ Charms: Futsunushi, Mount Yotei, Father, Charm of Thoughtful Restoration, Charm of Last Chance, Takezo's Charm of Bold Deflection","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ghost-of-yotei"},{"id":"322682678650382924","title":"Ghostrunner","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":390,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Slipgate Ironworks","3D Realms","One More Level"],"publishers":["505 Games","All In! Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-10-28","completedDate":"2020-10-30","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Ghostrunner is a fast-paced melee FPS with solid controls, enemy design, and platforming variety. The trial and error approach feels a lot like Super Meat Boy and Hotline Miami with forgiving checkpoints and ease of failure. Once you do get the rhythm though, the game is a joy to play.\n\n__Story.__ Story follows the typical cyberpunk theme of rich feeding off the poor. Forgettable.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Ghostrunner stands out in polished movement building on games like Mirror's Edge and with lethal combat like that of Dishonored. The core mechanic of dash with a slow-down to dodge projectiles is so awesome. It has a forgiving checkpoint system, encouraging high-velocity gameplay with split-second decisions. There are plenty of mechanics in platforming that keep it engaging throughout its campaign. The hacking level designs are pretty fun: they remind me of MGS VR, where there are a variety of scenarios each designed with an interesting mechanic. Upgrade system is limited; I only used Tempest and there isn't much diversity or encouragement to use skills.\n\nEnemies are designed well, each fitting a specific chess piece in encouraging how you play. Platforming also has enough obstacle variety. Weirdly, some enemies have inconsistent behaviors likely caused by them respawning with a different orientation; so shield guys may not actually turn on their shield for example. Boss fights are diverse and quite fun. Fuck the platforming of T-073-M though: I spent maybe 200 deaths on that.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Soundtrack isn't all that memorable but it beats well with the core gameplay adding to the DOOM-like feeling. Cyberpunk setting has a pretty standard minimalistically clean industrial look not unlike modern AAA titles like Titanfall 2.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nMotivated to play for its bullet chess-like aggressive combat (maybe like Doom Eternal), sword FPS like Dishonored, and agile Mirror's Edge-like 3D platforming.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ghostrunner"},{"id":"322682678652451404","title":"God of War","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":1230,"platforms":["PS4","PC","PS5"],"studios":["SIE Santa Monica Studio"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-06-20","completedDate":"2019-06-29","updatedDate":"2022-11-06","notes":"God of War (2018) stands out in its ambition in overhauling the series with its unique twists. It's a cinematic experience, a more gripping story with its father-and-son tale similar to Last of Us that adds depth but also remains a little too soppy and American. It's an over-the-top thrill ride in carnage and bombastic music. The innovative combat with the Leviathan Axe and Blades is closer to Dark Souls in dodging, parrying, and weak/strong attacks than its predecessors, but also combines elements such as Runic attack cooldowns. Finally, the world is a metroidvania.\n\n__Story.__ Decent story. That actually involves character depth, drama, and good supporting characters. Atreus' soppy moralism can get on my nerves at times, and he feels almost American in his culture which perturbs me.\n\n__Combat.__ God of War stands out in its third-person over-the-shoulder combat system paired with a bow-and-arrow companion. It's Dark Souls lite, but it also adds its own unique flavors from God of War. In particular, Runic attacks make combat more cooldown-intensive via light and heavy Runic attacks, Talisman, and Atreus' summon. There is a more complex moveset overall. Fights include a companion and involves juggling multiple enemies. Throwing Kratos' axe is also excellent. The different moveset complexity with AoE, single-target melee, and ranged offer variety to approaching enemies. I also like God of War's stun bar and immediate death action, similar to Sekiro. Climbing walls feels very intuitive and fun, similar to Sekiro.\n\nViewpoint is third-person over-the-shoulders, and I hate this limited FOV. I think the novel attempt is nice, but the ability to see behind you limits 360 degree combat and the HUD and controls has to fight against this limitation.\n\nBosses are servicable but not really great in God of War. Enemy variety is similarly a little stale. What's most disappointing is the tendency to reuse boss designs and what would seem like otherwise unique animations (e.g., the death kill scene against giants when Kratos would jump on top of the giant's head, grab his stone weapon, and drop it onto of the giant).\n\nThe world is designed as a metroidvania. Level designs feel a little too streamlined, similar to Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice in having beautiful forestry environments but invisible boundaries, some forced puzzle-solving, etc. Sometimes it's a walking simulator. With that said, there's an excellent mix of backtracking in travel for the main story/side quests and teleportation. Individual levels offer enough sidetreks to incentivize exploring to get artifacts, loots, etc.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I really like the graphics. CGI is done well. Terrain, lighting, environments add to the cinematic experience. I would go through the various terrains and gawk at its beauty. The sound is servicable.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Doing the Queen Valkyrie for hours. Then I slept on it. Did it second try the morning of.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ No missables. Anything you miss can be gone back to get like Odin's Ravens. Even chests with materials that you miss you can be purchased over later as no materials except the final armor pieces are finite.\n+ Minimal HUD.\n+ Very smooth transitions, often blurring the distinction between cutscenes and gameplay.\n+ When deciding between taking one of two routes, the main mission compass almost always tells you the right direction. This lets you explore the offpath to find loot.\n+ All the little cues that signal that something is interactive or special, e.g., the yellow signs pointing to areas you can climb, the blue things you hit, the white dots to things you can interact with.\n+ Your level is a function of your gear rather than an additional system of XP.\n+ No multiplayer.\n+ Difficulty and uniqueness of each valkyrie battle. I found myself fighting 5-10 tries, sometimes even more. Felt very Dark Souls esque in that I only fail because of my failings, and as I learn their moveset I can eventually play to their rhythm.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Collectibles. Even items you forget to loot that are important can be found in the Lost Items tab when talking to the merchant.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Target lock system is extremely wonky, particularly with the multiple enemy fights and third-person view where enemies can quickly escape your camera. The pseudo lock system in automatically moving your character to the nearest enemy is at least intuitive.\n+ Streamlined upgrade and crafting system (similar to, e.g., Spiderman). It makes the game feel more video-gamey and artificial.\n+ Metroidvania backtracking with new powers to unlock new paths and items.\n+ Procedurally generated dungeon-grinding in Niflheim for the best gear (Izaldi, on par with Valkyrie). That said, fortunately grinding is easy in that there are no loading screens per reload.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/god-of-war-2018\n+ gear progression | https://www.reddit.com/r/GodofWar/comments/8zmy6j/best_armour_at_different_stages_of_the_game/\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/GodofWar/comments/8xy90q/best_atreus_summon/\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/GodofWar/comments/9etf45/best_runic_attacks/\n\n I chose the \"Balanced\" difficulty. I switched to \"Give me a Challenge\" when entering Helheim and switched back whenever it was too hard (for most of the game, I did not craft any items and upgraded only weapons and spent Hacksilver for specific skills). To best appreciate the game, I played without a walkthrough (with exceptions to solve any puzzles I would be stuck on for too long). I love games that allow this vanilla style of playing without losing out on anything. I did not complete side quests (Favors) until I got the Winds of Helheim power because by then I'll have everything needed to access all the goodies around the place and not have to revisit areas again (with certain exceptions). I also completed them before finishing the main story in order to force myself to play them and not just quit once I beat the main game.\n\ntodos\n\n+ map completion | including nifhleim realm tears, max health and rage","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/god-of-war--1"},{"id":"322682678652579404","title":"Golden Sun","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":1920,"platforms":["GBA","WiiU"],"studios":["Camelot"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/golden-sun-the-lost-age"},{"id":"322682678652809804","title":"Grand Theft Auto IV","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2008,"playtimeMinutes":1650,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Rockstar North"],"publishers":["Take-Two Interactive","Rockstar Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Racing","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2023-07-07","completedDate":"2023-07-14","updatedDate":"2023-07-15","notes":"GTA 4 is the underrated title in the series, criticized for being “too serious” as it removed arcade elements in past titles. I greatly prefer these changes such as a smaller and denser open world, more realistic driving, and combat improvements. GTA 4 also features quality of life improvements that make GTA 4 a pleasant experience in 2023 (c.f., San Andreas). And its story is the best it’s ever been.\n\nFlaw-wise:\n\n+ Some streamlining goes too far such as the limited weapon variety, fewer customization options, and fewer minigames.\n+ Like San Andreas, the gameplay is a bit repetitive roughly 2/3 into the game. There's not much else.\n\n__Story.__\nIt's a unique character backstory from GTA, straying from Americans to an immigrant in order to understand the American dream. The story is a bit more serious with Niko's background of coming from a brutal war cutting off heads of children and Niko and Roman trying to establish themselves from little to nothing.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nGTA 4 continues the trend of all GTA titles with an open world sandbox with various activities and a linear sequence of missions that keep you in for the story and otherwise offer rather formulaic gameplay (drive here or shoot this guy).\n\nMultiple streamlined elements from San Andreas:\n\n+ GTA 4 is significantly denser from San Andreas’ 33 sq km to 16 sq km. This is a much better pace for rides and addresses one of the larger problems with San Andreas, which is its large but empty open world.\n+ Streamlined variety in weapons (16 instead of San Andreas' 38), which is much tighter and where they're all actually used at some point. However, there’s no longer choice outside the weapon type. Weapons within a type are strict upgrades.\n+ No RPG stats.\n+ No properties to purchase.\n+ Fewer specific time windows to enter missions.\n+ Less customization: no vehicle customization, tattoos, or haircuts. There's also only 3 clothing stores.\n+ Fewer minigames.\n\nOther gameplay changes:\n\n+ [Player choices](https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Player_Choices_in_GTA_IV) with some gameplay effects.\n+ Mobile phone.\n+ [Friendship](https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Friendships_in_GTA_IV), which has gameplay bonuses. You can call to hang out with your friends, and they call you on occasion. I like this as a slice of life and where you don't have to be pressured to do everything; events can come to you. This is unfortunately removed in GTA 5 as fans viewed it as constant pestering. I view it as making the game feel more alive.\n+ Vehicle maneuvering is more realistic, a departure from the previous titles' arcade nature where you can drive at 100 mph and take sharp corners.\n+ Physics engine called [Euphoria](https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Euphoria_Physics) which provides dynamic effects that haven't done before in GTA, and [not available in even GTA 5](https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA/comments/ucmwnt/why_did_r_ditch_their_physics_engine_in_gta_v).\n+ You can pick up and throw objects. Treated more like a gimmicky minigame in certain missions than used very much.\n+ Cars get dirty, so there's a car wash.\n+ New unique dialogue when triggering each mission. This helps for replayability from failing a mission. It's a pattern to be repeated in Rockstar games since (Red Dead Redemption, GTA 5).\n\nCombat:\n\n+ Melee combat is more involved with a lock-on followed by punch, alternative punch, kick, block, and parry/riposte.\n+ Cover system for shooting. No lock-on autoaim system (like San Andreas' PC port but now for all ports).\n+ Exiting crime is more tactical and no longer is just about driving as fast as possible away from the scene. Namely, you need to exit a radius and escape nearby cops. Sometimes they even spawn in front of you, so you need to take turns or hide.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nGraphics are significantly improved from San Andreas. It's clear in the shift from PS2's blocky pixelations to PS3's significantly higher polygon count, character model facial movement, and lighting/shadows. For 2008, the graphics are solid, comparable to Uncharted 2 (2009) and Bioshock (2010) and better than Fallout 3 (2008), Dragon Age 2 (2009), Dead Space (2011).\n\nGTA 4's New York City is one of the most accurate and spiritually correct renditions I've seen. Amazing Spider-Man's is technically more accurate but you're very rarely on the ground so the perspective is not the same. Traveling to specific sites, I feel just at home. I got goosebumps seeing the corner for 120th and Broadway since I traveled there every day in graduate school.\n\nOther perks of the improved graphics:\n\n+ Stores are seamlessly in the world. No more massive loading screens for both entering and exiting like San Andreas.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Waypoints have path finding, new to GTA series. It even works well lore-wise as a GPS, unlike waypoint paths in most RPGs.\n+ Fast travel is much improved. Instead of just a subway/train system for intra-city travel, GTA 4 has taxis to speed up travel to waypoints, including Roman's taxi service to summon a taxi.\n+ New quality of life controls:\n  + 1-8 number keys to switch to a weapon type. Way better than the scroll wheel.\n  + R to reload.\n  + X to turn the radio on/off. Beats having to scroll to get to \"Radio Off\" as a radio station option.\n  + T to zoom out of the radar minimap. This helps to get a better orientation of your path without having to exit to the full map screen, which breaks gameplay immersion.\n  + E to hail a cab if you spot one.\n  + C to look behind such as in your car.\n  + H to turn on high beam headlights.\n+ All the subtlties that the physics engine adds:\n  + You can hear your radio station still after exiting your car. Makes enter/exiting with music less abrupt.\n  + Destructible cover.\n  + More finegrained vehicle damage such as a broken headlight or losing a tire which affects your steering.\n  + Water physics such as the waves affecting your driving is surprisingly good.\n+ There's a lull in missions. They don't immediately appear after you complete the previous mission. You either wait or call the appropriate person. I like this as it feels less like a sequence of chores.\n+ Garage repairs car if you exit the area or reload the game. This is a nice quality of life given that the only other way to repair the car is pay and sprays, which are sparse and also change the color.\n+ Like other GTA titles, you can do a trick of reloading the game from your autosave. This effectively teleports you back to your safehouse.\n+ Water missions are fun. Controls are good and physics is fun to interact with.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ You no longer lose your weapons after wiping out and recovering at the hospital.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Mission starting points, new to GTA series. There's little to no actual checkpoints in the middle of a mission though, which sucks. Compared to San Andreas, at least they let you restart missions instead of having to drive all the way there again.\n+ Like San Andreas and all previous titles, there is [no way to permanently save a vehicle in GTA 4](https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA/comments/193aom/you_can_save_cars_in_gta_iv). You can store cars in the garage, but once you take it out, it can despawn during missions (not reliably added to the impound lot), and it can be destroyed or lost. It's a hassle to use your [personal vehicle to get to places for missions, which is effectively all of the game outside side activities like friendships and its sandbox](https://gtaforums.com/topic/975496-grand-theft-auto-iv-personal-vehicle-system).\n+ [Some things are missable: Dwayne as a friend, random encounters, and Roman's taxi missions.](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/933037-grand-theft-auto-iv/75406710) With that said, none are significant.\n+ No way to pause cutscene. Fortunately, alt tab can do this to an extent, although you have to be careful clicking back into the game or else you trigger skipping the cutscene.\n+ Maintaining friendship levels can be a pain, like stat decay in San Andreas. Specifically, the occasional calls from your friends can interrupt your goal, and if you reject them, their Like meter goes down. Fortunately, there's a [workaround](https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Friendships_in_GTA_IV#Criticism): accept and then cancel the plan. However, friendship can still decay if you don't talk to them often (e.g., the text messages).\n+ Flying missions are still a pain. Though at least there's significantly fewer and they're less frustrating than in San Andreas.\n+ You can't enter/exit cars or hail a cab while all on your phone, or it will end when you perform the activity. Would slightly improve immersion if this were possible. Can also be annoying when you accidentally do it and interrupt the phone call.\n+ The car you're driving [spawns significantly more frequently](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/321866/why-does-the-car-im-currently-driving-spawn-a-lot-more). This makes your rare supercar or sports car feel less special.\n+ Like San Andreas, it's not always clear in missions when you need to kill the person in the car before they escape or chase the car until a scripted event when you can now kill them.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [GTA Wiki](https://gta.fandom.com)\n  + [Missions](https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Missions_in_GTA_IV)\n  + [Cheats](https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Cheats_in_GTA_IV). Particularly helps in spawning regular supercars for usage as they can often despawn and are unreliable for use in missions.\n  + [Girlfriends](https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Girlfriends_in_GTA_IV) for identifying best activities\n  + [Friendship](https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Friendships_in_GTA_IV) for identifying best activities\n+ [Interactive map](https://mapgenie.io/grand-theft-auto-4)\n+ [r/gta](https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA)\n+ [r/gtaiv](https://www.reddit.com/r/GTAIV)\n\n__Version.__ I played the Complete Edition on Steam, which is the base game with the two expansion DLCs. This entry includes only the base game; there are separate entries for the DLCs. I used mods that I deemed as truly essential in order to be minimalist in setup overhead and maintenance (see also [Reddit guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/GTAIV/comments/10m6q27/setting_up_gtaiv_in_2023_figuring_out_some_basic), [Steam guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2438808634)):\n\n+ FusionFix ([source](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV#FusionFix)). Fixes shaders which are broken on Complete Edition ([example in 2023](https://www.reddit.com/r/GTAIV/comments/nanhal/why_you_must_install_fusionfix_on_pc_version)), fixes other gameplay and visual issues, skips intro startup and menu, and adds borderless fullscreen. After installation, [add `-windowed` for borderless to work properly](https://github.com/ThirteenAG/GTAIV.EFLC.FusionFix/issues/63). There's also a frame limiter, but playing in 2023, I was able to achieve a consistent 60 FPS (it went above and below; I didn't use any limiter).\n+ Radio downgrader ([source](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV#Restore_removed_music)). Restores 50 radio station tracks that were removed from the game in April 2018 due to expired licenses.\n+ I did not downgrade the game version itself. This is necessary for many mods such as ZolikaPatch and Various Fixes by Attramet which provide bug fixes in the spirit of San Andreas' SilentPatch.\n+ Some remaining issues:\n  + Mouse sensitivity is very high, even with it set to 0 in the in-game menu. There's nothing you can do about it except lower the mouse DPI (which unfortunately also affects menu navigation and outside the game).\n  + If you alt-tab and pause during the middle of a cutscene for too long, the game crashes.\n\n__Controls.__ I played with keyboard and mouse.\n\n__Setup.__\n\n+ Weapons: Weapons within each type are strict upgrades, so there’s not much choice required. In terms of combat, I usually use the SMG or Assault Rifle.\n+ Vehicles: Most supercars are good enough and I chose mostly for cosmetics and a slight difference in handling. Banshee is my favorite, and cars like Super GT and Turismo are also up there.\n+ Clothes: Chosen for cosmetics.\n\nI like Roman, so I played the Revenge ending.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/grand-theft-auto-iv"},{"id":"322682678652748364","title":"Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":1860,"platforms":["XBOX","PS3","PS4","Win Phone","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","X360","PS2"],"studios":["Rockstar North"],"publishers":["Take-Two Interactive","Rockstar Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Racing","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-11-28","completedDate":"2023-07-07","updatedDate":"2023-07-08","notes":"Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (San Andreas for short) most excels in its story and characters. It has an iconic cast, dialogue, and characters. The open world in areas like Los Santos is also a blast.\n\nFlaw-wise:\n\n+ There are missing quality-of-life features that make the game not age well: game setup (e.g., resolution, widescreen), lack of mission checkpoints, some highly imbalanced missions with a difficulty spike, no fast travel with large empty maps, sparse safehouse (save) locations, and no pausing during cutscenes.\n+ The world is too large and empty, and many missions are bloated with long drives from points A to B. San Andreas features 33 square kilometers (c.f., GTA Vice City's 9 sq km, GTA 4's 16 sq km).\n+ There's limited variety after 15-20 hours, where the game overstays its welcome. The game both story and gameplay-wise runs a bit stale in your 3rd city (Las Venturas). And there's roughly 10 more hours until the game completes.\n+ Writing-wise, there is little character development after the gimmick of each character's personality. It's surely an improvement from GTA3 and GTA Vice City, which felt significantly more arcade-y in its story effectively as an extension of Crazy Taxi. But San Andreas doesn't hold up to the greatest writing in video games like Last of Us Part 2, Disco Elysium, KOTOR 2, Fallout: New Vegas, and Witcher 3.\n\n__Story and missions.__ Characters are substantiated well and grounded. Dialogue feels real.\n\nMany missions, and the writing keeps it together. Gameplay is also quite varied with all the various minigame-like activities alongside the core ones of shooting and driving.\n\nDifficulty can be a bit much. There's no checkpoints during missions, and the death penalty is harsh: you lose all your items and a bit of money.\n\n__Level design and navigation.__ The world is a sandbox with NPCs, driving, different locations, events like cops. I also love the controls from moving around with sprint/super sprint/crouch/jump to vehicle controls. There's significant fun just in moving from point A to point B in the linear missions.\n\nThe overall sandbox is bloated and filled with empty locations, especially in the countryside and desert are inbetween the cities. But the city still feels real in its design and NPCs, especially Los Santos and San Fierro.\n\nThere are some famously bad missions:\n\n+ \"Learning to Fly\". Most frustrating mission. After half an hour to an hour of attempts on Circle and Circle and Land, I gave up and just downloaded a GTA save after this mission. I also gave up on \"Driving School\", but fortunately it's optional. And fuck \"Freefall\".\n+ \"Wrong Side Of The Tracks\". Fortunately, I only failed once. It's unintuitive but being on the farthest side of the train tracks for line-of-sight is the key.\n+ \"Supply Lines...\". This took me at least half an hour to master the flying mechanic. Boy is that a learning curve.\n+ \"New Model Army\" is quite frustrating, although it's bearable once you learn the [\"first destroy all tanks\" strategy](https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA/comments/ryzj1u/learning_to_fly_or_new_model_army_which_is).\n+ \"End of the Line\". Way too long of a mission (30 minutes), where failure means restarting from scratch. The prerequisite of taking over all gang areas is also rather tedious.\n\n__Other gameplay elements.__ \nThe game has RPG elements. [Stats](https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Statistics#GTA_San_Andreas_HUD_Statistics) that you train. And you accumulate weapons, cars, and clothes. The game also forces you to eat with a hunger mechanic, which influences your stats. These all have a rather minor effect on gameplay, but they're quite nice for both roleplay and back in 2004 when strategy was not clear and so people enjoyed doing things anyways even if suboptimal.\n\nCombat has your usual movement, aiming, selection of weapons. There's no cover system or detailed health (no way to heal). There's a large weapon variety with 38 and multiple types. With that said, only the SMG and Rifle are all that useful, and items like Sniper Rifle and Rocket Launcher only situationally used when required for missions. For non-autoaim, you just aim for the head and get a single shot to kill immediately.\n\nOther mechanics:\n\n+ [Gang warfare](https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Gang_Warfare_in_GTA_San_Andreas)\n+ [Girlfriends](https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Girlfriends_in_GTA_San_Andreas)\n+ You can purchase properties, which provide new safehouse locations as well as passive money over time.\n+ Varied minigame-like activities: burglary, drive-by shooting, races, lowrider, eating and working out, basketball, pool, video game machines, schools, valet, drive a police car for vigilante missions and use your siren to stop cars.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Hard to evaluate the graphics at this time. The voice acting, gesticulations, soundtrack, and general atmosphere do make it feel hip It's surprisingly well-animated.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The radio while driving. It adds so much vibe to the game while navigating the open world. It's something typical mounts like horses in Red Dead Redemption or mounts in World of Warcraft don't have.\n+ Headshot damage works. Popping heads is a blast in this game.\n+ Bike controls are top notch: simple and intuitive yet almost as detailed as even bike trick video games: accelerate/accelerate faster/decelerate, lean on front vs back pedal, slow down/make skid marks as you steer, bunnyhop and even harder.\n+ Quest waypoint use a triangle which points down or up to point out the verticality. Holy shit, that's revolutionary for such an early game! All games should account for something like this.\n+ Nothing is really missable such as missions or key items. That's rare for an open world/RPG-style game.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Gameplay mechanics do incentivize violence and law-breaking to an awkward degree: it's easier to drive like a madman than follow lights and park properly; most animations are centered around guns and killing people.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ There are no checkpoints within a mission. If you fail a mission, and I often do as I try to figure out the new minigame controls, you have to start from scratch and spend time to get back to the starting location. This is only partially fixed with SaveAnywhere, as you still can't save within a mission.\n+ Flying mechanic is horrendous. Every mission with it is unbearable.\n+ Can't pause during cutscenes. If you hit a button in the game you also skip the cutscene. And if you alt-tab during a cutscene, it's skipped when you return to the game.\n+ Certain cutscenes are unskippable. This is particularly annoying when you have to replay a mission.\n+ Vehicles can be saved in the garage, but are unsaved once taken out. This makes using your own vehicles a hassle during story missions, as the end location may differ from the starting location, and in certain missions the vehicle even despawns or is left somewhere.\n+ The world has a realistic level of verticality. Unfortunately, it makes map navigation confusing at times as the map itself doesn't indicate levels.\n+ There's no real way to reload. Either finish dumping your magazine or switch the weapon and switch back.\n+ Issues fixed with mods\n  + Too much tedious travel across maps, especially in Countryside missions. There needs to be more available fast travel or areas should be denser. (fixed with Cheat Menu's teleport to marker)\n  + Native aspect ratio support is 4:3 (16:9 gets stretched). No borderless. (fixed with WidescreenFix and Windowed Mode)\n  + Can't easily skip time, which is often a requirement for missions. You have to go to your safehouse to save game in order to skip 6 hours. (fixed with Cheat Menu)\n  + Controls in tutorials show JOYX instead of the natural Xbox One controller icons. This means I have to refer to an [external guide to know controller controls or otherwise use keyboard and mouse](https://www.grandtheftwiki.com/Controls_for_GTA_San_Andreas). (fixed with GInput) [Even mouse has issues whener you alt-tab back into the game](https://steamcommunity.com/app/12120/discussions/0/846960628210850291). (fixed with SilentPatch)\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [GTA Wiki](https://gta.fandom.com)\n  + [Missions](https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Missions_in_GTA_San_Andreas)\n+ [Interactive map](https://mapgenie.io/grand-theft-auto-san-andreas/maps/san-andreas)\n+ [Save data after each mission](https://www.gta.cz/eng/san-andreas/article/saves-into-san-andreas)\n\n__Version.__ The original Steam release is better than the Definitive Edition release which is a bad remake. Furthermore, the Steam version 1.0 is best as it supports mods. The Definitive Edition has certain [quality-of-life changes](https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA/comments/v2iqse/should_i_buy_the_original_games_or_the_definitive) such as 60 FPS, checkpoints during missions, and improved controls. However, its graphic improvements often change the style toward a generic Unreal Engine mobile look, there any many visual bugs, and gameplay balance is quite different as well (e.g., [NPCs have better aim and Zero missions are easier](https://www.reddit.com/r/GTATrilogy/comments/sm2f0x/has_gta_sa_really_been_made_more_difficult)).\n\n__Mods.__ I played with mods on the [1.0 release](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanandreas/wiki/versions), which is the most mod-compatible.\n\n+ Backend\n  + SA Downgrader ([1](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2921234295), [2](https://gtaforums.com/topic/927016-san-andreas-downgrader)). RockstarNexus, which the program uses to install additional mods during downgrading, is offline. Therefore I installed mods separate from the downgrading.\n  + [SilentPatch](https://cookieplmonster.github.io/mods/gta-sa/#silentpatch). Fixed frame rater limited to 30 FPS, bug fixes.\n  + [GInput](https://cookieplmonster.github.io/mods/gta-sa/#ginput). Adds XInput support, though I mostly use mouse and keyboard.\n  + [Widescreen Fix](https://thirteenag.github.io/wfp#gtasa), excluding the optional Widescreen Frontend Textures. Enables non-pillar boxed 16:9.\n  + [Windowed mode](https://gtaforums.com/topic/865138-windowed-mode). Enables borderless fullscreen.\n  + CLEO ([1](https://cleo.li), [2](https://www.gta-modding.com/san_andreas/tutorials/install_cleo_mods.html) although GXT Hook may not be needed). It's a tooling prerequisite for certain mods.\n+ UI\n  + [Remastered GUI](https://gtaforums.com/topic/743010-relsa-remastered-gui-textures-for-sa-inc-mobile-stuff). Higher-quality GUI.\n+ Graphics\n  + [Project 2DFX](https://thirteenag.github.io/p2dfx). Improved LOD and draw distance.\n  + [SkyGfx](https://gtaforums.com/topic/750681-skygfx-ps2-xbox-and-mobile-graphics-for-pc). Brings accurate PS2 and Xbox graphics to the PC version. Requires CLEO.\n+ Quality of life\n  + [Save Anywhere](https://gtaforums.com/topic/868771-iiivcsa-save-anywhere). Lets you save outside the specific designated areas such as right before missions. Requires CLEO. It's buggy if saved during missions or in vehicles. Controls are F4 to save.\n  + [Cheat Menu](https://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=16581). Quality-of-life features including \"skip time\" for mission requirements, though technically you can also do this by spamming Save Anywhere to skip 6 hours each time; \"teleport to marker\" for cross-country tedious traveling without fast travel; and various cheats like spawning rare vehicles. The controls are not explained well: digging [online](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OCbl5ZaQFE), it's Ctrl+C to open the menu, arrow keys to navigate, Shift to select, and Enter to go back to the previous menu.\n+ Mods I considered but omitted\n  + [HQ San Andreas Radar](https://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=9182). Not included in Remastered GUI. Requires using an IMG tool which I found is too much effort. [IMG Tool](https://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=63) is last updated in 2005 and while it opens, doesn't display any TXD files; [IMG Manager](http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=4052) is last updated in 2008 and doesn't open in 2023. [It's apparently not that accurate anyways.](https://gtaforums.com/topic/868217-remastered-radar)\n  + [HQ Weapon Icons](https://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=21062). Not included in Remastered GUI. Requires using an IMG tool and [TXD Workshop](http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=8320) tool which I found is too much effort.\n  + There is a mod for 60 FPS ([Framerate Vigilante](https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA/comments/xeqn8c/is_silent_patch_the_most_essential_mod_for_gta)) but it can still break on certain missions leading to a more buggy experience.\n\n__Controls.__ I played with keyboard and mouse. For more modern controls, I remapped Run/Sprint to Shift, Jump to Space. Otherwise I kept them the same (e.g., Fire (LMB), Aim (RMB), next/previous weapon (mouse wheel up/down), movement (WASD), Enter/Exit (F), crouch (C), action to view stats (Tab), look left/right for drive-bys (Q/E), conversation no (N), conversation yes (Y); on vehicle, handbrake (Space), next/previous radio station (mouse wheel up/down)).\n\nI played with joystick mode off, so aim is manual instead of autoaim. I didn't care too much about either setting, but it's nice that in manual aim, it's very easy to aim for the head which kills enemies instantly in one hit.\n\n__Playthroughs.__\n\n+ Originally I played on 2019-11-28 on the original Steam version and only got to the Cesar Vialpando low-rider mission before I gave up. Death penalty was too harsh for me.\n+ I picked it up again on 2021-02-06 with mods. Dropped it on OG Loc mission.\n+ I picked it up again on 2023-07-05 with mods. I completed all missions except for side missions near the end as I got burnt out: driving school chain and the Triad robbery chain.\n\n[Stats](https://www.ign.com/wikis/grand-theft-auto-san-andreas/How_to_Lose_Weight,_Gain_Muscle_and_Enhance_Stamina) are not that impactful aside from weapon skill for improved aim and health for larger health pool. These are not strictly that necessary given combat is very easy. Other stats are fun vanity stats and with some minor gameplay effects.\n\n+ Respect. It's a minor stat for recruiting 1-7 gang members. It is generally increased over the course of the game like Fame in Red Dead Redemption.\n+ Stamina is useful for sprinting longer.\n+ Vehicle skill. Generally increased over usage.\n+ Muscle and Fat isn't necessary to maintain as it only affects melee damage. It's useful for Sex Appeal to have a girlfriend although you can increase sex appeal with money (cars, clothes).\n\nSetup.\n\n+ Weapons ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanandreas/comments/oowbhk/best_weapon_layout)): I primarily use the Rifle or SMG. However, combat is not difficult so I often switch for fun.\n+ Vehicles: NRG-500, Infernus\n  + Bikes are the best for navigation given their small profile, and NRG-500 is the fastest. Cars are used for the required missions and style.\n+ Clothes: Chosen for cosmetics. Green color can assist with Respect but I don't care much about the stat.\n+ Money is quickly farmed by [horse betting and savescumming](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/70404/what-is-the-fastest-way-to-get-money-in-gta-san-andreas). However, it's tedious, so it's better to just give yourself the money with Cheat Menu mod.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/grand-theft-auto-san-andreas"},{"id":"322682678652585548","title":"Grand Theft Auto: Vice City","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":1110,"platforms":["XBOX","PS3","PC","Mac","PS2"],"studios":["Rockstar North"],"publishers":["Rockstar Games","Take-Two Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Racing","Adventure","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2023-07-07","notes":"I played bits and pieces, mostly as a sandbox, when I was a kid. I never really played the story missions.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/grand-theft-auto-vice-city"},{"id":"d0616a3f-d277-46bf-906c-7ec3cc5d475c","title":"Grim Fandango","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1998,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["LucasArts"],"publishers":["LucasArts"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2026-08-25","completedDate":"2026-09-02","updatedDate":"2026-09-03","notes":"You can see so much of what Psychonauts inherited: charming humor in the writing, characters, soundtrack, dialogue system. I find the puzzle gameplay very tedious. Following a guide greatly improves the pacing, but it comes at the cost of following step by step instructions which are itself tedious.\n\n__Writing.__\nI'd watch a movie version of this.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nBig worlds, immersive. The core gameplay of walking around and finding what goes where, the genre overall, I'm not a fan of.\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\nAges very well. Surprising given its age. It’s the excellent voice acting and soundtrack that makes it feel so good, even if the character models can be blocky and the fixed camera angles give it an aged feeling.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Director’s commentary. Fun to just turn on once in a while.\n+ Menu with the protagonist cycling through items in his suit. Simple and perfectly tasted.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ Guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=484287143\n\nI played Grim Fandango remastered. I dropped it at Year 3. Decided to read plot summary instead.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/grim-fandango"},{"id":"322682678652520012","title":"Guild Wars 2","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":5160,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["ArenaNet"],"publishers":["NCSOFT"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2012-10-31","completedDate":"2013-02-28","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Guild Wars 2 excels at PvP gameplay, minimizing the number of buttons to track. It also did WoW “epic battlegrounds” in a way that makes Alterac Valley seem dismal. I also liked the dyes for customization (as opposed to WoW's transmog, which is inherently reliant on older good looking gear). The world events were really well done as opposed to WoW’s questing system. I also liked its art style. Its fatal flaw is a lack of vanilla WoW's social aspects with partying and guilds. Other major flaws are a lack of solo queue rated, lack of strong lore like WoW, PvE raids, and anything to really keep the player tied to the game such as WoW’s sidemissions such as professions and the million things to optimize/farm.\n\nI stopped playing the game before it was introduced, but I heard Guild Wars 2 perfected the mount system for MMOs. Namely, mounts actually had unique mechanics among various beast families, and this made for selecting actually matter beyond the cosmetic appearance and the rare different like in WoW's (60% vs 100% movement speed; rare mounts with repair/water-walking).\n\n+: Minimalist/simplistic UI, stats, gear, skills; mobile combat system, dodging, dynamic events, crafting skills don't reset, crafting mats in bank, linkable waypoints, level-balancing, custom audio, no auto-attack, World vs World, cooperative farming (no tagging), account-wide ranks/pvp, keypress for main interaction, auto-heal out of combat, auto-quests, compact bags, account-bound achievements, leveling curve, dye system, global AH+features, AoE hits.\n\n-: No custom UI, macros, loading screens, mounts, no true PvE, no trade, no duels, lack of updates, area loot, faction griefing, standard PvE features: multi-target, target to target, bad target frames, no inspect feature, no duel feature, dots/buffs/debuffs importance.\n\n=: Mounts versus WPs, Jump Quests vs None, Instant access to AH+Mail, no gear grind/progression and thus no endgame.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/guild-wars-2"},{"id":"326553457192338001","title":"GunBound","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2005,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Softnyx"],"publishers":["Softnyx"],"genres":["Tactical"],"startedDate":"2005-01-01","completedDate":"2005-01-01","updatedDate":"2023-08-14","notes":"Played Gunbound again on March 2022, inspired by Twitch streams that Roflgator started and others like Sodapoppin joined in. It ages surprisingly well due to its cartoon aesthetic. The core aiming mechanics are also still fun in its simplicity of managing angle, power, and wind, but with loads of math to perfect your aiming.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Creedo's Turtle guide](http://creedo.gbgl-hq.com/turtleguide/turtleguide.php)\n+ [Creedo's Boomer guide](http://creedo.gbgl-hq.com/boomerguide.php)\n+ https://dragonbound.net works but makes several spinoffs to the Gunbound implementation, including drag being too easy. I do like that it makes certain things easy that you can set, namely, drag being easy and no wind. This lets you practice.  Dragonbound has too many hackers to make it fun. If you win, you still lose in the end screen, losing out on GP and gold. People automatically get dragon or knight at suspiciously high frequency. People probably also have aimbot.\n\nLearning about formulas, I remember reading a bit about this when I was young. But I never seriously committed to learning them. The fixed power formulas make a lot of sense and are especially advantageous in letting you calculate the wind adjustment.\n\nSame with using drag instead of slice.\n\nAll sorts of complications with real-world for the formula:\n\n+ wind\n+ hurricanes\n+ elevation\n+ screen measurements (need to memorize the 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90 markers according to screen; these are crucial)\n+ power bar dragging (need to memorize the 2.15, 2.2, 2.3 points)\n\nMobile notes\n+ In the old days, I liked Nak, Turtle, and Kal the most.\n+ I still like Turtle but its low angle range means you’re stuck searching for a decent enough slope for 65-85, and that’s made worse with its low movement speed. It’s also bad at short range as you can’t easily shoot your enemy unless you’re at a high angle (but your enemy will likely hit you and the ground causing you to readjust for every shot, particularly vertically) and shotgun doesn’t necessarily do full shot 2 damage.\n+ Boomer sacrifices turtle’s HP/defense for lower delay, higher angle range, higher movement speed, bunging ability (which can serve a useful consolation when you miss), easier SS (between dual and single shot 2 damage). It’s also far more flexible in its shooting from short to low range due to the methods of shotgunning, normal angle shots, lobs for 0 wind and wind toward the target, hooks for wind against the target, and advanced techniques like backshots. The skill ceiling is high due to the need to adjust for wind and master formulas for each method.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gunbound"},{"id":"322682678624200268","title":"Half-Life 2","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["XBOX","PS3","Linux","Android","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["Valve"],"publishers":["Valve","NVIDIA Lightspeed Studios","Electronic Arts","Sierra Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2021-03-08","completedDate":"2021-03-29","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Half-Life 2 pushes the series as the frontier of the cinematic linear FPS experience. It's excellent across graphics, physics engine with light platforming and puzzles (the particular novel contribution to the genre), cinematic storytelling, and enemy variety. Flaw-wise, I found Half-Life 2 put too much time into driving, boating, and platforming with looming chopper enemies going on for much longer than they should be. This slowed down the pace even further than Half-Life 1's core loop of navigating new environments, encountering enemies, some light puzzles/clues, and shooting. And Half-Life 2's weapon arsenal is weak. Half-Life 2 is often touted for its storytelling, and while I do like that it's placed here and there as you progress, not unlike Half-Life 1 and for good and bad, it's actually fairly skeletal as a way to transition levels.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core gameplay is the same with combat while navigating linear environments, light puzzle solving and platforming, and the occasional survival horror. Particularly notable to Half-Life 2 is the Gravity Gun and more open environments, with diverse variety going beyond the Half-Life 1's corridor shooter. The Gravity Gun has a lot of environmental and damage use cases, which I quite enjoyed. It's clearly the predecessor to the Portal Gun. Half-Life 2 also pushes further in destructible environments with your crowbar and environment interaction like barrels to distract the Barnacles. There's plenty variety in each level to keep the game fresh (e.g., antlions in Sandtraps and squads in Anticitizen One).\n\nThe ammo management can be tedious in certain levels like Ravenholm. What makes this more frustrating if it was aimed as a survival horror theme is that there is plentiful health pickups. This effectively encourages you to just use the crowbar as you can be a sponge for many hits, and crowbaring most of a level is not an engaging experience.\n\nThe weapon arsenal is fairly average for the genre: pistol, SMG, shotgun (only introduced in Chapter 6/13). The SMG does too little damage and wastes a lot of ammo. There's no weapon recoil or aim precision based on movement. There is no real medium-to-long-range weapon, which the game positions itself in its levels most of the time. The SMG does too little damage particularly at this range, and the crossbow has too little ammo.\n\nI dread the Airboat. The escape from the helicopter levels with it are unbearable to me. It's a weird platforming section separate from the core FPS and which I find more annoying than a breath of fresh air. Unlike Halo which integrated the vehicle into the core gameplay and showcasing more open environments, Half-Life 2 uses vehicles more as interludes which I don't think works well.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The detail ages surprisingly well with the facial models, textures, and lighting. It's quite clearly an upgrade from other 2004 games like World of Warcraft, MGS3, and Halo 2.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ There's a realistic heroine in both personality and body proportions.\n+ Automatic checkpointing as well as supporting old school manual quicksave system.\n+ The overpowered Gravity Gun at the end.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ RPGs shot at the gunships is just RNG whether they really hit. It's a dumb minigame of guiding the rocket.\n+ Chucking grenades into the Combine Ground Turrets. It's annoying to aim and with only 5 ammo, so you may as well savescum.\n+ Loading screen locations to separate levels can feel somewhat arbitrary, pulling you out of the immersion.\n+ I'm so spoiled by CSGO aim and movement mechanics that I sorely miss the precise aim on the first shot followed by imprecision from spray patterns, movement decreasing aim, movement acceleration, and 400% headshot damage multiplier. This incentivizes players to find cover, fire in bursts, and peek rather than shoot while moving.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI first played this game in 2004 and did not get very far. I played on Hard difficulty.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/half-life-2"},{"id":"322682678650369612","title":"Half-Life: Opposing Force","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":330,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"publishers":["Sierra Entertainment","Valve"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Puzzle"],"startedDate":"2020-11-22","completedDate":"2020-11-24","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The game felt like more of the same Half-Life, and with a few minor gameplay enhancements.\n\n__Story.__ The premise of playing the marines you fought against in Half-Life 1 is great.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core gameplay is the same. New is that companion NPCs you come across may also have special abilities like the medics and demolitions to open the next area. I found this more annoying than enabling further depth: the companion pathing can be frustrating. There's also new platforming with an alien whip to latch onto higher platforms. Nightvision goggles instead of a flashlight.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ I love the regenerating ammo alien weapon! Quality of life for ammo regen, particularly when you're exploring and there's only 1-2 enemies.\n+ There are no pestering marines with the ridiculous autoaim as in Black Mesa. You're playing as them!\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Crosshair is tied to your resolution. In modern resolutions (e.g., 2560x1440), the crosshair is so small. Color can also blend in with the environment.\n+ I quite often got lost on where to go next. The pathing isn't always clear, sometimes for good reasons, othertimes because you don't know what the assets forbid or allow you to do (like breaking an upper window in an elevator to jump-crouch through it).\n+ I quite often can get stuck and am unable to move. I'm forced to load from a prior point. Fortunately, this hasn't wasted me too much time since I save frequently.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on Easy difficulty as the difficulty is apparently much harder than the base game.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/half-life-opposing-force"},{"id":"322682678624131660","title":"Halo 2","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["XBOX","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Bungie"],"publishers":["Microsoft Game Studios"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Halo 2 is a more polished Halo CE with better story, level design, and refinements to the weapons and enemies.\n\n__Story.__ The storytelling is more cinematic than Halo CE, and with more nuance in its setting beyond the generic savior against a warring alien race and a Starcraft zerg-like infestation. I like the focus on an additional character, particularly from the covenant side in order to provide a new perspective.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Largely the same with a few changes: removal of health bar entirely (hence even more casual); new weapons like the Battle Rifle and Plasma Sword; rocket launcher can lock-on; you can dual wield (although its not good due to no grenade); you can hijack enemy vehicles. While the Battle Rifle made the old Assault Rifle finally useful, the SMG, Pistol, Shotgun, and Sentinel Beam are all too weak; and the Needler remains weak.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The remastered is especially impressive. It's most notable in cutscenes remade with new CGI animations using motion capture. There's significantly more work done to remaster Halo 2 for Anniversary than Halo Combat Evolved.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Halo 2's shotgun is terrible. Compared to Halo 1's, you have to get significantly closer to kill a grunt and you can't one-shot an elite. Similarly, the Pistol got significantly nerfed.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI replayed the game in November 2021. I played on Heroic difficulty. My preferred weapons are Plasma Pistol, Battle Rifle/Covenant Carbine, Sniper Rifle/Beam Rifle, Rocket Launcher/Fuel Rod Cannon, and Energy Sword. I almost always keep a Plasma Pistol for elites, dropping in later levels when the main enemy type is Flood or Brutes.\n\nI replayed it on November 2021 but dropped it in the middle of the covenant campaign.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/halo-2"},{"id":"322682678624132684","title":"Halo: Combat Evolved","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["XBOX","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["Bungie"],"publishers":["Microsoft Game Studios","MacSoft Games"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Halo defined the console shooter subgenre. It's an excellent linear campaign with worldbuilding, open level set pieces, defining aesthetics with new technology at the time, great weapons, enemy design, nd vehicles. It does away with Half-Life's puzzle and exploration elements to keep the campaign largely action-filled through the journey.\n\nFlaw-wise, certain levels can be all too frustrating in poor design. Levels also see a lot of copy-paste area reusage.\n\n__Story.__ Fairly standard but I enjoy the large lore in its military scifi setting.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The shooting still feels great in 2021, with excellent weapon variety, enemy variety, and level design. Halo unfortunately set the trend on regenerative health, but in this game, it actually works. The two-weapon slot limit also works well. There are so many iconic weapons here: pistol, plasma pistol, sniper rifle, shotgun, rocket launcher, sticky grenade. The \"noob combo\" of a plasma pistol + precision weapon, along with ample grenades for AoE, is especially satisfying.\n\nI greatly dislike Halo's limited ammo with the need to constantly swap weapons as you progress through a level. This would be greatly streamlined if the Covenant weapons at least restocked on battery as you ran over corpses instead of constantly having to search for a new one.\n\nSome levels are to brutally difficult due to lack of cover, too many enemies, and lack of ammo. Library and Assault on the Control Room in particular. Assault on the Control Room is also unnecessarily long and has too much level duplication.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The soundtrack stands the test of time. Animations and lighting are particularly good for its 2001 release. I enjoy the additional detail in the remastered, particularly during cutscenes. However, it also ruins the atmosphere with unnecessary detail and lighting at times: there are even remastered assets that don't align with the original's geomtry, so you'd shoot behind an object for cover but you hit an invisible wall.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ When you swap for a weapon of the same type, you can only pick up ones with higher battery than your current weapon.\n+ There's plenty of grenades. It's effectively as frequent as ammo.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ You zoom out if you get shot.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Shooting from cover in Remastered is unreliable because the asset sizes aren't always aligned with the original's.\n+ The Remastered graphics doesn't make it as easy to tell if you're shooting the shield or HP of an elite.\n+ No coop matchmaking. The coop FPS campaign seems like a great opportunity to play with randoms and have a good time. Similar to Resident Evil 5.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI replayed the game on November 2021, largely due to Halo Infinite hype, so I could catch up from previous games. It's the first time I played the game from start to finish. I played the Master Chief Collection. I played on Heroic difficulty. Following meta, I generally used Plasma Pistol, Pistol, Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, and Rocket Launcher. I like using an ammo dump weapon for generic enemies followed by a special killer (e.g., sniper rifle, rocket launcher). After Assault on the Control Room in Heroic, I felt so frustrated I just went to Normal difficuly. I replayed it on November 2021.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/halo-combat-evolved"},{"id":"322682678624201292","title":"Helltaker","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Vanripper"],"publishers":["Vanripper"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Indie","Visual Novel"],"startedDate":"2021-03-27","completedDate":"2021-03-27","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The gimmick of a harem full of demon girls drives the game well. The core gameplay is also not too bad with simple puzzles and a pretty awesome soundtrack. The art style defines itself with its color palette and cartoon girls.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/helltaker"},{"id":"322682678624213580","title":"Heretic","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1994,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["PC","Mac","DOS"],"studios":["Raven Software"],"publishers":["id Software"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2021-02-13","completedDate":"2021-02-14","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Heretic runs true to the subgenre mantle of Doom clone, with identical weapons but reskinned, and only under a fantasy setting. Heretic plays just as well but with no innovations on top of Doom. The game gets fairly repetitive in not really adding much after each episode. So I’m glad Heretic's base game is only 3 episodes; I wish the original Doom were also that short.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Heretic plays almost like a reskin of Doom, with slight modifications to Doom's weapon arsenal, different enemies, and a fantasy setting for the levels. Like Doom, it plays very well. The projectile non-hitscan enemies, weapons, enemies, and level navigation are all solid. It even has the same details such as enemy stagger, monster infighting, artificially constructed levels with little realism.\n\nThe item inventory is new. I found this added needless complexity from just activating the item as a power-up immediately.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Zero hitscan enemies. Makes for fun combat as you run around and dodge.\n+ Unlike Doom, the highest difficulty does not include respawning enemies.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Like Doom, bosses reappear as enemies in future levels. I think this works well for the Iron Lich as they can still be downed with a few Rocket Launcher shots. But Minotaurs are too heavy of health sponges, especially when they appear at early levels like E4M1 and E5M1.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The engine is the same as Doom so the control and graphics limitations remain the same. Heretic chooses a more colorful palette. Its environmental interaction with streaming rivers that push against your movement, or blowing winds, was new at the time.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI initially tried on the Chocolate Doom source port, but I dislike the lack of free look (vertical mouse movement), no autoaim, crosshair, widescreen support (it's pillarboxed), and borderless (it's only fullscreen or windowed). These are technically not vanilla, but people already do WASD + mouselook + always run, and always run is arguably vanilla. I stuck with GZDoom which is another popular alternative. Weirdly GZDoom adds jump and crouch, which [the original Doom and Heretic do not have](https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Jumping); so I disabled them as they can have some impact on intended level design (e.g., to get across an area or jump a ramp with item pickups). I also set up GZDoom to [play under Steam in order to track playtime](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1730383333). I played on \"Thou art a smite-meister\" difficulty, Heretic's equivalent of Doom's Ultra-Violence. I found the game surprisingly forgiving in how much damage an enemy would do to you, and how much health and ammo pickups there are.\n\nThis entry does not include the expansion (Shadow of the Serpent Riders). Originally motivated to play as one of the most iconic Doomlikes of the time, next to Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, and Blood. I'm also motivated as it's the spiritual predecessor to Amid Evil (2019) by New Blood Interactive, which is one of my favorite indie studios as they bring back the highlights of the classic FPS genre.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/heretic"},{"id":"340403446490333775","title":"Hitman (2016)","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":630,"platforms":["Stadia","PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","XONE"],"studios":["IO Interactive"],"publishers":["Square Enix","IO Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Tactical","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-02-14","completedDate":"2019-02-15","updatedDate":"2022-08-19","notes":"Hitman is the most replayable stealth game I've played. It's truly a sandbox with a variety of methods for assassination (including multiple within even the scripted content). I'm a big fan of its sleek, clean UI and font. The game's a beauty to immerse oneself in, especially with highest quality settings on my 21:9 3440x1440p screen. Totally beats MGS5's lack of ultrawidescreen support! I suppose it makes sense as the latest engine's game was released on November 2018. Face model integration is better than Yakuza 0.\n\n__Story.__ Basically nonexistent. It's clear it's not Hitman's strong point. In fact, given its sandbox nature, I would prefer if Hitman didn't have to make each target seem evil, and explain the motives or even who is the customer.That seems more immersive to the realism of a gun for hire.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I love the sandboxy feel unique to the modern setting for this stealth game, which is the main distinction from other games like Siphon Filter, Metal Gear Solid, Assassin's Creed and Dishonored. The use of mission stories also lets you play catered playstyles that are a blast to try out.\n\nPersonally, although I like the scripted content of Story Missions, I prefer the stealthy suit-only Silent Assassin approach---maybe occassionally with a costume change---rather than following from point A to point B in story missions. This lets me directly infiltrate an area relying only on my stealth skills.I also prefer minimal saving.\n\nI don't know how I feel with the starting items. They all tended to fill in the same archetypes of playstyle: lethal melee/ranged, nonlethal melee, and tools such as coins, lockpick, disposable scanner, poisons, and a briefcase for concealing an illegal item. The items picked up in a level didn't tend to help except for a handful which I did like, e.g., crowbar, wrench. They would be maybe more meaningful if 1. they were easier to find without already knowing the map; and 2. starting items were less clutch.\n\n__Levels.__ The level designs are all stunning, especially unique areas that don't typically appear in other games like the hospital institute in Hokkaido and suburban area of Whittleton Creek. They're all excellent, but I was especially tkaen aback by the details of Hokkaido. Certain assets just pop out. The mirror is sleak. I would totally want to relax here..\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Big fan of the ~10 hour playtime. There's only 6 levels per Hitman and Hitman 2, and you can replay them as sandboxes for contract/elusive targets mode or more challenges for replayability. I like that style of content which keeps the density of quality as high as possible while encouraging elements of replayability if you want more.\n+ Unique to other stealth games, wearing disguises just works. Hiding in plain sight is the real playstyle here.\n+ Eavesdropping for optional story misssions is smooth.\n+ Love the idea of concealed weapons.\n+ NPCs pick up guns on the ground. Great!\n+ Targets vary in ethnicity, gender, and generally cultural background. There's no political bullshit hampering this game's vision.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ No prone position.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Time-limited content: Elusive Targets game mode and seasonal missions (Snow Festival, Holiday Hoarders). Hitman 2's first expansion of the Snow Festival is no longer playable as of this date ([Feb 2019](https://www.reddit.com/r/HiTMAN/comments/aiavlx/hitman_2_game_update_213_io_interactive)).\n+ Too many game modes and confusing business model with missions released over time. I'd rather than just know all the options and play them all at once.\n+ Manual saves and loads so you don't have to restart the mission or from the last checkpoint. This eases difficulty but emphasizes the more important part of Hitman: experimentation and exploration. While I think unlimited saves (and even any manual save) is fine for the easiest difficulty, it makes it too easy for the normal difficulty of Professional. I'd prefer that Professional and Master difficulties don't have _any_ master saves, relying only on checkpoints at most which puts emphasis on IO Interactive to design these better.\n+ Too many buttons. X for scaling/climbing; G to unlock doors/trigger events; B for dragging bodies; Space for leaving; E otherwise. Why not just make most actions E?\n+ No interrogation.\n+ When close to an NPC, the combatish dialogue can be too unrealistic. This is especially the case if you're following an NPC due to a story mission but get too close. That causes them to give a mean line while in the middle of a standard one..\n+ It's not clear what breaks the requirements for Silent Assassin.\n+ It's extremely difficult to get a \"no witnesses\" kill without going through scripted content. The alternative is to really know the weak spots during a patrol position, which requires internet research.\n+ My game kept suddenly crashing in the last level Isle. Loading previous game states seemed to work haphazardly, suddenyl crashing 1s or 10s after. It took me an hour just to bum rush to finish the mission and not have to start over.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HyJocc0AjQ. Playthroughs like this are great not just because of marveling at the high skill, but because of the interesting tactics that I learn to also incorporate. For example, shooting your silenced pistol so guards look around (similar to coin); going behind a guard and immediately moving forward as they turn around so they don't see you; throwing objects or shooting in the leg to incapacitate two guards in the way.\n+ another playthrough, with commentary | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2GJ0naJUXE\n+ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYWpf9PESbc. Sodapoppin playthrough\n+ different ways of trying to play the game | https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/hd6vq0/im_not_even_into_stealth_games_but_hitman_is/fvjqiz5\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/HiTMAN/comments/a2mxx3/psa_while_found_trespassing_does_not_negate/, https://www.reddit.com/r/HiTMAN/comments/a0gnar/things_that_dont_void_silent_assassin/. \"Found Trespassing\" does not negate Silent Assassin. Searching does not. Bullet Impact Noticed does not. Compromised (e.g., seen killing), Body Found, Non-Target Kills, and getting caught on camera while not erasing evidence do. \"Suspicious\" usually does; but it does not if Suspicion activates from an enforcer during his patrol.\n\nI played for a total playtime (according to Steam) of 9 hours, just beating the base game. Afterwards I completed Patient Zero (more content but on same levels; I like them!), Escalations (they're basically Contracts but IOI-made and not time-limited like Elusive Targets; I like them!), and Sniper Assassin Mode (only one map; minigame-like level of content quality). I did not complete Contracts (player-made versions of Escalations), Elusive Targets (time-limited content), Ghost Mode (I'm not interested in multiplayer races), or Hitman 2 Expansion levels (they're not out as of my playtime, Feb 2019). I use keyboard and mouse. My first playthrough followed story missions. I chose the official recommended mission stories first as I assume they're the most interesting scripted content (https://www.reddit.com/r/HiTMAN/comments/9wiop9/list_of_all_recommended_mission_stories_spoilers/).\n\nMy broad playstyle is non-lethal stealth, going for Silent Assassin. This means killing and intercepting as few non-targets as possible, with no witnesses, body found, or being caught; that seems to be the Hitman mantra. To lure NPCs, I use my silenced pistol, trigger NPC to question mark by staying in their range for a bit, or throw a coin. That said, I will vary this style in order to 1. see the content from what other styles look like, e.g., full Rambo, poisoning everyone's food; 2. complete challenges. My first and foremost mission is to explore to see and appreciate all content; and then achieve my primary playstyle.\n\nPlaystyles typically differ in five dimensions: stealth vs nonstealth, lethal vs nonlethal, zero vs minimal takedowns vs all takedowns (similar to Dishonored's chaos system), melee vs ranged, and resets vs no resets. For the latter two, I almost always go with no resets (to an extent, using some save points like checkpoints but never to the point of savescuming), and I don't restrict myself to melee or ranged. I also use no/immersive HUD and max difficulty after the first playthrough. My favorite playstyles for Hitman (and the stealth genre more broadly) are the following, roughly ranked.\n\n1. First playthrough (option A): _Stealth nonlethal._ You perform non-target takedowns when you need to but don't go out of your way to prevent them. This is typically more challenging than a stealth lethal playstyle (e.g., more limited toolset; guards can wake up; chokeholding can take longer than an instant kill).\n2. First playthrough (option B): _Stealth lethal._ You perform non-target takedowns when you need to but don't go out of your way to prevent them. In most games, the lethal route uses an entirely different (and often more diverse) toolset. Lethal is typically more fun due to its toolset and kill animations, but it's less challenging than nonlethal.\n3. Second+ playthrough: _\"Ghost.\"_ Zero non-target takedowns, either lethal or nonlethal on targets. Known as Silent Assassin in Hitman. In Hitman, a variant is suit-only. This is the ultimate stealth challenge and fantasy. It's often frustrating for a first playthrough as you need to familiarize yourself with the level but it's perfect on a second or third.\n4. Second+ playthrough: _Speedrun._ Complete the mission as fast as possible. Possibly with the constraint of not being detected.\n5. Miscellaneous playthrough: _Scripted._ Following scripted linear scenarios (in Hitman, story missions).\n6. Miscellaneous playthrough: _\"Genocide run.\"_ Kill everyone (typically lethal), stealth, and both melee and ranged. Fun to go on a stealthy killer rampage. Often too easy though.\n7. Miscellaneous playthrough: _Assault stealth._ \"Rambo\" style. Fun for maybe five minutes to see how the enemy AI react. But it's boring in that you ignore the point of the game.\n\nI played this Season One content from the Hitman 2 game as $20. Apparently this is a slightly remastered version based on Hitman 2's engine.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/hitman"},{"id":"340403526304793169","title":"Hitman 2 (2018)","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["Stadia","PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["IO Interactive"],"publishers":["WB Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Tactical","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-02-15","completedDate":"2019-02-17","updatedDate":"2022-08-19","notes":"See comments in Hitman entry. My thoughts are the same as that game as they're basically the same---only difference are specific levels. I played for a total playtime (according to Steam) of 8 hours, just beating the base game.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/hitman-2"},{"id":"322682678650348108","title":"Hotline Miami","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["Stadia","Series X|S","PS3","PS4","Linux","Android","PC","PS5","Mac","Vita","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Dennaton Games"],"publishers":["Devolver Digital"],"genres":["Shooter","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2019-03-03","completedDate":"2021-01-18","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Love the serial killer vibes and chill culture with its art style and synthwave tracks. Simple core controls suits the game well: movement, aim, look ahead, hold enemy/bash enemy. The weapon and mask variety also adds a bit of depth to experiment with playstyles. I also like that the last few chapters continue with a different character, with a different playstyle: changes things up! Similarly, not all levels are combat intensive. Gameplay-wise, I have mixed feelings about the trial-and-error. Fights are instant-frame, which can make scenarios a little tedious to execute perfectly. Couple that with janky AI.\n\nI dropped it at the start of Episode 8. I picked it up again to complete on 1/18/21.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/hotline-miami"},{"id":"322682678624155212","title":"Hyper Light Drifter","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["iOS","Switch"],"studios":["Abylight Studios","Heart Machine"],"publishers":["Abylight Studios"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-08-12","completedDate":"2021-08-14","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Hyper Light Drifter is an isometric action that's particularly notable in its tight combat loop and creative vision of visual storytelling, pixel aesthetics, and atmospheric soundtrack.\n\nFlaw-wise, hidden areas can be obscure and there's generally just a bad visual design as you must, e.g., force yourself to walk along edges to discover things rather than a visual cue signaling a breakable wall. NPCs don't really do much, and even for its ambiguous storytelling there just isn't much of a story to be told. It would be nice to see an interconnecting theme one could analyze as you traverse the various enemy and boss designs, or the powers you accumulate over time. Enemy and boss designs are serviceable.\n\n__Story.__ The game focuses on symbolic imagery and cryptic speech, where for example NPC interactions only involve a soundbyte or image. There is little to no text, including even with merchant or upgrade HUDs. I love the idea of it, but the NPCs don't share any sense of character development or progression. It's disappointing given that it would be nice to show such character through purely visual imagery, not unlike WALL-E.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The game features 2D isometric combat not unlike Supergiant Games and action RPGs, and with a tight combat loop of attack, dash, and a variety of abilities such as chain dash, dash attack, and charge attack. There are also light platforming challenges as you dash through areas with gaps. Enemy and boss designs are decent. Collectibles include a Gearbit currency for upgrades, Modules which enable progression in a quadrant toward its boss and pillar, and Monoliths for the Librarian sidequest.\n\nLevels are semi-linear sometimes with forking paths. Hidden areas reward collectibles and are on the beaten path. The death penalty is forgiving with checkpoints appearing at the beginning for every level transition compared to Dark Souls-style checkpoints.\n\nControls are simple and intuitive. Movement, sword attack, dash, interact, aim and shoot, heal, and special. Tha game's movement and action speed is more deliberate than, say, Hades or Hollow Knight. The health and ammo involve singular quantities.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The pixel graphics are one of Hyper Light Drifter's greatest strengths. The abstract art with sumptuous colors, served alongside a moody soundtrack, are immersive.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Chain dash. It feels real good to move all speedy fast and time the chain.\n+ You can't fall off by running off the edge. Given all the areas have no guards, this is a big quality of life feature.\n+ No missable items, allowing you to backtrack to collect any missed Gearbits.\n+ You don't get hit from just touching an enemy. I hate that quirk in games.\n+ The shooting details like bullet dropoff when you're sniping (with a HUD determining the distance of a shot as well as grid to determine the bullet drop). Or bullet traversal instead of hitscan at long ranges. Or weapon sway when you're scoped in.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The four shard door is actually an 8 shard door. Bad visual design.\n+ Secrets aren't consistently visually clear. You often just need to run on the edges to see if you can traverse through an obstacle, as trees for example just obscure your view.\n+ Reset pattern is weird. An entire dungeon is reset, not just the enemy respawn, whenever you warp. But enemies don't respawn when you only run back to town.\n+ The stunlocks from the center boss are ridiculous. It's either beat at full HP or get hit once and immediately die. Fortunately the shotgun is so OP at doing 5 damage at point-blank.\n+ The game randomly unreadies you from queue.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Abilities and Upgrades](https://hyperlightdrifter.fandom.com/wiki/Abilities_and_Upgrades)\n\nI was originally motivated to play because of its similar controls and combat as Hades and Hollow Knight, which I adore. I played the game blind but looked into area and upgrade order. Area-wise, I went East, then North, then West. Upgrade-wise, I went Chain Dash, Bullet Deflect, Bullet Absorb, Dash Attack, Heavy Strike, shotgun ammo, grenade, health kit upgrades.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/hyper-light-drifter-special-edition"},{"id":"322682678650359372","title":"Ikaruga","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":90,"platforms":["Arcade"],"studios":["Treasure"],"publishers":["Treasure"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2020-12-15","completedDate":"2020-12-15","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"This is a challenging shoot em up. The stages are few but tightly crafted. The core idea of balancing light and darkness works very well.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ No borderless support. Windowed can't be used to go close to fullscreen either.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI remember playing the game around 2007 but never beat it. Playing in 2020, I allowed unlimited Continues, 9 Lives, and played at Normal difficulty.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ikaruga"},{"id":"322682678624137804","title":"Inscryption","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Linux","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Daniel Mullins Games"],"publishers":["Devolver Digital","Daniel Mullins Games"],"genres":["Puzzle","Strategy","Adventure","Indie","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2021-10-30","completedDate":"2021-11-02","updatedDate":"2023-07-22","notes":"Inscryption is a neat package of meta gameplay for card roguelikes. It provides an excellent combination of horror mystery and strong core mechanics. The game itself is fairly minimal without much replayability in the form of build variety but there are a lot of cool card ideas.\n\n__Story.__ The idea of a card roguelike taking place in a dark cabin is an intriguing idea. It's a mystery set for you to learn more as well as what and why things are happening in the tabletop adventure itself.\n\nThe story reveal after you beat the game once (Act 1) is excellent. I love how it continues to edge onto its experimental horror by then going VHS + found footage.\n\n__Gameplay.__ There are a lot of interesting ideas to the usual card based roguelike. Overkill damage to enemies and player health. HP system is based on a scale where you must do a relative amount of 5 more than your opponent. A card game largely based on sacrifices, using cards on the field (not unlike Yugioh) as well as those destroyed followed later in the game with other ideas: energy cost system like Magic the Gathering, gem system, and skulls system. A fairly small deck but also comprised with a draw option for the lowest minion. The enemy can surrender.\n\nThe card arena is effectively asymmetrical, with the enemy able to have a second row while you can only defend as it demonstrates enemy intent.\n\nThe events during the roguelike scenario are quite innovative. In one, you can merge two of the same cards to combine their stats. In another, you obtain pelts from a currency of overkill damage, the cards of which are useful defense, and you then sell them to another trader.\n\nThe three Acts are substantially different across gameplay, story, and aesthetic.\n\n1. Arguably the most fun part of Inscryption's gameplay is that on top of its excellent core card roguelike mechanics, it has an interesting mystery where you slowly understood the game's mechanics and unlock solutions to the puzzles to progress to the next Act. It's hard to not look up what to do next, but the game does provide sufficient hints and it's all the much more engaging as you arrive at the solution yourself. Eventually over future playthroughs you unlock enough upgrades to make subsequent journies easier: that is, not just through improved game knowledge but also better initial cards, items, and other mechanics (e.g., your own card, an extra candle, ability to reroll).\n2. Act 2 proceeds as a conventional card RPG with deck building and rewards as you defeat enemies. It's not as dynamic as Act 1's roguelike where you can modify a card's mechanics, but it's still fun for its deckbuilding aspect and new decks.\n3. Act 3 goes back to Act 1's more modern 3D indie graphics but delves further in the story adds ideas with the robot deck's mechanics. Exploration is now gridlike, and death involves Dark Souls corpse run instead of a full roguelike reset. Bounty hunters offer a challenge if you keep winning battles. Gems mechanic. While I enjoyed the open world exploration in Act 3, I greatly preferred Act 1's card mechanics over Act 3's energy system, which is overplayed in card games. It's much more passive than Act 1's blood sacrifice and bones resources. Act 2 and 3's death penalty just isn't as harsh and replayable as Act 1's roguelike structure. It's also unfortunate the ending doesn't really explain much.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I love the indie horror aesthetic. Atmospheric music, gritty dialogue, and a blocky texture. The tabletop layout for Act 1's card game is cute.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You get to create a card for the next playthrough. Nice way of adding some boost based on your previous deck but not in such a way that it's overpowered.\n+ The scariness and meta that the game uses the size and age of your files. And it creates cards even from your Steam friends.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You can't always look at your deck. This is annoying when you make decisions like card choices.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/inscryption"},{"id":"329777964305613377","title":"INSIDE","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["PS4","PC","iOS","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Playdead"],"publishers":["Playdead"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2023-07-20","completedDate":"2023-07-21","updatedDate":"2023-07-22","notes":"Effectively like a sequel to Limbo. It's the same style with level design approach, art style, and somber death penalty and challenges. Inside pushes further on the minimalist storytelling, doing something beyond your typical puzzle game by providing a subtext with story in its imagery and escape.\n\nPuzzles had appropriate difficulty. There were very few instances where I was stuck and needed to spend more than 5-10 minutes or a hint from looking up online.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ An improved variant of Limbo. Heavy in lighting, sound effects, simple assets, now popping in color.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Polygon: Inside puzzle guide](https://www.polygon.com/inside/2016/7/1/12074742/puzzle-help-solutions)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/inside"},{"id":"322682678652867148","title":"Ion Fury","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Voidpoint"],"publishers":["3D Realms"],"genres":["Shooter","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-09-22","completedDate":"2022-04-03","updatedDate":"2022-04-06","notes":"Ion Fury is a refined Duke Nukem 3D, standing out most in its smooth controls, weapon arsenal, and level design. It retains its excellent Build Engine feeling in its bit-style art and soundtrack.\n\nLike other Build Engine games, Ion Fury can suffer from too many hitscan enemies. The slow corner-peeking pace that it encourages is a fine gameplay style, but it leads to a tired trial-and-error tactic of save scumming as you take so much chip damage. It's also easy to get stuck, not knowing how to progress as navigation involves interacting with various assets. Unique to Ion Fury, it particularly suffers from having too many and too large levels, where the game gets repetitive due to the lack of enemy and weapon variety in contrast to the amount of levels: after Episode 3, the game felt largely the same.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core gameplay loop involves navigating an area, killing enemies, and collecting keycards, weapons, and other resource pickups. Like the Build Engine iconic trio of Blood, Duke Nukem 3D, and Shadow Warrior, Ion Fury features many hitscan enemies. This puts an emphasis on two core strategies—corner peeking and crouching—in order to kill enemies before they hit you. It's unlike Doom where you can fight in open arenas dodging projectiles. At hard and above difficulties, this can be a bit unforgiving in that enemies can hit you faster than you can react, even if you know they're already there. So it's somewhat RNG and forces you to savescum. This wasn't really an issue in Blood for example outside of the first Chapter.\n\nThe weapon arsenal is excellent in this game, working well in synergy for different situations and with ammo conservation to ensure diverse usage. \n\n+ Loverboy (Pistol): Medium to long range with headshot sniping due to its McCree-like high noon alt-fire. It's especially good for flying enemies as pistol headshots can kill the green ones in 1 shot and red ones in 2 shots. It's possibly my favorite pistol in a retro shooter.\n+ Disperser (Shotgun): Close quarters and with an alt-fire grenade launcher for AOE.\n+ Bowling Bombs (Grenade): AOE that actively seeks out enemies and is therefore great at corners.\n+ Penetrator (SMG): AOE spray in Akimbo-style, reminiscent of Shadow Warrior. I typically just use it for weak enemies or focus-firing a high HP one when I run out of Ion Bow or Chaingun ammo.\n+ Ion Bow: DPS for high HP enemies and long-range sniping.\n+ Chaingun: DPS for high HP enemies.\n+ Clusterpuck (Proximity mine): I don't use these.\n\nControls are typical for Build Engine games: fast movement speed, jump, horizontal+vertical aim, crouch, interact, reload, number keybinds for weapon swap, and a map toggle.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The idea of a 2019 game on the Build Engine is interesting. Surprisingly, a lot of the graphic detail, voice dialogue, and scale of the maps still work quite well. It looks and feels a lot like a game from the 90s, and it's more the refinements to the gameplay and level design where you feel the modern change.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Unlike the Build Engine games of old, Ion Fury has locational damage (headshots), where your pistol can kill cultists with 1 well-placed shot to the head.\n+ Instead of a list of items to scroll through (e.g., Blood), there are just two with specific keybinds: medkit and radar. This streamlines an unnecessary bloat feature in Blood as you don't really use any item aside from medkit.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ You can store a powerup. I end up not using them and just wait until I fight a boss.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI was motivated to play as it's one of the more popular games in the boomer/retro shooter resurgence. I played on Hard (Ultra Viscera) difficulty, my favored choice for this genre. I kept the keybindings the same and added Mouse4 to Ion Bow, Mouse5 to Disperser Grenade, and Q to Medkit so that I only need to use weapon keybinds 1-6. I got bored of the hitscan at E4M2 when playing in September 2021 and then picked it up to finish the game on April 2022.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ion-fury"},{"id":"322682678624147020","title":"Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["PS4","PS2"],"studios":["Naughty Dog"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Platform","Racing","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-09-11","completedDate":"2021-09-15","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Jak and Daxter is an interesting departure from Crash Bandicoot. It introduces two new ideas: an open world and a larger focus on story as an action-adventure. Jak and Daxter retains Crash's core ideas such as precise platforming, collectithon, and a memorable cast including supporting characters and villains. There isn't much new in terms of the gameplay that keeps it as innovative as the platforming ideas originating in, say, Crash Bandicoot or Spyro. But it's still quite a blast to play as one of the titans of the 3D platformer genre.\n\n__Story.__ Simple but enjoyable story and rich with interesting supporting characters. The way you complete tasks to be rewarded with a collectible reminds me a lot of Spyro.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The game is a collectithon with three currencies: power cells, precursor orbs, and scout flies, the latter two of which reward power cells.\n\nControls inherit from Crash Bandicoot with a (double) jump, spin attack, ground pound, and crouch jump. There are additional moves: punch, jumping uppercut, roll jump.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The cartoon style is timeless, with soft curves, a colorful palette, and smooth emotive animations. It's a natural progression of the cartoon style of Crash Bandicoot for PS2. Voice acting is also spot-on: you can really attests to the personality in each character.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ All the audio hints that Daxter provides in case you don't know what to do or want further confirmation. \"We need to get you charged with blue stuff to get you through this door.\"\n+ Generous checkpoints and without an extraneous Lives system like in Super Mario.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ There's no tracker item to find the remaining Precursor Orbs that you're hunting for. It makes getting 100% completion more a chore than fun. Fortunately there's no reward beyond the 100% number for getting the last 470/2000 orbs.\n+ No subtitle options.\n+ Vertical camera is confusing as it doesn't actually move up and down. It controls zoom.\n+ In menus, Circle is not cancel but an extra Confirm.\n+ You can't skip cutscenes. Makes replayability tedious.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Precursor orb locations](https://jakanddaxter.fandom.com/wiki/The_Precursor_Legacy_Precursor_orb_locations)\n\nI played the remastered version on PS3 (Jak and Daxter Collection) via RPCS3 (v0.0.18-12738 Alpha). The PS3 release is in fact better than PS4's as PS4's is just a PS2 emulator and does not use the [PS3's remastered port](https://www.reddit.com/r/jakanddaxter/comments/82zjtk/ps3_vs_ps4_versions/). Playing in September 2021, RPCS3's default settings worked for me (e.g., Recompiler (LLVM) for CPU's PPU Decoder and Vulkan for GPU Renderer). I set the framelimit (autos to 60 FPS) as the game speed is tied to 60 FPS. At 2x native resolution (2560x1440p), I see occasional frame rate dips from 60 to 40-50 FPS which causes annoying stutters that slow the game's speed (e.g., near fountains, lots of particle effects), and with occasional game freezes. 1.5x native resolution (1920x1080p) is more stable but still has stutter and freezes. I got 100% completion, which I surprisingly found did not really require a walkthrough or much backtracking.\n\nI remember watching Danny play this game as a kid when we had a PS2. I never got into it.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/jak-and-daxter-the-precursor-legacy"},{"id":"322682678650346060","title":"Katana Zero","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":270,"platforms":["Android","PC","iOS","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Askiisoft"],"publishers":["Devolver Digital","Netflix"],"genres":["Platform","Strategy","Adventure","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2021-01-19","completedDate":"2021-01-21","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Katana Zero constructs a gratifying loop of instant death instant reward, similar to games like Hotline Miami, Super Meat Boy, and Ghostrunner. Its art style and animations make it fun to experience just as a visual spectacle, adding further to its frenetic gameplay.\n\n__Story.__ It's like an extension of Hotline Miami: drugs, loneliness, feelings of loss and violence. The story is more coherent and tropey here, and my opinion is mixed on whether the added character development and setting was good. I do like the various choices as you interact with the story, even if many end up being an illusion of choice. The skippiness with time and various hallucinations adds a degree of surrealness that Hotline Miami doesn't.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Like hotline Miami but a 2D viewpoint. Controls are simple, deaths are instant, kills are gratifying, frequent checkpoints, even the sequence of levels followed by conversation interludes is the same. One benefit of this game are its bosses, which are each dynamic and unique in their moveset. Gameplay variety is a lot less though: from how to tackle a given area in eliminating everyone to the weapon and item variety (there is none). Having Fifteen as a playable character, with a new move, shows the potential in enabling more gameplay variety. I wish at least they would enable Fifteen as a playable character for the full game after you beat it once---similar to the other unlockable options like Speedrun and Hard Mode. A more ambitious goal would be more time-based abilities, pushing further than the current two of Slow and Dash.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I like the mix of pixel art, neon colors, and synthwave soundtrack. It reminds me of Hotline Miami but with an even better soundtrack.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ It displays the soundtrack names as they play.\n+ The timing of interactions. You have to explicitly wait for the person to finish talking to move to the dialogue options. Otherwise you interrupt them and end the conversation.\n+ Although it was only for one level, you could play as Fifteen who not only has a Slow but also a Dash move.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ No native borderless support. Borderless Gaming doesn't work either, cropping much of the screen. At the least, you can go windowed and resize it.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/katana-zero"},{"id":"b85efacb-1f37-4a3a-884d-d2a268e34294","title":"L.A. Noire","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":1320,"platforms":["PC","PS3","X360"],"studios":["Team Bondi","Rockstar North","Rockstar Leeds"],"publishers":["Rockstar Games","Take-Two Interactive"],"genres":["Strategy","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2023-08-23","completedDate":"2023-08-26","updatedDate":"2023-08-26","notes":"LA Noire's greatest strengths are in its writing, rooted in Cole's growth as an LAPD police officer, and in its core gameplay loop in solving episodic cases. Collecting clues in areas and questioning persons of interest under their detailed facial animations are quite fun. The cases over five desks (patrol, traffic, homicide, vice, and arson) keeps the story varied throughout the game.\n\nFlaw-wise, the open world and side quests (street crimes) are lacking. The questioning system can also be unintuitive at times. And certain cases and desks are too linear and provide little to no choice.\n\n__Story.__\nThe story tells the rise of Cole through a series of promotions at the LAPD, each grounded by a handful of cases. It's quite well done.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ The demotion for committing adultery and its popularity as a scandal seems rather offkilter for the story. Every character Cole meets is a misogynist and now apparently everyone feels bad for Cole's wife and hates on Cole.\n+ Cases can be entirely linear and provide little to no choice (e.g., The Set Up, A Walk in Elysian Fields); and every time there's a choice of two suspects, it doesn't actually matter because either neither of them did it (homicide cases) or both of them did (The Gas Man). The story never makes it clear that you chose the \"wrong\" suspect not because it's actually the wrong suspect, but because it looks worse for the department than choosing the other person.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nEpisodic cases. Quite fun clue-based mysteries. You go through a sequence of locations to find clues in the area and also question persons of interest. These areas may include the crime scene, locations of witnesses and other persons of interest, the coroner, and other relevant places of interest.\n\n+ Background music and the notebook can be used to determine if you [found all clues in a location](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/37259/is-there-any-way-to-tell-if-you-found-all-clues).\n+ Questioning involves a sequence of questions where responses must be answered with Truth, Doubt, or Lie (technically, the choices were developed as Coax, Force, and Lie which is more accurate). Doubt involves looking to see if they fidget, look away, or have a smirk on their face. Sometimes it's not seeing whether they lie but because you want to press on a statement and be more forceful. Lie is Doubt with contradictory evidence. Questioning system is fun although it has its quirks ([discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/51zkxz/la_noire_did_anyone_else_get_frustrated_with_the)): \n\n  + It can be unclear whether to take a statement as truth or to press on it. This might be due to the content of the statement itself, or the ambiguity of the facial expressions. \n  + The response you give after choosing a response may not be why you chose the response ([example](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1qnRv-fuxQ)).\n  + Even the idea of having objectively (in)correct responses is debatable. I could see a detective game in the future enable much more ambiguity (e.g., Pentiment), where there's no clear answer, only evidence that you stack up and try to nail the most likely suspect. I could also see AI be used to go beyond the linearity of choices.\n+ Failing is integral to the game due to player choice. You can fail questioning but still succeed in a case through other evidence. In fact, you can still fail a case and get on through the game; or otherwise restart the case over or quit immediately in order to restart a section.\n+ Cases vary significantly: murder investigation; stopping an ongoing bank robbery; person running away from a parole violation; first officer at a murder scene. Story missions themselves vary depending on Cole's department from police officer to police detective in traffic, vice, murder, and arson.\n\n  The homicide desk's cases are disappointing. You would think murder investigations would be the most varied and engaging given how they're the most popular in the genre. In this game, however, they're all almost exactly the same in order to lay down the an overarching plot of a serial killer and corruption. The goal is ambitious and unfortunately doesn't play out too well given the homogeneous episodic cases.\n\n  Same goes for the arson desk, which plays out like a drawn-out noire conspiracy mystery movie. It's by this point in the game that it jumps the shark and goes full-blown corruption and conspiracy instead of sticking to the episodic tales.\n\nOther parts of gameplay are standard to the Grand Theft Auto series: movement including vehicles; and gun-based combat including a cover system. The controls are intuitive and pretty smooth: for example, you need only hold the movement key to mantle, climb a pipe, or jump a ledge; and you tap A to tackle when you're close to the runaway. Combat system also includes melee brawling that's a streamlined improvement of GTA 4's: its core controls are swing, block (which doubly serves as a parry followed by a riposte if timed well), and grab.\n\nThere's a small progression system with Intuition up to a max of 5 per case. This lets you remove an answer during questioning, see the community's votes during questioning, or find all clues in an area.\n\nThe open world is a barren wasteland. It's worse than even the older GTA titles. The only interaction are scripted street crimes that you get called on when you're close to certain areas and landmarks that reward XP. The world is poorly designed, so it's better to simply fast travel everywhere (thankfully this is an option). The street crimes are storyless side content so they're not worth the tedium to both complete all of them and to have to drive around until you encounter them. They also tend to be too action-packed such as shoot outs that seem awkward for the immersion (a detective killing a dozen people during a shoot out as if it were Grand Theft Auto).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nFacial animations are astounding for its time. There's some uncanny valley at times but it works really well. The noire style is done well: including the black-and-white noire sign card at the beginning of cases, somber strings, and a brooding voice over about corruption.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can have your partner drive to a location (fast travel) rather than have to manually drive each time. This greatly alleviates LA Noire's empty open world. Like GTA 4, the fast travel also keeps the partner driving during any dialogue meant for the ride before performing the fast travel. This lets you still experience all the excellent dialogue in LA Noire.\n+ During questioning, you can press Start in order to see the full transcript of the conversation. You can also go to your investigation notebook, then look up to see the person of interest's reaction after their statement. This means you can see both their statement and reaction multiple times in order to collect your thoughts and make a more determined prediction of the right response.\n+ No game or story outcome for failing a case. I actually like this lack of player consequence. You can freely make choices and the only incentive to save scum is to get 5 stars on the case. Technically, you lose out on XP if you don't get a question correct, but you only need ranks for Intuition, and ranks are easy to max anyways.\n+ You can replay cases or go free roam to do street crimes for a given chapter. This makes for no missables and allows you to do street crimes at a later stage while not having to worry about scratching your car during cases or having to rely on manual drive.\n+ UI elements that are part of the game universe and not an external UI:\n  + Investigation notebook\n  + There's a waypoint, but unlike GTA 4, there isn't pathing provided for you. Instead, your partner can provide directions on the next turn whenever you ask for it. On top of making the minimap less gamified, this you rely less on staring at the minimap whenever you drive.\n+ You can ask your partner what to do next if you're stuck. It helps both in the assistance and in making your partner feel real and not a walking meatbag.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ If you're unsure between Doubt and Lie, you can choose Lie and then [back out](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/929170-la-noire/59202024) if you don't want to try to substantiate the specific claim Cole makes. There is no penalty.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You can't pause cutscenes. In fact, alt tabbing out and back in will skip the cutscene. So you have to be careful not to do anything else when a cutscene plays.\n+ No ability to save manually, including multiple save slots. The game saves automatically.\n+ Auto drive can lead to missable clues (e.g., [The White Shoe Slaying](https://lanoire.fandom.com/wiki/Case_Report), The Studio Secretary Murder) and missing time limits ([The Fallen Idol](https://www.reddit.com/r/lanoire/comments/qp4o40/does_letting_your_partner_drive_forfeit_time)) during certain cases. The Quarter Moon Murders also relies on you having found landmarks during manual drive. This is annoying because you don't know when you shouldn't use auto drive.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://lanoire.fandom.com)\n  + [Cases](https://lanoire.fandom.com/wiki/Cases)\n+ [PCGamingWiki](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/L.A._Noire)\n+ [Controls](https://strategywiki.org/wiki/L.A._Noire/Controls)\n+ [YouTube: All Bad Endings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X3wLGt4NYc). I watched this to see all the case failure cutscenes.\n\n__Version.__\nThere are three [versions](https://lanoire.fandom.com/wiki/L.A._Noire#Re-releases): original, complete edition, and enhanced edition. I played The Complete Edition on Steam which includes all [DLC](https://lanoire.fandom.com/wiki/Downloadable_content). There's a remastered edition released in 2017 for Switch, PS4, and Xbox One, and not on PC. From graphics comparisons between the remastered edition on console and the original on PC ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/lanoire/comments/79ocpx/loose_graphics_comparison_pc_vs_remaster)), there is not a significant difference.\n\n+ The PC is locked to 30 FPS. This can be resolved with community mods. Specifically, I installed the V-Patch which includes high resolution and borderless. Its FPS unlock setting causes certain sections in the game to be unplayable ([GitHub issue](https://github.com/VaanaCZ/LANVP/issues/4)); I disabled fps_unlock when this happened.\n+ The Xbox One controller doesn't work ([Steam discussion](https://steamcommunity.com/app/110800/discussions/0/1489992713698065952)). The game displays the mouse and keyboard controls during tutorial, only the controller button controls if I hold down a relevant button, and driving causes the camera to constantly spin around. Setting the controller to use [Steam Input](https://steamcommunity.com/app/110800/discussions/0/1489992713698065952/#c1621726179578883552) fixed the issue.\n\n__Playthrough.__\nI played on controller. The game was designed for console, and it shows. I generally used default settings but made some modifications, for example, Clue Music to Auto so that it turns off after I finish finding all clues in an area; and Aim Assist to Low.\n\nI played blind, not save scumming for any failures in order to take them in as part of the experience even if the questioning is poorly designed. I do look up the case on the wiki if I can't find the last clues in a location (otherwise I'd be searching forever myself since I know I'm missing a clue); and if a case doesn't perfectly so I can see what I missed.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/l-a-noire"},{"id":"322682678652597836","title":"League of Legends","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":94380,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["Riot Games"],"publishers":["Riot Games","Tencent Holdings","GOA Games Services Ltd."],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","MOBA"],"startedDate":"2010-06-30","completedDate":"2011-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/league-of-legends"},{"id":"8da3f662-367f-4cfd-b371-a9e07ded3cc1","title":"Lisa: The Painful","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Dingaling"],"publishers":["Serenity Forge"],"genres":["Platform","Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2023-07-22","completedDate":"2023-07-24","updatedDate":"2023-08-14","notes":"Lisa captures a certain charm: a quirky humor over a dark and depressing core. The writing, art assets, and soundtrack stand out most. It has two key detractors: tedious gameplay elements and somewhat gimmicky writing. The gameplay is standard for a turn-based RPG. \n\n__Story.__\nI love the dry quirky Earthbound humor, zany style, and its deeper themes in overcoming depression and addiction. The father-daughter relationship, and with a dilemma of selfishness vs the world at large, reminds me of Last of Us. This story is significantly darker though, including rape, child abuse, maiming, and you as a character torturing others.\n\nThe writing is decent. It can be gimmicky at times, such as [The Meaning of Life](https://lisa-rpg.fandom.com/wiki/The_Meaning_of_Life) and in its on-the-nose humor. Brad's backstory and its more subtle hints such as Marty's abuse and what happened to Lisa is  excellent. Other characters are effectively ignored from a story perspective. Great ending.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nCombat is fairly by the books for a turn-based RPG. Some notable mechanics include:\n\n+ SP vs TP.\n+ Attack vs support characters.\n+ Certain characters have a combo system.\n+ Joy and joy withdrawal. Ties to the story as well.\n\nBuild variety is largely derived from your party composition. There's some limited equipment upgrades as well.\n\nGame can be tediously difficult, with massive spikes, at times. There's a bit of savescumming in this game, whether intentional to mitigate disastrous outcomes, or as an effect of the game design such as retrying a boss fight until RNG is in your favor. I can see the designer almost intend for this difficulty to be this way as part of adding to the frustration in its world. But it makes playing the game a chore. This tedium arrives in its difficulty curve, permanent gameplay effects, and various events such as dojos (more gimmicky than funny).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nSoundtrack is excellent, lots of iconic tracks largely due to them being played so often in Moonmoon's stream. The pixel art is very much in style of Earthbound.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Permanent effects. Examples:\n  + When resting, there's a chance a party member abandons the party; or in one area, a raider may hit you in the head causing permanent reduction in stats.\n  + Brad loses a limb or you sacrifice a party member.\n  + Permanent kill moves from some enemies.\n  + Russian roulette.\n\n  I always have mixed opinions about permanent changes. A game with a 10 hour campaign is on the borderline of where it's designed like a replayable roguelike, so permanent changes are fine.\n+ Many party members are magazine currency dumps. There's not a quest behind them, just accumulate X amount of currency. Another common variation is to find a certain item.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Falling off a cliff is instant game over. Too punishing, and sometimes you actually do want to fall off and it's not always clear.\n+ Can't skip cutscenes. Particularly annoying when you want to reload because of some permanent effect fuckery that is annoying to play with.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://lisa-rpg.fandom.com)\n+ [Steam: LISA: The First, The Painful, The Joyful: The Complete Walkthrough](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=414777926)\n+ Tier lists\n  + [Reddit: Character tier list for Lisa: The Painful](https://www.reddit.com/r/lisathepainfulrpg/comments/9zk98q/character_tier_list_for_lisa_the_painful)\n  + [Reddit: My Party Member Tier List](https://www.reddit.com/r/lisathepainfulrpg/comments/b7gaba/my_party_member_tier_list_and_others_warning_bad)\n\nMotivated because I saw Moonmoon play this. And I love Earthbound.\n\n__Version.__ I played the Definitive Edition on Steam.\n\n__Playthrough.__ I played normal mode. [Pain mode](https://lisa-rpg.fandom.com/wiki/Pain_Mode) as slightly new content that would be better appreciated on a second playthrough. My playthrough was blind as largely recommended ([example](https://www.reddit.com/r/lisathepainfulrpg/comments/7p0l76/how_should_i_tackle_lisa_the_painful)), but I did look at the wiki in case I missed picking up a party member or location.\n\n+ Act 1 party: Brad, Terry, Nern, Olan\n+ Act 2-endgame party: Brad, Terry, Birdie, Nern\n  + Brad is a combo-bruiser, dealing attack damage or special attack damage with Fireball (a fire attack).\n  + Birdie has solid tackle attack damage for mobs. For bosses, Gasoline Spit oils up targets to take 350% more damage against fire attacks.\n  + Terry is generic DPS for mobs. For bosses, Hot Dance and Hottest Dance are powerful fire attacks, and he has a 100% heal. He sucks early game: before Hot Dance, he has Verbal Bash to debuff enemies with the Pissed status effect.\n  + Nern is generic DPS for mobs. For bosses, he is support to provide TP/SP to Birdie and Terry respectively, as well as heal HP.\n\nChoices:\n\n+ No joy. I chose this both for the lore and because I'm too lazy to micromanage a limited consumable.\n+ Sacrifice Brad's right arm.\n+ Russian Roulette: I sacrificed Rage.\n+ Did not kill Sticky and Rick.\n+ Sacrifice nipple.\n+ Lose all items,\n+ Empty Bottles: Used for a surplus of Firebombs (keep in stock roughly 5 at minimum), Diesel Firebombs (when available), or Bottle of Soup (maximum). I didn't use them, but in retrospect they would be best used early game as late game you have stronger attacks.\n\nI got all party members. I got Buckets (win russian roulette 10 times) and Clint Olympic (500 mags, skull town) but reloaded the game after getting them for the achievement. I also killed Satan.\n\nTODOs on future playthroughs\n+ joy route, different companions for main party","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/lisa-the-painful-definitive-edition"},{"id":"322682678650411596","title":"Little Nightmares","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["Stadia","PS4","Android","PC","iOS","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Tarsier Studios"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-08-07","completedDate":"2020-08-08","updatedDate":"2022-04-24","notes":"Little Nightmare's atmosphere and platforming amplifies the best of Limbo. It also introduces stealth elements with a diverse variety of monsters to bypass. I'm not a fan of the puzzles however, which although not as complex as Limbo, remain a core part of the gameplay loop. Its gameplay is fairly basic, but the ideas and execution of its horror are excellent.\n\n__Story.__ Simple premise executed for its purpose: escape from this warped hell. Imagery and story behind Little Nightmares is so much more interesting than Limbo's more basic storytelling.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Platforming with light stealth and puzzle solving. Unlike Limbo, I like the stronger emphasis on atmosphere and light platforming than puzzles (though there's still quite the amount). The platforming elements are basic but fun: I especially like its integration with the theme of the level: for example, climbing cabinet handles and grates. Animations especially give it a polish.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Art style is on point: photorealistic details, lighting, and backdrop, minimalistic sound design, like a 2.5D orphanage rendition of Limbo. Love the animations. Atmosphere is unsettling. Gorgeous boss designs. Horrific hunger bout scenes.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Cutting off the first monster's arms as you break the cage that holds the slider open.\n+ Onslaught of fat people.\n+ The eating scenes.\n+ Music and visual direction of the ending.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Hugging gnomes.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ It's not always clear what objects are interactable or climbable. This got me stuck quite a few times as I didn't know you can climb, e.g., chain links or swing on the rope to barely make your way through a time-based lock.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/little-nightmares"},{"id":"322682678650394188","title":"Mafia: Definitive Edition","originalTitle":"マフィア コンプリート・エディション","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":630,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Hangar 13"],"publishers":["2K"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-09-26","completedDate":"2020-09-27","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Mafia is a linear, cinematic action-adventure building on elements of Grand Theft Auto and similar to other games like Uncharted. Mafia most stands out in its story and polished presentation. Although not quite at the level of storytelling of its inspirations, Mafia still makes for a compelling 10-hour game as you adventure through Tommy's life. Gameplay elements are okay but get stale halfway through the game.\n\n__Story.__ The story is Mafia's most stellar aspect, truly feeling as polished as a gangster film. It clearly takes inspiration from Goodfellas and The Godfather. The characters stand out in their motivations. The in medias res feels unnecessary but works to provide narration. They're some characterization, particularly in the beginning, that works well. The novelty fades away however, and there isn't much more to substantiate Tommy's partner Sarah, his relationships with Paulie or Sam, or himself. You don't see much really driving the story forward except for the main plot element which is arguably less exciting than what the beginning offered in introducing the world-building and characters. Also kind of dumb that Tommy is the best driver, shooter, and money-maker in the gang.. mafias benefit from an ensemble cast and I wish Mafia benefited from delving more into supporting characters like Ralphie and Frank.\n\nThe Paulie death is heart-wrenching and played well to his misery although not unexpected given the stereotype of his character in other mob films. I think my biggest annoyance is that Tom decides to rob a bank just as an approach to cheer up his fellow brother. That seems so weird.. The underlying motivations from typical films of getting money to live a comfortable life and retire isn't as meaningful here because money isn't really mentioned; you sort of just assume everyone is well off once they're made men. Sam's motivation seems really weird too.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Third-person with basic controls for movement, driving, basic platforming, and shooting. The beat-em-up parts are pretty boring: dodge then hit combo. Roughly forgettable.\n\nLevel design is an open world like Arkham, Grand Theft Auto, or Yakuza. Interestingly, unlike any of those games, the city is devoid of any activity and is mostly just a setting for the linear quests. I think this is fine: no need for side quests and miscellaneous jobs.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics are gorgeous. Soundtrack is truly cinematic.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ You can turn on a speed limiter while driving. Lets you avoid driving like a madman.\n+ You can pause cutscenes. Increasingly more common, but good to have it such a cutscene-heavy game. Otherwise accidentally hitting a button and skipping, or not being able to multi-task, sucks.\n+ Cars in your garage will always be there even if you park it elsewhere. This is a nice qualify of life feature for a streamlined game like this.\n+ It's clear this game is a remake rather than original IP because of how few AAA stereotypes are the ingame: skill trees, upgrades, or equipment; there are still some collectibles and really basic stealth.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ You have both a minimap, map in the menu, and on-screen directions. I would prefer the minimap to not exist at all for maximal immersion. There aren't even options to alter HUD.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nMotivated to play as it's story-driven and seems like a fun linear, cinematic action-adventure. Adds some variety after my recent marathon of roguelikes. I played on Medium difficulty and 3/4 into the game while doing the climax to Morello I swapped to Easy difficulty; I don't have the patience for the combat. The game seems most designed for controller so I went with that.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mafia-definitive-edition"},{"id":"322682678652605004","title":"Mario Kart 64","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["Wii","N64","WiiU"],"studios":["Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development"],"publishers":["Nintendo","iQue"],"genres":["Racing","Arcade"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mario-kart-64"},{"id":"322682678652463692","title":"Marvel's Spider-Man","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["PS4"],"studios":["Insomniac Games"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-04-22","completedDate":"2019-04-24","updatedDate":"2023-07-01","notes":"Spider-Man is a cinematic action-adventure. It features engaging combat, a linear story connecting all the main villains, and sidequests rife with minigames. I especially love the overarching world based on Manhattan. Unfortunately, Spider-Man is also hampered by the occasional repetition with its beat-em-up mechanics and repetitive level designs, and not doing more with its open world and point A to point B levels in further fleshing out the city/environment.\n\n__Story.__ Standard cinematic fanfare that remains core to Spider-Man with a standard story, action and comedy. I think what works especially well is the band of characters, where Spider Man alone isn't the hero in many of the fights (and often fails). Yuri acts much like Batman's Commissioner Gordon. And damn that ending. It's a tragedy on both sides of Octavius and Aunt May. Although given the typical cinematic fanfare, I still really liked its ambition in going for such a soulful tragedy staying true to Spider Man's growth.\n\n__Levels/Environments.__ No Spider-Man game (or maybe video game overall) shows New York as much as this and recent Marvel Spider-Man films do. It's a linear and standard setting, from scene A to scene B and with no absolutely gorgeous areas and designs in particular or anything.\n\nThe semi-open world and linearity with side missions reminds me much of Yakuza. Spider-Man also nails exploration within the larger city well via backpack and landmark collectibles, which also add to the lore of Spider-Man and the city.\n\nI don't know how I feel about the agenda-pushing in this game and Marvel films overall: diversity cards with Asian-Americans and Black families, doing the right thing, and saluting police offers as heroes.\n\n__Gameplay.__ There are a handful of moves much like a fighting game, which can be mastered in an hour. The focus on aerial combat in particular reminds me of Devil May Cry. I wish there were a more Spider-Man-like mechanic for crowd control. I'm not a fan of the beat-em-up fighting game moveset.\n\nThey especially nailed the swinging mechanics to traverse from one city zone to the next. This includes your standard Swing with acceleration, Web Zip for sharp turns, Wall Run, and Zip to Point and Point Launch for low-height buildings like those in Hell's Kitchen and Greenwich Village.\n\nEnemies are generic beat-em-up types. I do love how they included many iconic Spider Man villains into the game though.\n\nProgression with XP and Tokens for Suits, a Skill Tree, and Gadgets is very much like Insomniac's Ratchet and Clank. They do progression systems well where it's not a grindfest or too complicated.\n\n__Aesthetics/Sound.__ Good.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ I think the action sequences with Triangle as a special generic button and sometimes Square at cutscenes fits the cinematic action-adventure game well.\n+ The hallugenic level with Scorpion is really fun. Clearly innovative in environment (not just more urban cityness) and allowing Spider-Man mechanics to explore more freely the traversal.\n+ The camera feature is iconically Spider Man and really well-done, from the camera as a mode to not restrict typical movement and slowing down speed so you can easily take a picture.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Other playable characters: Mary Jane and Miles. I did really like the level where you play as Mary Jane and Spider Man backs you up though. That's really cool in highlighting new Spider Man mechanics by letting you experience the sidekick role. Same when MJ gets a Taser. It's literally a stealth game.\n+ Minigames like the circuit, spectograph, and descrambling. I get that minigames can be a fun diversity addition as they are in Ratchet and Clank. I don't know about these ones though.\n+ Stealth appears occasionally and feels like yet another fun-but-barely-servicable feature to the game.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/spider-man-ps4/\n\nMotivated to play this as a PS4 exclusive; Insomniac making new IP since Ratchet and Clank; and nostalgia of previous Spider-Man games on PlayStation. I beat the game and did not get 100% on all Tokens, Skills, and Secrete Photos; got 80% total Campaign progress when completing game. This entry does not include the DLC of 3 chapters, The City That Never Sleeps. I did not play it as I heard lukewarm opinions. Note if I did play it, I would evaluate it as a separate entry.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/marvels-spider-man-the-heist"},{"id":"322682678624176716","title":"Mass Effect","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":1020,"studios":["BioWare"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2021-05-13","completedDate":"2021-05-15","updatedDate":"2022-05-01","notes":"Mass Effect is an action RPG that blends well the CRPG elements of progression, questing, world building, and level design like that of KOTOR and Deus Ex with the real-time combat mechanics of third-person shooters like Gears of War. Like KOTOR, Mass Effect truly works well as a hybrid to define the action RPG genre.\n\nFlaw-wise, the combat is subpar on multiple fronts: enemy AI requiring any novelty to overcome, friendly AI, and equipment. Sidequests are also often not good: the galaxy map outside the main zones are empty areas reusing assets and with little to do besides accumulating collectibles. The dialogue wheel is Mass Effect's worst influence on the genre. The characters also have little depth compared to its RPG titans, with less time to really provide their input.\n\n__Story.__ The overall saga and worldbuilding is good, though compared to space operas in literature Mass Effect is highly overrated and is only good compared to the average writing quality in video games. As an original IP, it's quite astonishing how much depth they're able to place with its races, galaxies, and characters. It's less derivative than the Dragon Age series for example. The main crew is not as memorable as other main Bioware companions like in Dragon Age or KOTOR unfortunately: they're just not enough depth to make them stand out, enough companion missions, and other integrations to the gameplay.\n\n__Gameplay.__ It's an action RPG with third-person shooting, talent trees and dialogue, and with Bioware's signature elements: for example, a morality system, branching dialogue options, companions, and multiple playable classes. Like other Bioware games, Mass Effect 1 features semi-open level designs where areas are large and incentivize exploration but aren't so large that they're empty or make traversal tedious with artificial collectibles---a common symptom of open-world RPGs and a symptom in Mass Effect's non-main planets. These elements all work very well. Minigame-like mechanics of the Mako and hacking also provide variety.\n\n[The third-person shooting is serviceable but not stellar.](https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/5eucr3/comment/dafcmrd) Enemy variety, but enemy AI (friendly AI included) is dumb, making the game not particularly difficult requiring tactics or any build optimization as enemies just run straight to you at best: you can safely hide behind cover. Equipment variety is also severely lacking with little difference within a gun type. Higher difficulties just wind up the imbalance where many enemies barely hurt you, rockets and lasers one-shot you, and you can still immediately CC with biotic/tech abilities.\n\nMass Effect pioneered the dialogue wheel which I dislike over traditional dialogue options. It's too streamlined in its dialogue options, often with fewer options, stock investigate and positive/neutral/negative options; and it doesn't outline the actual dialogue reply. For example, unlike other dialogue-heavy RPGs, there's no negotiation around rewards, and Mass Effect's Charm has much less influence in taking different paths to complete a quest than Bloodlines; doesn't influence your companion's approval of you like Dragon Age; or have faction-like ramifications like Fallout: New Vegas.\n\nSystem-wise, there are levels with XP, talent points, a morality system, companion loyalty (no approval score), and inventory management with equipment and removable upgrades. Abilities rely purely on cooldowns with no mana/stamina bar. I particularly like the healing system where built further in DA Inquisition, it's a consumable. This is as opposed to relying on a specific party member for heals, restricting party composition variety; same goes for grenades as you're not pressured to hoard them. As biotics form magic powers, I like its emphasis on crowd control with your gun still required for damage. Like KOTOR, the rogue-like equivalent of hacking isn't very good unfortunately.\n\nControls are simple and intuitive. Unlike Dragon Age, I like the option of a sprint. With the real-time focus, the use of no pause and instead Q/E to direct your squad members with C to pull back works well. There is no tactics system like Dragon Age to finely control your squad's actions, and the game is considerably less tactical in favor of real-time combat and relying on party AI. The contextual HUD also works well for immersion, keeping a radar-like minimap which solves a pervasive issue in Dragon Age 2 where you focus too much on the minimap.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The graphics are quite gorgeous. You can really see the new detail and lighting with the Legendary Edition. Face animations are stilted and there's still quite a bit of jank such as overlapping voices when skipping dialogue lines. Not unexpected for a 2007 game. With Legendary Edition, certain details have their typical age, and it can be somewhat jarring seeing photorealistic detail on certain scenes and blocky textures in another. The skin-tight outfits especially on all the females, is weird. Soundtrack is suitable for a space opera. John Shephard's voice acting was stilted. Areas are noticeably reused unfortuantely.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ In Legendary Edition, you can mark items as junk and sell all as junk at the vendor.\n+ Companion banter. Something Dragon Age would significantly increase and integrate as part of regular gameplay instead of elevator talk.\n+ Quest markers are only marked if they're in the present area; they don't highlight what area to go next. I like that this provides some quest direction, but not so much like in modern streamlined RPGs that you just follow waypoints and skip reading any quest text. For similar reasons, questgivers aren't explicitly marked on the map. This encourages you to explore the full area instead of just following the minimap and ignoring non-marked up areas.\n+ In Legendary Edition, Mako no longer receives half XP, so you're not pressured to exit Mako everytime for combat.\n+ In Legendary Edition, you can sprint and similarly on the Mako to make traversal just a bit less tedious.\n+ There's enough item variety, and one saving grace of the fact there's enough of the same item with little variety, that you don't need to constantly unequip squad members to have the best gear for your current party. This is a huge quality of life compared to many other RPGs.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ You automatically get loot after an enemy encounter. No need to loot individual corpses. Similarly in the name of action, you don't need to swap to a squad member to hack.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Galaxy map. While it's realistic that you can't land on every planet, the HUD is atrocious. You have to click on every planet to see which is landable rather than simply filtering to know where you can land beforehand. There's also no way to track which ones you've already visited, or which ones still have things to collect.\n+ The various bugs. None were game-breaking but twice I ran into massive FPS drops from 144 to being stuck at 20, [sometimes even 5 FPS](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1328670/discussions/0/5002914669826292436).\n+ The collectible sidequests. Artificially inflates playtime.\n+ Limited graphics options.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Mass Effect Wiki](https://masseffect.fandom.com)\n+ [System Guide](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Mass_Effect_System_Guide), [Assignments](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Assignments), [Reddit: Important sidequests](https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/3thxm8/bestmost_important_mass_effect_1_unc_side_quests/cx6xw2d)\n+ [Adept Guide](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Adept_Guide), [Adept Leveling Guide](https://bsn.boards.net/thread/2286/me1-basic-adept-leveling-guide), [Squad Member Builds](https://bsn.boards.net/thread/8321/squadmate-build-compendium-effect-edition)\n+ [Medi-gel and Grenade capacity upgrades](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Equipment#Medi-gel_and_Grenade_Upgrades)\n\nI played the remaster Legendary Edition on PC which includes all DLC. I played on Veteran difficulty, which is the highest in the base game for a first playthrough. Mass Effect doesn't have a high skill ceiling, so you may as well play what it's designed for. I completed many sidequests (assignments, especially the important ones) and skipped most planets' \"Galaxy-Wide Assignments\" as they're repetitive, defining one of Mass Effect 1's weakest elements. For posterity, systems that I didn't fully explore are clustered top-right: starting from bottom, Hades Gamma, Voyager Cluster, Maroon Sea, Styx Theta, Hawking Eta, Pangaea Expanse, Kepler Verge, Sentry Omega, Armstrong Nebula. I modified a few controls: Crouch to C, 678 as RTY, Tab as Squad.\n\nI played Bastion Adept class. Adept, Soldier, and Infiltrator are the most popular: Soldier is a bit too standard run-and-gun and doesn't use Mass Effect's unique gameplay with biotics or tech, and I'm not currently interested in a one-shot-kill sniper class. Adept is most OP in Mass Effect 1 because biotics bypass shields. I tended to Paragon. Unlike KOTOR's Jedi vs Sith or DA2's rivalry, Renegade is too one-bit as an unlikeable douchebag (particularly in later ME titles). Fortunately there isn't content like quests gated by a morality rating except Charm level, so I didn't feel obligated to always go Paragon; I just roleplayed as a rational Shephard.\n\nBuild-wise, I chose them somewhat ad hoc for Shepard and all squad members. Early game I focused on Charm, Lift, Singularity, Barrier, Pistols; I didn't use a Bonus talent. At the maximum character level of 60 (30 in Legendary Edition), you get 181 total skill points, which is almost enough to max out all 8 skills plus Bonus Power via 21 each so it doesn't matter too much endgame.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mass-effect--1"},{"id":"322682678624144972","title":"Max Payne","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2012,"startedDate":"2021-09-16","completedDate":"2021-09-18","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Max Payne is a solid action shooter with a decent story and which particularly innovated with its Bullet Time mechanic. Dodging bullets and using Bullet Time to quickly kill mobs of enemies is a great feeling that ages well even in 2021.\n\nGameplay is fairly repetitive and you've pretty much seen all the game has to offer by the first Part. There aren't new mechanics or enemies.\n\n__Story.__ The narration works well to provide context behind the gameplay. I especially like the comic style to do this. It's a classic film noir: undercover cop going after a drug story, but I still enjoyed it as a setting for the gameplay.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Max Payne's claim to fame is its Bullet Time mechanic, alongside shootdodge as a unique dodge ability for shooters. Playing in 2021, Bullet Time works particularly well as a way to enable guns in a world that would otherwise cause more passive cover shooting mechanics. It's also nice to see the last enemy in a mob be killed in slow-mo. Bullet Time enhances an otherwise serviceable shooter.\n\nMax Payne has good linear level design with a variety in settings. But it has mediocre weapon and enemy variety. There are indeed many weapons in Max Payne but there's often not really a reason to switch up your choice of weapon. I generally favored Dual Beretta and Dual Uzi. Shotguns are less forgivable as missing a shot meant getting punished as fire rate is low and you have to reload; and enemies may not be close enough. With high fire rate weapons, you benefit from enemy stagger. I resort to Desert Eagle when low on ammo on my favored weapons: I like that a well-placed headshot with one bullet is sufficient to down an enemy. So a Desert Eagle plays the opposite of a high fire rate low damage weapon.\n\nControls are simple and intuitive. They're not unlike other PC shooters like Half-Life, including a Quick-save and Quick-load option.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Developed during the beginnings of 3D shooters, the textures and polygon count certainly doesn't age well.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The dot cross hair. I love precise aim in shooters.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Bosses are rather annoying bullet sponges.\n+ There's a bit of reliance on savescumming as a shotgun enemy can one-shot you.\n+ The game requires setup to play in 2021. You need a [sound fix](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Max_Payne#Missing_audio). Widescreen requires a [fix for the stretched resolution](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Max_Payne). Windowed requires [-skipstartup -window](https://steamcommunity.com/app/12140/discussions/0/1621724915792340876) and Borderless Gaming doesn't work. To play at my favored low sensitivity, I had to set to 400 DPI and use the lowest ingame sensitivity. There are no subtitle options. [Part III's nightmare sequence is also broken.](https://steamcommunity.com/app/12140/discussions/0/224446432330178053)\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nMotivated by a [GmanLives video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuNbIm3PswA), I played with the [First Person Payne mod](https://www.moddb.com/mods/first-person-payne). It integrates into the game well with little jank beside the occasional moving body part and needing to swap out during the nightmare levels. I played a little in the vanilla third-person but I greatly prefer the first person viewpoint as it improves aiming and immersion for such an action-heavy game (like a Doom-like F.E.A.R.). Surprisingly, even shootdodge still works well in first person. I keybinded Bullet Time only on RMB and Shootdodge on Shift so I can control when to use which. With Bullet Time Combo, strafing would always Shootdodge when you only want to do it at specific times."},{"id":"322682678652617292","title":"Mega Man X","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1993,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["iOS"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Apple"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mega-man-x--1"},{"id":"322682678652488268","title":"Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","PC","X360","XONE"],"studios":["Kojima Productions"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Shooter","Tactical","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-02-02","completedDate":"2019-02-02","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Loved the introduction. Felt not only cinematic but extremely well-polished in its musical crescendos and visual effects. The graphics don't feel like it's 2014 at all! The bomb in Paz scene is horrific: no aesthetics, close-ups with gore, music.\n\nMost of my comments about the gameplay and other mechanics are in Phantom Pain as they're the same.\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\n+ http://www.wsgf.org/dr/metal-gear-solid-v-ground-zeroes/en. Unfortunately it doesn't seem compatible with the Japanese version of the game. So I can either have the Japanese audio or the right to 21:9 full resolution with easy alt-tabbing (otherwise I would fullscreen 2560x1440 to exit the game, and that causes stretched graphics; the borderless option is not really borderless although moving it to a new Windows desktop works). This seems fixed fortunately in Phantom Pain.\n\nI only played the base game. I complete only a handful of the side missions as it seemed like unnecessary fluff to a game that is essentially a teaser for the big release. To get all the bonuses for Phantom Pain, I just grabbed someone else's 100% save state (https://www.reddit.com/r/MetalGearSolidV_PC/comments/3j0q18/metal_gear_solid_5_ground_zeroes_100_save_game/).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/metal-gear-solid-v-ground-zeroes"},{"id":"342925433838240337","title":"Metal: Hellsinger","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PC","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["The Outsiders"],"publishers":["Level Infinite","Funcom"],"genres":["Shooter","Music","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-09-17","completedDate":"2022-09-28","updatedDate":"2022-09-28","notes":"Hellsinger is effectively a more polished BPM across enemy design, an actual campaign with levels, weapon variety, and soundtrack with tracks from acclaimed modern metalheads like System of a Down singer Serj Tankian and Trivium. It's an interesting spin, like a what if scenario where Doom is designed with modern metal and not 90s thrasher metal.\n\n__Story.__\nBland. Cutscenes are also cheap in the generic visual novel style of single frames.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nGuns are all quite fun. Enemy variety is one of the game's best strengths in order to make it truly appealing as a retro shooter. Level design is somewhat generic. Repetitive bosses are extremely annoying. The game would be better without them altogether.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nGraphics are fairly standard for a bullet shooter but quite good for an indie game. It's the soundtrack that really stands out, carrying stellar vocalists across mainstream modern rock bands.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/metal-hellsinger"},{"id":"0f0e9c68-bb69-4715-9f4b-cf1262b4334d","title":"Metroid: Zero Mission","originalTitle":"メトロイド ゼロミッション","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["GBA","WiiU"],"studios":["Nintendo R&D1"],"publishers":["Nintendo","iQue"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-07-14","completedDate":"2021-07-15","updatedDate":"2023-08-26","notes":"Zero Mission is a definitive remake of the original, wiping away many of the original's more tedious elements to make a polished and smooth experience.\n\nFlaw-wise, Zero Mission still features quite the amount of annoying backtracking, and the explicit objective markers in Zero Mission show just how many redundant areas you have to traverse. Zero Mission significantly reduces the amount of confusing parts of where to go next, but you can still get stuck once in a while.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I greatly enjoy Zero Mission's quality of life improvements, which without make the original NES game arguably unplayable. For example: there is a map including save rooms and map rooms; objective markers and slightly more linear level design making the game less confusing to wander; you can crouch and shoot as well as shoot diagonally (including while standing still with shoulder buttons similar to Super Metroid), making fighting enemies more approachable; and movement speed and shooting is faster (borrowing from Metroid Fusion); and objective completion leads to a recharge of enemy levels.\n\nLevels are somewhat mazelike, with many secret bottom corridors and walls to break. The unlocking of powers to get to new areas is somewhat intuitive with the great help of the objective marker. In the original Metroid, there are no Save Rooms, and Zero Mission also doesn't include Warp Rooms like Castlevania SOTN.\n\nAll of Samus' unlocked powers naturally increases your moveset, and it all feels like natural upgrades. Samus' attacks are unique for an action platformer, and playing in 2021, you can still feel its originality: for example, the Beam and its upgrades like Ice Beam and Warp Beam, Morph Ball and its Bombs, and Missiles. They can even be used in [pretty cool combinations](https://metroid.fandom.com/wiki/Special_Actions) such as bomb jumping.\n\nUnlike Castlevania SOTN, there are no RPG mechanics with leveling and equipment. And Zero Mission significantly benefits without them as there's no imbalanced difficulty curve and no need for grinding. Combat itself is fairly spammy---just point in the right direction---so there's less interesting strategy here compared to the timing and positioning of attacks in Castlevania. Instead, the unlocked powers serve as permanent upgrades which go beyond stat increases, and like Castlevania SOTN, you still get health/mana (in Metroid, missile) capacity increases.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Zero Mission inherits the NES' iconic soundtrack. The updated graphics are much appreciated, with 16-bit sprites more reminiscent of Super Metroid, and with the pixellation carrying a signature Gameboy Advance look.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played as it's a remake of the original with improved quality of life features like a map, gameplay, and graphics. I played on the mGBA emulator.\n\nI played on Normal difficulty. Given the remake's quality of life additions, I played blind and avoided savescumming.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/metroid-zero-mission"},{"id":"328717242010174033","title":"Mini Healer","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Sad Doge"],"publishers":["Sad Doge"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-09-08","completedDate":"2022-09-12","updatedDate":"2022-10-13","notes":"I mostly played a HoT druid-like build.\n\nI might play it again when it exits Early Access.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mini-healer"},{"id":"322682678650365516","title":"Monster Hunter: World","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":2850,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-08-08","completedDate":"2020-08-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Monster Hunter World shines in its monster quests: from preparation and crafting to hunting to rich combat with fantastical beasts. Core combat mechanics are deep in large movesets and weapon variety. Progression system works well with crafting and incentivizes exploration in levels.\n\nFlaw-wise, I wish the game were more challenging in terms of punishing mistakes. Part of this is that unlike Soulsborne games, MHW is more about endurance through a long battle. But I think this style could be made tense: Slay the Spire/Darkest Dungeon are punishing and the major mechanics also lay in macromanagement. I don't prefer this slowness in combat, from enemy moves to your movement and attack speed. I also greatly prefer minimal movesets over MHW's fighting game-style weapon combos.\n\n__Story.__ Apparently a rehash across all entries of the series in the same way Pokemon always tells the same story. It's basic and serviceable. The silent protagonist irks me.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Combat-wise, Monster Hunter World's most unique and interesting elements are: deep weapon movesets and weapon variety, the preparation stage of combat (including monster research, equipment and item loadout, food); movement speed and actions available when sheathed vs unsheathed; resharpening your weapon; recoverable health; potion effectiveness depending on standing or walking; monster mounting mechanic. Combat controls use a fighting game-like moveset with a variety of combos. I don't like this needless complexity, but it's great that after reading online, there is a convergence of just a handful of combos to execute for most weapons. MHW also features strong core mechanics: for example, health and stamina bars, dodge, deliberate timing in weapon moveset execution and enemy attacks; location-based weaknesses on an enemy; environment interaction during monster fights.\n\nMonsters are effectively boss fights taking place over the full level. In the preparation stage, you examine monster research, equipment and item pouch loadout, cooking. In the hunting stage, enemies patrol and you track and hide from them, gathering monster tracks and the like by following your scoutflies. Exploration is incentivized by tracking monsters, collecting items such as gathering and mining, befriending Grimalkynes, talk to First Wyverians. I like the way scoutflies balance exploring to find tracks/items to pick of interest vs automatically showing you where all the monsters are on the minimap as you level up. In the combat stage, it plays like an endurance race. I don't like how this combined with the lack of enemy stagger (on most attacks) often makes the bosses spongey where you need to smack at the enemy for a while. The multiple stages in fleeing and running, enemy moveset, and damaged enemy parts alleviates this a bit.\n\nShops/NPC pitstops are Canteen, Forge, Quest Board, Resource Center, Ecological Research, Provisions Stockpile.\n\nProgression system notably has a lack of RPG tropes like player levels (hunter ranks are meaningless), stat points, and skill trees.\n\nThere are multiple mission types: main mission, optional (side quests), investigations (typically to farm certain monsters so you get bonus rewards), online events, and expeditions (free roam mode). Resource Center has bounties you can complete as additional objectives across missions. Each mission falls into a few different base formulas to keep it diverse: monster hunting, monster catching, escort, fetching items, deliverying items, complete deliveries to set up camps (in resource center).\n\nCrafting system lets you upgrade weapon and armor, as well as combine ingredients to concoct items. Auto-crafting is a great mechanic.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics in the detail, environments, and facial animations are all great. Lip syncing is awful. Only partially voiced.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Fainting's \"death penalty\" is forgiving. There's only a limit for missions, and it only reduces the Zenny reward and food buffs. No dropped items, item durability, or currency.\n+ Like Soulsborne games, you can't pause the game.\n+ You can downgrade (most) weapons and get all materials back. Makes crafting zero cost.\n+ It's always better to capture than kill monsters, when possible.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ The HUD is so busy.\n+ You can't save and quit during a quest or expedition. At least with Soulsborne you could do this.\n+ Missions have a 60 second return timer once you complete them.\n+ Game only autosaves after you complete a quest. It should save before you start one too, as otherwise you lose out on all that preparation and post-quest bookkeeping if you quit on the new quest.\n+ The level mechanics of scoutflies are convoluted though with an unexplained split of scoutfly levels (which is a max of 4 levels across monsters and can decrease) and research (which provides monster information, and never decreases).\n+ Mission objectives, particularly in Optional quests, don't outline very well where objectives you need to gather are located. This is fine for capture/slay quests, where hunting is part of the fun. It's not fun however to parse the obscure map to find the necessary quest objective to loot an item.\n+ MHW is the most streamlined of the series, but it still omits lots of details in explaining mechanics.\n+ Lock aim is dog shit. Free aim works well and fine in this game, so the feature should just be removed.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nThis video analyzing MHW’s combat inspired me to play the game. It adds a bunch of interesting ideas to the table beyond what innovators in the genre like Dark Souls, Devil May Cry, and Sekiro have established. To motivate myself to get into the hurdle of Monster Hunter’s depth, it helped to 1. think of the lore as an new world+guild entrypoint like Toriko the manga; 2. start blind, and learn strategies by reading online after I get acquainted with the basics; 3. easy to eventually go deep into like I did recently for another series (Divinity).\n\nI played with Japanese audio and English text as the game was developed in Japan. I played with controller. I tried to play blind, but resorted to guide whenever I got stuck for too long and wanted some guidance on quest order. Cosmetics-wise, my hunter uses the Geralt-like gruff middle-aged  man preset, and my Palico uses default appearance (named nil and Palico). Quest-wise, I prioritized in order: optional quests that unlock a new mechanic (have a chat bubble), main quests on equal or lower hunter rank, and optional quests to grind hunter rank. I only did investigations for farming; and only select events.\n\nBuild-wise, I first tried the Longsword as my weapon of choice. This was because I prefer a Dark Souls-style DEX build to start things off as it prioritizes positioning, enemy movesets. In contrast, for example, Dual Blades is fairly attack-spammy; and Great Sword is very slow. I chose Chainmail as my starting equipment for aesthetics; I deliberately avoided the Guardian alpha+ and Defender weapons so I could complete base game at its original pace before Iceborne. I swapped to Great Sword as I didn't like the Spirit meter management. Following recommendations online, I upgraded equipment and weapons willy-nilly as I got crafting materials as they're not really used in endgame anyways. I stopped playing the game after the main mission of hunting Diablos.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/monster-hunter-world"},{"id":"322682678652461644","title":"Mortal Kombat 11","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch","Stadia"],"studios":["NetherRealm Studios"],"publishers":["Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Fighting"],"startedDate":"2019-04-24","completedDate":"2019-04-25","updatedDate":"2023-09-15","notes":"Mortal Kombat 11 is the best Mortal Kombat in fighting mechanics, story, and aesthetics. I love the cinematic feeling of the 5-hour story mode. It blends nicely with the fight scenes like an interactive film. Gameplay-wise, the moveset is top notch and with many iconic playable characters. The environments and cosmetics like character models and brutality of the fights are on-point.\n\nMortal Kombat 11's major flaw is the grind in Tower and Crypt modes (which are the major modes in the game outside the 5 hour Story mode and online PvP). The system is predatory, designed to keep you playing the game to accumulate currency or otherwise avoid losing them on certain purchases by obtaining them alternatively with real money (e.g., skins, easy fatalities). And who would do all that grind for a fighting game of all genres!? Tower mode has locked towers and characters, and enemies are stronger than usual and with ludicrous RNG modifiers ([discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/MortalKombat/comments/bgeeku/im_sorry_but_i_have_to_post_this_i_was_watching)). You can't progress without leveling from easier Towers, equipment augments and consumables from chests in the Krypt, daily bonuses, weekly bonuses, and Race against Time bonuses. While crypts are not lootboxes in that you can purchase them with real money, they remain in-game RNG as the item locations are random; this makes it take longer to get 100% until you're able to accumuilate enough currency to open all 600 chests. Moreover, Crypt mode is a walking simulator---it is needless time to even find the appropriate chests to open. How cool would this game be with just three modes: Story, (online and offline) Multiplayer, and Arcade (Tower of Time); where unlocks should done by furthering appropriately in each mode, without the need for any currency in the game.\n\n__Story.__ Story is as convoluted yet fun as Mortal Kombat always has been. I especially love how this games ties in the older generation of characters with the new one. Liu Kang hasn't been a hero as Mortal Kombat's poster child since MK4, and he takes front stage while also not so much that it detracts from other's heroic deeds. To the best of my limited knowledge, this is the best story of the series.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Boy are fighting games complicated. There are four core attack moves, one for each arm and leg, a block, and a grab button. Then there are counters, special moves, environment cues, combos, fatal blows, fatalities/brutalities. I already have trouble remembering the diversity of attacks, let alone master how to time and when to use them. I think much of this is justified as it adds complexity that simply weak/strong attacks from, e.g., Dark Souls cannot provide.\n\n__Aesthetics/Sound.__ Game is beautifully rendered. I love the character models and environments. The fatalities and gory attacks are all awesome.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Women being more fully clothed. There's a lot of controversy on this, where it's fair for Mortal Kombat to exhibit skimpily-dressed women similar to Dead or Alive as it's part of its core appeal. I actually don't think so as much as it's more about the gory combat. In this case, I think the women's costumes are well-done like Kitana's and Skarlet's. Kitana does look a little too close to the many Asian ninjas already in the game though, and her original costume is more exotic and fitting to Edenia in Outworld (albeit could be done to be less middle-easterny). This version of Kitana is my waifu (and suspiciously like an ex..).\n+ I'm always a fan of the diversity of characters in demographic region, sex, and their cultures (particularly Asians).\n+ I love all the signature moves and quotes (\"Get over here!\", \"Your soul is mine!\").\n+ So happy for Liu Kang and Kitana's happy ending. Don't recall that ever happening before; they finally did it!\n+ The opening banter between every pair of characters.\n+ The fatalities. Wow are they fun.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ There's a lot of Cassie Cage ass shots in this game. Like disproportionately to any other female character most of which have zero.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Krypt mode (not unique to Mortal Kombat 11). It feels unnecessary to have a walking simulator in order to loot items. I don't get the purpose of having this aside from extending the length of the game.\n+ DRM is always-on even in single player mode, requiring you be online to accumulate any currency.\n+ Microtransactions and multiple different currencies: Koins, Hearts, Soul Fragments, Time Crystals. It definitely feels like they added complexity to purposefully confuse players and distract them from real cash.\n+ Tower mode's story seemed a little unnecessary given the grand production values of story mode. I like that they kept the fighting game's tradition of per-character stories. But a narrated picture book is not what I had in mind. It feels like a cheap experience.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Youtube: Story summary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDII_QKoNEQ)\n\nMotivated to play this game because of the release date, nostalgia, haven't played a fighting game in a while, and am curious what the recent reboots are like given the high praise since Mortal Kombat 9 (2011) by the same developers. NetherRealm Studios' respawned the whole franchise and including Injustice as a spinoff.\n\nI'm not a fan of fighting games overall because of their complicated movesets and 2D levels with little environmental interaction. I prefer combat like Dark Souls; a closer analogy could even be Dragon Ball Tenkaichi Budokai where the levels are 3D.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mortal-kombat-11-kombat-pack"},{"id":"63cb2d66-b09c-49d3-9b76-7a6ce182b106","title":"Mouthwashing","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5","Switch"],"studios":["Wrong Organ"],"publishers":["Critical Reflex","Fangamer"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2026-08-15","completedDate":"2026-08-15","updatedDate":"2026-08-16","notes":"Things I enjoyed:\n+ Walking backwards to get out of an area keeping my POV straight like Orpheus' myth.\n+ The gun battle stalking.\n+ Nonlinear narrative with the freeze cuts and TAKE RESPONSIBILITY frames.\n+ Decent writing.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mouthwashing"},{"id":"322682678651439692","title":"Nier: Automata","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":1260,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["PlatinumGames","Square Enix Business Division 6"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"startedDate":"2019-10-13","completedDate":"2019-10-17","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Nier stands out as an action RPG with a great bleak story, hack-and-slash and bullet hell mechanics, progression system, and soundtrack. The transitions from hack-and-slash to minigame-like mechanics are especially notable in breaking up the gameplay. The open world, side quests, voice acting, enemy design, and overall level design are serviceable.\n\nOn weaknesses, Nier's most significant are twofold: 1. its Hard difficulty is unforgiving, with enemy attacks that aren't well-telegraphed and possible to see in the visual chaos that defines Nier's combat. With the generous iframes for Evade, you often spend battles Evade spamming while your ranged does the bulk of the DPS. Even Dark Souls doesn't have that in addition to many enemies one-shotting you. 2. Route B is too repetitive, playing more like a mandatory new game plus. It's a nice concept but gimmicky in practice. Even Route C has too many reused assets. It would be preferable if they condensed these two routes instead of diluting the playtime.\n\n__Story.__ Given Yoko Taro's reputation, the plot is surprisingly better than I thought it would be! The overall Nier-Drakengard universe is ridiculous (see any youtube summary). But Nier Automata's plot fits well by itself, particularly in the plot twists and despite the many plot holes. I also like the ambition in the different endings, particularly with different perspectives to the same story and with a total of 3 playable characters. And the ambition in its bleakness, almost like an Evangelion conclusion (but without the great depth in the characters and plot development to back up the ending). Pascal selling his village's body parts. ROFL.\n\nUnfortunately, the redundancy in route B is bad as it's largely the same for the most hours as it's from 9S' perspective with new sidequests, making players think Ending A is literally most of the game but arguably worse as the gameplay differences are minor and matter most in removing your Heavy Attack (https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/69wq47/when_people_think_they_finished_nierautomata/dhaesh3/). There are many gaps in the plot that are more a sign of forgetfulness than being purposefully left out.\n\nThe characters aren't as well-written as the fans say there are. I can't recall a single unique interaction or dynamic that defines character relationships. 2B acts like a mix of Rei Ayanami and Motoko Katsunagi, etc.\n\nThe themes are depicted amateurly at times, like what defines humanity via robots, existentialism, etc. As an AI researcher, the way fiction deals with this (especially as is common in Japanese pseudo-science fiction like Stein's Gate and Psycho Pass) is naive and trite. I find I enjoy it more flippantly as if it were a mere setting for anime characters to do their thing. It seems common for 2010-2020 anime fans to find these \"deep\". Take the Animal Care quest for example. \"[After a laborious fetch quest to get medicine] Having bodies seems so inconvenient. I wonder why one should have one. But at least they're warm.\", sending the implication that there's a tenderness to human fragility. But that's actually not true. You can make robots have soft skin and be warm too. That's just a combination of texture and expending energy. Similarly, I find it strange how much Nier Automata has to anthropomorphize everything, and make some artificial distinction among the levels of consciousness in Pods, Machines, and Androids.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Nier gameplay is a mix of hack and slash, bullet hell, and a variety of minigame like mechanics such as 2D platforming and flight as it changes up the game to keep the gameplay options diverse. The diversity is what keeps it from growing stale albeit it does in routes B and C (~20 playtime hours in). 9S can hack and control enemy units. You can play albeit briefly as a robot and later, Pascal. Then 9S as himself in the hacking zone. Cutscenes on the loading screen. Joke endings. etc.\n\nI also like the core combat mechanics of weak attack, strong attack, their variety based on press vs hold, and their occasional variety based on what other weapon is equipped; ranged weak and strong attack (I also like that Hard and Very Hard don't have lock-on, which I find to add too much to my mental model of controls); and evade. The use of ranged and melee reminds me of God of War. The fast running with evade feels awesome. I love just navigating the world and platforming. I love how balanced the game is in incentivizing ranged vs melee. I love how the flight sections borrow most combat elements from the hack and slash. The combat is not deep---there is no backstab/parry/riposte, well-designed enemy movesets, dodges are spammable, you can get by often with just ranged DPS---but it works well enough to remain fun.\n\nNier features RPG progression mechanics, upgrading your weapons, pod, and chipset. I especially like the chipset upgrade system. It's unique to Nier's style and it adds a surprising amount of customizability in changing builds for material farming, speed running, leveling up fast, and a broad balanced build. Even the HUD serves as chips! You can also fuse chips to get optimal loadouts, and I really like the minmaxing meta here of chip fusing.\n\nThere are three playable characters. The variety is nice. The fact that they all play the same however is disappointing. It's especially puninishing when playing as 9S, who replaces Heavy Attack with Hack, which is far too situational.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Music is excellent. I love the orchestral soundtracks. And the remixes across the story of the same songs. The art style is decent but not surprisingly good or bad for 2017. There are many reused assets in the open world, making it feel bland at times. Colors, character design, and overall art is great though.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Amazed at the seamless integration of 2D bullet hell and 3D hack and slash in the prologue.\n+ The opera singer boss Simone. The boss is designed perfectly, and with a tragic history. And the stage is set well. It's the first time you see bullet hell in a boss fight. It's the first time you see the hacking section, which just blows your mind you get sucked into it in the middle of a boss fight.\n+ Rolling my eyes and sighing as I play through the first several hours of Route B. I didn't get to the new content after Flooded City until 9 hours into Route B. And the new portions are primarily hacking and flight sections, which are fun minigames but should not serve as primary.\n+ The walking simulator part where you can play as several different enemies in the Abandoned Factory in Route B. Route C asset-wise also has the same locations and enemies, clearly beating down on the repetition.\n+ Koshi and Roshi.Shocked at the seamlessness of the constant back-and-forth switching between 9S and A2. It ends as a sort-of-final boss well in combining both the normal gameplay and flight sections.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ You're incentivized to buy and upgrade all weapons to the maximum level 4, unlocking a secret sidequest.\n+ Multiplayer appears passively as corpses you can retrieve items or revive.\n+ There's only one major missable aspect in Nier Automata which is Ending Y (https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/9cncw8/spoilerfree_faq_guide_for_nierautomata/).\n+ You're swimming in G by endgame. This removes the need for farming.\n+ Unlike most hack and slash games, Nier doesn't have any fighting combo moves which I find convoluted even in fighting games which the hack and slash genre borrowed it from.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Near-limitless inventory space.\n+ No autosave. You must manually quick save. I do like the mechanic of access points which act as a sort of GPS, deviating between Quick Save only and Save with Transport option.\n+ I think the meta of healing being overpowered in Nier is interesting. There are many healing chips and consumables are cheap.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Souls-like death penalty, but harsher in that you not only lose your experience but also your active chipset. Individual chips can take hours to farm, making the penalty extremely harsh to the point that the online recommendation is to reload the game. Note in flight sections, you don't lose anything though.\n+ All weapons of the same category have the same moveset. The minor differences between the many weapons inside a category is size of combo chain, stats, special abilities.\n+ Difficulty gap between Normal and Hard. Normal is apparently too easy, with one-shotting bosses and a handful of deaths over an entire playthrough. Hard on the other hand gets two-shotted on all mobs and is especially annoying because unlike Dark Souls, checkpoints are very sparse. I do like Hard encourages a very different playstyle than Normal, which is more deliberately paced in timing attacks rather than Normal difficulty's Devil May Cry and Bayonetta spam.\n+ It's not fully voiced.\n+ No native 21:9 support, stretching the screen when at fullscreen. There's a community mod, but it uses a crack of the game which disables Steam achievements, network connection, is not compatible with original game saves, does not support vibration that I know of, and likely other features and requires a change to the config settings (https://www.reddit.com/r/CrackSupport/comments/a2z23t/how_to_use_last_far_mod_7023_on_cracked_version/). Instead I stuck with 16:9 pillarboxed, done by setting Scaling from Aspect Ratio (default) to None and clicking the box Override the scaling mode set by games and programs (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=914437196).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://nierautomata.wiki.fextralife.com\n+ far mod for borderless and hide cursor (doesn't support nvidia-style no scaling for 21:9 fullscreen) | https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=914437196\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/67z0jx/perfect_evade_deflect_and_counter_guide/\n+ wgsf hack | http://www.wsgf.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=32499, https://steamcommunity.com/app/524220/discussions/0/2595630410189885976/\n+ how to share save files | https://steamcommunity.com/app/524220/discussions/0/135512305404232364/\n+ https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-03-10-why-you-should-play-nier-automata-after-the-first-playthrough\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/607w3o/chip_fusing_chart_guide_whats_worth_keeping/, https://nierautomata.wiki.fextralife.com/Plug-in+Chips\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/61k34a/spoilers_so_can_somebody_please_eli5_the_entirety/dff80k1/\n\nI decided to play this as my first entry into the Nier / Drakgengard series. (If I decide to continue, Nier Gestalt, the NA/EU release which is English-translated although it features a different protagonist than the original Japanese version, will be next (https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/9pbqke/spoilerfree_faq_story_guide_for_nier_2010/). It seems unlikely given how bad the writing plots are (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8xx4sT6rEI) although the guy is very likeable (https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/5vfoyd/behind_the_scenes_of_that_amazing_nier_automata/).) Following discussion (https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/9qvcwk/things_to_readplaywatch_before_nier_automata/, https://www.reddit.com/r/PS4/comments/7lnumi/nier_automata_do_i_need_to_play_the_original_nier/), the games are somewhat disconnected especially against the Drakengard series as NieR is a spinoff; and NieR apparently has slightly better story over NieR Automata which is the better overall game. Drakengard 1 apparently isn't even good, and Drakengard 2 is not directed by Yoko Taro (https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/8m1727/is_drakengard_worth_it/). Therefore it's worth playing Nier first as I may as well do it in release order. It's also recommended to at least watch lore summary of previous games (https://youtu.be/JE6n2KGbaZ0). I was also inspired to play this from its general positive reception, 20 hour playtime according to howlongtobeat.com, and a recent personal marathon in March 2019 of action-style RPGs: Dark Souls series, Devil May Cry, Nioh, Bloodborne, Sekiro.\n\nI played on Normal difficulty for the first level and then Hard afterwards (https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/5znspe/what_difficulty_should_i_play_this_on/, https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/5wgjx8/no_spoilers_can_we_talk_about_the_difficulty/). I switched to Normal for Route C as I was underleveled (44) and felt the game was too unforgiving and not fun (oneshots, attacks hard to see in the chaos, certain scenes like the flight scenes or 9S getting hacked). I played on max settings but with antialiasing off as adding it and Ambient Occlusion introduces LOD popping (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=914437196). I played on controller as like many JRPGs, Nier wasn't designed with keyboard in mind (PC more broadly) (https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/8e62mh/is_nier_automata_worth_it_on_pc/). I did not follow a guide (except for sidequests) and completed sidequests only after I got access points. I prioritized my early G for plug in chip capacity and then spent it wherever for new weapons and weapon upgrades. My preferred loadout stacks HP and Defense chips to avoid getting one-shot, then farming chips like XP and Drop Rate, and then offense chips like Critical Up. I stuck with Virtuous Contract and Treaty the entire game as I felt the weapons did not offer much variety in moveset or power in any case. I finished Route A in 18 hours, completing most sidequests, and Route C in 36 hours. I did not complete all endings, sidequests, weapon collections and upgrades, DLC colosseums, archive entries, or minmax my chipsets.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/nier-automata"},{"id":"322682678652474956","title":"Nioh","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":2130,"platforms":["PS4"],"studios":["Team Ninja"],"publishers":["Koei Tecmo Games","Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"startedDate":"2019-03-07","completedDate":"2019-03-15","updatedDate":"2022-02-12","notes":"Nioh has great core mechanics with its own non-Souls opinions. Combat is crisp with certain unique elements such as Ki Pulse, stances, and a MMO looting system. The Japanese folklore is excellent. Levels are well-designed. Enemy mechanics are a blast to learn. Overall, Nioh is fun as a challenging action RPG with a lot of (albeit repetitive) content.\n\nPlaying Nioh makes me better appreciate what makes Dark Souls so great. Unlike Dark Souls, Nioh lacks good (and diegetic) storytelling, level design variety, unique enemies/bestiary designs and enemy variety, equipment cosmetic variety, and music. Variety is especially an issue: after 6-7 missions when you enter the third region, 90% of the enemies have already been shown and I already mastered their mechanics. Each mission feels forgettable as you brainlessly go to the next. This is further compounded by needing to play new game plus for new content such as Divine gear.\n\n__Story.__ It's mediocre. Most progression is followed from cutscenes before and after missions, as well as walls of text in the world map. The story isn't integrated into the gameplay.\n\nMoreover, the story by itself isn't very good. It seems as if it were any other Samurai tale with Yokai and key epic heroes such as Oda Nobunaga and tropes. For a primarily Japanese setting and lore, I'm also deeply disturbed by the need to westernize the game by making the protagonist English and with a UK background. It reminds me of The Last Samurai in its level of yellow fever cringe. Nioh fans are quick to point that this is based off a true story, but it's also the case that Nioh developers could have chosen any distinguished samurai for the tale. It's naive to think otherwise that they didn't pick a white samurai for the audience in the same way Rachel in Ninja Gaiden was developed.\n\n__Combat.__ Man do the core mechanics play so much like Dark Souls, especially Dark Souls 3 in pacing: one weak and strong attack; dodge roll; D-pad consumables (but Demon's Souls style in consumable heal instead of Estus Flasks); Dark Souls elevator mechanics; no jump; falling attack; guard (and which halts endurance gain if you hold it); parry. Other gameplay mechanics are also similar: universal difficulty; heal and endurance bars; enemies stagger; infinite inventory but limited equipped weight (and weight tiers); checkpoints via a landmark (here, shrines); coop and deaths; gestures; picking up corpse to get back souls (Amrita) after death; Summoner's Candle (Nioh version of Ring of Sacrifice); a predilection for smashing boxes to find hidden item-holding corpses/Kodama. Even boss names during fights have a Demon's Souls-like font.\n\nTeam Ninja does add certain unique differences: most notably, Ki Pulse, Stances, viewing enemy stamina bars and the finisher moves, the Skill Tree, and the loot system. Ki Pulses (and Yokai realms) provide a deliberate combat pace, very different to the core of Dark Souls' mantra of punish-then-dodge-roll. However, it seems backward to have to shift your eyes to monitor the top-left screen while in the middle of battle. Stances work well situationally for certain weapon types more than others. With the loot system, items vary in level, rarity, damage/defense multiplier, and attributes. There's a huge amount of loot. I think the concept is interesting for a single player RPG. But it can be too much to organize, where most upgrades feel like stat scaling while the aesthetics don't change. (In contrast, Dark Souls does an excllent job at aesthetics and offering set pieces jointly when picking them up from corpses.)\n\nIt's unfortunate that the environments and enemy variety is so paltry. It also suffers from Dark Souls 1's cheap tricks of palette swaps and overusing bosses (fine in only occassional cases).\n\n__Aesthetics.__ I'm surprisingly disappointed by its graphics given its 2017 setting. Certain still shots can be impressive. But they remain lackluster overall, and the face models have jarring geometry for a 2017 game. Dark Souls III is infinitely more impressive and that was developed in 2015. Nioh's music also remains forgettable and cutscenes are often limited in frames in a visual-novel esque way.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ No missable content, especially dialogue options or sequencing as is the craziness of Souls games. The only ones are Kodama (can revisit area), Samurai/Ninja/Onmyo Locks (can just farm Skill Points and/or revisit area), and Nurikabe (appear in only two levels) which are not strictly necessary.\n+ Sprinting feels more weighty and real than Dark Souls. I found myself incorporating sprinting into my gameplay. It's like dodges, but more controllable and uses less stamina. Moreover, dashes replace dodge rolls as the main mechanic: dodge rolls in Nioh require a double-tap press and dodges in  general have a much smaller window for i-frames, only in the start of the dodge. They also outline the # of Kodama when starting a mission, and tell you when you get them all. There's an extreme level of satisfaction in obtaining all of them purely by exploration, and without a guide.\n+ Nioh encourages experimenting with all weapon types. Unlike Dark Souls which requires commiting to STR or DEX, Nioh has stats which only weakly contribute to overall damage output and titles/proficiency, which incentivizes using them all. And I thoroughly enjoyed playing with most all the weapons.\n+ No durability.\n+ Revenants to fight player deaths. Clear improvement over Bloodstains! Unlike Dark Souls' Bloodstains, player corpses can't be used to see how they died (it was generally useless anyways; all that mattered was seeing the corpse).\n+ Runs to boss fights are always short.\n+ Kappas are not missable and don't have ridiculous hitboxes unlike Dark Souls' Crystal Lizards.\n+ Endgame. It includes New Game Plus and the Abyss with continual hp/damage scaling not unlike Dark Souls. A specific feature I especially like about Nioh is that you can freely switch difficulty levels across missions. This avoids Dark Souls' annoyance of having to commit to a new difficulty level and never getting old ones back.\n+ Zones (missions/sub-missions) have recommended levels.\n+ All the missions are generally spot-on in terms of frequency of checkpoints and overall cohesiveness in connecting areas together (e.g., locked doors, which are infinitely better than Dark Souls' occasional cheap trick at cohesion through locked elevators).\n+ Unlike Dark Souls, chests cannot be accidentally destroyed from attacks.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ All the various passives: Guardian Spirit (and with their own level system!), Kodama Blessings, Clans (which are Nioh's version of Covenents, without Dark Souls' integration to levels and unique items, and ranks). It adds more complexity, but removing them could also be too streamlined like WoW.\n+ MMO items with rarity, affixes, and crafting system.\n+ You can see your enemy's stamina bar.\n+ There's a noise whenever an enemy aggros. This gives you a few second heads-up on archers and ambushes.\n+ Specific weapon slots for melee and range.\n+ Less \"Souls\" items on corpses, which other loot instead.\n+ Unlike Dark Souls, dialogue with an actual story.\n+ No PvP invasions.\n+ No huge reliance on backstabs like in Dark Souls.\n+ Titles.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Many weapon types don't have a distinguishing reason for using the Strong vs Weak attack. I typically only use strong attacks situationally when stabbing the enemy when they run out of stamina. Certain weapon types do at least utilize weak vs strong attack well by distinguishing a piercing thrust vs sweep (Spear), or Kurasagami's Strong Attack which is a really long range thrust and can hit many enemies in a line. For swords, it would be nice if they simply had a horizontal vs vertical slash. Same goes for fully utilizing the variety from three stances, where only weapons such as the Odachi distinguish between horizontal vs vertical slash.\n+ Skill tree, Agyo/Ungyo prestige, and fighting type-style variety in the moveset. I'm just not a fan of fighting games and the zillion of move variations; I like when a game shows mastery over a core set of moves like Dark Souls.\n+ Sub-missions enable more content but are redundant in level design, with minor variations in enemy placement and blocking off zones. The huge amount of redunancy makes sub-missions feel like artificial methods to stretch the total playtime of the game.\n+ Guardian spirits' living weapon. They're rare high-damage, which lets you EZ mode bosses and any difficult encounters. I find them to be a useless quandary---it helps progress faster, but it feels cheap as you don't learn from the encounter if you do use it.\n+ Parrying is not good in this game.\n+ Environments don't seem to be designed to occlude weapon interactions often. In Dark Souls, horizontal strikes would often bounce off walls and force you to be more considerate of your environment. Nioh does this well with Yokai realms but could take Dark Souls' cue of defining more areas in a level to encourage variety of gameplay strategies.\n+ Gold and Glory as extra currencies.\n+ Lack of open world. The map menu as the main entrypoint feels lazy; it makes the game feel more disjointed.\n+ Online interaction. Unlike Dark Souls, no soapstone messages. Summon signs are also not available so you have to actively look for interaction via offering a limited-quantity item.\n+ Zones scale quite highly in levels. This makes older zones way too easy for a given level. Dark Souls had less of this problem as there was not that much of a level disparity across zones.\n+ Radar. I never use it. Unnecessary GUI.\n+ Nioh developers sometimes just shit on you with random two boss enemy style characters like multiple tengus.\n+ Guard is omnidirectional. It removes a skill in the game to make sure your guard is facing the archer while fighting off a melee enemy.\n+ The sort order in the inventory is different for each item. This is incredibly annoying to have to change the sort order to be identical across items for consistency. I have the same issue with MGS V Phantom Pain which does this for all the comrades.\n+ No ultrawide support. It doesn't even support cropped aspect ratios with black borders. If I played without the fanmade fix, I would have to move my game to a new workspace and with my wallpaper specifically set to a nonintrusive backgruound.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [r/nioh](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh)\n+ [fextralife](https://nioh.wiki.fextralife.com/Nioh+Wiki)\n+ [starter build tips](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/5u9meg/tips_build_nioh_starter_guide_for_first_build_to)\n+ [skills tree passives](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/5sycdo/psa_you_gain_the_benefits_from_passives_in_other)\n+ [prestige guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/5v0y1v/prestige_guide_on_what_to_take)\n+ [dissassemble vs offer vs sell old items](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/8raxpo/new_player_here_wondering_if_i_should)\n+ [WSGF16:9 aspect ratio patch](http://www.wsgf.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=32376), [GitHub](https://github.com/LennardF1989/NiohResolution)\n+ [divine gear guide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRr8FFRYwKI)\n+ top affixes ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/5uzqho/top_affixs_what_to_aim_for), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/74fll1/help_with_kingo_build_in_wotd))\n\nI picked it up because of its \"Souls\" inspiration; relatedness to the upcoming Sekiro from From Software which aims to be the next game following Dark Souls III; generally high review scores; and my curiosity of how Ninja Gaiden developers would fuse their origins with Souls mechanics.\n\nMy total playtime according to Steam is 47 hours, beating the base game in 47 hours at level 96 (does not include DLC). To avoid spoilers, I only went back to a mission following a walkthrough to pick up any missing Kodama and locks. I completed all missions/submissions in the order of recommended level, and ended up skipping sub-missions in the latter half. In April 2020 when picking up the game to play the DLC, I refreshed myself by completing all sub-missions except the two boss missions.\n\nI played a build with loose stats. Recommendations on community discussions like Reddit suggest that builds don't matter for the first playthrough in any case; respec is always possible. So I played varying stats so I could try all weapons. Armor-wise, I like light/medium sets. This is not done for the immersion (I actually find the ninja archetype cringeworthy) but because video games like this and Souls series generally encourage aggressive dodging over defensive blocking styles. Dying in a few hits forces better gameplay. Weapon-wise, I switched types every mission in order to get an appreciation of the variety (and which is incenvitized in game via titles). My favorites are Katana, Dual Katana, Odachi, Spear, Tonfa. I use Ninjutsu for ranged attacks, Onmyo magic for Talismans, and rarely if ever Ranged weapons. Skill-wise, I never use special moves—I allocated all my points to passive bonuses—and I never use Living Weapon.\n\ntodos\n+ Gestures.\n+ All Kodamas.\n+ Defiled Castle: Give total of 20 Dung Balls for trophy.\n+ Abyss\n+ Twilight mission","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/nioh"},{"id":"323071444560904784","title":"Nioh 2","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":2670,"platforms":["PS4"],"studios":["Team NINJA"],"publishers":["Koei Tecmo Games","Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-02-12","completedDate":"2022-02-25","updatedDate":"2022-07-19","notes":"Nioh 2 does what a good sequel does: build upon the base game's core while making additional improvements not simply through more content but by refinements to the mechanics themselves. In Nioh 2's case, the most notable are its enemy variety (one of the biggest flaws from the first game) and Guardian Spirit integration including the Burst Counter and Yokai skills.\n\nFlaw-wise, Nioh 2 still suffers from poor level variety due to its style toward MMO-like grinding in most all its side missions. The game's tendency to dilute content with a lot of side missions and bland levels (including the main levels) makes the game feel overly extended and certainly not ideal for replayability. While the story is also not as bad as the first, I'd be hard-pressed to call it any good.\n\n__Story.__ The story is a bit more subdued which is to its favor given the poor worldbuilding and story of the first game. With that said, it's just a handful of cutscenes and mission text that makes it difficult to understand what's even going on in the story.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Nioh 2 has the same unique additions from Nioh 1 with Ki, stances, and weapon type combos as combat mechanics; level design with distinct missions under an overarching map; and a progression system with skills, Kodama, loot, and clans. The most significant changes are the following:\n\n+ Character creation, not William! This is especially an improvement given how forgettable William was in Nioh \n+ Guardian spirits are better integrated in the core combat loop:\n  + [Burst Counter.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/fboc0s/burst_counter_101_and_how_its_nioh_2s_best_new) The Burst counter makes parrying a more integrated element of Nioh and this makes offense and defense much more interweaved---not unlike Sekiro's counters for Perilous Attacks. Variants of parrying even do damage (distinguished from the timed block as \"counter\"). Nioh 1 restricted parry/counters on humans and smaller Yokai through a weapon skill; and Burst Counter extends this idea to enable a parry option against both humans and Yokai.\n  + Yokai Shift Grapple attack (attacking enemy after they're exhausted of stamina). The Grapple works particularly well as a mechanic due to Burst Counter, as [you automatically stay in Yokai Shift form for long enough after a Burst Counter if it depletes their stamina](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/g2xu69/friendly_burst_counter_guide_with_examples).\n  + Guardian spirits can be attuned with Soul Cores, which provide both an active move and passive stats.\n  + Guardian Spirit types of Brute, Feral, and Phantom.\n  + Additional passives through a secondary Guardian Spirit.\n+ The sphere grid skills offer more customization to builds.\n+ Improved enemy variety (although still weak level variety)\n+ Yokai and blessed weapon types\n+ Sudama and cats\n+ Yokai Dark Realms\n+ NPC companions during certain missions.\n+ Multiplayer improvements with expeditions\n\nLevel design remains a sore weak spot. Nioh's tendency to reuse assets can also be fairly annoying in the game's repetitiveness, even borrowing assets and entire levels from the original game.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics are roughly the same, and some animations and assets are even reused. Lighting is the most significant difference. Level aesthetics can all look fairly bland at times and don't stand out. The cutscenes see a significant upgrade in graphical fidelity, especially in facial features.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You automatically pick up your corpse when entering a boss area. What a dramatic quality of life improvement!\n+ Respec is cheap and infinite. You can even recustomize your character appearance.\n+ You can use Japanese voice and English subtitles. Unlike Nioh 1, it's no longer a mix of languages as the world has no English presence.\n+ [Exclusive to Odachis, you can actually parry Yokai's regular attacks.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/fmih1r/yokai_parrying)\n+ In the endgame, you change the core scaling stats of weapons to whatever you like. This lets you balance the other stats such as Life, Ki, and Equipment Weight, and it lets you synergize arbitrarily with your favored choice of duo weapon types.\n+ Ability to define equipment sets and builds that you can easily swap to. Perfect for playing around with builds during endgame.\n+ In addition to Nioh 1's audio one-liners when interacting with corpses, you get to hear one-liners from Kodama and Yokai.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ My favored build in Nioh 1 of Iai Quickdraw is nerfed. That comes and goes I suppose with the balance given the massive build variety in the game. Iai Quickdraw is still powerful but only as a situational heavy attack when the enemy is stunned or just executed a slow move.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Like Nioh 1, loot laid out in a level is mediocre due to being randomly generated. It's not like Dark Souls where you're truly incentivized to explore every corner because there's always unique items that you can only get from certain locations. The only exceptions are the Locks of hair.\n+ Walking into boss room before clearing an area is a pain. This is most an issue in submissions as it's detailed well enough in main mission's level design when you're going to walk into one.\n+ Like Nioh 1, recommended level in a mission is almost always an overestimate (referring to either character level or equipment level). I would do 100% side missions, not lose any Amrita, and only just be on par with recommended level.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Fextralife](https://nioh2.wiki.fextralife.com/Nioh+2+Wiki)\n+ [Prestige point allocation](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/lc5cv9/prestige_agyo_and_ungyo). For Ungyo, I did all except Gold Earned, Ninjutsu Power, Onmyo Power. For Agyo, I did all except Anima, Extended Yokai Shift, Soul Core Drop Rate.\n+ [Clans](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/ls94f2/best_clans_in_nioh2/gor1qxy)\n\nI mostly played a Sword and Odachi build. I did side missions generally to stay on recommended level but otherwise did not try to be completionist in all missions, Kodama, and Locks. I technically stopped once I hit the Dream region as I felt the game was too repetitive---left the rest of the content to be done jointly with the 3 DLCs at a future date: roughly 6/21 main missions left the DLCs' addition of 7 missions.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/nioh-2"},{"id":"322682678651401804","title":"Nioh: Dragon of the North, Defiant Honor, Bloodshed's End","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2017,"studios":["Team Ninja"],"startedDate":"2020-04-24","completedDate":"2020-05-01","updatedDate":"2022-02-13","notes":"Effectively more of the same: three new regions, a few enemies, bosses, some new weapons. I really like Nioh's approach to endgame content. Build variety really starts to shine here. The DLC is a mess level-wise however with arbitrary spikes: I felt underleveled the entire playthrough. Overall, endgame is above and beyond new game plus in Dark Souls. This is not only new game plus and the abyss, but also where content such as Divine gear, crafting, clans, and build choice in stats and skill trees actually appears.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ The bullshit of infinite Living Weapon for Date Masamune and Sanada Yukimura.\n+ Dying over and over again to the flame arrows as I manage mobs. Dark Souls 3 Ringed City flashblacks..\n+ Playing with NPC companions in the third DLC. That's a fun change of pace to have such a companion for a majority of the level.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nRecommendations are [to start the DLC a few areas into Way of the Strong; it seems balanced that way](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/8ge2ci/is_the_dlc_supposed_to_be_this_hard). To get myself reacquainted with the game after not playing since March 2019, I completed all remaining sub-missions except two boss missions, and delved into Way of the Strong (New Game+)'s mission levels to balance with the DLC's.\n\nI found myself doing much lower damage than I expected to kill mobs. So I familiarized myself with stat builds, skill tree, guardian spirits, clans, titles, gear, and crafting. I respecced to go full Katana, which still leaves me room for also using Dual Katana. This thread made me envy the mobility and charged attack utility with Katanas ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/6za5a1/kingo_katana_playstyle_guide), [2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psMspD-BrJk)). Some guides: [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/5vd2de/discussion_single_katana_build), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/5tun8j/kingo_ayakomori_behind_the_backbackstab_build). I followed the former very closely in terms of stats, gear (Kingo), and guardian spirit (Aya-Komori). I allocated minimal active skills and put the rest into passives. My active weapon skills are:\n\n+ Flux, Ki Pulse, and Living Water\n+ Grapple\n+ Kick\n+ Swift Step. The iconic combo of Swift Step -> sheath cancel -> Iai Quickdraw requires practice both in the combo execution and when to execute it. But when done successful, it feels so rewarding.\n+ Iai Quickdraw\n+ I haven't delved into parrying with Backwave + Tempest, Haze, Water Shadow; or Tiger Sprint. Flowing Shadow is too OP---enemies are just not designed around the insane mobility, autobehind attack, and iframes---so I use it rarely.\n\nFor Ninjutsu:\n\n+ Quick-change scroll\n\nFor Onmyo:\n\n+ Weakness Talisman\n+ Sloth Talisman\n+ Carnage Talisman\n\nIn WOTS, I was more careless in sweeping maps, often preferring the mission clear as enemies are the ones who typically drop quality loot (and I can advance to higher levels faster), not chests. The only incentive are on time items I missed on my first playthrough, e.g., Kodamas or hair locks."},{"id":"322682678652634700","title":"Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":840,"platforms":["OnLive","PS3","PC","PS1","PSP"],"studios":["Oddworld Inhabitants"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment","GT Interactive Software","Oddworld Inhabitants"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/oddworld-abe-s-exoddus"},{"id":"322682678652633676","title":"Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":750,"platforms":["OnLive","PS3","PC","DOS","PS1","PSP"],"studios":["Oddworld Inhabitants"],"publishers":["GT Interactive Software","Sony Computer Entertainment","Oddworld Inhabitants"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"REPLAYED: X/X/X - X/X/X\n\nOddworld is a sidescrolling puzzle platformer with a unique spin: Abe's a weakling lacking in both defense and offense. The story shares undertones of anti-consumerism, with the death animations being hilarious and a variety of dark comedy being featured in the grungy enslaved facility. This requires Abe to evade rather than defeat enemies, including sneaking, running, possession, and turning the environment against them. In addition, the enemies are diverse and story is fun. The overall environment and audiovisuals are serviceable. I like the optional challenge of saving all Mudukons, although I have mixed opinions about the 99 number without any progression rewards.\n\nAbe's Odysee is one of the earliest console games with quicksave-like/quickload options. [When exactly it saves however is convoluted: it's not as simple as just a checkpoint-based save system or a fully manual save system](https://steamcommunity.com/app/15700/discussions/0/606068060817179612/).\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ [Controller support on PC sucks](https://steamcommunity.com/app/15700/discussions/0/620700961056630458). You can't use LT/RT or D-pad; start menu is arbitrarily set to L3, and you have to press ENTER on your keyboard to save games. [Fortunately, the community found a third-party solution.](https://steamcommunity.com/app/15700/discussions/0/1457328927830941716)\n+ No native support for widescreen (pillarboxed) or windowed/borderless. I tried Dxwnd to get it windowed but it couldn't upscale from its original 640x480 resolution. DDHack works for pillarboxing widescreen resolutions and supports borderless!","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/oddworld-abe-s-oddysee"},{"id":"322682678624163404","title":"Ori and the Blind Forest","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Moon Studios"],"publishers":["Microsoft Studios"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-07-18","completedDate":"2021-07-20","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Ori works well as a metroidvania platformer. The sequence of abilities gained as you traverse through areas feels natural, and the controls are all responsive with engaging platforming challenges. The combat is Ori's weakest element, feeling largely unnecessary as a button spammer and with weak enemy variety.\n\n__Story.__ It's a plain story but one told in a Disney-esque wonder.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Ori is a metroidvania with more platforming than titles like Metroid or Castlevania. The core metroidvania elements are there with level navigation, ability and key gating, and manual saving.\n\nCombat is Ori's weakest element. It's a passive system where you just stand in proximity of an enemy and spam your auto-aim Spirit projectiles. The enemies' various attacks keep this somewhat engaging as you have to dodge, but it's a significantly streamlined system compared to a deeper combat system where you have to aim and time your attacks, have status effects or stagger your enemy, and more. The combat is like an even more streamlined Metroid experience where you still rely on attack spam but now you also no longer need to aim or manage attack type ammunitions.\n\nOri introduces the Soul Kindle mechanic as a limited save consumable to determine your own checkpoints. Fortunately, there is less incentive to hoard as the Energy meter has a maximum limit, and there's plentiful resource to save for less than 30 second intervals, which is particularly useful given all the platforming instant-death challenges. With that said, it still encourages a conservative gameplay where you'd only use your saves when you otherwise are at the max and can obtain new ammo, or you're in desperation. The game is even slightly imbalanced for this as it must encourage instant-death given that you can respawn anywhere.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The game is artistically beautiful with a watercolored style, unique bestiary, and a wonderful orchestral soundtrack. Level traversal with smooth platforming just feels awesome to experience.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The escape sequences. They're niced choreographed platforming. But I find them to be just trial and error most times.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Interactive map](https://ailothaen.fr/ori/oatbf-map)\n\nMetroidvania similar to Hollow Knight. Motivated to play for its difficulty, polished aesthetics, and 2D platforming, mostly coming from a metroidvania marathon. I played the Definitive Edition. I played on Hard difficulty as the game is easy compared to other metroidvanias.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ori-and-the-blind-forest"},{"id":"322682678624145996","title":"Overcooked","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":480,"startedDate":"2021-09-10","completedDate":"2021-09-16","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Overcooked is an excellent recipe management system. It's simple to understand and comes with many interesting mechanics to force cooperation: from specialized rotations to environmental obstacles.\n\nFlaw-wise, it's a shame this game doesn't have online multiplayer. It makes loners like me not able to appreciate its communication as you can't play with online friends or even randoms. Fortunately, Overcooked 2 implemented this. I also dislike how much later levels are gated by Star progression. This makes for repetitive gameplay where you're forced to master previous levels before you can continue. I significantly prefer systems where the barrier to complete a level is higher than the rhythm game-like gating of new levels with grades.\n\n__Story.__ Fun game-y story that's inconsequential but doesn't matter because it's a video game about cooking.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The food order management is excellent from cutting ingredients, cooking, plating, and washing dishes. It's a whole different beast in playing single-player---where the biggest challenge is coordinating parallel effort as you juggle multiple players---vs multiplayer---where the biggest challenge is communication in understanding who is on what duty.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The cartoon style ages well.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played until Level 5-3."},{"id":"322682678650414668","title":"P.T.","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":90,"platforms":["PS4"],"studios":["Kojima Productions"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-08-05","completedDate":"2020-08-05","updatedDate":"2024-07-20","notes":"The maddening loop in descent is awesome. Sound design and the subtlety is the best, never quite knowing what will appear next.\n\nNext step in progression can be unintuitive. For example, stabbing out the eye in the portrait, or exiting the fridge part, or finding the hole in the endless loop, picking up the pieces for the true ending.\n\nMy PS4 did not download P.T. before, so I can't play its original version. Instead I played the best PC P.T. fan remake: P.T. Unreal 1.0.7.\n\nOn 2024-07-20, I played again with Marisa using P.T. Emulation 1.4.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pt"},{"id":"322682678652512844","title":"Papers, Please","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","Vita"],"studios":["Lucas Pope"],"publishers":["3909"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Puzzle","Simulator","Indie"],"startedDate":"2017-02-03","completedDate":"2017-02-04","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I love the focus on time and the clear ability for the player to not only debate morality but avoid it altogether with the focus on feeding his family (or even killing them off to feed only himself). I played the game thinking of the family purely as a nuisance on my funding, and willfully accepted bribes so long as it netted me cash in the end. I agree with this description. https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1sxy6a/comment/ce2c2lx.\n\n> My favorite part about \"Papers, Please\" is how the mechanics are the storytelling.\n>\n> Outside of the opening cinematic and a few interludes, the game tells you everything you need to know about its world and the people that inhabit it through the gameplay solely. Reviewing the documents of these people coming through and balancing their specific stories, needs, and wants against that of your own is an incredibly immersive way to draw you into this world.\n> The addition of the timer and the monetary system basically put you in a place where the more you start to question everything around you, the worse it makes you feel and more your realize the gravity of just what is happening.\n>\n> I think that's an incredible contrast to other games with moral systems. For instance, a game like \"KOTOR\" asks you to make very clear good or evil choices on, relatively, your own time. It then reacts in bold ways accordingly.\n\n> \"Papers, Please\" doesn't offer that same luxury. What exactly constitutes good, evil, or something in between in this title is entirely dependent on the morality of the user themselves. The fact that someone can play this game and never question the moral implications of what they are doing, and have that still be a comment on their morality is a great example of its brilliant implementation of morality into the game.\n>\n> \"Papers, Please\" is one of my favorite games of this year and likely far beyond that. On a pure gameplay level its incredibly enjoyable, and it only gets more rewarding and more impressive the further you dig into it.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/papers-please"},{"id":"322682678652871244","title":"Pathfinder: Kingmaker","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":4470,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Owlcat Games"],"publishers":["Deep Silver"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Tactical"],"startedDate":"2023-09-05","completedDate":"2023-09-13","updatedDate":"2023-09-14","notes":"Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a CRPG with deep mechanics and where you play as a king. It is most known for its deep progression systems and combat mechanics, rooted in its tabletop RPG. Exploration on the world map is also surprisingly good: you wade though a fog of war to encounter points of interest across a sprawling map similar to open world RPGs.\n\nFlaw-wise:\n\n+ The game's pacing with time limits imposes an order in which to play the game. You're forced to do main quest activities and feel a sense of urgency in each chapter, making you cautious on how to spend time for other activities. With the right planning and overall understanding of the game's progression, this can be largely mitigated. However, it adds to how daunting the game can be on a first playthrough, and it ultimately restricts your freedom (sometimes you'd rather do something else such as explore the map, complete sidequests, or grow your kingdom rather than advance the main quest).\n+ Kingdom management requires micromanagement alongside the main quest time limits, is poorly explained, and does not offer much benefit to the rest of the game. I find it decently fun like a minigame, particularly with mods to relax all its time constraints. But it's not that deep or rewarding.\n+ The writing and roleplay ability is serviceable.\n+ The game has a padded length particularly toward the last few chapters. Writing is more minimal and with uninteresting content, and the gameplay is repetitive as areas and enemies are copy-pasted.\n\n__Overall gameplay.__\nThe core gameplay loop consists of completing the main quest and any side quests, exploring the world map with areas and new events, and managing your kingdom. On a given chapter, you typically prioritize the main quest and then are free to do the rest at your pace until the time passes to start the next chapter. With the [right priorities](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/iecrsp/feeling_overwhelmed_after_unlocking_kingdom), the game has a solid and fun pacing.\n\n__Writing and quest design.__\nWriting is serviceable. The story is not memorable in any particular way (deep characters, unique premise, etc.), and it has limited roleplay options as you mostly go from one quest to the next with little player choice.\n\nControversially, the main quest has a time limit. It's like Fallout 1's in order to give a sense of urgency, and it's done across the whole game. Chapters also progress according to these time limits. For example, Chapter 1 has a 3 month time limit which is generous as you can explore everything with significant room left ([source](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/jb90li/main_quest_time_limit_explained_for_a_newcomer)). Subsequent chapters progress based on the Ancient Curse quest with time limits at a regular cadence similar to Persona games; other main quests such as Troll Trouble have [hidden timers](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/9oxtku/info_on_hidden_timers_wanted). For this reason, Kingmaker encourages that you prioritize the main quest before anything else, which is the opposite of most RPGs.\n\nI enjoy all the various companion interactions, including in various dialogue, at camp rests, and during the scripted book narration where unique expositions might be added if a certain companion is there. I enjoy that there are companion quests, and unlike most games where there's only one for each companion, this game is so large it has multiple per companion.\n\n__Progression systems and combat.__\nIf there's anything Kingmaker stands out for, it's the build variety and vast, complex character creation. Progression system follows the CRPG standard with classes, skills, feats with passive and active abilities, spells, and alignment.\n\nThe combat is solid particularly as it supports both turn-based and RTWP. Turn-based works well as the game is designed for it (unlike POE2 where turn-based was added after release, and it shows). This dual compatibility works well as you can focus on turn-based for deeper tactics and switch to RTWP to avoid any tedium for easy fights.\n\nThe combat is generally better than the auto attack spam than RTWPs can get into. It’s not as tactical as Divinity though. The core mechanics are solid, but the encounter design and enemy design isn’t as good as it’s mostly designed with your standard RTWP CRPG mindset.\n\n__Kingdom management.__\nThe kingdom management is a nice concept but is executed poorly with mixed reception ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/uwlih7/the_biggest_flaw_with_kingmaker_mechanical), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/cff5a0/game_would_have_been_more_fun_without_kingdom)).\n\nEvents come in the form of problems, opportunities, and projects. You employ advisors and expand your land as you accumulate settlements and build and upgrade buildings.\n\nUnfortunately, kingdom management has a lot of problems:\n\n+ It is poorly explained.\n+ There are many false trappings (projects) that are mechanically not worth it. For example, [a project at the start of Act 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/czn0no/is_restoring_the_temple_of_the_elk_a_massive_noob) has you rebuild the Temple of the Elk, but sending your High Priest away for 60 days early on causes issues as many events require them. Trade agreement projects all require too much BP, take away your advisor, and give not enough reward.\n+ Certain events take time, and they can overwhelmingly high to someone just starting. You need to juggle the kingdom on top of the main quest time limits. Particularly problematic is that as an event auto-progresses, a main quest event can trigger such as An Ancient Curse where you suffer stat penalties for every day you don't resolve it. There's no way to recall advisors to solve these emergencies.\n+ The in-game connection isn't as deep as it could be. For example, the buildings you build in settlements don't actually appear in the towns you create. And kingdom stats don't really matter beyond preventing game over if they reach 0. The kingdom's in-game benefits are to travel quicker with teleportation at select hubs, provide artisan gifts, and provide more quests.\n\n__Level design.__\nPathfinder uniquely offers more exploration than most CRPGs. It has the same flavor of a world map and individual areas you access through travel. However, it begins with a fog of war and where you directly travel on the world map to uncover points of interest. I really like this approach as you can freely explore and encounter content at your pace. The alternative can feel formulaic where you go to an area, visit all the questgivers which will open up certain other areas, and then you fast travel to that area to complete a quest.\n\n__Miscellaneous gameplay.__\n\n+ Some encounters take the form of a book passage, where there's a page of dialogue followed by several options, and you proceed for a handful of pages until the encounter completes. I believe this originated in Pillars of Eternity. It's an excellent way to provide variety over the usual encounters, and I love its flavor in being text-dense and with more varied actions like a tabletop game.\n+ You can highlight certain keywords in order to learn more details about it. It's a dialogue mechanic introduced in Tyranny that I really enjoy as it condenses the walls of text that can be written otherwise (c.f., Pillars of Eternity). Here, characters are more to the point and aren't obligated to provide lore exposition.\n+ Resting at camps has more depth than your standard single action with the possibility of a random encounter in CRPGs. Namely, there are several roles to perform, including hunting, camp camouflage, cooking, and guarding. It's also enjoyable to see the party dialogue.\n+ You can romance certain companions.\n+ The game has a padded length particularly toward the last few chapters, and with 70-120 hours for a single playthrough. For example, many quests have you revisit areas or the new areas have a copied level from previous areas; and the quest objectives and writing follow the formulaic \"kill X\", \"get X from monster\", etc. The game could be condensed to have higher average quality.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nThe graphics including assets and animations are expected of a relatively modern AA studio game, much like Pillars of Eternity. The game is partially voiced and the soundtrack and sound effects are decent. The UI is intuitive, colorful, and beautifully designed like a tapestry as if you’re playing the tabletop game. I much prefer Pathfinder's UI over the archaic UI of BG1-2/Pillars of Eternity or the boilerplate UI of Divinity.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ When leaving an area, there's a notification to pick up any remaining loot. Nice quality of life to loot missables.\n+ All companions receive equal XP, including inactive party members and party members that were knocked out during battle (and it's a difficulty setting you can turn off). This makes experimentation easy and viable to play with all party members in a single playthrough. Similarly, attributes granting bonuses upon level up apply retroactively such as wisdom, which is a nice quality of life compared to older CRPGs like Baldur's Gate.\n+ You can use the \"Offer\" button during trading to auto-sell all the trash items, and you can toggle its granularity.\n+ Difficulty is highly customizable.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Just like its pen and paper and low-level D&D, hit chance is very low as a function of your roll and the enemy's armor class. You miss a lot at low levels.\n+ Vendors have infinite gold. Not realistic, but I generally like this option compared to many other solutions in CRPGs and Bethesda games where you're micromanaging inventory, encouraged to spam wait/rest, or visit multiple traders for the same functional purpose.\n+ Inventory is streamlined with a shared inventory rather than individual companion inventories. While simplistic, this removes the micromanagement tedium that's common in games like Baldur's Gate and Fallout. An alternative solution I like is as in Divinity and Pillars of Eternity, where party members each have their own inventory, but the UI presents all inventories at once, so it's easy to juggle.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ All the permanent effect debuffs. They can be near impossible to remove in the early game. Fortunately, this can be set to be removed during rest as a difficulty setting.\n+ There is a lot of [permanently missable content](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/fgx3lq/new_to_the_game_is_there_anything_permanently). This includes companions, which is an outdated part of classic CRPGs. For a game with a 100+ hour playthrough, it’s ridiculous that anything is permanently missable and would force you to replay the game to experience it. This is not a game where you do multiple consecutive playthroughs.\n+ Movement speed is [obnoxiously slow](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/l6aqh4/slow_movement_but_only_when_not_going_far) if you're not moving to a far waypoint. This dynamic movement speed is done in other CRPGs like Pillars of Eternity, but Kingmaker has a noticeably slow base movement speed that feels like slow motion. This is particularly noticeable if you have a 20 move speed companion and if they wear medium/heavy armor. The mods [Bag of Tricks](https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderkingmaker/mods/26) and [Fast Travel](https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderkingmaker/mods/1) fix this.\n+ Loading and saving times can be obnoxiously long at mid to endgame, where quicksaves can take a minute ([1](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/252382-pathfinder-kingmaker-definitive-edition/faqs/79613/introduction), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/9m4jx2/psa_about_save_files_theyre_huge)). This is because everything is tracked as persistent state. The mods Cleaner and NoHistory mitigate this.\n+ You can't change the keybind for highlighting interactable objects to be toggle instead of hold. I greatly prefer toggle given how often you need to use this key as you explore. The mod Kingdom Resolution has a setting to fix this.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [r/pathfinder_kingmaker](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker)\n+ [Wiki](https://pathfinderkingmaker.fandom.com)\n  + Kingmaker's wiki has a lot of missing content, and community guides are scattered without centralized knowledge. See [This Steam guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2681481678) which collects the main guides and with commentary.\n+ Build guides\n  + Roahin on GOG: [Roahin's Main Character Builds](https://www.gog.com/forum/pathfinder_kingmaker/roahins_main_character_builds/page1) and [Companion Builds](https://www.gog.com/forum/pathfinder_kingmaker/companion_builds/page1). This is my go-to build guide. It strikes an excellent balance of effectiveness while adhering to roleplay. It avoids falling down the rabbit hole of min/max which is unnecessary unless at the highest (Unfair) difficulty and is a symptom in almost all builds in RPGs.\n  + [InEffect on GOG: InEffect's Guide V2](https://www.gog.com/forum/pathfinder_kingmaker/ineffects_guide_v2/page1). It's designed well for min/max builds. Unfortunately, this is at the [cost of roleplay and gameplay diversity](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/kl5lrr/my_experience_with_kingmaker_builds) ([some drama discussion between InEffect and Roahin](https://www.gog.com/forum/pathfinder_kingmaker/ineffects_guide_v2/post116)).\n  + [chautemoc on Neoseeker](https://www.neoseeker.com/pathfinder-kingmaker/guides/Builds) (section of overall guide). This is the most popular guide. The builds are mostly written by InEffect but inconsistent and dated due to many author contributions. InEffect's standalone build guide is more consistent and up-to-date.\n+ Kingdom management guides\n  + [Reddit: Priorities](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/iecrsp/feeling_overwhelmed_after_unlocking_kingdom/g2fzrgo)\n  + [chris-williams on GameFAQs: Kingdom Management](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/252382-pathfinder-kingmaker-definitive-edition/faqs/79613/kingdom-management) (section of overall guide)\n+ Tips\n  + \"Fullscreen borderless window\" doesn't actually enable borderless. To enable borderless, see [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/phd4kt/fullscreen_windowed_mode_stop_minimize).\n  + [Use scrolls on arcane casters in order to add the spell to their spellbook.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/f5813i/psa_about_scrolls_for_beginners/)\n  + Keep antique items like Ancient Rostlandic Coin. You can sell them to an [antique collector available starting in Chapter 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/9jwt7t/a_wellgrounded_antiquities_collector).\n  + Keep notes and books. [Some are used in side quests](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/yltxmh/do_i_need_to_save_any_books_letters_or_notes). Same goes for [1 Emerald](https://pathfinderkingmaker.fandom.com/wiki/Green_Ston) and [1 Emerald Necklace](https://pathfinderkingmaker.fandom.com/wiki/Affairs_of_the_Heart).\n\nI chose this as my first Pathfinder game. It's the first released Pathfinder game.\n\n__Version.__\nI played the Enhanced Plus Edition, which is the base game with the v2.1 upgrade in 2021 and the 2 of 5 DLCs which are free adding minor improvements. There are 3 paid DLCs: Wildcards (new race, class, and companion), Varnhold's Lot (standalone adventure that carries over to the main game), Beneath the Stolen Lands (standalone that does not carry over to the main game). None are essential, so I didn't get them. I can always get them later if desired.\n\nI played with the following mods:\n\n+ [Unity Mod Manager](https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/21/). Mod manager.\n+ [Bag of Tricks](https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderkingmaker/mods/26). I like to use it for multiple features:\n\n    + Set party movement speed to 2x to increase the horrendously slow out of combat movement speed.\n    + Occasionally set party HP to 100% to deal with encounters with difficulty spikes and where I'm too lazy to revisit the area after leveling up more.\n    + Occasionally set travel time to instant to mitigate the time management where one needs to be efficient during travel by juggling multiple quests at once. It's more casual and stress-free if I can do, say, one quest at a time even if it involves a lot of traveling that would be best done if combined with concurrent quests.\n+ [Kingdom Resolution](https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderkingmaker/mods/36). I like to use it for multiple features:\n\n    + Set highlight items to be a toggle hotkey.\n    + Enable easy events (so no RNG), manage kingdom everywhere, skip day/claim region everywhere.\n    + Set activity times to 1 day and BP spending to be free. This mitigates feeling overwhelmed by the kingdom management. There's plenty of time to complete everything in the base game while waiting for the next chapter. But I like to play the game at my own order and pacing without the stress of the time management. After completing all that's possible in a chapter with time cheats, I can then skip days until the next chapter begins.\n+ [Cleaner](https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderkingmaker/mods/39) and [NoHistory](https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderkingmaker/mods/190). Mitigates the persistent state bloat that causes long save and load times over the course of the game.\n\n__Playthrough.__\nI played:\n\n+ Normal difficulty. It's the default difficulty. The game is known to be pretty challenging compared to, say, Pillars of Eternity. Challenging difficulty can be tried as I learn mechanics later in the game or on a future playthrough.\n+ Turn-based. I swapped to RTWP for easy fights to streamline them. The game is designed well with both options, and I prefer turn-based over RTWP combat.\n+ \"Remove negative effects on rest\" option enabled. Recommended by chris-williams' guide: \"Permanent ability damage is one of the many ways the game is annoying by design and is tedious and time consuming to put right (fiddle with spellbooks, rest, cast spells, fiddle with spellbooks, rest).\" ([source](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/252382-pathfinder-kingmaker-definitive-edition/faqs/79613/introduction))\n+ Enemy information in combat such as name and HP are set to display on highlight hotkey instead of mouse hover.\n+ By around Act 3, I changed the Kingdom Management difficulty from Normal to Effortless (easiest). All it affects is the [event DC](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/9xb145/kingdom_mechanics_by_owlcat), so harder difficulties only make the RNG higher that you can fail. I would savescum failure anyways, so I may as well do Effortless.\n\nAs usual, I mostly played blind with the exception of build planning and looking up guides when I get lost. I completed all side quests.\n\nI dropped the game around the start of chapter 5. I saw all there was to the game besides some extra main story quests, the last handful of companion quests, and one world zone to explore.\n\nStory choices:\n\n+ Did A Bitter Rival before Stolen Land. In retrospect, I would do Stolen Land first so I can unlock Tristian as a companion earlier.\n+ In A Noble Welcome, I chose Kassil Aldori as envoy and did not accept Ioseph Sellemius' deal.\n+ Did [Hour of Rage](https://pathfinderkingmaker.fandom.com/wiki/Hour_of_Rage) with Amiri before Betrayer's Flight to get back Tristian. This lets you ally with the Aldori Swordlords instead of House Surtova.\n\n__Build.__\nI played a Sword Saint / Duelist ([build](https://www.gog.com/forum/pathfinder_kingmaker/roahins_main_character_builds/post6)). It is a melee DPS role that's functionally similar but more effective than the Aldori Swordlord prestige class. I decided on a melee DPS role as I recently played a sniper build in Starfield, gun build in Fallout 2, mage in Tyranny, and ranged cipher in Pillars of Eternity.\n\nMain details:\n\n+ Class: Sword Saint 10 / Duelist 10\n+ Race: Human\n+ Skills: Persuasion, Athletics, Mobility, Knowledge (World), Use Magic Device\n+ Weapon type: One-handed (dueling sword)\n+ Alignment: Lawful Good. Largely to fit my party where there are more Good companions. Evil alignment is generally poorly written in RPGs, including potentially the Pathfinder series ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/pscuno/what_rpgs_handle_doing_evil_playthroughs_well_or), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShouldIbuythisgame/comments/12zbw43/wsib_rpg_games_that_do_playing_as_evil_well), [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/y8qxvy/is_being_evil_in_wotr_any_fungood)).\n\n__Party.__\nI prioritized companions roughly by individual strengths and party composition, as well as by story/lore (that is, who's best written or most relevant to the story?).\n\n1. Valerie. Tank. ([build](https://www.gog.com/forum/pathfinder_kingmaker/companion_builds/post2))\n    + Class: Tower Shield Specialist 8 / Thug 4 / Stalwart Defender 8\n    + Weapon type: One-handed (bastard sword) and shield (tower shield)\n    + Skills: Athletics, Mobility, Perception, Persuasion, Use Magic Device\n2. Player character. Melee DPS.\n3. Linzi. Buff support with melee DPS. ([build](https://www.gog.com/forum/pathfinder_kingmaker/companion_builds/post6))\n    + Class: Bard 7 / Knife Master 3 / Arcane Trickster 10\n    + Weapon type: One-handed (dagger)\n    + Skills: Mobility, Trickery, Stealth, Perception, Persuasion\n4. Ekundayo. Ranged DPS. ([build](https://www.gog.com/forum/pathfinder_kingmaker/companion_builds/post19))\n    + Class: Ranger 20\n    + Weapon type: Two-handed (longbow)\n    + Skills: Athletics, Mobility, Stealth, Lore (Nature), Perception\n5. Octavia. Ranged DPS and AOE. ([build](https://www.gog.com/forum/pathfinder_kingmaker/companion_builds/post17))\n    + Class: Rogue 2 / Wizard 8 / Arcane Trickster 10\n    + Weapon type: N/A (auto-attack with spells)\n    + Skills: Trickery, Stealth, Knowledge (Arcana), Knowledge (World), Mobility, Perception, Persuasion\n6. Tristian. Heal support with ranged DPS. ([build](https://www.gog.com/forum/pathfinder_kingmaker/companion_builds/post32))\n    + Class: Ecclesitheurge 6 / Empyreal Sorcerer 4 / Mystic Theurge 10\n    + Weapon type: N/A (auto-attack with spells)\n    + Skills: Knowledge (Arcana), Lore (Nature), Lore (Religion), Persuasion\n\nI played other companions to complete their quests and followed the above build guide resources for their builds.\n\nAs with most CRPGs, party composition means both their combat role and their non-combat skills. In Kingmaker, the [essential skills](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/9m3xc5/party_building_guide) are Persuasion on your main character, Perception on multiple characters (they each roll a check against a hidden object and can fail), Trickery, Lore (Nature), Lore (Religion), Knowledge (Arcana), and Knowledge (World). I jotted who fills these skills above.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pathfinder-kingmaker"},{"id":"322682678650385996","title":"Persona 3","originalTitle":"ペルソナ3","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2006,"playtimeMinutes":4800,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["Atlus"],"publishers":["Atlus USA","Atlus","Koei"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-10-14","completedDate":"2020-10-22","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Persona 3 is a unique mix of the JRPG and visual novel genres. It blends well the two core loops of combat and relationship-building. I like the rhythm that the game offers in balance. Both are slightly grindy but feel great in its formula of progressing both: spending days maximizing Social Links, and then evenings in Tartarus for some days and maximizing attributes during the rest. I like both the novelties in balancing both elements as well as the new mechanics for JRPG combat such as Personas and emphasis on exploiting elemental weaknesses.\n\nFlaw-wise, the combat can be tedious and heavily RNG, trial-and-error-based, and frequently with difficulty spikes: I hate going to Tartarus as opposed to increasing my Social Links. The reliance on party member AI adds to the RNG. In addition, there's quite a bit of missables and lack of explanation around mechanics like who exactly to contact for Elizabeth's requests or some Social Links. The managing of up to 21 Social Link schedules can also be quite annoying without constant referencing to a guide on who's available for a certain day. Finally, the game runs a little too on the long side, feeling a bit redundant around November; they could easily cut out July/August events in the game. By December I steamrolled through the game just to finish it.\n\n__Story.__ It's a somewhat generic anime story, appealing to the Japanese artistic sensibility of abstraction and weirdness even when unnecessary. For example, shooting oneself with guns is obviously a stylistic choie, but only adds edge rather than meaningful symbolism. Things just happen in the overall story without much explanation or substance: various people die, betrayals happen, and there aren't motivations underlying them. \"The power of friendship surges in you!\" Persona 3's story does do well in standalone character background.\n\n__Gameplay.__  Persona 3 combines JRPG and visual novel elements.\n\nJRPG-wise, Persona inherits the turn-based combat standards while also featuring several novelties: the 1 More mechanic and All-Out attack from knockdowns; exploiting elemental affinity (strengths on you, weaknesses on enemies) for such knockdowns; striking enemies when they appear during area navigation for a preemptive turn; inheriting skills from Personas which themselves level and can fuse to make new ones; and a select one-of-X card-based loot system almost reminiscent of roguelikes. Persona also introduces a condition, which affects combat, encouraging you to balance well between not going purely to Tartarus every day.\n\nThe combat is fun, appealing to a grindy Dragon Quest style with its own rock-paper-scissors quirks like Pokemon. It's a trial and error whenever you first attempt to identify an enemy's weakness, lacking Pokemon's obvious visual style that makes it easy to tell a Pokemon's type at first glance. Once you do know weaknesses, the repetitiveness can be quite fun in adding a sort of rhythm. The game can be frustratingly RNG-based in its one-hit-kills though.\n\nVisual novel-wise, Persona inherits character story paths in the form of Social Links, and which have light combat effects. Social Links can be largely ignored from a gameplay-only perspective, adding increased benefits from fusions and adding a new Persona after max rank for each Social Link; these benefits are minor, and I like this this choice because of how easy it is to miss Social Links. I wish however that Social Links were easier to track, find, and not ultimately be missable: by doing this, you can be safely ensured to have experienced the content from a blind playthrough, and therefore Social Links can also be designed with a bigger gameplay impact.\n\nPersona also features social attributes---Charm, Academics, and Courage---which enable various activities (e.g., Home Economics Social Link is only available when Academics is improved). The idea behind these make sense, and they indeed remain a staple in the Persona series as a way of defining \"stats\" for Persona's social half. In practice, however, Persona 3's three social stats only enable a handful of Social Links in the game: Home Economics, and three others each for maximizing a social attribute. I wish Persona had better integrated social attributes into the dialogue and rest of the game, similar to skill checks in western RPGs.\n\nBlending JRPGs and visual novels, Persona 3 progresses on a day-by-day basis with story events appearing on a per-determined basis, and with a set number of months before the game truly ends. This places you on a time limit to complete each dungeon to be ready for the next Full Moon boss. I find these deadlines worked well: it encouraged you to level up and progress in combat, but also know when you should stop and start spending the rest of your time on maximizing Social Links and attributes.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I'm a fan of the art style. It ages well playing it more than a decade later. The soundtrack is awesome albeit repetitive 50 hours in. Not even knowing the story when initially playing, I was hooked by its score. Dialogue is mostly voiced.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ L1 + select enemy lets you see an enemy's weakness, or analyze it if you haven't already analyzed the enemy type.\n+ Level 1 of Tartarus party heals. You can do this anytime, with the tradeoff of it cutting you off if a party member is Tired, or you don't have a waypoint to go back to the specific floor. This also means your HP and SP go full when you start a new day.\n+ The Split Up feature is pretty useless. By the time this is viable for individual members to take on shadows, it's better off fighting at higher floors as a party rather than dealing with unequal XP gain.\n+ You can use a button that's not X to advance dialogue. But it won't select a choice, so you can use it for spamming dialogue so you don't accidentally make a wrong decision.\n+ Magic spells have an easy to follow prefix/suffix: e.g., agi is base, mag+ means \"apply to all targets\", and +ion/+dyne are stronger versions.\n+ It's not too hard to control the RNG from fusing Personas. Just exit the fusion menu, then reenter to see a new outcome.\n+ In FES version, you can walk Koromaru at nights. This doesn't do much with the occasional item reward or happiness-building in Social Links. I like that it's a nice filler for Evenings however when you have nothing else to do, namely, after exhausting attributes and night-based Social Links.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Missable social links and Elizabeth's Requests if you don't complete them in time.\n+ Too many loading screens filled with small maps.\n+ You have to talk to your party members in order to see their status and equipment. Much more annoying than just changing from the main menu like your main character.\n+ You can only save your game at night or before beginning Tartarus. This is too infrequent, sometimes over 20 minutes in difference.\n+ You have to remember the specific set of Persona cards that you own. Otherwise you may pick a Persona during card selection that you already own, which is a waste.\n+ You have to remember each Persona's skills and weaknesses. You can only select one in battle, so it's effectively trial and error until you know not only the enemy's weakness but which Persona you have that best matches it.\n+ In typical visual novel fashion, you can't just be very good friends with a girl. Social ranks >=5 with girls mean dating them.\n+ To do best in exams, you need to maximize academics very early, sacrificing time spent elsewhere. And the rewards are meager.\n+ Item selection per party member and skill selection per Persona is very tedious. There's no global menu making it easy, e.g., who a new item can be given to.\n+ Certain time periods are not handled well. In the summer, \"after school\" is effecitvely replaced with daytime, and you lose access to upgrading all Social Links at school. Instead you have mini-dates in the daytime that don't actually progress the corresponding Social Link. I would rathey they don't provide any mini-dates since they're deceiving; instead, just recommend to use the time to maximize non-school Social Links.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://shin-megami-tensei-persona.fandom.com/wiki/Pop_Quiz_dates_and_answers\n+ https://www.neoseeker.com/persona-3/faqs/153211-attributes-theellimist.html\n+ https://sites.google.com/site/persona3fessociallink/\n+ https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps2/937269-shin-megami-tensei-persona-3-fes/answers/21873-who-is-the-best-party-for-you\n\nBy fandom references, I chose this one as my first entry to the Persona series (and I suppose Shin Megami Tensei more broadly). It's the first true Persona game in the modern style as the first two are closer to SMT. Version-wise, P3P's significant changes are controllable party members and a female MC option; P3P removes the epilogue (The Answer), anime cutscenes, and walking around the overworld. Therefore I played FES using a PS2 emulator (PCSX2 v1.6.0 with 4x Native so from 480p to roughly 2560x1440), Xbox one controller, and with the following additions: a ROM with undub and \"original BGM\" (I assume original means an option for undubbing; it wasn't clear to me if there's a soundtrack change from original Persona 3 to Persona 3 FES). There's both a controllable party members and a widescreen (16:9) patch but I prefer to play according to the original.\n\nI mostly played blind but did use guides for maximizing exam answers, attributes, most Social Links, and knowing teleport levels for Tartarus. I played on Normal difficulty; in retrospect, I almost wish I played Easy because of the grind, RNG, and difficulty spikes. I felt my playthrough could have been easier if I spent more time monitoring skills obtained during Persona fusions and maintaining good equipment purchases; but I didn't enjoy this micromanagement. I beat The Journey in 58 hours (according to save game data; I wish I learned about PCSX2's Turbo mode much earlier, not in January!); I did not play The Answer as I got bored of The Journey.\n\nI generally go to Tartarus ASAP to complete the section until the next block, halting when my party members get tired. Then I go to maximize Social Links (typically afternoons) and attributes (typically evenings).\n\n+ Social Link-wise, I try to level them all equally. Aside from balancing Persona fusion benefits, this benefits from more options to prioritize when anyone appears during lunchtime or asks for a Sunday date for guaranteed rank ups. I do prioritize girls I'm dating so I can move on to date another once they're maxed.\n+ Persona-wise, I effectively fuse everything. I care first about covering at least one of each elemental affinity for One More! attacks (Agi, Bufu, Zio, Garu), a party heal (Cadenza or Media), and in later game, defense debuffs and attack buffs (Rakunda, Tarukaja); and second their Persona level.\n+ Party-wise, I focused on the following instead of leveling them all up: Yukari, Akihiko, and Mitsuru. This party has heals as well as an elemental affinity for each party member. Exploiting elemental instead of physical attacks is the game's meta. I prefer sticking with one party when posssible because this means less grinding.\n\nI sometimes used PCSX2's save/load state if I find the save points too sparse and frustrating if I die. However, I never used it as a crutch for riskier gameplay except for frustrating difficulty spikes (see Sleeping Table).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/persona-3"},{"id":"322682678623085132","title":"Persona 4","originalTitle":"ペルソナ4","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2008,"playtimeMinutes":570,"platforms":["PS3","X360","Arcade"],"studios":["Arc System Works","Atlus"],"publishers":["Atlus","Zen United"],"genres":["Fighting","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-12-19","completedDate":"2021-12-26","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Persona 4 provides several refinements to Persona 3, improving its overall experience. I greatly enjoy Persona 4's overall gameplay loop, with managing a schedule to level up Status Parameters (including studying and jobs), level up Social Links (progressing character stories), dungeon crawling (with its own combat-based progression), and progressing the main story. I most enjoy the visual novel elements in boosting social stats and managing the social link schedule.\n\nFlaw-wise, Persona 4 suffers from the usual Persona issues of bland level design and side quests. I also dislike how difficult it is to maximize all Social Ranks (see all content) in a single playthrough as a second playthrough is too redundant with little replayability.\n\n__Story.__ The rural setting is a nice change of pace from Persona 3's urban environment. The story is fairly trite and follows the same formula as Persona 3 as well. I enjoyed most of the characters. I also greatly like that the main story is not nearly as dramatic in cosmic scale; it's a town murder, which keeps it more narrow and fleshed-out not unlike Jojo Part 4, and it's less melodramatic in dark themes and vague symbology.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Like Persona 3, Persona 2 is half visual novel, half JRPG-based dungeon crawling.\n\nThe core battle system is the same as Persona 3: exploiting enemy weaknesses, carrying a diverse moveset among your party composition with elemental attacks (Agi, Bufu, Zio, Garu), a party heal (Cadenza or Media), and in later game, defense debuffs and attack buffs (Rakunda, Tarukaja). Applying weaknesses stuns them (1 More) and enables a party All-Out attack. You also wander in dungeons, able to dodge enemies and attack enemies from behind to launch a preemptive attack.\n\nProgression system follows typical JRPG elements with skills, items, equipment, and with stats. Battle rewards are improved with Shuffle Time rewarding items or Personas, and additional cards that let you obtain multiple. Like Persona 3, only the main character can change Personas, which streamlines choices and keeps characters tied to their elemental/defensive playstyles. New is Fusion Forecast.\n\nNew to Persona 4 are some online features. I like the Persona Search function, which uses online capabilities to determine popular Personas to fuse as a default choice. it's a good alternative option than selecting based on specific Persona combinations, where instead of deciding based on Personas you want to lose, you decide based on Personas you want to gain. Rescue Requests also add a bit more dynamism to battles. Similarly, you can see what other folks did on that day.\n\nIn terms of the visual novel elements, Social Links remain as the staple. New to Persona 4, upgrading party member Social Links also improves combat abilities, including spontaneous combos, status ailment and down cures. New activities include jobs to improve certain Status Parameters; maintaining a garden; reading books; riding your scooter; bug catching and fishing.\n\nLike Persona 3, level design is quite weak. Dungeons are empty mazes.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Voice acting is excellent, as if it were a real anime. The soundtrack is decent.As a setting change, I like that Persona 4's dungeons isn't one redundant ladder climb but the dungeons themselves change depending on the theme. The anime cutscenes are also nice.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can change tactics to manually control your party members. I hated having to use a mod for this in Persona 3's PS2 edition. Having tactics in general is nice becaues you can have them automate when you're just grinding mindlessly.\n+ The sub-menu is such a nice quality of life to instantly go to different areas. Similarly, there are fewer small areas to navigate, e.g., NPC shops immediately trigger their menus instead of having to walk up to them.\n+ You can customize difficulty settings in the game (PC port), greatly reducing the need for grind by upping XP/money while keeping enemy damage/HP the same of a certain preset difficulty.\n+ You can skip through dialogue and cutscenes. This is especially helpful if you died during a long day.\n+ As quality of life, Persona 4 Golden adds settings to give more EXP won, money won, and retry in battles.\n+ All new Personas are automatically registered. This means you only have to manually register when you want to overwrite an existing one.\n+ Early game, I enjoyed that I had to actually stock up on HP/MP Potions, Retreats, and Revival Beads in order to complete a dungeon in 1 day. Fortunately, the game also gives you plenty cash to stock up.\n+ Like Persona 3, the Analysis option in battle keeps track of enemy resistances/weaknesses you've tried. No need to memorize.\n+ The TV show programs including shopping add an additional world-building element.\n+ Persona 4 Golden offers third-tier Personas with an extra skill. They are effectively an upgrade as a Rank 11 Social Link encounter among your party members.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Your character no longer gets tired, so there's no incentive to waste an Evening sleeping. This means it's also easier to complete a dungeon in one day.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ There's not as many missables (e.g., most of Persona 3's sidequests) but there are still quite a few, e.g., books if you chose basketball. There's also a specific subset of Social Links with earlier than typical deadlines: Nanako (Oct 31), Adachi (Nov 1), Dojima (Nov 3), Marie (December 31). The overall deadline of February 5 for Social Links is also arbitrary.\n+ Like Persona 3, sidequests remain as boring fetch quests with no story. Worse, they now require backtracking to previous dungeons. It's better if they don't exist in the game.\n+ Finding clues for the next dungeon is annoying without a walkthrough. You literally have to talk to every NPC.\n+ Skills don't distinguish between active and passive. I discarded Boost skills for a while because I thought they were active, but they're actually huge DPS increases!\n+ Fuck Hollow Forest. Its gameplay---while new in encouraging patterns like less item reliance---is too annoying in practice to actually play because its SP penalty disincentives you from actually fighting enemies. Furthermore, like Marie, its story is largely tacked on and not very interesting compared to the rest of the plot.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Social Links Guide](https://sites.google.com/site/persona4goldenguide/social-links)\n+ [School Answers](https://sites.google.com/site/persona4goldenguide/everything-else/school-answers)\n+ [Books](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/vita/641695-persona-4-golden/faqs/65714)\n+ [Boxed Lunches](https://www.rpgsite.net/feature/9852-persona-4-golden-boxed-lunches-how-to-make-every-perfect-lunch-for-the-cooking-with-gas-achievement)\n\nI played Persona 4 Golden on PC. I played on Normal difficulty as I enjoy the visual novel elements more than the combat; and the extent to which I enjoy the combat, it's when it's least grindy.\n\nI played blind with the exception of guides for Social Links; school answers; and books. Club-wise, I went with Basketball and Drama; for romance, I chose Rise. My strategy is to level everything equally---Social Ranks, party levels, Persona levels---but I prioritize Status Parameters before Social Ranks due to exams (Knowledge) and dialogue choices (Courage, Understanding), anyone who approaches you as it guarantees a level up (especially higher levels as various scripted events automatically boost Social Link points), and Nanako/Adachi/Dojima/Marie due to stricter deadlines. I complete dungeons in one day and as early as possible. I didn't care for quest completion nor bonus bosses. By the end of the game (True Ending), I maxed all Status Parameters and Social Links with the exception of Naoki, Ai, Yumi, Shu (rank 9), Fox (rank 8), and Eri (rank 5).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/persona-4-arena"},{"id":"322682678652516940","title":"Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney","originalTitle":"逆転裁判","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":1440,"platforms":["3DS"],"studios":["Level-5","Capcom"],"publishers":["Level-5","Nintendo"],"genres":["Puzzle","Strategy","Adventure","Visual Novel"],"startedDate":"2016-12-22","completedDate":"2016-12-26","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Excellent story and cast. the characters really sell the story, especially all the supporting cast in each case. its so great in this aspect that i admire phoenix wright ourely for its lovsble stories.\n\n Im always not sure how to grade gameplay in a visual novel. in one respect, it deserves its own grading separate from usual video games which focus in it and usual novels which have none. so when new gameplay elements are added to the core of phoenix wright, such as the fingerprint analysis, i think theyre cute but not really helping all that much in the gameplay. after alll, the visual novel is still only a small caricature of the interactivity you can really get if it were a crime game.\n\n The linear story is fine with me. it seems to be an eastern thing to prefer linear storylines, which i also prefer.\n\n The specific sequence of steps to progress the storyline is not very good. this reminds me of jrpgs where you have to know exactly what to do next in many occasions. for me this is fine because i always play them with a walkthrough, but it hampers the ability to play it raw and almost forces you to play with a walkthrough as the only way. i think that would be fine (as some other visual novels do to get at all completed paths) but its weird because theres never some official walkthrough you can follow as a complement to the story. this means a significant aspect of your enjoyment of the game is contingent on the strength of some third party guide you're reading. (for example, starmen.net's earthbound guide is excellent; as is strategywiki's phoenix wright guide; but ive not found a good ff6 guide).\n\nOne thing ive also found curious is the amount of summary content in the game. this is of course done for casuals who play cases piecewise and can tend to forget major events. but there is so much of it also within a day of investigation or trial that im not sure whther to 'dock points' off for.\n\nI love the characters. The Pheonix-Maya duo remind me of another pair, the detectives from Darker than Black. It's not that the characters are similar or even the dynamic involved with them. But it's the shear dynamic that makes it so excellent and lovable.\n\nI love the last two. Rise of Ashes is especially my favorite.\n\n[1] http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Phoenix_Wright:_Ace_Attorney\n\n[1] was a great guide; no complaints.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/professor-layton-vs-phoenix-wright-ace-attorney"},{"id":"322682678652717644","title":"Pillars of Eternity","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":2160,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Obsidian Entertainment"],"publishers":["Obsidian Entertainment","Paradox Interactive"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2023-07-31","completedDate":"2023-08-10","updatedDate":"2023-09-07","notes":"POE is truly a revival of the CRPG. Specifically, like Baldur's Gate and other Infinity Engine titles, POE emphasizes text and roleplay, system and progression mechanics, area exploration, quests, and RTWP tactical combat. For the formula POE sticks to, POE especially excels in writing in main plot, quest design, characters, and world; and it features intricate gameplay systems and progression.\n\nFlaws:\n\n+ It arguably sticks too much to its gameplay roots, not having an identity for a modern take on CRPGs like that of Divinity's turn-based combat, or Bioware's third-person RPGs like Dragon Age, KOTOR, and Mass Effect. The tried-and-true RTWP combat is fine but sees its age. There's a reason Pillars of Eternity is not as popular as either of these two takes. Pillar of Eternity is especially an interesting contrast to Divinity: both came out around the same time steering the CRPG resurgence; and one excels most in CRPG's writing while one excels most in CRPG's combat.\n+ Some difficulty spikes. It's never clear when an area is too difficult and something you should come back to (e.g., Temple of Eothas, Caed Nua, caves at Anslog Compass). This ends up causing frustration as you bash your head against a wall trying to execute the right tactics, savescum, or lower the difficulty.\n+ Pacing is awkward with the White March DLC being a roughly 16-30 hour adventure that's stuck in the middle of the base campaign and with only loose connections. I felt burn out starting White March Part 2 with 45 hours on my belt and having not yet started the base campaign's Act 3. This type of standalone DLC works better as an epilogue (c.f., Dragon Age Origins, Witcher 3).\n\n__Story.__\nWriting is mature like Baldur's Gate and involves some moral dilemmas. Worldbuilding is excellent in particular. The writing can be dry at times with lengthy exposition, but I enjoyed all the various conflicts, settlements, and characters.\n\nCompanions are grounded well and I enjoy their dialogue. The random dialogue between party members and the single companion quest feel short given how much more there is to learn about them though.\n\n[Animancy as a moral dilemma](https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/a0jojk/game_does_a_pretty_poor_job_distinguishing) is poorly delivered. It gives plenty of examples of animancy gone wrong and few to no examples of its potential in doing any good. There are also clear subtextual analogies to science and the resistance to change in the unknown from science. However, there is no such thing as the scientific method here; animancy is more like yet another branch of magic, not as bleak as necromancy and yet never really explained what the benefits are.\n\n__Builds and progression.__ Builds and progression comprise the following key systems:\n\n+ Classes.\n+ Skills. Some used for skill checks like lore and athletics; some used for exploration like mechanics for unlocking things; and some used for combat like stealth, athletics, and survival.\n+ Talents. This is similar to Fallout and effectively a much bigger expansion of passives than BG's weapon specialization passives.\n+ Abilities. It includes not only BG-style mage and priest spells, but also druid spells, cipher powers, and chanter incantations.\n+ Attributes.\n+ Equipment and consumables.\n+ Party composition with companions.\n+ Unlike Baldur's Gate, there is no alignment. But there is faction reputation and character disposition based on your deeds.\n+ [Health and endurance](https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Vitality). The health system is a cool idea to make rests an important yet limited resource.\n\nThe stronghold is a more significant system compared to Baldur's Gate 2. It has its own stats with Prestige / Security, events including visitors, adventures for your companions to earn experience while they aren't in your party. There are also various boons including occasionally free crafting materials and resting bonuses. I enjoyed this overall system; it's fairly low maintenance and a good way to spend money (which quickly accumulates).\n\n__Combat.__\nCombat is truly real-time, replacing the pseudo round system common in classic CRPGs with RTWP. The general tactics is similar to other CRPGs: positioning is crucial, CC is powerful, and you blast specific enemies at a time. There’s a noticeable density of mobs, so AOE helps in this game more than most.\n\nThere’s a damage type - armor type system that’s intended to encourage more tactical gameplay with damage switching and balanced composition across your party. However, I found this has mixed success. It’s not obvious from the UI when enemies are resistant or weak to a damage type, and correspondingly what weapon or ability you should be using to exploit this advantage. This is likely more suited to advanced Path of the Damned metagaming. But for a first playthrough, you often don’t even know enemy stats until after you master their bestiary and defeat most of them in the game.\n\n__UI and quality-of-life.__\nUI is very true to Baldur's Gate and other Infinity Engine titles. It has many quality of life improvements which make the game more bearable in modern times compared to classic CRPGs:\n\n+ Less bloated UI. You can even hide the controls menu and the dialogue/combat log so only the party member UI is displayed.\n+ Intuitive attribute stats. There's none of the confusing D&D 2e stats like THAC0, AC, and Saves.\n+ Inventory shows the inventory for each party member. No more tedious cycling among them to manage loot. Quest items and crafting items also don't take up the limited inventory space and can be stored in the stash and used freely.\n+ You can pick up all companions at level 1 rather than them be auto-leveled to your current party. This helps significantly for your builds and avoids the meta common in RPGs like KOTOR where optimally you would pick up companions before leveling.\n+ There's limited rests, where each consumes a camping supply, and there's a maximum setting depending on the difficulty. No longer is the game not balanced, where in Baldur’s Gate it’s common to spam rest after every encounter and refresh everything.\n+ You can respec.\n+ Custom formation settings are more intuitive and customizable than the preset formations.\n\nOther comments:\n\n+ I love the speech checks and the indicators when your background, race, or other character choice affects the dialogue.\n+ There are multiple attack and defense types. As you defeat a monster type, its bestiary entry fills out and you can learn what attacks work best. This also makes weapon sets viable as you will often want options in order to switch to the appropriate attack type.\n+ Fatigue from not resting and status effects such as wounds after being knocked out.\n+ Split of abilities into per rest and per encounter. \n+ You can learn Wizard spells through either level ups or from grimoires. In fact, you can even play the game's meta of hiring a wizard adventurer to learn spells, put them into a grimoire, then give the grimoire to your main wizard ([source](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/211330/how-can-i-learn-more-spells)).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nDecent and expected for a AA game at its time. The animations are noticeably better than Infinity Engine games. The background, assets, and color palette look similar but are actually rendered rather than static wallpapers. Cutscenes are obviously made from a budget, using photo stills in slideshow format.\n\nUnfortunately, for a modern CRPG, the voice acting is still only partial. Much of the writing is read-only, including even NPC-triggered dialogue as you walk through towns.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Due to the way defenses work, every attribute helps every class in some way. No pigeonholing that's common in RPGs where classes focus on only 1 or 2 stats.\n+ No quest markers to start or how to complete quests. I love that you have to actually rely on listening to dialogue. Quests in journals aren't only checkboxes to fulfill like static tasks.\n+ Developer commentary option. Great for a second playthrough.\n+ Unlike most games of this type, you don't earn XP for defeating enemies. Instead you receive experience for completing quests and bounties alongside minor rewards from filling out the bestiary and exploring the world. This makes peaceful resolutions more viable (c.f., the extreme in DOS2, where optimally you would kill everyone in the first town for XP).\n+ No missable quests or timeline except rare and very noticeable points in the game (e.g., transition to Act 4). Unique items are missable though depending on your quest choices.\n+ You can change the keybind for highlighting interactable objects to be toggle instead of hold. I greatly prefer toggle given how often you need to use this key as you explore. It's a nice quality of life that is missing in most CRPGs.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The stash is accessible at any point from the inventory. You don't have to make return trips to certain locations like an inn or bank to drop and pick up items. This has a significant gameplay effect: instead of being picky about your limited party inventory (and accounting for the tedium between walking back and forth between town and the location to pick up more items), Pillars of Eternity lets you loot literally all items. You can then vendor all the trash.\n\n  On one side, this ruins the need for any choice. It's too streamlined in that quest items and crafting items take no space and can be safely used from the stash. On the other hand, inventory management can be a tedious activity in Baldur's Gate activities. I prefer this over Baldur's Gate's approach, but I think there are better compromises that still encourage being selective about loot (for example, Bethesda and Divinity games' weight limits).\n+ Sell price is static and is affected by merchant type, reputation, or merchant discounts. This reduces complexity but also makes it easier to just sell loot as you go and not have to hoard and organize them.\n+ Party AI is serviceable, but not very customizable such as in the abilities they use. So there is a bit of micromanagement necessary to control the RTWP combat.\n+ All the non-dialogue NPCs named after backers. Makes it a bit confusing from a gameplay perspective who is actually working talking to.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Unintuitively, item bonuses don't stack. For example if you have both cloak with +2 Might, and ring with +1 Might, you'll get +2 Might from cloak. Bonus from the ring will be suppressed.\n+ Despite the roleplay options, like all RPGs the game is against you if you're evil. Few games handle it well as quests are almost always designed to be assisting someone. If you roleplay evil, you wouldn't be helping them in the first place; and evil writing is often conflated with being a dick.\n+ It is not clear when starting a faction quest that it will lock you out of other factions' quests. In my playthrough, I ended up going with the Dozens only because they were the first faction I got to the second quest leading to this lock out.\n+ Like Baldur's Gate and most CRPGs, inactive party members receive only a portion of accumulated XP. I prefer equally shared XP so that it's more accessible to swap party members in and out rather than mostly committing to one composition. It's not a significant penalty though, with levels roughly comparable across party members, especially at endgame where there's enough XP to reach the level cap.\n+ Long load and save times. Everything is tracked as persistent state, so the save and load time becomes slower over time. This is annoying given many locations are just huts with a single small area not unlike Infinity Engine titles (but these are very low in performance, so loading is near instantaneous). And I use a PC with an SSD. I can't imagine how slow it would be on console.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com)\n  + [Map](https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Pillars_of_Eternity_world_map)\n\nI was motivated to play as it's one of the most prominent CRPGs in the 2013-2020 era revival. It's an influence on other modern CRPGs I want to play: Torment: Tides of Numenera, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Tyranny, POE 2, Wasteland 2, Underrail, Age of Decadence. Other modern CRPGs I played or want to play include Divinity: Original Sin, Shadowrun, Disco Elysium, and Baldur’s Gate 3. I wanted to play this for a while but it took me a few years to get into BG1/2 and Planescape Torment first.\n\n__Version.__\nI played [Deluxe Edition](https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Pillars_of_Eternity#Editions). It includes all DLC: two The White March DLCs and the Deadfire Pack.\n\n__Playthrough.__ I researched online for character setup and build information. I generally played blind, though I referred to walkthroughs in case I got stuck on a quest (looking up the quest on the wiki). I tried not to metagame by looking at quest rewards and consequences of choices, preferring the blind immersion. I played the White March DLCs integrated into the base campaign ([order discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/8az04z/when_do_i_start_the_white_march_expansion_s)). I completed effectively all quests with the exception of roughly 5 side quests at the endgame and bounty tasks.\n\nI played Hard difficulty. I have experience playing BG2 with Core Rules difficulty. Hard is inbetween Normal and the Path of the Damned (hardest setting). I can always bump down the difficulty later if it gets too difficult or tedious. On top of default difficulty settings, I turned on \"Maim Companions Before Death\" as permanent death at 0 HP is too punishing and I always reload the game when this happens (both here and in Baldur's Gate); and I turned off \"Auto Level Companions\" so I can control companions from level 1 (no longer is there a meta of rushing to collect all companions at the lowest possible level).\n\nAdditional keybinds I added from the defaults:\n\n+ Camera Up/Left/Down/Right are set from arrow keys to WASD.\n+ Select All is set from Backspace to Q. I would use a number key, but they're based on individual group configurables, and a custom select all doesn't select summons and pets well.\n+ Attack Cursor is set to Z.\n+ Half and Double Speed are left unbinded.\n+ Quickload is set from F8 to F9.\n\nSome choices affecting gameplay:\n\n+ [Council of Stars quest](https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Council_of_Stars): Galawain for +1 Might, +1 Athletics.\n+ [At the Mercy of the Tribes](https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/At_the_Mercy_of_the_Tribes): Dungeon Delver.\n\n__Build.__\nI played a Cipher ([Obsidian: [Class Build] Cipher: A beginner's guide to GUNMAGE](https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/84139-class-build-cipher-a-beginners-guide-to-gunmage), [Steam: Ranged Cipher Build Guide (PotD, WM 1&2, Patch 3.05)](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=871584933)). It's a unique class to Pillars of Eternity—the equivalent of a spellsword. It also lets you experience most systems as both melee and ranged (physical and spells), and it suits the player character's lore of Starting settings are below.\n\n+ Sex: Male\n+ Race: Hearth Olan\n  + Wood Elf is also really strong. However, its ability changes in POE 2, so Hearth Olan is better in carrying over the character if I intend to.\n+ Class: Cipher\n+ Attributes: MIG 18 / CON 3 / DEX 17 / PER 18 / INT 18 / RES 4 (including racial and culture bonuses)\n+ Culture: The Living Lands (+1 MIG)\n+ Background: Explorer (+1 Lore, +1 Survival; no major difference, chosen for roleplay)\n\nIn retrospect, I wouldn't have chosen Cipher. It's a decent class with its own spell system to play with. However, I didn't like that its primary method of high DPS relied on positioning a line-style channeled beam (Antipathetic Field, Ectopsychic Echo). I found this to be too finicky and I hate moving and waiting to attack in RTWP as it's too much micromanagement.\n\n__Party.__ I chose them primarily for story/lore reasons. Party composition and their individual strengths came as secondary reasons. ([Steam: Companion Builds](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2143029546), [Steam: \nGetting all companions as soon as possible v1.1.1](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=415359165))\n\n+ Player character. Cipher. Serves ranged DPS and CC.\n  + Weapons: Pistol or blunderbuss due to Weapon Focus: Ruffian and Gunner.\n  + Skills: Lore (capped to 10).\n+ Aloth. Wizard. Serves ranged DPS with a focus on AOE.\n  + Weapons: Any ranged, preferably rod, scepter, or wand.\n+ Durance. Priest. Serves support.\n  + Weapons: Sword and shield due to Weapon and Shield Style and Inspired Flame.\n+ Kana Rua. Chanter. Serves support and ranged DPS.\n  + Weapons: War bow due to Weapon Focus: Adventurer.\n+ Eder. Fighter. Serves tank.\n  + Weapons: Sabre, stiletto, or club and shield due to Weapon and Shield Style, Weapon Specialization: Ruffian, Weapon Mastery: Ruffian, and Weapon Focus: Ruffian.\n  + Skills: Mechanics.\n+ Pallegina. Paladin. Serves off-tank.\n  + Weapons: Two-handed weapon due to Two-Handed Style, preferably great sword or Abydon's Hammer.\n  + It mostly follows the companion build guide, but with two-handed instead of one-handed weapon and shield.\n\nOther companions. They are situationally used, primarily for their companion quest or other content.\n\n+ Grieving Mother. Cipher. I omitted them because they have no party interaction. And I wanted to play Cipher on my player character.\n  + Weapons: One-handed weapon (TODO) and shield due to Weapon and Shield Style and Weapon Focus.\n+ Sagani. Ranger. I prefer Aloth and Kana Rua for ranged DPS.\n  + Weapons: War bow due to Weapon Focus: Adventurer.\n+ Hiravias. Druid. They're another potential tank, but I prefer Eder and Pallegina.\n  + Weapons: Unarmed.\n+ Zahua. Monk. I bring only for the White March DLC content. They replace Eder as DPS/support.\n  + Weapons: Unarmed due to Two Weapon Style and Weapon Focus: Peasant.\n+ Maneha. Barbarian. I bring only for the White March DLC content. They replace Eder as (off)tank.\n  + Skills: Mechanics.\n  + Weapons: Dual-wield sabre, stiletto, or club and shield due to Two Weapon Style and Weapon Focus: Ruffian.\n  + It mostly follows the companion build guide, but with two weapon style instead of one-handed weapon and shield.\n+ Devil. Rogue. I bring only for the White March DLC content. They replace Pallegina as DPS.\n  + Weapons: Dual-wield stiletto, sabre, or club due to Two Weapon Style and Weapon Focus: Ruffian.\n\n__Skills.__\n\n+ Lore and Mechanics are the main skill checks and needed as a max stat on only one party member. Mechanics is needed for finding traps and unlocking. Mechanics is best on your frontliner as they're best positioned to locate traps.\n+ All party members get a minimum of 3 Athletics for Second Wind and party-wide skill checks; Survival is a dump stat for camping rest buffs.\n+ Stealth is preferred on the combat initiator but not that important. It's not used often during quests, and it can put your ranged in bad position when initiating combat.\n\n__Abilities.__\nCipher abilities.\n\n+ 1st - Antipathetic Field, Mind Wave, Soul Shock, Whisper of Treason\n+ 2nd - Mental Binding, Phantom Foes, Psychovampiric Shield, Recall Agony\n+ 3rd - Ectopsychic Echo, Secret Horrors, Soul Ignition\n+ 4th - Body Attunement, Pain Block, Silent Scream, Wild Leech\n+ 5th - Borrowed Instinct, Tactical Meld, Detonate\n+ 6th - Amplified Wave, Disintegrate\n+ 7th - Time Parasite\n+ 8th - Reaping Knives, Defensive Mindweb\n\nWizard abilities ([guide](https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/73696-wizard-spell-guide-spells-you-get-for-free-early-on)).\n\nFor other abilities including priest and chanter, see the companion builds.\n\nTODOs on future playthroughs\n+ non-cipher class on player character. and a focus on other companions as my main party","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pillars-of-eternity"},{"id":"322682678624125516","title":"Planescape: Torment","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":1920,"platforms":["Linux","PC","iOS","Mac"],"studios":["Black Isle Studios"],"publishers":["Interplay Entertainment"],"genres":["Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy"],"startedDate":"2021-11-30","completedDate":"2021-12-11","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Planescape Torment is like an interactive novel. Its strength is clearly in its writing and as you explore the world and interact with characters and complete quests. Combat and menus do not age well, and neither do the audiovisuals. The game can also get bogged down by exposition dumps and unintuitive quest progression requiring a walkthrough.\n\n__Story.__ The story is mature: it's a personal journey of an immortal trying to regain his memories through repeated attempts. The dialogue options and depth of its themes are fun. It stands out most in its worldbuilding with deep lore in the setting, factions, and residents and their social status within the cities.\n\nDialogue consists of large info dumps during exposition. That does not age well.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Planescape Torment introduced the idea of dialogue-heavy RPGs, with stats and even attaining XP through dialogue.\n\nCombat is tedious click and waiting. RTWP system works reasonably well here given that combat isn't much of a large focus, and it's necessary for controlling the many menus to perform timely spellcasting. Making all combat turn-based would be even more tedious.\n\nControls are clunky and feel annoying traversing the world. My closest prior experience is with RTS games like Starcraft where you must control the camera, the selected units, and mouse control where they move/attack/apply special abilities.\n\nLimited inventory slots across party members and inventory weight. Further, you can only sell certain item types to certain vendors, and their value degrades if you sell multiple. There's no main stash, so you put them in places you can remember (e.g., containers in Marketplace near vendors).\n\nProgression system inherits from D&D with attributes, alignment, equipment, inventory space, mage and priest spell books and spell memory.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics and audio is much like Baldur’s Gate as the engine is the same. Partially voiced, which is surprising that there's even any voiced dialogue for a game in 1999 to be honest.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Quests have no quest/waypoint markers. I love the good old days of actually having to read quest descriptions.\n+ Save files work across platforms like Windows, Mac, and iPad.\n+ Quicksave cycles among 4 slots instead of just 1 slot.\n+ You can change both factions and classes at any time and without consequence, progressing in XP/requirements for each.\n+ Once you get to Lower Ward, you unlock fast travel.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The small fog of war and view distance. Possibly an engine limitation?\n+ You can only join one faction at a time. Leaving a faction to join another has no penalties.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Many of the formulaic named NPCs have generic dialogue. Sometimes though they actually have unique dialogue. This makes it a somewhat tedious affair if you want to experience the unique content in the game as you must talk to everyone.\n+ You drop all your inventory items when you die. Very tedious, so it's preferable to just savescum.\n+ Can't use function layer for keybinds, e.g., F5/F9 for quicksave/load.\n+ Quest items are carried like any other item in the inventory. You can accidentally delete or sell it. It's not clear what are quest items, especially items you want to carry for future quests.\n+ Unlike Bethesda-style speech checks, there's no indicator of which dialog options are made available through stat thresholds, or dialog options not available because of the lack thereof.\n+ There's a large collection of equipment slots for each character, but they're not all available. It's better design to just omit the slot for each character, e.g., only display tattoo, accessory, and organ slots for TNO.\n+ While I like that PT doesn't provide prescriptive quest objectives, it should at least tell me when I completed the quest and that I should head back to the questgiver for a reward.\n+ Object descriptions to click on. A relic from D&D that's more a nuisance to mindfully click and read each time rather than taking in its detail visually.\n+ The THAC0/AC system is poorly explained. For example, you want lower both but [items like rings indicate +THAC0/AC even though it decreases.](https://www.reddit.com/r/planescape/comments/mly9en/can_someone_tell_me_how_ac_and_thac0_work_in_this/gto5frs).\n+ I almost bricked my save by collecting all the Handkerchiefs then selling them. You need one to progress to Ravel.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Dan Simpson's guide](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/187975-planescape-torment/faqs/7964). It's the best one as he's known for Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and PS:T guides. But it's plaintext which I despise to play video games with as your enjoyment is largely stalled and dependent on following paragraphs of text. I used the guide for the initial setup.\n+ [Quests](http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/pc/planescape/quests.shtml)\n+ [Attributes wiki](https://torment.fandom.com/wiki/Attributes). Helps for planning stats when leveling. It's also a good reference for extra stats. The highest stat checks are [24 WIS, 21 INT, 25 CHA](https://www.reddit.com/r/planescape/comments/abcq9t/going_full_mage_tips_and_advises_are_welcome).\n\nI played the Enhanced Edition with its quality-of-life changes such as quickloot, tab-highlighting, heal on rest, max HP on level up, and always run. I rebinded keys so WASD allows me to control my camera, 1 as multiselect all, 2 as Nameless One, Q on Attack.\n\nI initially played on 09/03/17 on my iPad. I only made 2-3 hours progress. I restarted on 6/7/19 but gave up again. I played again on PC, on normal difficulty.\n\nI played mostly blind, enjoying the immersion---spoiler-free and without pacing issues when following a walkthrough line-by-line. I played a mage, focusing on Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma as they enable the most dialogue options and minimize the necessity of combat. I played Lawful Good as it allowed me to help random NPCs to complete sidequests and not arbitrarily kill off NPCs. Early game, I prioritized (with levels and tattoos) 18 INT / 19 WIS to benefit from Dak'kon's Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon XP and spell boosts, then 16 CHA. For Annah, I prioritized 100 Pickpocket, 100 Detect and Disarm Traps.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/planescape-torment"},{"id":"322682678652641868","title":"Pokemon Red and Blue","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":1560,"startedDate":"1998-12-31","completedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2023-08-13","notes":"I played Pokemon Red. I played it originally as a kid on an emulator. I remember also playing it again in high school with my cross country team when we had a Pokemon phase."},{"id":"330974773687353935","title":"Poppy Playtime","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Android","PC","iOS","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Mob Entertainment"],"publishers":["Mob Entertainment"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-05-07","completedDate":"2022-05-07","updatedDate":"2022-05-07","notes":"Unique environments, like a first-person perspective approach to Five Nights at Freddy's. I like the idea of Poppy Hands which are retractable and can bend currents for item and puzzle interaction.\n\nDetail in assets are excellent as is the sound design. I think it's really the environment detailing with the excellent artwork alongside solid creature animations that make the game stand out among other horror walking simulator puzzle games.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The end of Chapter 1 in the escape chute is iconic. It's the first reveal of the monster, its animation crawling through the chute at a fast pace is eerie, and you're claustrophobic. It's rare that I ever find linear escape sequences to be suspenseful.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played Chapters 1 and 2 on 2022-05-07. Haven't played any future chapters.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/poppy-playtime"},{"id":"322682678650395212","title":"Portal 2: Coop","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2011,"startedDate":"2020-09-18","completedDate":"2020-09-18","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Pretty fun and not difficult. Played with Danny."},{"id":"322682678650408524","title":"Post Void","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":90,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["YCJY Games"],"publishers":["YCJY Games","Super Rare Originals"],"genres":["Shooter","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-08-15","completedDate":"2020-08-15","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"This game really knows the idea behind push-forward combat like Doom, and with health pickups and a timer to encourage killing all enemies you see. Core mechanics of shoot, slide, jump are perfect. There's not enough item variety, level design, or enemies to keep the game replayable for many hours on end.\n\nMotivated to first play because of its frenetic Doom-like pace and unique art style.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/post-void"},{"id":"328044696934810193","title":"Prey","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":960,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Arkane Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-04-04","completedDate":"2022-04-07","updatedDate":"2022-04-17","notes":"Prey is like a modern System Shock, streamlining away a lot of the game's old tedium and keeping its core strengths. It doesn't have quite as good atmosphere, but it excels in the immersive sim elements of multiple paths. I greatly enjoyed the gameplay loop of exploring a new area, picking up items, recycling them, upgrading my character, and stealth-killing any enemies.\n\nFlaw-wise, Prey has minimal build diversity as all playstyles are quite similar unlike most other immersive sims, both with respect to the skill tree and weapons. Combat is also mediocre. Finally, I think there's too many sidequests that do little story-wise and simply encourage you to revisit previous areas; I much prefer Deus Ex Human Revolution's approach of a small number but highly scripted and told that have a similar quality to the main story. Many sidequests are an unnecessary modern convention aimed at maximizing the quantity of content.\n\n__Story.__\nThe overarching setting is good, as-is the final reveal. It keeps a sufficient amount of mystery. The characters don't necessarily stand out but are decent for a video game, showing sufficient uniqueness that's separate from tropes and where they feel more grounded in reality (e.g., Alex's grounding in business profit while still having familial ties).\n\n__Gameplay.__\nThe game truly has System Shock vibes in its gameplay mechanics as an immersive sim. It emphasizes atmosphere through level exploration with looting and exploring lore such as e-mails and audio logs. Prey reminds me more of survival horrors than action shooters in its ammo and inventory management (especially, Resident Evil 7).\n\nFor combat, you can fight enemies directly or stealth around them, including stealth attacks for critical damage and stagger.\n\nProgression system includes weapons and their upgrades, materials for crafting Neuromods to build your skill tree, chipsets, and keycards to access new level areas.\n\nControls are simple. Space exploration is also still quite enjoyable despite movement feeling inherently more wonky.\n\nThe weapon arsenal is diverse and unique, each with fitting use case.\n\n+ Wrench: The melee staple for stealth and ammo conservation. It's my favorite weapon as I use it for all but heavy targets and groups that I can’t pull individually. What a unlikely pairing for a game, similar to the Tranquilizer playstyle in Metal Gear Solid.\n+ GLOO gun: Versatile with platforming to get above or past areas with holes, dealing with environmental hazards such as fire, and trapping enemies (as a combo followed by 2x charged Wrench attacks). It even works against Cystoids so you don’t have to spend gun ammo.\n+ Shotgun: Close-range. Generally the weapon for heavy targets instead of Wrench and Gloo gun.\n+ Silenced Pistol (later, Golden Pistol): Medium-range alternative to Shotgun. I swap to the pistol when running out of Shotgun ammo.\n+ Q-beam: Heavy-target DPS for the enemies especially weak to it such as Weaver.\n+ Disruptor: Against mind-controlled humans and robots like Operator and Technopath.\n+ Situational weapons. I don’t keybind these and rely on the weapon wheel.\n  + Recycler Charge: An expensive instant kill AOE. Can also be used to wipe out large objects that block a passage that otherwise need Leverage skill points to move. Finally, you can spend obscene amounts of time stacking all movable objects into one pile for maximal recycled material.\n  + Huntress Boltcaster: Opening a locked door by hitting its button through a window.\n  + EMP charge: When overwhelmed by many robots.\n  + Typhon Lure: Ostensibly for distraction but ammo is rare enough that you don’t want to rely on it.\n  + Nullwave Transmitter: Against Telepaths but is effectively replaced by Psychoshock.\n+ Skills: Combat Focus, Psychoshock (more efficient version of Nullwave Transmitter), Mimic (for navigation).\n\nI wish the game had more melee weapons and higher weapon variety overall. Wrench is my favored weapon but its lack of upgradeability outside the skill tree limits the melee playstyle to Gloo and wrench. On top of improved skill tree balancing and level design, this would encourage much more diverse playstyles.\n\nThe overall map design is fantastic. It feels like a real ship with so much detail behind the various corridors. I could feel myself living in the Crew Quarters here. Level design follows a metroidvania style. I greatly enjoy this exploration freedom going beyond the linearity of games like Deus Ex and Dishonored.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nFacial expressions are surprisingly good for a 2017 game, with graphics close to Horizon Zero Dawn for a B-tier studio. The textures and environments are nice albeit slightly too polished and clean; reminds me of Alien Isolation.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Every glass stays broken, every Gloo ball stays until broken, you can stash items in arbitrary containers without them disappearing.\n+ Operating with a computer monitor feels immersive and easy to transition between going back to overall scene navigation and the computer itself.\n+ Due to the many codes, you don't have to keep track. Prey records and jots them down next to the relevant locked doors/safes. However, you do need to keep track of new keycards you access that may unlock areas you haven't explored yet. I find this is a nice medium between having to record everything yourself and automatically inputting all codes.\n+ Autosort. A quality-of-life feature for inventory management that doesn't do too much streamlining.\n+ Medical and engineering operators as the implementation of health and armor replenishment stations.\n+ Highlighting containers automatically shows its loot inventory. Saves an extra click such as in Fallout and Elder Scrolls games.\n+ Instead of System Shock's approach of researching which required tedious material management and which only rewarded a passive damage boost, Prey adds new abilities. Bioshock also only provided a passive damage boost.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Explicit waymarkers. It's like Dishonored's approach where the endpoint is clear but it provides plenty of open routes on how exactly to arrive there.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Hacking and lifting heavy objects are core skills enabling different path approaches in immersive sims. They're not as useful in Prey however: hacking only offers optional loot (not alternative paths or, say, Deus Ex's ability to turn off sentries); and lifting is completely bypassed by the Recycler Charge.\n+ Time limits. I don't like that type of pressure to make side quests permanently missable.\n+ Tracking crew members is a pain. They're grouped by the station they're assigned to, and it's not clear given a name which station they're in. It's much better to simply provide a flat list or provide a search query.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Skills](https://www.reddit.com/r/prey/comments/6h8o84/bestworst_abilities_to_invest_in/dix55sb). Necropsy is most important, with a common complaint that [Exotic Materials isn't the bottleneck but only when you play a run-and-gun style that uses most of your minerals and synthetic materials on ammo](https://www.reddit.com/r/prey/comments/6v4zgz/what_should_i_use_my_very_first_neuromod_on/dlxpvh2/). I never crafted anything except Neuromods and found that Exotic Materials are indeed the limiting factor. By the end of the game, I was able to fill out the full Human skill trees with the exception of 5 nodes, and filled out 3 Psychic nodes.\n\nMotivated to play not because it builds on immersive sims like System Shock, BioShock, and Dishonored. I played on Hard difficulty. I read online for skills and weapon upgrade choices but otherwise played blind to maximize immersion. I started doing sidequests primarily after Arbotoreum having accessed the main lift and Psychoscope. I did almost all but a handful of sidequests, getting bored around the point of the game's last 2 main missions so I went ahead and sped through them. I chose the Nullwave ending as I was immediately suspicious of January once I heard the transcribe recording in Alex's safehouse where Morgan talks about setting up October. Made me suspect January was not really created by me, even though it turns out it was but several months after October.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/prey--1"},{"id":"322682678624143948","title":"Project Warlock","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Buckshot Software"],"publishers":["gaming company","Crunching Koalas"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-09-18","completedDate":"2021-09-21","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Project Warlock is an excellent retro FPS shooter, particularly excelling in its weapon variety, controls, RPG mechanics, and audiovisual aesthetic. It takes the highlight weapons of titans in the genre, and each has a purpose against enemies.\n\nFlaw-wise, Project Warlock has rather forgettable levels and an overall too easy difficulty. I think the game could easily take a unique position if it leaned into the idea of a retro FPS roguelite: much harder difficulty (you have to learn over multiple trials before even getting close to beat the game), randomized level generation, Risk of Rain 2-like items, and more diverse builds.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core gameplay loop is excellent: navigate to find the exit by getting keys, fighting enemies, and looting ammo and gold (XP). Something about the game just makes the simple idea of shooting so fun: for example, the sound effects, weapon animations, enemy stagger. Each level has several stages which then progresses you back to the Workshop hub so you can upgrade weapons and stats before going to the next level.\n\nEnemy variety is particularly good, borrowing elements from other Doomlike games as you aim to kite melee enemies and dodge projectile attacks. Certain enemies encourage certain weapons, leading to a diverse weapon usage that goes beyond balancing ammo usage. Similarly, the overall weapon variety is good, and there's good reason to use different weapons depending on the situation. I found myself quickswitching often.\n\nLevels are intuitively designed and place environmental interactions (e.g., locked doors, barrels) and enemies well. I never really felt lost or even needed to resort to my map. They're fairly unoriginal flat designs almost like Wolfenstein 3D (although not convoluted nor empty). But the levels greatly kept with the consistency of the fast pace, which is something older shooters can often ruin (e.g., Duke Nukem 3D).\n\nThe game plays similar to a roguelike: it has a fixed number of lives (up to 3) and there are no saves: running out of lives means starting over. I especially like the RPG mechanics with upgrading stats and weapons. As a roguelike, this enables different playthrough styles. I only wish the levels also enabled random generation to make this an actual thing, and with Risk of Rain-like abilities.\n\nControls are standard for a doomlike with WASD, fast movement speed, Jump as interact, and number keys to change to a weapon type followed by pressing the number key again for a specific weapon in that type.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The shaded pixel graphics is a nice artistic design that ages well for an indie game. Weapon sound effects and animations are satisfying. I love the soundtrack.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Blood's dynamite as a weapon for AOEing large mobs.\n+ Shadow Warrior's akimbo SMGs for high fire rate spray at mobs or single target DPS.\n+ This was developed over 4 years by an 18 year old while in high school? That's commendable.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Fuck the final boss. It's such a different fight than the rest of the game because it's just a game of ammo conservation.\n+ You can't change your weapon upgrade.\n+ Brightness can be inconsistent at times, being particularly too dark in certain levels.\n+ [Windowed mode keeps changing resolution when you have multiple monitors, which makes borderless unplayable.](https://steamcommunity.com/app/893680/discussions/1/1744479698798113409)\n+ Mouse sensitivity doesn't go low enough. I had to use 1 ingame sensitivity and set my mouse to 400 DPI.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on Hard difficulty. I went for a HP/capacity build and generally used all weapons to balance ammo usage. My favorite weapons are: Shotgun (+Super Shotgun), SMG (+Chaingun), Dynamite for wide AOE, Crossbow and Rocket Launcher for narrow corridors and single target DPS, and Pistol and Staff on trash for conserving ammo. Closer to endgame, I situationally used the Magic powers for armor and more ammo.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/project-warlock"},{"id":"322682678650380876","title":"Quake","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":330,"platforms":["?","Linux","PC","Mac","DOS","Amiga","Saturn","Mobile"],"studios":["id Software"],"publishers":["MacSoft Games","Sega","GT Interactive Software","Pulse Interactive","PXL computers","id Software","clickBOOM"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2020-11-06","completedDate":"2020-11-06","updatedDate":"2023-08-11","notes":"Quake is one of the first games enabling the Doom-like gunplay in 3D levels. With vertical aiming, it brings closer to modern FPS. Much of it plays like Doom and excels for those reasons.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Plays effectively like a 3D Doom, with vertical aiming required: unique enemy types, navigation with keys to unlock doors, secret areas, health/armor/ammo resource management, and weapon variety with no reloading. Keeping \"always run\" makes movement speed feel quite fast similar to Doom. Like Doom, the game's core gameplay loop holds well in modern times. Interestingly, unlike Doom, Quake doesn't have a Use key, with things automatically opening when you get close.\n\nOne huge quality-of-life change over Doom and Doom II is that the death penalty restarts the level, but you still retain your original weapons, ammo, and health/armor. In Doom, dying is such a harsh penalty reverting you back to the pistol, and while maps are designed to enable you to succeed with just the pistol, it's a huge step back from your original position.\n\nLevels spanning over 10 minutes are still hugely punishing in terms of the death penalty though. Later in the game I went back to save scumming and not enjoying it as much.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics remind me of Thief. The soundtrack is more ambient than metal like the Doom series.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Many weapons are strictly useless: shotgun, nailgun, and grenade launcher as they each have an upgraded counterpart. It would be good to have default keybinds that just leverage those 3 upgraded variants; and be able to separately keybind the lesser versions for advanced players. Otherwise you have to awkardly weapon switch with 3, 5, 7.\n+ It's easy to have accidentally picked something up and not noticed. The prompt is easy to miss; modern games, e.g., also incorporate a sound and better animations.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [How to track Steam playtime with sourceports?](https://steamcommunity.com/app/2310/discussions/0/1471967615851328227)\n\nThis entry does not include the two expansion packs and only evaluates the single player campaign. I played the Quakespasm engine, which is the community's de facto recommendation adding things like widescreen resolution, WASD+mouselook by default, and digital soundtrack support. Quake 1 originally supported CD-mounted music; I manually added the digital soundtrack to play with Quakegasm (guides online). I don't always have patience for boomer shooters, so I played at Normal difficulty just to experience the game; and then went down to Easy for the last two episodes. I figure if I enjoy this, I'll enjoy further 3D Doom-like games such as further Quake titles, Dusk (and other New Blood Interactive games), and Serious Sam.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/quake"},{"id":"322682678626222668","title":"Quake II","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["?","Linux","PC","Mac","Amiga","PS1","X360"],"studios":["Hammerhead","id Software"],"publishers":["Macmillan Digital Publishing","Hyperion Entertainment","TecToy","Activision"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2021-02-08","completedDate":"2021-02-09","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Quake 2 is a great title but only with arguable ties to Quake 1 as a sequel. Its origins of being developed as a standalone title are clear with its realism-based changes, and different set of enemies and weapons. While I liked some of these changes, they aren't always for the better.\n\n__Story.__ There's more of a story here, with cinematic cutscenes between levels. You also come across non-enemy NPCs who are your allied marines stranded on a strange land. It's still fairly minimal though. The \"stranded in an unknown alien land\" setting is different from Quake 1's fantasy setting. I find neither necessarily executed better (they're both bad).\n\n__Gameplay.__ Same core gameplay as Quake 1 with gunplay, controls, and level navigation, with keys you must pick up to unlock new areas. As Quake 2 was originally developed as not a Quake sequel, the weapon set has some but not much overlap with Quake 1; and the enemies are entirely different.\n\nLevels are designed more realistically, and I actually enjoyed the level designs here as they seemed more intuitive to navigate. Each level now has explicit primary and secondary objectives which I find unnecessary (I hardly want to waste time occasionally pressing F1 to refer back to the mission objectives HUD). Also unnecessary is the new item inventory, even carrying around power-ups rather them being immediately applied on pickup. This encourages needless management similar to BFG ammo.\n\nThe overall level design is pretty streamlined and easy to follow. I did however have to resort to a walkthrough in a few select parts of a level though. The Palace level especially requires lots of backtracking.\n\nLike other Doom/Quake titles, certain weapons use the same ammo and strictly dominate earlier weapons you get. This gives a sense of artificial weapon variety where I greatly prefer encouraging all weapons to be used. After accumulating all weapons, I used Super Shotgun (shells), Chain Gun (bullets), Grenade Launcher (grenades), Rocket Launcher (rockets), Hyper Blaster (cells), Rail Gun (slugs), and BFG 10K which I rebinded as 1-7.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Like Quake, Quake 2 features significant graphical improvements. There are now skyboxes and colored lighting effects. Levels are less blocky with higher polycount and smoother interpolation. Death animations feel more lively, including with heads removed clean and enemies crawling on the ground as they die.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ I don't recall if this was also in Quake 1, but in Quake 2, you can pick up health packs even when at full health. Going over the limit slowly goes down to the max of 100. I greatly prefer this approach as it discourages frugal usage of health packs where you go back and forth to maximize their usage.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ For the first time in Doom/Quake titles, some weapons like the Machine Gun feature recoil. Fortunately, the Machine Gun is quickly outpaced by the Chain Gun.\n+ You have to swap explicitly to a flare gun in order to lighten an area. I prefer the more streamlined approach from Unreal and Half-Life which includes a standalone flashlight item. Grenades are similarly unwieldy.\n+ Weapon swap speed is slower than in previous titles. This makes the iconic weapon swapping to optimize ammo and weapon usage depending on the enemy and positioning more difficult.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nThis entry does not include the two expansion packs and only evaluates the single player campaign. I played the Quake II RTX version to enable modern settings: widescreen resolution, borderless (via windowed + Borderless Gaming), and WASD+mouselook+always run controls. I would otherwise have to use a third-party engine like Quakespasm. I followed a [guide to include Quake 2's OST](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1894966970); like Quake 1, the original Quake 2 requires a CD. I turned RTX off, playing with the OpenGL renderer as the RTX renderer gave me 10 FPS at 2560x1440p with my 1080 Ti. Like Quake 1, I played on Medium difficulty.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/quake-ii"},{"id":"322682678652681804","title":"Quake III Arena","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":330,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","X360","DC","PS2"],"studios":["id Software"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts","Sega","Loki Software","Activision"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"As a kid I did not nearly appreciate this game as much as it influenced the industry. I was never super into FPS at the time so I picked it up for a few weeks and then dropped it.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/quake-iii-arena"},{"id":"322682678652648012","title":"Ratchet & Clank","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":2730,"platforms":["PS3","Vita"],"studios":["Insomniac Games","Idol Minds","Mass Media Inc"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2002-12-31","completedDate":"2002-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ratchet-and-clank-collection"},{"id":"322682678652649036","title":"Ratchet & Clank 2: Going Commando","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":810,"platforms":["PS2","PS3","Vita"],"studios":["Insomniac Games"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. (SCEI)"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ratchet-clank-going-commando"},{"id":"322682678652719692","title":"Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PC","PS5"],"studios":["Insomniac Games"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment","PlayStation Studios"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2026-08-29","completedDate":"2026-09-12","updatedDate":"2026-09-13","notes":"Strong highlights of the past games, with excellent gameplay loop, graphics, and a mediocre story but with likeable character designs.\n\n__Writing.__\nSame quality of writing.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nCore gameplay mechanics are all excellent.\n\nGuns have a good variety. Weapon combos, limited ammo, and weapon leveling makes me weapon swap and constantly move around in a battle area like Doom Eternal.\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\nIncredible graphics for 2021 game. It is Pixar Dreamworks level in cartoon style mixed with extremely realistic details like fur and lighting. And performs well on my ROG Xbox Ally X.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Armor is split by collection bonus and cosmetic, so you can wear whatever armor you prefer. I prefer selecting armor which allows you to customize toward a build more.\n+ Some side quests are not easy to follow and just require blindly searching through the level again.\n+ If you fall, you die and restart all progress.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ratchet-and-clank-rift-apart"},{"id":"322682678650418764","title":"Rayman Origins","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PS3","3DS","Wii","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["Ubisoft Montpellier"],"publishers":["Ubisoft Entertainment"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-07-02","completedDate":"2020-07-23","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Rayman Origins is a 2D platformer with polished gameplay mechanics, a vibrant art style, and an overall easy, fast experience but with ample replayability in rescuing all Electoons. The soundtrack is especially catching. 2D platforming is not a genre I'm a particular fan of, but this game does it very well. I Just couldn't get into it to be honest, so I grinded out the second half of the game.\n\n__Story.__ Barely existent but that's okay for a platformer.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Rayman's playforming is about speed and ingenious level design. It's a particularly smooth experience and with ample checkpoints. Plenty of exploration via secret areas to collect pink guys, and all the coins. I love the massive level variety across worlds, new enemies, and the many platforming mechanics: dash jump, gliding, shrinking, air vehicle, wind geysers, sliding ice, ice cubes, and many more.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Love the gorgeous comic art and colorful palette. The tribal and ukelele soundtrack, combined with every character's gleefulness, makes the game have a charming vibe.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ There's only one extra life. No stockpiling or sharing of things across levels.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ 21:9 support is native particularly in gameplay, but cutscenes are zoomed in.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ No borderless support.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nTo play some of the best indie pixel art platformers like Shovel Knight, Hyper Light Drifter, and Dead Cells, I feel I should play classic newbie platformers like this first. I chose Rayman Origins as the first in the series to play (https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/c22v53/should_i_play_the_original_rayman_or_rayman/). I quit playing halfway into the Four Kings levels. It gated progression on collecting the Pink guys, and I didn't care for it.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/rayman-origins"},{"id":"327608422712214096","title":"Ready or Not","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":510,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["VOID Interactive"],"publishers":["VOID Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Simulator","Tactical","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-05-01","completedDate":"2022-05-01","updatedDate":"2022-05-04","notes":"Ready or Not is an excellent tactical shooter, building on prior games like SWAT 4. It's still rough in terms of low content and quality of life features though.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nTactical elements:\n\n+ Multiple game modes such as barricaded suspects and active shooter.\n+ Compliance. There are both suspects and civilians. You order everyone to surrender, tie them down, report, and lock away any weapons.\n+ Controlled movement options affecting your sound with run, walk, and crouch. There's also low ready mode as a semi-approach for sprint.\n+ Door management with peek (particularly important for traps) vs open. For locked doors, there's kick, C4, breaching shotgun, and lockpick.\n+ Tactical weapons such as Mirror Gun for checking under doors for traps and suspects and Breaching Shotgun.\n+ Headgear including NVGS, Gas Mask, Ballistic Facemask, and Anti-Flash Goggles.\n+ Low time to kill.\n+ Non-lethal options of sandbag, taser, flashbang.\n+ Chemlight for illuminating a room without night vision, and for signalling that a room is clear.\n+ Freelean.\n+ Weapon attachments.\n+ Magazines, not per bullet ammunition.\n+ Goes further than SWAT 4 for immersion by going more or less HUDless. To check ammunition, you have to specifically press an action to do this.\n+ Shoot through doors and drywall.\n+ Suspects can have hidden knives.\n\nThis game has a lot of jank: kick in lobby for AFK people, you can't see game difficulty after the game starts, you can't see the set (including number) of players in the lobby (you can work around this by toggling L for your voice chat mode and it also shows the team member's voice mode), no matchmaking filtering such as selecting for a certain difficulty or level, bugs galore with enemy AI at times where they float, get stuck, or you just lag out of the game. No progression and limited cosmetics/variety after the essentials.\n\nPlaying with randoms is a mixed bag. There's no real incentive for cooperation and strategy, so you don't have much organization like knowing who goes which route and how to effectively split a squad of 5 into 2/3 to go opposite ends.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Realism graphics and emphasis on sound effects.\n\nSound design is excellent as the audio clues you in on the location of suspects. I find this a massive improvement over SWAT 4 which did not feature this.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can push people that are AFK in the lobby to be ready with your Battering Ram.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Due to the lack of progression, there's no incentive to stay in a game after you die during public games. This means once it comes down to 2 or so people early-to-mid game, everyone just leaves.\n+ You need everyone to PgUp to end the mission. This isn't known for newcomers. The game should just end when either the host or majority votes to end the mission and it should just automatically end if everything is found.\n+ The default of local mode for voice is way too low. You have to set it to team in every game.\n+ Gas grenades and gas masks requires a pre-made team due to need of coordination. This makes them non-viable in public lobbies. Similarly, mirror gun is often not used as everyone prefers to move fast and the mirror gun slows the game's pacing too much.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ready-or-not"},{"id":"328508135910146639","title":"Resident Evil","originalTitle":"バイオハザード","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":690,"platforms":["PS1"],"studios":["Capcom Planning Room 2"],"publishers":["Virgin Interactive Entertainment","Capcom"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-03-29","completedDate":"2021-03-30","updatedDate":"2022-04-09","notes":"I love Resident Evil's atmosphere. It solidified key elements of the survival horror genre: limited inventory space, limited ammo encouraging you to deliberate between killing zombies and avoiding them, exploration, atmosphere, puzzle solving, specific locations for (limited) saves and item boxes, minimal HUD, enemy variety. \n\nFlaw-wise, I found the backtracking, particularly in the search of locked doors that are now unlocked with a new key, to be tedious. Especially with the limited resources, this encouraged a gameplay of wasting a playthrough searching for the optimal path, then resetting to do those steps without wasting resources going around zombies to navigate. That said, Resident Evil makes some ingenious uses of backtracking, adding enemy ambushes to avoid your lull in revisiting past areas.\n\n__Story.__ Serviceable. I particularly like the lore spread throughout the game as you navigate, even with descriptions of miscellaneous assets. This is one of the minor details that truly add to its atmosphere.\n\n__Gameplay.__ With its constant backtracking, slowly opening up new areas as you accumulate keys, Resident Evil is true to its horror roots, with later indie horror games taking a similar approach. The simple 4-state health system and use of health consumables work well. Core weaponry with their own ammo type and defensive items work well.\n\nTrue to its survival theme, resource management is crucial. Even saves require a limited resource. On one side, I find this annoying, but there is enough ink; you just can't save everytime you're near the save room. I like that this encourages tension. But particularly with all the backtracking in exploration, it makes navigation tedious at times as you dodge zombies to see if a locked door is now open. Resource management overall encourages me to simply hoard: ink, shotgun shells, grenade launcher shells, magnum bullets. By the time I faced the Tyrant, I had 24 magnum bullets, 12 acid shells, 6 grenade shells, and a ridiculous amount of health consumables in my chest (12+).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The fixed camera angles age pretty well. It adds horror to not seeing what you'd like to see and unique enemy placement for ambushes (e.g., a mirror to let you peek if you're astute). Combat, particularly with aiming the head or legs, and transitioning between fixed camera angles for kiting, is clunky.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The door loading screens slow the pace and add tension.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Enemy placement resets when you re-enter a zone. Makes for predictable video game-y behavior instead of them camping the door you just exited.\n+ It's interesting that the tank controls are universally hated. But the fixed cameras are universally adored. I can see why that these angles offer some useful detachment adding to the atmosphere, and with the potential for ambushes. It still leads to a bad control system though.\n+ Crimson Heads. Further punishment for killing zombies, particularly given the riskiness of headshots with RNG and limited resources for burning zombies (even carrying a handgun, lighter, and kerosene takes 3/8 slots!).\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Game supports a maximum of 1920x1440p resolution, with everything else upscaled. Borderless is possible with Borderless Gaming although it creates a mouse offset, making mouse and keyboard not viable. Max FPS is 60.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nThis entry does not include the minigames (extra content), only the campaign. I played the 2015 high-definition remake, on controller as the game was developed for PlayStation, Normal difficulty, as Jill, and with a walkthrough to tell me what's now unlocked. Because the 16:9 aspect ratio just crops, I played in the original 4:3. The Director's Cut on PlayStation offers the best content and higher difficulties, but has wonkier tank controls with turn left/right instead of strafe left/right.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/resident-evil"},{"id":"322682678624195148","title":"Resident Evil 4: Assignment Ada","status":"Completed","score":7,"playtimeMinutes":60,"startedDate":"2021-04-02","completedDate":"2021-04-02","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I like the idea of a single, self-contained mission and with a loadout. It lets the developers be more ambitious with the short game's design, trying experimental gameplay. This mission is fairly standard however and reuses the same enemies and a level. Still fun gameplay however, particularly with Ada's animations and her differing context-sensitive actions. I enjoyed using the TMP for the first time, and more frequently relying on grenades for AOE now that I don't own a shotgun."},{"id":"322682678624190028","title":"Resident Evil 7: Biohazard - Not a Hero and End of Zoe","status":"Completed","score":7,"startedDate":"2021-04-07","completedDate":"2021-04-08","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Both DLCs are quite good, up there with the rest of Resident Evil 7 in serving their own style: one more action-intense following Chris' shoot-melee combo style; and another redneck Far Cry-like which is campy and fun.\n\nNot a Hero: Chris' melee combo is great. Makes the game somewhat fun as a more action-oriented variant of Resident Evil 7. This makes sense since the game wouldn't be as scary now that you know the enemy mechanics. There's plenty new here: Regenerators, Little Crawlers, turrets, and suicide bombers; Chris' HUD and unlocks; anti-regen ammo and grenades.\n\nIt's annoying that the melee attack is the same button as the shoot attack. You can mess up if you incorrectly gauge your distance.\n\nEnd of Zoe: Punching zombies? That's badass. I like the left/right mechanic as well as stealth kills. The more campy elements really shine here while still staying true to the Resident Evil 7 story.\n\nNice detail with the critters as the health item. And new items: boxer effigy, throwing spear, and the final iron man upgrade alongside Marvel-like orchestral music.\n\nI didn't play any of the Banned Tapes. But I did watch Bedroom and Daughters."},{"id":"7ed9ac2f-6bf0-4a23-b84b-0d482d2ea1e7","title":"Resident Evil: Requiem","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2026,"playtimeMinutes":801,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"startedDate":"2026-03-22","completedDate":"2026-04-06","updatedDate":"2026-04-06","notes":"Combines the best ideas from all sorts of games. It is especially a fun hybrid of RE7 and RE4R. Not quite at the peak of either of those games in horror or action, but still quite fun as a new take.\n\nUnfortunately, Leon’s section in the latter half is a drag: barren environments, level and asset reuse, lack of strong storytelling, no sense of danger with resources, generic shop menu, bland enemies. It is legacy gameplay from their original concept of an open world game, and the incompleteness shows.\n\nRE1: level design, crimson heads, need to dodge enemies especially in the beginning.\nRE2: dual protagonists and them affecting on another in the game to see their perspectives, invincible pursuer.\nRE4: action Leon.\nRE6: ludicrous set pieces (bike fight with Gideon)\nRE7: first person horror.\n\n__Writing.__\nContrived but characters are always endearing.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nThe core gameplay of navigating bespoke environments, gathering resources, killing or dodging enemies, and backtracking to slowly make progress is excellent. The game makes great combination of first person walking simulator horror, classic RE survival horror, and Leon’s RE4 action horror.\n\nContinued emphasis on crafting, including and infected blood system.\n\nLove the enemy variety with uniques: singing enemy, chef, chunk.\n\nNew item type of charms.\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\nLooks great just like RE8.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Talking zombies. Makes them feel so much more alive.\n+ Like RE8 (maybe 7?), map tells you of items you missed and locks / things to unlock. Much more convenient on where to revisit given there’s so much to do in terms of unlocking or if you don’t have inventory to pick up yet. Big quality of life that was a big detractor for me in RE1.\n+ Like RE4R, Leon has an infinite durability knife and with the added mechanic of needing to sharpen it once in a while. That and his roundhouse kick is so fun. And parry mechanic. And stealth kills.\n+ Resurrecting head enemies, like in RE1.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Leon's route encourages killing all zombies. Unlike prior games (or Grace's section), there's no doubt: kill everything. You miss credits if you miss a zombie.\n+ Dynamic difficukty like all of the games since roughly RE4. Dynamic item drop rate like RE4 or RE7.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Can’t revisit basement.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Reddit: Weapon stats](https://www.reddit.com/r/residentevil/comments/1rtcv4q/i_made_an_infographic_about_all_re9_hidden)\n+ [Charms list](https://game8.co/games/Resident-Evil-Requiem/archives/583584)\n\nI played Standard (Modern). I dislike limited ink ribbon saves.\n\nAs in all RE games, I prefer to maximize damage per ammo rather than damage per second. I didn’t play second or third playthroughs to unlock Special Content like Infinite Ammo and go through Insanity. I was burnt out after the first playthrough in Leon’s section.\n\n### Grace\n\n+ Knives: Turn to scrap.\n+ Syringe vs Stabilizer: prioritize Stabilizer\n+ Crafting with blood and scrap, injector vs ammo: Ammo is more efficient in normal mode vs normal enemies (8 ammo, 3-5 to kill an enemy). But can cause blisters.  Prefer Hemolytic Injectors for high visited areas like most East Wing and hallway leading to custodian’s office. https://www.reddit.com/r/ResidentEvilRequiem/comments/1rkkp6j/hemolytic_injectors_are_too_expensive/\n\nOptimal loadout\n+ Handgun: S&S M232\n+ Charms (inventory): Eye Spy, Rugged Rookie (Special Content shop), Mr. Raccoon (Deluxe Edition only)\n+ Hemolytic Injectors (for mini-bosses / high traffic areas)\n+ Molotov Cocktails (for The Girl)\n\nOptimal loadout (post-Infinite Ammo)\n+ Magnum: Requiem\n\n### Leon\n\n+ Initial sells: worse guns when you can use better, various items if missing credits (e.g., hand grenades)\n+ Priority purchases: Case Upgrade (8x13), Body Armor Lv.II, Silencer 9, upgrades\n+ Environment (eg hazard explosives) always. Perfect parry and utilize melee when time is not limited to conserve ammo. Solo zombies can be stunlocked to death with heavy melee attacks.\n+ Zombie: 3 handgun shots to knee followed by melee.\n+ BSAA Zombie: SMG to head.\n+ Blister Head: Handgun (or in crowded environments, shotgun) to knee until stagger, melee, then knife to head.\n+ Blister Borne: Shotgun or rifle to weak spots until stagger, then melee.\n+ Licker, Elite Guard: Shotgun or rifle to head.\n\nOptimal loadout\n+ Melee: Hatchet w/ Connoisseur charm\n+ Handgun: Silencer 9 w/ Trusted Companion charm or DSO Emblem charm (Deluxe Edition only)\n+ SMG: Gal w/ STARS Emblem charm\n+ Shotgun: W870 Police\n+ Rifle: Classic 70 w/ BSAA Emblem charm\n+ Magnum: Requiem w/ Power Shades charm\n+ Hand / Stacked Grenades\n+ Body Armor Lv.II (Lv. III Insanity mode-only)\n+ Case Upgrade (8x13)\n+ Advanced Tuning: third-tier maximum upgrade for all weapons (effectively post-first playthrough)\n\nOptimal loadout (post-Infinite Ammo)\n+ Magnum: Requiem w/ Connoisseur charm\n+ RPG-7","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/resident-evil-requiem"},{"id":"322682678652486220","title":"Return of the Obra Dinn","originalTitle":"リターンオブザオーブラーディンエヌ","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["PS4","PC","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Lucas Pope"],"publishers":["3909"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-02-11","completedDate":"2019-02-11","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Developed by Lucas Pope, developer of Papers, Please? Fuck yeah I'll play it.\n\n__Story.__ The spiraling from the end back to the beginning works wonders.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The validating mechanic in sets of 3 works well. It lets you guess, but not so much that you go completely astray. Same goes with the set-in-piece chronology of the book.\n\n__Aesthetics.__ I was at first ambivalent about the graphics. After playing for a while, I find it endearing, similar to a visual novel.\n\nThe music and the simple mechanics put a lovely rhythm to the game.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ I love how the game doesn't baby you with a tutorial or anything. You jump straight into it and bumble around with the mechanics until things just work. Any mechanics they do need to teach out just sort are taught as you stumble into the mechanic.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Speared vs spiked.\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\n+ Guide | https://gameplay.tips/guides/3243-return-of-the-obra-dinn.html\n\nI played in a single sitting for a Steam recorded playtime of 5 hours. I wanted to minimize the number of sittings and the time inbetween them. This would let me keep all the memories so I wouldn't waste time revisiting them. I generously used hints from the guides as I didn't have the patience to work out the hours for the game. I just wanted to know the story in one sitting.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/return-of-the-obra-dinn"},{"id":"322682678652441164","title":"Rise of the Tomb Raider","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":810,"platforms":["Stadia","PS4","Linux","PSVR","PC","Mac","X360","XONE"],"studios":["Crystal Dynamics"],"publishers":["Microsoft Studios","Square Enix Europe"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-07-21","completedDate":"2019-07-23","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Rise of the Tomb Raider is a refinement of the 2013 title. As a cinematic action-adventure, platforming and gunplay controls the same alongside the HUD/menus as well as progression system. Two major additions are more emphasis on tomb raiding than firefights; and crafting (both for the better). Unfortunately, story/characters remain just as bad and there are no major innovations.\n\n__Story.__ Story is mediocre---just as forgettable in plot, supporting characters, and villains as usual. It focuses on Lara's obssession for a mystery like her dad. And a native village. Unfortunately it involves histrionics in drama; c.f. Uncharted 4 for a much better execution involving depth into the protagonist as well as his relationships with the other major characters. Having a syndicate following Lara as a villain organization is also incredibly boring. Formulaic explosion and \"tragedy\" ending with various deaths. Yawn. Baba Yaga DLC was way better. Not necesarily in terms of story, but in that the setting and boss fight actually involves Tomb Raiding (i.e., a mix of platforming, puzzle solving, and combat). I thought it was interesting that they chose only Jonah to continue on in the supporting cast. And of course as a male, Jonah is fat and a different ethnicity which makes the romantic pairing more unlikely than if he were white, fit, and good-looking.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The gameplay is largely the same across platforming, gunplay, HUD/menus/progression system.\n\nI like the new platforming and combat features: sprint and fast swimming; swimming underwater with a simple LT hold/release; deep snow slows you down; you can run up the bark of trees to platform and also take down enemies; tall bushes hide you from enemy sight. Platforming overall is the best I've experienced in the genre. It feels seamless. And there are a diverse set of platforming actions: for example, pressing a button to stablize oneself if a landing is precarious; running up a wooden wall; moving laterally on an edge; moving up with an axe; rope with bow and arrow for pulling doors open, trapezing, and swinging; grappel axe; broadhead arrows for woodern platform climbing; climbing up trees; and many more. Puzzles in tombs feel like natural mind puzzles unlike Uncharted's \"Look at Nathan's journal again.\" It surpasses Uncharted's platforming.\n\nSystem-wise, the progression system is more intricate with crafting materials to craft ammunition, equipment, and start bonfires; coins for the Supply Shack shop; gear upgrades along multiple axes; and outfits (some time in-game bonuses). I think this complexity is just enough. There's more involved weapon choices but e.g. upgrades for a weapon type are universal so you don't have to squander resources and specialize. Translate system is also added, which requires finding other collectibles (leveling up a language) before unlocking relics that require translations. I also like that the health system this time requires bandages and offers at higher difficulties the lack of health regeneration. I don't know how I feel about the optional side missions. It starts to make the game feel like an RPG.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Significant improvements since the last game across face models and expression nuances, textures, and postprocessing/special effects. I like the settings of Syria, Siberian snow, and jungle/forestry in the Siberian wilderness.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Baba Yaga DLC's boss fight and the Blood Ties DLC are examples of new addon content done right. Baba Yaga's DLC boss fight is a fun mix of all gameplay elements that make Tomb Raider. Blood Ties serves excellent lore behind Lara's family and allows you to explore Croft Manor.\n+ Tomb Raider now has chapter replay options like Uncharted. This makes a complete game much more worthwhile as you get to reuse your completed arsenal to master your favorite encounters StealthGamerBR-style.\n+ Like the last game, Rise supports 21:9 (except for prerendered cutscenes).\n+ Like the last game, there is no one screaming your name as you die and raise the death screen. I find that seriously annoying in games like Uncharted and Metal Gear Solid.\n+ Like the last game, I like the bell chime noise when you're near a Tomb. It's a cool noise.\n+ Like the last game, bonfires.\n+ Crafting material has a limiting capacity. This incentivizes you to spend right away rather than do what I tend to do (and which I always regret) of hoarding.\n+ Like the last game, all the collectibles add to requirements for gear upgrades and add XP for skill points. This incentivizes 100%-ing maps as you go (or at least, to the best you can given metroidvania backtracking).\n+ Like the last game, enemy variety involves not only humans but also animals. This meshes well with the huntering and gathering theme.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ This game is a collectithon. Having multiple types of collectibles and crafting material is fine. However, there's something to collect on every screen, which can sometimes ruin pacing in favor of just collecting things. I prefer Dark Souls' approach for exploration, where there are just a handful of items but they can be valuable so you search every inch of a map.\n+ \"Missions\" are optional side quests providing more content in the rich exploratory maps in Rise. However, they're sometimes just dull---not nearly as captivating as the main campaign---and thus feel like filler content.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Unlike the last game, Survival Instinct's orange hue is only on items rather than the full screen. This makes its frequent usage not as intrusive to immersion. That said, I'd much rather not have it in the game altogether in favor of better game design to make it easier to spot items while keeping them real-world. Similar to the white markings on platformable ridges.\n+ Like the last game, there's metroidvana backtracking.\"Expeditions\" which are other gameplay modes. I'd much rather DLC augment the existing campaign like the Baba Yaga DLC.\n+ The bloat of credits you earn in game to purchase \"card packs.\" Fortunately they only affect Expeditions and not single-player mode. But I don't like that this money grubbing with ingame currency is creeping into the game.\n+ Like the last game, subtitles have an ugly font and explicitly black border.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/rise-of-the-tomb-raider/\n+ https://guides.gamepressure.com/riseofthetombraider/guide.asp?ID=33025\n+ https://tombraiders.net/stella/walks/TR10walk/collectibles/07-geothermal-valley-challenges.html\n\nI played on PC and on max settings except using SMAA anti-aliasing instead of SSAA 4x. (I played at SSAA 4x but ran into frame drop issues; my PC crashes several times at select scenes even with SMAA anti-aliasing; it could also be DirectX 12 which I have now removed; https://steamcommunity.com/app/391220/discussions/1/451852225139502097/.) PC has better graphics. PS4 benefits from the 20 Year Celebration edition, including an extra Tomb Raider III-style outfit, cooperative gameplay for endurance mode, Blood Ties, and Lara's Nightmare. These are available DLC for PC and they're the only option to purchase on Steam which I did.\n\nI played on Survivor (second hardest difficulty). Like Tomb Raider (2013), Rise is also just as easy so there's not significant pacing drops even at Survivor (https://www.reddit.com/r/TombRaider/comments/3sugzh/what_difficulty_should_i_select_on_rise/). The only distinction with the hardest difficulty of Extreme Survivor is game saves only at campsites. This feels like it could be inconvenient to replay any challenging moments all over again and ruin pacing. So no for a first playthrough. For upgrades, I prioritized exploration skills and ranged bow/stealth. Content order-wise, I played in chronological order: main campaign, Baba Yaga, Blood Ties. I did not complete the remaining content as they're not likely to be canon and don't add to the existing experience: Expeditions, added Endurance mode to Expeditions, Cold Darkness Awakened, Lara's Nightmare (https://tombraiders.net/stella/walks/TR10walk/dlc.html). I kept my story experience as vanilla as possible by avoiding the use of DLC outfits, weapons, and missions.\n\nI ended up doing 100% completion with a total playtime of 26 hours which I wish I didn't (including Baba Yaga but not Blood Ties). This took 4-5 hours revisiting areas and I found this incredibly tedious. It only satisfied my OCD nature. It wastes time; provides little joy out from the actual gameplay (most is following guides as a checklist; and traveling from point A to B); and it's largely a forgettable experience (if the intention is to learn more about this game, then you could better spend that time learning about the ins and outs of the design behind the game as well as video game design and industry overall). I absolutely need to stop following into the completionist trap. It's suboptimal in optimizing for the wrong objective. I like what I did for Tomb Raider (2013) in that I course through the game without guides; completing only Tombs/major optional content; and stopped right after I completed the game and explored just a little bit more.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/rise-of-the-tomb-raider"},{"id":"322682678651404876","title":"Risk of Rain 2","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":630,"platforms":["Stadia","Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Hopoo Games"],"publishers":["Gearbox Publishing"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-04-04","completedDate":"2020-04-10","updatedDate":"2022-05-11","notes":"Risk of Rain's core idea is one of tradeoffs: encouraging exploration by having chests/items across the map that you need for upgrades; and not lingering too much per level as difficulty scales over time. It's wonderfully executed, and the balance of item stacking that can go into mid to end game is excellent. You always feel like a god regardless of how the RNG plays out.\n\nFlaw-wise, maps can feel barren and require too much travel, particularly in early stages where it takes 6-7 minutes to go through the full map with a slow movement speed. (The meta is to rush for the teleporter and clear with around 4 minutes per stage early on.) Deaths are always abrupt and the result of an attack leading to effectively a one-shot (with a flurry of attacks at once removing the one-shot protection).\n\n__Story.__ None, and which is totally fine for a roguelike.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Of the roguelike elements, Risk of Rain excels in its items, enemy variety, bosses, and characters. Each character has unique yet simple mechanics offering a wonderful variety of builds. It balances non-progression of roguelikes via achievements that unlock more items and characters.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Somewhat bland cartoon art. But it ages well.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Dying within seconds of activating the Artifact of Glass. Twice.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://riskofrain2.gamepedia.com/Items\n\nMotivated to play this after watching Sodapoppin stream this many times (first saw him doing it with Pokelawls), and an enthusiastic review from Gmanlives. I'm up for a 3D roguelike. My favorite for roguelikes is the balance of RNG in temrs of builds to work with what you've gotten, and the synergy as items work together; and the ease of picking it up for a game.\n\nI primarily played Huntress and then Engineer. I only played Rainstorm difficulty and never got to Monsoon. I also did not play when the game updated with the Mithrix final boss.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/risk-of-rain-2"},{"id":"322682678624162380","title":"S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2007,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["GSC Game World"],"publishers":["THQ","GSC World Publishing","Deep Silver","cdp.pl","GSC Game World"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2021-07-22","completedDate":"2021-07-23","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Stalker SOC is a semi-open world survival FPS, uniquely combining elements of each of these genres to form its vision of a Ukranian nuclear nightmare. It builds a tense atmosphere with palpable combat: shooting enemies feels immersive with its realistic constraints; there are diverse enemy designs across human stalkers, creatures, and environmental hazards; scripted combat scenarios; and inventory management as you deliberate on your loadout and loot. Every encounter is deadly as you can die from one shot.\n\nFlaw-wise, early game is a shit show until you obtain a scope in Dark Valley, as you can unload a full clip at an enemy point blank and miss every shot. The difference with later weapons is significant. Side quests are also forgettable, with little incentive to explore beyond the main quest objective paths. Finally, although I didn't find this hampered my experience, the game is clearly unpolished with janky AI and numerous bugs.\n\n__Story.__ Stalker's worldbuilding is its most interesting lore due to its unique setting of stalkers, artifacts, and human-experimented creatures as the aftermath of a nuclear war. The main story is serviceable in its progression but characters are largely forgettable.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Stalker's core gameplay loop is to find cover, low crouch, use iron sights or scope, and then take controlled pot shots in semi-auto mode from medium to long range, ideally hitting the head for instant kills. There are not only enemies in the form of human stalkers and creatures but also environmental hazards known as anomalies. Further, there's emergent AI behavior: creatures may ambush you as you loot; human enemies fight creature enemies. Unfortunately, enemies are bullet sponges, so it can be difficult to know if your shots which already have bad aim early game to even hit your target.\n\nThe inventory system makes you deliberate about your loadout before setting off and as you loot enemies: there's a carry capacity which affects running endurance and you can only carry a handful of weapons at a time alongside health consumables. I love this idea in FPS games. Weapons include an item condition and can even be modded with attachable scopes. Artifacts serve as a form of equipment, including a body armor. Like an RPG, there are weapons and armor of each type that are strictly better in terms of damage and accuracy as you progress through the game. There are traders, dialogue with NPCs including a simple notion of reputation which affects trade discounts. Meters feature stamina, health, and armor, and where consumables must be used in real-time to more quickly gain back any meters. Icons for status effects include hunger, radiation, and bleeding. Day night cycle.\n\nControls are simple and intuitive, borrowed from most FPS with sprint and crouch. Stalker also incorporates a double-crouch which drops your noise to zero and maximizes shooting accuracy, lean left and right, change firing mode, and quick bandage and medkit. There are additional utilities like flashlight and nightvision goggles.\n\nSide quest quality is infinite and not worth doing. Similar to Fallout 3 side quests, I'm strongly in favor of fewer and higher-quality quests, not this style of radiant quests. In addition to having formulaic objectives, they serve little to no story or worldbuilding. Ultimately, while it's an open world, the areas are largely bare, which is realistic, but this means there's some but not much incentive to explore. Instead, go from point A to point B for the main quests while sauntering if you see a nearby building or corpse.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The dirty graphics remind me of a dated Metro 2033. It feels immersive even in 2021 with only the face models appearing particularly dated. The lip syncing is horribly bad. Dialogue is only partially voiced.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The minimap. It includes all quest objectives, including side quests outside the main one you're tracking, allied and neutral NPCs, and generally points of interest. Makes it significantly juggle multiple quests simultaneously.\n+ Weapons have dropoff.\n+ You have to withdraw your weapon before speaking to NPCs.\n+ You can sprint while reloading.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Aim is incredibly bad, to the point that weapons like the pistol veer so much they're near useless. I much prefer a more challenging system that doesn't make your shots just RNG. Fortunately in mid to late game, weapons have much better accuracy and use a scope for their iron sight which do not nearly feature as bad aim.\n+ The map is a hassle to navigate.\n+ Currency is all but meaningless. There's not much to buy from traders beyond ammo.\n+ No subtitles.\n+ In dialogue choices, you can't press a keyboard shortcut with the numbers like Elder Scrolls games.\n+ Sensitivity is way too high even at its lowest setting. To reach my Overwatch settings of roughly 8.5in/180, I have to toggle my DPI from 800 to 400 which is annoying for navigating menus. To avoid this hassle, I resorted to [Cheat Engine](https://steamcommunity.com/app/4500/discussions/0/2183537632746786166) to go below the minimum limit of 0.05 to 0.023. This is a bit tedious in that you have to set up the address and then open the table each time you play the game.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [What You Might Know That Ain't So](http://www.metacognix.com/stlkrsoc/WhatYouKnowThatAintSo.html), referenced in [GameFAQs discussion on aiming](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/540331-stalker-shadow-of-chernobyl/51282384)\n+ [Zed's weapon tier list - Vanilla SoC ](https://www.reddit.com/r/stalker/comments/4u1odp/zeds_weapon_tier_list_vanilla_soc)\n\nI played on Master difficulty, which was most recommended from the subreddit. Difficulty only affects [player weapon damage, damage resistance, and loot quantity](https://www.reddit.com/r/stalker/comments/7fxvt5/what_do_difficulties_actually_change_in_stalker). I did a lot of save scumming especially with the terrible aim early game. I only spent RU for ammo, resorting to picking up weapons and armor. Artifact-wise, I stacked Endurance for infinite sprinting, 1-2 for Radiation, and kept Health artifacts in case I wanted to regen instead of instant heal. My weapon progression is: PMm, PB1, Double-barrel Shotgun, Viper 5, Akm 74/2U, Akm74/2 with scope, Obokan with scope, TRs 301 with scope, GP37, sniper rifle as backup, VLA.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/s-t-a-l-k-e-r-shadow-of-chernobyl"},{"id":"322682678624157260","title":"Salt and Sanctuary","originalTitle":"Salt and Sanctuary (ソルト アンド サンクチュアリ)","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":960,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","Vita","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Ska Studios"],"publishers":["Ska Studios"],"genres":["Platform","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-08-01","completedDate":"2021-08-04","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Salt and Sanctuary stands out among soulslike games by executing all the important elements well, and with the 2D design to keep things sufficiently interesting. It's shamelessly a Dark Souls clone in copying even minute details, but it doesn't detract from how fun the game is itself. As a 2D metroidvania with unlockable powers, it also borders on the line of Castlevania.\n\nFlaw-wise, there are few. I found the overall difficulty too easy. This is partially attributed to game imbalance where certain builds are drastically better than others, with other options or items being nonviable. For example, heavy armor is not really worth the sacrifices in movement speed, dodge roll, and investments in the willpower stat. Part of this is also attributed to the enemy and boss movesets not being that difficult to master. There's only so much you can do in 2D compared to 3D combat.\n\n__Story.__ Opaque like usual for Dark Souls.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Game is truly a 2D Dark Souls, including enemy movesets, player stats and equipment, core controls, bonfires, HP and stamina bar, Salt currency to level up, Red flask as replenishable heal consumables, real-time menus without any pausing, and metroidvania level design. Even minute details are emulated like the status effect bars and opaque messages on the ground. Game is faster paced than a typical Dark Souls game with abilities like Jump and Attack taking not nearly as much stamina as in Dark Souls 1, and with movement speed overall faster.\n\nIn terms of new elements, Salt and Sanctuary introduces the Tree of Skill. Leveling up provides you Black Pearls which you then spend in the Skill Tree to gain stats, ability to equip items, or increase potion capacity. Salt and Sanctuary also introduces Brands which provide key abilities to access different areas and events in the game. Other changes are somewhat minor:\n\n+ Creeds are the equivalent of covenants, but with more single player effects instead of a multiplayer interaction. This includes merchant offerings and rewards as you rank up in the Creed. Sanctuaries each have an associated Creed which determines whether you can access the merchants there, and you can convert a Creed by using a limited item or desecrate it by fighting the NPCs and enemy waves.\n+ Offerings allow you to unlock merchants and servants inside Sanctuaries.\n+ Death is like Bloodborne where all salt is absorbed by the nearest enemy and which must be defeated without the player dying for the salt to be reimbursed. If there's no nearby enemy, the game spawns one.\n\nThe Offering mechanic is poorly designed. You place them in specific Sanctuaries, which suggests merchants obtained from offerings require backtracking. However, you can place Stone Guides at any Sanctuary which then lets you warp to any other Sanctuary. This means the strategy is to just put as many offerings as possible (up to 4 total) in Sanctuaries each with a Stone Guide: one cluster of Alchemist, Blacksmith, and Merchant; and another with Leader to rank up a Creed, Mage or Cleric if your build uses it, and Sellsword if you play online. In doing so, you effectively have a hub accessible with one use of Calling Horn and where each Sanctuary can be warped to the next to access each merchant. It's overly complicated for a simple outcome: why not just enable a hub and allow merchants that are slowly enabled over time?\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Love the slightly cartoonish sprites with a grunge setting. The outfits aren't really suitable for Fashion Souls unfortunately. The atmosphere and lighting serve wonders. No voice acting unfortunately.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You only need to take about 30% or so of the a boss' HP to get your your Salt back. This helps with the issue of losing Salt when dying repeatedly to a boss.\n+ Unlike Dark Souls, you can't accidentally attack and therefore aggro NPCs.\n+ Bosses are all close to a shrine or sanctuary.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ There's a distinction between shrines and sanctuaries, where shrines may serve as midway points in areas and don't let you level up.\n+ No map. Obviously inherited from Dark Souls, although map complexity is a lot more difficult to handle in a 2D game.\n+ Heals heal more slowly than the more instantaneous heals in Dark Souls.\n+ Rings don't stack. Similar to Dark Souls.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Fuck Hagers Cavern. Boss is not close to a shrine or sanctuary. It's so easy to fall to your death.\n+ Gold is a separate currency from Salt which you use to purchase vendor items and as a respawn penalty. I rarely find it needed and just spend gold on salt pouches and the occasional splurge on upgrade items if I chance on upon that vendor.\n+ No sprint.\n+ No hard respec. There are only Grey Pearls to refund a certain number of Skill Points.\n+ Item notification pickups appear in a corner. I prefer Dark Souls' approach of making it front and center as I often pick something up and don't even know what I picked up.\n+ No plunge attack or ladder attack.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [New Player Guide/FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/saltandsanctuary/comments/4c6fcy/new_player_guidefaq)\n+ [Builds Guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/saltandsanctuary/comments/4e1rif/builds_guide)\n+ [Heavy Armor Ain't Shit](https://www.reddit.com/r/saltandsanctuary/comments/5ni5xp/heavy_armor_aint_shit_comparative_analysis)\n+ [When should I be upgrading/transmuting?](https://www.reddit.com/r/saltandsanctuary/comments/6lo7ug/when_should_i_be_upgradingtransmuting_stuff)\n+ [Wiki](https://saltandsanctuary.wiki.fextralife.com)\n\nI did a pure strength build as it like seemed most designed class in the game. Played blind but followed a [game progress route](https://saltandsanctuary.wiki.fextralife.com/Game+Progress+Route) so I didn't miss any optional areas or bosses.\n\n+ Starting Class: Knight.\n+ Creed: The Iron One.\n+ Armor: Light, particularly Beggar's Robes for <25% equip load for fast roll and Jester's Crown for drop rate boost.\n+ Weapons: Greathammer for strike damage and especially early game given their high base damage; and Greatsword for slash damage. I prefer Greatsword over Greataxe given their range and faster attack speed. Mossy Charm to speed up swings.\n+ Skill tree: Class 5 greathammer/greataxe and greatsword, potion capacity, Strength for more damage, Endurance for more carry load to move and roll faster, and Willpower for more stamina.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/salt-and-sanctuary"},{"id":"322682678651405900","title":"Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":1470,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","Switch 2","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE"],"studios":["Mimimi Games"],"publishers":["Daedalic Entertainment","Kalypso"],"genres":["Real Time Strategy (RTS)","Simulator","Strategy","Tactical","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-03-26","completedDate":"2020-03-29","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Shadow Tactics features excellent core stealth mechanics. The most unique element is the ability to play multiple units at a time, forcing a sort of riddle in its sequence as you get try to past guards. I couldn't get into this as a lot of it ended up being trial and error and riddle-solving.\n\n__Story.__ Story is not bad but also doesn't necessarily stand out. It's enough to keep around the ensemble cast and motivate the Shogun setting and scenarios.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Features some unique stealth elements: having partial visibility in view cones, which is an indicator to stay crouched; multiple players per mission (and Shadow mode to have them operate simultaneously); ranged items that cause sound tell you explicitly who they might inform in their sound radius; verticality in approaches; footprints in snow; lighting and putting out torches which can lure guards. Core stealth mechanics of crouch, quicksaving, caution/alert, areas to hide bodies and yourself.\n\nA core element of the game that grates me is the RTS element, where you must maneuver multiple units at once for stealth. This makes many areas feel closer to a puzzle, which I'm not a fan of. I much prefer stealth games where you control only one unit, so there are no strategy elements.\n\nThis is a challenging game. I was forced to save scum often as it would take so long to try to manuever an area with multiple enemies. It takes 1-2 hours per level.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics are quiet detailed for a game that's not exactly AAA. The signature killcam shots are especially great.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ The frustration of trial and error when encountering a difficult group of guards.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ The quicksave system has a buffer window of 3. This helps avoid the occasional issue where you quicksave in a bad state and must either take the sacrifice or reload the full mission.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Not too much support in terms of a fully non lethal playthrough.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on Normal difficulty and Japanese audio. THis genre is pretty interesting; if I want more, I'd go into what influenced this game: the Commandos series. I ultimately stopped playing at the game during Mission 9: Kage-sama's Camp. I couldn't get into each enemy sequence not necessarily involving stealth gameplay but riddle solving in finding the right sequence of enemies to kill and the right use of each unit.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/shadow-tactics-blades-of-the-shogun"},{"id":"322682678624209484","title":"Shadow Warrior","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":750,"platforms":["PC","iOS","Mac","DOS"],"studios":["3D Realms"],"publishers":["MacSoft Games","GT Interactive Software","General Arcade","3D Realms","Devolver Digital","Eidos Interactive"],"genres":["Fighting","Shooter"],"startedDate":"2021-02-15","completedDate":"2021-02-16","updatedDate":"2022-08-11","notes":"As part of the holy trinity of Build Engine classic FPS games alongside Blood and Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior defines its own identity with its Chinese setting (viewed from the lens of an American). This influences its weapons, enemies, and levels, and I enjoyed all these elements.\n\nShadow Warrior has two core flaws. First, peeking from corners and AOE damage are particularly critical due to the high enemy count, hitscan, enemies having precise aim, and no enemy stagger. It's fun but these reasons require you to savescum to enjoy the game. Second, level navigation can be unintuitive at times. As an aside, while the gameplay ages well like most Build Engine games, the story and voice acting is not and is casually racist with Chinese stereotypes.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The game plays like Doom and does it well: level design, core controls, enemies and weapons, health system, etc. The weapons are unique: the katana and shurikens make me feel like Genji from Overwatch (although the shuriken is massively underpowered, treated like a pistol; and you rarely use the Katana in mid-to-endgame). The mainstay weapons are effectively Doom's: Riot Gun for short range, Uzi for medium range, Rocket Launcher and Grenade Launcher for AOE and suicide bombers. Other weapons have more limited ammo and are used situationally as novelty weapons: Nuke, Rail Gun, Guardian Head, Ripper Heart.\n\nInnovation-wise, Shadow Warrior is the first to have its melee weapon deal significant damage which I greatly enjoy. The feeling of peeking in a corner, luring an enemy, then one-shotting it with your blade, is excellent. It's also the first to feature akimbo weapons as a regular weapon and mannable vehicles.\n\nLike other Build Engine games, Shadow Warrior's level design is fairly realistic, with intuitively placed assets unlike earlier games like Doom and Heretic. However, levels feature many enemies, and it's punishing at high difficulties if you don't spam the Grenade Launcher and savescum. Unlike Blood which also has many hitscan enemies like Cultists, you can't crouch to throw off their aim, strafe faster than they can turn, stunlock them with their stagger, or get them to follow you (Shadow Warrior's pathing AI is much stupider, making this unreliable). This is the same problem with Duke Nukem 3D.\n\nShadow Warrior also features an item inventory. I dislike item inventories because it requires maintainence and serves a secondary role, never with a core purpose aside from Portable Medkit. So you would always just keep the items and never use them---which is even more involved management than BFG ammo.\n\nSome progression in levels is unintuitive. So I had to reference a walkthrough once every other level. For example, Map 7's bronze key on an alcove that requires driving a boat and jumping on top of it.; Map 8's ladder hidden behind a fireplace; Map 11's end of level trap and where to go next; Map 19's blue key card by opening a piston.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Excellent pixel graphics that age well. The complexity in the level's assets, diverse environments, and verticality make it one of the better-looking retro shooters.\n\nThe Asian racial humor is cringeworthy and offensive, arguably worse than Duke Nukem 3D's sexism, mixing Chinese and Japanese stereotypes into a Chinese man. Like Duke Nukem 3D, it's easy to play into stereotypes for cheap humor when you're not the one being made fun of, and where playing into those stereotypes just further worsens their representation. The developers would likely be less comfortable if the game they're developing were about pudgy middle-aged virgins who can't make friends, get made fun of for playing video games, and get cucked from their crushes.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Unlike most other games (e.g., Doom II, Duke Nukem 3D), and with exceptions like Blood, ammo management is not a problem.\n+ Sticky mines. They're never used in single player, like Duke Nukem 3D's Laser Trip Wire.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Given the massive amount of enemies and hitscan, the spamming the Grenade Launcher from a corner is OP. Its splash radius is so large that it often hits you though, making it easy to kill yourself.\n+ The Uzi Gun is quite a bit more overpowered than other weapons, including even the Riot Gun at short range sometimes. This is because it puts enemies at infinite stagger effectively as you continue to shoot them. A Riot Gun does not because of its semi-auto fire rate.\n+ Alternate firing. None of them are really helpful, with the exception of two: Riot Gun's auto fire, especially helpful for burst damage on a heavy single target; and Missile Launcher's nuke. Otherwise it's fairly needless complexity.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Mouse aiming. It has a weird stick where the crosshairs don't move if you try to move your mouse a small distance in order to finetune your shot. This is caused by mouse smoothing and/or mouse acceleration, which is a problem with all Build engine games ([1](https://steamcommunity.com/app/225160/discussions/0/846958724736561342), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/hf54sz/ive_discovered_that_build_engine_shooters_duke)). For Shadow Warrior, I found auto-aim crucial as enemies like Ghosts, Rippers, and Hornets move too quickly, with small hitboxes and erratic movement; it's hard to hit them without the precise aiming. You can set the horizontal and vertical sensitivity, where I set it to 1/6/1 for sensitivity, horizontal scale, and vertical scale (this is roughly 8.5in/180 degree turn); for some reason, going to the mouse settings rounds some values down, so I always have to manually set these values again if I ever go back to the mouse settings. It doesn't solve the mouse smoothing problems however.\n+ Trap mines are invisible. You can only detect them by their sound, for which proximity sound isn't setup well here and the sound itself is grating to hear throughout an entire level. You can't even shoot them. This is one of the many mechanics encouraging savescumming or otherwise memorizing enemy placement.\n+ Ninjas hiding behind cover to pop-in-and-shoot. It's a nice idea, but impossible to directly shoot, encouraging more Grenade Launcher spam instead; further, there's too much RNG in whether you can even hit them. This is one of the many mechanics encouraging savescumming or otherwise memorizing enemy placement.\n+ Certain guns require reloading, but a manual reload was not invented at the time.\n+ Railgun's aim is actually to the left of the crosshair.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Walkthrough from 3DRealms](https://legacy.3drealms.com/sw/walkthroughs.html)\n\nThis entry does not include the expansion packs. I played the Shadow Warrior Classic Redux (2013) edition. I played on Who Wants Wang (second highest difficulty) as it's presumably the equivalent of Doom's Ultra-Violence. Like other games, I rebinded 6-0 to QGZXC.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/shadow-warrior"},{"id":"b3a7c8ee-7ba8-4bc7-b13f-75d8f6a09aea","title":"Shadowrun Returns","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","Android","iOS","PS4","XONE","Switch","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Harebrained Schemes"],"publishers":["Harebrained Schemes"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2023-05-10","completedDate":"2023-05-12","updatedDate":"2023-05-12","notes":"Shadowrun Returns is a detective mystery novella in CRPG form. It most stands out in its wonderful worldbuilding with a blend of cyberpunk and fantasy, enjoyable turn-based combat and progression systems. The writing's prose, dialogue, and worldbuilding elements are all quite good, especially for a video game.\n\nFlaw-wise, story is a bit too trope-y. And combat is a bit simplistic. But for a roughly 12 hour journey, it's staggering how much you can do.\n\n__Story.__\nThe main story isn't mindblowing, falling into your usual tropes. However, the worldbuilding is unique in its mix of fantasy and cyberpunk. So I enjoyed following through the campaign to learn about its world and the characters inhabiting it, and the new UI/flavor text/style that Shadowrun Returns takes compared to as if it were just in book form. Reminds me a bit of Dresden Files and urban fantasy, though more on the fantasy and cyberpunk than gothic elements. Corny dialogue at times.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Shadowrun Returns adopts the usual standards of CRPGs: isometric camera style, multiple party members (although Shadowrun has mostly an emphasis on your single character, with others appearing over various parts of the story), novel-like dialogue with choices and speech checks. Level design is fairly minimal and linear, with some light incentives for exploration.\n\nCombat mechanics:\n\n+ Turn-based, sequenced in rounds between player and enemy teams. Each member in a team can operate at any time in their turn.\n+ Encourages cover with light, medium, and heavy shields that is also direction-based.\n+ Attacks include guns with various options and ammo, overwatch, spellbook including (de)buffs, heals, and attacks, and class abilities.\n+ Options include weapon selection and item consumables.\n\nIt's not extremely deep, but it has a good amount of tactics, systems, and progression that feels intuitive and fun to play, particularly for its short length.\n\nProgression currency involves karma to improve stats and skills, nuyen to purchase equipment, items, and cyberware, and essence limits cyberware upgrades.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nArtwork is simple and functional. UI is not too complicated. The portrait artwork looks amateurish and not too detailed, lacking in proportion at times. With that said, I played this game immediately after completing Baldur's Gate 2. In terms of UI, this game is a significant improvement.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Low hit chance. Porting over a convention in tabletop RPGs. In video games, it feels bad because the computer does all the calculations so it can handle nuances more than pencil and paper, and the game doesn’t animate or roleplay the idea of dodging. Reminds me of For the King and to a lesser extent, 2e DND games like Baldur’s Gate (albeit less of a problem due to RTWP where individual hits to land a killing blow before the enemy’s next turn isn’t significant).\n+ The lingo in this game is the standard in scifi and fantasy (\"Domo arigato, [protagonist]\". \"Wiz. I could use a bunk.\"). However, it's not as cringe as Cyberpunk 2077. I imagine it fares better read but is too much when actually acted out.\n+ Quick load isn't that slow, but it's certainly not the fastest (roughly 5-10 seconds).\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The finite money made me minimalist about any money spending. Using any consumables and purchasing intermediate upgrades always felt like a waste of money. For the same reason, I drifted to a solo playstyle without prior intent just because I didn't see the need to spend money hiring runners.\n+ No Undo button in combat.\n+ Stat caps are janky:\n  + [Racial stat cap is a hard cutoff including equipment bonuses](https://www.reddit.com/r/shadowrunreturns/comments/3i08bh/can_you_take_stats_above_their_cap_with/). Stat increases are less useful because you need, say, max Quickness anyways in order to also level up Quickness skills to max such as Ranged Combat. This is [partially mitigated in Shadowrun Hong Kong](https://www.reddit.com/r/shadowrunreturns/comments/jru0oc/are_stats_hard_capped).\n  + [Speech checks assess base stat and not total stat](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/667057-shadowrun-returns/66876162).\n  + [Armor is hard capped at 10.](https://shadowrun-series.fandom.com/wiki/Armor)\n  + [0.5 essence costs round down and can lead to unintuitive behavior](https://www.reddit.com/r/shadowrunreturns/comments/1j73m6/essence_questions/). For example, you cannot spend 0.5 essence if you only have 0.5 essence left and an item costs 0.5. The game will calculate cost based on your rounded down value of 0. It's also not clear to beginners that Essence can't down to 1, so the max you can spend from the initial of 6 is 5.\n+ [Missable karma](https://shadowrun-series.fandom.com/wiki/Karma). That said, they give you plenty of karma points to max your pure playstyle and start hybridizing.\n+ No conversation history.\n+ Keyboard shortcuts are poorly explained. And they don't give you the standard RPG controls of number keys to hotkey a dialogue choice and space to go to next line.\n+ Buff/debuff timers is displayed but not really explained well.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Shadowrun Series Wiki](https://shadowrun-series.fandom.com). This covers the video games. There’s also a Shadowrun fandom wiki, but it’s for Shadowrun overall, including the tabletop RPG. And it’s not very detailed.\n  + [Controls](https://shadowrun-series.fandom.com/wiki/Controls). Not explained in the game.\n+ [Steam: General Strategy Guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=257755690)\n+ [Steam: Kickstarter Backer Reward Codes](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1127845689)\n+ Etiquette\n  + [Steam: Etiquettes and stats for dialogue checks](https://steamcommunity.com/app/234650/discussions/0/558747288066826615)\n  + [Reddit: Dragonfall Etiquette Analysis](https://www.reddit.com/r/shadowrunreturns/comments/ceguah/dragonfall_etiquette_analysis). Note this is for Dragonfall, not Shadowrun Returns though.\n+ [Tip: Smartlink weapons aren't available until the last mission.](https://steamcommunity.com/app/234650/discussions/0/864974467343172177/)\n+ [Steam: Best programs](https://steamcommunity.com/app/300550/discussions/0/483367798499527160/)\n\nMotivated to play as one of the most prominent CRPGs in the 2013-2020 era revival, and uniquely, it’s one of the easiest CRPGs to pick up because its base playtime is only 12 hours.\n\n__Version.__ I played the original version Shadowrun Returns. Others are sequel campaigns under the new engine. There is a mod to play Shadowrun Return's campaign of Dead Man's Switch under the latest 3rd Hong Kong title ([reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/shadowrunreturns/comments/6zb98g/dms_vox_populi/)), which includes the latest engine. I think it's better to play the original game as intended first, so you can appreciate any gameplay changes over the series.\n\n__Playthrough style.__\nI played the game solo, without companions excluding the mandatory ones. It turned out to be a surprisingly enjoyable experience. I still greatly enjoy the tactical combat from solo members, and I much enjoy this approach as you don't need to manage multiple party members. It also works well with Shadowrun's campaign style as there are no permanent companions, and the hirelings have [little-to-no dialogue](https://www.reddit.com/r/shadowrunreturns/comments/4ane1b/question_about_hired_runners_dfhk_mainly); it's closer to Fallout as a CRPG in that it's primarily just you as a character.\n\nPlaying solo wasn't by prior intent but a consequence of the following: I minimized spending money on anything temporary. This includes:\n\n+ Intermediate items or upgrades before endgame.\n+ Hired runners. If I would, Alexander Falk is the best support shaman / mage with Haste, Heal, and Armor (no Aim though).\n+ I only purchase upgrades for my character.\n+ Extra money (that is, adjusting for amount after purchasing all endgame items): Intermediate upgrades. Then spend any extra to gearout companions, which I rarely even hire.\n\n__Difficulty.__ Initially, I played on Hard difficulty. This is the second highest and apparently a [dev recommendation](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/667057-shadowrun-returns/66821303). Difficulty mostly only affects hit chance, which can make for a frustrating feeling that narrows certain playstyles (e.g., mages will miss too much, resorting to [spamming Aim spells)](https://www.reddit.com/r/shadowrunreturns/comments/3lb8lr/srhk_are_mages_fun_or_not).\n\nShadowrun Returns is also apparently the hardest of the trilogy. I can always try Very Hard dynamically over my first playthrough if I feel I can handle it, and for future playthroughs.\n\nBy midgame after The Digital World, I dialed up the difficulty to Very Hard. The game was too easy with my metagaming build, even with no hired runners. Very Hard felt a bit more challenging, particularly as I continued the commitment to no hired runners and then started dumping karma into decking rather than guns.\n\n__Build.__ I played a gunner and decker build, focusing on DPS and with survivability. ([reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/shadowrunreturns/comments/7kblbh/comment/drr9e44/), [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/shadowrunreturns/comments/d15x1k/current_op_builds/))\n\nBy midgame I was starting to max out my Quickness stat and skills. So I invested into Intelligence and Decking. Decker is [particularly useful in Shadowrun Returns](https://www.reddit.com/r/shadowrunreturns/comments/6ahg8o/first_time_playing_any_tips/dhemaoj) because you can pass decker speech checks whereas later games let you leverage your companions' stat. In retrospect, because the game offers so much Karma, it would be optimal to invest into Decking earlier if done at all, so that you can unlock the early game terminal rewards.\n\n+ Race: Elf\n  + For the higher Quickness cap. As a bonus, they also have the highest Charisma cap and start with +1 Charisma and an etiquette.\n+ Archetype: Custom, but playstyle is Street Samurai.\n+ Starting allocation: 3 Body / 7 Quickness / 1 Strength / 2 Charisma / 1 Intelligence / 1 Willpower. 2 Karma leftover\n+ Stats: Quickness (prioritize 7 minimum) > Charisma (prioritize 4 minimum) = Body (prioritize 4 minimum). Intelligence and Strength are at 1. Willpower is a dump stat after Quickness, Charisma, and Body.\n+ Skills: Prioritize Ranged Combat, Rifle, Dodge.\n\nEndgame\n+ Body: 4\n+ Quickness: 8 (and +3 from Ganger Mask and Alpha left/right legs)\n  + Ranged: 8, Rifle: 8, Dodge: 8 (and +2 from Alpha left/right legs)\n+ Strength: 1.\n  + All skills are 0.\n+ Intelligence: 7\n  + Decking: 7 ([6 maximum for terminal rewards](https://shadowrun-series.fandom.com/wiki/Decking); 7 required for Fairlight Excalibur)\n+ Willpower: 1.\n  + All skills are 0.\n+ Charisma: 4.\n  + Etiquettes are Academic and Socialite.\n  + All skills are 0.\n+ Equipment\n  + Weapon: AK-74 → FN HAR → Ares Alpha\n  + Outfit: Ganger Mask\n  + Cyberware: Datajack, Alpha left/right legs, Alpha eye\n  + Cyberdeck: Renraku Kraftwerk-1 → Fairlight Excalibur\n  + Programs: Suppression Lvl 1, Killer Lvl 3, Erosion Lvl 3, Blast Lvl 3, Medic Lvl 3, Shield Lvl 3\n  + Considerations\n    + High Grade Street Armor's +10 armor is a top-tier alternative to Ganger Mask's +6 armor +1 quickness +5 hp. It hits the armor cap. Assuming alpha left/right legs, Ganger Mask's 3rd +1 quickness saves 9 karma whereas High Grade Street Armor has 4 more armor.\n    + With 1-2 essence, you can pair Ganger Mask with Alpha body's +2 armor +1 body and High Grade Street Armor with Wired Reflexes With Reflex Trigger +1 Movement / +1 dodge first attack for 3 rounds. However, Alpha legs/right legs (4 essence) and Alpha eyes (0.5 essence) is much better.\n    + Colt M23 (Smartlink) would be third weapon as a secondary. However, you only get it by the last mission, in which you need to carry around the Aegis Mk. 1 Launcher.\n\nTODOs on future playthroughs\n+ mage dps / support shaman build\n+ decker / rigger build\n+ melee adept build","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/shadowrun-returns"},{"id":"cb238917-2ba7-4a59-af51-4a84a96a513f","title":"Slay the Princess","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Black Tabby Games"],"publishers":["Black Tabby Games"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Adventure","Indie","Visual Novel"],"startedDate":"2023-11-24","completedDate":"2023-11-24","updatedDate":"2023-11-25","notes":"It was fun with various twists as it goes with a RenPy game.\n\nThe writing quality in this interactive narrative seems interesting. I saw Sodapoppin play pieces of it.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/slay-the-princess"},{"id":"322682678650360396","title":"Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["Sucker Punch Productions"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-12-13","completedDate":"2020-12-15","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Sly Cooper is a fun 3D platformer with a reasonable balance in difficulty, enemy variety, and platforming obstacles coupled with stealth as the idea.\n\n__Story.__ The story and cutscene graphics remind me of a 2000s era cartoon show like Powerpuffs or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I wish it were more integrated across the individual levels though. It's fairly sparse otherwise.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Sly Cooper contains elements of 3d platforming, collectithon, and stealth. Interestingly, there is no health: you die from a single mistake although there are generous checkpoints. Coins accumulate to a 100 for an extra life like Super Mario. Clue Bottles enable cracking a vault which adds a new power-up. Other examples are the core platforming controls, platforming-style bosses, hub world.\n\nThe collectithon element with Clue Bottles does not pan well with the linear level design. Backtracking is either impossible or wildly impractical. Fortunately, the power-ups aren't all useful and they all use the same control scheme. For good and bad, the only useful ones are: Fast Dive Attack (1 vault), Dive Collection (4 vaults), Coin Magnetism (5 vaults), Explosive Hat (6 vaults), Water Safety (8 vaults), Move while Invisible (13 vaults), Defy Gravity (14/15 vaults); and none are essential. The way I found the game most enjoyable was to go through a level collecting Coin Bottles as I go, but never backtracking if I don't reach the total number.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The cel-shading and 3D models age well, albeit somewhat in the uncanney valley as the early stage of 3D graphics.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Minigames like At the Dog Track are infuriating without savescumming.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nMotivated to play this after loving the 3D platformers of the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 generation: for example, Super Mario 64, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Banjo Kazooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Donkey Kong 64, Psychonauts, Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank. I played on PCSX2 at 5x native resolution (3200x2240) and default FPS for NTSC (60).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/sly-cooper-and-the-thievius-raccoonus"},{"id":"322682678652661324","title":"Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Toys for Bob"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/spyro-2-riptos-rage-reignited-trilogy"},{"id":"322682678652469836","title":"Spyro Reignited Trilogy: Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!","status":"Completed","score":7,"playtimeMinutes":540,"startedDate":"2019-04-06","completedDate":"2019-04-08","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Ripto's Rage is a polished Spyro the Dragon. It maintains the core collectithon mechanics with excellent level designs, beautiful environments, memorable music, and diverse enemies. Importantly, Spyro 2 also adds a few core improvements: manual camera movement with the R3 stick, a more substantiated story with colorful characters and cutscenes per world (e.g., Elora, Mr. Moneybags, Professor); a replacement of the checkpoint system/Petrified Dragons with fairies and Jewel challenges (translation: many more minigames); spirit particles to unlock level superpowers (and beyond just supercharge and super flame); and Hover, Spit, Swim, Climb, and Headbash to further complexify the mechanics. Levels are on a whole new scale not just with the excellent integrated explorations across subareas, puzzles, and iconic soundtracks, but now with lore, mini-civilizations, and NPCs.\n\nUnfortunately thanks to metroidvania backtracking, Spyro 2 sacrifices a lot of player freedom in an attempt at a fairly linear vision. There are so many collectibles in levels that are locked behind future unlockable mechanics. This makes progression feel a lot less satisfying than it is in Spyro the Dragon, as you can safely achieve 100% on each level and be satisfied that you never have to revisit the level again. Similarly, there's a linear route based on talismans, where you must complete all levels before taking on the zone's boss; in Spyro the Dragon, it was collectible requirements. Within each level, Spyro 2 power-ups also only unlock after killing a certain number of enemies. This further shackles exploration, forcing backtracking where only after killing mobs can you fully explore the level. One of Spyro the Dragon's core strengths behind its collectithon exploration is the ability to uncover secrets at your own pace. Spyro 2's metroidvania backtracking---both across levels and within each level---significantly diminishes that freedom.\n\nSome memories:\n\n+ Using a cheatcode to play as Black Spyro.\n+ Being gated in mechanics such as swimming underwater by Mr. Money.\n+ Playing ice Hockey and removing the possessions from the Idol Statues in Colossus.\n+ Herding the cows in Zephyr.\n+ Exploring the outer walls and collecting gems in Autumn Plains.\n+ Dying multiple times (~8) to Gulp. He's truly the Dark Souls of Spyro. I don't remember him being this difficult!\n+ Following Agent Zero's Secret Hideout in Cloud Temples. That music is nostalgic.\n+ All the challenges in the last level, Dragon Shore.\n+ Getting permanent Superflame after 100% completion. I remember Danny, Dalton, and I thinking we could also get permanent Supercharge but could never find it.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ Criticisms I agree with | https://www.reddit.com/r/Spyro/comments/a0o768/spyro_2_is_the_worst_one/\n\nI beat the game (with 100% but not all Skillpoints) in 9 hours."},{"id":"322682678652468812","title":"Spyro Reignited Trilogy: Spyro: Year of the Dragon","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Toys for Bob"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-04-09","completedDate":"2019-04-12","updatedDate":"2022-07-06","notes":"\n__On minigames.__ Overall, I don't like the direction Spyro 2 and 3 headed with a larger variety of minigames and extra player mechanics. I appreciate the exploration, but at most it goes to show how important sticking to the core is. Many of the mini-games and characters are hit-or-miss, at best being B-rated versions of genre games, e.g., Sparx as a flying combat arcade game; Agent 9 as third-person shooter. Yakuza 0 is an excellent example of how mini-games can enhance a game: while many are simply fetch mechanics, it's the quirky writing that keeps them entertaining. I think a similar spirit has to be adopted in any other game like Spyro given that mini-games will always have worse mechanics than the genre games that are devoted to mastering them.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Enemies drop gems like in Spyro the Dragon rather than an additional effective currency of killed-enemies, which unlocks powerups in the level.\n+ All mechanics such as Hover, Swim, Headbash are unlocked from the beginning of the game.\n+ I like that they made the race flying a core part of all flight levels. It upgrades it more as a core mini-game which I agree with.\n+ I do love the variety of games each extra playable character has. For example, Agent 9 has third-person shooter, first-person shooter, and sling-em-up Duck Hunt style. I also liked the Kangaroo's platformer Crash Bandicoot-esque level.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Dragon Eggs are closer to the Spyro the Dragon's petrified dragons than Spyro 2's gems, which means fewer minigames.\n+ The non-Spyro playable characters. I like the experimentation with new mechanics. But they're also a hit or miss.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Like Spyro 2, there's some fair amount of linearity. For example, levels within a zone must be progressed in sequence in order to collect the requisite number of eggs and unlock later parts. I much prefer the nonlinear exploration even if that sequence is what I would ultimately do.\n+ Metroidvania backtracking still exists in this game, although `it's not nearly as bad as Spyro 2. Any locked-out parts are explicitly cordoned off.\n+ I feel like Year of the Dragon is the turning point for the series to become even more kiddy---with the baby dragon eggs and kiddier supporting characters---and my perceived difficulty of this game being easier, more streamlined and with secrets/routes more obvious. The Spyro magic is still there. But the audience seems to have shifted ever so slightly.\n+ Enchanted Towers may be the worst Spyro level I've played. It's not egregiously bad but it does have notably bad points: Rescue the Lost Wolf challenge is buggy and hard to get the wolf to follow you; you're forced to backtrack to get all flying dragons and missing gems with Sgt. Byrd.\n+ Controls for Sparx mini-games are plain bad. You can't dash while strafing which makes it especially bad to kite enemies and then lose your strafing position.\n+ Models for the baby dragons are recycled and not unique like Spyro the Dragon.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/spyro-year-of-the-dragon/\n\n I beat the game (100% excluding skillpoints) in 11 hours according to the menu in-game time.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/spyro-year-of-the-dragon-reignited-trilogy"},{"id":"0dae6e26-b5b1-48d4-a9db-5dd7fcf18e91","title":"Squirrel Stapler","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["David Szymanski"],"publishers":["David Szymanski"],"genres":["Shooter","Indie"],"startedDate":"2023-09-18","completedDate":"2023-09-18","updatedDate":"2023-09-18","notes":"Damn is Szymanski good at horror and FPS. The vibes are excellent. I didn't play this but watched playthroughs from 39daph and Lirik.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/squirrel-stapler"},{"id":"322682678651435596","title":"Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":1020,"platforms":["Stadia","Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Respawn Entertainment"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-11-22","completedDate":"2019-11-26","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Star Wars took me pleasantly by surprise. The game plays like a mix of Uncharted, Tomb Raider reboot, and Dark Souls. It builds on each of these game's elements very well, and while it adds few innovations, I thoroughly enjoyed the mix of elements from my favorite action RPGs/action-adventures. This is what a AAA title should be like: cinematic, methodical in its exploration/level design, well-paced in its combat, light puzzle solving, simple but fundamental action buttons and progression systems. We can do with less open-world AAA titles, shooters, and multiplayers, and I'm glad this Star Wars game took chances!\n\nFlaw-wise, it's enemy variety and backtracking not only for collectibles but even in the main story where you revisit planets and traverse through most of the same areas.\n\n__Story.__ Story follows the prototypical underdog story which is serviceable but not very interesting. Cere is an interesting character. The Sith villain feels like playing the diversity card as an Indian female. Same goes for Cere as a black female. I think what perturbs me the most isn't that there's diversity, but that the main character remains a young white male and built off conventional attractive stereotypes. It's like a white male fantasy.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I love the core mechanics, building on Dark Souls for combat and exploration, and Uncharted in the cinematic experience. Attacks are light and heavy with dodge, block, and parry based on Dark Souls, paired with core force abilities as utilities. Dark Souls style bonfires for healing and checkpoints. XP is regained by attacking enemies similar to Bloodborne's blood echoes. Artifacts, cosmetics, and force essence encourage exploration off the main path. Progression system is skill tree and lightsaber and armor customization. For a AAA game, I'm so glad it doesn't have open world elements.\n\nI admire the deviations that distinguishes Star Wars a bit: for example, the use of the lightsaber to light up dark areas; parrying ranged attacks to bounce back ranged shots; Force Dash is viable for enemies like flamethrowers; guarding is a lot more free in this game as attacks/sprinting doesn't deplete the stamina bar; the adversarial plants to make platforming more interesting in Kashykk; dual lightsaber and Force Push for crowd control.\n\nEnemy variety is not good. Mobs are re-used for bosses. Bosses are re-used as mobs. Too many storm troopers, not many interesting creatures. Bosses are just not very aggressive; they're too easy.\n\nI really like how labyrinthian and open in pathing the level design is. Definitely Dark Souls in this regard. I love that feeling of trying to explore every crevice to make sure I'm not missing anything.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ It's a really good looking game. Lighting, textures, face models. Builds well on the Star Wars universe by showing diverse races. Star Wars symphony music. Cutscenes are rendered in game. Same scenes are a bit janky and performance is bad. Most notable aesthetics-wise is how bare everything is: there's no densely populated areas, so it can feel strange as a Star Wars title as it's primarily in wilderness, and in the one rebel outpost, there's just a dozen people standing around.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ The train to imperial hallway sequence very early in the game (https://www.reddit.com/r/FallenOrder/comments/dwy5pz/about_that_part_in_the_beginning/). (Same happens when you go back to Zeffo and start climbing a wall. I love these point of view changes overall.)\n+ All the flashback sequences as young Cal the padawan and with Anakin-style hair.\n+ Getting lost in Zeffo for the umpteenth time.\n+ Laughing immediately when they show the double jump being a front flip in mid air to ascend higher distances. Absolutely a Crash Bandicoot thing.\n+ Spending an hour fighting Malicos over and over until I memorized his mechanics over stages. He's the only boss that I had to switch strategies: block instead of dodge, and a single light saber with very specific usage of Force with dual light saber attack for DPS/damage to his stamina bar. I love how aggressive he gets over time, and how he starts to chain moves so if you get too acquanted with the rhythm in the first stage, you get fucked. Other fights I had to patient with retries with: Umbaran fight club arena, about a dozen tries for Silla at final level.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ On platforming, I like that you need to press an additional action to hold onto the railing once you land the jump. This makes it a bit less automatic and snoozy as Uncharted and Tomb Raider platforming.\n+ Psychometry as a lore reason for finding artifacts.\n+ There's no extraneous currency or material item system. This makes it easier to manage less and also so that you don't need to pick up anything from corpses.\n+ Runs to bosses are not far.\n+ You can use Force abilities without depleting your bar when not in combat.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ No stamina bar depletion as you sprint or attack. It's only for guards.\n+ Holo map. Having a map is mostly unnecessary. But I do find it useful to keep track of all the missable routes I didn't take due to the metroidvania.\n+ Specific skills in the skill tree. They all feel fairly inconsequential and/or are stat boosts. Then again, I wouldn't want the skill tree to have an arsenal of overly complex fighting moves like God of War and Devil May Cry's tend to.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Several bosses are just bigger versions of the same enemy. No different mechanics.\n+ Performance issues at times, primarily frame rate drops.\n+ Metroidvania style of blocking certain small subareas as you haven't acquired the requisite ability. I think metroidvania is only done well if the new content is a path to a much larger area. Blocking off just a handful of collectibles makes the game feel more tedious as bookkeeping. There's too much backtracking in this game.\n+ Swimming mechanic. Boring.\n+ The parry mechanic (for melee attacks) is not great, making it not really viable compared to guard or dodging (https://www.reddit.com/r/FallenOrder/comments/dx82ny/why_parry_in_this_game_feels_harder_than_in_dark/).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played max difficulty (Jedi Grand Master) and on second-to-highest settings (High). I beat the game in 21 hours according to Steam. I actually found Grand Master to still be fairly forgiving, at least compared to Soulsborne. Skill tree-wise, I prioritized survivability and improvements to core lightsaber moves and Force mana. Once I got the double bladed lightsaber I ended up always using it; it's like a Dex-style build in Dark Souls: weaker damage but many more attacks. It also just works significantly better with crowd control.\n\nI played this as I was itching for a deep combat Souls-like game, but with a short-to-medium playtime as I'll be away next week for Thanksgiving. Of the Souls-like deep combat games, I haven't played Witcher III or Monster Hunter World yet. Others I haven't played seem fairly derivative, and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is the most mainstream of these even though I expect nothing new in its offering.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/star-wars-jedi-fallen-order"},{"id":"322682678652509772","title":"StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":1080,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"publishers":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"genres":["Real Time Strategy (RTS)","Strategy"],"startedDate":"2009-12-31","completedDate":"2009-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"This is an assessment of the campaign and the arcade. I don't play the multiplayer game, ranked or otherwise.\n\nOn the campaign. Story is overly cheesy and writing is not really that innovative. But the gameplay scenarios are pretty fun.\n\nOn the Arcade. It's infuriating that you can't see how many players are in a lobby until after you join in it. Overall, the wait time to start a game is significantly longer, and also the loading screen. I like that you can join a lobby while still browsing other games. I also like the significantly more customizability, better native support for finding what are the most popular games and downloading them, and no ridiculous bugs like someone not pressing Start in the objectives screen. But the lack of easily starting a game is easily the weakest point and is why SC2 Arena is so underplayed compared to SC1. I agree with the sentiment overall in Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/jui3g/why_did_the_fun_brood_war_umscustom_games_like/): no collective skill and friendship over many remade games; no custom titles and thus pro only and unique games.\n\nWhy did SC2 Arcade fail badly? One is logistics of the terrible support Blizzzard did. I also agree with this Youtube discussion (https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/5tqfpf/sc2_arcade_vs_use_map_settings_a_discussion_of/) that perhaps other big reasons are that in Starcraft days, there were no alternative options for hardcore game designers to build their own game under more engines; and for casual players, the Galaxy Editor is just too intense compared, to say, Starcrafts and without a gradual learning curve.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/starcraft-ii-wings-of-liberty"},{"id":"322682678652807756","title":"Starfield","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":1380,"platforms":["PC","Series X"],"studios":["Bethesda Game Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2023-08-31","completedDate":"2023-09-05","updatedDate":"2023-09-14","notes":"Starfield is what you would expect from a modern Bethesda game. It's designed most after Skyrim and Fallout 4, and in a space setting with resource gathering elements taken from No Man's Sky. Like most Bethesda games, Starfield excels in worldbuilding, writing, level and quest design, and RPG progression systems.\n\nUnfortunately, for a game developed for 8 years, Starfield has no major innovations to Bethesda's formula and mostly plays by the book. The major flaws are the following:\n\n1. Exploration is severely lacking as you can’t freely travel across the discrete locations. There's no trekking into the unknown to define your own adventure and with less spontaneity in events. Starfield is a regression in exploration: it’s arguably [not even an open world game](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/1672gj1/starfield_feels_like_its_regressed_from_other) ([2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16804g8/by_the_core_design_starfield_is_not_true), [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16d11l1/starfield_is_a_letdown_in_terms_of_freeroam), [4](https://www.eurogamer.net/starfield-review)). Starfield is a space game marketed to explore the stars, and it ended up being Bethesda’s [most linear locked down experience](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/1672gj1/comment/jynay0j).\n2. Side quests, combat, and build variety follow a rote design with limited true roleplay and playstyle options. This limits replayability. It's a common problem in Bethesda games, but it's more true in Starfield with the lack of notable builds.\n3. UI. This includes map design, inventory management, and the reliance on the UI to fast travel and land.\n4. Writing is decent but the quest storylines, factions, companions, and cities aren't that memorable. For example, they lack a unique hook, background, or deep tackling of themes.\n\n__Overall gameplay.__\nNew elements:\n\n+ Space navigation, ship building, and space combat.\n+ Procedurally generated planets of roughly 1000, which sacrifice quantity over quality. You rarely want to visit these planets as they're empty wastelands.\n+ Skill system has leveling progression that is a a hybrid of Elder Scrolls and Fallout's.\n+ Stamina meter is replaced by a Oxygen - CO2 system. I like that it fits the theme. Gameplay-wise, it also doubles as the system to hold your breath when sniping which is neat.\n+ Speech involves a minigame. It's no longer a hard stat skill check like in Fallout New Vegas and CRPGs. Rather, you enter a minigame with multiple rounds, and must accumulate persuasion points, where higher point rewards are higher difficulty.\n\n    Unfortunately, there's not much strategy to the speech minigame. It's [largely RNG](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/167u5g5/spoilers_making_persuasion_luck_based_instead_of), which encourages savescumming. I much prefer the hard stat floor checks in games like Fallout New Vegas and Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. It at least isn't based on RNG and a question of build focus.\n+ Digipicking serves as Starfield's minigame for lockpicking and hacking. Digipicking is a pretty good minigame as it involves solving minor puzzles. It's not as RNG dependent as the lockpicking minigame can be.\n\nOther core elements are inherited from Bethesda RPGs:\n\n+ Quests involve roleplay, dialogue, and varied objectives\n+ Level and world exploration\n+ RPG progression systems\n+ FPS combat with ranged and melee playstyles. The animations and controls are the smoothest they've been in a Bethesda game. They're not quite as good as Doom Eternal or Borderlands 2, but at least they're better than Fallout 4.\n+ Companions\n+ Crafting, including weapon and equipment mods\n+ Build outposts similar to Fallout 4\n\n__Writing and quest design.__\nQuests involve the usual types in Bethesda games: main quest, faction quests, side quests triggered by miscellaneous questgivers, and random radiant-style quests.\n\n1. Worldbuilding and main quest are decent and ripe with potential. The wars, factions, and locations in cities can be bland though. For example, there's no nudity or mention of sex in Neon or when you have a relationship with a companion. You can't kill children as in Fallout 1/2. There's little mention of slavery, genocide, racism, and other hate crimes to instigate wars.\n2. Factions have serviceable but not stellar writing. There are no stand out characters in each faction to make the factions particularly notable. Compare to, say, Elder Scrolls guilds where there's usually 3-4 main faction members you interact with and progress through the storyline. There's also no official ranks or ingame rewards for achieving certain ranks like a faction grandmaster would.\n3. Side quests are generally like Skyrim and Fallout 4 in being quantity over quality. The majority are fairly standard in introducing a setup with a handful of dialogue, then a simple completion followed by a reward. Faction-related side quests and some one-off side quests are more substantial.\n\nCompanions are forgettable with no unique personality, trait, or background, and they have little growth. There's not much to learn about them. There are some companion quests, but there's not enough to make them all that likeable or understand them better. [They're all good aligned](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16bxq1b/ill_be_honest_my_dudes_i_cant_stand_these_main) as well, so they have similar (dis)approval including leaving if you kill random NPCs or side with pirates.\n\nLike Skyrim and Fallout 4, quests are generally limited in the approaches you can take to solve them. There's usually just one. There's rarely a difference such as a good vs bad alignment, or stealth vs assault. The quests are also streamlined: for example, in Ryujin faction's Sowing Discord quest, you're tasked with influencing two executives against Infinity LTD, and you're given a dossier describing their personality and talking points. You would think you would need to memorize the dossier, but the game instead doles out all the key points for you.\n\n__Builds and replayability.__\nRPG progression systems involve skills, traits, gear, and inventory management.\n\n+ The skill system is a hybrid of Elder Scrolls' \"level as you use it\"; and Fallout's direct skill point allocation. You have to complete a challenge which then lets you spend a skill point to progress to the next rank.\n\n    The design doesn't work very well as it involves too much micromanagement in farming for these skill challenges along with hoarding skill points. I much prefer either Elder Scrolls' passive levels as you use an ability or Fallout's static skill point allocation. Elder Scrolls' skill XP also allows for much broader gameplay under that skill than the specific skill challenges in Starfield.\n+ Ships have extensive customizability in ship design. However, what you can do with the ship is limited: combat encounters, cargo storage, mining by blowing up asteroids, stats affecting fast travel distance.\n+ Later in the game, you gain powers with a cooldown-mana charge system, not unlike Skyrim's dragon shouts.\n+ There are no attributes, much like Skyrim. I miss the days of Morrowind and to some extent, Fallout games where you can pump a certain stat and become ridiculously powerful in that manner. For example, max out Morrowind's Speed and Acrobatics and you will move incredibly quickly and have absurd jump heights.\n+ There is no reputation system, whether it be ranks in a faction, reputation in an area, or good/evil chaotic/lawful alignment.\n+ Outposts are fairly superficial and not integrated to the core game well, much like Fallout 4. They're peripheral in that they only provide situational benefits: automated resource miner and a hub for crafting stations (but you could go elsewhere like the Lodge which already has these). I think outposts would be much better if they were tied more closely to the game much like Subnautica and other survival games; at the least, allow one to place core questgivers and traders like Path of Exile.\n+ Encumbrance and having to manage weight is a common criticism. I don't find this that much of a problem as I do like weight management in Bethesda games. It is exacerbated by Starfield's UI problem: if transferring weight to your companions and managing your inventory was more streamlined overall, weight would not be a concern.\n\nReplayability is somewhat limited.\n\n+ Build variety involves your choice of combat (e.g., melee, gun type) and allocation into social, ship tech, and physical. They all tend to be similar though. It's even more limited than previous Bethesda games: there's no magic, no VATS, and melee is not good as you can't block shots and there no abilities to quickly close distance. Combat is generally a choice of rifle (SMG/assault/sniper), pistol, or shotgun.\n+ Like most Elder Scrolls games, you're able to see pretty much all content, including joining all factions, in a single playthrough. There aren't faction choices like in Fallout New Vegas or Fallout 4.\n+ The order in which you complete quests and navigate the universe still has that freedom commonly enjoyed in Bethesda games. However, because of the limited space exploration (Starfield’s equivalent of overworld/map exploration), there’s not as much variety. The order boils down to a permutation compared to older Bethesda games, where you can go any direction on the map and start completing content.\n\n__Level design.__\nThere are roughly three categories of areas to understand Starfield's approach: hand-designed, procedurally generated, and intermediary zones to connect areas. The first is done well, the second is empty and bloat but is easy to skip as optional content, and the third is unfortunately non-existent.\n\n1. Level design across planets is diverse across the hand-designed areas. New Atlantis is an idyllic futuristic city reminiscent of Mass Effect's Citadel, and Akila City is a scientific-technology-meets-western-frontiers city reminiscent of Fallout's settlements.\n2. The procedurally generated planets sacrifice quality for quantity and are not that notable. There's no real need to go to them besides the occasional resource gathering and building outposts. If all the procedurally generated planets didn't exist, you could still do this well in the hand-designed areas.\n3. There are clear boundaries between areas and planets, with no intermediate travel. It’s a fast travel simulator with a series of unskippable cutscenes, which significantly ruins exploration and immersion. [It shatters the illusion of exploring a vast universe](https://www.ign.com/articles/starfield-review). It would be like if Skyrim had no area outside cities, dungeons, and other points of interests, and to travel from Whiterun to Solitude, you enter a cutscene to mount your horse, then you can move your horse within a small box, then enter a cutscene of your horse traveling to the area, and then enter a cutscene of unmounting from your horse.\n\n    For example, an iconic part of Bethesda’s games is that you’re placed in the unknown and you can travel in any direction to encounter landmarks, events, quests, and other points of interest (c.f., exploring the wilds after you exit the ship in Morrowind, dungeon in Oblivion, cave in Skyrim, or Vault in Fallout titles). Quests aren’t given to you with all the points of interest to visit beforehand. You get to decide where to go and what to do. Starfield misses this essential element of the core gameplay loop.\n\n    For another example, the game has significantly less emergent storytelling as instead you simply go from point A to point B. There are less dynamic events where you're trekking the unknown and get ambushed, run into a ship that triggers a quest, or encounter an interesting cave. A successful approach in previous Bethesda's open world games is where you aim to do quest A, then encounter quest/event B, then work on it and encounter quest/event C. This spontaneity doesn't exist in Starfield.\n\n    For another example, the artifacts you collect all have a location already pinpointed for you. Contrast to Skyrim, where you find dragon shouts as one of many possible rewards of exploring the world and entering the odd cave or dungeon.\n\nIs Starfield truly open world if there's no intermediary travel, only a list of discrete areas? Compare to, say, the semi-open world nature of Outer Worlds, which took the design approach of a small number of planets (discrete locations), but with fairly large spaces within the planets so you can still traverse in a zone featuring a city, an abandoned power plant, a settlement, and wilderness (Emerald Vale). Starfield’s approach is larger in scale and yet offers less exploration. In this regard, Starfield’s level design is closer to Mass Effect, KOTOR, and Fallout 1/2.\n\n__UI and controls.__\nThe player HUD is designed well in both space aesthetic and in featuring the minimal essentials for immersion much like other Bethesda games. Unfortunately, that's where the praise about the UI ends.\n\nThe UI is poorly designed across many aspects.\n\n+ Interplanetary travel. Traveling to planets/systems, landing/docking, and scanning is all done through menu UIs. For a game marketed towards space travel and exploration, this is silly. There's no seamless way to perform these actions without even pausing the game and going to the menu. At least you can look for the icon, press E to open up the interact options, then press R to fast travel/land/dock; but this still requires too many actions.\n+ Maps. [There is no local map displaying an area](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/16812ky/starfields_local_planet_map_is_horrible). This is especially important for cities where it's difficult to find shop locations or see all the various quest objectives in the area.\n+ Inventory. The inventory doesn't convey much information in one view (c.f., Skyrim's SkyUI). You can only see one person's inventory at a time, not two such as during trading or when transferring items to a companion. And most all actions require too many button presses: you can't even see items without selecting a category first.\n\n    Other missing quality of life features:\n\n    + There's no ability to sort inventory by \"val/wt\". This is the primary method to manage your inventory pickups as you only want to pick up high value items with low weight.\n    + There’s no ability to bulk transfer items to a companion. You have to spam the individual item transfer.\n    + There’s no ability to mark items as trash or mark items as locked down. This streamlines item selling as, common in games like Borderlands, you can determine what items to vendor at the same time that you first inspect the item pickups.\n+ Hotkeys.\n  + You can't exit instantly with Tab, which is used for dialogue, map UI, and inventory UI. You have to press it twice sometimes or otherwise hold the key. I significantly prefer separate buttons rather than overloading Tab for both zooming out in the map and exiting the map. It's tedious having to hold Tab to exit the map UI. Similarly annoyingly, Tab doesn't immediately exit player UIs such as the inventory UI or skills UI, it goes to the overview UI, which again requires a double press.\n  + There's no hotkey to [immediately consume food](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/167ndy4/let_me_eat_food_without_picking_it_up_and_adding) that you find instead of having to pick up, then go to inventory, then eat it (c.f., Fallout 76, Cyberpunk 2077). There's also no hotkey to read books without having to pick them up first (c.f., Elder Scrolls, Fallout). This greatly streamlines the flow of miscellaneous which are generally too tedious and incremental to use otherwise. \n  + No numbered hotkeys to select a dialogue choice. You have to use WASD followed by E or use your mouse. Truly made for consoles and no consideration for CRPGs and older Bethesda fans.\n\n__Miscellaneous gameplay.__\nPlaying on release, PC performance is poorly optimized and has quite a few bugs. See details in my playthrough notes below.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nGraphics are significantly improved from Fallout 4 as part of the next generation. It's pretty incredible how detailed the visuals are for such a large game ([DigitalFoundry review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS_LWwRBzX0)). This is noticeable across most all elements: animation, textures, facial animation, lighting. There's so much clutter in the areas to make them feel lived in and real. There is still some jank however and a tendency to have jilted single face animations for dialogue.\n\nSoundtrack is gorgeous and reminiscent of the orchestral approach to space started by 2001 Space Odyssey.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can display all quest markers at once and not only the active quest marker. This significantly streamlines quest progression in an area such as a city where you're juggling multiple quests at once. Usually without such a feature, the game boils down to fiddling with the UI to mark the active quest and see if there's an objective you can complete near you.\n\n    Unfortunately, it's often bugged. Often when I use the feature, it just points the quest marker to my ship and doesn't actually display the multiple quest markers in an area.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Turning on your scanner highlights all interactable objects, making it easier to see what to pick up or mine. It's a quality of life that degrades the immersion and interest in the environment at large. It's not too out of place in its highlight, so it's fortunately not as bad as Detective Mode in early games like Arkham Asylum.\n+ Like Fallout 4, Starfield's companions do not use ammo. [They do need to have at least 1 ammo in their inventory though.](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1716740/discussions/0/3824173464658082383)\n+ Mission boards offer procedurally generated quests that are in the realm of Elder Scrolls' radiant quests.\n+ No questgiver indicator. Instead, you generally pick up quests by exploring an area and interacting with any named NPCs.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Controls are not often explained. For example, it's not explained how to hail and dock at space stations and ships (align your crosshair to the station, press interact action to display ability to hail, and ability to dock appears when within 500 meters). I also didn't learn until 25 hours into the game that to scan something you need to not only turn on your scanner and highlight the item, but also press the interact button (there's no button prompt).\n+ Despite planetary features like temperature and weather, there isn't a functional difference in gameplay. The only ones that matter are Oxygen/CO2 which simply serve as the stamina meter, and gravity which affects jump height.\n+ For a game that often has low gravity jumps, it's a shame the player's jump action provides a static height. You can't vary the height from a single tap to holding the action. This would help a lot in low gravity situations as you try to reach a ledge, jump, and then go absurd heights and wait to land.\n+ You can't pass time while standing. You need to sit in a chair or sleep in a bed.\n+ [All the quest objectives with \"Follow X\"](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/169uqz0/bethesda_has_once_again_managed_to_make_a_game). This is worse than an escort mission as you don't even lead the way, and it's a fixed movement speed.\n+ Climbing ladders is very slow. There's no action to speed up climbing up or down the ladder either.\n+ Vendors don't have that much ammo. So it's difficult if you prefer to use only one weapon.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://starfieldwiki.net)\n+ [r/starfield](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield)\n+ [Console commands](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/starfield-console-commands-cheats). I find this particularly helpful for quality of life: for example, replenishing ammo on my main weapon as vendors don't stock enough.\n+ Tip: To sell contraband in the early game without shielded cargo, go to [The Den in the Wolf system](https://www.ign.com/wikis/starfield/How_to_Sell_Contraband_and_Smuggle).\n+ Tip: [It's never explained, but you can aim down sights to speed up your cutter's mining speed.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/168620m/tip_faster_mining)\n\n__Playthrough style.__\nI played on Hard difficulty but changed to Normal difficulty after a few hours. Difficulty really only affects damage dealt and received, and Bethesda RPGs are bullet spongey at high difficulties.\n\nI generally completed all quests from early to midgame, including the main quest and faction quests. I also completed most side quests but did not go out of my way to find side quests I didn't encounter from blindly wandering around. By around midgame, I got bored of the core gameplay loop and was not interested in any of the factions, so I blitzed through the main quest and did not do many more faction or side quests. These quests are something I can revisit on a future playthrough such as when the DLC releases.\n\n+ Preferred vendor: Early to midgame, I like to use Zoe Kaminski in The Well on Jemison. They have roughly 10K credits and can be sold stolen items too.\n\n__Version.__\nI played on the day of Early Access release.\n\nPerformance on PC is markedly slow. My 1080 Ti achieves 30 FPS in most areas with 100% resolution and all Low settings and 50 FPS with 75% resolution. Certain areas in New Atlantis dip to 20-30 FPS.\n\nI also experienced frequent bugs, mostly in the form of visual glitches, AI pathing, and minor physics engine screw-y nonsense. I also received numerous game crashes that occasionally happen when loading a new area. To help circumvent this, I capped Starfield's max FPS to 60 in the NVIDIA Control Panel. This helped for crashes that load new areas. I still crash semi-frequently in intense areas like Akila City.\n\n__Build.__\nI played a stealth sniper with additional focus on speech and companions. It is my favorite build for Bethesda games (both Elder Scrolls and Fallout titles). It works well because combat is not Bethesda's strength, and I enjoy the aim and peeking focus of long-range sniping (e.g., Ana in Overwatch, AWP in CSGO). While I dislike companion AI and prefer playing solo, companions are worth experiencing so I always go with them on a first playthrough.\n\nI played on the day of release, with minimal information online. So I went for what was intuitive and otherwise what fit the roleplay or seemed most fun.\n\n+ Background: Space Scoundrel (all 3 starting skills seem relevant and something I would use)\n+ Traits: Hero Worshipped, Alien DNA, Freestar Collective Settler\n+ [Skills](https://starfieldwiki.net/wiki/Starfield:Skills)\n  + Physical: Stealth → potentially Concealment, Rejuvenation\n  + Social: Theft 1\n    + Persuasion is only a +10% stat boost per rank and not actually worth it. It's better to save scum given the RNG nature of the speech minigame.\n    + Leadership is a contender, but companions are not that good in combat, and it requires too much investment into Social and other skills are not that good.\n  + Combat: Ballistics → Rifle Certification → Sniper Certification, Marksmanship → Sharpshooting, Armor Penetration, Crippling → potentially Lasers or Particle Beams, Pistol Certification, Rapid Reloading\n  + Science: Research Methods, Surveying 1, potentially Geology → Weapon Engineering, Spacesuit Design → potentially Aneutronic Fusion\n  + Tech: Security 3, Boost Pack Training 1, Targeting Control Systems 1, Piloting → Starship Design\n    + Energy Weapon Systems, Ballistic Weapon Systems, Missile Weapon Systems do not provide significant benefits but can be dump stats.\n\nTODOs / TODOs in future playthroughs\n+ quests i didn't complete: most faction quests, various side quests, all powers\n+ new game plus\n+ mods, waiting years after release\n+ alternative builds and background, e.g., melee. Will particularly benefit after wikis and guides flesh out, so there’s a deeper understanding of game mechanics","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/starfield"},{"id":"331874047227855425","title":"Subnautica: Below Zero","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":1230,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Switch 2","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Unknown Worlds Entertainment"],"publishers":["Unknown Worlds Entertainment"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-06-04","completedDate":"2022-06-06","updatedDate":"2022-06-06","notes":"Subnautica Below Zero is effectively Subnautica 1 but in a new (smaller) area along with a few new enemies and items. There is nothing significantly different about Subnautica BZ that feels fresh and new. As a shorter game BZ plays more like an expansion of Subnautica than a sequel. It shows that the game was originally conceived as a DLC. There are some minor improvements but the new elements aren't that interesting (emphasis on land, heavier story narration, temperature, Snowfox).\n\n__Story.__\nIt's set up such that you're trying to find your sister. The story isn't quite as interesting as Subnautica 1's premise, where you're a stranded survivor who's learning more about the history of the world, why your ship crashed, and how to escape.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nNew mechanics:\n\n+ Temperature is a more integral part of the survival resources, alongside health, food, water, and oxygen. Unfortunately it feels fairly gimmicky in effectively being an above-ground oxygen mechanic, where you have to go back underwater or find thermal plants to stay in good temperature. I'd rather temperature be used constantly such as areas that are simply hotter in underwater as well and which you need upgrades to deal with, and where, say, you may get hungrier/thirstier quicker. I do like that you have to at least swap between above-ground equipment (Snowfox, Cold Suit Helm and Body) and underwater equipment (Rebreather, Stillwater Suit, Seaglide although still needed above-ground as a flashlight).\n+ Expansion of land with tundras. Ironically, Subnautica has the opposite problem of video games where the swimming sections suck. Here, the land exploration sucks. This is because of many reasons: your movement options are more limited, the primary vehicle Snowfox is bad, your previous progression with underwater tools is not used, and the land feels barren and empty.\n\nIt's a shorter game than Subnautica 1 both in world size and the amount of progression content. I don't find this necessarily a fault but simply a different experience. I like some of the new enemies and items, especially the Sea Monkeys and Oxygen Plants. It's unfortunate that equipment and vehicle upgrades provide little choice for customizability.\n\nThe vehicles are largely the same but changed in terms of balance:\n\n+ The Seatruck serves a hybrid between the Seamoth and Cyclops, with neither extreme available any longer (especially Subnautica's unique idea of a mobile base). For example, the Seatruck has limited food/water options as you can't plant there and must rely on picking up fish in the aquarium; you can't install modules such as the modification station; storage is significantly more limited; and there is no equivalent of a Thermal Reactor module to charge your seatruck. I think this is okay in that the Cyborg was arguably too powerful and would not fit in Subnautica BZ's denser areas.\n+ The Prawn Suit is the same but improved to have a faster movement speed along with a speed boost ability. This makes traversing with it to be much more comfortable. It's unfortunate that I never really used the Prawn Suit that much. Even in the deepest areas of Fabricator Caverns you can navigate there with the seatruck. I'd rather the deepest areas be tight and only explorable on the Prawn Suit.\n+ The Snowfox is the newest vehicle, available for fast land travel. It's unnecessarily clunky due to its limited horizontal movement, emphasis on forward momentum but where many areas are narrow, and an unstable platform as your camera constantly shakes so it can be difficult to navigate. The Snowfox would simply be better if it was an equipment like the Seaglide so it's easier to equip on/off. I ended up just using the Prawn or traveling on foot.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nSame engine as Subnautica.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Oxygen plants. It's a better implementation of the bubble plant Subnautica 1 had (I found it way too inconsistent to actually use), enabling deeper dives.\n+ The Seaglide can now toggle between lights on/off and map on/off instead of cycling through all permutations every time you equip it.\n+ The quickslot HUD shows your tools' current battery life rather than having to cycle through your tools to determine them.\n+ Many bases include Beacons already on them. This means it's much easier to track them down as a middleground between no map and the full free-range exploration in Subnautica 1.\n+ More narration as you progress and interact with things. Makes the game feel more alive rather than a shoe-in protagonist.\n+ New items: Large Room, Quantum Locker, Jukebox, Teleportation Module.\n+ PDA pause option. I generally like real-time while navigating menus. But this is at odds with reading long lore and audio logs.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Unlike Subnautica 1, there's no radio and lifepods signaling to you. This makes BZ more difficult to find the various blueprints; in addition to not having a map, this contributes to making it easy to miss a location.\n+ Still no built-in map. I find myself frequently using an external map to orient myself in finding specific resources otherwise. Subnautica seems ill-suited as an exploration of a large area through markers and not through a map you can draw and take notes on. I could see an even more interactive version of Elden Ring's map work, and handwritten maps like in Thief and Penumbra, where you compromise between having too much detail on the map and enabling the player to mark notes themselves.\n+ Vehicle upgrades can now be fabricated from the Fabricator. This removes the only other mandatory building of Moonpool for the Vehicle Upgrade Station. Now you just need a Multipurpose Room or Large Room for everything. They should've required more buildings for an operational base, not less.\n+ Most tools have limited utility: Floating Air Pump (never needed and obsolete even early game once you get the Seaglide); Propulsion Cannon (only useful in specific scavenge locations and you can always go any blocked areas through another route); Spy Pengling (only necessary for obtaining the Kharaa antidode, helps you get Stalker fur, and otherwise provides extra minerals); Flare, Flashlight, Headlamp (why use these when Seaglide has a flashlight, and while a built-in headlamp is nice, Rebreather is simply too much of a necessity); Thumpers (use in only one area and you can just outrun the Ice Worms); Water Purification Tablets (limited use to just one bottle? you can just bring a bottle).\n+ I like the idea of Thumpers and Ice Worms, clearly inspired by Dune, but the implementation is not good. Ice Worms need to be more threatening for Thumpers to be useful, and you could do a mechanic such as riding Ice Worms for large distance travel instead of relying on a wonky Snowfox vehicle.\n+ Ion Cubes are finite even though the Seatruck Teleportation Module and Recycler encourage their infinite usage.\n+ There's no easy control to switch between immediately exiting the Seatruck/entering the drive versus wandering in the Seatruck itself. An advanced technique is simply to orient the Seatruck vertically as a way to immediately exit/drive.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Subnautica Wiki](https://subnautica.fandom.com)\n+ [Subnautica Map](https://subnauticamap.io/belowzero) is not good for Below Zero. It has too little detail such as ore locations and entrances to the deeper biomes.\n+ [Main quest](https://subnautica.fandom.com/wiki/Walkthrough_(Below_Zero))\n\nI played with the [Map](https://www.nexusmods.com/subnauticabelowzero/mods/15) and [More Quick Slots](https://www.nexusmods.com/subnauticabelowzero/mods/18) mods. The map works at a high-level showing where you've explored in the X and Z axes and the location of yourself and beacons. I wish it had note-taking abilities, letting you place icons such as to mark deep dive locations, and automatic marking for human habitats you see. As a compromise, I did quite enjoy using Beacons, which are cheap to fabricate, and it's easy to keep a handful on you and your Seatruck at all times.\n\nMy preferences:\n\n+ __Seatruck:__ Modules are Storage Module and Docking Module. I try to minimize module usage for faster movement speed. Upgrades are Depth, Horsepower, Afterburner, Perimeter Defense. I would get the Teleportation Module as well but completed the game before I ever got all 10 Artifacts (and by that point, you would have done everything in the game anyways).\n+ __Prawn:__ Arms are Drill and Grappling. Upgrades are Depth, Storage x2, Jump Jet.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/subnautica-below-zero"},{"id":"322682678650410572","title":"Suite 776","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Stanislaw Truchowski"],"publishers":["TurnVex"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-08-10","completedDate":"2020-08-10","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I watched Sodapoppin play from beginning to end way back when he first played it. More recently, I just watched Vigors play it.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/suite-776"},{"id":"327871650359935569","title":"Super Auto Pets","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":1080,"platforms":["PC","Android","browser"],"studios":["Team Wood Games"],"genres":["Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2022-04-02","completedDate":"2022-04-03","updatedDate":"2022-04-03","notes":"Easy to pick up and addictive. The game is somewhat RNG-based but quite fun in trying to balance the RNG to build your team.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-auto-pets"},{"id":"322682678650378828","title":"Super Mario Bros.","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1988,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["N64"],"studios":["Pasta Power"],"publishers":["Pasta Power"],"genres":["Platform"],"startedDate":"2020-11-07","completedDate":"2020-11-07","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Super Mario Bros is one of the most influential video games of all time. Playing it demonstrates precisely why: accessible levels with a gradual increase in difficulty; minimal, easy-to-pick, and yet advanced control options, enabling advanced players to distinguish their gameplay in addition to knowing secrets; solid enemy designs; minimal UI; graphics that age well even in 2020; and a great soundtrack.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Core platforming controls and level design age well. The variety in jumping distance, the walk/run and momentum in jumping distance. Plentiful secrets that make this replayable. The \"puzzle levels\" that otherwise loop you are more trial-and-error than anything else.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Soundtrack is among the most memorable in gaming history. Graphics also age quite well.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ [You can press a+start to start at the last world you were on effectively with infinite lives.](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2tbb0n/in_super_mario_brothers_on_the_nes_you_can). This is a quality of life change as otherwise you must start all the way back at World 1-1.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Timer. It no longer appears in platformer standards. But it does give a sense of urgency similar to Risk of Rain 2.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ You can't go backwards in a level, only forward.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on the emulator Higan because I already set it up as the most accurate SNES emulator. Used a USA ROM (thank you Vimm's Lair)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-super-mario-bros-super-show-64"},{"id":"322682678650377804","title":"Super Mario Bros. 2","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["Genesis/MegaDrive"],"studios":["Gamtec"],"publishers":["Gamtec"],"genres":["Platform"],"startedDate":"2020-11-07","completedDate":"2020-11-07","updatedDate":"2022-02-22","notes":"SMB 2 is the first colored Mario game and features three new playable characters: Luigi, Toad, and Princess Toadstool each with unique gameplay mechanics. There are several distinct gameplay elements as it originated from Doki Doki Panic. Level designs are far more creative and diverse than SMB1. But certain levels are quite frustrating in trial-and-error, ultimately making some aspects of the game punishing in its few lives and continues.\n\n__Gameplay.__ SMB2 has distinct gameplay elements from other Mario games, coming from its base of another Japanese game Doki Doki Panic. Instead of instant death, you now have a Health Meter. There are no coins. Foes can no longer be defeated by jumping on them, relying on lifting up items/enemies to throw at another. There's huge enemy variety each different but introducing new ones to the Mario series, ultimately derived from Doki Doki Panic, e.g., Shyguy. SMB2 also introduces new items like POW, cherries, bombs, and potions. There are significantly more bosses, making it mechanically quite challenging given the few amount of mistakes you can make. Some of the flying levels are especially punishing in trial-and-error, effectively wasting tons of lives to both learn and retry if you didn't play the level before.\n\nCore platforming controls are same as SMB1. There are some slight differences: high jump by holding B is replaced by a squat jump down by holding Down, then pressing B. There are climbable assets and doors you enter with Up. Instead of running into a shell to pick it up like SMB1, you can more simply press A when above it.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Colors are vibrant and age well.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ For the first time in the series, you can go backwards within the level.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Death penalty-wise, SMB 2 adds 2 extra Continues after lives run out. This improves SMB's accessibility but is still harsh in otherwise resetting you to 1-1. In my playthrough I savescummed on the emulator just to experience the game without getting frustrated, trying to save only at the beginning of every door entrance which is similar to if I had infinite lives. However, I still got frustrated by the game and just decided to savescum more often.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on the emulator Higan because I already set it up as the most accurate SNES emulator.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-mario-bros-2--1"},{"id":"322682678652518988","title":"Super Mario Kart","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1992,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["SNES","Wii","WiiU","New 3DS","SFAM"],"studios":["Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Gradiente","Playtronic","Hyundai"],"genres":["Racing","Arcade"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","completedDate":"2011-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-mario-kart"},{"id":"322682678624148044","title":"Super Mario Sunshine","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["NGC"],"studios":["Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Gradiente"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-09-09","completedDate":"2021-09-11","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I like Super Mario Sunshine most for its ambitions: in the same way Super Mario 64 added analog stick in a 3D environment, Majora's Mask took a darker spin, and Resident Evil 4 revolutionized the series' camera control. Most notable are Super Mario Sunshine's storyline, its new core mechanics with the addition of a water pump that sprays water in directions and adds to his jump moveset, and a generally harder difficulty.\n\nFlaw-wise, Sunshine has a camera that improves upon SM64's with manual camera control but is still quite bad. I also prefer more direction in knowing the objective where each star is instead of wandering haphazardly. It's quite annoying overcoming a platforming hurdle but the star is nowhere to be seen. It also stalls pacing as resort to looking up how to progress. Finally, the use of power-ups (nozzle types) and Yoshi seem like an afterthought and don't appear too frequently in the game.\n\n__Story.__ There's more of a story here compared to past Super Mario games. It's the same old kidnapping, but there are more supporting characters with a whole town setting as well as the villains' motivation. World levels also progress as you attain Shrine Sprites.\n\n__Gameplay.__ My favorite part of the Super Mario series' gameplay---standing out across all other platformers in the genre---is their moveset. It has both a low skill floor with simple, intuitive controls and a high skill ceiling with Mario's diverse moveset and a momentum design over precision. Sunshine inherits a lot of the emergent combinations in SM64 and adds new ones as a result of the FLUDD. This adds quite new mechanics for platforming although it also squanders a lot of Mario's pre-FLUDD moveset.\n\n+ __Ground movement.__\n    + New to Sunshine, water slide and hover slide (FLUDD on ground + dive) provide the fastest ground movement. However, they are hard to control and can be difficult to execute as you must manage FLUDD's active state.\n    + Dive+Rollout for fast ground movement which is more controllable.\n    + SM64's long jump is removed unfortunately as crouch is replaced with the FLUDD. One alternative is Spin Jump, which covers the most air distance. Another alternative is to dive in the air. Neither quite serves the same function: they're slow as a jump---for example, it does not enable a faster 0-60 start than just running and spamming Dive+Rollout.\n+ __Vertical movement.__.\n    + New to Sunshine, FLUDD lets you increase height and glide in air. TURBO increases height even more.\n    + New to Sunshine, Spin Jump provides the highest vertical movement. Spin Jump also has several advanced variants. Single+Double+Triple Jump also exists, but unfortunately, Spin Jump largely makes Triple Jump obsolete.\n    + Sideflip for high stationary jumps which are more controllable. It's not as high as Spin Jump but is easier to control. Backward Somersault also exists but requires FLUDD making it harder to use.\n    + Wall jump for bouncing off walls.\n    + Ground pound for halting momentum and preventing fall damage.\n+ __Attacks.__\n    + Jump + Burst Spray (Jump+FLUDD also known as Shotgun Spray) performs a spammable AoE attack.\n    + Spin spray (Spin jump+FLUDD) for a large 360 AoE attack.\n    + Y-Spray lets you have more precise aim.\n\nSunshine continues SM64's idea of a collectithon with a hub and an arsenal of levels, each with a variety of Shrine Sprites and 100 coins which reward a Shrine Sprite. Level design is excellent. There are some new environmental interactions: for example, diving onto water lets you slide similar to snow diving in SM64; you can spray water on flowers to let them grow or have windfills spin faster.\n\nThe world levels with multiple objectives work well. However, the pace greatly suffered as I frequently got lost not knowing what to do. This was not a rare occurence for me (e.g., Gelato Beach's Episode 2 to topple the monsters off the mirrors, Sirena Beach's Episode 3 to discover the hotel mystery).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The colorful graphics and art style age well even in Gamecube's 480p. Cutscenes are fairly blurry and unfortunately don't age as well given that they're prerendered. Audio soundtrack is excellent as usual in a Super Mario title.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The idea of a boss fight based on dental cleaning. Very cute. Terrible controls though.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The levels where Mario has his FLUDD taken away.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Star progression in a level is linear, not allowing more arbitrary exploration as in SM64. This hampers both SM64's freedom with replayability and a helpful mitigation of the issue when you're stuck progressing toward a specific star objective. Namely, you make much more progress as you explore an area and gain other stars.\n+ Camera controls are inverted by default. The horizontal camera control is opposite from modern default camera controls (pressing left moves the angle so you can see more from the right of the character instead of more from the left of the character). Moving down on the vertical horizontal camera lets you see more above you. There are no options to invert. Hardcoding controls in emulator also doesn't work because you aim with your left stick, and you can't just swap that one as it also controls movement.\n+ You aim your water gun with left stick, not right stick. Not only does this limit movement as you can't move while shooting, but aiming is just much less intuitive than a typical console shooter.\n+ Fuck Pianta Village Episode 4. The chuckster secret level is so unreliable.\n+ Mario lives seem like an outdated mechanic. All they do is kick you out of the world. This only has a consequence where you're in a level that's within another level (e.g., secret worlds) and otherwise is tedious as you have to run from the start back to the world entrance.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Movement, tricks, routes and version differences - SMS Any% Tutorial 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYynoHSwP9A)\n+ [Movement Guide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g631GAwB-IM)\n+ [StrategyWiki walkthrough](https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Sunshine)\n\nI played on a Gamecube emulator (Dolphin). I only completed the 7 episodes per level to beat the base game, with a final total of 58 stars.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-mario-sunshine"},{"id":"322682678651460172","title":"Super Meat Boy","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","Wii","PC","Mac","WiiU","Vita","X360","Switch"],"studios":["Team Meat"],"publishers":["BlitWorks","Team Meat"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-08-01","completedDate":"2019-11-30","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Love the minimal controls: move left/right, jump, run. I love that the levels are one-off challenges. Keeps the pace well so you can constnatly retry difficult pieces. I like the death system: you simply restart levels, no fanfare needed for counting number of lives or some progression system outside of each level ;e to(https://web.archive.org/web/20120118154900/http://supermeatboy.com/13/Why_am_I_so____hard_/). The design noted in the article is great: bite-sized levels for continual progression and reward; constant action to minimize time for tears.\n\n\"One thing that people often talk about, and I think the Team Meat guys and Jon Blow have also mentioned, is that games like SMB are successful because they take one aspect of gameplay and produce an absolutely pristine example of it. In SMB's case that example would be quick, responsive platformer movement, and levels designed around it. The rest of the game is completely stripped out. The point of the game is to get to the end of the level quickly and without dying. There are no powerups. There are no checkpoints. There is effectively no story. The only thing that changes is the world as the levels get progressively harder. You are still left with the same simple mechanics to move through the worlds.\" Agreed. https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1k30yu/whats_behind_the_success_of_super_meat_boy/","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-meat-boy"},{"id":"322682678652668492","title":"Syphon Filter","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PS2","PSP"],"studios":["SIE Bend Studio"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment","Inc. (SCEI)"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2023-08-14","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/syphon-filter-dark-mirror"},{"id":"322682678650347084","title":"Tabletop Simulator","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":7920,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Steam VR","Mac"],"studios":["Berserk Games"],"publishers":["Berserk Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Strategy","Indie","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2021-01-15","completedDate":"2021-01-15","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"This game is great for a group. I love the customizability and community building with various games here. No real single player options due to no AI though. I've only played Catan (there's an official game) and Pandemic. It's the best platform to play board games electronically, particularly for the majority of board games that haven't reached mainstream enough to feature their own electronic version. Games I'd like to play in this setting include: 7 Wonders (4th most popular on boardgamegeek as of Jan 2021), Cards Against Humanity, Bang!.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame?sort=rank","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tabletop-simulator"},{"id":"322682678624134732","title":"Tainted Grail: Conquest","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Awaken Realms Digital"],"publishers":["Awaken Realms Digital"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Indie","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2021-11-03","completedDate":"2021-11-06","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Excellent card roguelike with strong class variety. There's a ton of replayability in learning and mastering each class, let alone individual builds. You also have a sense of permanent progression through upgrades and quests.\n\nFlaw-wise, the game is too grindy. the roguelite progression mechanics are too grindy. After playing 20 hours and having beaten the final boss, there's still a long way to go before obtaining all permanent upgrades. The replayability is also offset by the fact that higher difficulties get somewhat unbalanced as it's simply damage scaling (c.f., Slay the Spire): many initial difficulties are easy as you've just gotten the major upgrades and in later difficulties enemies are HP sponges.\n\n__Story.__ Fairly basic, though I like how it's integrated through event triggers and each NPC of which progresses as a trader or certain rewarded event.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Interesting combination of RPG and card roguelite elements. Many classes, with several archetypes including fighter, archer, and summoner. The card mechanics resemble Slay the Spire: passive energy system, enemy intent. New mechanics: ultimate ability. Wyrd candles which is distanced-based not unlike Darkest Dungeon. Progression-wise, there are quests. You level up and obtain new cards this way. There's also currency for a shop. Runestones.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Pretty good 3D animation and detail for an indie game. Fully voiced.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ There are [permanent missable rewards.](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2538096053) In fact, certain optimal rewards like the song of forgetting for the Bard actually makes you lose out on an achievement.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tainted-grail-conquest"},{"id":"322682678624159308","title":"Tales from the Borderlands","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":630,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","X360","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Telltale Games"],"publishers":["Telltale Games","Take-Two Interactive"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-05-22","completedDate":"2021-07-28","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The writing is filled with Borderlands-style comedy, and it's so on point. There are many memorable points throughout the game. Characters also stand out in their realistic backgrounds with well-motivated actions across both the main cast and the many supporting characters, each of which add to the overall charm and world. Story's pacing is also quite good.\n\nIt helps that the story builds on the Borderlands universe, where you're already familiar with the worlds, companies, vault hunters and other characters, and weaponry.\n\nThe aesthetics is classic Tell Tale games with the standard controls with mostly QTE. Voice acting is quite good with each person sounding authentically convincing.\n\nFavorite scenes:\n\n+ Scooping out the eyeballs and the reveal.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You can't skip dialogue. Makes it tedious if your game crashes and you have to wait for the whole dialogue again. Or if the dialogue's pacing is just too slow at times so you'd like to speed it up like any other reading.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tales-from-the-borderlands"},{"id":"322682678650355276","title":"Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":510,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["K2 LLC"],"publishers":["Activision","FromSoftware"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-12-19","completedDate":"2020-12-20","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"__Story.__ Forgettable like the first game. I barely paid attention.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core concept remains the same, with multiple playable characters; individual missions of stealthing into an area followed by a boss fight; with an arsenal of items that you accumulate through the playthrough; and a score system. Controls are significantly improved from the PS1 games: movement and aim with an analog stick, a manual camera, lock on, left/right actually move the direction instead of just turn, you can stealth kill from multiple angles (e.g., a jump, from a ledge), and double jump greatly improves agility, one of the special move is parry (Ninjutsu Block). The grappling hook no longer clips through walls. The alert system is also significantly improved as there's a heartbeat that better signifies the possibility of being spotted prior to the alert going off.\n\nThe level design is also greatly improved. There is more variety in environments, including verticality, and more involved objectives than simply going from point A to B (e.g., get a key first). You can hide in bushes. The map now has objective markers. Levels are more linear, and I greatly enjoy this as it means the experience with the guards is more handcrafted. Open designs for levels at such an early console generation does not work very well due to the rudimentary AI and limited control scheme. For replayability, there are also three different level layouts.\n\nItem variety is increased. The levels are more varied for each playable character.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Typical PS2 era graphics. Does not stand out.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Has option for Japanese voices with English subtitles.\n+ You can press Circle during a Stealth Kill animation to regain immediate control of your character.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Camera control is only horizontal, not vertical.\n+ You can't stealth kill while leaning from a wall.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Lobos Plays Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AfwI0WxKjY)\n\nI'm motivated to play this as it's often touted as the best in the series. I played it on the PCSX2 emulator. I played on Easy difficulty. It really only makes a difference in the tedium of combat and, in some levels, the number of enemies. I savescummed. I beat the game as Ayame.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tenchu-wrath-of-heaven"},{"id":"322682678652517964","title":"The Binding of Isaac","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["Edmund McMillen","Florian Himsl"],"publishers":["Edmund McMillen"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2012-10-31","completedDate":"2012-10-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I think I played the original version; must be since this was in 2012, before the release of Rebirth and the DLCs Afterbirth and Afterbirth+. I only played a few hours however and was turned off by the 2D isometric bullet hell.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-binding-of-isaac"},{"id":"331063008694370895","title":"The Convenience Store","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":90,"platforms":["PC","Switch"],"studios":["Chilla's Art"],"publishers":["Chilla's Art"],"genres":["Puzzle","Simulator","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-05-07","completedDate":"2022-05-08","updatedDate":"2022-05-08","notes":"The VHS aesthetics works wonders here with the low poly style, similar to Puppet Combo's games. I especially like Chilla's Art's style. It's more mundane focused in a Japanese society where you're working in an everyday life, and the horrors are more subtle. Unlike horror games where you try to escape or explore through a level to find notes or items to unlock the next area, you're in the same area and working mundane tasks while things happen around you.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The headbobble animation. Adds to the immersion.\n+ The early mention of someone being violently murdered on the bridge. It kept me on my toes every time I would go outside the house. Nothing ever happens during the commute in the game but I love that they add it.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-convenience-store"},{"id":"322682678652456524","title":"The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2006,"playtimeMinutes":1680,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Bethesda Game Studios"],"publishers":["2K Games","Bethesda Softworks","Ubisoft Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-05-11","completedDate":"2019-05-17","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Unlike other Elder Scrolls games, Oblivion excels most in its guild quests and a mixed bag of side quests. It also features combat refinements and voice-acting for the first time (with mixed reception). For the better, it retains a lot of Morrowind's complexity with starting classes, weapon/armor conditions, speechcraft, lockpicking, spell variety, and progression system via major/minor skills and attribute bonuses.\n\nLike all Elder Scrolls games, Oblivion has mediocre combat; a significant amount of bugs; lazy level designs with asset reuse across towns, houses, and dungeons; a mediocre main quest; and UI issues. Unique to Oblivion, it also suffers from three core issues: 1. the worst level scaling in the series, including level-scaled enemies for the first time, attribute bonuses, levelled quest rewards, and levelled gear drops such as random bandits dropping full glass sets; 2. the worst world-building, with a generic fantasy setting with little diversity, and sparse cities and settlements; and 3. streamlined RPG elements from Morrowind such as standalone mini adventures in questlines that never intersect, including the ability to join all factions; fast travel; quest markers; not being able to kill essential NPCs; no weapon-type-specific skills; magicka can no longer fail; and no difference between minor and miscellaneous skills.\n\n__Story.__ Like Morrowind and unlike Skyrim, Oblivion is consisently good across its many questlines (aside from its mediocre main quest). They have more variety than Skyrim quests as they often involve dialogue with speechcraft for example, not just another camp or dungeon to raid, or involve travel across cities so questing effects feel more lasting than a local area. These varieties are what I find most appealing in Elder Scrolls as the environment interaction and skills system is largely what distinguishes the series from other RPGs as well as a good novel or movie. This is also why Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood consistently provide the best guild questlines in the series. Oblivion's Thieves Guild questline would have you talking to town beggars for information, trespassing and stealing, pickpocketing, lighting up dark passages, planting evidence. I also like the Oblivion's Mages Guild beginning questline: it requires traveling around to all cities' local Mages Guild so you could get a recommendation to enter Arcane University. This is a lot more immersive than the Skyrim's College of Winterhold. The new addition of the Arena faction is also great, rife with colorful characters.\n\n__Gameplay & Combat.__ The attributes and spell variety is just as good as Morrowind. It enables a lot of experimentation such as leveling up acrobatics to jump across buildings and spellmaking for absolutely broken (read: fun!) combos. Core combat however still remains clunky, but is at least an improvement over Morrowind's even more RNG-based and clunky melee system.\n\nOblivion's level scaling is notoriously bad. Leveled items force players to delay certain quests such as advancing in guilds until they reach the leveled item limit (level 30). With level scaling, I prefer Skyrim's approach: all but a handful of unique and special armor sets from quest rewards are not leveled, and the only leveled ones are generic items. Alternatively, take Morrowind's approach of [no level scaling for powerful regions and selective level scaling otherwise](https://www.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/3ccy7i/eli5_why_is_the_level_scaling_in_this_game_so/csude28). In addition, like Morrowind, Oblivion's attribute bonuses system causes a tedious leveling playstyle where you must deliberately pace your skill-leveling in order to better level up certain attributes. Combined with level scaling, this means if you level up too inefficiently, you may end up being worse as the game progresses.\n\nUnlike Skyrim's dungeons, Oblivion's are fortunately not as stupidly linear. With that said, the Oblivion gates are notoriously repetitive as there are 50 to complete overall (although only 3 required for quests) and only 5 levels recycled over that 50.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Cyrodill is clearly aimed toward Romanesque and Far Eastern cultures. However, the result is a generic medieval setting with little uniqueness that actually attests to specific culture and details. The environment is largely the same across Cyrodill whereas Morrowind had distinct regions with prairies, deserts, swamplands, artic regions, and volcanic wastelands. Spells are bland color palette swaps, which is pretty inexcusable in 2008. Similarly, like all Elder Scrolls games, dungeons and many locations are bland recopies from asset reuse to layouts.\n\nFunnily enough, playing in 2019 and after Skyrim with all the crazy graphics mods, I don't find vanilla Oblivion to be that bland in visuals. It may be because the textures look a lot like WoW, and I'm okay with those graphics. What I do find bad however is that it's more expansive as Skyrim's cities and as expansive as WoW, but the amount of NPCs is a lot smaller so cities look like desert towns.\n\nMost ambitiously, Oblivion is the first game in the series to employ voice acting for all its dialogue. This has mixed reception as there are only half a dozen voice actors for all NPCs. This can cause some jarring dialogue (including NPCs with lines from two different voice actors), occasionally forced generic responses to reuse voice-acted lines. Worst of all, there are fewer NPCs in towns compared to Morrowind, making the world feel a lot more empty.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Like Morrowind, the questing UI is detailed and incentivizes you to read through it to understand things. In contrast in Skyrim, quests are more streamlined in offering prescriptive directions as bullet points. This ruins the immersion in favor of an instruction manual.\n+ Like Morrowind, there are weapon and armor conditions.\n+ Spell effectiveness is affected by light/heavy armor. This is a good incentive for mages to wear robes proper to their class fantasy.\n+ Speechcraft, haggle, and lockpicking minigames. Unlike Morrowind, they're actual minigames and not random chances of success.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Oblivion introduced quest markers for the first time. This streamlined the questing experience so you didn't have to learn the details, only the instructions. While simpler, the cost is a lack of incentive in the immersion and minimal story-understanding.\n+ Dialogue zooms into the NPCs' face rather than the more holistic body shot view and minimalistic dialogue UI of Skyrim.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Fast travel (newly introduced in Oblivion). It kills the scale of the game. Fast travel is a workaround to another flaw: not packing enough content in the traveling areas to begin with. I prefer Morrowind's network of Silt Striders and Mage's Guild teleporters.\n+ Game menus including the inventory, loot, and pickpocketing pause the game. This interrupts immersion/pacing in favor of an easier difficulty.\n+ Non-universal difficulty setting, and the ability to change the difficulty on the fly. This adds too much flexibility to players where I think it should be the game's direction that should figure this out.\n+ UI is not good. Although not as bad as Skyrim's, font sizes are too large and spacing is bad, clearly compatible for consoles and TVs and not specialized to PCs and widscreen aspect ratios.\n+ Dedicated buttons for Attack, Block, and Cast. I prefer Skyrim's approach of left and right hand action buttons which depend on what it's equipped as. In addition to a unified simplicity, this enables dual wield playstyles of Weapon/Cast, Cast/Cast, and more. It also avoids stat sticks such as for mages who wear a shield and a dagger, two-handed, or bow for the enchant bonuses, but they only use the Cast button.\n+ No sprint.\n+ Grab button. I prefer Skyrim's approach of holding the Activate Button (E), which is intuitive and removes the need for yet another key.\n+ Horse is useless given you can move faster and manuever better.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [UESP Wiki](https://en.uesp.net)\n+ [r/oblivion](https://www.reddit.com/r/oblivion)\n+ [Nexus Mods Oblivion modlist](https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/47591). It's the most popular modlist, recommended on Reddit and by Predcaliber.\n+ [Oblivion start video guide by William Strife](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLvb4Zwq4rA)\n\n__Mods.__ For my first playthrough, I used the following.\n\n+ __Core essentials.__ Stability (Oblivion Stutter Remover, Engine Bug Fixes, 4GB RAM Patcher, Unofficial Oblivion Patch, Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch, Unofficial Oblivion DLC Patches, Clean Up, Better Saves); scripting framework (OBSE, Pluggy); borderless support (Borderless Gaming); and all managed with Wrye Bash and BOSS.\n+ __Quality of life.__ Improved UI for PC and widescreen aspect ratios (Darnified UI, Darnified UI Config Addon); max attributes for leveling to avoid micromanagement (Max Attribute Level Up); keep enemy weapons in inventory and reduce save file sizes (Floating Weapons Fix). Initially, I did not use AULIAS (auto update leveled items and spells) as I wanted to experience the original progression system first; I added it later.\n+ After 30 hours into the game, I added the rest (majority) of Bevilex's mods: OBSE plugins (Blockhead, MenuQue), base texture packs (2), grasses, trees, and landscape (6), architectures and cities (1), oblivion world (1), weather and immersion (1), body, armors, and weapons (6), creatures and animals (7), diverse retextures and replacers (1), ENB and Oblivion Reloaded (2).\n\nI played the Game of the Year Deluxe Edition on Steam (PC). I remapped controls to be more like Skyrim (WASD for movement, Ctrl for Sneak, Space for Jump, E for Activate, F for Change View, R for Ready Weapon, Tab for Journal, F5 for Quick Save, T for Wait, Left Click for Attack, Right Click for Cast since my build doesn't Block, Middle Click for Auto Move). My total playtime is 39 hours according to Steam (as of 5/18/19). Progression-wise, I started by following [UESP's recommended early quests](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Quest_Timing) which includes completing the main quest up to Dagon Shrine and Arena up to last quest. Then Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, main quest, Thieves Guild. I occassionally used player.advskill, player.coc, tlc, and player.additem to force skill ups, teleport, and flying/clipping to avoid grindy parts. Note I deliberately postponed the main quest to motivate doing the other questlines; and left the Thieves and Dark Brotherhood for last in order to avoid collecting infamy points.\n\nOn my second playthrough (December 2021), I finished what I didn't get to during my first playthrough: Dark Brotherhood (only did half), Knights of the Nine, Shivering Isles. Others todo: max level with max skills; best-in-slot everything; all Daedric quests; all master training quests; all city and settlement quests; visiting all locations on the map.\n\n__Build.__ My first build is Destruction Mage. Race is Breton, birthsign is Mage, class is Mage, appearance is default. Use primarily Destruction and Restoration; Alteration for shields and opening locks; Illusion for utilities like Invisibility, Chameleon, and Charm to avoid speechcraft; Mysticism for Soul Trap. Focus on Endurance early on, then Intellect, Willpower, and Speed. Enchantment is always [Fortify Magicka for sustaining high-damage spells](https://www.reddit.com/r/oblivion/comments/3ay1t2/the_most_useful_armor_enchantment). Custom main spell is [X damage for 2 secs on Target with Frost and Shock, where X is set so spell is at most 1/5 my magicka pool](https://www.reddit.com/r/oblivion/comments/7lobfm/best_destruction_spell). I deliberately ruled out the Combat specialization: melee as Elder Scrolls melee combat is bad. I also ruled out the Stealth specialization: Oblivion's archery is underpowered with low damage ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/oblivion/comments/2cmosn/how_can_you_play_a_stealthy_character_efficiently), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/4w6kyl/was_defaulting_to_sneak_archer_a_thing_in)), which can be made good but throws away all appreciating enemy mechanics anyways in favor of terrain; and melee is very challenging. Unlike Skyrim and like Morrowind, the Mage specialization has spellmaking and more utility spells. The other major mage build is High Elf Atronach. I avoided it because of zero regen which requires leveling up Alchemy for potions before every battle ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/oblivion/comments/5izz6j/some_tips_for_a_mage_build), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/oblivion/comments/79sgv6/returning_player_want_to_make_a_pure_mage/dp4v0x6)). I stored my items in Aleswell Inn.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion"},{"id":"322682678623086156","title":"The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Shivering Isle","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2007,"studios":["[western rpg]"],"startedDate":"2021-12-17","completedDate":"2021-12-19","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"For once Oblivion's setting is actually intriguing due to its reliance on the madness of Sheogorath and the houses of Mania and Dementia. Some quests are also quite fun such as Baiting the Trap, The Lady of Paranoia. The combat-heavy defenses and dungeon-crawling is not fun."},{"id":"322682678652745292","title":"The Evil Within","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":930,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","PC","X360","XONE"],"studios":["Tango Gameworks"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-04-11","completedDate":"2022-04-14","updatedDate":"2022-04-14","notes":"Evil Within is like Resident Evil 4 with more survival horror elements, including stealth as a mechanic, environmental items for improvisional combat, and more scarce ammo. Combat is excellent overall and feels like a clear refinement.\n\nFlaw-wise, the story is bad, and the level design is too linear. While I like the stealth mechanic, it doesn't appear very often in the game and is too simple. Difficulty can also be frustrating at times due to the many scripted one-hit-kills; there's just too many scripted encounters in general.\n\n__Story.__\nThe initial premise is interesting but the characters and overarching story is barebones. It's not that interesting. It reminds me of the quality of Resident Evil 1's writing.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Most new to The Evil Within over Resident Evil games the stealth mechanic. There's line of sight and light with crouch and environment lighting or your lamp. Kicking doors will also make a noise vs opening them slowly. This has a consequence on level design and enemy placement, as while there are often still many action-packed sequences, there are also open areas designed for you to stealth kill to minimize resources (and you can also run away to reset the alert). I can't help but wish stealth was a more prevalent both in terms of quantity across the levels and more prevalent as a mechanic. For example, hiding is often just not a useful mechanic.\n\nThe game's level design is linear and sequenced under discrete chapters. I greatly dislike this approach as it means the story is not only linear but in one direction! You can't revisit areas if you missed items (especially collectibles).\n\nBurn mechanic is back from RE1. It's more subdued compared to the threat of zombies reviving, with plentiful ammo. You use burn to spread AOE before zombies advance against you, or you apply it to zombies that may be pretending to be dead or you temporarily downed (e.g., those that haven't dropped loot and whose head hasn't exploded)\n\nControls are simple and intuitive with WASD-type strafe movement, an interact key, sprint vs walk vs crouch, shoot/aim, reload, melee, lantern on/off, and inventory. Default settings on keyboard are bad though: following shooter conventions, I set interact to E, melee to V, lantern on/off to F, walk to Spacebar, and turned off toggle crouch since it's mapped to Ctrl.\n\nMy strategy is sorted by priority in each category as follows.\n\n+ __Ammo efficiency.__\n  + Stealth kill.\n  + Environmental items like the torch, axe, or traps. With a bottle, you can a hit zombie in the head to follow up with a stealth kill.\n  + Punch 1-2 times to stun a zombie. For weak zombies you can actually do this infinitely until they’re dead.\n  + Shoot the leg of an enemy running at you to make them fall over. Then burn them.\n  + Shoot head (and prioritize the critical chance stat to maximize the likelihood a shot will immediately blow up their head).\n+ __Crowd control.__\n  + Grenade.\n  + Shotgun multiple zombies' torso or knees to knock them down. Then burn them. Or just shotgun to head.\n  + Agony Crossbow's Flash Bolt followed by stealth kills; or Shock Bolt followed by lining up headshots; or Explosive Bolt followed by burning the downed ones.\n+ __Single target DPS.__\n  + Magnum.\n  + Agony Crossbow's Harpoon.\n  + Shotgun.\n+ __Situational.__\n  + Sniper Rifle for ranged enemies.\n  + Flash Bolt for invisible enemies.\n  + For bosses, apply Agony Crossbow's Shock Bolt or Freeze Bolt followed by lining up weak spot/headshot damage.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Decent grungy and detailed graphics for its time. The cinematic elements age well.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Every chest is opened slowly to detect a trap. Adds suspense.\n+ All the unique death animations.\n+ Explosive Bolt and Shock Bolt serve more like proximity traps rather than damage on collision. This lets you do some set up in your crowd control, and you can even pick them back up.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The default is a 2.50:1 letterboxing. I don't mind the stylistic choice much as it doesn't limit my horizontal field of view, only vertical.\n+ No inventory management. No puzzles. Clearly a departure from the Resident Evil traditions.\n+ Checkpoints on top of manual saves. Checkpoints are pretty much necessary due to all the scripted one-hit-kill scenarios.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The many mouse problems: 1. Mouse sensitivity works fine in game, but the menu has an unbearable mouse smoothing effect where moving your mouse slowly does not trigger any movement. This includes the inventory and upgrade menus. I had to use the keyboard for navigating the menu; fortunately, WASD works so I don't need to move my right hand back to the keyboard aside from Enter. 2. Mouse sensitivity setting [also resets on game start](https://steamcommunity.com/app/268050/discussions/0/619568682067927492/) and I have to change it back to my preferred setting each time (value of 2). 3. Mouse sensitivity when you have camera control in cutscenes is severely reduced. This is fine as a cinematic effect when you can hold a direction on a controller's analog stick but it makes steering with a mouse annoying.\n+ Melee is fairly obsolete after maybe Chapter 2. I think they missed an opportunity here to make melee a key mechanic by taking cue from Left 4 Dead 2: make it a shove that you can apply even while reloading.\n+ Unskippable startup videos. Fortunately, [there's a launch setting to remove them](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Evil_Within).\n+ Too many action sequences. Even the final boss involves a rail shooter sequence which is annoying.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Keys](https://theevilwithin.fandom.com/wiki/Keys)\n\nI played on Survival difficulty, the intended design (Nightmare is gated until after your first playthrough). Even though the game was designed for controller as a console game, I played with mouse and keyboard as I prefer the mouse's precise aim for shooters, third-person included; fortunately it's also strafe and not tank controls like in RE1-4. I played blind but looked up the strategy for upgrades, [agreeing with this advice](https://www.reddit.com/r/theevilwithin/comments/qckswl/what_do_you_upgrade_evil_within_1/hhgyyc0).\n\n+ Handgun critical chance to 5. This is my favored weapon for weak zombies, and the critical chance means only 1-2 shots per head.\n+ Essentials: Ammo for all to 2 or 3, sprint time to 4, health and syringe refills to 2 or 3.\n+ Handgun reload rate and capacity to 3. Helps for many zombies. I don’t find fire rate or damage necessary for the gun since you only care about headshot crits with the rare exception of shooting knees.\n+ Harpoon to 4 or 5. This is my favored attack for single target DPS. Not only one of the highest damages but also the cheapest bolt to craft, requiring only 2 parts.\n+ Shotgun damage and critical chance to 4 or 5. Useful on top of Harpoon for single target DPS, while also for crowd control. I don’t find the other stats of fire rate, reload rate, and capacity important.\n+ Flash Bolt to 4 and Shock Bolt to 3. Flash Bolt level 1 is already useful against invisible zombies but against crowds, a high level lets you stealth kill 3-4 zombies and it only costs 2 parts. Shock adds further utility against bosses and also occasionally for crowd control when at max ammo. I don’t upgrade Explosive because Shotgun and Grenade ammo already serve its need, although I use any Explosive Bolt ammo I pick up. Similarly, Freeze Bolt is too expensive so I use it exclusively against bosses.\n+ Magnum damage until end of game, after maxxing Shotgun and Harpoon, and ammo to 4.\n+ I don’t upgrade the Sniper Rifle. I use it for headshots at a distance (typically weak zombies with ranged attacks), and it’s already a one-hit kill.\n+ I don’t upgrade the Crossbow. Fire rate, reload speed, and distance aren’t important.\n\nI didn't bother using a guide to collect all keys (reward is ammo, green gel, and syringes, which isn't too major; there's not enough green gel to upgrade everything anyways and following keys has spoilers and you can't wait until a level is almost complete because sections can be blocked off) or all map fragments (reward is two new weapons for new game plus).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-evil-within"},{"id":"322682678650353228","title":"The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1991,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["GBA"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-12-21","completedDate":"2021-01-10","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"LTTP is the pinnacle of 2D action RPGs. It boasts one of the best overworlds of all time and a timeless graphics and soundtrack. It also features great core combat, enemy variety, and plenty of dungeons and items. Flaw-wise, the rigidty of completing dungeon after dungeon is too repetitive. Unlike Ocarina of Time, there are no side quests or interesting deeper characters (supporting or otherwise). There's just too many dungeons, 11, each of which feature the same music and don't vary enough in diversity to validate the amount.\n\n__Story.__ LTTP introduces the idea of parallel worlds, further built on by, e.g., Ocarina of Time.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Core gameplay builds on prior titles, combining elements of overworld exploration, RPG progression, and dungeons. Camera-wise, LTTP did the correct choice of a 2D overhead perspective over Adventure of Link's sidescrolling perspective, and there are no camera issues or handling of multiple enemies such as with Ocarina of Time's lock-on and lack of manual camera control. Controls are minimal and tight: only a few moves and you can now walk diagonally and the sword has a larger swing. The 2D combat is excellent. Dungeons are more linear and combat-oriented than solving specific puzzles, and the combat difficulty is relatively quite high on par with its older titles.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The graphics are at the peak of 2D pixel sprite graphics, and with an iconic 16-bit soundtrack.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Unlike its successors, there's only one item shortcut, with the game designed such that you don't need to swap as often (though you still do).\n+ You accumulate arrows and bombs and no longer spend Rupee to use them.\n+ [No missable items.](https://zelda.gamepedia.com/Permanently_Missable_Items)\n+ You get infinite restock of bombs and arrows with the Mysterious Hut in Kakariko Village.\n+ Like previous titles, LTTP's Master Sword has Sword Beam if you have full health. It's a little overpowered however and is like a rich-gets-richer scheme, helpful more for advanced players.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Fortune Teller hut. You pay rupees for ingame hints on what to do next. Usually, games give this out for free!\n+ The effectively infinite Rupee dump, at least for the duration of a playthrough, for upgrading to a maximum of 50 Bomb and 70 Arrow capacity.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You can only save and exit. When you load a game, you start from Link's House or the Sanctuary.\n+ Secrets and puzzles are occasionally too cryptic in this game compared to its successors. For example, cracks in the wall that you must use a Bomb on for a Piece of Heart. A hidden tile to activate or move in order to open the door.\n+ Too many optional items that only have a single required use or are only used to assist in battle. I greatly enjoy Ocarina of Time's removal of all these items, overloading new items to serve both exploration/puzzles and combat.\n+ Compass only shows your location and the boss room. It doesn't show all hidden Treasure Chests like Ocarina of Time and beyond.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [overworld map](https://www.snesmaps.com/maps/ZeldaALinkToThePast/ZeldaALinkToThePastBG.html)\n+ [zeldadungeon.net](https://www.zeldadungeon.net/a-link-to-the-past-walkthrough)\n\nI played on an SNES emulator (Higan). I lost my save at Turtle Rock and skim-watched the rest of the playthrough on Youtube. In retrospect, I should have been more careful, save-exiting at each time I stopped playing instead of relying on emulator save states. This is too annoying because it changes you have to reload at select spots though.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-legend-of-zelda-a-link-to-the-past-and-four-swords"},{"id":"322682678652843596","title":"The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":3000,"platforms":["Switch"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2024-12-19","completedDate":"2025-01-14","updatedDate":"2025-01-15","notes":"Comfy vibes. Overall solid open world game with plenty of gameplay incentives to explore and grind. There's some formulaic rote, lacking in dungeons, side quests, and writing. So I wasn't excited enough to go completionist.\n\n__Story.__\nMore of a story than any other Zelda game I've played. With cutscenes! Japanese dialogue and fantasy setting reminds me of anime.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\nLevel design is excellent. No open world chores, just empty territory to explore. Not too dense or empty.\n\nProgression elements: gear and weapons (sword, shield, bow), gear upgrades via crafting materials, runes to power up via ancient materials, inventory slots via Korok seeds, guardian abilities to unlock, horse, towers for map visibility, fairies for gear tier unlocking. Beyond this, the things to do are map exploration, shrines, side quests, main quest, and farming for the progression elements.\n\nWith early game especially, there's so much to do as high priority: gaining the useful sets such as climbing, stealth, and cold resistance, farming a few shrines to remove the limited stamina and health, unlocking the map, farming rupees, farming heal consumables to cook, fairies to unlock ability to upgrade gear tiers.\n\nDungeons and four parts of the world are formulaic. Dungeons are not BOTW's forte.\n\nThe filler content with shrines and sidequests are OK but quantity over quality.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nLofi. The cartoon graphics and saturated colors work well given the lack of graphics intensity available to the Switch.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Ability to be your own cartographer with multiple customizable symbols to track interesting locations to revisit or just mark as an interesting area. I loved this feature in Elden Ring. Rather than a busywork UI like Ubisoft open world titles, the ability to set off into a random part of the map and uncover interesting points is so much better in terms of exploration and freedom, stress, and minimal UI for immersion.\n+ Shrines have a bonus chest hidden off somewhere. They're nice perks to encourage exploration. But they're not so vital or unique that you would want to have to resort to a guide to make sure you get them all.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ UI.\n  + If you run out of inventory to pick up an item, you have to enter your inventory to discard an item, then pick it up. Immersion-breaking.\n  + To heal, you have to go into your inventory. No in-game healing selection like there is for weapon and shield selection.\n  + Can’t easily batch cook.\n+ Can’t call horse from anywhere. Realistically the game is one designed for fast travel and manual on foot travel at times. Both times make riding a horse infeasible from start to finish.\n+ Rain. It forces you not to be able to climb when you want to. This goes against the freedom of choice.\n+ Motion control puzzles. Annoying due to their lack of precision.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki\n+ https://www.zeldadungeon.net/breath-of-the-wild-walkthrough\n+ https://www.zeldadungeon.net/breath-of-the-wild-interactive-map\n+ [Hestu Korok seed cost](https://www.reddit.com/r/tearsofthekingdom/comments/13x8fps/all_korok_seed_inventory_slot_upgradescosts)\n+ [Rupee farming strategy](https://www.reddit.com/r/Breath_of_the_Wild/comments/97hmwy/early_game_rupee_farming/e49ig9c).\n+ [Heal farming strategy: Durians](https://www.reddit.com/r/zelda/comments/64598l/botw_guide_ultimate_cooking_health_stamina)\n\nI played it on Nintendo Switch. The ideal version is to play on Windows, [following a Cemu guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/cemu/comments/6skf8f/text_guide_for_setting_up_cemu_botw_with_links). The increased resolution, frame rate, cell shading, and many more were just difficult to lose from playing the original port (Nintendo Switch or WiiU).\n\nI didn't play [any DLC](https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki/Breath_of_the_Wild_Expansion_Pass) as its main bonuses are a power-up to the Master Sword and the challenger trials. They are bonuses and optional. These can obtained done closer to endgame if I do want them.\n\n+ Guardian beast order: Rito, Zora, Goron, Gerudo.\n+ I did Rito early on as it makes exploration really easy from Danny’s suggestion. Then I chilled and explored the world, completing shrines, side quests, towers, and fathering materials as I went until I had a hankering for main quest progression.\n+ I didn't complete many side quests and only did enough shrines for 13 hearts and a decent amount of stamina. After completing the Divine Beasts, I got the Master Sword and went straight to Hyrule Castle. I wasn't that interested enough in the game to complete the padded content.\n\ntodos\n+ upgrade [ancient set](https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki/Ancient_Set), [climbing set](https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki/Climbing_Set), [sheikah set](https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki/Stealth_Set)\n+ farm shrines for hearts and stamina\n+ farm korok seeds","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-2"},{"id":"338909407131730511","title":"The Mortuary Assistant","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["DarkStone Digital"],"publishers":["DarkStone Digital"],"genres":["Simulator","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2023-07-04","completedDate":"2023-07-04","updatedDate":"2023-07-05","notes":"Unique setting for a horror title. Honestly I'm surprised someone hasn't covered the mortuary before. Gameplay also has unique elements specific to the job and not following your usual exploration in a dark room and picking up items.\n\nIt's a shame the game is so short and ends within a single shift. The randomization and detective mystery makes it clear that the game could last over multiple shifts and be highly replayable. That would truly elevate the game.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Clearly an indie title with the facial animations and bodies, sound effects, etc.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nMurderCrumpet had high praise for it.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-mortuary-assistant"},{"id":"322682678624128588","title":"The Outer Worlds","originalTitle":"アウター・ワールド","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Obsidian Entertainment"],"publishers":["Private Division"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-11-26","completedDate":"2021-11-28","updatedDate":"2026-04-23","notes":"Outer Worlds is designed like a spiritual successor to Fallout New Vegas while also borrowing elements from Bioware games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age. It doesn't quite reach those heights. But it does retain high-quality writing, main and side quests, and RPG progression mechanics to provide a great Fallout-like experience. Its art style is also nice.\n\nUnfortunately, combat is mediocre; difficulty is too easy; and it suffers from limited exploration, worldbuilding, and diegetic storytelling due to its semi-open world design. Still, the general online perception of the game is more negative than the game deserves.\n\n__Story.__ The writing is impressive. I enjoy the corporate politics satire: having worked in one, I can appreciate its emphasis on efficiency, corporate middlemen and bureaucracy, and the culture/responsibilities individuals feel. It's clearly a universe where companies have too much power, effectively at the level of governments: they're able to overwork their workers, redact what would otherwise be universal rights such as contracted servitude, and commit crimes like the Plague without accountability.\n\nThe sidequests are also all on par with Oblivion. I love the acting sidequest, Retirement, The Secret People, Foundation.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core system is much like Fallout's, and it plays to Oblivions strengths in RPGs. The quests are all excellent, including side quests with sufficient objective variety going further than the rote fetch, escort, or slay. They also feature optional objectives with multiple ways to approach it. Choices, and at least the illusion of choice, are strong.\n\nCombat is mediocre, feeling like only a slight upgrade to Fallout New Vegas. It is largely a point and shoot with forgettable encounters, enemy AI, and enemy variety.\n\nIn terms of level design, Outer Worlds adopts a semi-linear design not unlike Bioware games such as Mass Effect and Dragon Age. It is distinctively not open world and there's little incentive to explore in the open areas that do exist. I can no longer wander in a random direction and stumble onto events or acquire new items. The craft of diegetic storytelling is forgotten. Space exploration with discrete worlds also makes for a noncontiguous design, making the world feel less open. Town houses are also sectioned off so you can't explore to pilfer a random NPC's place.\n\nBuild variety includes stealth, dialog/pacifist, sniper vs gunslinger with small guns vs melee, energy vs physical vs other weapon types. Like Fallout's build options, there are attributes, skills, and perks, and with the staple of attribute/skill/perk options. There are 18 Specialized Skills grouped into 7 Core Skills that you can level up.\n\nOn miscellaneous mechanics:\n\n+ Outer Worlds brings back the speech checks from Fallout New Vegas which Fallout 4 removed, and keeping it as deterministic instead of a roll. Workbench also enables modding and repairing. These systems are great.\n+ VATS is replaced with tactical time dilation. This keeps the game better paced than the turn-like-order of VATS, and with weak spot damage. TTD is excellent as a more dynamic rendition of VATS. With that said, weak spots aren't obvious and there's little incentive to shoot any body part aside from the head.\n+ Stealth has seen several improvements since Fallout/Elder Scrolls. For example, there are enemy awareness indicators and bushes.\n+ There is a larger emphasis on repairing items as their condition affects their efficiency. This encourages you to repair at vendor or to break down items in order to use your weapon/armor parts.\n+ Unlike Bethesda games, you carry 2 companions at a time which enables camradarie chat not unlike Mass Effect and Dragon Age.\n+ The lack of difficulty outside the beginning area removes the need of many mechanics. You never run out of ammo, Adreno consumables, or picks; food is plentiful yet useless; and there's little need to spend Bits; companion abilities are useless given their animation already takes as long as a typical fight.\n+ Item variety is fairly lacking. The weapons aren't all that interesting and don't have much variety: all weapons in an area are static and you'll see dozens of any one.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Detail is quite good, certainly above average for 2019 and among titles like Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War. Motion capture animations look great during cutscenes but lip sync is off. Dialog scenes are also just talking heads. Voice acting is good.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Like more modern RPGs, you can flag items as junk. That way you don't have to reexamine all your items before you sell them.\n+ You can see all quests on your map, including active quests. I wish the default displays inactive quests though.\n+ Quicksave doesn't overwrite the same slot, so you can go back to previous quicksaves, and it's cycled among 4 slots.\n+ You can holster your weapon.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ I like the animations and idea behind Companion Abilities. It's a shame they're not integrated better into the gameplay with more unique abilities or incentives to use them.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ There's a number of streamlined elements. No waiting/resting-based mechanic with NPCs performing a day rotation. No lockpicking or hacking minigame. Armors have negligible type differences and only feature armor and helmet. There's no real change to maximizing faction reputation or companion quests (e.g., Dragon Age's companion bonuses that are significant). No jail or lose item system when you're caught stealing. No romance.\n+ On both the Edgewater and Monarch, you're given a choice of morally grey choices. But one of the solutions is a compromise that feels like the \"right solution\". They should do away with that option altogether to challenge you to a true decision.\n+ The Dash/Dodge ability sucks. Why even bind it as a jump dodge instead of a separate keybind? The game combat also just isn't Dark Souls-style where you enemy attacks are well-telegraphed and necessitate dodge.\n+ There's no disadvantage to equipping full heavy armor on your companions. This ruins their aesthetic.\n+ There aren't options to stealth kill until later in the game such as when you equip a sniper (any high damage per shot weapon) with a Quiet Muzzler---earliest with the Hunting Rifle Ultra if you can find it.\n+ Corpses can be hard to find sometimes because they're not easily glowable, particularly from a larger distance. This makes Plasma weapons especially annoying as they turn enemies to ash.\n+ Without Science 100, tinkering to level up a low level weapon has exponentially high costs. Tinker costs should be based on weapon level, not how many times it's been tinkered.\n+ Quest markers. I prefer Morrowind's approach of forcing you to read the quest lines to know where to go next. This makes you more immersed in the quest itself rather than going from point A to B. Similarly, having to go through the notes to get the keycode, not have it automatically written.\n+ The use of both waypoint markers and a compass HUD is redundant.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nThis entry does not include the DLCs. I played Hard difficulty. I played blind.\n\n__Build.__ Like my Fallout playthroughs, I played a stealth sniper build ([1](https://www.neoseeker.com/the-outer-worlds/guides/Stealth_Sniper_Guide), [2](https://fextralife.com/the-outer-worlds-builds-time-sniper), [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/theouterworlds/comments/dw0p10/outer_worlds_sniper_build_guide_with_and_without)). It's derived from the legacy that Bethesda RPGs have bad combat, and therefore it's often better exploiting first encounter damage and from long range.\n\n+ Skills: 100 Long Guns, 100 Sneak, 100 Science, 60 Inspiration, and rest into Dialog.\n+ Companions: For boosts to dialog skills (at max level 36 with Lockpick/Hack helms and +5-15 Dialog armor, Parvati/Max boost my Persuade/Intimidate/Hack to the 105 threshold and Lockpick to the 100 threshold).\n+ Gear: [Dead-Eye Assault Rifle 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/theouterworlds/comments/dybmx6/sublight_sniper_rifle_vs_dead_eye_assault_rifle_2) with [Shock](https://www.reddit.com/r/theouterworlds/comments/dqmkve/a_damage_chart_for_snipers), Sublight VP Armor, and Cell Stability Mono-Lens.\n+ Aptitude: +1 Persuasion.\n\nTodos in future playthroughs\n+ other builds such as melee, pacifist\n+ a few different main story choices","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-outer-worlds"},{"id":"322682678624126540","title":"The Outer Worlds: Murder on Eridanos","originalTitle":"アウター・ワールド： エリダノス殺人事件","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":330,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch","Series X"],"studios":["Obsidian Entertainment"],"publishers":["Private Division"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2021-11-29","completedDate":"2021-11-30","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Writing is great. Graphics are wonderfully colorful. Like Peril on Gorgon, Eridanos has a promising start with its investigation but it's all too linear. I greatly prefer the multiple approaches that an immersive sim/emergent gameplay offers, c.f., Beyond the Beef. Here, you just complete a choice of 3 quests simultaneously, and it's obviously ruled out which suspects have a solid alibi. The twin sister plot twist is also just dumb. I'd much prefer an actual mystery solve where you actually investigate the murder instead of just ruling out everyone else.\n\nMiscellaneous things I enjoyed:\n\n+ The conversation with the Bellhop, and the overall premise of investigating a high-profile murder.\n+ Discrepancy Amplifier as a clue finder. I also like that it pings you when you enter an area that requires investigation. That way you don't have to spam using it.\n+ The woman with the slug in her neck.\n+ New factions.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nTo quicken the pace, I tried to RP as an actual investigator in the real story. So no dilly-dallying too much such as investigating corners of the map, looking at the map screen, or looting every single item I find. This greatly improved the flow and my overall fun even though I didn't inspect all the content necessarily (the mystery of some unexplored rooms added to my enjoyment as I'm sure knowing that they're empty would be even more boring).\n\nI played on Story (Easy) difficulty as I got bored of the gameplay during Peril on Gorgon; it's just shoot heads.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-outer-worlds-murder-on-eridanos"},{"id":"322682678624127564","title":"The Outer Worlds: Peril on Gorgon","originalTitle":"アウター・ワールド： ゴルゴンに迫る危機","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Obsidian Entertainment","Obsidian Entertainment","Obsidian Entertainment"],"publishers":["Private Division","Private Division","Private Division"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2021-11-28","completedDate":"2021-11-29","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Peril on Gorgon is very much more of the same in the base game's strengths and weaknesses. I enjoyed the story. It's like a standalone episode in a franchise, not unlike the Fallout DLCs. It's a well-written intrigue with a family to redeem itself as a mysterious heiress and retracing the footsteps of a previous mercenary.\n\nThe threefold labs to explore gets video gamey, and while I like that the end mission provides a choice, but it's too clear-cut of a solution much like Outer Worlds' main faction choices. There's an obviously evil solution and the writing should have given better justification. Combat remains mediocre as well as itemization and a too easy difficulty.\n\nMiscellaneous things that I enjoyed:\n\n+ Freddie vs Trixie.\n+ Businesses in Halycon officially owned by sprats for any legal recourse.\n+ Audio logs. I enjoy them in RPGs as a method to introduce lore while not halting gameplay to read a wall of text.\n+ \"Tasks\", which are sidequests you can trigger by exploring and not just going to a quest hub.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-outer-worlds-peril-on-gorgon"},{"id":"334148910010335809","title":"The Quarry","originalTitle":"クアリー 悪夢のサマーキャンプ ","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Supermassive Games"],"publishers":["2K Games"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-06-10","completedDate":"2022-06-10","updatedDate":"2022-06-11","notes":"Watched a playthrough from Moonmoon. Overall good story with the expected amount of cringe and bad characters for a B-rated teenage flick.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The ending is rather abrupt. You just see the consequences of your actions in the form of a list of who's dead and alive. No cutscene playing out here.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-quarry"},{"id":"322682678651416140","title":"The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":1440,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["CD Projekt RED"],"publishers":["CD Projekt RED","cdp.pl","CyberFront","Bandai Namco Entertainment","Spike Chunsoft","Atari, Inc."],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-01-20","completedDate":"2020-02-15","updatedDate":"2023-07-04","notes":"Witcher 2 is a clear improvement in its refined gameplay and cinematic experience of Witcher 1. But its combat, lack of character and story depth, and rushed ending makes it feel unpolished and not nearly the masterpiece as Witcher 3.\n\n__Story.__ More cinematic and linear than both Witcher 1 and Witcher 3. Still great story all-around, though lacking a bit in the depth of moral ambiguity and choices as in both games.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Significant refinements since the first game, most noticeably gameplay-wise in the more action RPG-oriented combat system which encourages a hit-and-run style with weak and strong attacks, dodge, and parry/riposte. Consumables like oils and potions, signs like Quen, and crafting after gathering herbs set the stage for Witcher 3's excellent system of preparation/customizability and keeps The Witcher unique as a series. Upgrades are skillpoints for several trees from level ups; item customization; and mutagens on certain talents. The HUD is also much more improved: sleaker overall; dialogue HUD lets you clearly know which option advances the main dialogue and which are optional choices you can use to learn more; more reasonable minimap. Combat overall does not feel as responsive as the original game (e.g., there is no major thunk noise or stagger hitting an enemy; your movement towards an enemy is not as smooth as in Witcher 3).\n\nNo sprinting or jumping though, both crucial movement options (sprinting for moving through areas more quickly without the pacing of backtracking; and jumping for mor erealism where you don't have to run down stairs to fall off or climb impossibly for a miniscule bump). Dice poker is still bad in RNG as in the first game, but fortunately it's limited to one round.\n\nThere are some interesting spins as a Witcher game. You can only drink potions in the meditation state. Potions remain consumable-limited and are not refilled like in Witcher 3. Medallion (which takes several seconds to recharge) acts as your Detective Mode (a somewhat lore-appropriate mechanic). Places/Circles of Power remain closer to Witcher 1 than Witcher 3 as just temporary buffs and not skillpoint increases. Some scenes have a stealth lite mechanic.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I like the dark, grittier look of the game compared to Witcher 3 which seems more fantastical. The resolution of environment textures remains especially astounding in 2020. Colors are often too saturated in many scenes though, rendering the high resolution rather unnecessary with much of the environment given this weird smoothing effect. Voice acting is actually decent in this game and not a half-hearted attempt in the first game. Love that the character-to-character dialogue isn't just talking heads.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Going through the tedium of Endless Battle and the end of Act II while limited only to the abilities of attakc and block. Dying over and over to the same sequence of mobs.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ I prefer the fistfights' quick time events over typical combat gameplay in Witcher 1 and Witcher 3, which feels stifled.\n+ You have to manually draw your sword most of the time unlike Witcher 1 and 3 (which requires thinking about which sword to use).\n+ Environments feel very large even though the playable regions are much more restricted.\n+ Dark mode dificulty remains punishing all the way through, and in a good way. I could 2-3 shotted and can instantly die if I'm surrounded by enemies which I feel I should be appropriately punished for. I never died enough times that difficult encounters felt frustrating---sometimes only annoying given the combat mechanics have the flaws.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Even more missables than Witcher 3 (which had more than Witcher 1). Not only are chapters sequenced so you miss certain sidequests as you traverse a chapter. But there are many \"secret abilities\" that have somewhat crucial bonuses such as +50 carrying capacity that feel almost mandatory. Quest NPCs can also mysteriously disappear after progressing certain quests. For example, I tried to not craft Chapter I's dark armor until after Asassin of Kings and Where is Triss Merigold? Bad choice. I had to revert to an older save so I could craft them, and then redid the quests.\n+ Riposte has a visual cue. I much prefer the Dark Souls/Witcher 3 approach of timing your block with the enemy's attack in order to start the stagger followed by the optional riposte. I ended up never using parry/riposte in favor of the roll as you also lose Vigor.\n+ Fastest way to move is to take your sword out and double roll around.\n+ Mutagens cannot be replaced, making them effectively never use them until endgame.\n+ Like Witcher 1 (I think), indicators for questgivers do not appear on the map.\n+ Like Witcher 1 and not Witcher 3, the game does not clearly delineate craft items. It does prevent you from selling the most explicit quest items though as you never have to loot gather for Witcher contracts.\n+ Dark mode outfits have a visual and sound cue that becomes grating quickly, especially if you bundle that with the fact that you will almost always have your sword out in order to roll to move faster. It was so intrusive I used a mod to turn it off (https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher2/mods/649). I also did the same for Dice Poker.\n+ Borderless works natively but is buggy. (\"fullscreen\" option seems to do this by default; doesn't work as well for others though and I do occasionally get black screen which crashes game and/or my whole PC).\n+ No support for 21:9 aspect ratio even though Witcher 1 supports it. I followed this guide (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1529400057).\n+ Saves (including autosaves) accumulate but do not delete themselves. This makes your save list extremely long to the point of crashing the game.\n+ Similar controls as Witcher 3 but with different button layout. What cognitive dissonance.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/The_Witcher_2_quests\n+ https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=269561138\n\nI played with controller. I played on Normal difficulty, the hardest difficulty excluding Insane which insta-deletes your save game if you die once. This is like my experience with Witcher 3 where the early game was the most difficult and it got progressively easier. I turned off \"Difficult QTEs\", which removes it almost entirely. I played on max settings including Ubersampling but kept cinematic DOF off. Apparently, although it looks great, it is a huge performance dip on top of Ubersampling and is overdone in many cutscenes (https://www.resetera.com/threads/digital-foundry-the-witcher-2-in-2020-tech-review-red-engine-analysis-performance-on-modern-pc-hardware.164201/#post-28148409).\n\nChoice-wise I picked Iorveth and saved Triss. Although picking Roche is likely better continuity wise for the Witcher 3, Iorveth’s path is argued to be more realistic for Geralt who plays neutral and would only vy for his friends; and apparently it has better content.\n\n\"I always think Geralt from the book would choose Ioverth because it would be the fastest way to rescue Triss/catch Kingslayer (even though Geralt still got himself into unnecessary involvement) and the fastest way to \"escape\" Roche and all the political mess.\n\nPlus it has more book references, Zarpen Zigrin, more Zoltan, more Dandelion-Zoltain interaction, Philippa Eilhart, LOTR references, sex scenes with the succubus and the elf, better music and better setting.\" https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/4rhyc2/comment/d51frxo.\n\nMy total playtime is X (according to Steam). I played all quests and crafted all Dark mode outfits (including weapons, which made it easier to not think about what to upgrade next to). I only omitted The Secrets of Loc Muinne and The Gargoyle Contract. I did no cheats for Orens, fortunately accumulating enough in Chapter I to craft Blasphemer's and waiting until Chapter III before I could craft Oathslayer's as I was waiting to be able to purchase Studded Leather anyways. At that point I was tired of the game so I just cheated to immediately get the Kinslayer's outfit after having a frustrating experience killing enemies with just Blasphemer's. I played a sword and magic build which seemed most popular. It doesn't seem as optimized in OPness as an alchemy build, but I don't like the idea of relying on consumables which don't have the convenience of replenishing like in Witcher 3.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings"},{"id":"322682678651421260","title":"The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Hearts of Stone","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["CD Projekt RED"],"publishers":["CD Projekt RED"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-01-08","completedDate":"2020-01-10","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Decent story with a variety to the gameplay during quests: minigames during A Dead Man's Party; auctions; a bank heist. It's a fun motley crew of new characters, especially one of an immortal depressed from a failing marriage and a demigod. But the story overall doesn't truly stand out, not building on any of the already existing characters in Witcher 3. Only Olgierd von Everec and Gaunter O'Dimm really stand out; the other characters all fall by the wayside: Ofier the foreign landmass, Olgierd's crew, Shani, Olgierd's servants and background.\n\nMinor gameplay addition of enchanting, which adds more variety to the simple change of gear items via sockets from the base game. Sidequests are few and decent but not memorable.\n\nGoing through the Painted World, picking up pieces detective mode style, and being rewarded with scenes that each build up his marriage, is so awesome. Reminds me of horror games. The final quest, and the rewards if you decide to sell Ulgierd's soul, are awesome.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Spending an over hour fighting 6 Olgierd phantoms at once.\n\nMy total playtime is 12 hours according to Steam. I completed all main and sidequests but not treasure hunts.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-hearts-of-stone"},{"id":"322682678624205388","title":"Thief: The Dark Project","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Looking Glass Studios"],"publishers":["Eidos Interactive","Activision Value"],"genres":["Simulator","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-08-21","completedDate":"2021-02-22","updatedDate":"2023-04-20","notes":"Thief pioneered the stealth genre alongside Metal Gear Solid and Tenchu; and was also a great influencer to immersive sims. Compared to its successor Thief 2, Thief 1 emphasizes exploration and not only burglary (arguably half-exploration half-stealth). To Thief fans, tomb raiding is a core part of the appeal: getting lost in a level's mazes and making progress with a mental map using your compass, memory, and barebones map.\n\nPlaying it in 2019 and 2021, there are two major faults: 1. clues or maze navigation can be too vague and necessitate playing with a walkthrough (see examples below); and 2. undead levels forgo stealth in favor of maze navigation.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Thief established standards like light with interactable objects, shadows, and a light percentage bar; sound based on movement speed and surfaces; emergent gameplay from enemy AI and open maps with many approaches; first-person stealth; and a quick save system. There's also many nice details:\n\n+ You can snuff out torches (which Styx inherited) but not electric lights.\n+ Surfaces like carpet or marble make different sounds.\n+ Diverse utility items: water arrow for taking out torches; moss arrows to not make noise on marble/stone; noisemaker arrows for drawing guards (too bad you can't do it like Dishonored of just whacking your sword at the wall).\n+ The map is a piece of paper which you annotate, not a GPS like modern games (that said, a very rough one) and which Dishonored inherited.\n\nThe controls are simple and age well. You alternate between run, walk, and crouch. Jump, attack, block, cycle items, use item, and lean left/right provides corner views (like Dishonored). Number keys select specific weapons. Swordplay provides control to swing right, left, or overhead. Item inventory.\n\nThief's equipment provides a diverse toolkit consisting of mostly excellent items. The blackjack is the mainstay melee weapon: while undetected, it can nonlethally one-hit an enemy. Gas Arrows and Gas Mines provide ranged nonlethal means. Utility equipment include water arrows to snuff out torches, fires, and wash away blood; moss arrows to provide quiet surfaces to walk on; rope arrows to climb onto a wooden surfaces; noisemaker arrows to cause a diversion; lockpicks; and holy water to turn water arrows to kill the undead. Equipment for last-resort combat are an arming sword, broadhead arrows (which can one-hit lethal from undetected status and also lure enemies if you hit metal), fire arrows, flashbombs, and explosive mines.\n\nLevels are hit or miss. Many levels stray too much into maze navigation with few enemies: Bonehoard, Haunted Cathedral, Lost City, Return to Cathedral, Maw of Chaos to a lesser degree. Level progression can also be obtuse. For example: Lord Bafford's Manor has items hidden behind cloth banners: 1. there's no indicator that you can cut them; and 2. there's no way you'd know outside of an occasional guard's conversation. Thieves' Guild has confusing orientation in not explaining that you first need to acquire Donnel's safe key from Reuben's house; then retrieve the vase from Donnel's safe in Donnel's house. Haunted Cathedral requires lighting two torches next to a statue; and if you don't have two Fire Arrows, game over. Let's not even talk about Lost City, which I have no idea how you could navigate with its winding paths and unintuitive roof climbing/house holes. Return to Cathedral has convoluted fetch quests.\n\nUndead levels are the worst part of Thief. Zombies are not typically stealthable in the areas they're placed, they cannot be knocked out, and they resurrect infinitely. They force combat or running away, as they can only die with water arrows with holy water, fire arrows, or flashbombs, all of which have limited ammo. Undead levels serve as a reminder that the Thief series originally didn't know what it wanted to be. Undead levels no longer exist in Thief II and for good reason.\n\nCompared to Dishonored, Thief has its own identity: it's different, not better or worse. Garret plays like a true thief, stealing key items, looting, and in Thief 1, tomb raiding. He's weak when spotted, rarely able to take more than a single enemy at a time. In contrast, Corvo plays like a true assassin: taking out key targets, and with the ability to kill when caught. They also share similar stealth toolkits and the underlying stealth system, but Garret's emphasizes environmental interaction (lighting/sound) and Corvo's emphasizes movement/line of sight (e.g., Blink) and other creative supernatural powers, opening up the level design to enable even more diverse approaches than Thief while still preserving architectural realism.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ As an early 3D game, the 800x600 resolution, polygon textures, lack of animations such as grappling and climbing, long empty corridors, and asset resuse do not age well. Even in 1998, the game was panned for its graphics compared to, say, Quake II. Albeit large, areas are often empty feeling more like mazes than real buildings (and the lack of a real-time map makes you further lost). I do like the overall dark art direction which fits the game, and the varied settings: mansions, prisons, abandoned cities, catacombs, and strange mage towers. The directional sound design to notify of you enemies walking by, their alertness, and where work well.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Light indicator. Most all stealth games ought to have a version of this. Otherwise like in Dishonored, you just crouch and somehow automatically go in stealth mode without having an idea of how much until guards are alerted.\n+ The HUD is just right in minimalism, with health, light indicator, weapon, and item.\n+ Difficulty levels don't just change stats like in other games. They add more enemies, new or stricter objectives, and less HP. This means to experience the full content of a level, you want Expert difficulty. Note the alertness or toughness of an enemy doesn't change though.\n+ You can skip levels with Ctrl+Shift+Alt+End. I wish there were more cheats though similar to Doom, or better yet Elder Scrolls such as the ability to modify movement speed.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Save system is manual. There are no checkpoints/autosave. This is part for the course for the time, like Doom and Quake.\n+ Items and money do not carry over missions.\n+ You can pick up the Broadhead Arrow and Rope Arrow after their use.\n+ No guard alertness indicator. Instead guards provide audio cues, which I think is better for immersion although it leads to confusing behavior at times, and you have an explicit light indicator.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Gold is tracked as an item that you have to cycle through.\n+ You can't go nonlethal when confronted. This makes Expert difficulty impossible without savescumming as alerts effectively mean game over.\n+ No guard alert indicator. You have to guestimate.\n+ Max resolution is 800x600, fullscreen, and there are no cutscenes. Fortunately, the TFix mod fixes this. For borderless, I set TFix with [windowed](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Thief:_The_Dark_Project#Windowed).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [TFix](https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134733)\n+ http://www.thief-thecircle.com/guides/keeperchapel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm6RtQAof4E\n+ [Thief vs AAA Gaming](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/3bjrze/thief_vs_aaa_gaming) | It's ranty, but he highlight specific elements well: indicate progress not via quest markers and a minimap but clues and player exploration; incenvitize agency via clues and realistic levels which immerse you, not game-y aspects like loot in some corner that doesn't make sense realistically; more subtle storytelling; movement mechanics like the rope arrow is done more realistically by the roof's material (wood), not context-specific assets; focus on core minimal tools all of which are applicable; other parts of the video are ranty or only specific to stealth.\n\nI played the Thief Gold (1999) edition. I used the TFix Lite mod, which improves system mechanics for a modern PC (e.g., 21:9 resolution, borderless) based on the NewDark game engine. I chose not to use TFix which also improves textures/special effects using Thief 2's as [that changes the original atmosphere](https://www.reddit.com/r/Thief/comments/c88g66/playing_thief_gold_for_the_first_time). One caveat is that because of the NewDark game engine, both TFix and TFix Lite uses Thief 2 AI which is not authentic ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Thief/comments/9prlz4/how_can_i_get_the_most_original_experience_on_a), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Thief/comments/a0igj7/original_thief_gold_ai)).\n\nFor controls, I changed to Dishonored-like keybindings: W for Run, hold Shift to Walk, C for Crouch, F for Use Item, Left Mouse for Attack, Right Mouse for Block, Q, Alt + W, and E for Lean Left, Forward, and Right. Controls separate from Dishonored are item inventory management with Z, X, and Tab for previous, next, and use item, R for Drop, Shift + F for Sheath Weapon (can't map it to Hold F as in Dishonored).\n\nI played on Expert difficulty (the highest) for two episodes and Normal for the rest. Immersion is my priority, and I'd rather experience the full challenge and content in a level on future playthroughs, where levels otherwise feel drawn out. I first picked up the game on 8/22/19 and abandoned it after 2 missions. I couldn't stand getting lost (and without a second monitor to refer to walkthroughs, or Twitch streams to keep getting lost not being annoying), and the exploration component which makes Thief part walking simulator. I picked it up again on 2/21/21.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/thief-the-dark-project"},{"id":"322682678653494860","title":"Thomas Was Alone","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","WiiU","Vita","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Bithell Games"],"publishers":["Bithell Games","Ant Workshop Ltd","Curve Digital"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-12-12","completedDate":"2021-12-17","updatedDate":"2022-02-19","notes":"Thomas Was Alone is a cute puzzle-platformer with simple puzzles but a nice progression of cooperation alongside a charming narration of events.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I'm impressed how well the simple cube aesthetic with lighting and sound effects works here. It's the closest example of how well an indie game can do with little to assets.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/thomas-was-alone"},{"id":"3edd734c-c131-45cf-87ff-d38263ba77eb","title":"Thymesia","originalTitle":"ティメジア","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PC","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["OverBorder Studio"],"publishers":["Team17"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2023-03-18","completedDate":"2023-03-19","updatedDate":"2023-03-19","notes":"Thymesia has an excellent core combat loop with its deflect, wound/health damage system, and finisher move. During intense fights, you really do utilize your full arsenal: weak attacks, claw attacks, deflect, and your plague weapon. Other elements don't stand out but are serviceable such as level design, music, artwork, and story.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nCore mechanics are borrowed from Dark Souls: enemy attacks, weak attack, parrying, and dodge, souls, and level design.\n\nNew elements:\n+ Enemy health based on wound damage with your normal attack and health damage with your claw attack. It's an improvement to Sekiros' two health system of parry bar and health bar, where, say, posture damage doesn't just lead to a one-hit KO or it's wasted. Rather, you juggle damaging both bars.\n+ Plague weapons. Skill shards.\n+ Enemy health heal and claw damage.\n+ Talent tree.\n+ Deflect system that's more similar to Sekiro.\n+ Enemies have a guard system, which discourages pure weak attack spam.\n\nThe core combat loop is quite satisfying with its combination of Sekiro's deflect mechanic and juggling wound and claw attacks.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nServiceable. No voice acting. The alchemy vibe is great.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can change talent point allocation at any time.\n+ Odur is a great first boss. The biggest player wall that forces you to master the deflect and wound mechanics.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The sub-quests. They pad the game a bit too much for the amount of repetitive content (it's the same level and enemies; reminds me of Nioh 2 that you only do it for the grind).\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Varg (third area boss) is way too easy. He seems better as a tutorial boss given that his moves are so slow and telegraphed.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nTo play if I have an itch for soulslikes.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/thymesia"},{"id":"322682678650421836","title":"Titanfall 2","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Respawn Entertainment"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-07-10","completedDate":"2020-07-12","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Titanfall 2 is the smoothest FPS game I've played to date. This polish is given by responsive and intuitive motion controls, seamless platforming level designs with action, and easily understood player and enemy animations.\n\n__Story.__ Servicable like an action film.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Titanfall 2 features responsive modern controls with sliding, wall running, double jump, mantling, sliding down cables, gun tilt aiming when you crouch. It makes for seamless platforming on top of tight gunplay, and I'm most surprised by how elegantly the game introduces new platforming mechanics across the story: time warp; arc; cranes. I love the minimal immersive HUD. Health system is regeneration-based, which I think is fine given its cinematic presentation. I like the ability to cloak when under duress.\n\nThe mecha provides a great change of pace from the vanilla firing.\n\nThe weapon and enemy variety is serviceable but ultimately forgettable. It's similar to Call of Duty and Wolfenstein rather than Dark Souls and Doom, where enemies largely serve the same purpose and do not have distinctive roles that force you to play a certain style.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Polished, somewhat generic visuals.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ The assembly level. Awesome level design with seamless integration of platforming and gunplay.\n+ Time warp level. Works for both platforming and gunplay. It's like Dishonored 2's but for FPS.\n+ Hot damn, even the verticality in the Beacon level.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Hip fire crosshairs still have a dot in the middle. It makes hip fire feel precise more so than typical Call of Duty like games even if it may not be.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on Hard difficulty (one up from normal).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/titanfall-2"},{"id":"322682678652449356","title":"Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2005,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["XBOX","NGC","PC","PS2"],"studios":["Ubisoft Montreal"],"publishers":["Ubisoft Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Tactical"],"startedDate":"2019-07-04","completedDate":"2019-07-05","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Chaos Theory plays surprisingly well in 2019. It's clearly one of the best stealth games with excellent use of lighting cues, sound, and an arsenal of tools and approaches to sneak around. Enemy AI is great. Level designs are varied. On the cons, the story is mediocre.\n\n__Story.__ I didn't really pay any attention to it. Didn't seem very interesting. I do like the characters and the mix of Sam Fisherman humor along with his radio supporting characters like the equivalent of Naomi Campbell of a younger female to add perspective to an old grim guy's perspective.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I love the granularities of stealth for lighting and sound. For example, you can control your movement speed which allows you lower the footstep noise below the ambient noise. With the light receptor UI, you can also wander essentially in the open as long as it's dark enough and use your pistol to electronically disable the lights temporarily. Goggles offer nightvision, thermal heat vision, electromagnetic field vision, and electronically enhanced vision. The other gear is also excellent: knife; CQC and acrobatic moves; pistol; silenced rifle; shotgun. There is still a dated feel to it: for example, guards can disappear from their patrol positions entirely and no other guards that intersect patrols are curious.\n\nMissions are typically linear with just a handful of different approaches to get to a subarea. I found this worked well for its style. It still suits all the major gameplay styles for stealth: no alerts+0 kills+0 knockouts; no alerts+some knockouts; and no alerts+all kills; and with different restrictions on weapons (e.g., melee only, pistol only).\n\nEnemy AI is also not so stupid in terms of patrol patterns and vision is not completely obvious but still game-ifiable via the use of the light receptor and audio UI.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics were apparently one of the best at its release. Playing it now in 2019, it actually still holds up pretty well and I'm not bothered as much by it as I was bothered, say, playing Oblivion in 2019. Maybe it's just because of the low lighting in most of the gameplay combined with nightvision. The face model's low details are the most jarrying however. Lighting with shadows and object lights are really good. I also really like the variety of levels such as the Bank, New York, Hokkaido, and a North Korean missile base.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ The light receptor and sound UIs (including tracking of your noise vs ambient noise).\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Quicksaves and quickloads as the crutch over well-placed checkpoints.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ The map UI is extremely bad. I find it almost entirely unusable to find where to go next. This is typically fine for mission objectives since you'll come across them as you explore each room. But exfiltration is particularly hard to find, so I always just look it up.\n+ Success rating criteria seems a little arbitrary. For example, you can take damage and you can knock out as many enemies as you'd like.\n+ There are no reinforcements. Knockouts are effectievly permanent without a timer, as long as someone does not wake them up.\n+ There's no in-game reward to high success rating (and which includes completing non-mandatory mission objectives). The only reward is pride.\n+ The boss battle in the second-to-last level Bathhouse is not good.. I don't play Splinter Cell for ill-equipped action and perfect-sighted AI.\n+ Alt tab doesn't work.\n+ The tutorial is simply a collection of videos. This has zero interactivity and is lazy, not even giving the ability to pause, fast forward, etc. to the important pieces.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ improving pc guide (I did intro skips, custom resolutions and UI adjustments, and field of view) | https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=728093866\n+ https://www.ign.com/faqs/2005/tom-clancys-splinter-cell-3d-100-requisites-list-606755\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/tom-clancys-splinter-cell-chaos-theory/Walkthrough\n\nI decided to play this as my second foray into the Splinter Cell series since playing the first game on PlayStation as a kid (or maybe I didn't play it and it was just the relatively similar and named Syphon Filter). I chose Hard difficulty, which apparently only increases damage taken from Normal difficulty (https://splintercell.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tom-clancy-s-splinter-cell-chaos-theory"},{"id":"322682678652442188","title":"Tomb Raider","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["PC","PS2","Mac"],"studios":["Core Design"],"publishers":["Eidos Interactive","Aspyr Media"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-07-20","completedDate":"2019-07-21","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Tomb Raider (2013) skillfully executes cinematic action-adventure in the light of games like Uncharted and combined with some of the elements that define a Tomb Raider game. It's a fun action-packed story offering depth into Lara's origin and under the core motif of survival rather than mystery-diving; and it features a combination of great platforming, actually good gunplay with stealth and a upgrade system, and exploration through its semi-open world and beautifully rendered environments. Compared to the Uncharted series, Tomb Raider features better gameplay across platforming, gunplay/stealth, exploration in nonlinear worlds, and progression systems; but it has a weaker story and cast, fewer excellent environments, not as memorable set pieces.\n\nFlaw-wise, the game has three major ones. First, the story and characters aside from Lara are just not good. Second, the core appeal of Tomb Raider's puzzle-solving via intricate tombs is largely dropped. Third, it get fairly repetitive in its heated action similar to Uncharted where it's wave after wave of enemies.\n\n__Story.__ This game is bleak and greatly so for being such a stark approach to the standard Indiana Jones-style formula of past Tomb Raider games and the Uncharted series. It starts from the beginning where Lara is imprisoned in a madman's cave and even gets caught in a bear trap. She wades in a pool of blood and bones. It is such a stark (and great!) contrast to the Tomb raider series and Uncharted. It's an origin story, providing good depth into Lara's beginnings. On the contrary, unfortunately every other character, from her friends and supporting cast to the villains, are all fairly one-bit characters. The story quickly remains fairly tropey as a survivor island with a weird cult. I do find it interesting what a turn Tomb Raider (2013) took---all based on the premise of searching tombs but instead the majority of the game is faced with modern man-made problems.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Tomb Raider (2013) features platforming, exploration, and third-person shooting.\n\nPlatforming is excellent in the genre. I love the interactions most of all. For example, the use of Torch for lighting and interacting with various objects. This includes other weapons such as the bow and arrow's rope mechanic and the shotgun to blast wooden barriers. I'm overall a big fan of utilizing items that work for both action and platforming. For example, even the pick axe can be used for stealth melee kills. Unfortunately, there are very few tombs in the game (none mandatory), and of those that exist, they're simply one-off puzzles rather than spanning a much longer sequence as the old Tomb Raider games. This makes the reboot feel slightly off as a successor, playing more like a generic AAA action-adventure title with firefights.\n\nEnvironments are semi-open world similar to God of War (2018) instead of single-path linear like most action-adventures. Furthermore, multiple elements incentivize exploration: collectibles like relics, documents, and GPS caches; challenges; salvage to upgrade gear; and animals to hunt for XP. There's a progression system with passive skill points, gear upgrades with a fixed set of weapons; and document and relic collectibles.\n\nCombat is a combination of fights as you wander around (sometimes animated cutscenes and confrontations) and stealth. I like the stealth elements such as utilizing the bow and arrow for stealth kills as opposed to the gun and requiring headshots for immediate kills or otherwise they yell for help. Shooting into walls distracts enemies. Stealth melee kills. Rolling is the classic Tomb Raider dodge maneuver when they swing for an attack. I love the fixed toolset. They all have excellent situational uses. The bow is particularly sweet and my personal favorite default. It has platforming utility such as fire arrows and roping to platforms; and it has combat utility as a stealth ranged kill and held-back for stronger power.\n\nDifficulty-wise, the game seems almost too easy. Enemies have really bad accuracy. Melee-type enemies are well-telegraphed and easy to shotgun away. You never really run into ammunition problems, incentivizing more diverse playthroughs as you cycle through your weapons' ammo. Enemy variety is mediocre. I wish the samurai appeared more often in the game rather than just a climactic middle gorey scene and the end.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics look great and I expected especially so for 2013. Having just played Uncharted 4 before this, I can easily tell how the graphics have aged. Face models, textures, lighting, and the postprocessing on the screen feels more artificial. Scenes are often pre-rendered rather than real time. Transitions to cutscenes aren't as seamless. Debris vanishes instead of remains as part of the environment. I think what harms atmosphere most is that dark areas like caves are lit too well for the purposes of gameplay. I'd much rather have a foreboding environment. When light is in fact a scarce resource in certain areas, you can feel on edge in the game. I like that the game focuses on a singular area though (the island); it keeps the environments fairly homogenous and less video game-y like, e.g., in Uncharted where every title seems to have a snow area; jungle area; ruins area; and city area as requirements. That said, Uncharted actually is based on real regions which gives it more nuance. In contrast, Tomb Raider's island feels forgettable as yet another forestry.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ I love Tomb Raider's requirement to press a button when you land a jump that could have you fall off. This adds more thrill than say Uncharted's tendency to let you just spam the jump button.\n+ The game supports both 21:9 resolution and borderless window.\n+ You loot bodies to get loot, not some highlighted items as is gamified in many other video games.\n+ You need to access bonfires to spend skill points, upgrade gear, and fast travel. Furthermore fast travel is restricted to select bonfires. It's very Dark Souls (1).\n+ Documents, relics, and Lara's journal let you look at specific assets and also learn about lore through audio narration. They're small enough snippets that they don't feel intrusive like, for example, MGS5's audio tapes.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ I like the idea of collectibles in order to incenvitize exploration across an semi-open world. However, like God of War (2018), I always feel conflicted about the point of having useless things to collect purely for the completionism: there is no ingame benefit. Doing it within the middle of a game can ruin pacing of the main story. So you may as well do it after you beat the game, but at that point there's not really any point to doing it. Ultimately, I converged to just playing the game and trying to explore every room, collecting a good amount of collectibles but not all of them.\n+ The overlay HUD. For example, the art style when filling up a bar to pry open a door. Or all the popups when you unlock something or gain XP.\n+ Automatic system for crouching vs standing, walking vs running, and cover behind obstacles.\n+ Call of Duty/Uncharted health system.\n+ Auto saves are fairly forgiving. Pickups and collectibles are always saved so you can reload from checkpoint after picking them up instead of trekking back to a tent.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Survivor sense. I hate the detective vision/mode mechanic in almost all video games since Arkham Asylum introduced it. It allows you to toggle when to look for hidden items, keeping the environment in palette and less game-y to find interactable objects. On the other hand, it's added complexity and feels unneeded if the video game were well-designed enough to allow you to easily spot these in the first place. I find myself using it at every corner, ruining native exploration. I'm not the only one (https://www.reddit.com/r/TombRaider/comments/9hz3dk/the_amount_of_time_i_used_the_survival_instinct/).\n+ Metroidvania backtracking to access collectibles you couldn't on the first time you move through the area.\n+ Alternate firing mode. I never use it. It adds unnecessary complexity.\n+ There's a TR logo  during autosave. I find it distracting and breaks immersion.\n+ Subtitle art is really bad. It's black borders which makes it extremely distracting. And it's closed caption, i.e., it describes sound effects. I really like subtitles in games (and audio mediums in general) as it gives me the most detail so I don't miss out on a single word. This can happen due to heavy accents, murmuring of guards from afar, etc.\n+ Unlike Uncharted, you can't just replay missions/chapters. After the game, you can still go back to get everything you missed. But to experience the campaign again, you have to restart from scratch. New game plus has close to zero encounters as it's just exploring the map.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/tomb-raider\n+ https://tombraiders.net/stella/walks/controls/TR9controls.html\n\nI played on PC on max resolutions and with controller. It's clear this game was built for controller. The Definitive Edition on Xbox One/PS4 has some new features but compromises on texture quality over PC's: \"The PS4 version certainly sports lower resolution textures, inferior Anti-Aliasing options, lack of tessellation and certainly lower frames per second (and resolution) if your PC rig can handle it. The other side of the coin is the new facial animation systems look very nice, TressFX 2.0 is a major improvement over the original (leading to fewer times were hair acts completely strangely, such as strands going in the wrong direction), Sub-Surface Scattering and a little extra geometry.\" (https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-tomb-raider-definitive-edition-next-gen-face-off; http://www.redgamingtech.com/tomb-raider-definitive-edition-playstation-4-vs-pc-graphics-analysis/). By the time I realized there's a Definitive Edition, I had already sunk 2.5 hours into the game (no Steam refund and there's also no transfer of game saves). Oh well. At least, the differences are significantly noticeable (Definitive Edition was released in January 2014 when game was released in March 2013) and the PC benefits from context-switching by browsing the web and preserving the game save as PC is more universal than consoles.\n\nI played on Normal difficulty. This seems more canonical where this game is more for the adventure and seamless fun factor of the cinema---rather than the challenge which can halt pacing. I completed the game in 13 hours and 83% completion. I completed all Tombs as they're a premiere part of the game and also give weapon upgrades. I did not collect all collectibles. I did not play multiplayer.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tomb-raider-the-angel-of-darkness"},{"id":"322682678652447308","title":"Tomb Raider: Anniversary","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2007,"playtimeMinutes":750,"platforms":["OnLive","PS3","PC","Mac","PSP","X360","PS2"],"studios":["Buzz Monkey Software","Crystal Dynamics"],"publishers":["Feral Interactive","Eidos Interactive","Square Enix","Crystal Dynamics"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Simulator","Strategy","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-07-04","completedDate":"2019-07-14","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Platforming, switches, moving blocks, deadly traps, the occasional physical enemy outside the environment. These elements are what define (old-school) Tomb Raider. I really enjoy these elements with the exception of puzzles in dungeons, which I personally find tedious. (I just followed along with a video walkthrough for the last two dungeon sets. It let me purely enjoy the platforming while not thinking too much about the sometimes convoluted puzzles.) Combat is also not good, and the Anniversary version is rife with bugs. Camera angles and some frustrating platforming at times can really hamper the experience.\n\n__Story.__ It actually exists a bit more than the sparse original version. It's still rather banal and nonexistent. Serviceable at best.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I love the platforming aspect, and where the enemy is more often traversing the environment with its variety of traps than physical enemies like in generic action-adventures. Anniversary also cleaned up the controls of the original clunky game. It added new animations which made platforming (specifically, parkouring) and exploring dungeons to be a treat. Specific ideas like weaving back and forth to gain more momentum in a jump, and holding down the Jump button to jump farther, adds to the tension.\n\nPlaying this, I can't tell how much to rate it based on any innovations that the original game in 1996 did that helped start tropes for the action-adventure genre---at the same time as Super Mario 64. I don't know even know what those innovations: for example, 3D third-person shooter in dungeon crawling with puzzles; parkour platforming; checkpoint system; interact button for the catch-all actions and animations; great graphics at the time; quick time events. Playing it now, like many classic 3D games, it has clunky controls and camera. It's primarily a platformer with puzzle and only with some combat however, so this wasn't a dealbreaker.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Gamebreaking at the time, but really bad now.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Tomb Raider: Anniversary is one of the first games to sport secret collectibles which rewards exploration. It also shows up in the Croft Manor as your achievement and in Anniversary offers new outfits, character bios, and art galleries.\n+ Minimal HUD.\n+ Croft Manor. Fun place to explore and toy with the butler.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ The ending with the mercenary enemies is surpisingly more brutal than I expected..\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Combat is really bad. It's very easy to cheese enemies where they suddenly stop moving and you just shoot them until they die.\n+ Autocenter camera. Annoying and often clashes with player's manual control leading to a jittery camera as they fight back-and-forth.\n+ I don't know if it's incompability with Windows 10 and modern drivers. But the game is quite buggy. Some are cosmetic, like Lara's hair tail acting as if it were its own entity. But some really bad like game crashes, a jittery camera, clipping through areas so you can't land jumps, or have pillars be unremovable with the grapple until you turn on V-sync.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/tomb-raider-anniversary/\n\nI chose this as my first Tomb Raider game (https://www.reddit.com/r/TombRaider/comments/32o601/which_tomb_raider_game_should_i_play_first/). I played Tomb Raider 2 (or was it 3?) in my childhood, but I really only played in the mansion with the butler. I never made it past the first zone. I also watched that film with Angelina Jolie. It's a faithful rehaul of the first game and also serves as the first game to the first of two Tomb Raider reboots. From here, I can decide to continue with the next two games in the first reboot trilogy (Legend, then Underworld) or start the second trilogy with Tomb Raider (2013). I decided against starting with the second trilogy as it plays very differently from what makes Tomb Raider iconic, focusing more on action-adventure with a cinematic story and gunplay similar to Uncharted; this would bias my experience of the rest of Tomb Raider, which is more based on exploration and puzzle-solving within the tombs. I played it on controller.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tomb-raider-anniversary"},{"id":"340110699265000015","title":"Trombone Champ","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PC","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["Holy Wow Studios"],"publishers":["Holy Wow Studios"],"genres":["Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-08-01","completedDate":"2022-08-01","updatedDate":"2022-08-16","notes":"Watched Soda play this, then Lirik, then Daph. This is a hilarious game and surprisingly challenging for its meme tier songs.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/trombone-champ"},{"id":"322682678650402380","title":"Ultrakill","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Arsi \"Hakita\" Patala"],"publishers":["New Blood Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2020-09-03","completedDate":"2020-09-04","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"This game preserves the intensity of Doom games, particularly Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal. It has a handful of simple, well-purposed weapons alongside unique enemy types and bosses. The unlimited ammo and lack of reloading makes the game focus even more on the gunplay as there's less resource management with just health and stamina. Quake graphics. Boss battles are more frequent than Doom (which is great), and much more epic. Core mechanics are Doom-like: no sprint, dash, no reload, keys.\n\nThe game's opener with the music and presentation of HUD is excellent.\n\nMy only nit is that the weapons, and enemy types, don't encourage weapon swapping as much as Doom and Doom Eternal do. There is some incentive, but it's mostly based on current distance to enemy as well as cooldowns such as the pistol's chargeshot. Soundtrack is also somewhat stale mid to end game. Something also feels off with the shotgun. I would rather the railgun do less damage and be off cooldown, acting similar to Doom's Gauss Cannon.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ultrakill"},{"id":"322682678652445260","title":"Uncharted 2: Among Thieves","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":630,"platforms":["PS3"],"studios":["Naughty Dog"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-07-16","completedDate":"2019-07-18","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Uncharted 2 is a refinement of the original game, improving the cinematic experience with a more compelling story, added characters, and excellent visual set pieces as stages within the game. Combat is slightly improved---particularly with an added stealth element---and more variety to the gameplay exists beyond the original game's tendency to have wave-after-wave of fighting enemies. Combat/platforming is clearly not what makes Uncharted an excellent series, but it is decent enough to enjoy the overall cinematic experience.\n\n__Story.__ Standard fanfare story again with a generic character. Character dynamics shine through most though (but not technically that interesting as uninspired characters). I like the additional of another female main character. The dynamics work well among Nathan, Elena, and Chloe. Having the protagonist be a mid-20s to 30 year old and play sexual and exgirlfriend jokes makes the game feel more mature. Like the gameplay, the story also changes setting and accompanying characters often to not get old.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Most noticeable improvement to the gameplay are occasional stealth elements. It doesn't make it easy to go full stealth since options are limited and signs of enemy awareness are few. But it adds diversity to Uncharted 1's monotonous gunplay. There are also slight upgrades like the melee system to press triangle whenever enemies deflect your Square spam. It's still not all that great, but it's decent to keep the gameplay with platforming and gunplay/stealth as you learn more about the story. Redditors agree and is the most popular criticism of the series (https://www.reddit.com/r/uncharted/comments/7veze1/playing_uncharted_3_again_and_wow_what_happened/). This is why Uncharted plays best on easier difficuties where the gameplay’s occasionally frustrating and tedious moments become a lot fewer.\n\nGameplay is impressively varied as the story demands it so you don't get bored. For example, running from a car trying to mow you down. Two helicopter fights, one RPG-based and another anti-air. One tank. Carrying around a limping guy. Explicit stealth scenes. Explicit confrontation scenes. A drive-by scene. Sniper scene.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ It's clear that Uncharted 2 was designed with brilliant visual set pieces, starting from the very first scene of scaling a train off the edge of a cliff. Also notable is climbing the giant golden statue. The urban city levels are especially astounding in diversity and layout. Also the Tibetan village. Uncharted 2 easily shines through most here. Graphics look a lot better than Uncharted 1 and even feel like a modern game in 2019. For example, the face model graphics are less noticeably non-modern. The sprawling environments also are rich in content even if their detailing is not as modern.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Like the last game, I like that all chapters are continuously integrated. Makes it extremely easy to just rush through the game.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Stealth is funny in this game. By design, certain scenes are constructed to be confrontation-based. Even for areas with optional stealth, it's difficult to get all enemies stealthwise unless you're willing to wait a very long time to cycle their patrols and use the very limited options to you. Many levels do not enable progression without killing all enemies---as opposed to the stealth standard of just bypassing them. All enemies alert at the immediate sound of a gun regardless of distance; same goes for enemies that spot you. That said, I like that the checkpoint system effectively encourages a hybrid of stealth followed by going Rambo as you soon as you're caught instead of just restarting.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ I think the idea of a white guy saved by a rural Tibetan village. And then it demolished, is classic whitewashed bullshit. This is Anglocentric to the extreme.\n+ As per the last game, the amount of henchman, and the location of the henchman are impressively stupid. It's like an entire army is against them.\n+ The difficulty curve for fights in Chapter 25 is way too high. Way steeper than previous games.\n+ Certain sublevels to get through areas are nonintuitive and/or tedious.\n+ There's at least 6 dangling off the cliff scenes.. What a cliche shot.\n+ There are no zombies, but the supernatural version of beast-humans in this title is still kind of dumb that they exist.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/uncharted-2-among-thieves\n\nI did not play multiplayer.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/uncharted-2-among-thieves"},{"id":"322682678652444236","title":"Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["PS3"],"studios":["Naughty Dog"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-07-18","completedDate":"2019-07-19","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Uncharted 3 is effectively another Uncharted 2. It's an excellent cinematic action-adventure with brilliant visual set pieces, diverse gameplay situations, and a diverse level design as the characters travel to select regions in the world for the next step of some conspiracy. Set pieces and level environment this turn around are even more astounding varying from jungles to urban sprawls to deserts to the lost city of Ubar.\n\nUnfortunately, Uncharted 3 doesn't add anything new to the series aside from improved CQC mechanics. Like Uncharted 2, it also focuses perhaps too much on a collection of amazing set pieces rather than a tight, cohesive narrative. This makes it harder to follow along why so many set pieces could plausibly happen in one story: burning chateau; sinking freightor; airplane crash; hallucination scenes in Yemen; wandering a desert; horseback chase; destruction of a lost city (https://www.reddit.com/r/uncharted/comments/8kl8qn/spoiler_uncharted_3_is_actually_better_than_2/dz92jtk/). It's perhaps this over-the-topness and emphasis on set pieces that makes me enjoy Uncharted 3 more than Uncharted 2; the story was never that interesting to begin with so I care less that all these set pieces make the story less cohesive.\n\n__Story.__ I actually really like the story this time around. It's still fairly trope-heavy with a generic mercenary evil organization. But it felt executed much better than the previous titles, particularly in providing more depth into Nate and Sully's relationship. I like the addition of the side character Charlie Cutter. Most apparently flaw-wise, I did not even know Nathan and Elena had married and were separated as an ongoing drama conflict in the story! The interactions with Elena were overall very limited leading to little depth.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Like the rest of the series, its gameplay strengths are its seamless integration into the story and wide variety of different scenes. Notable in this title for example are the hallucination scene; and the chase. The abduction scene reminds me of the setup in Metal Gear Solid. Not as cool as escaping MGS' prison cell and facing torture though.\n\nThe only addition to gameplay is CQC, which is more intricate with a counter move and more animations. It also features more often in the story starting from the very first scene to the last boss.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Excellent as usual and just the same as Uncharted 2. The Uncharted series is explicitly designed with visually and technically astounding set pieces in mind, and that's no more apparent than in Uncharted 3. This time, it's London, a chateau in France (with a burning scene!), Yemen, a shipyard with a sinking freightor, flying off an airplane, a desert, and a lost city.\n\nOverall, Uncharted like many games has a tendency to exhibit a diverse collection of environments for levels by showing completely different countries and subregions in the world. This often feels forced to make the story shoehorn to capture all of them. It also makes the collection of areas overall forgettable. For example, I can't easily recall the main areas that defines where the adventure of Uncharted 1, 2, and 3 took place. I'd much rather a title focus on a specific area, say, New York in Marvel's Spider-Man. Then dig deep into expanding the culture, subareas of the city/region, and further.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Hints, which as in all Uncharted games help keep the game from breaking pace and resorting to walkthroughs as you get stuck too long on a puzzle.\n+ For once, there are no supernatural beings. You do fight a supernatural enemy but it's restricted to one chapter and only the result of a hallucinogen.\n\nI did not play multiplayer.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/uncharted-3-drake-s-deception"},{"id":"322682678650339916","title":"Unreal","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":600,"startedDate":"2021-02-06","completedDate":"2021-02-08","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Unreal was released at a unique point in FPS history, as one of the final titles in the Doom-Quake trend and overshadowed by the cinematic linear FPS trend started by Half-Life on the same year. Evaluated standalone, Unreal stands out in its atmosphere, iconic weaponry, graphics, enemy AI, and strong core Doom/Quake gameplay with movement, level design, and enemy variety. Gone are the artificially designed corridor shooter and arcade elements of Doom/Quake, and in are atmosphere and a mix of indoor corridor and outdoor environments. Unreal's weakest part is its occasionally confusing level designs with convoluted solutions that can hamper the game's momentum. This happened too often at every level or every other level which lowered my overall enjoyment as I had to reference a walkthrough.\n\n__Story.__ Effectively Doom and Quake-level of storytelling, which is bare none. However, you do pick up a lot of lore as you explore the world and examine assets with the Universal Translator. Particularly notable in the world is the mix of both indoor corridor shooter like Quake and outdoor settings.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Overall gunplay is like Quake and Doom, and with navigation and a focus on only a handful of enemies to fight as a trendsetter before Half-Life. Its level design is cinematic with realism: the areas are atmospheric and more realistic than the synthetic creations that you'd often see in Doom levels. You even navigate areas in levels devoid of many enemies, and where enemies you do fight are often single in number. I find the raw gunplay very fun with a diverse weapon variety, enemy variety, projectile/hitscan, and ammo management. Enemy AI is surprisingly intelligent, particularly in dodging your projectile attacks. Also notable are the shaman aliens who if protected can open you secret areas for extra items.\n\nIt may have been the Medium difficulty I played, but I found the game very forgiving in both health restores and ammo unlike Doom and Quake. As long as you cycle through your weapons with the most ammo, you never run out.\n\nI love the unique weaponry in Unreal. They vary in art style as well as projectile and hitscan variety. For example, Dispersion Pistol, Razor Jack, Bio Rifle. It does run into the typical issue with Doom/Quake titles in that although there's significant weapon variety, a few of the early weapons aren't ever used as you accumulate the more powerful weapons (e.g., Rifle > ASMD > Automag; Flak Cannon and Minigun > Stinger). By the midgame, I only used 5 weapons: Eightball, Flak Cannon, Razorjack, GES Biorifle, Rifle, and Minigun. Personally, it wasn't until Doom (2016) (and especially Doom Eternal) where the entire weapon variety was really used. You still do experience specific enemies encouraging you to use certain weapons in this game as well as Doom/Quake titles: e.g. based on range, Eightball's AOE splash damage, or ASMD's hitscan to avoid the enemies that dodge projectiles.\n\nLike Quake, the sandbox level design can get annoying when you get stuck in a level, losing all your momentum in enjoying the raw gameplay as you get lost wandering around a level trying to find the knob you didn't quite hit or the corner you missed. Some are particularly convoluted in Unreal. For example, wandering the water mazes in Chizra - Nali Water God; or the entrance unlock to Dark Arena; or navigating the vertical and horizontal maze of lifts in Sunspire; or the knob behind the bar in Na Pali Haven; or the right underwater tunnels to traverse in Bluff Eversmoking; the arbitrary slant you must go down in Dasa Mountain Pass. What makes this even more cumbersome is that controls like door unlocks can be relocked if you hit the control again; and some controls are timed. It would be so much simpler if hitting the control always kept it open. Unfortunately, Unreal was right before the revolution of linear level designs that Half-Life started.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ As one of the earliest 3D games, the game doesn't necessarily age well with blocky textures and empty space. With that said, the lighting and overall atmosphere is quite brilliant particularly with the Direct 3D 11 renderer. The music rocks. I also really like the beheading and enemy corpse explosion animations.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Universal translator. Gives you lore similar to System Shock as you navigate the world.\n+ Monster infighting like Doom.\n+ Quicksave/quickload hotkeys like Doom.\n+ This must be one of the earliest games where you play a female character, and the female character isn't sexualized.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Like Quake and unlike Doom, Unreal doesn't have a Use key, instead automatically using when close.\n+ No real secret areas like Doom and Quake.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Item inventory is a chore to navigate and keep track of. I would rather it not exist. I only really used the Universal Translator and Flare/Flashlight/Searchlight. Light sources also aren't reusable, so I tend to not use it. I prefer Half-Life's approach of a dedicated flashlight key.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Unreal Gold 4K Textures + DX11 [03.11.2020]](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2276457084)\n\n+ [Unreal weapon guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=873237746)\n+ [Unreal wiki with level walkthrough](https://unreal.fandom.com/wiki/Unreal_Single_player)\n\nI played the Unreal Gold version on Steam (but this entry does not include the Return to Na Pali expansion), on Medium difficulty, and remapped some controls for modern settings (e.g., WASD). I played with the [OldUnreal 227i patch](https://www.oldunreal.com) to support modern Windows, extra renders, bug fixes, etc., and which is apparently endorsed by Epic themselves after official support ended; and with the [Unreal DirectX11 Renderer v1.6.1](https://www.moddb.com/mods/unreal-directx11-renderer-for-ut-ug-rune-and-dx) to play in high-resolution, widescreen, Direct3D 11, and beyond the 30 FPS cap. Borderless Gaming doesn't work to convert the windowed version to borderless, but turning the taskbar to auto-hide works fine enough: you still see the window title. The HUD is also too small, not scaled properly for the high resolution. I deliberately chose not to play with HD textures to experience the vanilla game."},{"id":"322682678652682828","title":"Unreal Tournament","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":660,"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"As a kid I did not nearly appreciate this game as much as it influenced the industry. I was never super into FPS at the time so I picked it up for a few weeks and then dropped it."},{"id":"322682678651406924","title":"Until Dawn","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Relic Entertainment"],"publishers":["THQ","Feral Interactive"],"genres":["Real Time Strategy (RTS)","Strategy"],"startedDate":"2020-03-21","completedDate":"2020-03-21","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Until Dawn has a trite but well-paced and polished story with gripping horror elements and dialogue-based and QTE gameplay.\n\n__Story.__ It plays like any other 80s teen B-rated slasher camp, and one that doesn't take itself that seriously.  All the tropes throughout the story are almost hamfisted, but it still works because of camp. And surprisingly they actually all explain it instead of having it as plot holes. I’m impressed not by the story that goes bananas, but the story’s pacing. It slowly leaves out clues, letting you try to figure out what’s going on with the mystery man; the banshee; the ghost helping them from the Seance and the dollhouse and poltergeist activities; the paint and fake newspapers; the flamethrower guy in Chapter 7. Indian rituals and miner backstory. The weirdly specific early death with Josh, one of the key protagonists and acted by one of the most mainstream stars in the cast Rami Malek. I’m in chapter 5. Mystery man has got to be Josh!\n\nThe illusion of choice. Always a fun storytelling technique. That’s how I feel with traits/relationship status numbers. And the death sequences, as if there’s a major impact on the story. Any character who could've died from a previous segment has a largely irrelevant role for the rest of the story.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Character traits and relationship status HUD is fun. I like the various interactive controls. For example, swiping on the controller’s sensor bar; or not moving the controller to stay still. The butterfly effect icon (reminds me of Telltale’s signature “Your action has made a deep impact on X’s thoughts.” The Don’t Move sequence in the finale is so epic.\n\nThe style with the Architect building on your fears. The unknown of how it affects the story.\n\nThe totem mechanic. I love the foreshadowing! This definitely keeps me on edge when playing different characters.\n\nI think quick time events are fine. It’s a bit dubious however when they’re mixed with this type of gameplay where you can’t replay any actions if you make a mistake. This can add to tension, but oftentimes it just adds to annoyance because it’s a button you have to press: there’s no skill involved and it can happen at any moment.\n\nThere's quite a few jump scares that I'm okay with given its camp.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I like the cinematic style, with options like Telltale. Fixed camera angles Resident Evil style. The motion capture was good overall save for the occasional dead eyes in the CGI.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ The bonus content that goes into the making of the game. Reminds me of Blu-Ray/DVD extras for movies. I liked their \"science of fear\" approach to collect biometric data to determine what scares. I can imagine this being particularly helpful after you've seen a scary scene a million times and are no longer sure what the response would be like.\n+ Sometimes the best choice is to not make a choice. This adds ambiguity, where sometimes you don't want to \"win\" the QTE.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://until-dawn.fandom.com/wiki\n\nI only looked at walkthroughs after completing the game. I went through the Until Dawn wiki to get a better sense of the depth and branching paths of differing choices; and what the mechanics actually mean. In my playthrough, Matt was the only one to have died. I also got 80-90% of all clues/totems. I cheated a few sequences to make sure people survived, e.g., the last sequence with Sam. I completed the game in one sitting.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/warhammer-40-000-dawn-of-war-ii"},{"id":"322682678651443788","title":"Untitled Goose Game","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PS4","PC","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["House House"],"publishers":["Panic"],"genres":["Puzzle","Simulator","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-10-07","completedDate":"2019-10-07","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Untitled Goose Game is an inventive stealth-puzzle game. Love the sumptuous visuals, animation, and village setting. On-action piano rolls is on par. Love the asshole playful narrative. Love the mechanics which allow you to play as a sneaky asshole (e.g., quacking, grabbing items from their hand).\n\nThe controls with mouse clicks for movement and picking items is imprecise (did not try a controller). A few puzzles are also rather abstract and are puzzles in and of itself to find out what to complete them. I'm not personally a fan of this as I just odn't like puzzles in games.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/untitled-goose-game"},{"id":"322682678623080012","title":"Vampire Survivors","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Poncle"],"publishers":["Poncle"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-01-14","completedDate":"2022-01-25","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"What an addictive game for such a simple and solo dev experience. Vampire Survivor nails the two core elements well: ability progression and horde waves.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Enemies are fairly monotonous in just doing melee damage primarily. It's about the amount and maintaining your DPS as the time survival clock goes up.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Castlevania borrowed pixel art. Surprisingly works well.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Upgrade chart](https://www.reddit.com/r/VampireSurvivors/comments/s5fgqd/made_this_combo_upgrade_chart_for_vampire)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/vampire-survivors"},{"id":"322682678652764748","title":"Visage","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PS4","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["SadSquare Studio"],"publishers":["SadSquare Studio"],"genres":["Puzzle","Simulator","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-04-15","completedDate":"2022-04-15","updatedDate":"2024-09-05","notes":"Visages excels in ambient horror, with a focus on lighting, sound, and jump scares only appearing after a slow playthrough that immerses you. The game's at its most terrifying when you're exploring its dark corridors, managing light to battle your sanity and hearing creepy auditory sounds. As of writing, it's been of my most horrifying experiences alongside Amnesia Dark Descent, P.T., and Silent Hill.\n\nUnfortunately, the game is hampered by two major flaws: poor guidance on where to go next, leading to a frustrating experience that can take you out of the immersion and have you resort to walkthroughs; and a clunky inventory system.\n\nChapter 3 is the last chapter but the most linear, straightforward, and not as scary. It doesn't have much candle, lighter, and lights management, and should serve as the first chapter, not the last. I found Chapter 1 to easily be the best in level exploration and horror, particularly in managing lights while navigating the basement. Chapter 2 had its moments, but the finding and sequencing of mirror puzzles is too annoying.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Visage uses a sanity mechanic like Amnesia, and with item consumables for inventory management such as lighters, pills, and lightbulbs.\n\nSome of the puzzles solutions are arbitrary, and getting lost and needing to resort to a walkthrough is perhaps Visage's biggest flaw. It's never clear when something is solvable, and when you should wait later (e.g., Chapter 1's dark room full of closets, Chapter 2's picking up the slippers, Chapter 2's mirror room, Chapter 2's destroying mirrors with the sledgehammer and their locations, Chapter 2's park in using a compass and digging up an open grave).\n\nThe dynamic inventory is another of Visage's flaws. It's tedious to store items, manage in the inventory, examine items, and equip items in your left and right hands.\n\nAdvanced gameplay involves knowing the location of all the light switches so you can easily turn them on when they turn off during random exploration. And the location of spawn points for dynamic items, the lighters especially. It's also worth knowing that pills are only needed in dark areas where you're running away. If in safety you can just recover sanity by staying underneath a light.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Decent graphics. Unity engine/indie-generic is sufficient. Audio and focus on environmental sounds for horror-building are excellent. The character models and budget animation throws you out of the immersion though.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The linear scripted scenes whenever you no longer have control of your character aren't nearly as scary as the ambience during exploration. It's a good change of pace I suppose.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Poor sequencing of chapters. In terms of horror, it's 3 < 2 < 1; in terms of linearity and ease of level progression, it's 3 < 1 < 2; in terms of overall quality, it's 3 < 2 < 1.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Neoseeker walkthrough](https://www.neoseeker.com/visage-2020/walkthrough)\n\nI first saw Visage by watching Vigors do a playthrough on Sodapoppin's stream in August 2020. I played the chapters in release order: Lucy, Dolores, Rakan. Instead of playing Rakan, I got bored and decided to watch Sodapoppin.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/visage"},{"id":"322682678624133708","title":"VRChat","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":15420,"platforms":["Meta Quest 2","Android","PC","iOS","Steam VR","?"],"studios":["VRChat Inc."],"publishers":["VRChat Inc."],"genres":["Simulator","Sport","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-11-07","completedDate":"2021-11-26","updatedDate":"2022-02-05","notes":"\n__Gameplay.__ Trusted user rank. You can favorite avatars and worlds.\n\nThe amount of user customization in avatar creation, world creation, and mods is what keeps the game to be so replayable. Availability across PC and VR headset platforms.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The cartoon graphics age well.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Interestingly, just a single purchase (1 month subscription) of VRChat Plus immediately boosts you from Visitor to User rank.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Limited microphone settings, including ability to test it and basic options such as Discord's noise cancellation.\n+ No toggle sprint option, or at least an animation to show if you holding Sprint is even moving faster.\n+ There are options to set to (borderless) full screen and change the resolution, but [it's rather opaque](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1240103533).\n","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/vrchat"},{"id":"322682678652683852","title":"Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":1080,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"publishers":["Blizzard Entertainment","Capcom","Sierra Entertainment"],"genres":["Real Time Strategy (RTS)","Strategy"],"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2004-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/warcraft-iii-the-frozen-throne"},{"id":"cc297d72-d7f6-48f4-b98f-4e6543d96c16","title":"Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Auroch Digital"],"publishers":["Focus Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2023-05-28","completedDate":"2023-06-30","updatedDate":"2023-06-30","notes":"Warhammer 40K Boltgun is a solid Doom shooter in Warhammer's setting. On top of the new setting, the guns are refashioned to fit Space Marines and work excellently. Enemies are great. Level design uses the standard Doom approach of linear sequence of levels with some exploration via secrets and keys to unlock new areas.\n\nExterminatus difficulty is brutal. Plague toad requires 2 shots at close range from shotgun. This makes a lot of close range movement not viable and can make the game less of an aggressive shooter as you need to start peeking from cover. Chainsword is also not that viable because it doesn't usually kill enemies. Doom Eternal's Ultra Nightmare does this well because it gives you the ability to be extremely aggressive and regain health through that aggression. I view the glorykill mechanic as an essential upgrade to the Doom formula.\n\nThe game is more manageable when you don't necessarily treat it like Doom 2016/Eternal when you can run into the thicket of an area, kill a zone of enemies, then regenerate health. Here, there's still a bit of corner peeking and playing defensively, especially since enemies don't move that quickly if you play defensive. So the core combat loop is often to kill enemies near you, and then to slowly inch your way to clear more space. Sometimes finding cover.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nSound effects are excellent. Guns feel weighty and have chunky shooting effects, you feel weighty when running. Soundtrack is appropriately a mix of Doom metal and futuristic vibes.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Boltgun is easily the best assault rifle implementation. Usually assault rifles in Doomlikes are high fire rate but  too weak to find a use over the standard arsenal of shotguns, sniper rifles, etc.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Lord of Change's Pink Hellfire attack is too powerful. It's very difficult to tell when it's channeling the move, and while I'm OK with the attack being undodgeable, it's not broadcasted well when the move is starting. Furthermore, once it starts it is effectively instant KO on Exterminatus difficulty, making for a frustrating experience.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI stopped playing around the middle of Chapter 2. It felt roughly the same.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/warhammer-40000-boltgun"},{"id":"61637f4e-b7c3-43ea-9667-2b03fa1ef6ae","title":"Warhammer 40,000: Darktide","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":1740,"platforms":["PC","XONE","Series X"],"studios":["Fatshark"],"publishers":["Fatshark"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-11-17","completedDate":"2022-12-04","updatedDate":"2025-07-01","notes":"Excellent core gameplay. Darktide uniquely nails the mix of ranged and melee combat. It's everything else unfortunately where Darktide falls flat.\n\nMany flaws:\n\n+ No crafting at launch, which is crucial for endgame. Relying on a randomly stocked shop every hour is significantly worse than a loot box rewarded based on achievements per game. This has improved as of 2024.\n+ Lack of weapon variety and class variety. Class design is also not as interesting as in Vermintide 2 (e.g., 2 classes just have a charge ability).\n+ Level design is bland and all the maps blend together visually. There's the same number of missions as base VT2 but they reuse areas for multiple maps.\n+ Server instability and game performance/optimization. I get frame dips constantly and the game is only playable at low settings everywhere. The game also crashes occasionally, which can be especially annoying if you're near the end of a game and can't reconnect in time.\n+ Secondary objectives for exploration in a map are poorly designed. Weekly contracts as a whole are far too grindy, requiring roughly 30-40 hours to complete on all characters.\n+ Monetization from the predatory store, more so than VT2 due to the emphasis on grind and player engagement. Especially terrible is the reliance on a time-based shop refresh.\n\nOverall, agree with [this Reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/zk3d5h/comment/izxoanp/). This game is worth revisiting in a year or two. Hopefully then it’ll be as amazing as I had experienced Vermintide 2.\n\n__Story.__ Story is more pronounced with cutscenes.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nMost notable as a sequel to Vermintide 2, Darktide features significantly more ranged combat aiming for a 50/50 split of melee and ranged. To combat ranged enemies, Darktide introduces the Toughness mechanic, which effectively serves as replenishable buffer health. It's like THP in that it regenerates from attack enemies but also regenerates from being around your team.\n\nMedi-packs and ammo crates are no longer single items but placed down for the full team. This is similar to Deep Rock Galactic's approach in order to further improve camraderie.\n\nMelee mechanics are the same as Vermintide 2 with light and heavy chains, block, block attack, and dodge. Some melee and ranged movesets are in fact the exact same.\n\nSkill tree system is same as Vermintide 2.\n\nInventory uses primary and secondary weapon like Vermintide 2. Curios are effectively the necklace, charm, and trinket.\n\nCorruption health. Similar to Back 4 Blood, and which can be rehealed only at certain stations. It also borrows B4B's idea of random conditions in levels.\n\nI like the RPG elements in your background selection. They add to the immersion and dynamic dialogue. It's a shame they have no gameplay effect and are largely forgotten about.\n\nThere's no equipment loot box system. Endgame-wise, I greatly prefer Darktide's grinding for mats to upgrade items over Vermintide 2's random loot for the appropriate red item type. Even if the expected time to get an optimized loadout is the same, I greatly prefer Darktide's guaranteed loot progression. Nevertheless, you still have to fish for a high item level gray item though.\n\nThe levels I've played are very samey. Colors aren't as varied as Vermintide 2. There are even reused areas in certain levels. Level objectives are largely the same, such as scan assets with the Servo-skull or purge the demonic infestations.\n\n[RNG shop system is not fun](https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/yzli28/rng_shop_is_not_fun). I even prefer loot boxes. Nothing should be based on a wait/time system.\n\nNew to Darktide, there are now dedicated servers. This solves one of biggest issues with Vermintide 2 where games can often crash due to, say, host lag or ragequitting, and ping being extremely high. Even with normal gameplay you would play at around 100 ms ping. Finally, you can reconnect to a game session (e.g., due to disconnection).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I like the new environments. Lots of animations inherited from Vermintide 2.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Unlike Vermintide 2, you finally spectate a player in first-person, not third-person.\n+ Consumables like health and ammo are shared across the party, not used per person. This makes for less greedy behavior. But it makes using of such resources only worth it when multiple are low. There's less altruistic behavior like giving someone your health pot.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Anyone can play any class. There's no restriction to a unique career per player on a level like in Vermintide 2.\n+ You can no longer ping items inside a chest before opening it.\n+ Clutch potential with 1 person is more difficult than in Vermintide 2 due to all the ranged enemies.\n+ Lack of potion consumable like Vermintide 2.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Unlike Vermintide 2, currencies, items, and even weekly contracts are set per character and not shared account wide. This makes for way too much grinding. The 25 mission weekly challenge for example takes roughly 8.5 hours at 20 minutes a game, discounting failed missions, and is per character. In Darktide, there's even more shared weapons so it doesn't make sense for them to be separate. It's too much forced engagement. It also has an insidious effect on gameplay: you're encouraged to specialize and you're less able to change classes at will to better fit a certain team's composition or a level.\n+ No scoreboard.\n+ Little to no clutch potential. If three teammates are down, there’s very little chance the last teammate can save due to the reliance on Coherency for toughness regeneration, Vermintide 2 makes for many gripping moments as the last player can make or break the game by carrying everyone if they’re good enough. I think that solo potential makes for higher skill ceilings.\n+ Lack of enough sound cues. Ragers have no sound like the berserkers in VT2. There's also no consistent sound if a enemy is behind you and about to strike. (Rager is resolved on launch.)\n+ Classes aren't as visually distinguishable as they are in Vermintide 2. This means it's harder to tell which class each person is, which can be important sometimes when you're assessing people's abilities to give items to for example.\n+ No emotes. No Yes/No as part of the social wheel, which are used so often. They should also have a spammable voice line like \"For the Emperor!\" to build camaraderie like Deep Rock Galactic. Similarly, you can't ping everything you'd like to, e.g., deployed med kits. Or tell people to pick something up. Or \"come here!\". Social wheel is also slower, so you can't, say, think in the middle of combat.\n+ Grimoires are poorly balanced, with 1 taking more than 50% of your max HP. The incentive isn't even as worth it as there's no loot box system like Vermintide 2.\n+ There are no keyboard shortcuts to access the various menus in the hub.\n+ You can't chat during loading screens like Vermintide 2.\n+ Plasteel and diamontite containers are per player. Why? That encourages selfish behavior..\n+ There's a cap on the amount of weekly contracts you can reset. This sucks particularly since so many contracts are so bad (e.g., 6 secondary objectives in a specific level, 25 missions, 10+ grimoires or scriptures).\n+ No menu to see other players' level, their build, and items.\n+ You can't select what mission to play. Like the shop, you can only pick from a random selection.\n+ Things eventually resolved:\n  + The game shows if your teammate is carrying an item, but that curiously excludes scriptures. No grenade counter too. (Resolved a few days before beta ended.)\n  + Dodge reset timer is too long, significantly higher than Vermintide 2 despite ranged enemies meaning dodging is even more important here. (Resolved on launch)\n  + Lack of explained weapon stats. It's like they pushed further into VT2's reliance on community spreadsheets for breakpoint calculations. (Resolved on launch)\n  + Chip damage while with Toughness is annoying, especially for Zealot's incentive to be low HP. Toughness should be treated like Vermintide 2's temporary HP. (Resolved on launch)\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Steam: Crafting and Item Levels Guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3059248596). I compiled this myself.\n+ [Games Lantern: Builds](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds)\n+ [What 3500+ Hours of Darktide Looks Like](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p65s6iiowE)\n\nI played on release. I got all 4 classes to level 30.\n\nI revisited the game on 2023-10-15. The class overhaul with talent trees was recently released.\n\nNew changes I like:\n\n+ Crafting currency loot is shared across team members. No greedy pickups now, finally.\n+ Quickplay option. Further, it gives a 10-20% bonus instead of selecting one of the provided missions.\n+ Talent tree. Enables far more build customization and variety.\n+ An account wallet instead of character wallet. Finally, just like in Vermintide 2 your currency is shared across characters. However, weekly rewards and equipment still aren't shared across characters.\n+ Some new levels and weapons.\n+ Small talk among the party members. It's a nice feature from Vermintide to add to the immersion.\n\nChanges I don't like:\n\n+ Mouse sensitivity seemed to reset randomly ([discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/16yxgbc/make_sure_to_reset_your_mouse_sensitivity), [2](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1361210/discussions/0/3904116162873588473)). Turns out there's different sensitivity for different settings, and you need to tune the sensitivity for all of them.\n\nMods:\n\n+ [Scoreboard](https://www.nexusmods.com/warhammer40kdarktide/mods/22)\n+ [Better Melk](https://www.nexusmods.com/warhammer40kdarktide/mods/71)\n+ [Book Finder](https://www.nexusmods.com/warhammer40kdarktide/mods/121)\n+ [Armoury Exchange](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/armoury-exchange/hcjihmkcnjkfkaeebhnpjcnnibpoolgc) Chrome extension, which lets you view your armoury shop on the web. Sort by \"Modifiers Rating\" in order to easily spot the 370+ base items in green.\n\n__Builds and items.__\n\n+ Curio\n  + Perks: Usual ones to go for are Toughness Regeneration Speed, Toughness, Health, and Damage Resistance (Gunners / Snipers).\n+ Veteran ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/13zhl0d/best_overall_gun_for_veteran))\n  + Builds: [Lasgun team build](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9a4d581a-cc36-4853-ae57-8552cf5e5e65/recon-lasgun-allrounder)\n  + Melee\n  + Ranged\n    + Kantrael MG XII Infantry Lasgun\n    + Locke Mk IIb Spearhead Boltgun\n+ Zealot ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/16guzau/zealot_with_combat_blade_which_blessings_to_take))\n  + Builds: [Crit build](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9a54aeb0-2b72-4eb8-9f74-2548c74d8157/zecrit), [Chorus build](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9a7bee4a-4d6e-4ebd-bbfc-967bbf7c13c4/saltzpyre)\n  + Melee\n    + Tigrus Mk II Heavy Eviscerator\n    + Combat Blade: Lacerate; Uncanny or Mercy Killer\n  + Ranged\n    + Zarona Mk IIa Quickdraw Stub Revolver\n+ Psyker ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/12irwa6/best_blessings_for_psyker_staves_and_force_swords), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/12irwa6/best_blessings_for_psyker_staves_and_force_swords))\n  + Builds: [Voidstrike Force Crit build](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9a6db1dc-0cf3-4d96-8306-be5f753e7767/voidstrike-force-crit-build), [Assail build](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9a5bb8a6-6593-4e77-8f40-a4cbc6e2bb70/psyker-assail-crit-build-t5)\n  + Melee\n    + Force Sword: Slaughter; Unstable Power\n  + Ranged\n    + Voidstrike Force staff: Transfer Peril; Warp Flurry or Warp Nexus\n+ Ogryn\n  + Builds: [Melee DPS build](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9a4ee813-e7a5-4cbf-94bd-b04e96b12c5e/bullknight-the-crusher-crusher)\n  + Melee\n  + Ranged\n\ntodos\n\n+ iamactuallygood: 2 +17% toughness\n+ Kerillian: 2 +21% max health\n+ KRONK: 1 +21% max health\n+ nil: 1 +21% max health\n+ I last played with the talent tree update. Check back in a year or two when the game has more content.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/warhammer-40000-darktide"},{"id":"322682678650391116","title":"We Were Here","status":"Completed","score":7,"playtimeMinutes":120,"startedDate":"2020-09-30","completedDate":"2020-09-30","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I played with Danny. Fun asymmetrical puzzle solving relying on communicating problems and following opaque manuals."},{"id":"322682678651394636","title":"Wolfenstein: The New Order","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":690,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","PC","X360","XONE"],"studios":["MachineGames"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-05-15","completedDate":"2020-05-16","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Wolfenstein is a mix of run and gun, stealth, and cover shooter. It's not quite the run and gun of old school FPS games or Doom (2016). Rather, it's a mix of gameplay elements that works quite well given its core FPS mechanics. At reasonable didficulty levels, all are viable and allow you to transition from one to the next (e.g., stealth to guns blazing when alerted) even if the stealth mechanics aren't very nuanced. The story is quite polished and fits well into a linear narrative.\n\nThe major flaws are the enemy variety, difficulty spikes, poor hit indication, and overly responsive enemies. Enemy AI in general is not great. While a great game, The New Order is overrated in the fanbase, with the largest praise being the story and characters which distinguish the game from yet another FPS that's all action with a paper thin story. But the story is riddled with plots and the characters do not develop. Levels like swimming are unreplayable and kill pacing. For comparison, a better cinematic experience integrating storytelling, action, and stealth is Uncharted 4. The New Order doesn't push enough on its core strengths (silliness and brutality of run and gun killing nazis, more invokved stealth mechanics, more weapons). This is also why I prefer The Old Blood which drops most of the story and lushes on the core action. See the unique elements of Wolfenstein’s gameplay mechanics that I all really enjoyed that FPS genre should all do.\n\n__Story.__ The premise of Nazi Germany winning World War II is a great one. And the story is decently substantiated building on the badassery of Wolfenstein's protagonist unlike any other in the series. The mix of story cutscenes and gameplay is linear like Call of Duty.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Wolfenstein: The New Order uses both a mix of old-school chaotic combat with modern FPS. Modern elements include stealth to keep the gameplay fresh as well as side mechanics such as hotwiring, prison escape, hub fetch quests, vehicles, and space suit; reload and cover mechanics; collectibles; upgrades; and partial regenerative health. Classic elements include the trio of health, armor, and ammo, secret passages and nazi gold, enemies.\n\nThere are some notable mechanics. Health overcharge lets you pick up all the health packs, and it will slowly dwindle down to your max HP (I really like this idea). You can slide by moving from Sprinting to Crouching which is very nice. Dual wield. Cover fire mode. Lean mechanic. Stealth take downs.\n\nThe stealth mechanics are rudimentary, making it difficult to really proceed without trial and error. For example, there are no field of vision/early warning of alert status; lighting; or diverse stealth arsenal. This can also ruin some fun as the game spawns an infinite number of enemies, so you can only proceed successfully if you know the officer locations to stop alarms. And there's no way to turn off the alarm like a radio switch.\n\nThe progression system for Perks is an interesting one: based on completing challenges rather than collecting items or leveling up.\n\nThere are serveral collectibles that incentivize exploration: enigma codes offer several game modes; gold, letters, concept art, and character bios add to the lore; and weapon and health/armor upgrades (health/armor depending on Wyatt or Fergus route). The latter are the only ones affecting gameplay and appear roughly only once a level.\n\nThe enemy designs are decent but don't stand out in having distinctive enough mechanics that make each one iconic in their own way. Contrast with, e.g., Doom's weapons and enemies, each of which have a distinct moveset that encourages mastering and adapting to a certain mechanic---whether it be range from melee to medium range; to mobility of enemies from fast-moving to slow. Weapon choices are distinct and enjoyable however: knife, grenade, silenced pistol for stealth, assault rifle with dual wield for short to mid range, marksman for mid to long range, laserkraftwerk for armored enemies, and shotgunf or short range.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics look like a AA game for 2014; it's not awfully bad but not great. There are abrupt transitions between cutscenes and gameplay, sometimes dynamic soundtrack changes during fights as well. This makes for a disjointed experience. The prerendered cutscenes show their age with limited 30 FPS, poor widescreen scaling, and stuttering. I do enjoy the variety in settings from prisons to facilities to sewers.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Constantly retrying levels at Uber difficulty, not really learning mechanics but learning the right positioning to take down X enemy first.\n+ The annoyance of firing hundreds of bullets at the bullet sponges that are Fire Troopers and Super Soldats. Fuck these enemies.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Mission objectives on where to go next are displayed on the map and not via a HUD. Similarly, the automap points out collectibles and commanders instead of having a radar HUD. Fewer things on the screen!\n+ Nightmare levels integrating Wolfenstein 3D into the game. They're the predecessor to Doom (2016) going even further in enabling a piece of the classic levels into the game's levels themselves.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ You have to explicit press E to pick up ammo rather than just run over it. Makes it player closer to an RPG like Elder Scrolls in that aspect.\n+ Apparently poor 21:9 support as it's Hor+ and distorted (https://www.wsgf.org/dr/wolfenstein-new-order/en). HUD is fixed at 16:9 and miscellaneous are stretched. Certain pieces of the HUD that go away in 16:9 remain as artifacts in 21:9. I used Flawless Widescreen, although I don't know if it is actually applied (I don't think it did because I did not leave it running when playing the game).\n+ Startup screen is annoying although not as bad as Doom (2016)'s. I set an option to skip it (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=261768809).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ http://www.gamersheroes.com/game-guides/wolfenstein-new-order-guide-weapon-upgrade-location-guide, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc0va8tadRw\n+ http://www.gamersheroes.com/game-guides/wolfenstein-new-order-guide-health-upgrade-locations/\n\nYou can pick up plating from dead enemies in order to restore armor. This is a great mechanic that acts like a predecessor to Glory Kills.\n\nGenerally recommended as the first to start with in the series. Motivated to play after DOOM (2016). I first tried on the hardest difficulty (Uber), but gave up as it encouraged cover shooter and a very cautious playstyle which I didn't really like. I took the Fergus route to get health instead of armor upgrades. The super soldat and Fire Trooper enemies are way too fucking spony in Uber. They take hundreds of bullets, and Run and Gun is not viable. After finally dealing with the bullshit of the Submarine level in Mission 13, I went to normal difficulty (Bring 'em on!) as I feel the game is just better balanced and designed that way: you're otherwise forced to go incredibly cautious, turtling and/or relying on stealth. Run and gun is not viable, and I don't feel I really improve over multiple trials but memorize from trial and error the proper positioning within an arena to take down enemies. Relevant article for Wolfenstein II (https://www.avclub.com/wolfenstein-ii-gets-so-much-better-when-you-play-on-eas-1820299534). Once I switched, the game felt so much more badass. I only bothered to pick up all weapon and health upgrades, not collectibles; I tried to complete relevant perks but did not get all of them.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/wolfenstein-the-new-order"},{"id":"322682678651393612","title":"Wolfenstein: The Old Blood","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["MachineGames"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-05-16","completedDate":"2020-05-18","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The game is effectively a polished DLC to The New Order, so it plays the same. Due to its only 6 hour playtime, there aren't any upgrade collectibles and just a simplified perk system which is fine by me. Instead, there's three health upgrade perks, and there are just a tad new mechanics: climbing a wall with two pipes; and destroying unstable walls with pipes. This adds a bit more verticality to level designs and interweaving of areas which I like. Weapons are mostly the same but with some variations (I love the emphasis on melee and the new sawed-off shotgun in the zombie chapters).\n\nDetails:\n\n+ Cutscenes are stretched in 21:9 but otherwise no major issues (still mostly 16:9 like the HUD though).\n+ Crouch changed the default keybinding from Ctrl in The New Order to C in this game. Why?\n+ First mission is okay as mandatory stealth with a limited arsenal, but it's inconsistent with the rest of the game's shooter with stealth as optional. It plays like Outlast being stuck in prison dodging monstrosities, or Half-life with your crowbar.\n+ Instead of just telling distance to commanders, you're also shown the direction they're in.\n+ Fire troopers are significantly more balanced in this game. They're weak to their fire tank and die instantly once it explodes. Super soldiers are ridiculous bullet sponges still however, but I do like the mechanic where if you hit them enough times, they stagger in which you can melee them and break the armor to reveal a sensitive area which makes them super easy to kill in the second phase.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ all 3 health upgrades guide | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo-wGS_8_cw\n+ Performance fixes for 60 FPS gameplay | https://steamcommunity.com/app/350080/discussions/0/620712364045379458/","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/wolfenstein-the-old-blood"},{"id":"322682678650384972","title":"World of Horror","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":90,"platforms":["PS4","PC","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["panstasz"],"publishers":["Ysbryd Games"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Role-playing (RPG)","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-10-23","completedDate":"2020-10-23","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"World of Horror features excellent art along with a nice 1-bit vibe in a case mystery standard. The RPG elements hold promise but not enough content is there to make the game replayable after a few hours.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The game plays almost like a roguelike with standalone stories, each story and set of events randomly determined on a playthrough. There aren't emergent gameplay elements, but there are enough random encounters to keep it interesting for a few hours. I enjoy the various options for navigation, and with narration. The turn-based combat is sufficient, not excelling or being a pain to play in managing actions to take over a bar not unlike tactics games like Divinity with AP.\n\nProgression is about resource management. I liked the various options in managing Stamina (health), Reason (like Darkest Dungeon's sanity), Funds, stats that are important for skill checks, and combat stats (STR/DEX/PER). You can accumulate allies and perks which boost your stats, visit locations which spend resources to obtain others or heal injuries. You must also manage the town's Doom level. I hate that it's unexplained exactly what each stat does, making it difficult to determine what's important for what.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The art stands out and is why I picked up the game.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The UI is hard to navigate, but it does grow on you once start playing as it appeals to the weirdness of 90s RPG UIs like System Shock.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ No borderless support. Windowed mode + Borderless Gaming works though.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/world-of-horror"},{"id":"322682678653490764","title":"Zork","status":"Completed","score":7,"releaseYear":1980,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PC","DOS","Mac"],"studios":["Zombie Studios"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2009-12-31","completedDate":"2009-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-05-05","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/zork-nemesis-the-forbidden-lands"},{"id":"322682678651407948","title":"Alien: Isolation","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":1110,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","X360","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["The Creative Assembly"],"publishers":["Feral Interactive","Sega"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-03-14","completedDate":"2020-03-20","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Alien Isolation excels at a gripping atmosphere as you try to hide from the excellent Alien AI, always looming. Unfortunately, it outstays its welcome, with an overextended pacing and reuse of levels without any progress in characters or gameplay.\n\n__Story.__ The game has horrible pacing. Levels often do not progress any story but are simply filler with keycards, generators, and doors. I like the ending! Death is great.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The minimal HUD and basic controls help with immersion. Alien Isolation uses terminals as their version of notes in horror games for worldbuilding. The objective lists feels a little too video game-y to me.\n\nI love the level designs. It looks models like an actual airport-like location, which causes multiple forking paths in exploration. I'm ambivalent about all the backtracking with newly opened areas as you accumulate tools: it's just extra supplies and some collectibles that don't seem very useful.\n\nI really like the save system. It's manual. It has a distinctive ringing sound of assurance to know when you're near one. And it has a 1 minute or so lockout to make each save feel significant.\n\nLighting doesn't really play a role in gameplay, and I wish that affected stealth.\n\nI found all the many items somewhat tedious to manage. The credit and crafting lite system was a little too AAA and unnecessary. Many of the items like flares, smoke bombs, and noisemaker all felt unnecessary. Too many served a similar purpose.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The graphics are astounding for 2014. I was shocked to hear that. It's clearly up there at 2017 like Horizon Zero Dawn and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, and the ship aesthetics even remind me of Star Wars Fallen Order. You can see age with the face models though.\n\nThe sound design with the soundtrack and the looming Alien keeps you on your toes.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Boy is this game challenging. I first saw this by repeating the medical facility part with the Alien and the humans at least a dozen times.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ There is backtracking so you can collect things you missed.\n+ The delay in waiting for the animation to save game, open locked doors, reading terminals. You can die during all these animations.\n+ The keybind combinations you need to do to unlock doors, activate switches, etc.\n+ Motion tracker and minimap points to where the main mission is, so you can do any sidetracking.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Hilariously, you can bypass the need for flares or flashlight batteries for light by equipping Molotov cocktails.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Subtitle rendering is awful. It's so ugly and intrusive that I turned it off even though I would prefer reading subtitles, particularly for horror as the audio can be very quiet, you're moving around so sound fades, or there are certain details to pick up on.\n+ Map UI. I hate maps. It isn't needed for action-adventure and horror games, which tend to be fairly linear. Maps just complicate things. I did find it helpful in this game for keeping track of the many locked doors and what I now had access to however.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ http://www.gamersheroes.com/game-guides/alien-isolation-guide-blueprint-location-guide/\n\nI played on Hard difficulty as recommended within the game and on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/alienisolation/comments/4q6an6/which_difficulty_for_a_beginner/). I played with mouse and keyboard. I played with pretty much max items as I did not really use them aside from the flamethrower and medkit.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/alien-isolation"},{"id":"322682678651411020","title":"Amnesia: Justine","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Frictional Games"],"publishers":["Frictional Games"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-03-09","completedDate":"2020-03-09","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I like the permanent death mechanic. It works to build anxeity for a short game. It particularly helps that once you know the route your first time playing through, you can zoom by until the area where you died.\n\nThe slide puzzle in the Library has a convoluted solution.\n\nI like ths story albeit brief. You play another madman, but this time it's the victimizer.\n\nIt took me two tries. I died on the water level as it was not clearly signalled where the monster was coming from. After rushing through it the second time, I still felt super anxious at that section.\n\nMost levels were well-lit so it was not that scary except select levels.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/amnesia-justine"},{"id":"322682678652462668","title":"Animal Crossing","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":4080,"platforms":["NGC"],"studios":["Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Simulator"],"startedDate":"2019-04-19","completedDate":"2019-04-24","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"A relaxing, sleepy game that I imagine would work well on mobile platforms to tune into whenever at a lull in real life. It's not something you really dedicate to playing for long periods of time as I typically spend for video games.\n\n__Gameplay.__ \"Gameplay\" comprise of mostly fetch quests. It's the socializing with NPCs that keeps it fun. Unlike Harvest Moon where the goal is to \"beat\" something, Animal Crossing's goal is to exist.\n\n__Visuals/Aesthetics.__ The game ages very well in my opinion. The blockiness of the character models and environments fits the cuteness and cartoon nature of the game. The sounds are all soothing.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Signs for tips and NPC interactions always exist. They're largely unnecessary after the first hour playhtrough.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played the \"enhanced\" port on Gamecube (Dolphin). I only played enough to complete paying for rent.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/animal-crossing"},{"id":"322682678624154188","title":"Apex Legends","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":2220,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Switch 2","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Respawn Entertainment"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Shooter","Tactical"],"startedDate":"2021-08-13","completedDate":"2021-08-15","updatedDate":"2022-09-11","notes":"Apex stands out among battle royales as a team-based one, with Legends each with different abilities, and with a focus on movement.\n\nFlaw-wise, I just don't find the twin gameplay elements of looting and arena-based shooting in battle royales very interesting. While looting gives more build variety and randomness in each game, there's too much downtime. The movement also encourages third-party fights where another group picks off the winners or attacks mid-fight and the RNG of who wins based on proximity to others (particularly early game) makes battle royales not as fun to me as a direct arena-based team fight.\n\n__Gameplay.__ It's a battle royale with the usual elements of looting and shooting. Controls are standard in FPS and intuitive. As a more movement-oriented FPS title, there's holstering weapon, sprint, and slide; along with area-slides. Apex involves holding two weapons, grenade, survival item, syringe, shield cell, shield battery, and phoenix kit. There are also a number of ping controls based on middle click.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Average.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/apex-legends"},{"id":"322682678652532300","title":"Apocalypse","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1994,"playtimeMinutes":270,"platforms":["Amiga"],"studios":["Miracle Games"],"publishers":["Virgin Interactive Entertainment (Europe) Ltd."],"genres":["Shooter","Strategy"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I can't believe I never realized how prominent Bruce Willis was in this game. Maybe as a kid I didn't even know who he was. What I remember most is the top-right HUD, the blocky character model, the constant sound of the gun as if it were gatling, and the movement of the gun projectiles.\n\nAs a side note it took me a long time to try to find this game. See my journal notes on 2019-04 on my vague memories. What I originally tried to recall of fire unlockable powers was actually the Particle Beam.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/apocalypse"},{"id":"322682678652504652","title":"Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney","originalTitle":"逆転裁判4","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2007,"playtimeMinutes":1200,"platforms":["3DS","Android","iOS","NDS"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Puzzle","Adventure","Visual Novel"],"startedDate":"2017-04-18","completedDate":"2017-04-20","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I really enjoyed this story. I can see why popular opinion does not like the story as it both takes spotlight away from Phoenix and cast but also doesn't give sole attention to the new cast of Apollo. It's a funny hybrid that didn't really mix well. That said, I enjoyed the refreshing new takes and while taken just as a general storyline treating both Apollo and Phoenix equally as the main characters, it's a pretty fun story.\n\nIt's kind of unfortunate Apollo and Trucy are playing at the exact same dynamic as Phoenix and Maya. Apollo in general doesn't stand out much beyond the previous Phoenix. His mannerisms and thought processes are also all the same due to the way of writing (e.g., straight man role taking the blunt of most eccentrics, parenthetical comments, stupidly rash outbursts). There's also little difference in mechanics, with the Magatama vs Perceive and magician vs medium.\n\nI do like the unique father-daughter dynamic in that Phoenix acts somewhere between that and a good friend. While Apollo is listed as the main character, it's more like him and Phoenix jointly in terms of all the characterization. Indeed, even the last case is like this, where the climax seems really in the investigation phases rather than the trial phase. In general it seems a common pattern in the games that the prosecutors change antics, but the defense (and moreover playable) side remains the same. I like how this game's prosecutor is less antsy about personal vendettas as all previously have been and is more about simply returning the truth. I can see how he's less characterized than other prosecutors in the game thuogh, as more spotlight is placed on his older brother. Maybe this split in all the spotlights did not enable enough individual attention.\n\nI like the idea of the bracelet. The music and slowdown is really awesome. Or maybe it's because I got sick of the Magatama as more of the same old mechanic, but just available during the investigation stages. Here the mechanic itself is different. (It also remains just as unbelievable as spirit channeling.) Forensics gimmicks were fun and helped reminisce about Ashes, the best case of all.\n\nThe option to skip text flow is amazing. Thank you so much for letting me zoom by the story at my own pace (I may have finished the game 2x as fast because of this). I get that the scrolling text is deliberately paced with various emphases. But I only wish the relative speeds might remain the same, and we can alter the magnitude. After all, I'm a faster reader than the average, and this is of personal taste. I also love the ability to quickly thumb through the testimony during crossexaminations.\n\nOn individual cases: Oh man, that second case. How wildly Japanese. I enjoyed the characters, although the yakuza girl plot is kind of predictable. The third case on music was okay, only faulty in that playing the song many times was ingratiating and all the characters were not eccentric enough or stand out enough.\n\nI like that the whole introduction of the Jurist system did not get too preachy about the values pf cour systems and how decisive evidence should be considered. It is not nearly as overbearing hear as Justice for All.\n\nI followed this guide:\n[1] https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Apollo_Justice:_Ace_Attorney","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/apollo-justice-ace-attorney"},{"id":"322682678651444812","title":"Aragami","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Lince Works","Lince Works"],"publishers":["Merge Games","Lince Works"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-10-04","completedDate":"2019-10-07","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Aragami has nice core stealth mechanics and a decent art style. Unfortunately the story is mediocre and there isn't much innovative or interesting in how to do stealth beyond that core.\n\n__Story.__ Boring.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Nice core stealth mechanics of walk/run/crouch, light, teleportation, guard awareness levels, distract button. Enemy variety and level design are a bit stale. Sound design is also paltry. Mechanics and freedom felt a bit stale beyond the core mechanics unfortunately. There's little opportunity to approach a level beyond pathing and kill all vs kill none. There aren't many ways to stealth peacefully aside from teleporting past everyone. Similar for kill all.\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Saves follow a checkpoint system, not a manual quicksave/quickload system.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Unlike Dishonored, there is no Heart to pinpoint all collectibles or an audible noise when near one. Not until you spend 5 skills for it.\n+ The score system equally balances zero kills vs all kills. Anything inbetween with some skills, some disturbed, some not killed are scored equally.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Aragami\n\nI used mouse and keyboard which enables more precision in Shadow Leaps (https://steamcommunity.com/app/280160/discussions/0/135510393195451514/). Like most stealth games, I try to go nonlethal as much as possible as it's typically designed to be the more challenging approach. Instead of save scumming, I play lethal when I must to get out of sticky situations. This entry does not include Aragami: Nightfall DLC.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/aragami"},{"id":"322682678651440716","title":"Ashen","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":930,"platforms":["NGage"],"studios":["Torus Games"],"publishers":["Nokia"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-10-10","completedDate":"2019-10-13","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"As a brighter and streamlined, Ashen makes for a nice experience. What most stands out is its art style, optimism, open levels, and sound design. Unfortunately, the combat, enemy designs, and levels feel meaty but overall mediocre without any interesting innovations or Dark Souls' depth. I also found its most unique twist of a companion to be inconsistent, lending many battles to be too easy or too hard depending on how good the companion AI is at the time.\n\n__Story.__ Slightly ripped off of Dark Souls. But taken a bit more optimistically in that it's the rebuilding of a bleak world, which I like. Nothing specifically interesting, just standard Western fantasy lore.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Core souls-like mechanics of health and endurance; weak vs strong attacks; plunging attacks and sprint-attacks; bonfires and estus flasks; movesets for one-hand/shield/two-hand; death penalty; hub that grows over time. I find it most interesting what the differences are in Ashen's Souls-like mechanics. Most notable is the companion. Forgiving difficulty. No stats system, instead health/stamina upgrades from collectibles and story progression. Levels are typically more open and well-lit, which in turn makes fighting more open and exploration of all nooks and crannies a bit more difficult. I greatly preferred the more narrow areas in Ashen such as the dungeons and Pinion Pass. I especially love the lighting in Ashen, which I feel implements the Torch from Dark Souls II even better without the annoyances of finite fuel. You can replenish your Estus Flasks without resetting the zone. No convenant system or PvP invasions. There's a jump button, which largely feels unnecessary in the game. There's a map and compass. There is no parry, riposte, spells, build variety, per-weapon moveset, gear variety, repair so much less combat depth. Character has finite bag space and also cannot sell items for currency, only store them in the town storage box. Relics and Talismans.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I love Ashen's optimistic view moving from bleakness, and how that's reflected in the art style: soft colors, clean UI, soothing music.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Dodging the charge attack from the Ghost Maiden things.\n+ Dying over and over again in Amiren Dungeon.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Unlike Dark Souls, you can't be blocked from completing a NPC quest if you complete the pathing incorrectly.\n+ Unlike Dark Souls, there is not any finite quantity item such as upgrade materials. For Sapient Moss/Roots/Twinroots, there are enough in the endgame that it's not a problem.\n+ No missables.\n+ Storage chest is auto-sorted.\n+ 21:9 works natively.\n+ Teleportation mechanic where you can throw a spear at the glowing monk statues.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Passive multiplayer system similar to Journey.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Many of the weapon movesets have the heavy attack actually be faster or do less damage than the weak attack. It makes no sense.\n+ Moveset variety across weapons is also bad.\n+ Item drops percolated across maps are often not good. There's not as much a sense of joy as in Dark Souls where you pick up an armor set.\n+ No hit collision, e.g., with walls.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ all gear; also explains best shield, etc. | https://www.reddit.com/r/AshenTheGame/comments/a5yb9c/ashen_gear_database_and_misc_info/\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/AshenTheGame/comments/abhcnu/ashen_all_weapons_armor_shields_relics_feathers/\n+ best 2h weapon | https://www.reddit.com/r/AshenTheGame/comments/a4uxe7/best_2h_weapon_stun_vs_crit/, https://www.reddit.com/r/AshenTheGame/comments/a853p0/your_favorite_2handed_weapon/\n+ best 1h weapon | https://www.reddit.com/r/AshenTheGame/comments/abwkln/is_the_spiked_club_that_good/\n+ best armor | https://www.reddit.com/r/AshenTheGame/comments/ah0ofa/ashen_armour_rankings/eeawbc1/, https://www.reddit.com/r/AshenTheGame/comments/acuvcy/armor/\n+ robust talisman | https://www.reddit.com/r/AshenTheGame/comments/a4tuqi/best_talisman_in_the_game_so_far/\n+ farm area | https://www.reddit.com/r/AshenTheGame/comments/a7ilhm/best_spot_to_farm_scoria/\n\nMotivated to play this as I'm hungry for Souls-like combat, enemy, and level designs. This entry does not include the DLC Nightstorm Isle. I stuck to 2-Hander for max dps except in dungeon areas where I needed to swap to lantern+1H. I prioritized stamina on my talismans, relics, and armor. I rarely use potions or spears because they're consumables. For my 2H weapon, I settled on the Runic Axe. It has the second highest weak attack damage, where the highest (Gilded Halberd) has a strong attack that's weaker than its weak attack and its weak attack can only thrust. For my armor, I used Disciple Vestments until I could pick up Defiler Veil. I did not follow a walkthrough, so I didn't find all items including the White and Black Ashen feathers. I beat the game in 18 hours.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ashen"},{"id":"322682678652913228","title":"Assassin's Creed Origins","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":1800,"platforms":["Stadia","Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Ubisoft Montreal"],"publishers":["Ubisoft Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2023-06-24","completedDate":"2023-06-30","updatedDate":"2023-06-30","notes":"To play the open world [Ubisoft formula](https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/a84inj/the_ubisoft_formula_once_youve_played_one_ubisoft) requires a certain mood: OCD dopamine of completing routine tasks, enjoyment of core gameplay loop, and brainless activity. I find the game particularly enjoyable if you think of it like an ARPG: the progression, loot elements in sorting out lots of useless items and incrementally upgrading, and the formulaic level grind and quests.\n\nYou can tell you're playing a bad open-world game when the activities feel like obligations---chores that are an exercise in tedium and completionism rather than an enjoyment of the core gameplay loops that make completing these activities not feel like a countdown. Assassin's Creed Origins felt like this with its lackluster story, basic stealth, clunky combat, and no majorly unique elements.\n\n__Story.__\nCheesy, made to fill certain cliches and made to seem deep in its grand story pitch but is quite shallow. [The modern day story timeline also never worked.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/kolfmd/its_time_for_assassins_creed_to_ditch_the)\n\n__Gameplay.__ Origins is unique in the AC series by introducing the open world, RPG elements, and where combat is almost at the same level as its stealth. \n\n+ The open world has busywork that's typical of Ubisoft: side quests, strongholds, eagle peaks, loot treasure, papyrus scrolls, crafting material from convoys and animals. Side quests have a formula. Map tends to be too big and filled with these chores. The environment is largely the same across every zone in the world: same deserts, same hut-style citystates, same sea.\n+ RPG looter elements include gear, levels and XP. The grindy element of needing to reach certain levels to continue playing the main game is ridiculous. Items within a gear type don't differ at all except in stat scaling.\n+ Combat follows the Dark Souls formula of weak and strong attack, guard, parry, and dodge. Instead of a stamina bar, your attacks have clear combo ends and enemies recover from stagger. The [combat tactic](https://www.reddit.com/r/assassinscreed/comments/il7q9h/ac_origins_combat_is_a_nightmare_please_could_i) is a bit odd as the game is stagger-heavy, so it's primarily about getting the first strike and therefore having both the range and avoiding getting parried.\n\nStealth is what makes Assassin's Creed stand out, not just take RPG and action elements from every other Ubisoft title like Far Cry, Tomb Raider, and Watch Dogs (they're all the same gameplay-wise now with only legacy differences; and only differ in setting). I wish AC dug deeper into improving the depth of its stealth.\n\nThe parkour is excellent. Pretty much every environment is something you can interact with to climb on, grapple over, cling on, etc. Among open world games, AC Origins is certainly the smoothest I've played in terms of being able to easily navigate and climb terrain.\n\nThere’s not much enemy variety.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Texture detail seems surprisingly bad for 2017. It's not at the level of Uncharted 4 (2016), Dishonored 2 (2016), and Witcher 3 (2015), but maybe Nioh (2017). The age they have for having developed this for 4 years shows. The facial animations are at least good. Maybe it's after playing Ghost of Tsushima, but there's something less immersive about its clunkier movement, attack, and hit collision animations. Environments look quite pretty.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Semu the eagle makes marking enemies during the initial scouting stage much more streamlined and convenient. It also streamlines looking for treasure chests in areas.\n+ The ability to climb and scale walls so easily, and it not being clearly demarcated with white lines.\n+ Level scaling is an optional setting, turned off by default. This makes it useful if you'd like to turn it on such as in endgame or during sidequests as you quickly become overleveled if you do them all. There's no XP bonus though. Otherwise, you can appreciate the game as a true RPG with it off. \n+ Multiple [HUD settings](https://www.reddit.com/r/assassinscreed/comments/78wf4r/only_4_hud_presets_3_of_them_are_useless_and_1). However, it could be better by enabling toggling of specific items individually and not presets; only a few are truly usable. I also turn Compass off.\n+ Side quest dialogue has actual animations and not just talking heads like Bethesda games.\n+ Crafting materials to upgrade sides like quiver, hidden blade, and breastplate is not too tedious. Simply pin the appropriate item, then use Senu and it'll highlight all crafting materials in your vicinity. You can easily hunt down, say, a convoy for cedarwood.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ No sprint button. Instead, it's variable movement speed by intensity of the analog stick.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Game froze constantly for a few seconds and resumes.\n+ Level gating for main quest.\n+ It's not clear you can in fact skip individual lines in dialogue (via press B instead of hold B to skip the full dialogue), and it doesn't work for dialogue with animations. Otherwise you have to wait for every line to be fully delivered. Many quests are not written that well to require your full attention span.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Steam: Skill tree: a quick guide on what to get](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2614651411)\n+ Dismantle early game if needed, but generally prefer sell ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/assassinscreed/comments/7ol8qn/sell_or_dismantle_ac_origins), [2](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/211210-assassins-creed-origins/77616289)). I sell everything except the top item for each category and legendary items.\n+ [Performance settings from DigitalFoundry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG9Bsv-d8HM&t=679s)\n+ [Papyrus Puzzles](https://www.eurogamer.net/assassins-creed-origins-papyrus-puzzle-solutions-locations-clues-loot-4849)\n+ [Farm at Apollonia docks](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/211210-assassins-creed-origins/76224434)\n+ [What to spend drachma on](https://www.reddit.com/r/assassinscreed/comments/8cvysf/what_to_spend_drachma_on_in_aco): fully upgrade gear at max level (your favorite legendaries and crafting material for your side gear); and customization like mounts and outfits.\n+ [Mount differences](https://www.reddit.com/r/assassinscreed/comments/8jyfs4/whats_the_best_mount_on_origins_is_there_much_of)\n\nPlayed as the reboot of the franchise, venturing more into open-world. I played on normal difficulty. Difficulty just scales stats like enemy HP making them spongier; may as well default to the difficulty most developed toward. I played on controller like most third-person and console-developed games. I played the base game; I can always pick up the DLC later as they are extensions of the base campaign.\n\nI played the game originally on 2020-08-05 but stopped playing the game shortly before the 2 hour limit in order to get a refund.\n\nI played most all side quests as I enjoyed the brainless activity until around 25. Then I got bored and mostly spent time on main quests and minimally on side quests to keep on level and farming upgrades. I dropped the game after Way of the Gabiniani. I got bored of its repetition.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/assassins-creed-origins"},{"id":"322682678623087180","title":"Babble Royale","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["Everybody House Games","Everybody House Games"],"publishers":["Everybody House Games"],"genres":["Fighting","Strategy","Tactical","Indie","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2021-12-18","completedDate":"2021-12-18","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"It's a fun idea. I don't like the gameplay incentive toward short words, conservative usage, and just positioning toward the middle. I'd much prefer a Tetris-style battle royale where the incentive is maximizing wordplay (particularly long words and rare characters). The vocabulary is iffy at times, like accepting latin characters.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/babble-royale"},{"id":"331062460841722447","title":"Babysitter Bloodbath","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Puppet Combo"],"publishers":["Puppet Combo"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-07-15","completedDate":"2022-07-15","updatedDate":"2022-07-16","notes":"Resident Evil controls and gameplay with its inventory and save system. Movement controls are wonky, making it difficult to navigate in the areas. Sprinting is also impossible to do effectively so you're mostly walking around.\n\nFirst person camera is much better to navigate but it clearly feels wonky as you have a physical body you're lugging around. For example, sprinting is not possible in a straight direction with first person.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played Murder House first as it was on Steam. I then proceeded to play Puppet Combo by [release order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppet_Combo).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/babysitter-bloodbath"},{"id":"6f35da74-ef12-4679-8b63-8f2ce91750a5","title":"Backpack Hero","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","browser"],"studios":["TheJaspel"],"publishers":["TheJaspel"],"genres":["Fighting","Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure","Indie","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2023-12-16","completedDate":"2023-12-27","updatedDate":"2023-12-28","notes":"The backpack is an accessible and fun mechanic.\n\nThe town building and resource management is grindy.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/backpack-hero"},{"id":"b5f37f85-b7e8-4280-b523-6eace5a2f573","title":"Balatro","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Switch 2","Android","PC","iOS","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["LocalThunk"],"publishers":["Playstack"],"genres":["Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Indie","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2024-03-03","completedDate":"2024-03-03","updatedDate":"2024-03-04","notes":"Fun, engaging idea of a standard deck of cards with modifiers to make it a roguelike. Not that deep.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/balatro"},{"id":"322682678650429004","title":"Baldi's Basics Plus","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Basically, Games!"],"publishers":["Basically, Games!"],"genres":["Strategy","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-06-22","completedDate":"2020-06-22","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I really like the premise, and building on the Sonic's Schoolhouse. Boy that nostalgia. It gets boring 20 minutes in however as it plays just like a mediocre hide-and-seek with no stealth mechanics, just optimal pathing. Survival horror without any deflective items or hiding capabilities is really weird. The various enemies and their mechanics are awesome however! I only got to level 2 before quitting.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/baldis-basics-plus"},{"id":"322682678650350156","title":"Bang!","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2002,"startedDate":"2002-12-31","completedDate":"2002-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I played the physical game a ton, picking it up when I was in Boy Scouts. I also remember playing an electronic version of the game online.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bang-bang-bang"},{"id":"322682678651462220","title":"Batman: Arkham City","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":750,"platforms":["OnLive","PS3","PC","X360","Switch"],"studios":["Rocksteady Studios"],"publishers":["WB Games","DC Entertainment"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-07-27","completedDate":"2019-08-04","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Batman: Arkham City is a polished Arkham Asylum. Core mechanics are improved such as stealth, beat-em-up melee combat, and gadgetry. Boss fights remain just as inventive. Most significant is the larger open world, sprawling as a city with more interaction in verticality and tools (for example, the grapple reaches significantly longer along additional options like Grapple Boost).\n\nDetective mode is still the major flaw. In addition, I don't really like (but don't necessarily hate) Arkham City's open world as the entire map is relatively homogenous, with little diversity just like in Arkham Asylum. Asylum was better in keeping the map much smaller; the trend of open world in this game and future titles ruins pacing in my opinion. Story is also slightly worse than Arkham Asylum, lacking its uniqueness in having many supervillains cameo and with their own boss fight and more.\n\n__Story.__ Features an arsenal of new awesome villains from the Batman series. Also includes heroes Catwoman and Nightwing both of whom are playable characters. Like Arkham Asylum, all the villains' weight in story mostly comes from prescedence. They each could be devoted their own game and this game like Arkham Asylum only cursorily features them all.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Core mechanics are the same as Arkham Asylum. Combat is slightly improved such as the flurry attack that feels really good to use when stunning an enemy with body armor. Most new is the open world with new gameplay elements to make traversal and exploration feel alive: for example, grapple mechanics are simpler to operate and automatically hurdle you over a gap if you grapple to one; and you automatically listen to radio conversations when in area to make it feel more alive. There also many side missions, but unfortunately some feel like fetch quests as busywork to make the open world feel alive (e.g., running around for Zzazz's phone calls). I found the additional mechanics for specific enemies to be a bit gimmicky, pushing further on Asylum's with specific movesets (e.g., OXX for riot shield enemies; XXSquare for Stun Stick enemies; SquareX for body armor enemies).\n\nI really enjoyed playing as Catwoman and Robin in order to have a little more variety in their advantages in movesets. For example, Catwoman is acrobatic, executing and moving around much faster than Batman. This makes her a joy to kill a bunch of mobs by circling around them instead of having to wait for Counters. It's kind of unfortunate how little Robin's gameplay appears in the DLC.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Movement feels much faster paced in this game. The animations are not as sluggish as in Arkham Asylum.\n+ Detective mode is not as mandatory in this game, and you're sometimes incenvitized to not have it on as, e.g., mission maps will not appear in the Detective Mode HUD.\n+ There's now a compass direction! Much desired from Arkham Asylum.\n+ You get clay on your costume during the Clayface fight.\n+ There are deaths in this game.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ I prefer the audio tapes in Asylum. Added a lot of lore and character.\n+ Solomon Grundy is not a fun boss. That shit is just tedious.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/batman-arkham-city/\n\nI played the remastered version, Batman: Return to Arkham (2016) on PlayStation 4. See DigitalFoundry's video analysis comparing to PC (https://www.vg247.com/2016/10/27/how-does-the-arkham-city-remaster-stack-up-against-original-pc-release-on-max-settings/). I played including the DLCs: Catwoman, Nightwing as a playable character on challenge maps, Robin as a playable character on challenge maps, Harley Quinn's Revenge. I did not complete the side missions as I found open world map exploration tedious.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/batman-arkham-city"},{"id":"322682678624153164","title":"BioShock 2","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PS3","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["2K Marin"],"publishers":["2K Games","Take-Two Interactive","D3 Publisher","Feral Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-08-18","completedDate":"2021-08-19","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Bioshock 2 is largely the same as Bioshock 1, with a greater emphasis on combat as you're more powerful as a Big Daddy and therefore fighting against larger groups of enemies at a time. It has all the elements of an immersive sim---gripping atmosphere, characters, subtle sound design and enemy ambush cues, logs and ammo to incentivize exploration---paired with combat and RPG elements.\n\nFlaw-wise, Bioshock 2 shares Bioshock 1's dated shooting mechanics, where aim is imprecise (including headshots), movement controls are lacking, and difficulty settings translate to damage and health scaling. I found the core gameplay loop not very engaging in 2021 and unlike Bioshock 1, there isn't enough novelty here to keep me playing.\n\n__Story.__ Core atmosphere is the same. There's more depth behind ADAM and supporting characters.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Most new is that you play as a Big Daddy, which means that you can now dual-wield plasmid and weapon, and you have several new weapons such as the Drill. These are core gameplay changes that help make the core loop more thrilling. It is largely the same however: Plasmid and weapon selection; harvest or adopt Little Sisters; enemies (only a few extra like Brute Slicers and female Big Daddies).\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Hacking minigame is now real-time and faster-paced, taking you less out of the base gameplay.\n+ Research camera is now a video, meaning less interruption during the gameplay, and without the need to manage ammo.\n+ Like Bioshock 1, money and ADAM are separate currencies, so you're not incentivized to squander your cash as it's only ever used for replenishing ammo and restorative items. The wallet also has a cap of $600-800.\n+ Winter Blast (at level 2+) finally lets you loot shattered bodies. So loot is no longer a tradeoff for this powerful single-target CC compared to Electro Bolt (level 3)'s AOE. It further synergizes with Freeze Drill.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ I faced semiregular game crashes, and [there is no consistent fix and only with folktale wisdom such as vsync and compatibility mode](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1659202156).\n+ You can't backtrack to previous levels.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Power to the People locations](https://bioshock.fandom.com/wiki/Power_to_the_People#Locations_in_BioShock_2)\n+ [Gene Tonic Locations](https://www.ign.com/wikis/bioshock-2/Gene_Tonic_Locations)\n\nI played on [Normal difficulty](https://bioshock.fandom.com/wiki/BioShock_Game_Options#Difficulty) as I find Hard difficulty to just be too spongey, with item shimmer (to avoid pixel hunting) and without the quest arrow (the map is fine). I played blind but looked up collectible lists in case I missed a Power to the People or Gene Tonic before ending each level. I rebinded keys so weapons are only 1-5 (6-8 as Mouse4-5 and F), plasmid change with mousewheel, E interact, Q heal, H hack, Z logs, V melee. I stopped playing at the beginning of Dionysus Park.\n\nI remember playing the multiplayer a lot around 2011. I didn't do the campaign. I greatly enjoyed BioShock 1, but hear that BioShock 2 is just more of the same: incremental changes with most polishing in the core gameplay, but nothing more notable regarding the plot or characters. I may be interested in playing it after a long break from BioShock 1.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bioshock-2"},{"id":"322682678652498508","title":"Black Desert Online","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":5940,"platforms":["PS4","XONE","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Pearl Abyss"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Strategy","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2018-11-09","completedDate":"2018-11-11","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Black Desert Online excels most as a sandbox with excellent graphics and combat system. It pushes new avenues for character customization, crafting, and combat with manual targeting system and combos reminiscent of fighting games. There are no real stories or raids, but rather the barebones for you to build an empire with your own home.\n\nThe combat reminds me of Diablo and fighting games, where you have a set of attacks you perform via combinations of your mouse and certain keys (usually directional arrows). Unlike a cooldowns and rotations battle system, it is a playground of invincibility frames and animation cancels.\n\nGraphics-wise, it's beautiful statically. The textures and 3D maps are particularly nice. Although of course faces still remain expressionless and there's the annoying \"crop-up\" feature of textures appearing non-seamlessly as you move in the wilderlands.\n\nIts flaws are microtransactions. As a sandbox, it also lacks a community to push for eg the best PvP or PvE compared to other online competitive games. The only PvP are sieges, which are similar to Ragnarok Online’s guild wars. It’s more idling. The story is not very engaging either. It's your prototypical fantasy setting.\n\nI played a Sorceress. Seems to be a fun mix of melee but also with some magic. I only ended up playing for a total of 5 hours (up to level 28 I believe).\n\nDetails I like from Black Desert Online (compared to, e.g., WoW):\n+ Explicit directions via arrows to get to quest objectives. This is built-in and far better functionally than any addon like Carpenter.\n+ Individual mobs that are useful for the quest are highlighted a different color in the minimap.\n+ Can press one keyboard shortcut (\"R\") to zoom by all quest selection options.\n+ Character customization.\n+ Making grinding fun by improving the core combat system and others (I wish they wuold also benefit from Guild Wars' world instance quests).\n+ Wiki links built into website.\n+Great default UI, without a need for a million addons including overhauls like ElvUI in WoW.\n\nThings I'm not sure how to feel about:\n+ Lack of flight paths or portals and the reliance on autorun. I think the idea is nice, but I feel like autorun removes that spectacle of having to manually move around a map.\n+ Lack of explicit directions/tutorials in-game that teach you all its mechanics. It's otherwise a bit immersion-breaking to look up external guides. But then again, those external guides are always more comprehensive than the in-game ones.\n\n## References\n\n+ [Sorceress guide](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AZY0Bzzbyi2jCfRNser83sS7TIKbQRO5bR4GrZjt4u8/edit)\n+ https://community.blackdesertonline.com/index.php?threads/sorceress-guide.13675/","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/black-desert-online-prestige-edition"},{"id":"322682678650436172","title":"Borderlands 2: Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PC","Mac","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"publishers":["Aspyr Media","2K"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-06-07","completedDate":"2020-06-08","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Lilith DLC is a standard DLC with a new area, some new enemies, and a new theme (plant zombies). The story is more engaging than the first 3 DLCs featuring the ensemble cast like a miniature version of the main campaign. I like that Tiny Tina is more emotional and less lolrandom in this DLC, building off the Tiny Tina DLC's portrayal over the base game. I also like the beginning and end sequences involving an altered Sanctuary (I wish they focused more on that in the missions). However, the new characters Vaughn, Cassius, and the main villain aren't as iconic as other DLC characters like Torgue. It's not super interesting in any new mechanics or totally cool weapons either: the one new mechanic of a spore mist is never around enough that it's actually a threat. For example, having fights in mist where you must keep track of it as you fight. You just run through it. Also hilarious that one of the final areas is being able to enter the Black Market room filled with Eridium.\n\nI played at level 80 in UVHM. To switch things up a bit, I played around with a few gear items: Bee, Legendary Cat, Fire/Shock Interfacer (+Damage), Pimpernel, Sand Hawk.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-2-commander-lilith-and-the-fight-for-sanctuary"},{"id":"322682678650441292","title":"Borderlands 2: Headhunter Packs","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2013,"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"startedDate":"2020-06-03","completedDate":"2020-06-04","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The headhunter packs are small events typically revolving around holiday similar to MMOs. They offer roughly 1 main mission and 1 side mission, a new map area, reskinned enemies, and a few bosses. Very standard fanfare and fairly forgettable. My favorite parts are the jabs at meta: e.g., Maya killing friendly NPCs in Moxxi's DLC and apologizing for being a completionist; everyone bashing how they farmed Crawmerax in Hammerlock's DLC.\n\nI started the headhunter packs while in TVHM to accomodate levels for the base story's main missions when having already played side missions in that level range. This entry includes all 5 headhunter packs. They each take less than an hour."},{"id":"322682678650439244","title":"Borderlands 2: Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PC","PS3","X360"],"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2020-06-06","completedDate":"2020-06-06","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"What a mediocre DLC. New area but uniform in wasteland variety. No new enemies. Level designs are littered with arena bouts as the laziest approach. I like the various characters in the DLC, but the story is just so boring (going from Rank 5 to 4 to 3 to 2 to 1). And Baddassarus Rex ranks as one of the the most unbalanced boss in the series: too large health pool, deflects bullets, massive damage via rockets. Piston is also incredibly frustrating with few enemies for Second Wind and easy one-shot-deaths based on its rockets. I had to cheese both oof them. I like the newly introduced Unkempt Harold.\n\nI played at level 80 in UVHM.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-2-mr-torgues-campaign-of-carnage"},{"id":"322682678650438220","title":"Borderlands 2: Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PC","PS3","X360"],"studios":["Gearbox Software","Triptych Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2020-06-06","completedDate":"2020-06-06","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Pretty small campaign compared to the other DLCs. Areas are roughly the same but I do like the tribal swamp theme. Witch hunters are interesting enemies for their buffing effect on nearby enemies (thus encouraging a kill priority, them notably first). In practice, they're too huge bullet sponges, without critical hit spots, and their mechanic could be better or made more noticeable. New endgame weapons (Interfacer).\n\nI played at level 80 in UVHM.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-2-sir-hammerlocks-big-game-hunt"},{"id":"322682678650381900","title":"Borderlands 3","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":1350,"platforms":["Stadia","Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE"],"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"publishers":["2K Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-10-25","completedDate":"2020-11-05","updatedDate":"2022-03-28","notes":"BL3 improves upon previous titles in its core controls, action skill variety, and item variety. It adds two core flaws: poor main story and bad level design. The main campaign is completely lacking across story and characters, making the overall grind in traversing level to level to complete missions somewhat of a chore. The level design also feels lazier in its linearity and disconnectedness, encouraged by the new ability to fast travel from the map which I despise, and with the disparate planets with a disconnected hub.\n\nMy criticisms may partially be attributed to a different mindset where I may have gotten tired of the formula since BL1, BL2, and BL TPS. However, the writing and level design strongly ruined my enjoyment, and the looter shooter's core flaws persist with the early grind in lacking powers/weapon variety, the bullet sponge combat, lack of distinguishing enemy designs (c.f. DOOM) that fundamentally change the rhythm of combat, and unbalanced endgame. BL3 also makes sniper and melee playstyles too underpowered to be viable.\n\n__Story.__ Borderlands 3's biggest flaw is its story. You play a side character to a boring main character, Lilith, and fight against forgettable villains of Tyreen or Troy who are Twitter personified (namely, cringe). I enjoy the quirky characters in the overall Borderlands series. However, BL3 teeters on quirkiness for the sake of quirky, and the joke writing is too transparent and lacking depth. For example, the way Maya just dies is insulting compared to how Roland was at least handled in BL2; it would have been more impactful to have Lilith die. Ava as Maya's preteen replacement sucks, and recurring characters like Marcus, Moxxi, Claptrap, and Tiny Tina don't make much of an appearance to shine or develop unlike previous titles.\n\nI despise the decision to go to any fast travel stations from the map. It breaks world connectivity, and makes areas more like a disparate set of continuous paths, only continuous for completing a certain mission and otherwise you teleport out. This maks BL3 the least \"open world\" of the series.\n\nOn the positive side, I do like that they introduce manufacturer characters, adding more depth to the persistent world across games. Side quest stories I played are forgettable, but there are apparently some good and quite dynamic in quest objectives that I didn't play.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core gameplay loop remains the same with tight FPS combat with ability skills; RPG progression in leveling, skill trees, and loot; and quest-based semi-open-world navigation. Enemy movesets seem noticeably more diverse and responsive with dodging attacks. There are more bosses in the campaign each with varied mechanics. Controls are more responsive and newer movement options: sliding and mantling; it also carries over BL TPS' ground pound. Radiation element replaces BL2's Slag although it isn't ever made a core part of the game so it ultimately becomes a useless added mechanic. Classes now feature multiple action skills. More weapon modifiers and variety, such as switching between elements on one weapon with alternate shooting modes. Guardian Ranks are a variant of Borderlands 2's Badass System: however, it's accessible only at the endgame and account-wide instead of character-wide.\n\n__Endgame.__ BL3's Mayhem mode enables unrestricted level scaling and is unlocked after your first playthrough. This bypasses the need of Borderlands 2's second and third playthrough of TVHM/UVHM, which greatly minimizes the campaign grind. Mayhem extends BL2’s OP levels with modifiers to make it more mechanically diverse and with the option to turn off. I don't like Mayhem as it restricts build variety by making enemies spongier, but it's not nearly as bad as OP levels.\n\nBL3 also introduces Anointments, which add unique item stats, and Guardian Rank.\n\nBL3 still offers TVHM, but it only provides more badass enemies unlike BL2 which added new enemies and made the elemental damage mechanic more important. This means BL3’s TVHM isn’t worth playing. \n\nThe recommended route is NVHM prioritizing main missions -> activate at least Mayhem 1 for level scaling and Mayhem 6 for Mayhem-exclusive gear -> reach max level -> base game side quests and DLCs for their max level rewards. Missing max level rewards isn't a big deal in this route as you could ultimately also have TVHM as a backup.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ BL3 inherits the iconic cell-shaded style, advanced further in seamlessly blending with realism. For example, the game has more unique shooting animations per weapon type, making gunplay feel more weighty. Objects are also interactible, enabling destructive cover. Borderlands 3 newly involves planets across levels, enabling more creative freedom in variety than Borderlands 2. However, it sacrifices Borderlands 1 and 2's interconnected levels, making BL3 feel less like an open-world game. Character designs push even further in diversity of LGBTQ, which I think is great in strides (e.g., Ellie being a lesbian in The Last of Us) but feels too forced when it's every character like in BL3.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can press a single button to refill all ammo at the vending machine. Holy shit, what a quality of life improvement!\n+ You don't have to spam E to pick miscellaneous items like money and ammo! I think Borderlands 3 was the first to make this quality-of-life improvement.\n+ For the first time, fall damage no longer exists.\n+ You can use [ and ] as a shortcut to cycle the tracked quest. No going back to the quest log to identify what quest objective is closest.\n+ Lost machine helps you guarantee getting all loot you may have missed.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The even more cosmetic options, with customizable vehicle parts, weapon trinkets, room.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Like all previous Borderlands games, there’s a meta of delaying side quests and DLC until you reach max level so that any unique items will be granted at their highest level. This is newly mitigated with Crazy Earl’s vending machine, but it only lets you purchase unique base game rewards at max level and not DLC. Fortunately, the community created save editors.\n+ Unlike BL2, there is no ignore mission to more easily organize missions.\n+ Mayhem Mode requires rerolling to select modifiers, and rerolling resets every level. This makes for a tedious experience. Fortunately, there's an [AutoIt mod](https://sourceforge.net/projects/bl3-mayhemmod).\n+ Vehicles are not balanced on Mayhem mode, instantly dying in Mayhem 10.\n+ Mail option. Unnecessary bloat feature.\n+ Borderlands Science minigame. Unnecessary.\n+ Eridium still exists as a secondary currenct on top of $, but there's literally no purpose to them anymore (unlike their need for SDU upgrades).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://bl3skills.com/beastmaster/#5050301330510000000000000530030533121\n+ https://borderlands.fandom.com/wiki/Borderlands_3_mission_flow\n\nI played on normal (the maximum) difficuly. The story was forgettable and I played much of the game with a stream on the side monitor. Similar to my playthroughs for BL1 and BL2, on my first playthrough, I did minimal side missions to be on-level or slightly under for main missions. I didn't feel compelled to even play the DLCs after beating the base game.\n\nI chose Fl4k as I most enjoy the high DPS, aggressive run and gun, and glass cannon style with pistols from BL1's Mordecai and BLTPS' Nisha, increased movement speed, and an active action skill. I ruled out Amara as I don't want to play another Lilith from Borderlands 2. I ruled out Zane who's apparently the BL3 version of BL2's Axton and the weakest of the 4 (at the time).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-3"},{"id":"327236506282361423","title":"Borderlands 3: Guns, Love and Tentacles: The Marriage of Wainwright & Hammerlock","originalTitle":"『ボーダーランズ3』：愛と銃と触手をぶっ放せ！","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE"],"genres":["Shooter","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2022-03-28","completedDate":"2022-03-28","updatedDate":"2022-03-28","notes":"I liked the enemy variety. The level design was also newer than previous levels in BL3. Writing just felt sort of boring. The levels are also quite similar to BL2's Hammerlock DLC so there's not much new here. Maybe I'm tired of Borderlands as a whole?","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-3-guns-love-and-tentacles-the-marriage-of-wainwright-and-hammerlock"},{"id":"322682678650443340","title":"Borderlands: Claptrap's New Robot Revolution","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"publishers":["2K Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2020-05-29","completedDate":"2020-05-29","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Robolution is a fairly standard DLC, introducing a new area with new NPCs, enemies, and missions. It's the same formula as Zombie Island. This time there are even fewer newer enemies, and those new Claptrap enemies are a joke. Other new enemies are reskins of almost every enemy in the game. The DLC even reuses the previous DLC bosses.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-claptraps-new-robot-revolution"},{"id":"322682678650445388","title":"Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PC","PS3","X360"],"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2020-05-28","completedDate":"2020-05-29","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Somewhat generic premise with zombies. New zombie enemies and areas. Very standard approach to a DLC with nothing improving the core.\n\nI technically started Zombie Island a bit before I completed Playthrough 2 and level grinded to 69. I did this around level 44 to try to catch up to main mission levels at 47 with Jaynistown, but I didn't found the missions and enemies actually scaled.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-the-zombie-island-of-dr-ned"},{"id":"4e6a61c5-2531-46f4-a266-73405ed96eeb","title":"Brotato","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["PC","Switch"],"studios":["Blobfish","Blobfish"],"publishers":["Blobfish","Seaven Studio"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2023-06-30","completedDate":"2023-06-30","updatedDate":"2023-07-01","notes":"Nice indie aesthetic, simple but engaging core gameplay loop following Vampire Survivors. Great that it's no meta progression elements, only unlockables for more characters similar to true roguelites like Binding of Isaac.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/brotato"},{"id":"322682678652513868","title":"Burly Men at Sea","originalTitle":"Burly Men at Sea: 三人の海の男","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["PS4","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","Vita","Switch"],"studios":["Brain&Brain"],"publishers":["Plug In Digital","Brain&Brain"],"genres":["Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2016-12-22","completedDate":"2017-01-03","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I like the concept behind Burly Men at Sea. I love the art and textures in this visual novel. That sparse, clean look suits the narrative well. However, I felt the controls were frustrating and often I had little idea where to go or how to solve a specific scenario, if it could even be solved.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/burly-men-at-sea"},{"id":"340403738162233935","title":"Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Infinity Ward"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2021-02-12","completedDate":"2021-02-14","updatedDate":"2022-08-19","notes":"Every year you can see the increased polish in graphics, presentation, and minor tweaks to the Call of Duty titles. Modern Warfare does nothing truly new, but I did enjoy the single-player campaign when treated like a typical blockbuster action movie. MW (2019) pushes even further on military realism---gritty settings, more cautious and determined shooting---and I find it accomplished this for the better to stamp out CoD's identity. The multiplayer is less impressive, bordering mediocrity in sticking to the formula but with Modern Warfare weapons/maps.\n\n__Story.__ The single-player campaign has all the merits and flaws of a typical blockbuster war movie: excellent polish, a tad of grit with attention to certain realistic military tactics but not enough to make it accurate, Hollywood diversity, streamlined pacing, no real delving into the true darkness and controversies instead aiming to paint things black-and-white, and with white macho men as leads. No Americans are doing the pillaging or torture. There are also diverse settings, with cities being hit and civilians and child soldiers abound. I love its further push toward military realism. I also like that it's a reimagining of the Modern Warfare series so you can play it without having played all three other titles.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Single player plays like a typical linear FPS with cutscenes, cinematic set pieces, and scripted combat scenarios. It remains the same as previous titles with twitch shooting, playing as just a soldier among a group, refillable health incentivizing cover shooting, checkpoints, and a console-friendly weapon inventory. The mix of different gameplay across the campaign keeps it fresh, acting like the streamlined FPS that CoD is known for: light stealth, planting explosings, assaulting a base, retreating, sniping, etc. I found playing the campaign to feel even more like a military shooter, which is for the better. CoD leans further into its realism where you're even more incentivized than previous games to be cautious as you move outside of cover and closer in distance: movement speed is lowered, you can die instantaneously, there are audio enemy callouts, your crosshair aim decreases as you move. This is pretty cool for the realism. I also love the more immersive HUD in the campaign; in multiplayer it remains fairly cluttered and arcade-y. AI remains bad though.\n\nMultiplayer hasn't really changed since the original COD4. The campaign is clearly a step up and the multiplayer is the same-old. There's more maps, game modes, and customization options. Nothing really changed in the core gameplay. Perhaps most significant is that spawn camping is less possible with smarter spawn positions. Skill-based matchmaking would make matches more balanced and apparently it has it. Without a specific rating, the game remains clearly casual and without specific modes that really feel competitive to encourage teamwork like Overwatch. I like the minor quality of life things (not necessarily new in this title): now typical in modern FPS games, you can mantle, slide, and peek from a corner. I also like that you can reload while staying on iron sights. You can hear footsteps to avoid ambushes if they sprint behind you. There are both lethal and tactical grenades.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The graphics are photorealistic, particularly the cutscenes. It's the most detail I've seen for facial models, textures, and lighting in a video game. I can't wait until this is the minimum standard for all video games, indie ones included.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ In multiplayer mode, the default gameplay mode is Quick Play. This incentivizes diversity in game modes, and not shoehorning the majority population to Team Deathmatch like typical FPS games.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Reloading a checkpoint (e.g., failing) takes a long time with a black screen, sometimes disconnecting you from the game. [This is incredibly annoying.](https://www.reddit.com/r/modernwarfare/comments/junuu5/campaign_close_to_being_unplayable_because_when_i)\n+ You have to be connected to their server in order to play single player. I abhor this business model.\n+ There are still hard restrictions that cause failure in a campaign mission. For example, shooting at civilians.\n+ Games can start with as few as four people.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Performance settings](https://www.gamingscan.com/best-settings-for-call-of-duty-modern-warfare)\n\nI played both the single player campaign (veteran, which is second highest difficulty; it's the same as realism but just with the standard HUD) and multiplayer modes. Veteran works well as a realism setting, with near instantaneous NPC reactions and aim. It can be grating at times as a video game. In order to progress you effectively just remember spawn points and optimal positioning, which puts you out of the moment. No one really kills that many people.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/call-of-duty-modern-warfare"},{"id":"322682678652540492","title":"Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":390,"platforms":["PS3","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["Infinity Ward"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2008-12-31","completedDate":"2008-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I spent so many hours on different builds for this game.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2"},{"id":"322682678623081036","title":"Call of Juarez: Gunslinger","originalTitle":"こーるおぶふぁれす がんすりんがー","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360","Switch"],"studios":["Techland"],"publishers":["Ubisoft Entertainment","Techland"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2021-12-14","completedDate":"2022-01-21","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I love the core gameplay as an arcade shooter with intuitive controls, a few cool ideas in Overwatch McCree-style. Gets fairly repetitive.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Excellent as an arcade shooter. Plenty of enemies to shoot, with a core loop of aiming for headshots. Fun level design. Simplistic but sufficient progression system with skill points. Duels. Health system like a rail shooter. The narrating story with its evolving level design also keeps the game engaging.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Standard.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Hardin duel is annoying. Dodge isn't always triggered. It's not clear that you're supposed to pick up your pistol, then hold A/D (not just tap) to dodge, and wait until your reticle is small enough to shoot.\n+ Mouse sensitivity settings aren't low enough. I had to use the lowest in-game sensitivity and lower my DPI from 800 to 500.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on Hard difficulty. My preferred weapons were the Rifle and Ranger.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/call-of-juarez-gunslinger"},{"id":"322682678650344012","title":"Carcassonne","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["iOS"],"publishers":["The Coding Monkeys"],"genres":["Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2021-01-17","completedDate":"2021-01-22","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Easy to pick up and the mechanics around empire-building with meeples, cities, roads, fields, and monasteries is fun. I don't really get the strategy: It's like a more involved version of Connect Four. I hate the intelligence in the AI with no difficulty grades.\n\nMotivated to play as it's the 2nd most popular on boardgamegeek (as of Jan 2021). I only played the basic version.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/carcassonne--1"},{"id":"322682678650351180","title":"Cards Against Humanity","status":"Completed","score":6,"startedDate":"2021-01-17","completedDate":"2021-01-17","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Perfect party game for friends, like a mix between a real board game and a social one (e.g., Truth or Dare) where you learn more about everyone. There is no official digital version, but there are various [third-party sites](https://www.reddit.com/r/cardsagainsthumanity/comments/ga1j2y/the_covid19_guide_to_online_cards_against_humanity). It's no fun online though, especially playing with anonymous people as it's more about getting to know everyone you're playing with (the art style on the physical cards is also way better than simple text on a lot of these third-party sites). I played this back at NeurIPS 2019 at the under/overrated party as I remember having a crush on Jasmine Collins at the time and seeing if we had similar humor."},{"id":"322682678650345036","title":"Catan Universe","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":1920,"platforms":["PC","iOS","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["Exozet Games"],"publishers":["United Soft Media Verlag GmbH"],"genres":["Strategy","Quiz/Trivia","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2021-01-16","completedDate":"2021-01-22","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Settlers of Catan has a great mix of RNG and empire building, with enough simplicity that there's still enough depth in strategy. The game is all about adapting to the demand of resources according to other players, so I like this variety where trying to decide on a build beforehand is suboptimal. Simple and fun board game.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nMotivated to play as it's one of the most popular board games (Danny and Dalton have played it). Officially, it's the 3rd most popular on boardgamegeek (as of Jan 2021).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/catan-universe"},{"id":"322682678651413068","title":"Catherine","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["PS3","X360"],"studios":["Atlus"],"publishers":["Atlus","Deep Silver"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-10-04","completedDate":"2020-03-06","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Catherine has an excellent tetris-like puzzle game and a unique style with its Persona visuals and adult characters. Unfortunately, the story nor characters do not develop much so it rests much on its gameplay to keep the game entertaining.\n\n__Story.__ A noncommital and mature protagonist. Three love interests (one just being a side addition) which symbolize comitment/growing up and the other of rebellion. Story lacks changes of setting, staying primarily with his apartment and the bar. The story has too slow pacing and barely develops. You also get little depth into any of the characters.\n\nI hate Rin as a character. She has this fake moe charm that makes the realism feel artificial otherwise. Her cutscenes also don't seem to really fit the rest of the story.\n\n__Gameplay.__ It's surprising how much depth there is to simple block stacking. The added mechanics and introduced techniques as levels progress continue to make the game interesting. I did not expect to get engrossed in this aspect as much as I do; I'm enjoying it like I enjoy Tetris.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Mix of handanimation from Studio 4C and CGI. Not sure how I feel about the transitions. I love the overall art style and wacky game design. It's uniquely Catherine. I don't like the rehashed music though; it quickly becomes repetitive.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played the Full Body version released in September 3 2019 (NA) on PS4. It is remastered with new content and only available English-localized on PS4. I played with Japanese audio, Normal difficulty, Classic mode, and the default of Maya Sawashiro for Catherine's voice actress. I got the Catherine (Good) ending and leaned mostly towards chaotic in my choices.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/catherine"},{"id":"322682678652544588","title":"Chex Quest","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["PC","DOS"],"studios":["Digital Café"],"publishers":["Ralston-Purina","General Mills","Inc."],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"1997-01-01","completedDate":"1997-01-01","updatedDate":"2022-07-06","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/chex-quest"},{"id":"322682678651392588","title":"Chex Quest HD","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["PC","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["Team Chex Quest HD","Flight School Studio"],"publishers":["General Mills, Inc."],"genres":["Shooter","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2020-05-21","completedDate":"2020-05-21","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I like the sprites. I'm pleasantly surprised how well The original 2.5D combat translates to this 3D FPS game. It's a shame the level designs changed so much. I found the game way too easy, with the majority of enemies being melee allowing you to kite them.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/chex-quest-hd"},{"id":"322682678652452428","title":"Chinese Parents","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":270,"platforms":["PC","iOS","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["墨鱼玩游戏"],"publishers":["Coconut Island Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-06-20","completedDate":"2019-06-20","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Cute game.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/chinese-parents"},{"id":"70b9b5ae-e71a-4f23-9a40-1638e983f21f","title":"Closing Shift","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["PC"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2024-07-20","completedDate":"2024-07-20","updatedDate":"2024-07-21","notes":"Not his best. Like all Chilla's Art games, I like the slice of life elements most, where it's often day-to-day and horror enters into the picture.\n\nThe gameplay mechanics were a chore. The coffee simulator elements were a tiny fun once you got used to it. But learning how is not intuitive, where there are a lot of artificial restrictions like needing to place the cup on a specific tray area and then putting the lid on the tray area whereas you would often just pick things up. After mastering the mechanics, it's still tedious because there's no easy way to inspect the recipe; you have to keep going back to the storeroom to check. I resorted to following a walkthrough so I would know immediately what ingredients are required for a given drink.\n\nPlayed with Marisa. The jumpscare elements were fun.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/closing-shift"},{"id":"322682678623089228","title":"Codenames","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2020,"platforms":["browser"],"studios":["Czech Games Edition"],"publishers":["Czech Games Edition"],"genres":["Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2021-12-15","completedDate":"2021-12-15","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I like the minimal learning curve. It's a fun word association game.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://codenames.game\n\nMotivated to play as it's the 7th most popular on boardgamegeek (as of Jan 2021).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/codenames"},{"id":"322682678652545612","title":"Command & Conquer: Red Alert","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":1260,"platforms":["PS1"],"studios":["Westwood Studios"],"publishers":["Virgin Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Real Time Strategy (RTS)","Strategy"],"startedDate":"1997-12-31","completedDate":"1997-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/command-and-conquer-red-alert-retaliation--1"},{"id":"bb421215-049b-4e5a-839f-9528c993843b","title":"Counter-Strike 2","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":3300,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Valve Software"],"publishers":["Valve Software"],"genres":["Shooter","Tactical"],"startedDate":"2023-09-29","completedDate":"2023-10-07","updatedDate":"2023-10-07","notes":"CS2 is mostly a reskin of CSGO as it's now rendered under the Source 2 engine. There are barely any changes, which makes its advertising as CS2 misleading.\n\n+ Long and short matches are replaced with MR12.\n+ Premier and competitive modes. Competitive lets you play specific maps each with their own rating. Premier uses the full map pool and lets you vote and ban maps. Premier is also more balanced for solo queue as you'll never go against premades like in competitive.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Smoke grenades.\n+ Follow recoil.\n+ You can disable detaching the silencer on the M4A1-S and USP-S.\n+ You can mute enemy team.\n+ No more of the dumb 1v1 warmup stage. Instead you're booted into the map and can move if you'd like.\n+ You can finally refund purchased weapons. Helps when a teammate drops you an item or you drop someone an item but they already purchased.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Console damage stats are removed, and damage done/taken stats are only shown at the end of the round. You can no longer pull up your console to see how much damage you did to an enemy before dying and relay it to your teammates.\n+ Jump throws are now consistent and no longer need a dedicated bind ([discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/168qszf/cs2_how_to_create_jumpthrow_bind)).\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nThe release will lead to a resurgence of new players, which will make the game fun to experience again.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/counter-strike-2"},{"id":"339739828419560016","title":"Cult of the Lamb","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":840,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Massive Monster"],"publishers":["Devolver Digital"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Strategy","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2026-01-31","completedDate":"2026-02-25","updatedDate":"2026-02-26","notes":"A bit superficial mechanics for base sim and dungeon crawling. Like a worse Stardew Valley for base sim and Binding of Isaac for dungeon crawling. But decent fun for a couch coop.\n\nThe best parts are its cult theme and hilarious antics. For example, quest to prank a follower to eat poop, or a follower asking to sacrifice themselves.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/cult-of-the-lamb"},{"id":"322682678652820044","title":"Cyberpunk 2077","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":1350,"platforms":["Stadia","Series X|S","PS4","Switch 2","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE"],"studios":["CD Projekt RED"],"publishers":["CD Projekt"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-08-08","completedDate":"2022-08-18","updatedDate":"2023-09-25","notes":"For all its false advertising, Cyberpunk 2077 deserves its bad reputation. Evaluated standalone, Cyberpunk works well as a linear semi-open world game. It features a well-written story, characters, and side quests to keep you busy. Cyberpunk also features wonderful aesthetics, particularly with varied level design in its city environment and character models.\n\nFlaws:\n\n+ Empty world, with no incentive to explore. It is a Grand Theft Auto game, not a fog of war map exploration like that of Bethesda games or even Witcher 3. It also features far more busywork than Witcher 3 due to 86 gigs and 156 NCPD scanner hustles compared to 26 contracts and 66 treasure hunts.\n+ Superficial combat and stealth systems.\n+ Action-adventure RPG mechanics are shallow and with little consequential variety affecting build variety and roleplay (e.g., dialogue, attributes and perks, quest consequences, factions, starting lifepath).\n+ Bad enemy AI.\n+ Janky bugs, even after patch 1.5.\n\n__Overall gameplay.__\nIt's a linear game with little player choice in quests and in a semi-open world. This is most similar to Deus Ex, Grand Theft Auto, Yakuza, and Marvel's Spider Man.\n\n__Story, quests, and writing.__\nQuest design includes three types:\n\n1. Main quest.\n2. Side quests are generally fully fleshed out with a unique story, voice acting, and objectives toward that story. They're often quest chains centered around a single character, which is quite nice to see progression across the side quests.\n3. Gigs are the equivalent of Witcher 3 contracts where the gameplay is formulaic but there can still be some added worldbuilding and writing in the quest. I generally enjoyed Witcher 3 contracts more however: 1. [there's only 26 in the game (Gigs have 9 in each area and there are 9 areas!)](https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/ot6gc1/witcher_contracts_vs_cyberpunk_gigs); 2. the gameplay flow is much more involved than just going to a single area and wiping out the enemies; and 3. there's more more writing in Witcher 3's on average in order to make the quest feel slightly less repetitive.\n4. NCPD Scanner Hustles are not infinite but even more frequent than gigs. They're like Bethesda radiant quests and Witcher 3’s “?” quests. They mark points of interest with a simple objective when you get close.\n\nThe setting and quests are the game's biggest highlight. A high amount of quests have strong writing, voice acting, motion capture, and varied objectives.\n\nDialogue is similar to Witcher 3 in that the protagonist has a voice and has some options for flavor but it doesn't change much. I particularly like its obvious distinction between yellow options that advance the dialogue and white options that only add flavor text. This makes it too video game-y and makes it obvious what dialogue lines don't matter. Unlike Elder Scrolls and CRPGs, little affects dialogue options like skill checks. It's even more limited in that there's always one mandatory dialogue option and the rest is almost always for flavor, not an actual choice. Cyberpunk is not a game with player agency.\n\nThe dialogue writing can feel too on-edge, written as if it's back-to-back lines between teenagers at times. It's a product of its time. I cringe pretty often.\n\n__Builds and progression.__\nBuilds involve attributes and a skill tree with perk points, similar to Fallout. There is also skill progression to reward passives and perk points, leveled through playing in a certain playstyle, similar to Elder Scrolls. Equipment. Cyberware implants. There are roughly 3 playstyles:\n\n+ Melee involving blades and blunt weapons\n+ Guns involving pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, SMGs, assault rifles, or LMGs\n+ Quickhacking involving enemy damage and unlocking environment paths\n\nEach playstyle also involves a choice of stealth under the Cool attribute or loud with higher tankiness under the Body attribute. Unfortunately, many builds (in 1.5) are not that viable. For example, melee is a joke.\n\nReplay value is limited in that the only new content comes from a new build. And build variety is lacking. The quests progress exactly the same with minor variations from different choices (e.g., your starting background and the ending).\n\n__Combat including stealth and hacking.__\nCombat is bad. Enemies are bullet sponges like Fallout, and unfortunately, there's no unique combat mechanic like Fallout's VATS which at least makes the gunplay more engaging if you take advantage of it. Guns also don't feel all that powerful like Borderlands, with animations feeling wonky and accuracy being quite bad.\n\nThe moveset itself feels good. Movement has a modern moveset with the basics of sprint, run, and crouch; and with more advanced animations of sliding and mantling. Cyberware also provides the option of a high jump or double jump. Other controls include holstering your weapon, scan, and a consumable hotkey. For melee combat, there's fast attack, strong attack, block and parry, and dodge. Ranged combat is standard with aim down sights.\n\nStealth is rudimentary with all enemies being immediately alerted to your exact location. Levels just aren't designed for stealth like they are in Deus Ex: examples include vertical roof platforming as an alternative route, vents, walls I can break if I invest in a physical route vs hacker, etc. There is some routing with Body vs Tech but it's quite limited and usually only to open doors. Enemies also don't patrol often and simply sit in one spot.\n\n__Level design.__\nThe world is empty outside the main quest areas. \nDespite an impressive city with intricate aesthetics and complex level design, Cyberpunk 2077 offers no incentive to actually explore the area. There's no interaction, with emergent quests or interesting events simply by walking around.\n\nA lot of the emptiness is due to bad design: the map opens up with no fog of war, the map marks newly available side quests, there are automatic routes laid out for you for every waypoint, and there are too many fast travel points which make it more feasible to just go waypoint by waypoint. Gone is the open world idea of opening up a map, finding some spot you haven't explored yet, and you just saunter off in that zone to complete points of interest, perhaps finding a new quest hub. While Witcher 3 also had fast travel, it was not nearly as finegrained so there was still plenty of movement.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nGraphics are excellent, particularly all the different clothing and facial features. The setting looks beautiful with the posters, lights, and other city attractions. The amount of details to clutter a room or fashion up an NPC is incredible. You can easily tell there's stock animations on NPCs though.\n\nPlaying the game in August 2022 (patch 1.52), it still has tons of bugs: performance drops as you wander around town, weird NPC animations that trigger and cut through assets or carry a gun while not actually showing the gun, incorrectly triggered dialogue lines in response to nothing. Children look hilarious with their adult faces.\n\nI greatly dislike male V's voice acting. He sounds too purposeful in acting tough and edgy, like a stereotypical mob family member. Every line feels exaggerated. Female V also sounds like a purposeful hard ass, but at least her lines feel more natural and has more range in emotion.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The phone and car. They functionally serve identically to game quest notifications and calling your horse mount as in Witcher 3. But they're thematically appropriate, adding to the cyberpunk immersion.\n+ The braindance minigame is a neat approach to solve mysteries. It's much more involved than the simple Detective Mode hint-finding in Witcher 3.\n+ Cutscene transitions, including dialogue being able to move while selecting options.\n+ Some of the Cyberpunk visual effects. Not the Detective Mode. But the animations during cutscenes at times.\n+ Money is balanced well. You use it to pay debt for quests, ripperdoc upgrades, weapons and other equipment, and vanity items like apartments and cars.\n+ Corpses with loot are marked on your map. This means you don't have to track where you killed everyone to loot them after a battle.\n+ [Assuming you have Cyber Engine Tweaks](https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/107), you can access the debug console for Bethesda-like console commands. [Console commands for items are here.](https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/521)\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Unlike Witcher 3, quests don't give you an exact recommended level. They state Danger on whether it's suitable toward to your level and gear.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Crime system with pickpocketing and police is nonexistent. Another example of feature bloat.\n+ Ammo is practically infinite. There is no limited amount. It's effectively an unnecessary bloat feature.\n+ Lifepath is a vanity RPG element. It barely makes a difference outside the initial 15 minute mission and the occassional dialogue option. Compare to classes, alignment, or Dark Souls starting gifts all of which affect gameplay.\n+ Street cred is a superficial reputation mechanic. Unlike other RPGs, there aren’t consequences for reputation like vendor discounts, unique items, new dialog options, changed NPC attitudes, and faction choices. It’s a meter in order to dole out the Gig quests.\n+ You can't respec attributes, only perk points. At least there's a [mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/2881) to fix that. You also can't remove weapon or clothing mods without destroying the mod when replacing it or destroying the item during disassembly (with a Crafting perk). At least there's a [mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/2358) for this.\n+ The game comes with a launcher. Ugh, now CD Projekt Red is in the clouds enough that it thinks it needs its own system like that of Ubisoft and EA.\n+ No silenced sniper rifle. This makes sniper rifles completely nonviable, like a stealth sniper Fallout New Vegas playstyle. You can only get off one hit before everyone is thrown into alert, starts ducking behind cover or rushes you. There are also many encounters where you start in close to medium distance. It's not like you're ambushing enemies through grasslands like in Fallout.\n+ Skip Ahead to skip dialogue lines is annoyingly slow. it's a fast forward instead of a discrete movement in time, and the fast forward often feels like it doesn't actually speed up any time more than letting the NPC finish speaking the line.\n+ Sending Jackie's body to Viktor locks out the Jackie funeral quest and with no reward of an alternative quest. This is silly of a consequence. At least there's no gameplay reward difference.\n+ So many overloaded keybinds. For example, Crouch and Slide are bound to C (toggle) and Dodge/Dash are bound to Ctrl. You often have a difference in pressing a key vs holding a key down.\n+ [Driving handling is awful.](https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/10440ud/cyberpunk_2077_has_some_of_the_worst_driving_i) I particularly find it impossible to not understeer or oversteer. It's worse than GTA 4.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com)\n  + [Jobs](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberpunk_2077_Main_Jobs)\n+ [r/cyberpunkgame](https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame)\n+ Tip: [It's almost always better to sell than dismantle items. You can purchase crafting components for cheap.](https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/tktgne/psa_regarding_crafting_components)\n\n__Version.__ I played [patch](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberpunk_2077/Patches) 1.52.\n\n+ [PCGamingWiki](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Cyberpunk_2077) settings. To skip starting launcher and finetune mouse sensitivity.\n+ Mods: Cyber Engine Tweaks to skip intro video, [NPCs Gone Wild](https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/1436).\n\n__Playthrough style.__\nI played on Normal difficulty. The game is poorly balanced: you get one shotted in early game on Very Hard but even Very Hard is easy by midgame.\n\nI generally completed side quests (with at most moderate Danger) before the next main quest. I skipped most all Gigs and NCPD Scanner Hustles. Before stopping playing, I completed most side quests.\n\n__Build.__ I played a stealth pistol build ([link](https://nukesdragons.com/cyberpunk-2077/character?v=1&a=3kaik&p=u11u22u33u41u61u71u81ua3uc2ud1uj1uh1h01h11h23hc1hd1h93h83h51hf3b03ba3bc1r21r91rg2r71r61r41s01se2sg1si2sj1sk1sb1sc1s31s41s22s61sn1h72hg2c93cd1c12p72pf1q12qa3q91)). I would play stealth sniper, which is my preferred playstyle in first-person RPGs. However, sniper is not viable because of poor build and gear options and because missions mostly place you in close to medium quarters combat.\n\n+ Sex: Female\n  + I started the game as a male V in streetlife path, but the male voice acting immediately got on my nerves.\n+ Lifepath: Nomad\n+ Starting attributes: 5 Int / 5 Reflex / 6 Cool\n+ Attributes: 3 Body / 20 Reflexes / 18 Technical Ability /  10 Intelligence / 20 Cool\n+ Skill tree and perks: 0 Athletics / 0 Street Brawler / 0 Annihilation / 18 Assault / 21 Handguns / 7 Blades / 3 Breach Protocol / 6 Quickhacking / 0 Engineering / 7 Crafting / 16 Ninjutsu / 6 Cold Blood. The skill tree allocation is roughly correct but not optimized; it also goes over the max perk point allocation.\n+ [Weapons](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberpunk_2077_Weapons): I generally use the Crash pistol at mid to endgame. Other weapons I use include Dying Night and Dying We Stand.\n+ [Cyberware](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberpunk_2077_Cyberware)\n  + Frontal Cortex: Heal-On-Kill, Limbic System Enhancement, Visual Cortex Support (requires 6/8/12/16 Intelligence)\n  + Ocular System: Kiroshi Optics Mk.3\n  + Circulatory System: Microgenerator, Tyrosine Injector\n  + Immune System: Cataresist, Pain Editor\n  + Nervous System: Nanorelays, Synaptic Accelerator\n  + Integumentary System: Optical Camo, Subdermal Armor\n  + Operating System: Dynalar Sandevistan Mk.4\n  + Skeleton: None\n  + Hands: None\n  + Arms: Gorilla Arms\n  + Legs: Reinforced Tendons\n+ [Clothing](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberpunk_2077_Clothing): Nothing specific\n+ [Vehicles](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberpunk_2077_Vehicles): Porsche 911, Jackie's ARCH\n\ntodos on future playthroughs\n+ netrunner (hacking) build with stealth\n+ close quarters build like shotguns and smgs, either stealth or loud\n+ retrying stealth sniper rifle and pistol build with the 2.0 update\n+ male voice acting","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/cyberpunk-2077"},{"id":"324411089032841808","title":"Dark Souls: Daughters of Ash","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":1200,"platforms":["PC"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-07-16","completedDate":"2022-07-18","updatedDate":"2022-07-19","notes":"I was disappointed by Daughters of Ash. Despite it being touted as an overhaul of the game, it's mostly a forced change in progression route, much in the style of item randomizers that force you to take different routes by virtue of getting different items in sequence. In fact, there's little new content, only with the occasional boss, items, and side quest. Levels are exactly the same but progressed differently as different doors are open and you pick up key items in different locations. Enemy and bonfire placements can also vary.\n\nThe lack of new content (e.g., levels, enemies, cosmetic items, spells, mechanics) and the particularly egregious backtracking, make this mod suffer. I might have appreciated the game for what it is (a progression route change), but I played expecting an expansion and instead just found the progression disorienting. I much prefer playing the original game, and I could perhaps see this mod's use many many playthroughs after the original game when you prefer the progress disorientation.\n\nSome new mechanics:\n\n+ Hollow means you lose 20% of your max HP. I like this design because it finally provides an incentive to using Humanity outside of kindling bonfires.\n+ Runes, which apply permanent buffs to your Runic Weapons (an additional weapon upgrade path).\n+ Bonerust status effect from being hit by skeletons. It reduces healing by 30-50% and can be cured with Green Moss Clumps.\n+ Heavy Gauntlets are needed to ring the Gargoyle bells, and they also add +80 Attack Rating.\n+ Antiquated Set (notable for Crown of Dusk for caster builds) only appears on Dusk's corpse after you beat Manus, so you have to backtrack after DLC to return to Darkroot Garden.\n\nThere's too much backtracking in this mod:\n\n+ You go through Undead Parish to get the Gargoyle, only to go to Sen's Fortress or later in order to acquire gloves. So you traverse to Undead Burg (Upper) -> Undead Parish -> get gloves (e.g., Sen's Fortress) -> Undead Parish.\n+ Anor Londo is gated until you go through Catacombs or the Depths. After Catacombs, you have to traverse all the way back through Sen's Fortress!\n+ Gaping Dragon isn't available until you get the Peculiar Doll. So you traverse to Depths -> Undead Burg (Lower) -> Depths.\n+ You traverse backwards through Valley of Drakes, meaning upper Blighttown and Undead Burg is not strictly necessary but they do lead to Capra Demon boss who provides the warp ability and one path to Anor Londo.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ They made Blighttown just as sufferable as the first time around by changing the bonfire location and adding poison dart enemies. And you can't buy moss clumps from the Undead Merchant beforehand. At least the blowdart snipers don't respawn.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Capricious Demon retreats if you die, and Warp is particularly important to get as early as possible in this mod because of how much backtracking there is.\n+ Like the original game, there are still some tedious runs all the way back to a boss fight.\n+ Area renames. It just leads to confusion, particularly for the warp points.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://dark-souls-1-daughters-of-ash.fandom.com), [r/daughtersofash](https://www.reddit.com/r/daughtersofash)\n+ [Progression route](https://dark-souls-1-daughters-of-ash.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Progression), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/daughtersofash/comments/adrw3k/spoilers_sidequests_and_progression_routes_guide)\n\nI played an INT build, starting as Sorcerer, Tiny Being's Ring, and focusing on Chaos Servant covenant. I focused on VIT, END, INT, and ATT. Casting gets old, so I also ventured into DEX closer to endgame so I can use melee and amplify my damage with utility spells like Magic Weapon and Homing Soulmass. My final weapons are Moonlight Greatsword +5, Balder Side Sword +10 Magic on the right hand; and Logan's Catalyst or Tin Crystallization Catalyst, Small Buckler on the left hand. Gear is fashion souls with 25% or less equipment load.\n\nI skipped all the optional areas: Return to the Asylum, Great Hollow -> Ash Lake, Painted World, Darkroot Basin (excluding entrance to DLC) -> DLC (excluding Oolacile Sanctuary for Artorias' Ring); and new optional areas in this game: most of Anor Londo.\n\nI stopped playing the mod after ringing two bells and realizing there was yet another backtracking: you have to do DLC before Four Kings.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dark-souls-daughters-of-ash"},{"id":"322682678652502604","title":"Dead by Daylight","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":4020,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Behaviour Interactive"],"publishers":["Starbreeze publishing AB"],"genres":["Strategy"],"startedDate":"2018-07-02","completedDate":"2018-07-06","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Addictive fun.  Like Call of Duty and League of Legends in its gaming queue and also their community culture (well, probably more like LoL in terms of the demographic). I really enjoyed my time taking a break from work. Writing this on July 7, 2018, after having played 3 days straight, I love the long days of just playing for 14+ hours and then when going to sleep having these shivers from insomnia and also thinking that everything looks like the animations from Dead by Daylight. All great. Also watching the streams (I had initially even found DbD by watching Sodapoppin play a random game, and I thought this one was interesting. Then I saw TrueTalent's youtube channel and proceeded to marathon a few of the videos even though I never actually played the game.)\n\nIt's repetitive though, and the perks like Call of Duty can strongly determine the best. And while I do love some of the skill involved—the meta, the juking, the map/pallet awareness—it seems like the game is made so that you can easily pick it up, and the bar for the highest skill is honestly not that much. The differences are subtler (particularly for Survivors), as it's highly reliant on their performance as well. In addition, the chat system leaves much to be desired. Post-game chat only with the Killer is only asking to make the divide between the two teams further, as well as hugely toxic chat from people being very salty. Would in-game chat work instead?\n\nThe ladder, and matchmaking system, are all barebones and with much to be desired compared to other heavy duty games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. And certain meta constantly remaining OP: as of this date, survivors with friends which have the additional feature of voice chat (https://www.reddit.com/r/deadbydaylight/comments/7xpskr/dead_by_daylights_concept_is_inherently_flawed_it/), Hex Ruin, Decisive Strike. I can see why SWF is a money maker to keep the game here. But it ruins the whole concept of imperfect information and horror.\n\nI'm very fond of Dead by Daylight's bloodpoints system, where they encourage players to have a diverse strategy, e.g., for survivors by generators vs saving people vs juking the killer vs surviving.\n\nIn terms of content, I found the asymmetrical team-vs-one game, and also the spin on killers and survivors (and even the lore) to all be refreshing.\n\nThis juking guide is super useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJCuAFssn7s. I wish I had time to engrain all of that knowledge!\n\nThe procedural generated maps is interesting. It's not nearly as intelligent as you can really do with machine learning these days. This is likely just a deterministic formula with a select number of locations and constraints for generators, map structures, hooks, and hex totems in each realm.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dead-by-daylight-headcase"},{"id":"322682678652779084","title":"Deathloop","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":930,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Arkane Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-04-09","completedDate":"2022-04-17","updatedDate":"2022-04-25","notes":"Deathloop is to Dishonored and Prey what Fallout 4 is to Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Deathloop brings interesting ideas to the immersive sim genre. Most notable are the time loop mechanic and emphasis on FPS; and the game exudes style and Colt and Julianna's voice acting are quite good. Unfortunately, Deathloop is too streamlined due to Arkane's desire to appeal to mainstream audiences, and it's a step back from the advances in Prey.\n\n1. _Player freedom._ Typical immersive sim playstyles like pure stealth (ghost), nonlethal, and melee-only aren't balanced well compared to the guns blazing approach. It's not surprising to see players all generally converge to the same loadout. Stealth is overall discouraged given how easy it is to shoot everyone. Because Deathloop has to be balanced for gunplay, there's too many crowded guards that make stealth and melee too difficult (contrast with Dishonored's guard routes and placement). You can't even tackle the final challenge of killing all leads in one day with your own order: you have to follow the game designers' intended way (contrast with Prey Mooncrash). \n2. _Difficulty._ The game has an inverted difficulty curve where you get stronger over time and therefore the game gets easier, not harder. Silenced guns in general are too powerful due to one-shot-kill and infinite range. Melee stealth games are well-balanced because you have to learn enemy routes to know when to sneak up on them; and it's especially tricky when near a crowd as you must for example use environmental objects to distract and isolate one. With silenced guns, you can just quickly shoot them in the head before the second one alerts others.\n3. _Repetitiveness._ The time loop mechanic leads to too much redundancy without any randomization in the level generation or enemy placement. Using the same route always works. Prey Mooncrash showed that even with fixed levels, you can force players to adapt in new ways by blocking off routes according to environmental hazards; making the game more challenging as you make permanent progress; or placing items randomly and where the player must manage pickups with a limited inventory. There's also no unique level designs like Dishonored 2's clockwork mansion or Dishonored 1's masquerading in Lady Boyle's Last Party.\n4. _Exploration._ There is little incentive to explore off the beaten past of quest markers. Dishonored encouraged this well through runes, bone charms and coins to upgrade your powers, and also the fact that any time you see a locked safe, you know it's possible to unlock it by finding the appropriate note somewhere in the level. This game goes even deeper down the path of markers where I bothered little to examine the environment or notes in detail; I simply looked for items to pick up that would redirect me to the next marker.\n6. _Multiplayer._ Peer-to-peer PvP with Julianna is laughably broken.\n\nFrom a game designer's point of view, I think going the route of FPS action is incompatible with immersive sims, whose whole purpose is emergent gameplay and diverse playstyles. Arkane should push more on Prey's genre-leaning of survival horror which is much more compatible (e.g., scarce resources, inventory management, reliance on environmental items like Evil Within's bottles to assist with stealth kills, exploration). Horror atmosphere as you explore terrain is also one of the survival horror genre's greatest elements, and survival horror games sell very well.\n\n__Story.__\nThe story is stylish and comedic. I like its flippant nature. The mystery is interesting overall and the pacing with how you learn about the various characters through scattered lore. The visionaries are one-note and the story overall is rather forgettable.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nDeathloop uses a semi-roguelite structure due to its time loop mechanic. Death means you can lose weapons and trinkets. However, each run carries permanent progression over knowledge such as maps/item layout, keycodes, and infused weapons and trinkets. After acquiring Infusion with the Residuum currency early in the game, you also carry progression through upgrades in weapons, trinkets (both for Colt and weapons), and slabs (abilities).\n\nDeathloop's level design takes the idea of immersive sims even further, closer to Hitman's approach of designing expansive areas rather than introduce linearity between them. It's 4 levels, and with 4 variants due to time of day that can change up events and enemy placement. Unfortunately without randomization, this quantity is too repetitive for the amount of quests it has.\n\nQuests are nonlinear which I greatly enjoy. Unfortunately I can't say the same with just how much the game holds your hand to complete any one of them.\n\nJuliana's invasion is an interesting approach to include multiplayer. The lag is too much to bear however, and her single-player AI is not good in terms of pathing either. So invasions as a feature are forgettable.\n\nThe game's difficulty is too low. There's too much healing drinks and health stations scattered throughout a map for you to safely kill everyone and use the items to go back to full HP. Furthermore, you regenerate MP. Dishonored balanced both better by giving you a limited amount of potions. Residuum is also too easy to come by.\n\nControls are simple and intuitive. I especially like the left and right-hand controls where you can equip a variety of items, and where utility such as slabs and hacking transmitter are on the left side. It's an expansion of Dishonored's left and right hands, where for example holding the heart on your left hands lets you find Runes but prevents you from using powers.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nThe styling is nice. Game does feel fairly modern in its strong detailing.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ No manual saves. I love stealth and immersive sim games that are designed around checkpoints and do not necessarily rely on you savescumming to get by difficult encounters. It means no part can be truly unfair, and where you must adjust for mistakes.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ You can mark enemies (also in Prey). I don't remember if this was a thing in Dishonored.\n+ The Dark Souls-borrowing of elements: returning to your corpse to loot Residuum; and Juliana's invasions.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Streamlining: corpses despawn, no skill tree, tagging enemies.\n+ A mission start screen at every new level. It's too video-gamey. I much prefer no loadout screen, and where instead you can manage your inventory during the level and must go to next levels by entering different routes. This makes the game more immersive as levels are actually interconnected.\n+ The plot twist that Julianna is Colt's daughter. It's a cheap plot twist based on a trope, where it's especially gross since they flirt so often.\n+ Not really any new powers. Shift (Blink), Nexus (Domino), and Karnesis (Windblast) are taken from Dishonored 1 and 2. The others are not that interesting. Instead of Colt's Reprise ability, rewind time as a power is such a good idea to avoid savescumming and make reloading more integral to the game’s mechanics itself. With a high mana cost and, say, a high cast time, you can’t use it willy nilly, and you can’t just use it immediately on every detection: due to a high cast time, you’ll need to run away a bit so you can safely cast.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nMy favored loadout:\n\n+ Weapons: Silenced weapon using Silenced LIMP-10. This gun can do one-shot-kill headshots to non-boss enemies from any range. My other two weapons are loud and more variable such as Explosive Rapier and Strelak 50-50.\n+ Trinkets: Creeping Death, Juiced Up, Never Say Die, Spring Heeled, Turtle Shell, Sprinter.\n+ Slabs: Shift (Reach, Airborne), Nexus.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/deathloop"},{"id":"336313330139398736","title":"Detroit: Become Human","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["PC","PS4"],"studios":["Quantic Dream"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-07-02","completedDate":"2022-07-04","updatedDate":"2022-07-05","notes":"I watched Moonmoon's stream of it. What lack of subtlety and terrible moralism. The scifi android being more human than human is a trite theme. It's heavy handed in the way David Cage parallels the black civil rights movement. In this story, androids have exactly the same function as humans: both physically (apparently having a fatal heart as well as blue blood and biomechanics for repair) and in their reasoning abilities (including human emotions).\n\nExamples:\n\n+ Ultimately human and AI are two different creations; androids should not be a fill-in for a humanoid extraterrestrial race or some minority group.\n+ Androids could be described and used in how they differ physically (think modular components, easily reparable and reproducible).\n+ Androids also have different reasoning abilities. In the simplest example, think of massive database queries and parallel math calculations as being easy for a computer. O r more grounded in current machine learning research, consider its various constraints, like the effects of training on arbitrary web data (of which may lead to emergent humanlike behavior by virtue of all such data being created by humans, but also possibly synthetic data). It's this struggle as a result of training data that may be very interesting.\n+ It's unlikely androids in the future would communicate with each other through human language. They would have such an option in order to interface with humans, but for robot-robot communication, they would simply communicate bitstrings like you would in transferring a file from one hard drive to the next.\n+ Intelligent robots are likely to take _many_ forms, not just humanoid. Humanoids would likely be created, but largely for human convenience. They're inconvenient otherwise (imagine requiring an android to type on a keyboard to transmit information on a computer for example). There's little depiction of robot intelligence more broadly in how it affects society. Devices that exist today but made more intelligent. Borg machines where androids communicate to a cloud server for universally shared intelligence, balancing local vs global information.\n+ AI-generation in art (e.g., paintings) and stories (e.g., books, movies) will likely be even more creative than humans can ever be, by virtue of using all such data to create novel combinations that a human wouldn't be able to recall. It also has unique perspectives by virtue of its path in learning through a large collection of data.\n+ Actions that an android can take. Consider the alternative of machine learning language models today, that are only input-output, responding when humans prompt in. Instead, androids can decide when to make an action as it observes a world. Goals are also ambiguous.\n\nI think many of the characters are interesting by themselves, along with the pacing and overall setting. For example, the character stories with different perspectives all converging to a movement is excellent, branching paths with main characters that can die very early on. This is what keeps the story largely interesting even if the moralism is so cringey.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/detroit-become-human--1"},{"id":"327949408466371151","title":"Devil Daggers","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":90,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Sorath"],"publishers":["Sorath"],"genres":["Shooter","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-04-03","completedDate":"2022-04-03","updatedDate":"2022-04-14","notes":"Cute idea. Atmosphere is eerie due to its limited field of view, enemy design, and sound effects. I don't like the core gameplay loop as it amounts to circle strafing, and there's RNG involved with killing enemies quickly enough and picking up the red powerups.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/devil-daggers"},{"id":"322682678652496460","title":"Diablo III","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":570,"platforms":["PC","PS3","X360","Mac","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"publishers":["Blizzard Entertainment","Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2018-11-14","completedDate":"2018-11-18","updatedDate":"2023-03-28","notes":"Overall it's a fun game. But it doesn't stand out in any particular manner as well as Diablo II did. Diablo 3 unfortunately just won't stand the test of time in any innovations aside from perhaps the idea of making a modern action RPG a casual affair best spent through a good chunk of hours every few months. It has an arcadey feeling suited to its casual playstyle that is off-kilter with the rest of the series.\n\n__Gameplay/mechanics.__ I like the havoc that seems to be a bit more chaotic than Diablo II, and also the addition of both event quests, chaining kills to get XP bonuses, and destroying boxes to get a speedup. I also like that in maps and bestiary, the Act structure pretty closely follows Diablo II's.\n\nI like the clean UI (although I miss the minimap overlay). I'm not a fan of the WoW-y style graphics though (as opposed to the grungier deathy approach that defines Diablo); it's just too clean.\n\nPlaying this, I'm a bit skeptical about the benefit of all the conveniences from Diablo II. It reminds me of World of Warcraft, where this is very catered to the casual player. And indeed, Diablo 3 seems most successful for players interested in spending a burst of, say, 4-6 hours and then stopping for weeks to months. To one extent, I completely agree with the streamlined design in filtering out nonsensical information such as extraneous stats and needlessly complex skill trees. (Many hardcore RPGs give the impression of complexity, but in meta, there can often be just as few narrow routes that are actually viable. The important quality in a good RPG is not just complexity, but complexity that remains viable and interesting throughout.) Examples:\n\n+ Town portal button instead of scrolls.\n+ Health potion button instead of consumables.\n+ Legendary quality or set piece items appearing on minimap so you don't miss them.\nTotem to teleport back to entrance of dungeon at the very end.\n+ Right-click to reveal powerful items instead of consumable identifying scrolls.\n+ Lack of stat allocations until Paragon, which are resetable.\n+ Ability to remove gems and keep both the item and the gem.\n+ Kanai's cube powers being account-wide (within a season/non-season/hardcore), like other unlockables.\n\nOne interesting note is that while playing campaign on Expert mode, my leveling progression seemed to interestingly well-paced to be at the maximum level of 70 by the end of Act 5 (e.g., I was roughly level 61 at end of Act 4). I don't think this is intentional though; somehow I may have been overleveled where the XP bonus in Expert difficulty seemed to just make me an overpowered monster. This was okay for typical monsters which seemed to scale with my level(?). But many bosses which had a set level were steamrolled in seconds, and it was just laughable that I didn't get to see any of their cool mechanics that I expect the developers spent much energy on.\n\n__Endgame/meta.__ The seasonal aspect is an interesting spin on competitive gaming. It focuses not on a single main, but that you should reroll a character every season (allowing you eventually to play every class). In fact, it only takes up to 3 hours to farm to 70, and you share Paragon levels and Kanai cube powers (but you only get one full Set armor piece during the Season journey). I really really like this strategy towards casual gaming. It is easily my favorite of all online games I've played. The end-game will always be gear grinding, but one you can do at your own pace without any dailies or weeklies. Speed dungeons for dungeons and difficulties are the highest skill tier. PvP is unfortunate in this game as underdeveloped. There isn't much new content that justifies playing season after season however. Adventure mode is interesting. No real cow level where players are interested in farming game after game. I like personal loot. The full thing feels a little antisocial though in that the mechanics carry away much need for any conversation. The Paragon leveling system seems like a great idea (and it's accountwide!), much improved over grinding to a single maximum level cap or the prestige mechanic of Call of Duty games.\n\n__Story.__ It's always been banal but now it's even worse than before, with Leah who doesn't belong in this medieval nightmare, a nonsensical death for Deckard Cain, Diablo being Leah's father... Agree with this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/39hmq2/years_after_the_launch_how_do_you_feel_about_the/cs3g6qq). I also don't like the cutscenes interspersed throughtout the act---there's not even much going here except for a specifically pased dialogue while a manuscript and some ink is being displayed.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Way too bright and cartoon-y. I hate the move toward WoW-like graphics.\n\n## References\n\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo3/\n+ https://www.diablofans.com/\n+ http://www.diabloprogress.com/\nGood overview of meta on how to start from 0 to endgame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZStpNSidcgo\n+ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwbPMZqkxlP0rREbouYj3WXyAgFpJhrKQ\n\nMiscellaneous comments below.\n\n__On population.__ It's unfortunate I only experienced the game 6 years after its making, in its endstate quite a few months after it stayed in maintenance mode. I see literal 10s of players in active games (for seasonal <=T6), and it's difficult to easily join public games at a desired difficulty and type (e.g., bounties vs rifts).\n\n__On classes.__ I played Necromancer. I went with the highest-rated build in patch 2.6.1 (the last patch in Diablo 3 since it went into maintenance mode), which is a [pet build](https://www.diablofans.com/builds/91220-gr-90-blood-for-the-blood-god-pet-build-updated).\n\nInitially to pick a class I got started by watching videos: [1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fn1ja0TapQ); [2](https://us.diablo3.com/en/game/guide/get-started/choosing-your-class). I chose to roll a Witch Doctor and played only Act 1. (This was the limit before I had to decide if I should pay the $30 battle chest with a seasonal character and following the meta for builds; or just play a different game.) Generic classes aren't as much for me. I prefer choosing the class that has spent the most time and is iconic in uniquely defining the game. (I'll only have one way to experience the game, and I may as well choose the one with the most information content.) I would choose the Necromancer (my favorite in Diablo II for its diverse playstyles including curses, poisons, corpse explosions, minions, bone caster; fun-wise it's tied with Amazon for spamming multi-shots on Cows and Sorceress for spamming frozen orb or fire walls on Cows). But it doesn't seem like it's the same as in Diablo II, where Witch Doctor was originally aiming to serve that path (and Necromancer was added in the future because of its fan favorite). [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/6sa8b0/the_witch_doctor_is_just_a_boneless_necromancer/dle0hkq) Interesting point about the weird state of Witch Doctor given Diablo's original theme of christianity and goth. [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo3/comments/9vkj3p/will_the_druid_class_show_up_before_diablo_4) Interesting points about Necromancer in Diablo 3 just not being as good as its state in Diablo 2. Although Necromancer was purely added as a fan favorite, [Necromancer is far superior for a pet build than Witch Doctor.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/6znjih/necromancer_pets_vs_witch_doctor_pets_vs_other).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls"},{"id":"698b261a-7b6e-425f-9ba3-6aa2243b3c9c","title":"Diablo IV","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":1560,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"publishers":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"startedDate":"2023-06-01","completedDate":"2023-06-24","updatedDate":"2026-06-01","notes":"Diablo 4 is an attempt at transitioning the most iconic ARPG series to be more MMO, in line with modern WoW's streamlining, and I'm not a fan. On the positives, Diablo 4 is what you might expect in a modern Blizzard game's art direction: highly polished in graphics, animations, sound, etc.\n\nHowever, there are too many flaws across both core gameplay and progression to make the game any good.\n\n+ Combat loop is too much like an MMO and MOBAs. You're constantly starved of resources, and with only one skill that actually consumes resource alongside a bunch of cooldowns. Core gameplay as well as gameplay variety is too restricted.\n+ [Progression is unsatisfying.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/140snpf/progression_isnt_satisfying) This is caused by level scaling, poor skill tree design where you're frontloaded with abilities by level 5, not meaningful itemization (overly streamlined stats, no consequential affixes, no iconic legendaries), and lacking endgame content. It misses the core ARPG feeling where a new item can completely change your build and playstyle. It's fun to pick up interesting new ideas and experiment with them.\n+ Too much formulaic content to pad the game with MMO elements (quantity of generic quests, generated content like cellars and events, empty world). This is tiring on a first character and bodes poorly for second characters and seasons.\n+ Trade system. Diablo 4 made the decision to have many items, especially the legendary and unique items, account bound. This makes Diablo 4 closer to MMO-style loot than the iconic (everything is tradeable) philosophy of ARPGs. There is no active trade market.\n\nUpdate (2026-05): Much better endgame. Foundations are still flawed in its streamlined progression/combat, MMO, and forgetful itemization.\n\n__Story.__\nStory is more pronounced with cutscenes and voiced dialogue. In my opinion, too cinematic and linear and not as gameplay-focused (compare the amount of time you can skip to go pure gameplay in Diablo 2 vs the amount of escorting and follow dialogue in Diablo 4). Still cheesy writing and not memorable characters. No Diablo game has good writing.\n\n__Progression.__ RPG elements are light. There's not much going into build customization and choice.\n\n+ Itemization and stats is more similar to D3 than D2. They're simplified, and stat attributes autolevel rather than provide you points to allocate.\n  + There's also not many iconic unique items (or any set gear) as in Diablo 2 and PoE. These items are iconic to the series and can have build-defining abilities. What a shame they don't really exist in D4.\n  + [Most all stats are useless: every build stacks for critical damage and vulnerable damage](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/14egi4s/this_is_why_your_damage_sucksa_psa_on_damage).\n+ For many builds you get the skills you're going to use most early, and then you just use them, with minimal modifications. The ramp-up in skill tree progression is too quick. Gameplay feels too boring without variety: the build you're playing at level 20 is the same you're playing at level 100, just bigger numbers.\n+ Inventory is too streamlined. Potions don't take up space and replenish by being tracked as its own monster drop. Quest items take up different inventory type. Same with crafting materials. All items take the same 2x1 space, from 2H weapons to gems. Fast travel happens by map and not a town portal consumable. No need for scroll of identity.\n+ Endgame, that is, after beating the campaign and roughly level 50-100, is boring and lacks content ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/1436ter/diablo_4_endgame_is_boring_trash_and_brainless), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/140qiot/the_end_game_has_too_much_intentional_friction)).\n  + Paragon Boards for endgame progression.\n  + You don't even get to farm campaign bosses which have the most varied movesets like in D2's farming.\n+ Alt-friendliness and seasonal content is mixed. Certain things are account wide: you can skip the campaign, horse, major waypoints, gold, crafting material, and obols, renown and its rewards (skill points, Paragon points, potion capacity), Altar of Lilith buffs, unlocked aspects, paragon glyphs, and elixir recipes. However, you still have to rediscover all the other waypoints, and renown is not shared across seasons. This sort of replayability does not pair well with the formulaic open world design. The very fact that there are tedious things players don't want to do every character such as Altar of Liliths, strongholds, and side quests suggests they shouldn't be in the game in the first place. Refine the core gameplay loop and minimize extraneous content.\n+ Nonexistent trade system. Too many things are account-bound, and there is no supported market.\n+ Even leveling feels too slow. The time it takes to get a level from 50-70 feels roughly like levels 80+ in Diablo 2. Part of this is due to enemy density and significant amount of downtime as you have to travel to each Nightmare dungeon.\n\n__Combat.__\n\n+ Combat pacing is slower and closer to Diablo 2 than Diablo 3 or Path of Exile. I like it.\n+ Dodge mechanic works well to make gameplay slightly more active than in typical ARPGs where you just click to move and spam one attack. Boss fights are particularly more engaging.\n+ Weird ass resource management. There are no mana pots, and for sorceress, only the primary skill consumes mana. The others are cooldown-based. Combat here is about constantly spamming cooldowns, being deprived of abilities, and spamming your primary attack such that you're now deprived of mana or equivalent resource. I much prefer having mana actually be indicative of mana for all skills and you can chug mana potions.+ Quests organized by main quests, priority quests, and side quests. The side quests feel like MMO side quests that I have done for 20 years.\n  + The design of cooldown-based abilities with a handful of options for the core attacks severely limits Diablo 4's build variety. There is no frozen orb or blizzard build for example because they're cooldown-based and not \"core\" attacks.\n+ Limited enemy variety.\n\n__Level design.__ Open world. Somewhat like Lost Ark.\n\n+ Much running around in empty maps. You just hop on a horse and go to the next quest marker, zooming by everything.\n+ Level scaling for everything: enemies in areas, dungeons/instances, quest rewards. I think this is a poor trend in all games. Level scaling makes progression meaningless and defeats the point of an RPG. You're only competing with yourself as you increase stats and passives to combat the similarly increased stats in the enemies. Loot similarly feels unrewarding. Call me crazy, but a level 3 and a level 30 character _shouldn't_ be able to play together; it shows there's no difference between them except stats.\n+ Exploration is not rewarded. There's not much benefit in exploring the nooks and crannies of areas. Once you open up an area from fog of war, then you're good to go.\n\nNew, at a lower-level of detail:\n\n+ Mounts.\n+ Currencies: obels, renown.\n+ Enchantment slots.\n+ Ultimate.\n+ Cellars.\n+ Herbs and ore.\n+ [Salvage vs sell](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/11zxu4z/when_to_sell_vs_salvage).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nUI, monsters, and animations are based on D3 albeit slightly upgraded in detail and less cartooney. Thank god the style is closer to Diablo 2 Resurrected than Diablo 3. Character is voiced and cutscenes are a bit more like a real AAA game.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ [No overlay map](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/12oo4x8/no_plans_for_overlay_map_in_diablo_iv). Thank god. This is such a staple in the genre that I intensely dislike. It ruins level design and exploration by having you follow a map's fog of war. You don't pay attention to the actual environment but the minimap itself. It also encourages lazier level design. Map overlay is too powerful in information-sharing that you nerf yourself by not using it in games like Diablo 2 Resurrected and Path of Exile. It's an unfortunate compromise due to the limited POV in 2D isometric games where you have limited visibility without such a map overlay.\n+ You can respec at any time by going the Skill Tree tab. What a nice quality-of-life that lowers the barrier of entry. You can play without needing to do research on builds beforehand, and always optimize later after you play around yourself.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Smaller than usual FOV ([1](https://old.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/123zx8a/in_case_why_you_felt_d4_kind_of_felt_like_d2_but), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/13zrgcs/please_let_us_zoom_out)).\n+ Transmog.\n+ Other players roaming in the area.\n+ Extracted aspects become imprinted aspects when used, and therefore can't be extracted again for reuse.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Side quests are bloated. Quantity over quality.\n+ I greatly dislike the \"find x\" quest objectives. They highlight in blue some area and you have to wander around it looking for some objective point. It's neither engaging in combat and level design nor exploration.\n+ No loot filter in a modern ARPG. That's insane. You commonly need to filter the junk, particularly when you're in a new difficulty tier (you don't need to pick up Sacred or normal Rares).\n+ [Mount speed depends on cursor distance.](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/141036m/psa_horse_speed_is_relevant_to_cursor_distance)\n+ [Pressing shift to compare items only shows one and not both rings.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/140oy55/comparing_rings_with_shift_should_show_both)\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [r/diablo4](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4)\n+ https://maxroll.gg/d4\n+ [Waypoint locations](https://www.powerpyx.com/diablo-4-fractured-peaks-all-waypoint-locations)\n+ [Interactive map](https://mapgenie.io/diablo-4)\n  + [Altar of Lilith pathing](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/13xk97m/altars_of_lilith_routes). Use the [interactive map for more precision and to track statues](https://d4builds.gg/map/).\n+ [Reddit: Crafting materials infographic](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/144mcn8/crafting_materials_and_currency_source_guide)\n+ [Reddit: Endgame progression tips](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/13zwkhq/tips_for_efficient_endgame_progression). Namely, prioritize Hellfire dungeons that you haven't already completed yet for both the renown/aspect reward and Grim Favor reward. Then prioritize Nightmare Dungeons to level up Paragon Glyphs and Tiers.\n+ [World boss timer](https://d4armory.io/events)\n+ https://maxroll.gg/d4/meta/endgame-progression\n\n## Season 0: 2023-06-01\n\n__Build: Sorcerer.__ I played Sorcerer on my first playthrough.\n\n+ Rationale: Barbarian and Druid are generally underpowered in Diablo (also Assassin) and fun for second characters, with Sorc, Amazon, and Necromancer reigning supreme. I played Necromancer in D3, mained Javazon and Hammerdin in D2 Resurrected, and recently played an archer in Path of Exile (Explosive Arrow).\n+ Difficulty: Veteran.\n+ [Maxroll: Chain Lightning Leveling Guide](https://maxroll.gg/d4/build-guides/chain-lightning-sorcerer-leveling-guide)\n+ [Maxroll: Ice Shards Endgame Guide](https://maxroll.gg/d4/build-guides/ice-shards-sorcerer-guide)\n  + Endgame, [Sorcerer has many issues, worse than all other classes.](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/14bdzx3/sorcerer_has_a_lot_of_design_issues_at_endgame)\n\nI dropped the game at level 71. The next stage is farming nightmare dungeons in order to replace all gear with Ancestral.\n\n__Build: Rogue.__ I also got a level 26 rogue. But gave up as the level grind was repetitive (dungeon spam).\n\n+ [Maxroll: Twisting Blades Leveling Guide](https://maxroll.gg/d4/build-guides/twisting-blades-rogue-leveling-guide)\n+ [Maxroll: Twisting Blades Endgame Guide](https://maxroll.gg/d4/build-guides/twisting-blades-rogue-guide)\n+ I leveled by farming helltide dungeons that appear around my level, and slowly accumulating waypoints along the way. And [specific dungeons](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/146obje/which_dungeon_to_solofarm_to_level_alts). At minimum, with enemies 3 levels higher than you for the 25% extra bonus XP.\n\nI might replay when a new season comes out, there is new content, and the seasonal progression needs get fixed (e.g., renown must be grinded from scratch every season). As of 2023-07-24, there are no major changes in Season 1 (in fact, there have been severe regressions); all press is bad for Diablo 4 at the moment. I see no reason to play it.\n\n## Season 13: 2026-05-05\n\nI unlocked Torment 12, unlocked all Seasonal Ranks excluding the last (Mephisto capstone dungeon), got all gear to Ancestral Legendary or Unique.\n\n__Build.__\n\n+ Class: Spiritborn\n+ https://maxroll.gg/d4/build-guides/evade-counterswarm-spiritborn-guide\n+ Leveling: https://maxroll.gg/d4/build-guides/rock-splitter-thorns-spiritborn-leveling-guide\n+ Difficulty: Hard\n+ Loot filter: [Raxx](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQGrOlk1Hl8). I started it at Torment 6.\n\nStrategy\n\n+ Complete war plans, accumulating gear, crafting materials, and completing season missions along the way.\n+ Sell yellows, salvage legendaries, charms, seals.\n+ Legendary items: Salvage to attain highest level power in Codex, then apply anywhere. Target best items with greater affix rolls (legendaries have 4 affixes + aspect; rare has 3-4 affixes; magic has 1-2 affixes). Reroll items with bad affixes. Masterwork gear to highest quality. Temper item with remaining affix.\n+ Nightmare Sigils: transmute to escalation sigils. Use within sequences of Nightmare Dungeons during War Plans.\n+ Murmuring Obols: Target farm for legendary Aspects and unique items. [Do it in Cerrigar, not Temis](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/1tmaxpz/this_guy_rock_dont_gamble_in_temis).\n+ Set charms: Reroll for better affixes on my build's set charms.\n+ Seasonal blessing order: Ancestral Whispers, Reclamation, Glyphs, Masterworking, Curiosities.\n+ Favor tokens: Spend at reliquary on arbitrarily aesthetic cosmetics.\n\nDetails I like:\n+ pet helps autoloot crafting mats\n+ mercenaries have skill trees and quests to obtain them\n+ You can favorite a town as the waypoint for any town portal.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n+ No longer upgrade 3 gems of a level to go to next. You salvage to fragments which can be used to craft tier gems requiring fragments gold and other mats\n+ Unsocketing is free.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n+ Option to skip campaign for new characters is bad. It's like WoW where the campaign becomes minimized when it should be a core part of the early leveling experience.\n+ MMO bland world remains. Side quest bloat.\n+ 5 minute wait during Helltides is annoying. War Plans make Helltides mandatory when you select them, so not worth doing anything else.\n+ Uniques roll with an extra random affix. very stupid\n\nNotes\n+ Endgame content still there since I last played D4\n  + Paragon board and glyphs\n  + Nightmare dungeons\n  + World events\n  + Strongholds\n+ Endgame content changed starting since I last played D4\n  + The Pit\n  + [Seasonal Rank](https://maxroll.gg/d4/resources/season-journey#unlocking-skill-points-header) is account-wide progression. Capstone Dungeons unlock Torment tiers (which allow you to hunt for Ancestral and Mythic items). They feature season blessings. They also unlock more skill points and Paragon points.\n+ Endgame content changed starting in Vessel of Hatred\n  + Mercenary\n  + Runes\n  + Kurast Undercity\n  + Dark Citadel (party endgame content)\n+ Endgame content changed starting in Lord of Hatred\n  + [War Plans](https://maxroll.gg/d4/resources/war-plans) streamline endgame progression choice paralysis: Tree of Whispers, Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, The Pit, Lair Bosses, Infernal Hordes, Kurast Undercity. They also have skill trees.\n  + Horadric cube\n  + Horadric seal and charms. Effectively an inventory system for D2 charms.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/diablo-iv"},{"id":"322682678651448908","title":"Dishonored: Death of the Outsider","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":390,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Arkane Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-08-23","completedDate":"2019-08-24","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Death of the Outsider makes a few minor changes: mana regenerates; certain elements less obvious such as the contracts and the bonecharm/rune locations. Flaw-wise, the game deviates too little and unfortunately feels very same-y. There are also 18 bonecharms in a single mission (and no way to track them). That makes exploration feel more like a tedious collectithon. This game feels much like Dishonored's version of Uncharted Lost Legacy: standalone expansion to an excellent finale; some minor improvements but otherwise lackluster in story and same-y feeling. As a third flaw, the game reuses parts of levels even more than Dishonored 1 did in the first two missions: Missions 2 and 3, Missions 4 which is a copy of Dishonored 2's Mission 5; the game should have just been 3 missions long of new content instead of stretching it out.\n\n__Story.__ Story feels like a nice sequel to Dishonored DLC's with Daud. Billie Lurk doesn't feel as compelling a character to play though. The story doesn't really grab one. There is also no chaos mechanic to add dynamism to the story. Daud's death and the burning of the Dreadful Wale happens as a cutscene in the beginning of a mission; it's totally incongruous.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ You can converse with rats.\n+ Foresight is an actually good version of Dark Vision. It's not constant and instead is a one-time look-up, and can track only a finite number of items.\n+ I like the idea of Semblance. Too bad I don't really know how to use it.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Displace is yet another Blink variant. I like in general how each playable character has their own version with (dis)advantages. It gets a little formulaic though; perhaps they should get rid of Blink altogether.\n+ Contracts replace side objectives. The main difference is that there is a money incentive for completing them, there is no explicit quest marker (so more subtle), and there's only one way to complete them.\n+ There are no runes and powers to upgrade, just bonecharms.\n+ There's no heart to pinpoint rune and bonecharm locations. They're alerted to you get close to them but you must still search from there.\n+ Mana bar regenerates.\n+ You can get attacked in Neutral territory if they catch you stealing.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ There's no chaos system.\n+ The new powers are nice. But the game's powers feel more limited than other characters, making my approaches to a path less versatile.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/dishonored-death-of-the-outsider/ \n\nSince there's no chaos system I played lethal. This also mirrors my nonlethal playstyle for Dishonored and lethal playstyle for Dishonored's DLC as Daud.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dishonored-death-of-the-outsider"},{"id":"322682678624207436","title":"Doom 3","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["XBOX","Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["id Software","Aspyr Media"],"publishers":["Activision","Aspyr Media"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2021-02-17","completedDate":"2021-02-19","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Doom 3 is a different experience than its Doom predecessors. It works quite well as a linear horror corridor shooter, with particularly good lighting and sound design---along the lines of F.E.A.R. and Dead Space which were released a few years later. Doom 3 also inherits several of the Doom franchise's traits that work well: enemy design and the iconic weapon arsenal.\n\nWhat I dislike most about Doom 3 are the frequent ambush from behind tactics, frequently with no game design clues to notify you that enemies are there; and the terrible shotgun that not only renders a core weapon nonviable but severely limits the diversity of the other weapons. Doom 3 also provides the worst combat of the series. There's little variety in the playstyle as you peek from corners, back up on any enemy spawns, and shoot your mid-ranged weapon. Enemy variety doesn't do much either: Imps can now jump in your face which is fine, but most of the new enemies (Cherubs, Wraiths, Ticks, Trites) also do this where there main attack is melee, adding little variety as interchangeable enemies.\n\n__Story.__ It tries to play like Half-Life with a linear narrative and NPCs, but with horror elements. Also includes audio logs you pick up like System Shock. The story is still forgettable with not much lore or interesting villains.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Doom 3 does not play like other Doom games. There are multiple Doomisms that don't appear: many enemies, always run, circle strafing, shotgun as the main weapon (here, the Machine Gun shines), monster infighting. Instead, Doom 3 a linear corridor horror shooter. Lighting adds to the atmosphere with deliberate limitations of the flashlight. Sound design is also important to alert you to an enemy's proximity. There are just a handful of enemies you encounter at a time. Because many enemies are hitscan and reloading take a long time, the game encourages corner peeking and playing cautiously. Movement and reloading feels more sluggish in favor of realism and atmosphere. There's fairly plentiful ammo and health pickups. Health stations and various combat armor pickups also let you reset to max health and armor.\n\nI despise the ambushes from behind. In general, ambushes are great in moderation, particularly if they're in your frontal view. What's the worst are enemies either spawning or appearing from closets behind you, without any sound to notify you that that they're there. They can also appear in front of you, but in melee range as you open a door and you take an immediate hit regardless of your reaction time. There's no way to respond to this aside from save scumming at higher difficulties to avoid taking significant damage. Spawn-in enemies in general are annoying as you can't rely on having covered previous areas. They're a lazy implementation from just having enemies in the area.\n\nDoom 3's shotgun is terrible. Its range is not good, with the spread being extremely wide. Just a few steps away from an imp is enough for many pellets to not hit. You need to be in point-blank (melee) range to one-shot an imp or zombie. That's really only viable by luring them around a corner, and even then point-blank range is risky because all the pellets may not hit. I can understand the design point that a Doom 1/2 shotgun in Doom 3's levels would be heavily overpowered. But the current game's balance makes the shotgun underpowered. This makes the core 3 weapons the Machine Gun, Chaingun, and Plasma Rifle: they all serve similar purposes, so there isn't much weapon variety. Grenade and Rocket Launcher are also available, but don't serve many purposes since most encounters have only a few enemies.\n\nLevel design has mixed quality. On one side, the assets and overall environments are varied and intuitive to navigate. On the other hand, enemy placement is bonkers with both enemy spawn points and monster closets that follow video game logic.\n\nAtmosphere-wise, I find the horror elements closer to F.E.A.R. and Resident Evil in that the game is more shooter and action than horror. There are many jumpscares, mostly in the form of ambushes, and none really caught me by surprise in terms of actual horror. It felt closer to Doom-style ambushing, although they could be cheap. Dead Space is perhaps a better example of using the horrific atmosphere and bizarre enemies to make something actually scary.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Released in 1994, Doom 3 came out at a time with games like Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft, Killzone, Metal Gear Solid 3, and F.E.A.R. Compared to those games, the 3D models are more detailed and lighting is more pronounced. The graphical fidelity is generally beyond them, with Doom 3 almost feeling like a tech demo. The weapon sounds feel extremely muted however, making you feel like you're wielding pea shooters. The soundtrack could also be better, c.f., Dead Space's.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can sometimes evade projectiles by crouching. I love the feeling when it works.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The original flashlight weapon slot vs BFG Edition's armor-mounted flashlight. Playing the BFG Edition, it's clear certain areas were designed with a flashlight in mind such as two escort areas with the escort as the light source. Further, there's the feeling of seeing an enemy while you're unprepared with the flashlight in hand and must scramble to swap. However, many areas are also just too dark. So both approaches are flawed, but I do prefer the flashlight approach which is essential for the horror in preserving the original lighting. As an approach, I tried to avoid flashlight use whenever I was fighting an enemy. I wish they nerfed the BFG Edition's flashlight to encourage this, e.g., slower recharge.\n+ Computer interfaces are actual interfaces you navigate with a mouse. This is unlike typical interaction in video games by pressing an Interact button.\n+ Audio logs. They distract from the sound design as you navigate and are cautious for enemies. I also wish they auto-played when you pick them up. I'd rather not go into my PDA every time I pick one up.\n+ There's both an auto and manual save system. BFG Edition added the auto save, and I find the areas with auto save to be too sparse, so the game relies mostly on manual saving like the original Doom games. You control the level of savescumming.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The berserk power-up is so out of place in the horror game. And the sound effect feels silly. I don't feel powerful with my restricted punch animations and muffled sound; the rate of fire and punch speed is also too damn slow.\n+ No native borderless. Alt-Enter for windowed mode and Borderless Gaming works though.\n+ A somewhat lengthy splash screen.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [doomwiki, including weapon stats](https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Pistol_(Doom_3))\n+ [All DOOM 3 & Expansion Codes](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=295656505)\n\nThis entry does not include the expansion packs. I played Doom 3: BFG Edition [There are some differences](https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_3:_BFG_Edition#Differences_with_Doom_3), most notably an armor-mounted flashlight that can be used alongside a weapon instead as a replacement. I played Veteran difficulty, the equivalent of Ultra-Violence.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/doom-3"},{"id":"322682678651397708","title":"Doom II","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1994,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["iOS","Mobile","blackberry"],"studios":["id Mobile"],"publishers":["(Archive) id Software Inc."],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Tactical"],"startedDate":"2020-05-12","completedDate":"2020-05-15","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"New to the series are the Super Shotgun and a few enemies such as Archvile, Mancubus, and Revenants. The Super Shotgun adds significant DPS as the Combat Shotgun was the primary staple for most DPS due to abundance of ammo in the original game. This makes the fights a lot more hectic this cycle. These enemies added more variety to fights as they went a bit beyond the single projectile attack and melee that the first Doom had.\n\nFlaw-wise, Doom II is effectively a new set of levels, and they're a mixed bag often with questionable quality. Many are gimmicky---feeling like a chore to tough the level out rather than enjoyable to explore. Further, while new enemies like Archvile are well-designed, Pain Elementals' infinite respawning of one of the most annoying enemies, and Chaingunners, are not good.\n\n__Specific memories:__\n\n+ Fuck Pain elementals.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ M5's use of lighting. The one scene where you're entering a dimly lit room with stealth pinkies is chilling, and then turning around and seening an imp!\n+ One episode with a continuous 30 level campaign with 2 secret levels.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Pain elementals. So annoying.\n+ Annoying maps like Map 9: The Pit kill the pacing.\n+ Obscure details that block actual level progress and not just secrets (e.g., M15)\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Doom wiki's walkthrough](https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Doom_II#Levels)\n\nThis entry does not include the expansion packs (e.g., Master Levels). As of writing this in May 2020, I chose not to play the Master Levels as they're a monetized collection of 3rd party maps that aren't even the best 3rd party maps in 2020; Final Doom because it's apparently unbalanced and difficult; and Doom 64 and Doom 3 do preserve the frenetic madness as the original games.\n\nAt map 11, I switched from Chocolate Doom to Crispy Doom to benefit from a 640x400 over the original 320x200 resolution, 21:9 rendering, uncapped framerates, and extended automap colors which is a huge quality of life improvement in knowing what unlocked once you find a key. Around map 22, I start feeling the tedium of the maps. So I turned on cheat codes and zoomed by them.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/doom-ii-rpg"},{"id":"f5e652d4-c84c-4077-ac86-2f402a39c2d4","title":"Doom mod: Doom Infinite","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2022,"platforms":["PC"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2025-03-08","completedDate":"2025-03-08","updatedDate":"2025-03-09","notes":"Solid roguelite in the Doom engine.\n\n## Resources & Miscellanea\n\nI initially learned about this mod from [Mutant Mods' video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CU-ZtzqZiI). I played version 0.978.6 on GZDoom 4.10.0 (it wouldn't work on the latest of 4.14.1).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/doom-infinite"},{"id":"322682678652521036","title":"Dota 2","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":46440,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Valve"],"publishers":["Valve"],"genres":["Strategy","MOBA"],"startedDate":"2012-11-30","completedDate":"2012-11-30","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dota-2"},{"id":"322682678624182860","title":"Dragon Age 2: DLCs","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2009,"startedDate":"2021-04-20","completedDate":"2021-04-24","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"This entry includes all DLC, evaluating the three quest/new location content:.\n\n+ Exiled Prince. Treated as part of the base game, it's a great way to increase the amount of content, which DA2 lacks. It still reuses areas however, adding to the feeling of repetitiveness.\n+ Legacy. Took Anders (has most unique content), Varric, and Fenris. Battle-intensive as you explore dungeons. Story and player agency is lacking as is any new enemies.\n+ Mark of the Assassin. Took Isabela and Aveline (has most unique content, including 2 quests). New setting of Orlais which adds worldbuilding (especially green after all the drabness of the repeated areas!), companion, a few enemies, and a soundtrack. There's even a stealth minigame.\n\n    All the marketing (including live-action series) and voice acting by Felicia Day is off-putting. I'm not a fan of her \"brand\" of geekdom---a weird combination of quirky sex comedy---and it breaks immersion.\n\nI played The Exiled Prince in Act 1 as it's initiated automatically. I played Legacy and Mark of the Assassin in Act 3---later in the game to experience the vanilla base campaign as much as possible, and to pad out Act 3 which is the shortest of them all. It also gives some content left for me to experience after optimizing endgame builds and gear."},{"id":"322682678624180812","title":"Dragon Age: Inquisition","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":2790,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","PC","X360","XONE"],"studios":["BioWare Edmonton"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Tactical","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-04-30","completedDate":"2021-05-03","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"DAI is an ambitious title for the series, experimenting with its year's trends: even more real-time action, open-world levels, and commander mission management. While I can admire (and quite enjoy) the third-person real-time combat, the other inclusions do no good for Dragon Age. The game's best content---Inquisitor's Path main quests and Inner Circle companion quests---is diluted with the most generic MMO sidequests, resource grinding, and War Table micromanagement. DAI barely makes use of its grand areas, many zones devoid of main quests entirely.\n\nDAI also takes streamlining too far, removing key elements of Dragon Age's legacy: companion tactics AI, leveling attributes, and sustained abilities. The game plays so close to an action RPG that there's little point for it to even carry the pause and tactical camera features, feeling more like a run-of-the-mill action RPG.\n\n__Story.__ The overarching story of an inquisition to close the Breach is okay. I like the continuation of the various DA1-2 characters appearing in Inquisition. The setting of both Orlais and Ferelden areas is great, enabling unprecedented variety in levels and exposure to less seen cultures: Orlais and the Chantry.\n\nUnfortunately, the characters don't stand out. Companions are not as notable as prior games, with less ability to provide input into the game like in DA2. There's also much less banter as it's rarely activated, and fewer quests per companion. No character, including even ones from the prior titles, have much of a chance to shine.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Inquisition pushes further on the spectrum of real-time action RPGs and farther from tactical CRPGs. Unlike MMOs like WoW that DAO and DA2 leaned to, Inquisition is closer to third-person action RPGs like Dark Souls, Witcher, and Assassin's Creed.\n\nOne of DAI's newest changes is an open world level design. Symptomatic of open world RPGs, DAI is littered with low-quality quests with minimal story, consisting of kill X enemies, fetch X resources, complete X objectives across the map. The areas are wonderfully designed with variety and verticality---certainly solving DA2's biggest flaw---but you navigate by moving from quest marker to quest marker with barebones dialogue for why. They should've less time on level design and more time on quests that make use of those levels. Even many companion quests, which are the highest quality sidequests, are grindy; and most all main quests don't even use the open world but rather instanced zones. Open world-wise, Witcher 3 is the best example that lacked in sidequest gameplay, following formulas like DAI; but they were still greatly enjoyable because the writing substantiated each one.\n\nDAI introduces a War Table to complete missions across the world. It uses mobile-like mission gameplay, where you send advisors and wait a period for them to complete. It includes a currency of Power and Influence points, one to advance the missions completed and another for perks. Not unlike WoW's implementation, I found this made you feel less like a commanding strategist and more like a tedious micromanager, interrupting the core game by visiting the war table to send your advisors off again. I do like that the Quartermaster requisitions table makes use of crafting resources (crafting resources were near useless in DA1-DA2), but gameplay-wise, it is a tedious series of fetch quests (and infinite!) alongside shards and other open world quest objectives.\n\nProgression-wise, stats follow previous titles, and with abilities using the DA2's web system. It's further streamlined in that attributes are automatically assigned on level ups. Sustained abilities are removed entirely, which is a shame as I always felt they were the best implementation to MMO-style buffs. With that said, I do like some additions to the mechanics. For example, focus abilities like Divinity 2 which act as more powerful abilities saved for the occasional combat. Permanent upgrades include fade bonuses, amulets of power, potion upgrades, inventory capacity, creature research. Equipment follows previous titles, newly with more upgrades to weapons and armor adding customizability.\n\nThe companion system follows previous titles, newly with advisors. The tactics system is a significant downgrade in the name of streamlining, [removing the if-then customization with behavior presets]( https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonage/comments/aaxeak/no_spoilers_the_combat_in_inquisition_makes_me). I can see the appeal of pushing the game towards third-person action RPGs where you only control one character. But it removes one of DA's most important value-adds to the mixed MMO/action RPG genre. Certain classes as AI play worse, doing best as tank and support and worst as DW rogue, reaver warrior, and knight enchanter mage. It also diminishes the importance of a party, which is a key element in DA compared to western RPGs like Elder Scrolls and Witcher. The approval system is also a downgrade from DA2: like DAO, only maximum companion approval is important. There is no rivalry scale. Furthermore, approval only gates companion quests and romance, doing little more like boosting stats or DA2's unique friend/rival abilities.\n\nControls enforce a real-time playstyle. Abilities no longer auto-move to execute an attack but execute immediately; and the default attack does not move you like DA1-2's auto-attack toggle. I like the effect this has: positioning is important with effects like a 2H warrior's swing potentially striking multiple enemies; and different weapons have different reach. Mouse look is also useless as you never click to move or target NPCs; your mouse instead always controls the camera. Ultimately, the controls represent a compromise: as a third-person action RPG, you feel more immersed in playing a character rather than instructing one; but you sacrifice the tactical combat of previous titles with fine-tuned instructions (move to this spot, cast fireball at this location to hit all enemies and not you, etc.).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics are gorgeous with detail, lighting, and color. For a game in 2014, it looks like later games like Dishonored 2 (2016), Witcher 3 (2015), and Horizon Zero Dawn (2017). There's voice acting like DA2 but with more options as you can select your race. I also love the Tarot card and portrait artstyle.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The game removes healing spells and puts more emphasis on healing items and defensive utilities like Barrier. I like the idea of removing a heal bot as a crutch as in DA1-DA2: I resent Wynne and Anders as characters as they're so one-dimensional in DA1/2 respectively.\n+ Minimap. DA2's minimap was too good, leaving you to constantly look at the minimap to navigate areas whereas DAO had none, requiring you to constantly press M find the quest marker or zone you're missing. DAI's minimap is more like a compass which enables immersion.\n+ Dragon Age Keep enable custom world states to give you different playthrough backgrounds.\n+ Quality-of-life controls: Tab to cycle target enemies, command your party to attack enemy you're targeting or disengage, jump, auto-run.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ No health regeneration outside of combat.\n+ To increase immersion, you can't see the companion's approval.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Fuck the Hinterlands. Literally no main quests and no side quests are interesting: it's one-line questgivers with a gameplay loop of wandering an empty zone killing enemies and picking up items. Hinterlands is representative of the worst parts of DAI: sidequest quality lacking any story, player agency, or gameplay variety; and large areas made artificially busy by finding X items, marking landmarks, and other menial tasks.\n+ [\"Valuables\"](https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Valuables) replaces DA1-2's junk and unfortunately, they're not always junk. Some are used for creature research (highlighted yellow), requisitions, and companion gifts. So you have to selectively hoard them by monitoring which items are requisition in the Wiki, yellow, or gifts.\n+ Auto-leveling attributes as a streamlined element. There wasn't much build customization in the first place in previous titles (e.g., all Rogues focus on DEX/CUN), but I do think it's helpful to be able to control when to pump CON or WIL vs your damage stat.\n+ I despise the Search button. It's a mini-Detective Mode, highlighting interactible assets by spamming a key rather than making them more visible through the game's native design. I much prefer the \"highlight all\" from prior games as it's more like action RPGs.\n+ Multiplayer mode, although I never experienced it. I like the idea of coop, but as it's detached from the main game, the multiplayer has little content and is very grindy.\n+ The horse is a lazy implementation to adjust for areas being so empty. Because it also removes party members, it's a weird compromise as a game meant for a party and not a solo player RPG.\n+ No altitude indicator on minimap icons. This is especially important since the game's levels feature so much verticality with mountains and mines. This, combined with arbitrary gates in certain areas that force you to go back to the War Table to unlock the gate, can be infuriating to even know if you can reach a certain quest.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Valuables](https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Valuables). A page to keep open to know what valuables to keep.\n+ [2H Reaver build](https://fextralife.com/forums/t167034/2handed-reaver-warrior-build--ragenroll)\n+ [Zone level ranges](https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonage/comments/2nad8y/community_effort_minimum_level_for_zones)\n+ [Best Influence perks](https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonage/comments/9po7ep/no_spoilers_what_dragon_age_inquisition_perks_are/e83565g)\n+ [DAITools Suite Loader](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonageinquisition/mods/693) with a [tutorial](https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonage/comments/358gtp/no_spoilers_modding_dai_for_a_total_noob). [War Table - No Waiting](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonageinquisition/mods/479) removes one of the game's worst elements. [More Banter mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonageinquisition/mods/1454) makes banter more active although still not enough. [Quicker Looting](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonageinquisition/mods/788) removes the loot animation reminiscent of Witcher 3's looting.\n\n __On mouse and keyboard vs controller.__ Both are a compromise. With controller, movement and camera control is more intuitive, as well as actions like Interact and combat abilities. With mouse and keyboard, you can quick save/load, control zoom, and more keybindings means instant access to 4 other abilities, quick heal and potions, party commands, and menus. Ultimately, I chose controller as I think the intuitive controls and analog sticks outweigh the extra keybindings.\n\n__On difficulty & trials.__ I switched between Hard and Normal difficulty without friendly fire, toning things down when things got too frustrating because difficulty just scales enemy damage/sponginess and adds more time to the grinding. I played with one trial: Even Ground. Even Ground scales enemies to be at least the same XP level as you, keeping areas that you overlevelled to still be interesting. Some also use Take it Slow (after getting to Skyhold to avoid playing with minimal abilities and because you won't get max level until during Trespasser and completing all sidequests if you started with it). Take It Slow halves XP as you'll easily reach max level midway through the game with Even Ground and completing all sidequests. I skipped most side quests (even some zones) as it's Inquisition's weakest point.\n\n__On playthrough choices.__ I sided with Templars. I wanted to switch things up from DA2, and it seems not unreasonable in DAI given the Inquisition's Chantry background and advisors. Unfortunately, DA is always one-sided in depicting mages as the oppressed underdog and going out of the way to show Templars as arrogant and abusing their power (see DAI's Val Royeaux).\n\n+ __Inquisitor.__ Male Qunari 2H DPS warrior. My playstyle is to draw threat while doing lots of AOE on the frontline. I chose warrior to change things up from a Mage in DAO and Rogue in DA2.\n+  I swapped party members semi-regularly to experience different specializations and companions, not aiming to minmax. Typical party comp was a tank, mage, and rogue.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-age-inquisition"},{"id":"322682678624179788","title":"Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":330,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["BioWare"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Tactical","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-05-04","completedDate":"2021-05-04","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Decent writing: streamlined in the overall consequences of the Inquisition's rule, what the companions have been up to and their influence on the DLC's story itself, and I found the Qunari villain subplot to be rather unnecessary (the core plot with Solas should have been given more spotlight).\n\nStory-wise, there is little to no player agency. Like the rest of Inquisition, choices in the dialogue wheel are hardly choices: options are questions to solicit more information or, occasionally, vague options to express slightly different emotions that evoke no difference except at that line. Compare to, e.g., control of a small empire with different diplomatic choices in Awakening.\n\nThe level design is linear and cinematic---something you would expect of an action-adventure, not a deep RPG with an ensemble cast each with their own input shaping the story of an RPG. It does work well as an action-adventure, and I wish I were more absorbed into the consequences of the story with the Inquisition disbanding if the base game's story was necessarily interesting.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI barely had motivation to complete Inquisition's base game, skipping all side content. I played the Trespasser DLC as I'm only interested in good writing and affecting the core storyline. Played at level 17 and on Normal difficulty.\n\n+ Jaws of Hakkon is a larger Crestwood and I didn't even enjoy Crestwood with its superficial main quest. In fact, I skipped many zones altogether.\n+ The Descent is a dungeon crawl, with no story, just Dwarven lore percolated throughout the dungeon. I'd rather just read a wiki or until I ever get a mood for Inquisition combat (which is rare; I find it the worst among the 3 DA titles).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-age-inquisition-trespasser"},{"id":"322682678624184908","title":"Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition DLCs","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2009,"startedDate":"2021-04-12","completedDate":"2021-04-20","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Combat got a bit stale by the time I got to the DLC. Continuing the gameplay loop, particularly with reused assets (sometimes entire levels), diminished the value of the DLCs. Nevertheless I enjoyed the campaigns by treating it like a typical D&D campaign. You have the same mechanics, characters, and so forth; but now it's a different spin based on a different dungeon master's telling of a story that weaves the elements together.\n\nThis entry includes all DLC except Awakening, to be evaluated separately, and A Tale of Orzammar, which is more of a promotional teaser. I played A Warden's Keep as I played the base game and The Stone Prisoner and Return to Ostagar after I beat the main campaign. I completed all additional campaigns after Awakening.\n\nI didn't play The Darkspawn Chronicles as I got a little burnt out. Since it's standalone (and apparently not good), I can always play it later when I have an itching for DAO."},{"id":"337375363507159633","title":"Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies","originalTitle":"ドラゴンクエストIX　星空の守り人","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":2880,"platforms":["NDS"],"studios":["Level-5","Square Enix"],"publishers":["Square Enix","Nintendo"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2022-07-16","completedDate":"2022-08-27","updatedDate":"2022-08-27","notes":"Dragon Quest 9 most excels in its flexible party composition and progression mechanics to enable diverse and useful growth across its party members. It continues with DQ's strong core battle system, linear semi-open world design, and aesthetic and soundtrack appeal.\n\nFlaw-wise:\n\n+ Generic story and characters. This is particularly a problem in DQ9 due to the lack of a real cast of party members.\n+ It can be confusing knowing where to go next as objectives are not clearly laid out. I had to resort to a walkthrough several times.\n+ Unlike other titles, there's no incentive to explore in the world map. There are no chests, only the occasional random loot. This meant I just beeline to the next town/dungeon.\n\n__Story.__ DQ9 has no distinguishable party members to provide character dialogue, which is a shame since in DQ, the protagonist is always silent so there's not really anyone to riff of of or provide much development. This was done in the spirit of making the game multiplayer, but it makes the story suffer with the lack of any substantial characters.\n\n__Gameplay.__ DQ9 builds on DQ8's skill system newly with a class changing system, including party members that can change classes at will. This job system is clearly the predecessor to DQ11's, greatly improving the flexibility in the game to build your own party and flexibly change each party member over the course of the story. \n\nThere's incentive to play multiple classes, never sticking to just one for each party member. This is caused by all skill points transferring across classes, meaning accumulated active skills and passive boosts remain useful: defensive ones are useful for all classes, and physical and magic offense ones separately synergize well.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Toriyama’s art and the classic Dragon Quest soundtrack age well. It’s always fun to see Dragon Quest rendered in a different but always familiar world.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Like all DQ games, you can set party member tactics. It's a nice quality-of-life to speed up the grind when fighting mobs.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ There's no Metal King Slime spawn until after you beat the game. This means you can't easily grind to achieve endgame gear until after you beat the base game, and by that point, I personally just quit the game.\n+ There is no additional release to the game. The base Dragon Quest IX has no quality-of-life features like speed up for battle. There are also no settings to speed up the text animation. Fortunately, you can at least fast forward on an emulator, treating the game effectively like you would when emulating Pokemon.\n+ Like DQ8, magic is poorly balanced at endgame, where physical attackers reign supreme.\n+ You can't respec your skill points. At the least, you can get an infinite amount by resetting a class once you hit level 99, resetting their attribute points but keeping the skill points you attained. You can also swap to level in another class for skill points (99 x 11 classes, 12 for Hero).\n+ While accumulated skills including their passive boosts transfer across classes, weirdly, Seed of X stats are locked to the specific character's class that you use them on. This makes them even more limited than being used on a single character.\n+ Unlike DQ11, there's no strike button you can use in order to preemptively begin a battle against a roaming enemy (and conversely that they can ambush you if they touch your back). Pre-emptively is subject to RNG.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Walkthrough](https://almarsguides.com/retro/walkthroughs/NDS/Games/DragonQuestIXSentinelsoftheStarrySkies). There are more walkthroughs in GameFAQs, but they're all plaintext.\n+ [Woodus' DQ9 Resources](https://www.woodus.com/den/games/dq9ds), including [Quests](https://www.woodus.com/den/games/dq9ds/quests.php), [postgame strategies](https://www.woodus.com/den/games/dq9ds/post_game.php)\n+ [Metal Slime Hunting tips](https://levelskip.com/rpgs/Metal-Slime-Hunting-in-Dragon-Quest-IX) and their [exact floor locations](https://www.woodus.com/den/games/dq9ds/metal_slime_farming.php). You can even manipulate the seed to [guarantee a Liquid Metal Slime spawn in Bowhole B3](https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonquest/comments/conzx8/liquid_metal_slime_rng_manipulation_in_dragon).\n\nLike New Super Mario Bros, I played this game on the melonDS emulator. It's more updated than DeSmuME, including higher resolutions. I didn't bother with completing all sidequests as there weren't significant rewards or an interesting story behind them, just fetch quests. I used all Seeds on my Hero with Gladiator class (non-Skill Seeds don't transfer across classes) with the exception of magic-based seeds, which I gave to my Sage (originally, a Priest). I didn't play post game content.\n\n__Party build.__ Skill points wise, I prioritized:\n\n1. Metal Slime ability for every party member: Metal Slash (SP 13 Sword) early game, Thunder Thrust (SP 58 Spear) mid-to-endgame. I prefer Spear over the alternative Hatchet Man (SP 58 Axe).\n2. Unique class trees for their passive boosts. Paladin's Virtue tree is especially good. Of the max 200 skill points obtained at max level 99 for a class, make sure 100 is spent on the unique class tree. It's possible to get more skill points for a given class with Revocate, but only in post game.\n3. Shield on every party member in order to equip a shield regardless of class, which is a significant defense and block chance boost.\n4. Swords for highest DPS with Falcon Slash + (Uber) Falcon Blade.\n\nI started with a basic composition of Minstrel, Warrior, Mage, Priest. Then I swapped everyone to Paladin for 100 Virtue, and I prioritize all Priest swaps to go 100 Spear first (the initial Priest swaps to Warrior to obtain 100 Spear). By endgame (and before post game), I had 3 Gladiators and 1 Sage each with 100 Spear, 100 Shield, 100 Virtue, and a decent progression toward other unique class trees.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-quest-ix-sentinels-of-the-starry-skies"},{"id":"322682678652742220","title":"Dragon's Dogma","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":2280,"platforms":["PS3","X360"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-06-25","completedDate":"2022-07-05","updatedDate":"2023-09-21","notes":"Dragon's Dogma stands out most in its mix of RPG with a tight combat system. There are vocations that are all diverse and viable, and where core combat involves leveraging 3 skill shortcuts you select along with other upgrades. It's made further rich with a party system of Pawns, which act as online-like NPCs that fill your player's weakspots and also provide quest guidance. In simple terms, Dragon's Dogma is what Elden Ring would be if it were developed 10 years ago.\n\nDragon's Dogma has many major flaws: empty world, quest design, writing, and missable quests. Nothing stands out in the story, world, or characters. Quests are by the book, and a significant amount can easily be missed with no notification of new quests that appear or quests that will fail after you venture enough in the main quest chain. Even the combat is overrated: while I like the progression mechanics and combat abilities, enemy variety is low, difficulty is too easy, and the level designs are too generic to make for interesting encounters like in Dark Souls.\n\n__Story.__\nWriting is generic. No character nor part of the world feels memorable.\n\nEven the quest design is fairly generic. Most lacking is the open world encouragement to explore, where you see an area you haven't explored on your map yet, and you organically find a quest, new items or lore, and enemy encounters. Instead, Dragon's Dogma's is hub-based, where you continually revisit the various towns to look for new quests, and that gives you an excuse to venture further in the world.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Combat is fairly hack and slash. The most unique element is climbing on creatures to attack weak areas, similar to Shadow of the Colossus. Like Dark Souls, there is stamina, block, and a parry mechanic (for select vocations). Unlike Dark Souls, there is also no dodge mechanic and where enemies have a telegraphed moveset. Dragon's Dogma puts more emphasis on positioning, and timing is less punishable. For example, basic attacks also do not deplete stamina; only actions such as sprinting, skills, and spells do.\n\nPawn system. Online feature. They have natural dialogue and provide quest hints if they completed them in another world.\n\nDragon's Dogma employs both character levels and class levels (vocation ranks). Vocations are flexible, letting you change at any point in the playthrough after purchasing them with Discipline Points, and Discipline Points are obtained proportionally to level XP. In fact, the game encourages you to play multiple vocations as a vocation's Augments (passive bonuses) are shared across vocations.\n\nThe game is surprisingly short in content and shows its incompleteness. For example, there are very few towns. The NPC affinity system is shallow as there are no real rewards.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nStandard for its time. Doesn't age that well as it aims for a realistic graphics style that clearly shows its age, similar to Oblivion. Day night cycle.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Vocations determine your level up's [stat growth](https://dragonsdogma.fandom.com/wiki/Stat_Growths), with stats reaching soft thresholds at level 10 and 100. This means if you're high enough level, you can hamper your abilities of another vocation if you didn't balance your stats appropriately or started with a vocation with bad stat growth. Fortunately, min maxing is not necessary as the game is easy to complete under most any build; you'll beat the last post-game encounters by at most 130-140, let alone leveling all the way to 200. Moreover, gear accounts for 80-90% of your stats so a suboptimal vocation swap won't be significantly worse. That said, I wish the game let you allocate your stats at level up or reset your stats upon changing vocation. You can work around this with a [stats calculator](https://stackoverflow.github.io/dragons-dogma-stat-planner) and stats editor.\n+ This game encourages hoarding. Materials are needed to keep for crafting, the storage chest is effectively infinite, and you already loot a lot of gold. You never sell anything with the exception of duplicate equipment or if you have a lot of a given item.\n+ The fast travel system only has a handful of permanent locations hardcoded for fast travel. For the majority of other locations, you use Portcrystals to set them wherever you like in the overworld followed by your Eternal Ferrystone. I’m not convinced the manual setting is better than the streamlined standard of fixed locations though.\n+ Notice board quests add infinite bonus objectives of kill X or escort X to Y. I like that they’re more bonus as they’re infinite, so you never are obligated to go out of your way to complete them. Still annoying that you have to visit the Notice Board so often as it’s infeasible to keep track to know which completed quest corresponds to which Notice Board to newly check. Also, escort quests are just tedious; at least you can bypass them altogether using Portcrystals.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Many quests are missable. It's important to be familiar with the game's [stages](https://dragonsdogma.fandom.com/wiki/Quests#Stages) in order to avoid blocking yourself from content.\n+ There's only one save file. You have to manually backup your save file in order to collect multiple.\n+ Game should bucket the quest types as there are many quests filled up by notice board kill X quantities. This way you can more easily identify the main and side quests.\n+ You can't skip the prologue and jump directly into character creation. There is at least a [workaround](https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma/comments/41586t/psa_switch_to_hard_mode_to_change_your_character) where you swap from Normal to Hard, which resets the game skipping the prologue, and then you swap back to your desired difficulty.\n+ Game pauses whenever you alt-tab. Very annoying. Fortunately, you can fix this by installing the [Agnostic Dragon mod](https://github.com/Kaldaien/AgDrag).\n+ Sound is quite low as the game always assumes you're using Surround Sound. Fortunately, setting my Speakers to use [Loudness Equalization](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Dragon%27s_Dogma:_Dark_Arisen#Issues_fixed) seemed to fix it.\n+ You can't tell time of day or use a wait mechanic to pass time by the hour. This is important for tracking down NPCs like Fournival or NPCs that only appear in the afternoon.\n+ Sprinting out of combat shouldn't reduce stamina. Fortunately you have infinite stamina in towns, but you're still limited during free roam. You can use a mod to bypass this.\n+ Pawns don't ever shut up to give you even the simplest tutorial advice whenever you trigger some condition. Repetitive dialogue that's almost as bad as the NPC lines in Divinity.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Quests](https://dragonsdogma.fandom.com/wiki/Quests)\n+ [What to keep in inventory, sell, or store?](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/210447-dragons-dogma-dark-arisen/75849091)\n+ [Assassin skills](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/684236-dragons-dogma-dark-arisen/68337873)\n+ [Where to put your 5 Portcrystals, prior to New Game Plus?](https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma/comments/rmp0z2/where_do_you_mostly_place_your_portcrystals)\n+ [Map](https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma/comments/8pwkje/full_map)\n\n__Version.__ I played with [Agnostic Dragon mod](https://github.com/Kaldaien/AgDrag) for enabling the game to not pause while alt tabbing and [dinput8.dll hooks mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma/mods/96) for an in-game clock, time manipulation, quick save hotkey, respec, and save backups; and [unlimited sprinting mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma/mods/9). \n\n__Playthrough style.__\nI played on Normal difficulty as Hard mode isn't encouraged for a first playthrough.\n\nUltimately, I found the game to be a chore and quit shortly before The Final Battle quest. I had a bunch of other side quests I needed to complete before then, and I didn't find the game interesting enough combat-wise, and certainly not quest/writing/world-wise, to continue playing. The only remaining piece of the game is the final quests, Bitterback Isle, and experiment with endgame builds.\n\n__Build.__ I experimented with vocations but generally went Assassin and with a Mage Pawn for utility and support.\n\ntodos on future playthroughs\n+ bow build\n+ mage build\n+ sword and shield build\n+ hard mode","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-s-dogma"},{"id":"322682678652700236","title":"Duck Hunt","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1984,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["Arcade","famicom","WiiU","NES"],"studios":["Nintendo R&D1","Iwasaki Giken Kogyo"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Shooter","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/duck-hunt"},{"id":"327894479847555665","title":"Duke Nukem 3D","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":570,"platforms":["PC","Mac","DOS"],"studios":["3D Realms","3D Realms"],"publishers":["MacSoft Games","3D Realms","U.S. Gold","FormGen"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle"],"startedDate":"2020-12-03","completedDate":"2021-02-14","updatedDate":"2022-04-03","notes":"Duke Nukem 3D shines in its unique setting, with a history of its own character, weapons, and enemies. It stands among the holy trinity of Build Engine games—alongside Blood and Shadow Warrior.\n\nHowever, I hate the unintuitive level progress, limited ammo, hitscan enemies, and lack of enemy stagger. I frequently got stuck in the game, at least once or twice every level, hampering the game's momentum. This happened most in Duke Nukem 3D of all classic FPS games I've experienced as of this writing, largely attributed to its more complicated level navigation with mazes, arbitrary buttons, and underwater tunnels.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Gameplay is effectively Doom: key emphasis on movement, weapon variety strong, keycard open level progression, health and armor system, and diverse enemy types. New to this game, there's actual vertical aiming. I also liked the weapon variety: with the core Doom weapons of Pistol, Shotgun, Chaingun Cannon, RPG, and Devastator (BFG-equivalent); but also Pipe Bomb and Shrinker. I used all the weapons excluding the Laser Tripbomb and Freezethrower.\n\n[Unfortunately, the level design is not intuitive, and I'm not the only one who experienced this.](https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/ddviih/playing_duke_nukem_3d_for_the_first_time) This greatly impacted my overally enjoyment of the game as I frequently had to stop to refer to a walkthrough. With that said, the levels have a sense of realism with how things are placed that previous games like Doom and Heretic felt far too artificial.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I love the graphics. It's like the perfected rendition of the 2.5D era that Doom (1993) made iconic. The textures and colors give it a sense of refined age. The misogynism doesn't age super well with scantily clad women and tossing at them cash. I think it's okay to the extent it promotes pornography not unlike how Doom promotes violence.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Destructible environments, like Blood a year later.\n+ Duke's various quips as you interact, like Blood a year later.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ With 20th Anniversary Edition World Tour, the vertical sensitivity is noticeably lower than horizontal, and you can't set them separately. It also has weird mouse smoothing---a problem with all Build Engine games (see my comments for Shadow Warrior). This incentivizes auto-aiming, but it's often too aggressive such as rockets aimed at an enemy far away but flies to a closer enemy. In Duke Nukem 3D, you particularly need it off in order to shoot the Battlelord Sentry's feet with your Shrinker.\n+ I hate how arbitrary the location of keycards are, obscured by some wall you have to interact with occasionally. This slows down gameplay as I have to look around for it or look it up.\n+ Hitscan enemies. In Blood this was tolerable as there are quite a few strategies to fight them, e.g., crouch or stagger. Most enemies do not stagger here. Fortunately, the Shrinker works on the Battlelord Sentry and Assault Commander, making their encounters tolerable if you have the ammo.\n+ Fuck the Sentry Drones. They're too spongey for their melee suicidal nature. Especially the worst in Episode 2. They're the Lost Souls equivalent from Doom, but spongier and their explosion with multiple of them means a one-shot death.\n+ Laser Trip Bomb has limited use.\n+ Certain guns require reloading, but a manual reload was not invented at the time.\n+ Death system is forgiving with the Playback Feature, allowing you to revive at any time you were in the level. Helps avoid accidental quicksaves that are poorly timed. However, I run into a [bug where I randomly die](https://steamcommunity.com/app/434050/discussions/0/143388408893795534) so I just turn it off.\n+ No real quicksave system. F6 is a shortcut to the save menu and F9 is a shortcut to the load menu. Fortunately, it's not that bad: two keypresses instead of 1.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played the Duke Nukem 3D 20th Anniversary Edition World Tour (2016) edition. It's apparently better than the Megaton edition (2013) as well as the fan source port of the original EDuke32. I played on Come Get Some!, the hard mode (Ultra Violence) equivalent of Doom. This entry only includes the 3 base episodes and not the 4th from Atomic Edition (1996) and the 5th from 20th Anniversary Edition World Tour (2016).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/duke-nukem-3d"},{"id":"322682678653505100","title":"Dying Light","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":1050,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Linux","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE"],"studios":["Techland"],"publishers":["Techland","WB Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-02-04","completedDate":"2022-02-07","updatedDate":"2022-02-07","notes":"Dying Light implements parkour movement mechanics in an open world action game. The parkour is great with a diverse moveset and is supported well by the level design.\n\nUnfortunately, it suffers from multiple elements, some common to its open world genre: uninteresting main story, sidequests, and characters; tedious and unrewarding loot; subpar combat system without a block or parry mechanic, or with stealth (you effectively just spam melee or kick). Early game until around level 9 is also a pain due to your limited moveset and the need to constantly repair weapons that would take forever to kill a zombie.\n\n__Story.__ Typical Far Cry-style story. Predictable plot and full of action cut scenes.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The parkour controls of holding space and aiming correctly is simple and intuitive. It handles a lot of the animations such as mantling from your feet, climbing up a wall, ledge climbing. Further skills that you level up augment your capabilities providing a nice experience, including slide, drop roll, wall run, vault, tackle, the grappling hook.\n\nSkyrim-like lockpicking.\n\nAs an open world game, it has the standard systems of loot, inventory management, and crafting. Its most interesting feature is the night and day cycle, which is particularly novel with how dangerous it newly is at night thanks to its excellent lighting (or lack thereof) and new enemies.\n\nQuests comprise story quests, side quests, and bounties. I actually think the game suffers from too many scripted scenes which interrupt the pacing of the actual gameplay. The game might feel more immersive and engaging if it focused more on the freerunning and spent less time on all the campaign scripted scenes.\n\nAs you add skills and weapon stats increase, the game becomes significantly more enjoyable as combat is now viable. The early game requires much more running around as fighting even a single zombie can take multiple attacks before they finally die. This is compounded with the weapon condition and your limited supplies for repairs, where a weapon might last just one or two enemies. Later game's extra skills greatly increase your damage (e.g., grapple, dropkick, stomp, drop attack, charge attack), and higher damage weapons require fewer strikes to kill.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics are surprisingly quite good for a game in 2015. Facial animations are excellent during cutscenes with motion capture, although most cutscenes from the usually poor lip sync for this graphics era. The level of detail in environments and characters is also good.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Triangle indicator on minimap to denote if the waypoint is above or below your current elevation.\n+ The one-to-two liner story recaps during loading screens. Good way to catch up if I wasn't paying much attention to the cutscenes, and that's often as the story is forgettable.\n+ Challenges as an additional content within the open world. I could see a game being successful if it was just about these parkour challenges.\n+ While weapon condition is low, weapon damage scales with your Survivor Rank. This means you'll continue to find stronger weapons, so there’s less regret about no permanent weapon.\n+ The ragdoll physics after you dropkick someone, especially when dropkicked off a ledge.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n+ No stealth kill, at least not as a core ability until much later when you unlock the skill. It still doesn't encourage stealth to clear a safehouse though.\n+ The multiplayer elements such as coop and Be The Zombie invasions. I just don't find any of these elements interesting so I set my game to be Friends Only.\n+ Checkpoint system with no manual save. This means game overs with their albeit small death penalty have an impact as the death penalty accumulates.\n+ No map-based fast travel system.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The low weapon condition so you often have to repair, encouraging you to generally just avoid enemies instead of kill them. This encourages more resource management. But it's to a detriment with the fact that weapons have finite amount of repair so you can never even stick with a single weapon. All items are therefore temporary. It's also too unrealistic to have weapons barely last a single fight during early game.\n+ Upgrade system is similarly pointless given that weapons don't last until endgame, and at that point you're so strong you don't even need more upgrades.\n+ Survivor sense. Annoying action you gotta spam to alert yourself to any missing items to loot. At the least the minimap mitigates the amount of spamming by highlighting areas with remaining lootable items. It's also not an obnoxious screen filter like in Batman Arkham Asylum but rather like a radar.\n+ Stamina is only an explicit mechanic for combat and not movement.  I hate that the stamina bar is invisible for movement.\n+ QTE final boss fight.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Quests](https://dyinglight.fandom.com/wiki/Quests)\n\nThis entry includes all DLCs except the Following expansion. I played on Normal difficulty.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dying-light"},{"id":"37a6f12d-da1f-4a53-beae-cf6202de3007","title":"Dynasty Warriors 7","originalTitle":"真・三國無双6","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":1380,"platforms":["PC","PS3","X360","PSP"],"studios":["Omega Force"],"publishers":["Koei","Koei Tecmo"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"startedDate":"2023-03-19","completedDate":"2023-03-25","updatedDate":"2023-03-26","notes":"Dynasty Warriors stands out in its ambition of a historical epic story with grand campaigns and massive ensemble cast; along with its iconic musou gameplay.\n\nUnfortunately, while DW7's story is good, it does not stand out even among video game stories. The story is dense in exposition, skips by too many details such that you can even recall all the characters, and individual characters are not granted much depth beyond a single theme or quirk. Furthermore, combat is superficial, with not much progression to go beyond the weak/strong attack combos. Enemies offer little variety in either number of unique enemies, movesets, or challenge. The game encourages a stunlock fest in order to defeat officers, and the regular soldier is fodder with no danger if you're surrounded. This quickly gets repetitive after the first story campaign, let alone having to complete 4 total.\n\nOther flaws:\n+ Level designs are generally all similar. Even some story missions are repeated across story modes.\n+ Movesets only vary by weapon, so it gets repetitive after a while.\n+ RPG progression mechanics are superficial.\n\n__Story.__\nThe story is surprisingly quite good in telling the overall epic and individual character portrayals. It's streamlined for such an ensemble cast, so it's difficult to see too much backstory and personality behind the individual characters. Rather there are large swaths of themes behind each kingdom.\n\nThe story is told as an alternating sequence of heavy exposition and individual scenes to play out iconic scenarios. It's a lot to take in for a first telling of Three Kingdoms given just how much happens in the story and the amount of characters involved. Fortunately, the repetition in the story mode plays out to this favor in that you effectively hear the same story from three different perspectives in Story Mode, each from the respective kingdom.\n\n+ Wei is my favorite. Tons of engaging characters. Cao Cao's theme is the most progressive and logical in government, and he's realistic about how this is required, not sugarcoating the brutal efficiency that's required.\n+ Wu has a likeable family. But the idealism they strive for is largely one of nepotism.\n+ I find the depiction of the Shu characters to be the most hypocritical. Their main theme as verbalized in dialogue is benevolence, and Liu Bei is portrayed in all interactions as kind and accepting to a fault (such as losing Xu province by hiring Lu Bu). However, their actions speak of betrayal on multiple occasions: not relinquishing Jing province to Wu after they helped with the Chibi harbor scenario; and Liu Bei betraying Liu Zhang to overtake Yi Province when Liu Zhang in fact requested their help. The story then depicts Wu as the traitors by attacking Jing province and defeating Guan Yu. The prototypical three brother heroes and some companions they encounter like Zhuge Liang are great.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nDW7 introduces two main features: EX moves and the ability to swap between two weapons.\n\nThe game has light RPG elements. You have weapon drops, seals that upgrade your weapons, a skill tree, and stat boosts.\n\nThe shop and gold currency are rather useless. The game gives you plenty of weapons through weapon drops. There's no need to purchase weapons. This progression element could be made quiet better with crafting in order to upgrade weapons similar to the system seals have (e.g., buy replaceable parts, or include new attachments to the weapons).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nServiceable, clearly aged for its time. The battle soundtrack is the same in every battle.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ I feel the combat against officers would be greatly improved if there were a deflect or parry mechanic. Rather, the game is largely just a stunlock fest in order to prevent the enemy from hitting you.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ You gain stats when defeating officers, and more so if you defeat them with a 8 or 16-hit combo. You also get a weapon drop if you defeat an appearing officer in less than 30 seconds. The increase is minor and you can easily grind for this. That said, I like that it at least encourages defeating officers quickly.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You have to manually walk over to pick up stat boosts and weapon drops. This is annoying because they're easy to miss, especially given all the temporary buffs, and that you have to wait a second or two after an enemy dies for the item to appear. It'd be much better with auto-pickup.\n+ Calling and mounting a horse is inconvenient. You have to look for the horse, then the trigger to mount is not easy, you often have to stop and look for the specific A button prompt or otherwise you just jump in the air. This is fixed in DW8 where you can simply hold L2 to not only call the horse but automatically mount.\n+ Camera control is slightly awkward. You need to press LB to reposition yourself at times, particularly when you get disoriented and are looking for the officer next to you.\n+ Save data progression is slightly confusing. Skill points are reset in each story mode. However, you keep weapons and seals, so you're still overpowered as the intention for each story mode is from scratch.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n__Playing order and game version.__ What's the best first title to play in the Dynasty Warriors series? There are two popular recommendations:\n\n+ [Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends (DW7XL)](https://koei.fandom.com/wiki/Dynasty_Warriors_7:_Xtreme_Legends). DW7 is the best in story. Although DW8's engine is technically different, the assets are largely the same as DW7.\n  + On version, a related title is \"Definitive Edition\": this is the bundle of both the base title and XL expansion. \n+ [Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends (DW8XL)](https://koei.fandom.com/wiki/Dynasty_Warriors_8:_Xtreme_Legends). On top of being a good starter, DW8 is ranked by fans as among the best in the series. It has decent story, worse than DW7's, but has more content (e.g., characters, weapons, movesets).\n  + On version, a related title is \"Complete Edition\": this is the bundle of both the base title and XL expansion. The \"Definitive Edition\" was released on Switch and PC (Windows store) and includes all other DLC (e.g., cosmetics/weapons).\n  + On port, the PC is more or less a PS3 port such as in its models and textures but with some PS4 assets (e.g., crowds). That said, the PC has the best performance (e.g., crowd density, draw distance). The PS4 release has the best graphics but does not include DLCs. The PC's 60 FPS is the same on the PS4 Pro (4K 30 FPS or 1080p 60 FPS) and better than the base PS4's 1080p 30 FPS.\n+ On XL vs Empires, Empires is more of conquest mode with a character creator, where you play a hypothetical conquer all of China campaign and without story (it’s the grindy elements of DW in my opinion); XL provides more on top of the base game.\n\nI chose DW7. DW7 is shorter than DW8, with a more streamlined story and argued by fans to be the best story (including pre-set characters in the story mode). If I find I enjoy DW7, I can play DW8 next to enjoy its sequel improvements (e.g., more characters and movesets) or venture into older classic titles (e.g., 3-5).\n\n__Settings.__  I played on Normal difficulty. I played Story Mode in the order of Wei, Wu, Shu, Jin. [This is the chronological order: 219AD -> around 225AD -> 234AD -> 264AD.](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/606303-dynasty-warriors-7/58593816) I did not play the other modes.\n\n+ Controller. The game didn't detect my Xbox Core controller; so I changed the controller settings in Steam to use Steam Input. Many issues still: button prompts are in keyboard and mouse ([fixed here](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2074858145)); keyboard and mouse doesn't work; D-pad isn't detected.\n+ Resolution. Highest resolution is 1920x1080. It has no borderless setting, but works with Borderless Gaming.\n+ Game runs at 60 FPS.\n+ You can't make the FOV higher. The default FOV feels a little too close, particularly to get a sense of your perspective around you with the many enemies.\n+ I generally played with Japanese audio (the native voiceover language) and English subtitles. English audio is monotone and lacks personality in the voice acting; but it is quite convenient because there's so much text during battles that it can be hard to follow with all the reading.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dynasty-warriors-7"},{"id":"6f70e4f4-a62e-49a7-abac-72feae25b2db","title":"EarthBound Beginnings","originalTitle":"Mother","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1989,"playtimeMinutes":1020,"platforms":["WiiU","famicom"],"studios":["Ape"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2023-07-28","completedDate":"2023-07-31","updatedDate":"2023-07-31","notes":"Mother 1 plays like a beta version of EarthBound. It has your core mechanics down, and there's clear original ideas the formed the basis of EarthBound. But the sequel did everything better. Mother 1 suffers too much in random encounter rate, the grind, unclear progression and generic Legend of Zelda-style objective collection (eight melodies followed by a final boss), lack of much writing and story, and too little character backstory.\n\n__Story.__\nWriting still has some of the iconic Earthbound charm, with quirky humor and various references. The story is more barebones than the other titles, less like a JRPG and more like a Legend of Zelda game on the NES or SNES. Namely, you're tasked to find eight melodies at various areas and you pick up party members without much backstory behind them.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nIt's the first game that started it all, and beyond Earthbound you can also see its influence on games like Pokemon. To name core examples:\n\n+ Aliens in a modern day setting and writing charm.\n+ Isometric camera angle, area exploration, and turn-based battle system.\n+ Simple stat system of HP, PP, Offense, Defense, Speed.  Other stats have changed slightly across successors.\n+ Bestiary, items, and Psi attacks.\n\nThe worst element of Mother 1 is its grind:\n\n+ Encounter rate is 12.5% for each step, which is way too high.\n+ World map is largely empty. Combined with the high encounter rate, it's often better to refer to a walkthrough than explore every crevice and have to fight all the encounters while doing so.\n+ All party members start at level 1, meaning you need to level them up and gear them up with new purchases every time.\n+ Where to go next and how to clear objectives is often unclear. This is classic for a NES game. It can feel almost random how you'd collect the 8 melodies.\n\nControls age decently well but have some dated features. Talk and check are separate actions, and they must be executed by first going to the menu so it's an extra key press. Unintuitively, only houses with round doors or signs on them can be entered.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nThe graphics age well playing in 2023. It's clear this is developed for the Famicom / NES given the low-poly details and 8-bit color compared to the SNES' detail and 15-bit color. Areas also feature significant amount of emptiness and copy-pasted textures.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ A charm to the Earthbound series, instead of monsters dropping money, you get money deposited to your account which you then withdraw by visiting an ATM machine. It's part of the modern setting adaptation of fantasy RPGs.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Unlike EarthBound, Mother 1 has random encounters without overworld enemies. Overworld visible enemies didn't really become a pattern until around Chrono Trigger (1995).\n+ It's not precise the amount of HP/SP gained from items. You have to resort to a walkthrough.\n+ Limited inventory of 8 slots. You're incentivized to store most items to Minnie.\n+ No fast travel to towns except for Magicant until you get the Teleport Psi by progressing in the story.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Map is not very detailed. It can especially be hard to navigate because all areas look so similar. I resorted to an external website's map while playing.\n+ You can only revive a party member by visiting a Doctor or using Super Healing. This makes for a lot of tedious backtracking early game when you're trying to level up new party members as they start at Level 1. Having to visit hospitals is surely a mechanic from Dragon Quest's churches.\n+ Talking to NPCs can sometimes cause a Cold status ailment, which is annoying because you now have to find a doctor to cure it or else you'll slowly lose all your HP and game over. I think the immersion of the mechanic would be nicer if the penalty were not as harsh; for example, slow down movement by causing the character to pause and sneeze every once in a while.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [WikiBound](https://wikibound.info/wiki/WikiBound)\n+ [Starmen.net](https://starmen.net)\n  + [Walkthrough](http://walkthrough.starmen.net/earthbound0). It's compiled by [Tomato](https://earthbound.fandom.com/wiki/Tomato), who founded Starmen.net and wrote the Mother 1+2 English translation.\n  + [Maps](https://starmen.net/mother1/maps), including the full world map.\n\n__Version.__ There are several versions. There is no significant consensus in the community on the best version:\n\n1. [Mother 1](https://wikibound.info/wiki/EarthBound_Beginnings) (Famicom). No official release with an English translation. ([hacks](https://www.romhacking.net/?page=hacks&genre=&platform=&game=918&category=&perpage=50&title=&author=&hacksearch=Go))\n\n2. [EarthBound Zero](https://wikibound.info/wiki/EarthBound_Beginnings#Release) (NES). This is a leaked official English version of the game. It was known at the time as \"EarthBound\" and was never released. Certain sprites and situations are censored ([WikiBound](https://wikibound.info/wiki/List_of_regional_differences_in_EarthBound_Beginnings), [lostlevels.org](http://www.lostlevels.org/200407/earth-02.shtml)). From the community online, the translation is also dry, literal, and doesn’t capture language nuances well; it is worse than Tomato's translation. Gameplay-wise, it includes a Run button but which is a simple game fast-forward.\n\n    I found the game also has a weird [flickering effect](https://www.reddit.com/r/earthbound/comments/lh826f/problems_playing_the_first_game_on_mesen_emulator).\n\n    + [Mother: 25th Anniversary Edition](https://mother4ever.net/mother-25th-anniversary). It remakes assets and balances gameplay elements. It replaces the script with Tomato's script from the GameBoyAdvance.\n    + [Mother Restored](https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=32775.0). It replaces the script with Tomato's script from the GameBoyAdvance. It also reverts most of the localization changes.\n    + [EarthBound Zero Tweaks](https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4161). Halves encounter rate while doubling earned experience and money in order to mitigate the grind.\n\n3. [Mother 1+2](https://wikibound.info/wiki/Mother_1%2B2) (Gameboy Advance). To compensate for the GBA's capabilities, some sounds have been altered, some music has instrument removals/changes, and some graphics are changed to fit the smaller screen size. It is a Japanese translation of the English prototype of Mother 1, so the regional differences also remain.\n\n    Gameplay-wise, it adds quality-of-life controls including Run (natively and not a game fast-forward), L button as an all-purpose interact (rather than having to go to the menu to interact and select between Talk and Check), Check to see if there are random encounters in an area, and movement is no longer restricted to a fixed grid.\n\n    There is no official release with an English translation. ([hacks](https://www.romhacking.net/?page=translations&genre=&platform=&status=&languageid=12&perpage=20&title=mother+1%2B2&author=&transsearch=Go))\n\n    + There's an [English translation patch](http://mother12.earthboundcentral.com).\n\n4. [Earthbound Beginnings](https://wikibound.info/wiki/EarthBound_Beginnings#Release) (Wii U Virtual Console / Switch). It is effectively identical to EarthBound Zero but with an official English release.\n\nI played EarthBound Zero with Mother Restored (v1.2.2 updated on 2022-02-07, MOTHER Restored version) and EarthBound Zero Tweaks (\"Gameplay balance hack\" only).\n\n+ Emulator: I used Mesen as my NES emulator. It's the most accurate and cited to be the best as of this writing (2023-07-28).\n+ Mother Restored is the most true to the original title in terms of no localization, translation quality, original sound, and full screen graphics.\n+ A common gameplay hack is to lower the grind. For example, an \"Easy ring\" would double EXP during battles while halving the encounter rate. Initially, I opted not to use anything like this in order to experience the original gameplay design.\n\n  Later, I did not like the high encounter rate, so I added the gameplay hack. NES emulator's fast forward and save states also helps as quality of life with the slow and grindy speed.\n\n__Playthrough.__ I played with a walkthrough. Famicom / NES games don’t age well playing blind; navigation can be unclear and difficulty is punishing. Starmen.net's walkthrough is way too finegrained which hampers pacing, so I usually only referred to it on a per-area basis (rather than per action).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mother--4"},{"id":"ba571422-b3a0-4950-a324-c563f54faba6","title":"Eclipsium","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2025,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Housefiregames"],"publishers":["Housefiregames","Critical Reflex"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2026-08-09","completedDate":"2026-08-09","updatedDate":"2026-08-10","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/eclipsium"},{"id":"322682678651445836","title":"Eternal","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":3390,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Xuse"],"publishers":["JAST USA"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Visual Novel"],"startedDate":"2019-10-03","completedDate":"2019-10-03","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I played the beginning where you get all the decks after a series of tutorials. I couldn't get into it after, only playing the two free campaigns. It plays too much like a Hearthstone and Magic the Gathering clone, but with less AAA polish.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/aselia-the-eternal-the-spirit-of-eternity-sword"},{"id":"322682678651432524","title":"Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Bethesda Game Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2019-12-21","completedDate":"2019-12-21","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Linear experience, decent but boring as it relies primarily on its combat which Fallout is not great at. I like the OP items you get out of it though! Gauss rifle, Chinese Stealth Armor, Jingwei's Shocksword.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallout-3-operation-anchorage"},{"id":"322682678651424332","title":"Fallout 3: Point Lookout","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Bethesda Game Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2019-12-25","completedDate":"2019-12-26","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Forgettable, nothing particularly interesting about the whole experience: story, characters, exploration, main and side quests. The overall premise is interesting though and the environment very different from typical Fallout 3's nuclear wasteland: it's a creepy, swampy forest with backwoods hunters, cultists, miremurks, and robobrains.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallout-3-point-lookout"},{"id":"322682678651426380","title":"Fallout 3: The Pitt","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Bethesda Game Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2019-12-25","completedDate":"2019-12-25","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Love the environment: dark and gritty from unsafe working environments and grabbing steel bars from an abandoned factory filled with Trogs. No memorable characters, it's fairly linear, and no player agency though.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallout-3-the-pitt"},{"id":"322682678650430028","title":"Fallout 4","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":1620,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Bethesda Game Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2020-06-13","completedDate":"2020-06-21","updatedDate":"2025-02-26","notes":"Fallout 4 is unlike any other Fallout: this is an open-world FPS with RPG elements more than an RPG. On positives, Fallout 4 improves on its previous titles with smoother gameplay and shockingly good visuals. Unfortunately, everything else is worse. Story and RPG elements are more streamlined, and this works to mixed degrees and certainly not as well as New Vegas: there is significantly less player agency from dialogue to story choices. Other major flaws include: forgettable story and characters; tedious settlement building; level scaling; bad performance; Bethesda-iconic jank in combat and animations; Fallout-style bad inventory management.\n\n__Story.__ This is the most linear RPG I've experienced from Bethesda. Unfortunately, the story is also not that interesting: the factions are each forgettable; and no characters stand out. The story largely follows the same structure as Fallout 3. At least it has sufficient worldbuilding to keep it interesting. And side quests and exploration are still there, keeping you piqued to learn lore just by going through areas (and much denser than previous games).\n\n__Gameplay.__ Gameplay is the smoothest in the series. For example, there's more real-time immersion: search through containers and corpses are real-time and the loot window appears automatically; VAT slows down instead of pauses combat; heals take time to apply and heal over time. There's also a new critical strike system. Similarly, controls are refined with a much appreciated Sprint ability (though clunky in that it's Toggle-based and does not work while strafing). You can also turn on your Pip Boy as a flashlight. Unfortunately, [combat is still not great](https://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/5jtrzv/fallout_4_combat_analysis_and_critique): bullet sponge enemies, limited ammo, and clunky animations still make me ultimately prefer stealth, silencers, and VATS for all combat encounters to bypass its flaws.\n\nThe RPG elements have undergone significant streamlining. Skills have been removed and merged into the perk system (e.g., lockpicking); no karma/faction reputation; no weapon durability; dialogue has reduced to four options (often two of which are yes/no) and without persuasion/speech/barter skill checks making most quests have the same outcome; no targeting healing to specific limbs; no conditions; and no explicit detailing of what dialogue choices cause morality to increase/decrease. There are no light or heavy armor choices: just armor upgrades that vary in resistances: physical, energy, radiation. On the plus, there is now weapon crafting which adds some customizability, and disassembling for materials means no item picked up is worthless. You can also enter a Power Armor as a hybrid vehicle-like mode (which I never use, but it's nice I guess). Finally, there are unique companion perks granted by companions at max affinity, perk magazines (replacing Fallout New Vegas' skill magazines), and non-SPECIAL bobbleheads.\n\nBuilding and managing settlements is a big component of Fallout 4. I hate this resource and people managing: I do enough of this at work! This feature is very out of place in the game and requires too much micromanaging. But I do like that it provides a central hub for you to do things. The workshop can also infinitely store all junk, which is a quality of life improvement.\n\nThe level designs are sufficiently diverse, but the open world has a fatal flaw: too many side quests all of which follow similar formulas. For example, all the settlement quests to clear an area; all the radiant quests. See Witcher 3 as an example of quests and open-world design that's sufficiently diverse to encourage you to visit all of them. There are too few companion quests to further their story. There ought to be fewer companions and with more quests per companion.\n\nLike other Bethesda games, Fallout 4 is a victim of level scaling. I much prefer that quests have strict level recommendations, weapons have explicit levels, zones have level ranges. I see the intention to have the full world be explorable. But the soft gating just fuzzes this concept rather than solves it, ultimately advancing an artificial difficulty of health/damage buffs instead of more fundamentally solving enemy AI and player/enemy mechanics like what a more hand-designed level system does. For example, you can't rush to get a powerful weapon early on as the picked up weapon scales with your level.\n\nIt's 2015 and I still hate Fallout's inventory management. Apparel for example is a flattened list, with no ability to compare an item to the equipped, or automatically sort by the apparel type. The DEF_UI mod is a good improvement with a clearer indicator of which item corresponds to which type via a thumbnail and grouping of items like Notes. I'm looking for something like Skyrim's SkyUI however.\n\nEnemy variety and enemy designs build on prior games and is generally excellent.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Textures are great. Lack of facial animations during dialogue is jarring. Lots of miscellaneous janky animations and scripting.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ The core loop of fast traveling to the closest location to a quest marker; clearing the area with a handful of a weapons monitoring ammo types, sneaking to loot everything; fast traveling back to Diamond City for vendoring and Sanctuary for stashing important items; repeat.\n+ Losing an hour and a half of progress due to game crashing to desktop (CTD, possibly due to Sim Settlements?) and finally loading back to a corrupt save. Fortunately, I did not make much quest progress so I just added 1000 caps, Endurance bobblehead, and 1 level to make up for this.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Lone Wanderer perk counterbalances the common approach of not having a companion as their AI is often stupid.\n+ You can track multiple quests at once. This is a huge gripe I have with many RPGs (e.g., Borderlands). I forget if this was possible in previous Fallout games.\n+ You can hold your breath when sniping.\n+ Like other Fallout games, I like that NPC conversations reveal new locations on the map. It's a good gameplay incentive to talk to people, and while not being so fully expansive as a quest per NPC.\n+ Sprint endurance is given by AP.\n+ Ammo capacity is unlimited. So you’re not cucked by reaching max ammo on a certaint type that you use less and forcing you to do a hard swap to use weapons of that type. Instead, the ammo capcity is more of a soft encouragement as you quickly run out of ammo for types you do use.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Instead of a wait button, you now have to sit in furniture similar to previous Fallout's requirement to sleep in order to get a rest XP bonus.\n+ The green color for the HUD and VaultBoy works well for the theme but isn't the most readable. Fortunately there's an option to change the color which I did to white.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ The ability to skip dialogue lines with the Mouse button is extremely inconsistent as you can sometimes shoot the person. And you can exit the conversation if you're a few feet too far away. I hate this so much. Similarly, you can enter and exit dialog camera, panning back to the original gameplay perspective. It's pretty janky in the transition, often escaping dialog unintentionally or taking too long to enter dialog. I turned off the camera which pans to yourself.\n+ Dialogue options are paraphrased and clearly shortened to be console friendly with its D-pad shortcuts. This is so annoying that the Extended Dialogue Options mod is a must for any playthrough. There's also no clear indicator of which dialogue options advance the conversation as opposed to gathering more information.\n+ Sprint and Sneak controls are Shift/Control even though both are Toggle.\n+ The biggest city of Diamond City is pathetically the size of Megaton from Fallout 3. See Oblivion's Imperical City or any of Skyrim's cities.\n+ Performance is awful even in 2020 with a top-end PC. First, long loading times. Second, mouse is sluggish by default so I turned off mouse acceleration (https://now.avg.com/the-ultimate-fallout-4-performance-tweak-guide). Borderless also pauses game so I added bAlwaysActive=1 to unpause it (https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/3sb3aj/tweaking_tip_alt_tab_without_pausing/). Third, there's a max FPS of 60, with bugs when you try to support more than that. I got tons of FPS drops to 20 and stuttering with my default monitor's refresh rate of 75, and my cap was half my monitor's refresh rate. I tried iPresentInterval=0 to no avail (https://www.gamepur.com/guides/fallout-4-pc-error-how-to-unlock-fps-add-219-support-change-fov-mouse-acceleration-more). Setting my monitor's refresh rate to 60 fixed it (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/articles/1637). Fourth, like other Fallout games, there is no native 21:9 support. Fifth, alt tab borderless support is also spotty. When back in game, I'm sometimes unable to move. Then I have to hit Third Person mode, go back to First Person mode, and I can move again.\n+ So many bugs. So much jank: fautily triggering dialogue and replaying it; AI pathing; entering and exiting dialog camera.\n+ Checkpoint system remains really bad like all Fallout games.\n+ Like previous Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, you still can't respec.\n+ Companions use ammo for their non default weapon. This requires too much micromanaging since they're very ammo inefficient. Therefore it makes giving companions weapons not viable.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://fallout.fandom.com ([quests](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_4_quests))\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/FalloutMods/wiki/index\n+ http://www.fallout4map.com/, bobblehead locations | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBU4-ttGLHs\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/42965r/comprehensive_guide_to_not_destroying_factions_in/\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/3siw35/i_tested_intelligence_idiot_savant_and_experience/\n\nI played on Normal difficulty. I played on Ultra settings, consistently getting 50-60 FPS. I beat the base game in 30 hours according to Steam. This entry does not include the 3 campaign DLCs: Automatron (2016), Far Harbor (2016), Nuka-World (2016). I played female to switch things up. I advanced faction quests and the main quests simultaneously, completing each faction quest until I was gated by main quest progress. This seems to be the preferred approach given the level requirements in the main and side quests. I completed all main quests, including all faction main quests up until Institutionalized where I focused on the Institute quests. I sided with the Institute as they seemed the most new at this point, and with the most content alongside Brotherhood of Steel (Minutemen have uninteresting quests after the Castle; and Railroad is forgettablt). I did not complete all side quests.\n\nAround level 20, I was fed up with the game's pacing and content. So I turned on Very Easy difficulty, tgm, player.setav speedmult, and coc for a lot of it to speed up main quest pacing.\n\n__Mods.__ I didn't play with mods for the first few hours as they didn't seem necessary in this game: there were no huge bugs for example that the Unofficial Patch fixes. The dialogue and PipBoy inventory were too annoying for me however, so I ended up adding mods. These are:\n\n+ Base: Nexus Mod Manager. Fallout 4 Script Extender (to launch from Steam, follow https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=682660057). TruBy9 Ultrawide (with default UI scaling, Extended Dialogue Interface patch; fixes HUD being stretched on 21:9). Mod Configuration Menu (for in-game options of mods below). Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch (bug fixes). Achievements (re-enable Steam achievements when mods are used).\n+ UI: Extended Dialogue Options (explicit dialogue options; indicator for dialogue cues). I couldn't get DEF_UI to work.\n+ Quality of Life: Ish's Respec Mod (to accommodate Fallout 4's lack of it; easier than console commands); Sim Settlements Three-in-One (I use City Planner, Low involvement, without a leader, Auto-Built Plot Plans set to Designer's Choice, and used Console Commands to make building City Planner desk free; to bypass Fallout 4's core micromanaging flaw); IDEK's sim settlements logistic station (with attacks at settlement with Logistics Storage Designator off and Global Collection enabled; to automate supply lines and enable a central hub that's shared and accessed in other locations via the Logistics Storage, especially useful for synchronizing settlement's workbench tax collections.\n\nFor 21:9 support, I first tried a simple solution: [I edited my resolution in Fallout4Prefs.ini in Documents](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=551069501); contrary to this guide, I didn't need to change Fallout4Prefs.ini in the Steam directory. In addition, setting bTopMostWindow=1 and bMaximizeWindow=1 did not let me Alt Tab, so I kept them at their default of 0). I also used Flawless Widescreen to prevent the HUD from scaling (it centers it at 16:9 instead) and to set my first person, third person, and weapon FOV to 100. This solution worked well, but requires Flawless Widescreen to remain open when using Fallout 4. Once I realized I'll use other mods, I switched to the TruBy9 solution instead and which also is compatible with DEF_UI.\n\n__Build.__ I played a stealth sniper, tending to prefer VATS in order to conserve ammo, and using manual when VATS has too low probability (e.g., early game and far away). This eventually just became a stealth rifleman build in order to use multiple ammo types. Early game was Righteous Authority followed by Overseer's Guardian.\n\nI followed a popular and more recent (2019) [video from VinlyicPumaGaming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8GcbAgrHCo):\n\n+ SPECIAL stats (timestamp 6:55): 2 STR, 5 PER, 3 END, 2 CHR, 5 INT, 6 AGI, 5 LCK.\n+ Major perks: Rifleman, Sneak, Ninja, Mister Sandman, Sniper, Better Criticals\n+ Minor damage perks: Action Girl, Lone Wanderer, Critical Banker, Concentrated Fire, Bloody Mess, Black Widow, Grim Reaper's Sprint, Four Leaf Clover, Penetrator, Gun Fu.\n+ Utility perks: Gun Nut, Armorer.\n+ Companion perks: MacCredy's Killshot, Deacon's Cloak & Dagger.\n\nI have all companions at Red Rocket since it's small.\n\nOther popular builds are the following ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout4Builds/comments/3usal7/stealth_sniper_quickest_path_to_max_damage); [VATS](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout4Builds/comments/3rceje/guidebuildloner_vats_sniper); [Infiltrator guide](https://www.vg247.com/2017/12/19/fallout-4-build-guide-infilitrator) is also promising for stealth, close range, and VATS). Instead of trying to minmax SPECIAL stats, I picked up [bobbleheads and the You're SPECIAL! book as I went](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/242540).\n\n__Misc.__ Coming from playing this after Borderlands, I'm surprised just how stark the differences are between Fallout and Borderlands. Fallout is slower paced, encouraging exploration and delving into stories with ammo conservation and being mindful of resources as you loot. Borderlands is very fast-paced, more linear, features a more forgettable story, but it also has much better core FPS and looting mechanics.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallout-4"},{"id":"322682678651428428","title":"Fallout: New Vegas Lonesome Road","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Obsidian Entertainment"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2019-12-25","completedDate":"2019-12-25","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Fairly linear. I wasn't engaged by the story. I admire the ambition in connecting all the DLCs together. No interesting characters though.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallout-new-vegas-lonesome-road"},{"id":"322682678651429452","title":"Fallout: New Vegas Old World Blues","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":390,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Obsidian Entertainment"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2019-12-24","completedDate":"2019-12-25","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Love the voice acting. Think Tank reminds me of Futurama. Also love that you realize you just gained a bunch of perks while chatting with Think Tank on your sudden scars. The beginning dialogue of Old World Blues are the best part and clearly what many find so enjoyable about it.\n\nGameplay, on the other hand, is not good. Quests are all fetch quests (literally). Enemies are bullet sponges. The DLC overall can be summarized as a 30-40 minute exposition dump followed by fetch quests. No world-building exploration, player agency, interesting environments, balanced enemies, new companions. X-8 Data Terminal Retrieval quest is a good example of how bad it is: you complete the Basic Test, fine it's typical of Fallout, then the Advanced Test which is exactly the same but with some replaced enemies, then you fetch a key, then you do the Basic and Advanced Tests all over again! I think the gameplay would be permissible if the story or characters at least developed much.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallout-new-vegas-old-world-blues"},{"id":"322682678651453004","title":"Far Cry 4","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":1080,"platforms":["XONE"],"startedDate":"2019-08-14","completedDate":"2019-08-17","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Far Cry 4 is basically Far Cry 3 (and unfortunately, I hear all the sequels since are like this too). The only major differences are the setting of Himalaya, improved graphics, and worse story and characters. Unfortunately, Far Cry's repetitiveness especially takes its toll in 4 where the novelty runs out and the experience is just more of the same bland open world. Aside from minor quality-of-life improvements, Far Cry 4 does add several new mechanics, but I think they actually worsen the game. In particular, Balance of Power mission paths are dumb: Far Cry works as a linear story, without this forced approach at replayability. I also don't like the Karma system, which forces participation in bland random encounters. And I could care less for all the extra sidequests like the Arena and upgradable house; there's just way too many to artifically pad content in the open world. \n\n__Story.__ Structurally and stylistically the same as Far Cry 3, which isn't necessarily bad. Pagan Min is an eccentric, fun villain but doesn't appear often, even less than the amount of times Vas appears in Far Cry 3. Story proceeds as an abducted American. The protagonist and his friends this time are even more bland. There is no Citra or Buck. It's the typical revolution story. Psychedelics.\n\nFirst-person view in seeing how the other characters act. Missions now have a Balance of Power choice which offers two different missions in the story. I think this is a bad design aimed for replayability.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The same as Far Cry 3 including combat, stealth, open world exploration and capturing radio towers and outposts, and the crafting and skills progression system. The controls are exactly the same. There are minor improvements, often quality-of-life based: you can now move bodies; the HUD has a sleaker style; loot from corpses now appear on the minimap; consumables like syringes are auto-crafted; autodrive given a waypoint and for manual drive, the path to a waypoint is highlighted; like Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, you can throw bait to lure predators towards enemies; throwing knives; outposts now have difficulties where each alarm must be deactivated separately. Some slightly more significant changes are the karma system with guns for hire; Fortresses which are larger-sized outposts; and the bumper aerial vehicle. The Shangri-la missions where you get to control a tiger companion is awesome.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Beautiful setting and most all cutscenes rendered in-engine. Some of the best graphics at the time. Shangri-la is especially amazing in its color palette. I like that the open world in Far Cry 4 is more vertical, requiring a grappling hook. It's a shame that all loot on minimaps are 2D, making it frustrating like in Far Cry 3 to find certain items.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Hunter enemies that don't appear permanently on your camera and which don't show alarm. They add variety, forcing you to not rely on crutches.\n+ The idea of Pagan Min being a pretty nice guy (at least to Ajay) and that you could have avoided the entire game conflict if you just stayed put.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ This game is more difficult than Far Cry 3. I struggled a lot more in encounters at the same normal difficulty. In retrospect, I should have played on easy since the game excels more in exploration and random hijinks. I turned it down to Easy in the last Act and remainder of the game.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ The Fly Suit is a neat idea. But it's binding with the hold-Jump action is extremely annoying. This makes certain precise jumps very hard to execute, particularly for certain poorly designed Bell Towers that ask for precise platforming even though this game does not offer precise platforming controls.\n+ Not only are there more many copies of the same boring side mission across outposts. But you also have to go to a certain location to activate them, e.g., the propaganda wars; the racing ones.\n+ I hate the karma system. It encourages playing random encounters none of which feel substantive. They're all redundant after the first time. And getting Karma Level 4 is a blocker to one of the most important skills: sprinting forever and moving faster when crouched.\n+ Stealth alerts are as bad as Far Cry 3 in immediately knowing your location. There's also no indicator of when you being in a darker location actually helps.\n+ Like Far Cry 3, traders all have the same inventory as your vending machine. So there's no point in using them.\n+ 21:9 support, but zoomed-in FOV without a slider which makes it bad. Note WGSF proposes you modify the setting in the text (http://www.wsgf.org/dr/far-cry-4/en), but that setting is just ignored (https://www.reddit.com/r/farcry/comments/2sennt/has_anyone_been_able_to_get_fov_changed_w_a_219/). Fortunately it doesn't have a zoomed-in HUD like Far Cry 3.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ jackfuste from WGSF's patch to add in the FOV slider for 21:9 (which is outdated) | http://www.wsgf.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=27713&start=160#p174830\n+ 21:9 review | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od5rta95UBY\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/far-cry-4/\n\nI played on PC (Ultra settings) and Normal difficulty. I beat the game in a total of 24 hours (according to Steam). I did not play the DLC. Like the last game, I prioritized stealth and crafting in my build. I use a silenced pistol, bow, assault rifle for when I inevitably get caught, and RPG for large vehicles and tanky enemies. I crafted early game to build up my equipment. For simplicity (and because I'm a realist), I always chose Amita's missions and then chose to spare Pagan. I did not complete the side quests like Longinus' or Shangri-la. I grew tired of the game.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/far-cry-4-plus-far-cry-primal-bundle"},{"id":"322682678652572236","title":"Final Fantasy Tactics Advance","originalTitle":"ファイナルファンタジータクティクスアドバンス","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":2760,"platforms":["WiiU","GBA"],"studios":["Square Product Development Division 4"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Square Enix","Square"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Tactical"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/final-fantasy-tactics-advance"},{"id":"322682678652574284","title":"Final Fantasy VIII","originalTitle":"ファイナルファンタジーVIII","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":2400,"platforms":["PS3","PS1","PSP"],"studios":["Square Product Development Division 1"],"publishers":["Square","Square Electronic Arts","Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Characters who I really liked, and the overall plot at least in the beginning. I also liked the setting with the military academy, gunblades, and other fantasy-science combinations. Confused story that unravels unfortunately by the latter half. Combat with Junction system was bad. One of the best sidegames of all time in Final Fantasy games (Triple Triad).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/final-fantasy-viii"},{"id":"322682678652576332","title":"Final Fantasy X-2","originalTitle":"ファイナルファンタジーX-2","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":1860,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["Square Product Development Division 1"],"publishers":["Square Enix","Square","Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/final-fantasy-x-2"},{"id":"322682678623084108","title":"Gauntlet","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":750,"platforms":["PS2","XBOX","NGC","Arcade"],"studios":["Midway Games West"],"publishers":["Midway Games"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"startedDate":"2021-12-18","completedDate":"2021-12-29","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I played the 2014 remake.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gauntlet-dark-legacy"},{"id":"322682678652580428","title":"GoldenEye 007","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":570,"platforms":["virtualboy"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Shooter","Racing"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/goldeneye-007--3"},{"id":"322682678651464268","title":"Gone Home","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["Linux","PC","iOS","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Fullbright"],"publishers":["Annapurna Interactive","Fullbright","Midnight City"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-08-03","completedDate":"2019-08-03","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Interesting concept for a game. Purely exploration in a house, picking up story and gradual audiotapes via environmental clues. Surprisingly, I did not need a guide to go through the house and pick up everything. The pacing of it is pretty good. I like how the story adds depth into the sister going through a phase, the mother and her successful career and a possible affair with the rwnger Rick, and the bumbling writer father who found recent success again.\n\nGood summary: https://steamcommunity.com/app/232430/discussions/2/666825524823216257/\n\nI played it on iOS.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gone-home"},{"id":"322682678624173644","title":"Grandia","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":3930,"platforms":["Switch"],"studios":["Game Arts Co., Ltd."],"publishers":["GungHo Online Entertainment, Inc.","GungHo Online Entertainment America, Inc."],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-05-28","completedDate":"2021-06-02","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Grandia is a JRPG of the PlayStation 1 era playing to tropes and with a few new ideas for turn-based combat. It introduces weapon and magic leveling, encouraging moveset variety; and the IP gauge encouraging light strategy around both positioning and timing of attacks. Its story, characters, and overall RPG elements are decent but don't stand out. I enjoyed Grandia as a slightly more opinionated Dragon Quest title. Like other JRPGs, I just don't find the story compelling---it's like an average-to-good anime following tropes and told well enough to be marginally interesting---and the game is fairly grindy and long, where the complexity in combat doesn't increase enough to remain interesting.\n\n__Story.__ Fairly prototypical, filled with the tropes you'd expect of a JRPG. The especially adolescent characters turn me off a bit from the story, but I do find the overall storytelling decent enough as if it were a shounen anime. I did enjoy the revolving party members, and never where there was a need to manage leveling only a subset of your party members from all of them.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The turn-based combat uses all the essentials that make the system fun: equipment and level system, overworld-visible enemies, gold currency system. Unique to Grandia, party members level up weapon and magic types separately, each of which add a stat bonus and can gain you new skills. This encourages gameplay variety where you don't focus on the most powerful moves; there are also plenty save points that you can freely spend SP/MP. Unfortunately it adds to the grind and meta in how to best grind XP for each type, but I still enjoyed it overall.\n\nGrandia's combat is its most innovative aspect with a time scale known as the IP gauge. Positioning matters: one of the 4 core stats is AGI/MOV, taking up less time to reach an enemy before you attack it; and it affects AoE. Another is WIT/ACT which determines the IP gauge's fill speed. Attacking enemies also staggers down, slightly delaying the time before they can make an action. The normal attack Combo consists of 2x attacks and can do extra Counter damage if timed, Critical can cancel enemy attacks like a well-timed parry, you can Defend with Endure vs Evasion, and there are Tactics to automate farming gameplay.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I like the 2D sprites in a 3D environment. The partially voiced dialogue is nice, at least there's some voice acting unlike most PlayStation 1 JRPGs.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Remaster enables Japanese audio.\n+ Surprisingly, Grandia features dialogue choices which I rarely if ever see in JRPGs. They don't affect the game much beyond the next few lines but it's nice having the illusion of choice.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The camera's field of view. Level navigation is disorienting due to the narrow FOV, lack of minimap with only a compass and the occasional overview access points, and lack of camera control for vertical or zoom in/out. PlayStation 1 era graphics with mostly empty areas also doesn't help distinguish individual locations as they all look similar. I would play with a [maps guide](https://i-njoy.net/gd1e_top.html) but found this too tedious and also ruined a lot of the blind playthrough experience.\n+ Inventory system. Each character can only hold 12 items and you can only use items from each character. The realism is nice but it makes item management across characters tedious as opposed to a party inventory.\n+ Like other RPGs at its time, vendor menus can be annoying. Equipment comparisons don't note a party member's current equipment so you don't really know what is an upgrade and what stats are being traded off. You also can't mark items as trash to sell, so it takes some back-and-forth to memorize the set of weapons/armor that you no longer need to cycle for leveling.\n+ Missables, particularly good equipment, items, 3 optional dungeons, unrevisitable dungeons after certain story events. To enjoy a walkthrough-free blind playthrough, I only kept track of [mana eggs](https://grandia.fandom.com/wiki/Mana_Eggs).\n+ You can't skip dialogue during cutscenes to make it go by faster, or even pause it.\n+ Unfortunately no fast-forward combat like the Final Fantasy remasters to greatly speed up the grindy elements when you just auto-attack enemies.\n+ All the backtracking to exit dungeons.\n+ There are lots of roaming NPCs and extra houses in towns, but there's little point talking to them. It's rare you'll get a side quest, and none have good rewards.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Stats](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/197483-grandia/68547615)\n+ [Experience Farming Guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/grandia/comments/g4uq8p/experience_farming_guide)\n\nI played the remastered edition on PC and using a controller. I spread out my seed stat boosts but mostly gave to Justin. I stopped playing the game at Zil Desert, roughly 3/4 of the way through the game. I felt I experienced everything and the story and gameplay wasn't interesting enough to continue.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/grandia-hd-collection"},{"id":"322682678652507724","title":"Groovecoaster","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2011,"startedDate":"2017-04-14","completedDate":"2017-04-16","updatedDate":"2022-01-30"},{"id":"322682678650406476","title":"Gunfire Reborn","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":930,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Android","PC","iOS","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Duoyi (Hong Kong) Interactive Entertainment Limited"],"publishers":["Duoyi (Hong Kong) Interactive Entertainment Limited","505 Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-08-19","completedDate":"2020-08-23","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Fun roguelike mechanics, easily a combination of the E power attack from Borderlands with looter shooter items, alongside the roguelike and mechanic stacking of Risk of Rain 2. It doesn't have the movement speed, variety of power ups, and level of item stacking that Risk of Rain 2 does, and environments are much less diverse.\n\nI hate the movement speed. The game feels so slooow.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gunfire-reborn"},{"id":"322682678652602956","title":"GunZ: The Duel","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":2040,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["MAIET Entertainment"],"publishers":["Netmarble Games","Aeria Games & Entertainment","Level Up! Games","GameOn","NHN Entertainment Corp.","Masangsoft, Inc."],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2006-12-31","completedDate":"2006-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I so remember playing this (or a similar game?) in middle school with Phong Lai, Anthony (?), and others.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gunz-the-duel"},{"id":"322682678650368588","title":"Half-Life: Blue Shift","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"publishers":["Sierra Studios","Valve"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Puzzle"],"startedDate":"2020-11-25","completedDate":"2020-11-25","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I love the idea of having the full game and each expansion pack offer a different perspective to the same story. It truly assists in world-building, making even side characters feel important. The gameplay is straightforward like typical Half-Life. The most infuriating part is the escort of the NPC who has insufferable pathing. It's a much shorter experience and fewer weapons at your disposal than, say, Opposing Force.\n\nI played on Easy difficulty.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/half-life-blue-shift"},{"id":"322682678624160332","title":"Harvest Moon","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Natsume"],"publishers":["Rising Star Games","Natsume"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-07-23","completedDate":"2021-07-27","updatedDate":"2023-08-26","notes":"Harvest Moon pioneered the farming simulator genre, leading to further titans in the genre like Animal Crossing and Rune Factory. It introduces all the core elements. But as a game standalone, it doesn't age well feeling tedious in many areas.\n\n__Story.__ Skeletal.\n\n__Gameplay.__ It introduces all the core elements of farm simulators: crops, livestock, marriage, town NPCs, and events happening over seasons. Harvest Moon SNES really introduces the main elements but not much more, acting as a distilled version of farming simulators. There are two crop options for spring (tomatoes, corn) and two for summer (turnips, potatoes), varying only in how quickly they ripen with the latter options selling higher. The fifth crop is grass for livestock. Livestock have two options (chicken, cows), varying in their maintenance. Terrain include shrubs, rocks, and trees, each with specialized tools hammer and axe to take them down followed by tools of hoe and watering pan for tilling and watering.\n\nUnlike more modern games, there's no tired meter or in-game daytime clock. There's no inventory to manage. There's no cosmetics.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The cartoon sprite style is iconic. Ambient noise adds to the atmosphere. The soundtrack is serviceable but repetitive, especially when you constantly hear the same 30 second soundbite during routine activities and there's no way to turn off music.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ For an SNES game, I'm pleasantly surprised by how much tutorial there is so that it's accessible playing blind.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You can't buy items in quantity.\n+ You plant seeds in a 3x3 manner, meaning the optimal plot is a 3x3. But this wastes a lot of space compared to rows.\n+ You can't manually get rid of grass.\n+ You have to water crops when planting seeds during a rainy day.\n+ There's no counter for how much grass feed you have.\n+ The chickens wandering around make feeding 12 chicken every day a huge hassle.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [High level guide](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/562623-harvest-moon/42440839?page=1)\n\nI played on the emulator Higan as it is the most accurate SNES emulator.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/harvest-moon-one-world"},{"id":"322682678652437068","title":"Heavy Rain","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","PC"],"studios":["Quantic Dream"],"publishers":["Quantic Dream","Sony Computer Entertainment","Inc. (SCEI)"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-07-27","completedDate":"2019-07-28","updatedDate":"2022-07-08","notes":" Heavy Rain is like any other David Cage game: a flawed, experimental narrative appealing to film trope fantasies while incoherent as an overall plot. Controls are clunky but offer interesting ideas. Individual chapters/scenes are interesting but holistically riddled with plot holes and poor characterization. The QTE-style of video gaming is an interesting genre and interactive novels like Heavy Rain push it further on this axis. Camera is really bad.\n\n__Story.__ Individual scenes can be good. But the overall story is riddled with plot holes. I like the multiple perspectives. Keeps the story intriguing although the plot and its development is weak. Father who lost two sons. Capable FBI detective. Excop private detective. Sexy 20-30 year old independent woman. (Madison's motivation makes no sense however.) I especially like how fatal choices to each of the main characters actually cause them to die. It's the mystery and darkness (not overly edgy) that keeps the story interesting if not the B-rated side characters. I like how dark and visceral the trials are. \n\nFlaw-wise, the story is riddled with major plot holes and undeveloped character cliches. Individual characters are fairly stock and overdramatic. For example, Liutenant Blake always being an aggressive punch-out against witnesses. Alzheimer condition for the serial killer's mother.\n\nPlot holes:\n\n+ The private detective Scott Shelby exonerates himsefl from being the Origami Killer during his thoughts (e.g., killing Manfred but in the chapter he narrates his thoughts, \"I wonder what's taking Manfred so long...\"; also storming the building to get the mafia boss).\n+ Ethan's blackouts (the true answer for them is that Quantic Dreams originally developed Ethan to be psychically linked to the killer which they ended up scrapping; so now it's a red herring that he has these blackouts and wakes up with origami).\n+ The tape recordings of Shaun alive after each trial somehow being convincing as they're not live (the tape recording in the gun handle is particularly notorious).\n+ What it takes to kill a child.\n+ The Triptocaine subplot seemed cool but never explained, only giving the possibility that he's the killer.\n+ Madison is somehow surprised at hearing Scott Shelby's last name during the reveal even though she never met him. And she knows his address!\n+ Madison somehow knows both Ethan's phone number and Jayden's phone number, the latter of whom she has never even met.\n+ Poison that's supposed to activate at exactly an hour.\n+ The fridge approach to escape a fire. And despite all the gameplay trying to find an escape and not getting anywhere, Madison suddenly teleports to safety after having hidden in the fridge.\n+ Cops that are shoot-on-sight at the last chapter.\n+ Game (Jayden) profiles the killer as 30-45. Shelby is revealed to be 48. He does not even look close to that age, and his twin brother's grave marks being born in 1967 which does not translate to 48 in 2011.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I like getting to hear the character's thoughts. And also that options are integrated next to the character rather than a flat HUD. I find completing all the menial click/movement-based actions to do things around the places to be quite soothing.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Face models and lack of expressions remind me of Oblivion. I like the symphony music although it gets repetitive quickly. Camera angles are really bad. It's particularly jarring when you're moving, then the moving scene transitions and your previous direction moves you in the opposite direction in the new screen. The game would do much better without fixed angles.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Arbitrary resolution, borderless, and 60 FPS on the remastered PC verrsion.\n+ Game doesn't pause when you alt tab out. I do this frequently to take notes on the game.\n+ Graphics settings show examples of change as you upgrade/downgrade various features.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Many of your choices don't actually matter. But I like that the game gives the illusion that there are many choices in the game to make it feel more aunthetic. It's the not knowing aspect that keeps certain scenes in high suspense (e.g., if crawling over glass shards will really kill Ethan, or if the cops will really barge in on Madison and Ethan).\n+ The weird scifi invention of Ari sunglasses. Because they're sunglasses, they shouldn't have any audio..\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ No ultrawidescreen (21:9 specifically) support. There is a community patch but it has some stretching.\n+ Playing through the game in 2019, I had an inching that Scott Shelby was the killer as I had spoiled myself watching the ending many years ago. But as I played the game, I became skeptical of my memory as certain scenes would recall Scott's thoughts, and I would think \"There's no way that's what the killer would think.\" such as in the Manfred scene. And yet it turns out it is him..\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.kotaku.co.uk/2018/05/23/eight-heavy-rain-plotholes-i-still-think-about-eight-years-later\n+ weird monologues that Shelby has even though he's the killer | https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/comments/ae505z/heavy_rain_is_a_good_game/edo8ums/\n\nI played this on PC which provides upgraded resolution settings and with the highest difficulty. I decided to play this as the most popular and successful David Cage/Quantic Dreams game. I'm not interested in other David Cage/Quantic Dreams games aside from hype as other people have played it. For example, the most recent game of this writing, Detroit: Become Human, is a hackneyed android story (https://www.reddit.com/r/DetroitBecomeHuman/comments/8no916/why_is_detroit_become_human_getting_a_mediocre/dzxfcba/).\n\nI also watched Moonmoon play it on July 5 2022.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/heavy-rain"},{"id":"322682678652477004","title":"Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":450,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Ninja Theory"],"publishers":["Ninja Theory","Xbox Game Studios"],"genres":["Simulator","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-03-03","completedDate":"2019-03-05","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Senua's greatest strengths are its auteristic visuals, with no HUD, minimalistic controls, and psychotic atmosphere. Lighting. Camera angles. It's MGS-style in its seamless transitions of gameplay and cinematic. So many amazing scenes---reminded me of when I would play Dark Souls Remastered and be stricken in awe at the environments: the beginning rowing, the firey hell, the hands in the Sea of Corpses. Its core weaknesses lie in its superficial gameplay. Movement within areas is standard but lacks most interactivity which keeps the environments feeling more restricted with boundaries, almost like a walking simulator. Puzzles are interesting the first time and quickly become an exercise in tedium. Combat is only serviceable. Enemy variety is countable on your hand. Dark Souls not only had better mechanics but also a better story and level design.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Stereo whispers. ASMR level.\n+ No tutorial.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Combat is weighty but more servicable than great. It feels like a forced form of interaction. I do like that the two bosses differ in tactics: fire boss requires dodge-rolls; raven boss requires blocks, which block his ranged and fast weak attacks. FOr the combat, I like that the parries are more or less automatic if you block weak attacks, and Focus is a fun occasional power-up. The combat is almost too slow however, even slower in its methodical behavior than Dark Souls 2. Constant and automatic lock-on targeting can be a hinderance.\n+ Permadeaths losing game save state as a bluff and not actually real. The Kick/Melee combat didn't seem necessary---I only ever felt compelled to use it on the single Barbarian enemy with a shield.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Puzzles. They're a silly game of pattern recognition. I just don't like puzzles in general. I do like the encouragement of exploration though. I found them so tedious overall that I ended up following a walkthrough for the majority of the puzzles after the first two zones.\n+ I'm only ever in danger when I'm in combat pulling out my sword. This saps some of my expectations as I'm not afraid of the atmosphere randomly killing me/shocking me.\n+ The many camera shots with Senua facing the camera feels a little too tryhard. It doesn't feel as much as the other elements reflecting pyschosis (whispers, hallucinations, tomb faces to signal her mother, spirit of Dillion).\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\n+ walkthrough | https://www.ign.com/wikis/hellblade\n+ combat overview | https://www.reddit.com/r/hellblade/comments/6sr9ff/combat_system_overview_everything_i_know/\n+ story | https://www.reddit.com/r/hellblade/comments/6u1l3r/this_game_is_confusing_does_anybody_know_the_story/\n\nI was motivated to play this due to its awards, PC release unique premise, and short playtime of roughly 7-8 hours.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/hellblade-senuas-sacrifice"},{"id":"322682678651437644","title":"Horizon Zero Dawn","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":1350,"platforms":["PS4","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Guerrilla Games"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-11-01","completedDate":"2019-11-08","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Horizon Zero Dawn is a decent open-world RPG with polished bow-and-arrow combat and its own spin on a tribal world reawakening from a technologically infested wilderness. The store is serviceable but not great. Same goes for progression systems, stealth, and combat. Side quests are bad.\n\n__Story.__ Prototypical story tropes of an outcast of a tribe. Setting of tribal politics is interesting. And the overall presentation and characterization is enough in the beginning to make it enjoyable from its polish (not unlike God of War (2018)). It progresses as drivel and is a bore. Characters are not interesting. 1-dimensional Mary Sue as the original of Aloy's gene, as well as the stupidity of Ted Faro.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Horizon Zero Dawn plays like a Far Cry/Tomb Raider/Ubisoft title, Spider Man, God of War, and others of its genre but in a polished style that adds highlights from strengths of the genre. On the level of sameness, it's an open world with exploration, HUD of things to pick up/interact/quests, collectibles, crafting, skills. Similarly, combat is a mix of stealth, archery, and platforming. Even animations and quick crafting are very similar. The changes from the formula, sometimes inspired by other games, do make it interesting: more complex bestiary than Far Cry, weak/strong melee attack like Dark Souls, trap weapons, Concentration skill slows down enemy to line up your shot (making archery at specific parts more viable), tracking enemy patrol paths, enemy weak points, investigating clues Batman Arkham-style, head vs head dialogue with little else moving (which I find awkward in all games like this), flashpoints (closer to dialogue options in games like Elder Scrolls/Fallout), little stat scaling based on levels but rather equipment and an emphasis on weakpoints/weapon variety mechanics for endgame combat.\n\nOn the open world system, Horizon Zero Dawn exhibits a worrying trend that I find in 2010-2020 open world games: streamlining. Questgivers typically have interesting dialogue and offer specific directions about how to reach any next point. But questmarkers make it obvious where to go such that that dialogue is no longer important. Detective mode for tracking footprints/blood trails makes it unnecessary to actually examine the environment around you; instead you follow the path given by your HUD. Detective mode also highlights enemy weaknesses and weak body parts rather than you figuring it out yourself. Platforming is simply moving the D-pad in the right direction so that the character does heroic leaps and all you pay attention to are cliff point A to cliff point B. Side quests, collectibles, and other open world elements can feel rather drab, which is especially unfortunate as this soaks up the majority of one's playtime; I would much prefer a denser game that just cut out those sidequests and focused on the main missions. Overall, you can tell that the open-world games like these are designed formulaically by first, positing the space of a zone, and then filling it with a variety of assets. I significantly prefer Dark Soul's approach, where players are encouraged to explore every crevice of an area because of human-designed locations of loot, and loot that is missable; these games just have generic lootboxes and collectible numbers.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The CGI is integrated very well with human faces. Lighting and textures are excellent. There's a good variety of areas from wilderness to dungeons, and under a variety of weather conditions.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Watching all the pivotal and emotional cutscenes via cheesy holograms.\n+ Hipshot spam firing Hardpoint Arrows to take down components of enemies. What a great feeling.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Stealth indicator with a reasonable number of gradations for both sound and visibility. I like this in stealth games because it displays the actual stealth mechanic involved. While no indicator is better for immersion, it's unclear in many stealth games if sound and visibility make any gameplay difference.\n+ No currency system, all items are the currency.\n+ Fast travel is limited in beginning then more readily available once you purchase the Golden Travel Pack.\n+ Good uses of vibration in controller. Even landing a jump which makes the game feel overall more responsive.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Flashpoints (player choice in the narrative) do not have a major impact on the story.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Detective mode. Fortunately it restricts movement in this game, which limits its overall use but it is still intrusive.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://horizonzerodawn.fandom.com/wiki/\n+ Alert system. If you hit an enemy with caution status, they automatically go into red and know where you are even if you're sniping from very far away. Similarly, in bandit camps, one red enemy signals the entire camp even if they don't yell out.\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/horizon-zero-dawn/\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/horizon/comments/5xc2nq/guide_to_understanding_weapons_armor_mods_and/\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/horizon/comments/8bhs48/how_weak_points_work/\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/PS4/comments/7cgeiy/things_you_wish_you_knew_before_you_started/\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/horizon/comments/6hzpi0/shadow_war_bow_or_shadow_sling/\n+| https://www.reddit.com/r/horizon/comments/8v3zpv/whats_your_most_frequent_4_weapon_carry_and_why/\n\nThis entry does not include the Frozen Wilds DLC expansion. I played on Normal difficulty (https://www.reddit.com/r/horizon/comments/7loqmu/which_difficulty_is_recommended_for_first_time/). I beat the game in 22 hours according to the save game data. I used dynamic HUD. I did not complete all sidequests, Hunting Grounds, etc. I prioritized harvesting/gathering skills and upgrades, then stealth and the occasional ranged and melee upgrades. My playstyle is stealth until I get caught. Melee for only situational DPS. Hunter Bow with Hardpoint Arrows for general DPS and taking down weak points and Hunter Arrows for cheaper use (e.g., against humans). Sharpshot Bow for Tearblast Arrows to strip any specific components and Precision Arrows for sniping. For more defensive battles (e.g., strong large enemies), I used the War Bow's Freeze Arrows for CC. While non-bow weapons are interesting from a design perspective, I don't find their uses any better than the equivalent bow which competes for the same feature (e.g., War Bow vs Sling for freeze CC, Sharpshot Bow vs Tearblast for tearing down components). Reading online, this is what everyone seems to have converged to as well.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/horizon-zero-dawn"},{"id":"341446089775252047","title":"Immortality","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["Series X|S","Android","PC","iOS","PS5","Mac"],"studios":["Half Mermaid","Sam Barlow"],"publishers":["Half Mermaid"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Simulator","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-08-31","completedDate":"2022-09-01","updatedDate":"2022-09-01","notes":"The investigation is quite good, particularly in browsing through video files, going backwards with potentially unnerving reveals, and the object image similarity to discover new clips.\n\nThe mystery itself doesn't really unfold unfortunately.. and that's the game's biggest weakness. I find the pacing to suffer quite a bit as you don't really learn much more of who killed who, or what's going on behind the two immortal folks.\n\nWatched a playthrough from 39Daph.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/immortality"},{"id":"322682678652590668","title":"Jade Empire","originalTitle":"ジェイド エンパイア ～翡翠の帝国","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2005,"playtimeMinutes":1020,"platforms":["XBOX"],"studios":["BioWare"],"publishers":["Microsoft Game Studios"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2005-12-31","completedDate":"2005-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/jade-empire"},{"id":"322682678652526156","title":"Katamari Damacy","originalTitle":"塊魂","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PS3","PS2"],"studios":["Keita Takahashi","Now Production"],"publishers":["Namco"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2004-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/katamari-damacy"},{"id":"322682678652592716","title":"Killer Instinct Gold","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["N64"],"studios":["Rare"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Playtronic"],"genres":["Fighting"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/killer-instinct-gold"},{"id":"322682678624169548","title":"Killing Floor 2","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":840,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Tripwire Interactive"],"publishers":["Iceberg Interactive","Deep Silver","Tripwire Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2021-06-24","completedDate":"2021-06-30","updatedDate":"2022-10-19","notes":"Killing Floor 2 is a fun horde shooter. The game gets repetitive after a while, but it's fun for a casual experience and occasionally for deeper dives into the higher difficulties and with friends.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Shooting mechanics, enemy variety, and class (perk) variety are all solid. The progression system with XP to advance perks, and where difficulties are somewhat tied to level, works well. Prestige ranks and the many classes keeps the game replayable. Within a level, progression is based on economy management.\n\nLevels are sufficiently varied. However, my biggest problem with KF2 is that the idea of an arena with waves of hordes is inherently less interesting than the mission-based levels of Left 4 Dead 2, where you make progress through levels rather than move around a static arena based on where the trader is. Boss variety is also lacking. Waves get repetitive, especially as it encourages camping. There should be more to switch up the waves such as Stand Your Ground objectives. Navigating a level also enables more varied objectives within a level.\n\nCombat is heavily around headshots, and using various perk players to handle the majority of trash while others deal with heavy Zeds. Perk specializations range from trash killing, healer, tank, large zed specialist. Zeds have resistances and weaknesses, encouraging perks to specialize to certain zed types and know how to take down certain zeds (e.g., the legs for rioters, Husks' ranged fireballs). This adds combat depth. Advanced techniques include:\n\n+ Crouch reduces recoil and spread.\n+ Sprint backwards.\n+ Reload cancel, particularly for gunslingers.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Serviceable for a adrenaline-fueled horror shooter. Cosmetics add a degree of customizability.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Last enemies in a wave appear on screen so you can always find them.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ No crosshair as default, and with it on, the crosshair is pretty terrible.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Weapon despawning. If a teammate didn't pick up your weapon, it's up to a timer (so RNG) whether you can find where you died and pick it up in time to also visit the trader.\n+ Stand Your Ground offers too few rewards, is a deathtrap for higher difficulities from Suicidal, and isn't clearly noted that if teammates leave to be selfish and get remaining kills, the objective may no longer be met.\n+ No way to see how much damage you contributed to a boss. Leaderboard, although it doesn't matter given roles like tank and healer, is still imperfect in that it only shows kills, not say damage which can be important for tracking large Zed contributions.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ Class guides: [Commando](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=795952652), [SWAT](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=885497234), [Gunslinger](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=874275491).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/killing-floor-2"},{"id":"322682678652593740","title":"Killzone","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["Guerrilla Games"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2004-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/killzone"},{"id":"336391521057112656","title":"Kingdom Come: Deliverance","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":2460,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Warhorse Studios"],"publishers":["Deep Silver","Warhorse Studios"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-07-24","completedDate":"2022-07-29","updatedDate":"2023-09-14","notes":"KCD implements a unique vision of a grounded historical RPG adhering to realism across its mechanics; Bethesda RPG progression and quest systems; and a wonderful setting.\n\nUnfortunately, KCD is iconic eurojank and suffers from numerous major flaws:\n\n1. While the combat system is innovative, bringing first-person Chivalry-style melee combat into an RPG, it is extremely lacking across controls, gameplay balance, and enemy variety and AI.\n2. There’s an unparalleled amount of jank that ruins certain scenes and at the least pulls you out of immersion constantly.\n3. Tedious mechanics for the sake of realism over enjoyable gameplay. The most annoying are all the timed quests and sidequests that aren't displayed available on your map.\n4. Lack of substantive progression systems from mid to endgame, where you reach the best gear and get the best perks by midgame.\n5. Writing both in side quests and the overall main quests is not that great.\n\n__Story.__ Writing and characters are serviceable. The stilted character development is particularly what makes it feel lacking. You can tell each character has their own personality and isn’t so closely tied to tropes. But there’s little depth. While the story is interesting early on both due to the main character's backstory and the worldbuilding, the main quest's pacing really suffers as you just go from one town to the next with a banal mystery and that doesn't significantly advance the main story.\n\n__Gameplay.__ KCD's most significant mechanics are those adhering to realism: survival meters of health, energy, and nourishment; dirt; the item pickup animation; time of day. Fast travel is deliberately slow and not instantaneous, simulating travel with time passing and potential ambushes. However, I have mixed feelings about quite a few of them: the clock tediously passing time during wait/sleep, you can't talk to NPCs until after they complete certain animations like walking routes, the many NPC follow quests, and training with Bernard kills your HP and won't be refilled.\n\nMelee combat emphasizes positioning (including clinches), attack direction (including feint and chain strike), and timing with perfect block, master strike, and dodge. Balance-wise, it's unfortunate several actions are useless: dodge (better to block so you're in position to strike back), combo chain strikes (enemies almost always block before you can follow through). Because enemies are parry gods and a disastrous combo from them can take almost all your HP, the only real strategy is to clinch which lets you get away with a stab and also take advantage of perfect blocks and master strikes.\n\nCombat is poorly implemented. Controls are too janky, mechanics are unbalanced, and it just doesn’t work for handling multiple enemies at once. Combine this with the lack of enemy variety and fighting mechanics, and it’s simply lacking to any fantasy RPG. There is no interesting tactics at play here, nor instinctive skill beyond following the rote loop that’s much more limited than the full feature set tries to sell.\n\nOther mechanics: Persuasion with timed and different skill levels.\n\nBoy is this game janky. And I thought Bethesda games were bad. Clipping, pathing with NPCs stuck walking against a boundary, dialogue lines interrupted or failing to trigger entirely, weird rendered cutscenes.\n\nProgression in this game doesn't feel substantial. I saw no notable difference as I equipped increasingly better armor sets, and there's no rarity or itemization stats to make equipment all that varied (just go for higher stats). The same goes for endgame weapons which are easily achievable early into the game. The most notable are your level improvements across your passive stats and skills. However, by midgame, I reached level 10-12 everywhere, and so there wasn't anything else to build toward and look forward to.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The soundtrack is folkish and endearing. The graphics are decent across detailed textures and facial models. The animations have a jankiness similar to Oblivion and Skyrim where dialogue often consists of rote animation gestures usually focused on a talking head.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Dice minigame. With that said, it can be a chore to play sometimes due to the ridiculously crazy RNG NPCs can have. By the time you get enough loaded die, the game is trivial.\n+ Other minigames: fighting tournament, archery contest, horse riding.\n+ You can buy and upgrade your horse. Horses also have different stats.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ [Timed quests](https://kingdom-come-deliverance.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Timed_Quests), which aren't even clear that they're timed. It's often recommended to only take side quests you plan to complete immediately, but this doesn't bode well with the fact that several side quests are location-based and obviously designed to be completed simultaneously. In addition, many quests aren't even clearly indicated that they're available, only made available after selecting a certain option on an NPC. So you can't even keep track of newly available quests.\n+ There are many quests that officially end too early, where you are supposed to visit someone you saved a few days later to see how they're doing and receive a reward. It's very easy to miss them. For example, getting Ginger back on the farm, or the various worker bribes for the Aquarius quest.\n+ No items or skills are transferred from A Woman's Lot back to the original game. Why not just have this DLC be a separate game mode if that's the case?\n+ All the various quirks fortunately solved by mods. For example:\n  + The limited save system, relying on sleeping in a bed or using the Savior Schnapps consumable in order to save. While the idea of limiting saves is useful in order to make decisions have more intent and consequence, there are a variety of reasons you'd simply like to explore the various options to see outcomes, or avoid hassles (game crashes; bugs; not knowing the game you make an unintended decision). This is why quicksave in both Elder Scrolls and stealth games is so important.\n  + There's a half-second animation of Henry moving his arm toward the center of the screen to pick something up. This is a hassle and a good reason why Bethesda games never animate it.\n  + Helmet vision. What a dumb addition favoring immersion over the massive gameplay inconvenience.\n+ If you walk around too quickly, you might skip a villager prompting you for a discussion, leading to reputation lost. Fortunately, this only happens in the beginning of the game in Skalitz and Talmberg.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://kingdom-come-deliverance.fandom.com)\n+ [Interactive map](https://kingdomcomemap.github.io)\n+ I followed [PCGamingWiki](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Kingdom_Come:_Deliverance) to unlock 144 FPS from the fixed 30 FPS during in-game cutscenes.\n+ I played with a number of quality-of-life mods: [Unlimited Saving](https://www.nexusmods.com/kingdomcomedeliverance/mods/1), [Stay Clean Longer](https://www.nexusmods.com/kingdomcomedeliverance/mods/390), [Bot Dot Reticle](https://www.nexusmods.com/kingdomcomedeliverance/mods/13), [Instant Herb Picking](https://www.nexusmods.com/kingdomcomedeliverance/mods/367), [Easy to See Herbs](https://www.nexusmods.com/kingdomcomedeliverance/mods/213), [No Helmet Vision](https://www.nexusmods.com/kingdomcomedeliverance/mods/28), [No Stamina Effects](https://www.nexusmods.com/kingdomcomedeliverance/mods/10), [A Sorted Inventory](https://www.nexusmods.com/kingdomcomedeliverance/mods/290), [Cheat](https://www.nexusmods.com/kingdomcomedeliverance/mods/106).\n+ I sold primarily to the Ratay Miller to maximize reputation in a single seller; he buys everything, has a good amount of gold, and is located next to a fast travel marker and a linked storage chest. The Sasau armorsmith and swordsmith also have 10K+ Grochen and pay better for armor and weapons.\n\nI played the Royal Edition, which comes with all DLC. I completed all side quests I came across but didn't bother to track down anything I missed on the wiki (there's 54, excluding DLC!). I also didn't bother too much with completing all activities as they're like Elder Scrolls' Radiant Quests.\n\nI dropped the game after completing Questions and Answers, and Pestilence. I didn't find the story captivating enough, and the quest design, core gameplay loop, and progression systems all fairly banal. This leaves roughly half of main quests remaining along with side quests and most DLC. So I can always pick it back up again if I'm interested.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/kingdom-come-deliverance"},{"id":"322682678652591692","title":"Kingdom Hearts","status":"Completed","score":6,"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30"},{"id":"322682678652596812","title":"Kirby & the Amazing Mirror","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["3DS","WiiU","GBA"],"studios":["Dimps","HAL Laboratory","Flagship"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2009-12-31","completedDate":"2009-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/kirby-and-the-amazing-mirror"},{"id":"0c231e30-a5f6-49f0-8e5c-4d6416bb1a75","title":"Last Epoch","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":1020,"platforms":["Linux","PC"],"studios":["Eleventh Hour Games"],"publishers":["Eleventh Hour Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2025-06-29","completedDate":"2025-07-11","updatedDate":"2025-07-15","notes":"A decent ARPG with itemization being its strongest suit, specifically with more precise crafting and incentives for both crafting and item drops. Nothing is terribly new. Builds are standard and between Diablo and Path of Exile in complexity. Campaign is mediocre. Endgame is routine, largely following Path of Exile's mapping system. Art direction is mediocre.\n\n__Writing.__\nA mediocre and forgettable experience. The most memorable element is how difficult it is to follow along with the story. I've read multiple plot explanations, tried to listen to the ingame dialogue, and still don't get it.\n\n__Content.__\n\n+ Campaign is a zoom-zoom and forget experience.\n+ No procedural level generation.\n+ Monolith of Fate acts as LE's endgame mapping system, with a Weaver tree not unlike Path of Exile's Atlas skill tree. This mapping is more repetitive due to less variation in content, and the maps are much smaller to complete. Other endgame content includes dungeons which specialize in item farming and the Arena for ranking your performance on a leaderboard.\n\n__Miscellaneous gameplay mechanics.__\n\n+ Aside from gear, build choices involve passive skill tree (determined by your class and mastery) and skills' skill trees (determined by the active skills you spec). This is inbetween the complexity of PoE’s single node system and the simplicity of D2’s stats and skill trees.\n+ Skills level up separately than the character level. It's similar to Path of Exile but not attached to specific gyms like Path of Exile 2.\n+ Dodge roll like Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2.\n\n__Crafting & Itemization.__\n\n+ Deterministic crafting system via forging potential that lets you control for specific affixes, their tier, or their roll. Legendary potential also lets you customize affixes on unique items.\n+ Both crafting and item drops are incentivized. Perfect your items with crafting. And obtain Tier 6 and 7 affixes which are only available from item drops.\n+ Circle of Fortune or Merchant's Guild factions. They also gain favor, leveling up over time for various passive bonuses. Circle of Fortune increases drop rate by rejecting the trade faction. It's a good gameplay mechanic incentive to balance focusing on crafting vs item drops.\n+ Extensive loot filtering and with a bold idea to keep all items identified so players can truly customize the gear drops they know to get. It enables really nice ideas like crafting custom loot filters, even catered to a leveling build for a specific class.\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\nStandard for an ARPG of its time. Art direction such as enemy and environment design, and animations are mediocre.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Sort inventory button.\n+ Dedicated idols (Diablo 2 charms) inventory.\n+ No XP death penalty.\n+ [Loot despawns if you portal back to town](https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/1bc50ov/is_the_loot_disappearing_when_using_a_portal_to). In fact, vendoring items is not encouraged as it is negligible. So you only want to pick up things you want.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Personal loot. I like the idea of looking at a set of items in a shared party and then deciding how to distribute it. For strangers, you can use different loot systems like in WoW.\n+ Minimap has pointer to exactly where side quest and main quest objectives are on the map. No exploration needed.\n+ No portal item. Feels too gamified.\n+ Simplified potion system. It has dedicated inventory and is only for healing, no mana, or Path of Exile's special effects elixirs.\n+ You can respec masteries. Too much quality of life for me. The only permanent choice is the base class.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Last Epoch Tools](https://www.lastepochtools.com)\n+ [Maxroll](https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch)\n+ [r/LastEpoch](https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch)\n+ [Plot explanation from Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/1azi16a/the_lore_of_last_epoch)\n\n## Playthrough: Season 2 (2025-06-29)\n\nI played coop with Marisa. I played [Acolyte](https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides/warlock-leveling-guide). Marisa played [Mage](https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides/spellblade-leveling-guide).\n\n## Playthrough: Season 2 (2025-06-30)\n\n+ Leveling: [Rogue](https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides/falconer-leveling-guide)\n+ Endgame: [Umbral Blades Falconer](https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides/umbral-blades-falconer-guide)\n\nI completed the campaign and dabbled in the Monolith endgame. I reached level 64.\n\nI debated between Umbral Blades Falconer and Warpath Void Knight. I ultimately went with the more unique playstyle to LE. My latest ARPG builds involved Warlock (LE, 2025), Boneshatter Slayer (PoE, 2023), Victor Vran (2023), Explosive Arrow totems Champion (PoE, 2023), Ice Sorcerer (D4, 2023), Conqueror with Defense & Warfare (Titan Quest, 2023), bow Rogue (D1, 2023), Spellbinder with Arcanist & Necromancer (Grim Dawn, 2021), Javazon & Hammerdin (D2R, 2021), Alchemist (Torchlight, 2020), Arc Elementalist (PoE, 2019), Necromancer (D3, 2018).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/last-epoch"},{"id":"322682678624139852","title":"Layers of Fear","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Bloober Team"],"publishers":["Bloober Team"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-10-30","completedDate":"2021-10-30","updatedDate":"2022-04-29","notes":"Fairly tropey. Too linear to be scary to be honest as it's literally just moving from corridor to corridor. Going into a room to turn around and see everything isn't scary; it's just disorienting. I love the painting and antique aesthetic though.\n\nI dislike the jump scares. The level variety also gets stale as it looks the same and blends together. This is standard budget for an indie horror.\n\nThis entry does not include the DLC.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/layers-of-fear"},{"id":"322682678651465292","title":"Life Is Strange","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":840,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","X360","XONE"],"studios":["DON'T NOD"],"publishers":["Feral Interactive","Square Enix"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-08-01","completedDate":"2019-08-02","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I like the rewind mechanic and how seamless it is for control. It works especially well in interactive narrative games like this so that you can experience all sides of content by just rewinding to hear the other choice, then making an action after hearing both consequences. I also like that it allows you to add new content, where you learn an answer after a conversation, then rewind the conversation to start a new topic given that information. And the cues to tell when choices actually matter, and when there's new content if you rewind. The rest of the gameplay is typical as a walking simulator with light puzzles. Animation, settings, and soundtrack work well. I also liked the sacrifice Chloe vs Arcadia Bay ending choice, even if it made no sense within the plot.\n\nThe characters are all tropes and a complete bore. The plot is sopping with teenage drama, none interestingly told in any way when compared to actually good teenage media like Catcher in the Rye, Freaks and Geeks, etc. These media all made innovations. Privileged rich kids. Jocks and bullies. Clique of cheerleaders and female bullies. Nerds and outcasts. Useless grown up authorities. Bland Catcher in the Rye references. I do like that the game offers some perspective to each of the characters to act out, and to provide Max with options to better understand and respond to this. However, it still remains fairly lacking in depth---going little beyond, for example, insecurity being Victoria's reason for bullying; and pressure being Nathan's excuse for being an asshole. Choices lead to bipolar personalities in all the characters, where they go immediately from enemies to friends from a single dialogue option.\n\nPlot meanders often: from teenage drama to larger school conspiracy to Chloe specifically to serial killer. It's overly dramatic with the rich kid owning the entire town; kids attempting suicide; drug dealers being involved; obviously ass-kissing and useless principal; serial killer; everyone smoking marijuana; town-scale eco disaster. I swear the game would have easily gone to actual murder or rape if it didn't try to remain pandering to tweens.\n\nThe cringy dialogue is fine. However, the teenager language uses so much slang that it feels forced at times. You can tell it's dialogue that 20-30 year olds think teenagers would say. You can tell who likes this game because they're probably cringey and like the label of being called a 'hipster'.\n\nPlot holes galore. The time travel is sort of a gimmick as a player mechanic and emotional drama tool. But does not lead to logial stories. For example, why Max couldn't go back in time to save both William and Chloe by using a different photograph? And her nosebleeds coming at convenient times only to avoid her cheesing her way through certain plot circumstances. But not being a problem when she travels 5 years in the past multiple times.\n\nI played on my Macbook Pro with a touchpad/keyboard, 1400x900 resolution, low settings. Ideally, it would be at max settings, highest resolution, and with a controller.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/life-is-strange"},{"id":"322682678652467788","title":"Limbo","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","Vita","X360","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Playdead"],"publishers":["Microsoft Game Studios","Playdead"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2011-09-30","completedDate":"2019-04-13","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Atmosphere, lighting, natural sounds like footsteps and nature. It's almost like a walking simulator and with puzzles interspersed as a platformer to move on. Mechanics are minimal with just movement, an action button, and a jump button. I'm ambivalent about the gameplay itself as a trial-and-error death-puzzle game. On one hand, the checkpoint system are frequent so failure isn't necessarily tedious. But physics puzzles however can be tedious to execute even when you know the solution.\n\n+ You have to control keybind and windowed settings through a text file.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://portforward.com/games/walkthroughs/Limbo\n\nIn general, puzzles and platformers are just not for me. I can enjoy them but it's rare for me to find that right mood. I tried this in October 2011 but could never get into the atmospheric puzzles. Even playing it in 2019 with at most a puzzle mood I can be in, I just don't find it very fun.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/limbo"},{"id":"322682678652688972","title":"Line Rider","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2006,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["browser","Android","iOS"],"studios":["Emergent Studios","Boštjan Čadež"],"publishers":["Emergent Studios","Boštjan Čadež"],"genres":["Puzzle","Simulator","Indie"],"startedDate":"2006-12-31","completedDate":"2006-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/line-rider"},{"id":"322682678651446860","title":"Little Misfortune","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Killmonday Games HB"],"publishers":["Killmonday Games HB"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Platform","Puzzle","Adventure","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2019-10-03","completedDate":"2019-10-03","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I love her accent. Her sayings are hilarious. Her dialogue is also thinly veiled with naivety, random vulgarness, and gloom. I pseudo-played this, watching Soda's stream (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/489824363).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/little-misfortune"},{"id":"322682678624203340","title":"Loop Hero","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":1680,"platforms":["Series X|S","Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Four Quarters"],"publishers":["Devolver Digital","Playdigious"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Adventure","Indie","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2021-03-18","completedDate":"2021-03-18","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"__Gameplay.__ Loop Hero's interesting mechanic is that traveling, fighting, and other similar actions are done automatiaclly. Instead, the game concentrates on progression building (e.g., stats, equipment, buildings) and building the map, which leads to harder enemies and better equipment. It reminds me of simulator and custom map defense games in this manner.\n\nI don't like the strategy dependence on building card combinations in the world map, without the game telling you beforehand what the combinations are. It requires looking the strategy up online rather than understand and discover strategies as you play, but without needing to try a ton of arbitrary combinations.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ THe pixel art has a nice indie feel. Soundtrack is serviceable.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ No borderless option. Windowed mode also only has fixed scales so borderless technically requires cropping a bit of space depending on your resolution needs.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI didn't play very long, only getting the basics of the game and building a handful of buildings.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/loop-hero"},{"id":"322682678652453452","title":"Mario Kart 8 Deluxe","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["Switch 2","Switch"],"studios":["Nintendo EPD Production Group No. 9","Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Racing","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2019-06-08","completedDate":"2019-06-09","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Played it for a day with Danny, Mom, and Sanky. Fun but nothing innovative in this one. I do love how the Switch makes it so easy to do multiplayer with all the various controllers though.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mario-kart-8-deluxe"},{"id":"322682678652606028","title":"Mario Kart DS","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2005,"playtimeMinutes":270,"platforms":["WiiU","NDS"],"studios":["Nintendo EAD Software Development Group No.1"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Racing","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2005-12-31","completedDate":"2006-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mario-kart-ds"},{"id":"322682678652609100","title":"Mario Power Tennis","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["Wii"],"studios":["Camelot Software Planning"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Sport","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2010-09-30","completedDate":"2010-09-30","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mario-power-tennis--1"},{"id":"322682678652610124","title":"Mario Tennis","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2000,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["Wii","N64","WiiU"],"studios":["Camelot"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Gradiente"],"genres":["Sport"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mario-tennis"},{"id":"322682678652731980","title":"Mass Effect 3","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":1470,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["BioWare","BioWare Edmonton"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-04-29","completedDate":"2022-05-05","updatedDate":"2022-05-05","notes":"I don't know if it was the case also for the previous Mass Effect games, but I found the story and character development simply not interesting. It was too galactic in scale and trope-y to build an army against a deadly foe. The combat is also not any different than ME2, so the gameplay simply felt stale.\n\n__Story.__ I find the story of building an alliance force to fight the Reapers too cliche. It's so boring, especially with the intrigue from say Mass Effect 2 largely not being of consequence. It's even more convoluted than the previous games due to needing to wrap up many threads. I do like the various reunions with past characters. It lets the game have side quests that build on prior history, but the side quests are more about wrapping up the character's planned arc than providing any fun personality or cool detail.\n\nI find the outcry against ME3's ending childish. It's a purposefully bittersweet ending made of compromises, and I greatly prefer this over the power fantasy and a fully happy ending.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Combat and progression systems are largely the same as Mass Effect 2. It's fun albeit a bit outdated. The most noticeable change is the ability to wield any weapon type across classes, balanced through a weight capacity. I particularly like this as it makes Infiltrator have more variety by using an Assault Rifle or Shotgun and not just a Sniper Rifle. There's also a return of weapon mods.\n\nWar asset mechanic feels too video game-y and grindy. Same goes for the fetch quests. Fuel and searching for lost items minigame in the space exploration is just tedious, taking elements of what was bad in the previous games.\n\nSide missions in ME3 all have a feeling of sameness. Enemy variety is low, and there's little tactic to killing enemies. Levels are also extremely linear like ME2. The story to many side missions, especially for prior companions, are good. It's the other side missions (especially the fetch quest ones you pick up during a mission) that artificially inflate playtime.\n\nMass Effect 3 continues ME2's worst combat mechanic of a shared global cooldown for all active abilities. This disincentives using a variety of your own powers since they all trigger cooldown. You're only ever encouraged to use another active ability beyond your best if the other ability is specifically better for the situation. For Infiltrator, this was rarely if ever the case where I almost exclusively used Tactical Cloak on cooldown and rarely applied Incinerate or any other ability. The intent of the cooldown is to manually control your squad member abilities as well. However, I find the shortcut micromanagement annoying as you have to change them whenever you change your squad, and using the Shift to slowdown time and control abilities at a more fine-grained level ruins the combat pacing.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Items missed for pickup during a mission can be purchased in stores. The only missable are time sensitive side missions that are gated after certain story progression.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The various timed missions that fail upon achieving a certain Priority main mission. I had to lose roughly 1.5 hours of playtime to reset because Grissom Academy failed after I went to Citadel to purchase items and 0.5 hours of playtime to reset because of Tuchanka: Bomb. At least you can change the difficulty to Narrative (the easiest) in order to zoom by the missions.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Mission guide wiki](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Mass_Effect_3_Guide). It's especially required to monitor in order to avoid failing timed missions.\n\nI played the remaster Legendary Edition on PC which includes all DLC. I played on Normal, which is the new Veteran difficulty from prior titles, and combat difficulty is not necessarily Mass Effect's strength when damage numbers just get scaled. I leaned toward Paragon. I completed most all side quests except for the several Citadel quests that fail after you complete Priority: Tuchanka (I didn't know).\n\nI played Infiltrator. My typical playstyle is: Cloak -> Headshot until out of ammo -> Hide behind cover to reload -> repeat. The cooldown for Cloak is fast enough that I can apply it by the time I finish shooting and reloading my sniper rifle. I upgraded squad members ad hoc and chose them mostly based on RP/quests.\n\n+ Talents: Tactical Cloak for damage bonus; Incinerate for extra DPS for armor and health; Sticky Grenades for AOE; Warp Ammo as bonus power for barriers (+80%), armor (+40%), and health (+40%); Disruptor Ammo for shields (+60%) and to a lesser extent barriers (+60%) and health (+15%); Operational Mastery for damage passives; and Fitness for health and armor passives.\n+ Weapons: Black Widow (Sniper Rifle), M-96 Mattock (Assault Rifle).\n+ Armor: Damage/Headshot bonus.\n\nI was on Priority: Thessia before I stopped playing. I simply watched endings online. I played all DLC except the Citadel DLC.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mass-effect-3"},{"id":"322682678652689996","title":"MediEvil","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":390,"platforms":["PS1"],"studios":["SCE Cambridge Studio"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment Europe"],"genres":["Platform","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"1997-12-31","completedDate":"1997-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I have lots of nostalgia for this game. Loved the action-adventure.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/medievil-2"},{"id":"340403694856045135","title":"MediEvil (2019)","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["PS4"],"studios":["Other Ocean Interactive"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-11-27","completedDate":"2019-12-01","updatedDate":"2022-08-19","notes":"MediEvil is a charming game with fun core combat mechanics, level design, and charm for its time. Unfortunately the game is also extremely unforgiving at times and janky with camera angles and controls.\n\n__Story.__ Love the humor to the game.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The combat is hack and slash that's quite a bit janky from PlayStation 1 era. No dodge button. There are two moves (Square and Circle), but only the charged up Circle attack is really viable (you want to minimize time near enemies as that's the only way you can reduce damage taken). There's also many ranged weapons with limited ammo that forces you to spend gold. Triangle lets you swap between two weapons, which is fine but not as diverse as the D-pad 4-choices common in PlayStation 4 games. Camera angles are janky. Heals are auto-use.\n\nI like the level design. I'm a big fan of hand-crafted mostly linear levels, and with collectibles off the beaten path. This game encourages exploration well by forcing you to kill all enemies and find the location to the chalice, which lets you unlock more powerful weapons. Enemy variety is also good. The hints but never pedantic throughout the levels are all well-done.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Vibrant colors. Love the cartoon art. Soundtrack is great.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Switching off the first few levels while playing with Danny.\n+ Dying multiple times in Scarecrow Fields and Enchanted Forest.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Game is quite unforgiving. Death means restart entire level. I like the general difficulty, but I don't like how unforgiving the death penalty is. Plus, if you do worse in previous levels, your life flasks do not replenish meaning you're screwed the next level.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nSo excited for this game!","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/medievil--1"},{"id":"322682678652613196","title":"Mega Man Battle Network","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":840,"platforms":["WiiU","GBA"],"studios":["Capcom","Capcom Production Studio 2"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Real Time Strategy (RTS)","Role-playing (RPG)","Tactical","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mega-man-battle-network"},{"id":"322682678652618316","title":"Mega Man X2","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1994,"playtimeMinutes":270,"platforms":["SNES","3DS","Wii","WiiU","New 3DS","SFAM"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom","Playtronic"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mega-man-x2"},{"id":"322682678652619340","title":"Mega Man X4","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PS3","PC","Saturn","PS1","PSP","Mobile"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom","Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Played this one so much in particular.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mega-man-x4"},{"id":"322682678652621388","title":"Mega Man Zero","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["WiiU","GBA"],"studios":["Capcom","Inti Creates"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2004-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mega-man-zero"},{"id":"322682678652622412","title":"Mega Man Zero 2","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["WiiU","GBA"],"studios":["Inti Creates"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2004-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mega-man-zero-2"},{"id":"322682678652816972","title":"Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2008,"playtimeMinutes":1110,"platforms":["PS3"],"studios":["Kojima Productions"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Shooter","Tactical","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2023-08-10","completedDate":"2023-08-12","updatedDate":"2023-08-15","notes":"MGS4 is an epic conclusion combining the plots and characters from MGS1, MGS2, and MGS3. It is one of the most cinematic games at its time, featuring film-inspired scenes and a reliance on cutscenes to drive the game. Gameplay-wise, MGS4 features some of the best controls and a stealth war zone level design.\n\nUnfortunately, MGS4 has two major flaws:\n\n+ The gameplay falls flat after Act 2. Acts 1-2 are excellent in their semi-open war zone level design, reminiscent of previous MGS titles, with gameplay freedom, and while heavy in cutscenes, not overwhelmingly so. Acts 3-4 are gimmicky and linear with few stealth moments (in Act 4, there are not even human enemies), and Act 5 has only boss fights. MGS feels like MGS5 as an incomplete title (although only gameplay-wise; at least MGS4 has a cohesive story).\n+ Holy hell are the cutscenes long in this game. With a total of 8 hours of cutscenes, the longest cutscene being 70 minutes, this game is 50% cutscenes and 50% gameplay. This really set up the joke for Hideo Kojima's style as a fetish for western movies. It does not work well in a video game, especially when the story itself is not that good. Cinematic games like Last of Us advance plot and exposition in a far more seamless way with gameplay.\n\n__Story.__\nThe usual fanfare of an industrial military complex, convoluted politics, soap opera drama, and some of Kojima-style corniness (e.g., Johnny) and over-the-top Japanese tendencies (e.g., beast enemies, psycho mantis, anime-like cutscenes). The overarching plot is rife with convoluted exposition dumps (and they're often made redundant with multiple explanations across the acts; it's much better to condense and streamline the story).\n\nYou get to revisit iconic moments and areas like Shadow Moses. It's based on the concept of a war economy, where proxy wars continue through the same PMC factions all controlled by the Patriots and under the two conflicting interpretations of the Boss' vision by Zero and Big Boss.\n\nContrived plot elements:\n\n+ All the unnecessary plot twists for the sake of having a plot twist. For example, the van being destroyed was a decoy; then the corpse that was destroyed was not actually Big Boss but rather Solidus, then Big Boss dying in the epilogue. Or Rosemary staging her child's death causing Raiden to enter depression for at least 4 years followed by the sudden reveal that he was alive and that her marriage to Colonel was a ruse all along. Or that Zero is suddenly alive at the epilogue. Or Naomi's multiple betrayals and that she has a final message not only in suicide but also in the program sent to JD and a message from Big Boss in the epilogue.\n+ Deaths like Eva running into a fire, Naomi commiting suicide, and Raiden holding back a submarine is contrived and cheesy.\n+ Meryl and Johnny marrying.\n\n__Gameplay.__ It's the usual mix of stealth gameplay with linear sequences but open individual areas, followed by cinematic cutscenes. The core gameplay loop is solid.\n\nHealth and psyche/stress system. Psyche is not unlike MGS3's stamina bar.\n\nControls are the same as previous games: crouch / crawl, walk / run, wall press for peeking, mantling, and holding onto the wall and cross narrow ledges, roll forward and to the side, swim.\n\nLevel design follows the standard of mostly linear with open areas to explore for various item and easter egg pickups. New to MGS4, there are some scripted encounters such as rebels vs PMCs in Acts 1-2. Levels are also diverse, with war zones in Acts 1-2 and bases (particularly revisiting Shadow Moses) in Acts 3-4. Act 4 is not very compelling gameplay-wise, but it's a blast from the past with all the references.\n\nOther new features:\n\n+ Octocamo. It's like a streamlined version of MGS3's camo costumes.\n+ Radar map is replaced by threat ring. And the Solid Eye, which has limited battery and requires being inactive in order to recharge.\n+ Drebin's shop and its currency. Any extra weapons picked up are collected as points for Drebin's shop.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nFacial textures are incredible for its time. Excellent animations and the usual iconic MGS soundtrack.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Like previous titles, New Game Plus lets you keep your weapons, items, face camo, and more. Moreover, you get rewards for completing the game in [certain conditions](https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid_4_secrets) such as the infinite ammo Bandana or stealth camo. This significantly adds to replayability, a legacy from PlayStation 1 games, and I wish more modern titles had this.\n+ Like previous titles, cutscenes include interactions ranging from an interactable camera to funny easter eggs.\n+ I don't remember if this was in MGS1-3, but in MGS4, the magnitude that you hold down the analog stick affects movement speed and sound (light vs loud). To sneak behind an enemy, if you have to only slightly tilt the analog stick while crouched.\n+ In MGS4, if you crouch for too long or sometimes after a forward roll, you get back pain. This reduces your psyche until you stop crouching or else requires the Compress item to heal.\n+ Like MGS3, there's a separate backpack with the weapon and item equip menu. This streamlines scrolling through the items.\n+ The emulation of the first level of MGS1 in Act 4. Cute.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Saving is done by checkpoint.\n+ You can purchase ammo from Drebin's shop. Possibly too streamlined.\n+ The minigame-like encounters with different controls: the motorcycle scene, Metal Gear Rex fight, the CQC vs Liquid Ocelot.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ No way to quick reload the game such as when you're spotted or give up. You have to either exit to the main menu then load your save, or run into enemies for them to kill you. Lots of unnecessary waiting.\n+ No easy way to check stats such as kill count or alarm count. This makes going for certain final rewards like 0 kills tedious. The only current way is to exit to the Main Menu, then go to Mission Briefing and to load the save.\n+ No ability to skip individual lines during the codec to make it go faster. You can only fast forward which can make it difficult to follow as the alternative to skipping lines after you finished reading it.\n+ Facecamo is a strict benefit of roughly 10-15% more camo than wearing nothing. However, it's on even during cutscenes where you don't see the facial animations. So annoyingly I resort to leaving it off so that I don't have to micromanage it and predict when cutscenes might happen.\n+ Boy the fanservice does not age well. It is one of the worst MGS titles with Naomi's cleavage and upskirt and the beauty and the beast units.\n+ Act 3's escort mission is terrible. Fixed pacing and trigger happy in alerts with unclear how to proceed without resetting the escort.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://metalgear.fandom.com)\n+ [Controls](https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid_4_Walkthrough/Controls)\n\n__Version.__\nI played the \"Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of the Patriots 25th Anniversary\" BLES00246 edition released in 2012. It's the latest release, but there is no real difference among the editions ([discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/PS3/comments/1cffv1/whats_the_difference_between_mgs4_and_the_mgs4), [discussion](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/926596-metal-gear-solid-4-guns-of-the-patriots/68197261)). Obtained from [r/roms](https://www.reddit.com/r/Roms/comments/m59zx3/roms_megathread_40_html_edition_2021).\n\nOn emulators, it started to become playable on RPCS3 around Aug 2019 ([2021 post](https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/ihewal/i_just_beat_mgs4_for_the_first_time_on_rpcs3_i)). A [Jan 2022 post](https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/rk6htm/anyone_know_any_good_settings_for_mgs3_on_rpcs3) indicated it's inconsistent for framerate, and gets 15 FPS during action sequences. In April 2022, DigitalFoundry got it to work at 4K 60FPS, albeit with a few crashes, visual bugs, FPS drops to 15-20 at intense scenes, and long load times due to PPU building at every new scene ([video](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/ucd701/digital_foundry_metal_gear_solid_4_revisited_at), [article](https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2022-playstation-3-emulation-tested-revisiting-metal-gear-solid-4-at-4k-60fps)). As of this writing (2023-07-31), RPCS3 hasn't improved much from the issues noted above, but at least there is no longer a need for a custom RPCS3 build.\n\nI played on RPCS3 (version 0.0.29-15470-4bbe885f Alpha | master, 4.90 firmware). I started with the default settings from a fresh install, then applied [RPCS3 wiki's game-specific settings](https://wiki.rpcs3.net/index.php?title=Metal_Gear_Solid_4:_Guns_of_the_Patriots) and used a native resolution of 1920x1080. (I'm unsure if this affected performance, but I incorrectly set \"Resolution\" to 1920x1080p, not the \"Resolution Scale\".)\n\nI tried playing in 2023-08-10. Generally around 30-50 FPS. Issues I ran into:\n\n+ Frame rate drops down to 10-20. This also slows down game speed and can lead to audio stuttering.\n+ Audio stuttering during the intro FMV cutscenes.\n+ Asset pop-ins particularly as a scene starts and shaders are still being compiled.\n+ [Audio cracking](https://github.com/RPCS3/rpcs3/issues/13105) at times during general gameplay and during cutscenes.\n+ A handful of missing assets or visual glitches.\n+ Some game freezes.\n\n__Playthrough.__ I played Big Boss Hard difficulty, which is the highest difficulty available on a first playthrough. As with all my Metal Gear Solid playthroughs, I follow the nonlethal route, generally killing as few as possible (but not with the strict target of 0 kills which can be tedious at times, and to try out the lethal content). I got the title of Eagle with roughly 15 hours of in-game time.\n\n__Build.__ My favored setup:\n\n+ Weapons: Mk II pistol, Mosin-Nagant. Saiga with V-ring ammo for close encounter bosses. Rolling into targets, CQC, and Stun Knife work well in close encounters against non-bosses. Smoke grenade and M4 custom (masterkey, 4x sight, laser, suppressor) are used to get out of tricky situations.\n+ Items\n  + Solid Eye and batteries for extended battery life.\n  + Drum can or cardboard box to relieve psyche when I don't want to use a consumable.\n+ Camos\n  + Rebel camo in Act 1 and 2 to get by rebels (though you can also just take down a single PMC and they become friendly).\n  + Any Beauty facecamo in Act 3 to get by PMCs.\n  + Facecamo is optimal for stealth, but as this is my first playthrough, I used no facecamo aside from Act 3 in order to see the cutscenes with the facial animations.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/metal-gear-solid-4-guns-of-the-patriots"},{"id":"322682678652487244","title":"Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":2730,"platforms":["PC","PS3","X360","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Kojima Productions"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Shooter","Tactical","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-02-02","completedDate":"2019-02-10","updatedDate":"2023-08-13","notes":"MGS5 has the polish of a AAA title (for the first half), but it ultimately feels soulless---lacking in story, characters, level designs, the culture that makes the Metal Gear series dumb but fun technobabble, the movie-game hybrid theme, and rife with flaws of its new western mechanics (e.g., barebones open world and home base). With that said, what MGS5 does better than any other game in the series is advancing the philosophy of freedom of gameplay. It refines certain combat mechanics so well: this is how stealth should be done.\n\nFan consensus is that MGS5-PP has the best gameplay but lacks in story. I actually disagree that the overall gameplay is the best. Certainly MGS5's AI and combat styles are the most refined they've ever been. However, the combat quickly becomes repetitive. For example, levels lack variety as a open world environment with the same assets used across levels and any evolving content; bosses don't really exist and lack the iconic status of, e.g., Sniper Wolf, Psycho Mantis, The End, Cyborg Ninja. This offers few incentives to change up your gameplay style aside from the occasional enemy adaptation. Most importantly, the combat lacks context, [without a real story and cast to drive it forward](https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/5g9n7w/mgsv_is_a_repetitive/darjoxi). The cast and bosses are barely existent in the game, and the story itself feels incomplete due to the Konami-Kojima dispute.\n\nIn general, I also don't like MGS5's move towards western game elements: currency, platformer-style levels, scores, a home base with others you level up, silent protagonist, storytelling that only ties the missions together rather than the opposite of gameplay complementing the story.\n\n__Story.__ The prologue is set up very well, incredibly cinematic, dark, and seamless in integration as a tutorial. The rest of the story is unfortunately barebones, just stringed along as you complete a list of missions. The story that does appear such as the Zero mission is cringey in its dialogue. The majority of the story appears in cassette tapes, optional audio to listen to. This mechanic is just not good: it should be integrated into the story, not be a chore list that should be consumed. Any story that does exist is at the quality of fanfiction: Quiet and hints of romance, forgettable characters, Huey Emmerich having a child Hal with Strangelove, the zombie mission and infections in general. I feel like the game was built around a few powerful conceptual enemies: Man on Fire, Psycho Mantis, Skulls, child Liquid Snake, child soldiers; and the game fell flat to build a story around them.\n\nCharacter-wise, Snake has gone from a standalone character in previous games of the Series to a silent protagonist with little emotion. I find every dialogue with him cringey: it's so strange to have Ocelot and Snake have a \"conversation\" where Ocelot says something and Snake hardly even gestures to react. Ocelot or Miller are not distinctive in this game. Quiet is a brilliant example of just how bad the western fanservice can be---she's not even a good character if you forget about the ludicrous sexual appeal.And she is also the only one with character development. Ocelot is forgettable. Huey Emmerich is just incredibly whiny all the time---there's no variation in his emotions; the story is constantly setup to interrogate him and learn something new as he whines about it. I liked the idea of a whiny guy being a huge asshole villain in actuality; but there's no big reveal to make it interesting. We just hear the in-progress steps of him whining.\n\n__Combat.__ This is clearly the best of the Metal Gear series. The overall style of non-lethal stealth has been incredibly refined, with versatile approaches to a mission. Individual elements are refined to reflect this. For example, alerts are the best they've ever been: unlike MGS2 where you have to run away to avoid the infinite enemy respawn, you can silence enemies in Reflex mode (and which can be turned off for a mission bonus!) or incapacitate/kill all enemies in a vicinity to turn off the alert. Binoculars give you a surveillance that's more encompassing in the full screen UI minimalism than a radar.\n\nThere are many new controls to use than any other MGS game. To facilitate this, actions that used to be a single button such as knocking are now part of a larger switching scheme in which you can select an action from your D-pad followed by a L/R-movement to pick within it. This expands a single button press to up to 4 (button + up/down/left/right). I think the complexity is warranted in MGS5.\n\n__Level/Environments.__ Because of the base and list of missions, the game is unfortunately more platformer than the more RPG/arcadey elements of the other games of the series. I have mixed feelings about whether this platformer style with semi-open worlds is better than the arcadey style of MGS1/2 and the more RPG-style of MGS3.\n\nLevel-design wise, I'm surprised by the lack of variety with most gameplay being outside in arid landscapes. This is unlike MGS games which typically involve others such as jungles, urban indoors, battleships, submarines, even a cave in MGS1. Compare to the huge diversity set piece of Ground Zero's Camp Omega level. It's clear you can in fact set up open world environments that are just not outdoors with a handful of minimally set-up bases. The tutorial mission and mission 43 are excellent examples. I would prefer fewer than the 50 levels in favor of a density of more variety and interesting missions/designs. Level 34 is emblematic of this repetitiveness: it's literally a previous level but set to extreme difficulty. Multiple such levels occur in the second half.\n\nI also think the open-world environment is overly praised when it also suffers from the same problem other games using this mechanic do: quantity over quality (https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/09/09/metal-gear-solid-v-and-the-witcher-3-both-suffer-from-the-same-big-flaw/). I much prefer a higher density of content whereas MGS5's missions string together patches of content within an illusion of a much larger map that you have to run to. There is only the occassional medicinal herb shrubbery and animal. There's low variety in level assets to encourage exploration.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Love the seamless integration of binoculars as a way to scan the land before continuing. There are explicit game incentives (constant tracking of enemies) that makes the mechanic not only add to the realism but be encouraged through the gameplay mechanics.\n+ The addition of a stealth stance on top of prone.\n+ The lack of quantitative numbers: stealth percentages of MGS3, pyramid surveillance field of vision of MGS games, timers for alert and evasion.\n+ NPC injuries applied to different body parts affecting different mechanics. Same as in other MGS games.\n+ Interrogations actually help even if you know the vital mission objectives such as pointing out Rough Diamonds locations, nearby Specialists, optional prisoners.\n+ Smooth transitions from gameplay to cinematic. Same as in other MGS games.\n+ Unlike other games in the series, nothing is strictly missable aside from cutscenes as you can replay story missions and freeroam to obtain them (e.g., cassette tapes). This makes it possible to not require a guide to play through the game!\n+ Interactive camera during cutscenes. Always refreshing since the first game.\n+ You can play with Japanese audio tracks. With that said, MGS5 was developed specifically with the English cast's performance (including motion capturing), where the Japanese version is actually the dubbed one. This is in contrast to all previous releases where characters' vocal and facial expressions were developed with lip-syncing exclusively to Japanese and not English voice acting: MGS1-4, PO, and PW.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Call of Duty-esque health state including regeneration rather than the health bar of previous games.\n+ The infection is an interesting idea. But it's also inconvenient. If you quarantine and then rush the missions 26-29, you still lose up to 20 people.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Casette tapes over codec calls. The music tapes are great and something iconic for the radio transmission of the Metal Gear series. However, the mission details available via optional cassette tapes is passive over the interactivity of the codec calls. There's no incentive to sit and listen to them; a better design is to integrate them into the core game.\n+ Combat Deployment's Dispatch Mission system and upgrades for Mother Base. It's a waiting game and totally a mobile move. Boring..\n+ Rating the gameplay for a mission with ranks. This emphasizes certain playstyles: non-lethal, stealth (no alerts or hits taken), tactical takedowns, headshots, interrogations, rescues. This combined with Fultoning emphasizes the specific gamestyle of tranquilizer single-shot pistol for mid-range; tranquilizer sniper rifle for long range; CQC for close range; water pistol for destroying electronics; Fulton-ing enemies to get rid of bodies; letting them see you briefly, magazine, decoy, or buddy for distractions. Forget about weaving through enemies for the no trace (while this may improve mission time and give the perfect stealth bonus, it removes all takedown bonuses, Fultoning possibilities, and exploration of areas for items); Rambo-style with assaut rifles/SMGs and rocket launchers; deploying grenades that alert others; D-Walker assults; cardboard box; etc. The point of MGS5 is to explore and adapt the playstyle as the enemies also adapt; the rating system is at odds with this. More broadly, this is a platformer game element and is a reason I don't really like platformers. Previous games did have ranks, but it was over the entire game which made focusing on a particular style not as incentivized as there are no in-game awards for it, only glory of completionism.\n+ Fulton. It's too essential a game mechanic for something that feels so silly in its realism. I'm not sure if I would even put it in the same weird mechanic that defines Metal Gear as, e.g., the cardboard box.\n+ Credits before and after every mission.\n+ Save states for the Japanese and English versions are not compatible. This makes it difficult to use someone else's save state as most play in English.\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://metalgear.fandom.com)\n+ [r/metalgearsolid](https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid)\n+ [WSGF](http://www.wsgf.org/dr/metal-gear-solid-v-ground-zeroes/en)\n+ IGN Walkthrough](https://www.ign.com/wikis/metal-gear-solid-5-the-phantom-pain/Walkthrough)\n+ [YouTube: CQC guide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-Fgdr58-ao)\n+ [Reddit: Non-obvious tips](https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/9kio9y/mgs5_nonobvious_tips_no_spoilers)\n\nI found the following two series very good for getting caught up with the series. These cover up to MGS5 in less than an hour ([1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngySxUOj-VI), [2](https://justpaste.it/j0cs)). Kefka Productions has a [12 hour overview of the full series](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K977NxGhyU). This one explains the game order ([1](https://www.gamingscan.com/metal-gear-game-order)). If there's one thing clear, it's that the story is convoluted with crossings, double crossings, world conflicts, clones, etcetera. Each game is really a platform for Kojima to express certain interesting mechanics, and the lore is just made to try to best fit it ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/3hxcg1/the_history_of_metal_gear_in_12_minutes/cubm82n)). It's clear lore is not Metal Gear Solid's strong point as an overarching story, but it still remains interesting within each standalone game.\n\n__Playthrough.__\nI played with Japanese audio and English subtitles, which is the native game. My total playtime as recorded by Steam is 43 hours. I beat the base game (except for Mission 45-46) and did not go for completionism, e.g., all side ops, missions, maxing out R&D items. The game was just not very fun to continue. I skimmed through Missions 45-46 on Youtube to see the content.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/metal-gear-solid-v-the-phantom-pain"},{"id":"0c16b527-c22f-4c52-a83d-3dfc01434d4b","title":"Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":960,"platforms":["PS1","PS3","PSP","Vita"],"studios":["Konami Computer Entertainment Japan"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2001-01-01","completedDate":"2001-01-01","updatedDate":"2023-08-11","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/metal-gear-solid-vr-missions"},{"id":"322682678652482124","title":"Metro 2033","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":570,"platforms":["PC","X360"],"studios":["4A Games"],"publishers":["THQ"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2019-02-14","completedDate":"2019-02-22","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I like that it plays like a cinematic movie. The linear storytelling suits the novel adaptation very well. The lighting with the use of flashlights/lighters, gas masks and air filters, and partial stealth adds to the drab atmosphere. That said, the story isn't stellar by itself. It's only the interesting combination of gameplay interactivity that makes games like this better than mediocre. Overall, I'm just not invested in the game. Perhaps I'm not a fan of the FPS genre itself---I couldn't get into the Half-Life, Call of Duty, or Halo series. If it weren't for my personal tastes maybe I would rate this game higher for applying the MGS-like cinematic treatment to FPS. However, the silent protagonist, and lack of any character depth to the supporting characters, makes the game feel like moving from point A to point B most times. This is the same issue I have with Half-life and Halo which are too linear, shooting enemies in point A and then shooting enemies in point B (contrast this with DOOM (2016)'s approach to level design).\n\nThe survival setting pits you well against monsters and bands of humans alike. The game encourages exploration but not to the extent that you'll miss a permanent item if you don't explore enough: only consumables such as ammo.\n\nMetros are unfortunately redundant in assets and level design. So it's boring arriving at a new on at each new rest stop. All levels feel roughly homogenous and more of the same.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Minimal UI.\n+ Journal entries as collectables. They're the only missable item and not strictly necessary as a completionist as they don't affect gameplay.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Ammo as the universal currency, and which can be scarce. I don't like the idea of ammo management, even if it's realistic. It comes across as tedious gameplay.\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\nI played the Redux version. I was originally motivated by Metro Exodus coming out on the day that I started this game. They seem largely story-driven, and therefore necessary to play in release order. A big bonus is that they're only a max of 10 hours per game, and I'm also personally in for something FPS action-heavy at the moment as my last played recent games are Metal Gear Solid, Yakuza 0, and Souls games. I played Survival style on Normal difficulty. They seem most standard. Weapon-wise, I converged onto the Duplet for short range, silenced Kalash for medium range, and VSV for long range respectively.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/metro-2033"},{"id":"322682678651461196","title":"Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":930,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","X360","XONE"],"studios":["Monolith Productions"],"publishers":["WB Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-08-01","completedDate":"2019-08-07","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I enjoyed Shadow of Mordor's open world, combat, and stealth mechanics, greatly preferring its gameplay mechanics over action-adventures that heavily inspired it like Arkham and Assassin's Creed. At its core is viscerally satisfying gameplay. There's nothing other games hold to it in the feeling of being overwhelmed by a large collection of foes yet slashing through them. Most impressive is the Nemesis system as a personalized progression system against an army. It can be a lot of fun going through the map, killing Orc Captains, and leveling/gearing up.\n\nUnfortunately, the game is a sandbox and falls into common traps of open-world games. For one, level design is redundant with little variety. For two, it fails to have any sense of a connecting story and side quests. For three, the only incentives for exploration outside the Nemesis system are boring Artifact collectibles and loot for Mirian currency. I think only RPGs have been successful at open world games. Action-adventures that are more \"open zones\" than open world provide too little content, diluting the density of content per travel time. I think action-adventures can succeed in freedom via metroidvania-style open worlds in the likes of games like Tomb Raider and God of War, where regions unlock according to a linear storytelling and each is big enough to incenvitze explroation (although I dislike the mandatory backtracking from locked abilities to revisit older areas). Other qualities are servicable but not necessarily impressive either: level design, progression system, aesthetics, sound, any inventions in the gameplay.\n\n__Story.__ It's borderline bad. It's a skeleton story with scuffed Aragorn alongside cameos such as Gollum. Story points are disjointed. Most of the \"story\" emphasis is instead placed on the Nemesis system where it's like a choose your own adventure in personalized progression of killing captains and ranking up new ones.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Shadow of Mordor plays similar to Arkham and Assassin's Creed with a single-button melee combo, counter, ground finisher, stealth kills. Gadgets are replaced with a bow and arrow and magic, where ranged is actually viable for kills rather than just stuns. Additional mechanics like interrogating Worms for intel; possibility to recover from death state; Drain, particularly with the Brand ability for mind control. XP for an ability progression system. Level design is also semi-open. Standard amount of enemy types; I do like that unlike Arkham, the game's enemies also involve animals (although I think they could do more here).\n\nMost new is the Nemesis system and Mirian currency as a progression for attributes (weapon slots, Health, Focus, and Elf-Shot). The Nemesis system personalizes the ranking of generals in Sauron's army to your gameplay. Reward for defeating them besides lore is lots of XP and Power to unlock ability tiers. Mirian currency is found through collectibles and side missions.\n\nUnlike Arkham series, stealth is a lot more forgiving. For example, alert doesn't automatically signal all enemies. They have to raise an alarm. As another example, you can run straight in front of an enemy and stealth kill them for about a second before they raise their weapon. Because battles happen in the open instead of indoors, it's also easier to select where you fight and when/how to retreat.\n\nUnfortunately, the sandbox fun with Nemesis doesn't last long.The main quest can often be dumb \"asssassinate this guy\", fetch quests, or follow the leader quests, which offers little diversity to the game.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ What you'd expect for a generic AAA title in a fantasy setting. Setting and music are forgettable.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Universal difficulty.\n+ Unlike Arkham series, the equivalent of Detective Mode is not useful outside forensic/environment investigation. In combat, it only lets you see living souls which you can already see on the minimap. And the foreground is black which makes navigating let alone fighting in the mode impractical.\n+ Unlike Arkham City, you can interrupt the animation of your ground finisher. This makes it a much more viable move.\n+ Unlike Arkham City, the minimap is an actual minimap, not a compass. Waypoint also appears explicitly on the main screen and with a meters number.\n+ You can advance time.\n+ 21:9 support.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Reliance on QTE for certian battle scenes and always for the death state.\n+ Fast travel.\n+ Tomb Raider-esque artifact collectibles. Complete with the examination and audio narration.\n+ No death penalty. Your nemesis just ranks up.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Weapon slots are only stat boosters. They have no effect showing that they actually do anything, e.g., modifiers in action RPGs that add chance of spell casts and other cosmetic effects.\n+ The superpower cooldown is OP. You can turn it on and just brutalize a group of captains.\n+ Final two missions (boss fights) are super anticlimactic. The Braided allies only help in a single isolated piece which is killing a group of other Captains. The bosses themselves are QTE.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor\n\nI was motivated to play this after playing the Batman Arkham series where combat is apparently similar but within a medieval setting (so like Dark Souls in arsenal). Also motivated after watching the video article about a Batman title eventually becoming Shadow of Mordor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0lRkQd9skU).\n\nI played on PC with a controller (max settings; the official benchmark ran at ~100 FPS). I did experience a sound issue where dialogue volume is too low  while cinematic sound was way too high (https://steamcommunity.com/app/241930/discussions/0/613940477865130491/). It seems like setting to Headphones caused this; the default environment setting seems to be fine. There are three major DLCs: Lord of the Hunt (separate map), Trials of War (challenge maps), Bright Lord (play as elf character in separate zone). I played none as they weren't recommended (https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/4y5lxv/beat_shadow_of_mordor_any_dlc_worth_checking_out/).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor"},{"id":"322682678650407500","title":"Mirror's Edge","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2008,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["EA Digital Illusions CE"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-08-15","completedDate":"2020-08-17","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Platforming controls and general pacing within its free running are impressive, particularly for its time. Combat is terrible. There is noticeable jankiness, and some platforming sections are so frustrating as to make the last few chapters tedious to play (e.g., knowing exactly where to jump for the ledge in The Boat Chapter; the vertical climbing in Kate Chapter, final battle's last portion). Story is a bore.\n\n__Story.__ At best mediocre. At least it strings along the story. I couldn't care about a single character or the overarching setting to be honest.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Controls and HUD are easily Mirror's Edge most innovative mechanics to the industry. Mirror's Edge enhances the platforming feel under a realistic rather than cartoon setting. It introduces a myriad of core complexity in how to maneuver different obstacles: movement acceleration, sliding, vaulting, wall running, and red obstacles to indicate what's interactable (to my knowledge, the first game that they appear in). And a bunch of unique animations to interact with various objects: climbing fences, jumping on pipes, sliding down ropes, jumping off ramps and forcing to roll when landing large fall distances, run-on-wall-turn-jump, jumping and hitting a button to break glass as you enter, balancing tight walkropes. HUD is minimalist with no explicit objective trackers, just a head turning button to not get lost. The linear corridor-like platforming (which works well). I prefer this curated platforming approach than an open-world one. Level designs are sufficiently varied. Combat is easily the most dated piece of its gameplay. Its clunky enemies and combat controls makes me cringe whenever I have to fight instead of run.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I like the colors, particularly the way it focuses on runner paths, although the outdoors is way too saturated. The animated cutscenes feel poorly detailed and cheap in animation, and I cringe every time I see them.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Playing this in 2020 was an annoyance. Alt-tab in the game (fullscreen only) can often crash the game. I changed a setting in its config to be windowed and used Borderless Gaming (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/941949-mirrors-edge/47696871). I also disabled physx just in case.\n+ Loading the game starts from the entrance of Gruntilda's Lair. You can't save and load from the middle of a level or in the hub.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on controller. Originally motivated after playing the frenetic pacing of Post Void and all its running.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mirror-s-edge"},{"id":"322682678650413644","title":"Monster Train","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["Series X|S","Android","PC","iOS","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Shiny Shoe"],"publishers":["Good Shepherd Entertainment","Big Fan Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Indie","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2020-08-07","completedDate":"2020-08-07","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Only played for a few hours to understand the basics. I like it. I prefer Slay the Spire's more deliberate microcard-playing over the macro board state setup in Monster Train. Monster Train has decent variety in mechanics/enemies and deckbuilding though.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/monster-train"},{"id":"04637970-a228-4c2e-a4bf-f88dd8d2d36a","title":"Mortal Kombat 1","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PC","Switch","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["NetherRealm Studios"],"publishers":["WB Games"],"genres":["Fighting","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2023-09-15","completedDate":"2023-09-16","updatedDate":"2023-09-16","notes":"I didn't play the game. Instead I watched CohhCarnage play through story mode and various other streamers like AvoidingThePuddle play the game for the competitive aspect. This is mostly an evaluation of the story: I enjoy NetherRealms' cinematic stories because they are effectivel y movies. I'm not a fan of fighting games but I still enjoy watching them.\n\nAs expected, all the individual scenes are great. The writing is cheesy and contrived.\n\nMiscellaneous details:\n\n+ Megan Fox's voice acting is so dull and monotonous compared to the rest of the game's stellar voice acting that it stands out in a really bad way.\n+ The plot of two timelines is dumb but excusable. It's a nice way to get certain characters that are now good in the new timeline to have their original portrayal as bad (e.g., Sindel), and it lets Liu Kang team up with Shang Tsung.\n+ The plot to have effectively a multiverse with more than 2 timelines is just dumb. This is classic Marvel shit and appeals too much to the trope of fanservice, lack of individual development, and is a marketing trap.\n+ I think the overall decision to tie into multiple timelines and revisit past plots is a bad one. MK1 is marketed as a reimagining, not MK12. The plot would be significantly better if it truly started from scratch, focusing on just, say, the MK1 movie's plot. Think Jojo's reboots.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mortal-kombat-1--1"},{"id":"08553f9b-3e49-44dc-bbf5-0f73c67160d5","title":"Mullet Madjack","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2024,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","XONE"],"studios":["HAMMER95"],"publishers":["Epopeia Games","HAMMER95"],"genres":["Shooter","Indie"],"startedDate":"2025-05-11","completedDate":"2025-05-12","updatedDate":"2025-05-12","notes":"Post Void but more substantial. The gameplay mechanics are still a little superficial but it at least expands upon the core idea. I prefer the style of Post Void better.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Virtual unboxing.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played Challenge difficulty. Dropped it at Chapter 3.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mullet-madjack"},{"id":"322682678651408972","title":"Neverending Nightmares","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":90,"platforms":["PS4","Ouya","Linux","PC","Mac","Vita","Switch"],"studios":["Infinitap Games"],"publishers":["Infinitap Games"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-03-13","completedDate":"2020-03-13","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Love the art style. Clearly what makes this game the most unique: American comic lines; unsettling paintings; aggressive horizontal lines for shadows. The game is otherwise basically just a sidescrolling walking simulator as there's no real challenges. But I still enjoyed it sort of like a picturebook. It doesn't need too much compleixty like stealth, inventory management with limited resources, or puzzles. The aesthetic and the soundtrack keep the game unsettling.\n\nTons of reused assets. I felt lost more in being disoriented rather than anxious in being lost.\n\nQuite a few jumpscares. I think they're annoying. It's just the sudden audio change that makes you jump, nothing disturbing or horrifying itself.\n\nI like the guy's panting with his limited sprinting.\n\nVarious horror tropes as the scares. I preferr horror that has a unifying theme. It's what originated a lot of these tropes and what makes them disturbing to begin with, not merely that they exist. You should be appealing to the core of what makes a certain type of element horrifying (e.g., covered-hair women Ring style, zombies, other worldly beasts, mutilation porn). Neverending Nightmares does capture this a bit with her dying sister and inducing dream-esque sequences; I would like more of that!\n\nCheckpoints are very forgiving which I find good, but almost so forgiving it's extremely easy to go through any encounters with enemies.\n\nI think Nightmare Gabby is the most interesting of the enemies in that you have to face away to get by her. It's entirely unique (it was done in Detention for one of the Chinese spirits as a few others) in requiring differences in mechanics.\n\nI completed the Final Descent ending.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/neverending-nightmares"},{"id":"8cb72ff7-72ca-4e2f-b073-701a3bbe285e","title":"Night in the Woods","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","iOS","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Infinite Fall"],"publishers":["Finji"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2023-04-22","completedDate":"2023-04-28","updatedDate":"2023-04-29","notes":"Identifiable characters. Poorly paced and overarching storyline, and some tedious gameplay backtracking.\n\n__Story.__\nThe dialogue and story is true to life for a high schooler reaching adulthood and being indecisive about what they want to achieve in life. The dialogue is kiddy and humorous; and the characters are all full of personality to define them.\n\nYou can also see why Mae is so directionless and unwilling to confront real problems. Her parents also skirt around issues as well, and don't force Mae on anything: revealing why she left school, why not look for a job, what money problems they're currently having.\n\nI don't really connect with the story much as I always had ambitions. But the story hammers the perspective well enough for you to understand.\n\nThe story is too aimless. I can see why this makes sense for Mae as a character. But as a standalone story, it's not quite interesting to experience day-to-day with nothing much happening. Like Pentiment and Disco Elysium, the game would be stronger cohesively if the mystery played a larger role, or some other overarching narrative like Mae actually confronting her challenges and trying to get a job.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\nChoices are not that much. There's some flavor text. You can choose who to hang out with at certain moments, leading to different scenes with Bea or Gregg's storyline.\n\nBeing forced to revisit every location in order to find all the new character dialogues or scenes is annoying. So much backtracking.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nThe 2D + animal setting fit the aim well of being playful yet enabling deeper purpose underneath.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The Guitar Hero minigame. Adds some variety but can get annoying quick. Fortunately you can skip them with no consequence.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Game can be unclear where to go next at times, particularly in the dream sequences. I had to resort to a walkthrough.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nMotivated to play as I thoroughly enjoyed Pentiment, and it was compared to this game as a story-focused exploration game. My storyline choices were Bea -> Gregg -> Bea -> Bea. I dropped the game near the end of Part 3, at the start of the Proximity hang out with Bea.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/night-in-the-woods"},{"id":"327621883849605697","title":"Nightmare Reaper","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":1260,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Blazing Bit Games"],"publishers":["Blazing Bit Games","Feardemic"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2022-03-31","completedDate":"2022-04-02","updatedDate":"2022-04-14","notes":"Nightmare Reaper is a retro shooter whose key appeal is a roguelike structure and large arsenal of weapons. It's an enjoyable experience although the game is largely formulaic, having roughly seen its major content of guns, enemies, and level design by Episode 1. At least there's a few new enemies and guns in future Episodes.\n\n__Story.__ The game features an overarching setting of battling through nightmares and uncovering the mystery behind why the woman's in an asylum. This works really well to add atmosphere.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nLevel design is a roguelite, with a linear area progression but different layout at each generated run. It's serviceable but does not stand out, being perhaps the weakest element of the game. Many areas are best served by simply camping in a corridor as your pull mobs to you. The run and gun style key to Doom does happen at times, but really only when the door behind you gets locked or you fight a boss.\n\nProgression system involves a skill tree as well as looter shooter item pickups. You're further incentivized to explore as you can only keep one weapon after each run.\n\nThe GBA as the menu and with minigames is such a cool idea. It adds to the retro theme and also adds some variety to the gameplay as you complete mini Mario/Zelda/Pokemon games to level up skills. The minigames can be fairly \nannoying as you must do it on _every_ upgrade, which means effectively after every run (Topaz minigame of Pokemon is especially annoying). So I ended up turning them off.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The 2.5D Doom block graphics and high filtering ages well as an art style. The soundtrack is also quite good. It's not much different than any other soundtrack made by Andrew Hulshult, but it seems more appropriate in these indie games with low budget aesthetics. Mick Gordon was just too tied to the style of the modern Doom games for Andrew's instrumental Doom style to take center hold; Andrew's music serves closer to a complement than the bombastic style that Mick does.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Nightmare Reaper adds a dash mechanic following Doom Eternal. But its gameplay doesn't encourage its use: for example, there are no glory kills so you never need to dash to quickly get close to an enemy; no mid-air dash; no 2x charge of dash; there's not as much need to run around a map as opposed to camp in one zone and kill enemies as they come by.\n+ All the constant interruptions to the core gameplay from not only the cartridge minigames but also being in the hospital to wake up after every run. They should only have you back in the hospital after a full level, not after each level's Part.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1860882796)\n\nI stopped at Episode 2 Rust Works.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/nightmare-reaper"},{"id":"331068655840264785","title":"Okaeri","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Chilla's Art"],"publishers":["Chilla's Art"],"genres":["Puzzle","Simulator","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-05-08","completedDate":"2022-05-10","updatedDate":"2022-05-11","notes":"Okaeri is arguably Chilla's Art's first real video game in their now iconic style of VHS Japanese indie horror. Prior games were closer to Unity asset flips having not found the right style yet. It has good scares in a Japanese subdued fashion. The gameplay itself is not good since you're frequently stuck not knowing how to proceed in the game.\n\nI watched Sodapoppin play this on stream on 2019-10-11.\n\nIt's got its scary moments: trying to open all locked doors, then one creaks open opposite from you that you tried previously; you hear a cat crying and seek to open the closet; there's a sudden large noise in the house after you interact with various items of the house for dialogue; you hear footsteps shuffling on the carpet of your house.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/okaeri"},{"id":"322682678624202316","title":"osu!","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2007,"playtimeMinutes":24840,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","Android","iOS"],"studios":["Dean \"ppy\" Herbert"],"publishers":["Dean \"ppy\" Herbert"],"genres":["Music","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-03-13","completedDate":"2021-03-19","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"osu! is one of the pinnacles of rhythm games, lasting for years due to its customizability with community-made maps with effectively infinite scaling of difficulty and japanese fandom. I can appreciate osu!, but the grind in mastering maps is something I'd rather do without. Like most rhythm games, I find they're best at a more casual level, where devoting too much time otherwise is a wasted effort that you could do better just learning an instrument.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I like the core mechanics of single beats, sliders, and sliders with reverse arrow. I wish there were also precision, and a 3D option to make aiming more of an emphasis.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can skip the intro of a song that takes a while before you actually play.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Due to copyrighted material, osu! isn't on Steam, but there's a [guide to get it on as McOsu](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1772228108). This allows you to track the game, including playtime.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played with mouse and keyboard as it's the most recommended.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/osu--1"},{"id":"322682678651409996","title":"Outlast","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Red Barrels"],"publishers":["Red Barrels"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-03-13","completedDate":"2020-03-13","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Tropey and the execution of the horror wasn't as great as I expected from praise online. I enjoyed it but was never terrified as I was like the sound design, lighting, and general atmosphere of Amnesia's. Way too linear and gameplay was mostly stealth followed by chase sequences.\n\n__Story.__ Trite, but it had a fine enough pacing to entice you to keep playing.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I like the idea of a camcorder for dark locations, which adds to the sense of anxiety because of your limited and distorted vision. But it can ruin lighting. Sometimes this game plays more like a stealth horror game than a horror walking simulator game. Which can be fine if the stealth elements with the enemy AI weren't janky. The stealth plays like a cat and mouse where you can take two hits so there's still room to run if you're cornered as in Dead by Daylight (combined with health regeneration). And if you run enough there's certain areas that you're always invincible from the enemies. The chase sequences became enough that it played more like an action than horror.\n\nI'm kind of disappointed at the lack of sanity mechanic like in Amnesia. It feels a little artificial otherwise as when I play the game through any potentially scary parts, I sort of dissociate myself from immersion and just play mechanically. And the lack of textures and campiness of the enemy AI makes it not as scary.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Sound design is average; definitely disappointing after coming off of playing Amnesia. Horror elements tend to be very tropey: disfigured humans; shutting doors; jumpscares; blood writing on walls.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ You can look behind you while running.\n+ The amount of batteries felt limited but never so limited that it was frustrating. Throughout the game, I hovered between 5-7, reaching a minimum at worst case of 4.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ You're incentivized to always keep the camcorder on. It doesn't drain battery, the switch to nightvision is faster than turning on the camcorder and switching, and it records new events in your notes.\n+ So many closed doors. They're more an aesthetic choice as they're almost always locked and not worth spending the animation to see if it opens. It took me a while to realize that those which are open-able have the Interact ability.\n+ Quite a few jumpscares. Annoying.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on normal difficulty.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/outlast"},{"id":"322682678623076940","title":"Outlast: Whistleblower","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Red Barrels"],"publishers":["Red Barrels"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-01-28","completedDate":"2022-01-28","updatedDate":"2022-02-04","notes":"It's effectively an action-based stealth horror, always in a thrill with adrenaline. I enjoyed the linear experience overall much like the base game.\n\nThe unintuitive obstacle progression can sometimes be annoying, so I'd have to consult a walkthrough in case I get stuck.\n\nI played on Normal difficulty.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/outlast-whistleblower"},{"id":"327603559514243663","title":"Overboard!","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["Android","PC","iOS","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["inkle"],"publishers":["inkle"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Adventure","Indie","Visual Novel"],"startedDate":"2022-03-31","completedDate":"2022-03-31","updatedDate":"2022-03-31","notes":"Cute reverse whodunnit situation. Not much to it.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/overboard--2"},{"id":"331076642433663568","title":"Penumbra: Overture","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2007,"playtimeMinutes":330,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Frictional Games"],"publishers":["Paradox Interactive"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-05-08","completedDate":"2022-05-10","updatedDate":"2022-05-10","notes":"Most of the core elements of Amnesia are present in Penumbra: story through exploration, sound and ambience, puzzles, first-person view, limited batteries for a flashlight, inventory system, and picking up lore and unlockable items.\n\nFlaw-wise, it's the game's difficulty with too much lighting, the bad level design, and an assortment of janky elements. I also find the game more puzzle-heavy than Amnesia and I don't enjoy puzzles.\n\nThe game is noticeably easier than Amnesia. There is no sanity mechanic and lighting is less an issue. The glowstick is an infinite light resource and lights up your surroundings. While it doesn't let you see far away like the flashlight, the glowstick is what Amnesia games make limited through matches or if you're without any light, it would provide the dark lighting at the cost of your sanity.\n\nLevel design is bad. Levels are a maze in Wolfenstein fashion. There's no verticality or environment variety, with all levels being tunnels in a mine.\n\nControls are a bit more janky with an Interact Mode to more finely control item interaction. Amnesia would simply combine interact mode with the free movement. Right-click also serves as an Examine button which provides a text description of certain items.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nDated but aged pretty well. It looks pretty much like Amnesia's level of detail regarding textures and lighting.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ There is no flashback audio memories in Amnesia's signature style.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You can fight enemies. They're easy to fight by simply jumping on a crate then crouching to hit for an easy first hit. Once they're down, you can simply stand behind them and attack them again when they get up, stunlocking until they die.\n+ In addition to checkpoints, there are save spots using Artefacts. I think Amnesia did it better in removing manual saving and relying purely on checkpoints. It makes the game more immersive this way.\n+ I prefer Amnesia's approach of removing a HP system and doing away with healing consumables.\n+ There are quite a few useless items. Flares are useless given flashlight and glow sticks. Their only unique advantage is to mark areas but you never need to. Similarly, lighters don't really have a need as you there's already sufficient light that you don't need to walk around to light up lanterns in a room. There are also several weapons which all serve similar purposes.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [PCGamingWiki](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Penumbra:_Overture) provides tips for skipping intro video, quick save, simple swing, wide screen solution. I got windowed mode working and borderless via Borderless Gaming, but the mouse isn't recentered which would cause my mouse to hit the boundary of my monitor and no longer be able to move in that direction even though in game it's still somewhere in the middle.\n+ [Penumbra Wiki walkthrough](https://penumbra.fandom.com/wiki/Penumbra:_Overture_Walkthrough)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/penumbra-overture"},{"id":"322682678652636748","title":"Perfect Dark","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC"],"studios":["The Initiative"],"publishers":["Xbox Game Studios"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/perfect-dark--3"},{"id":"322682678652503628","title":"Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies","originalTitle":"逆転裁判5","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2013,"platforms":["Android","3DS","iOS"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Visual Novel"],"startedDate":"2017-04-21","completedDate":"2017-05-04","updatedDate":"2022-02-01","notes":"I liked how everything wrapped up nicely to make the last case. Some of the cases were mediocre.\n\nAthena's unique power is not at all good. It provides no way of furthering out truth from lies and deception. It's a weird therapeutic tool oftentkmes, just thrown into cases to make her feel useful to the plot.\n\ncase 2 is incredibly stale. Characterings are boring, mystery just drags on and is uncompelling.\n\nEnd justifies the means debate. So half baked in ethical issues just like JFA.\n\nNew logistical mechanics are nice. For example, I love the new anime style for video animation in the cut scenes. A significant improvement over the awkward CGI in Apollo Justice. I also like the reading log, which makes it subscribe more to ots visual novel genre and helps practically in keeping track with some of the fast dialog. I have to admit the whole 3D rendering of sprites and backgrounds kept me disoriented for a while as all the prefious games did 2D. This is a whole new dimension (literally)! Wish it could switch from english dubbing to original Japanese though. English dubbing in a Japanese game always feels so forced,  ot necessarily because of the premise of the idea but that English dubbing often forces specific English cultural nuances that are just incorrect (such as a lack of a moe voice and better seiyuu industry). I like how dialog and movement is a lot more organic, where instead of a list of chat optioms they arise sequentially from the conversations, and often one automatically moves to the next relevant scene.\n\nThe DLC episode is easily one of my favoriate in this game (and the series). Great characters, spunky scenarios and individual budgetized scenes, I even learned a bit about orcas from this. Had not expected the villain given his friendly character and even his relationship with Pearls. And how after much teasing about cross examining an animal you get to eventually do it again! And the ending, finally one that isnt canonically about evil masterminds.\n\nI followed this guide.\nhttps://strategywiki.org/wiki/Phoenix_Wright:_Ace_Attorney_-_Dual_Destinies","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/phoenix-wright-ace-attorney-dual-destinies"},{"id":"322682678652506700","title":"Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney − Trials and Tribulations","originalTitle":"逆転裁判3","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["Wii","PC","NDS","GBA"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Adventure","Visual Novel"],"startedDate":"2017-01-09","completedDate":"2017-04-18","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I like how the story establishes an overarching plot over 3 cases. It really lets the characters continue building, just as in the first game. I particularly like how it changes viewpoints so different characters are playable, and that so many recurring characters come back to life as a conclusive trilogy.\n\nThat said, the individual writings have flaws. The theft plot was interesting only in that the crime was not murder. it and the other middle story were pretty stale, just your typical Phoenix Wright story. Plot holes are the bane to taking any phoenix wright mystery too seriously, especially when one can simply go around with the magatama and ask if the person committed the crime. I hugely miss the first game's soundtrack during the cross examinations; I felt like it played it best due to its rhythm with the scrolling text.\n\nWhile I like that Trials and Tribulations recasts a bunch of past characters in the last turnabout, it's kind of unfortunate that Edgeworth still must rely on magical hijinks to be a defense attorney. I only wish the gameplay mechanics were different (another element for why Rise of Ashes is the best turnabout). The twin sisters reveal was already bad enough. Now all the medium hijinks on body swapping, Godot being in a deep coma for 5 years, that Godot could contact Misty Fey, Phoenix dating Iris for 6 months, and holding total suspension of belief in court of justice, it's all too much. It's not a good mystery at all, and the character building and stprt is just too forced with all these connections to make it fell any authenticity.\n\n[1] https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Phoenix_Wright:_Ace_Attorney_-_Trials_and_Tribulations\n\nI'll miss you strategywiki. You were amazing.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/phoenix-wright-ace-attorney-trials-and-tribulations"},{"id":"322682678624152140","title":"Pico Park","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PC","Switch"],"studios":["TECOPARK"],"publishers":["TECOPARK"],"genres":["Puzzle","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-08-19","completedDate":"2021-08-19","updatedDate":"2024-04-02","notes":"Didn't play necessarily but watched Murdercrumpet's stream when they played with Sodapoppin and others. And then later when Roflgator streamed it..\n\nGreat coop game, a classic for dates: a game is short and self-contained, the idea is simple to learn to play, accessible to casuals, the graphics are cute and not video-game-y/immature, you can play LAN so it's an excuse to invite them over.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pico-park"},{"id":"322682678652640844","title":"Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":1800,"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2004-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30"},{"id":"322682678624136780","title":"Pony Island","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Daniel Mullins Games"],"publishers":["Daniel Mullins Games"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-11-02","completedDate":"2021-11-02","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The meta gameplay is fun just to uncover what comes next. The gameplay itself is fairly basic, not nearly as polished as a game like Inscryption.\n\n+ The GOTO program loops are basically mini programming exercises. Pretty funny.\n+ The Steam friends chat caught me offguard. Love it. Just like the file deletion and Steam friends appearing as cards in Inscryption.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pony-island"},{"id":"cc80890b-ef6f-4a36-b344-0c555e2ad8b2","title":"Prominence Poker","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Pipeworks Studios"],"publishers":["505 Games"],"genres":["Simulator","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2023-03-13","completedDate":"2023-03-25","updatedDate":"2023-03-26","notes":"This is the best Poker game with play money. There's not much to it, as you would expect from a poker game. It has a casual and ranked mode, cosmetics, and pay-to-win chips.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/prominence-poker"},{"id":"322682678623090252","title":"Propnight","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Fntastic"],"publishers":["MyTona"],"genres":["Strategy"],"startedDate":"2021-12-13","completedDate":"2021-12-13","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The prop mechanic is a fun quirk on top of Dead by Daylight. Nothing else innovative but still fun overall.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/propnight"},{"id":"322682678652646988","title":"Ragnarok Online","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":1380,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Gravity Interactive"],"publishers":["Gravity, Inc."],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2005-08-31","completedDate":"2006-07-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ragnarok-online-2"},{"id":"340403648240552527","title":"Ratchet & Clank (2016)","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["PS4","PS5"],"studios":["Insomniac Games"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-04-01","completedDate":"2019-04-02","updatedDate":"2022-08-19","notes":"Like all Ratchet and Clank games, this game is a refreshingly fun platformer-like action adventure. It has witty dialog with its characters, great level designs, and beautiful colorful environments. It's one of the weaker games in the series due to its streamlining however, trying to aggregate highlights from each new game's innovations but not really doing so effectively; Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal were personally the most memorable for me in its innovations.\n\n__Story.__ The story is serviceable, perhaps too cliche particularly in its revisions of the original version. However, I didn't mind the story as it was primarily a template to establish the quirky characters and meta comedy. I do prefer Ratchet's original background as a more cocky arrogant person who just wanted to help Clank along the way than as a squirrel who looks up to Quark and wants to become a Galactic Ranger. There's also less camraderie or really any dynamic interaction between Ratchet and Clank. It makes the character and Clank more memorable.\n\n__Gameplay/Combat.__ The autoaim mechanic, vibration on Wrench attacks, and many gadgets (e.g., swingshot, hydrodisplacer) make the game feel fluid. I also love all the minigames, e.g., Clank, rail ride, holocar, shoot-em-up aerials.\n\n__Levels.__ The fog of war-esque map, objectives, and Card Collection incenvitizes exploration. I also like that the weapon leveling system encourages using all weapons.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ There is just the right amount of collectibles/optimization to do: Levels, Weapons (and their upgrades), Gold Bolts, Holocards. Currency of Bolts and Raranium is also the right amount.\n+ No missable content.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ They introduced the weapon leveling system of Going Commando. But they don't have any new armors like in Up Your Arsenal? In a similar vein, Bolts aren't all that useful to farm as they're only required to purchase weapons and afterwards, do repairs. It would have been nice for example to keep RYNO as a huge currency item like in the original game. I'm totally okay with endgame farming as that's what you have to do to spend time.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/ratchet-and-clank-ps4/Walkthrough\n+ TheGamingBritShow 2002 vs 2016 Comparison | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kD_QhYgIA4. It's nitpicky, focusing on nostalgia and with certain criticisms just not valid. I do agree in its attempt to become more mainstream, the reboot streamlined some of the edge like the subtler nuances of the capitalism theme. And I do prefer the original, which was effectively a very different game due to its weapons and slightly edgier characters.\n\nI used the guide only after completing a level to backtrack and obtain any missed items. I did not get 100%, e.g., all Gold Bolts or Holocards.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ratchet-and-clank"},{"id":"322682678652650060","title":"Ratchet & Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":690,"platforms":["PS2","PS3","Vita"],"studios":["Insomniac Games"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. (SCEI)"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ratchet-clank-up-your-arsenal"},{"id":"322682678652651084","title":"Ratchet: Deadlocked","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2005,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["Insomniac Games"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2004-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ratchet-deadlocked"},{"id":"328543607138026063","title":"Resident Evil 3","originalTitle":"バイオハザード RE:3","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Switch 2","PC","iOS","PS5","Mac","XONE"],"studios":["Capcom Development Division 1"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-04-14","completedDate":"2022-04-15","updatedDate":"2022-04-15","notes":"Due to its length cutting content from the original RE3, and the same engine and mechanics as RE2 (2019), the RE3 remake is closer to a standalone expansion to RE2 (2019) than a sequel. It's more action-focused and linear, with less deliberation in exploration and puzzles. I still enjoyed the experience overall like a big-budget action flick, but the lack of exploration and reused assets limited the game's potential.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Its campaign is only roughly 6 hours and has little replayability due to only one main character without multiple routes or characters. Due to the emphasis on action, there's more zombie encounters; sufficient ammo to kill all zombies; the knife has infinite condition; and Jill's handgun has a fast focus rate due to an early red dot sight upgrade.\n\nThe newest mechanic is quickstep, where dodge is more prominent. A perfect dodge slows time so you're also rewarded with time to fire several shots. While simply kiting Mr. X in RE2 (2019) was feasible, Nemesis is faster and requires dodging.\n\nLevel design is linear and based on city streets. This is a stark contrast to RE1 and 2's approach which mostly stuck to indoors. I liked the hospital level most as it was closer to the traditional RE design of multiple rooms and exploration. It's a shame it's so short.\n\nNemesis is actually a downgrade from the Tyrant in RE2. While Nemesis has more dynamic gameplay (in particular, a larger moveset), most of the encounters with Nemesis are purely in scripted scenarios. RE2's encounters with Tyrant are far more interesting because it appears randomly during the level and can be an obstacle to completing an objective. There's no such hindrance in RE3.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics are largely the same as Resident Evil 2 due to the same engine. The cutscenes are photorealistic.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Unlike RE2 (2019), headshots are more reliable than knee shots followed by knife. It takes 3-5 shots to down from the head (1 shot to kill with a crit, which is only possible on the head) and 3-6 shots to the knee to destroy their leg. RE3 body parts are also more durable, meaning knifing a body on the ground can still be quite dangerous as they're not as easily stunlocked and can lunge at you.\n+ No sub weapons as in RE1 and RE2 for defense.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Because of the emphasis on combat, there's no survival horror element as in RE1/2 where you have to deliberate whether to spend the ammo to kill a zombie if you predict you'll backtrack to the area. In RE3, you can pretty much safely kill all zombies, even in Hardcore difficulty.\n+ Area reuses from RE2 (2019). How lazy. This game is truly closer to an expansion or DLC than a sequel. It eliminates effectively half of the original game: cemetery, park, clock tower, and dead factory.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on Hardcore difficulty. Fortunately unlike RE2, it doesn't require ink ribbons. My strategy\n\n+ Zombie: Pistol headshot. Grenade, grenade launcher, or assault rifle if in group.\n+ NE-Alpha Parasite: Shotgun or assault rifle to head.\n+ Hunter Gamma: Flame Round.\n+ Hunter Beta: any Round (preferably Acid). Grenade if possible for Carlos as it's a one-hit-kill.\n+ Pale Head: Acid Round followed by Pistol. Or Shotgun to head.\n+ Nemesis: Magnum, Mine Round, Flame Round, Explosive Round, Shotgun.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/resident-evil-3"},{"id":"322682678624194124","title":"Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways","status":"Completed","score":6,"playtimeMinutes":180,"startedDate":"2021-04-02","completedDate":"2021-04-03","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Fairly repetitive, and honestly overstays its welcome unlike Assignment Ada. I do like playing a character with new animations, and a loadout that uses slightly different weapons, particularly as I relied more on grenades this time. Everything else is the same though such as enemies and areas, and I wish Separate Ways changed more. The core fight areas are also quite lacking compared to the base game. For example, the last major zone as you rush the base for the island in Chapter 5, or anything like any of the base game's major fight instances in the Castle. Cutscenes also rehash content."},{"id":"322682678624193100","title":"Resident Evil 5","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["PC","PS3","X360","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-04-03","completedDate":"2021-04-05","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Resident Evil 5 pushes forward on the action elements of Resident Evil 4. It greatly improves controls for the better, and makes many parts of RE4's gameplay more fast-paced such as real-time healing and weapon swapping.\n\nRE5 is a decent action shooter, but even as an action shooter and not a survival horror, it suffers from numerous flaws. In particular, quite a few chapters are hit or miss (a sentry gun level, a semi-open world swamp level, two vehicle boss fights and a gimmick boss fight, and a tomb raider level); single player experience has bad AI; worse inventory management; weapon progression is gated by other weapon unlocks, with the amount of money you get during a single playthrough only enough for upgrading 3 weapons; overall world progression is bad, without any sense of a merchant and typewriter; atmosphere; and the characters and villains are even more forgettable than for Resident Evil's usual low story standards.\n\n__Story.__ Forgettable. I didn't know what was going on and didn't care to find out.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Most new to RE5 is its coop gameplay and more real-time combat. Weapons, enemies, levels, and the overall Africa setting are somewhat varied from RE4 to also present some novelty. I have mixed feelings about the coop experience as it ultimately makes for a subpar experience while trying to play solo. You have to work around Sheva's bad AI. I also think the \"downed\" state greatly diminishes the value of healing items. Instead of treating health as a conservative resource like ammo in Resident Evil games, rarely did I enjoy stocking up on health as I did in RE4. The AI would use it too often, and you would quite regularly rely on downed state for effectively extra HP.\n\nRE5 is bad as a survival horror game. There are no puzzles with managing clues and key items. It no longer has limited health and ammo with proper inventory management like in RE4. RE5 streamlines too much in this regard, making the need for ammo conservation not really a concern. The only saving grace is that the limited inventory space forces you to discard items. I wish it weren't a simple 3x3 grid however, with all items taking up 1 slot. The 3x3 grid prevents as much of RE4's weaopn variety as you can only use at most 4 weapons easily, including grenades; 3 weapons + 3 ammo already take 6 slots and on higher difficulties you use two more for the vests. In RE4, I would use 4 weapons and possibly all 3 grenades for a total of 7, alongside an accumulation of herbs and ammo. Instead of a merchant as you progress through a global map, checkpoints also simply let you buy/sell at every opportunity and with an permanent storage for infinite stocking up.\n\nAlthought there's quite the enemy variety and new designs, enemies in RE5 just aren't as good. Aside from the base enemies, many enemies have fairly strong poise (cf chainsaw man or fat guy), and the creature enemies like Dog and Licker don't really even have any melee prompts. Plagas (and the shell variant) have way too much health, and while this incentivizes more usage of the flash grenade, its limited amount of drops and lacking inventory space make flash grenades a rare blessing. The game is designed with coop in mind, where unlike RE4, you have to pass a damage threshold to stagger. I hate this approach for single player until you get to endgame with much stronger upgraded weapons when it isn't as much an issue. Crossbow enemies also shoot explosive bolts, making them a pain in the ass whereas in RE4 you would still prioritize them, but not newrly as much as you do in RE5.\n\nControl-wise, RE5 most significantly improved upon RE4's by providing strafe instead of tank controls. The game also features other improvements: higher FOV (PS4's remaster and PC with a patch), weapon and heal swap mid-combat, knife to boxes only requires one action, and you can reload without aiming. The headshot -> melee -> knife ground combo is also made faster paced here as the ground melee attack is a dedicated melee animation. The game also supports a minimap, so you don't have to go into the main menu all the time although at the cost of a more intrusive HUD. While mostly action-oriented, RE5 does still retain some of the deliberateness of classic survival horrors: for example, you must stand while aiming; and there is no manual camera control. Like RE4, it has bad QTE but amplifies the pain further by requiring QTE against certain enemies and not just cutscenes.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Strong graphics at the time, and I found it was still quite realistic in graphics playing in 2021. The game is too well-lit though, and I think it could still have been an excellent action zombie shooter but with better use of environments and lighting (see, e.g., Doom (2016)). I like the large variety in settings across chapters, although the story doesn't transition them well so you're often wondering how you arrived from a village to a swamp to a tomb to a factory.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ As an expert tactic, you can go to item menu and drag-and-drop ammo onto a weapon for instant reload. If you do this during melee animations, it requires no time.\n+ Unlike RE4 where the knee melee attack is single-target, RE5 melee combos consistently have a small AOE. There are also multiple new combos: 1 head, 2 arm, 2 legs, and ground. The melee from back on a leg combo in particular are instant kills, which is particularly useful to prevent plagas from spawning.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The knife is nerfed compared to RE4. Much of RE4's use cases are replaced with melee combos such as stomping the ground. It's relegated to a box opener.\n+ No typewriter but rather automatic saving.\n+ In single player, Sheva basically acts like a slightly buffed-up Ashley from RE4. It's not perfect however, as sometimes you do need to rely on her AI's shooting in certain areas. Solo play is overall suboptimal.\n+ RE5 lets you replay arbitrary chapters to accumulate wealth, ammo, and heals. This is great for the coop experience of plug-and-play. It's not really great for single player continuity and game progression.\n+ Movement speed is lower when injured.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ No dedicated grenade key like a typical FPS. This is all the more paramount in RE5 where weapon swaps happen in real-time and there is limited inventory space. Instead they dedicate a key to the useless knife.\n+ El Gigante fight is awful. Plays like a rail shooter as is another vehicle boss fight. Chapter 5-1's Uroboros is also a tedious fight in 60 fps due to a physics bug calculating flamethrower FPS. And the Wesker and Jill fight is gimmicky. Last two boss fights are rocket launcher fights.\n+ Game doesn't work out of the box. You have to work around [Games for Windows Live](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=864823595) using a variety of fan solutions. Linked is an unofficial patch that also fixes issues such as pathing, provides the PS4 HD Remaster's larger FOV and shadows, and borderless windowed. Sensitivity is also really high. To approximate Overwatch settings, I set my mouse to toggle to 400 DPI, and I use 1 mouse sensitivity. I toggle back to 800 DPI for menu and desktop browsing.\n+ You can't unbind certain keys such as Reload (S+Shift), and you can catch yourself accidentally pressing it a few times.\n+ You can only strafe in walking speed.\n+ Needless cover mechanic.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Items and Weapons](https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Resident_Evil_5/Items_and_weapons)\n\nMy first playthrough was solo and on Veteran difficulty. I played on mouse and keyboard as I greatly prefer a mouse's precision over an analog stick for aim even though QTE is bad (and even more prominent in this game than RE4). I unbinded my Reload key and instead reload from inventory, with 4-6 rebound to slots 7-9 so that ammo is directly below the weapon.\n\nMy favored loadout is M92F (to unlock M93R, which is my preference as a blend between a Machine Gun and handgun, and with highest DPS), Ithaca (to unlock Hydra, which has the highest DPS as attack range actually increases number of pellets, and blasts people farthest), Dragunov SVD (highest DPS at the cost of sway which I can manage with mouse aim), ammo, grenades, vest. I made Sheva a healbot, handling my heal items and any remaining ammo; I also gave her a machine gun to force those to drop ammo and let her use it and stun rod as an infinite ammo weapon. In Chapters 5 and 6, I felt the game was too frustrating. So I swapped from my starter pistol and shotgun to M93R and Hydra by farming Chapter 3-1.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/resident-evil-5"},{"id":"322682678624192076","title":"Resident Evil 5: Lost in Nightmares and Desperate Escape","status":"Completed","score":6,"startedDate":"2021-04-05","completedDate":"2021-04-06","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Lost in Nightmares was okay---it was fairly gimmicky in focusing on a single new enemy. I liked the light puzzle elements though. Wesker boss was underwhelming. Desperate Escape was what I expected out of a RE5 DLC: just throw all the enemies at you. The turrets sections were dumb though."},{"id":"334681026773123664","title":"Resident Evil Village: Shadows of Rose","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":1380,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2023-04-05","completedDate":"2023-04-05","updatedDate":"2023-04-06","notes":"You play as Rose in a somewhat contrived setup that makes you revisit the highlights of RE8's levels. A shame effectively every asset, from levels to objects to certain cutscenes, is reused. Even the villains are dumb. There's one minor mechanic, which is Rose's new power to disintegrate mold and freeze enemies. What a boring ass DLC.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The SCP-173 sculpture vibes was horrifying. I liked that.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ DLC is in third person.\n+ The super powers boss fight.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Too video game-y. The omniscient side companion literally gives you free items.\n+ Too many linear chase sequences.\n+ Eveline boss fight is dumb. What a simplistic fight with literally one move, a wind blast.\n+ The Little Nightmares part was nice variety but simply boring.\n+ The dialogue is so cringe lol.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/resident-evil-village-gold-edition"},{"id":"322682678624130636","title":"Rhythm Doctor","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["7th Beat Games"],"publishers":["7th Beat Games","indienova"],"genres":["Music","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-11-23","completedDate":"2021-11-24","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Simple premise but the constant additions to the rhythm make it so fun. Seventh vs second beat, rests, swing, multiple tracks, holds. And then there's the visual tricks.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/rhythm-doctor"},{"id":"322682678624150092","title":"Risk of Rain","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2013,"startedDate":"2021-08-22","completedDate":"2021-08-23","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Risk of Rain 1 has a lot of the key elements behind RoR2 but clearly lacks polish in its core gameplay loop, namely in enemy spawn and kiting/dodge mechanics.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core ideas behind RoR2 are clearly present here, and it works well: roguelike with great enemies and boss designs, and with excellent itemization to form different build outcomes for each character. I don't think the 2D plane works well as there's limited opportunity to dodge attacks, and the enemy spawn makes farming gold more tedious than in RoR2.\n\nProcedurally generated levels are notably worse than RoR2. Here, it's an assortment of bland platforms, with little to really explore.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Good pixel graphics.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You have to clean up by killing all remaining enemies in a level before continuing. Furthermore, enemies spawn during level traversal instead of already existing. This makes for annoying backtracking, especially if you were to follow the Risk of Rain 2 strategy of traversing an area to open most chests before starting the teleporter. Here, you want to start the teleporter ASAP as a way to generate guaranteed enemies on your path. And unlike RoR2's restriction to an area near a teleporter, you can go anywhere in the map when the teleporter is started."},{"id":"322682678623083084","title":"Rogue","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1980,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PC","XONE","Series X"],"startedDate":"2021-12-30","completedDate":"2021-12-30","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Fairly boring with monotonous combat system. Doesn't age well. I do admire it as an enhancement to text-based adventures like Zork.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/rogue-company-rogue-edition"},{"id":"322682678624158284","title":"Rogue Legacy","originalTitle":"ローグ・レガシー","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":990,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","Vita","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Abstraction Games","Cellar Door Games"],"publishers":["Cellar Door Games"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-07-29","completedDate":"2021-08-01","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Fun roguelike with 2D combat and platforming. It pushes most on the persistent elements of roguelites, where most of the game's fun zone is derived in farming areas for gold to permanently upgrade your character. There are only a handful of bosses and enemy variety is decent but not stellar as they see much reuse. There's not enough randomization across runs or engaging combat mechanics.\n\n__Story.__ There's a certain humor in Rogue Legacy due to all its references, adding to a certain charm. For example, your heirs can inherit a baldness trait, which has no gameplay effect. Or heirs which have dyslexia.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The game reminds me a lot of a Dead Cells predecessor, building inspiration from Castlevania and roguelike elements. Controls are tight, but the moveset is restricted without a duck, dodge, block/parry, or angular attack.\n\nRandomness in runs mostly comes from the level design, where the change in starting class doesn't have much real effect and there aren't much random items, equipment, or stat upgrades within a run. You use gold you accumulated over the run for upgrades, equipment, and runes.\n\nThere's just four main areas.\n\nThe game is fairly grindy as a roguelite. The gameplay loop involves searching around areas to farm gold to improve your permanent stats for the next run and discover blueprints. After accumulating sufficient stats, the only other portion of the gameplay loop is to fight bosses, turning on the architect to fix the level placement.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ It has a charming pixel style. It's also nice to see equipment affecting the player cosmetics.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The idea of new runs being your next heir is cute.\n+ Teleporter to the next area after beating the boss in the previous. This helps with the redundancy in having to trek through the Castle each time. You're still incentivized to go through previous areas for gold farm runs, but you're no longer forced to.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Each level you gain increases the cost of all upgrades by 10 gold. I find this just increases the grind by making all upgrades more expensive.\n+ Touching enemies hurts you. Cheap mechanic.\n+ Highest resolution for the art assets is 1920x1200. [You can apparently hardcode it in the config text file to higher](https://steamcommunity.com/app/241600/discussions/0/846957366711894275), but it only rescales the resolution instead of increasing its native resolution.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n[Upgrades](https://roguelegacy-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Upgrades)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/rogue-legacy"},{"id":"322682678651402828","title":"Sayonara Wild Hearts","originalTitle":"さよならワイルドハーツ ","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":90,"platforms":["PS4","Switch 2","PC","iOS","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Simogo"],"publishers":["Annapurna Interactive"],"genres":["Music","Adventure","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2020-04-30","completedDate":"2020-04-30","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Music and animation are spot on. I love the soundtrack, particularly the ones with lyrics (the singer reminds me of Japanese Brekfast). Songs are too short. Visuals are locally coherent and blend well. But the game lacks proper gameplay as well as an engaging story or art narrative that makes sense of the visuals.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/sayonara-wild-hearts"},{"id":"322682678624129612","title":"secrethitler.io","originalTitle":"Secret Hitler","status":"Completed","score":6,"startedDate":"2021-11-24","completedDate":"2021-11-25","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"What a fun game. Rudimentary implementation of the physical board game. No option to kick AFK players. ELO system is fun although somewhat meaningless. The resources on meta is interesting to say the least: it's almost mechanical to the point that the game becomes more or less \"solved\" and therefore not as interesting as it was when played casually. Playing in 2021, there's also little traffic so it can be difficulty to find a game (especially one friendly to newbies).\n\nHow I tackle the game so far:\n\n+ Turn order meta of +4 in a 7p game. Prefer (skip to) pairs most likely liberal: those who vote blue > those who haven't voted yet > red presidents = conflicts.\n+ Keep track of conflicts and alliances (e.g., conflicting president/chancellor claims; special investigation by president).\n+ Keep track of red presidents.\n+ Keep track of any suspicious voting, particularly in votes that aren't universal.\n+ I should count the # of blues so far as it determines whether to TD (top deck) or not."},{"id":"322682678652439116","title":"Shadow of the Tomb Raider","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE"],"startedDate":"2019-07-25","completedDate":"2019-07-26","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the same game as Tomb Raider (2013) and Rise. There are only two major differences: a larger emphasis on exploration and puzzles than action, which appeals better to the strengths of Tomb Raider; and a more urban and jungle setting, involving more NPC interaction in villages.\n\nFlaw-wise, what I find most unfortunate is that Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamic are unwilling to take risks, doing so very little to improve upon Tomb Raider (2013). Rise and Shadow effectively play like expansions of the original game rather than as sequels, using the same plot (down to individual sequences) with a reskin of the environment, and almost entirely the same gameplay mechanics. Shadow makes so few changes to Rise's success in particular, and I actually don't like these changes such as the addition of hub towns/cities, more NPC dialogue, and merchants with a currency system. The Tomb Raider reboot's redundancy is perhaps most dramatic in Shadow: 1. the emphasis on exploration and non-combat, where redundancy in the environment designs and gameplay can really start to take its toll level after level; 2. a heavier reliance on the story, which was never good in the game (in fact, Shadow's is the worst of the trilogy); and 3. as the final game where redundancy really takes its toll. I greatly prefer Rise for these reasons: 1. it had a greater balance of exploration and combat to make gameplay more diverse; 2. there are changes to the previous game that I actually liked; and 3. it is a sequel, which made the direct copy not as bad as Shadow doing it a third time (fool me once..).\n\n__Story.__ Bad story and characters as always. Overly dramatic. Even the in medias res beginning and getting stuck in the wilderness is the same premise as Tomb Raider (2013) and Rise. To make this the worst story of the trilogy, the plot is now also incoherent, jumbling together multiple plot lines each of which are already weak (e.g., Trinity, Paihiti, the creatures, Lara's vengeance, Captain Rourke as a villain introduced 2/3 into the plot).\n\n__Gameplay.__ Gameplay is the same as Tomb Raider (2013) and Rise with minor revisions, at its core comprised of platforming, puzzles/exploration, and combat. Most noticeable is that there are fewer combat and enemy encounters than Rise, focusing further on exploration and puzzles.\n\nOn platforming, new features are: rappeling; wall run; overhead climbing.\n\nOn puzzles/exploration, most significant is the NPC interaction, building on Rise's idea of side missions. This makes it feel closer to action RPGs like Skyrim and Red Dead Redemption, which doesn't appeal at all to Tomb Raider's strengths. I also find it funny that many animations and sequences are ripped directly from Uncharted. For example, lifting a heavy object with Lara and Jonah so that one can pass at a time, or two people necessary to push a lever; sliding on high slopes to jump at the edge and reach the next platform; the many run levels as the environment collapses.\n\nOn combat, new features are: vegetation walls for stealth instead of only tall grass; mud camoflauge; buff consumables. Enemy variety is as bad as usual. All guns of a type feel the same as usual. And although stealth is slightly refined (e.g., you can now restealth from alert), it's still mediocre compared to any other stealth game as it's incredibly situational (not skill-based) on executing a full stealth kill; little player agency to approach areas; and the alert system can be bonkers.\n\nOn progression systems, skills involve a path instead of 3 tiers; outfits involve an upper and lower body each with different bonuses; and there are now merchants to trade between currencies and also allow you to purchase gear. I don't like these complexity additions as I think it adds RPG elements which Tomb Raider does not do well in. One thing I don't understand is that given the emphasis on exploration in the new game, why even add more complexity to the combat (and even a larger arsenal of weapon/armor choices) if the number of encounters is in fact a lot smaller? If I designed the game, I would drop combat altogether in favor of just stealth, and only with the knife and bow and arrow.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Beautiful as always. While the graphics upgrade from Tomb Raider (2013) to Rise was noticeable, Graphics comparisons online show that Shadow has more detail, particularly in antialiasing and lighting. Animations are reused though. The most significant is perhaps more nuance in facial expressions. The added interactions with NPCs in Shadow make the game feel cheaper: these conversations are stilted, primarily with talking heads. I like the new environments: city in Mexico, jungle in Peru, cities in Peru. Paihiti in particular is impressively large for a single-player and non-RPG game. Unfortunately, there's not much that makes the cities and towns in Shadow interesting. They feel more like hubs like in Diablo II cities with a set of questgivers and merchants, and as a stage in a linear path. The story does not tie them back and allow them to feel like actual urban locations to revist rather than as linear levels that happen to have NPCs rather than more forestry, platforming, and enemies.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Unlike the last two games, survival instinct does not highlight enemies, show next path for exploration, or show solutions to puzzles at Hard and Very Hard difficulties. This reduces (but does not remove) the need to spam Survival Instinct at every new screen. At the beginning of the game, Survival Instinct is only helpful to locate mission beacons. After upgrading skills, Survival Instinct will still show challenge objects (Owl's Wisdom), collectibles (Eagle's Sight), and enemies, resources, and objects (Owl's Vision) so you'll still need to spam it.\n+ Unlike the last game, there is no white paint on critical paths at Hard and Very Hard difficulties.\n+ Like the last game, there is no health regeneration on Hard and Very Hard difficulties.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ There's a lot more vibration in this game. The controller vibrates for example, every time Lara's axe strikes the craggy wall as she climbs up.\n+ Significant portions of levels include underwater mechanics.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Merchant and addition of an in-game currency. I liked the idea of craft materials in Rise which you must farm individually instead of being able to, e.g., farm one and just sell for a currency and then buy the rest. If there were a trading system, it should be Path of Exile-style in trading goods for other goods. I also don't like the idea of purchasing weapons/armor sets. This is closer to a generic RPG where strategic gear choices are involved. As a <20 hour action-adventure where gear largely doesn't make much of a difference, Tomb Raider should be about trying out all weapons, not forcing you to make a commitment for purchasing.\n+ Unlike the last game, weapons now have unique upgrades, causing you to be stingy with your purchases and commit to single choices rather than play with all of them.\n+ Buff consumables like Potency and Endurance mixtures.\n+ Unlike the last two games, artifacts/documents never automatically appear to their description with audio after picking them up. You have to press an additional button. I liked the pacing of the previous games where by examining each new item, you accumulate more knowledge and atmosphere of a level.\n+ Underwater is featured a lot more in this game. I hate swimming in video games.\n+ Unlike Rise, all Murals are the same image. And more broadly, all artifacts are narrated by Lara and not a distinct person!\n+ Like the last game, side quests are RPG-generic and tedious. Not worth doing.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/shadow-of-the-tomb-raider/\n+ criticisms i agree with (e.g., on towns, in-game currency, swimming)| https://www.reddit.com/r/TombRaider/comments/9mi88z/shadow_of_the_tomb_raider_is_too_mediocre_to_be/\n\nI played on PC. I played only the base game and with a total playtime of 20 hours (according to Steam) at 84% completion (did not complete all challenge tombs and side missions). The DLCs (so far as of playing) only offer challenge tombs which don't seem compulsory in terms of canon or entirely new content. I played One with the Jungle difficulty which is Hard everything (second hardest difficulty). Deadly Obssession (hardest difficulty) is inconvenient in that there are game saves only at Base Camps. This is the only major difference (https://tombraider.square-enix-games.com/fr/news/shadow-of-the-tomb-raider-difficulty-and-accessibility). I played with no walkthrough, only ever using it if I'm stuck in the main campaign on a puzzle for too long or to find all the challenge tombs. I deliberately avoided the walkthrough for completionism or following along as I play the main story. I think this ruins the pacing and novelty of discovery. Progression-wise, I prioritized exploration and stealth.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/shadow-of-the-tomb-raider-ultimate-edition"},{"id":"340403590565724751","title":"Shadow Warrior (2013)","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":750,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","XONE"],"studios":["Flying Wild Hog"],"publishers":["Devolver Digital","Majesco Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-09-04","completedDate":"2020-09-05","updatedDate":"2022-08-19","notes":"Shadow Warrior (2013) plays like the Wolfenstein reboot, building on its own series with an Asian setting, Lo Wang the charismatic jokester, melee combat with limbs torn off from locational damage, fighting game style movesets, and a surprising amount of container looting. It doesn't necessarily stand out in any of these elements, and it's a fun hack-and-slash when one's in the mood for more Doom/Wolfenstein gameplay.\n\n__Story.__ Lo Wang's quips add to the charm of this Asian-influenced comedic action. The story is somewhere between a Hollywood blockbuster and a B-rated martial arts films.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Core gameplay loop is fun with decent enemy variety, an arsenal of weapons, and diverse moveset variety for your katana. I'm not a huge fan of the array of fighting move-style movesets per weapon, as I'm a big proponent of simple fundamentals that work and extend well. For example, in Shadow Warrior (2013), the shurikens, multiple sword Ki moves, Demon Heads, Shockwave, and Protection skill trees are useless. There's no incentive in the game to utilize the full diversity. Maybe it was just normal difficulty speaking, but I often was just spamming the Katana attack.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Forgettable. Love the gore. Environment variety in levels is decent but the asset reuse is still noticeable.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ You can use your left hand simultaneously with your right, e.g., attack while healing or casting Flux.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ For an arcade-like game, it would benefit from clearer waypoints to guide mission objectives. I would frequently find myself lost, which is okay for a Doom game which plops you into a level, but not in a linear game liek Shadow Warrior (2013).\n+ Like Doom (2016), the game should track the number of secrets and ki crystals during the mission, not after the mission when you have to backtrack or otherwise carefully follow a walkthrough to 100% in the first run.\n+ It's not exactly clear how Karma currency translates to Karma points to spend in the skill tree.\n+ I wish the precision and variety of melee attacks follows that of Chivalry, not flashy moves that are often not viable.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ build | https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=207578456\n\nI played on normal difficulty, playing more for the power fantasy than a challenge. I just played blind to enjoy mindless gameplay. I primarily used the Katana, and situationally the Zi-Type Pow for ranged enemies and bosses, Shotgun for shield enemies, and Flux when overwhelmed. I never used Revolver, Crossbow, or Flamethrower.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/shadow-warrior-4a585c08-b9c8-4f94-9bed-4461ac7e6a4c"},{"id":"330077276734489153","title":"Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams","originalTitle":"サイレントヒル2最期の詩","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2001,"platforms":["PC","PS2","XBOX"],"studios":["Team Silent"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-04-27","completedDate":"2022-04-27","updatedDate":"2022-04-28","notes":"A slow-paced entry, largely redundant but I like its mood.\n\nIn this entry, I discuss only the Born from a Wish scenario which was newly added to the game from this definitive version rerelease. I played the definitive edition in my base scenario playthrough, documented in the entry Silent Hill 2.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/silent-hill-2-restless-dreams--1"},{"id":"322682678652658252","title":"SimTower","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1994,"platforms":["PC","Mac","Saturn","3DO"],"studios":["OpenBook Co.","OpenBook Co."],"publishers":["OpenBook Co.","Maxis","OpenBook Co."],"genres":["Simulator","Strategy"],"startedDate":"1997-12-31","completedDate":"1997-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/simtower"},{"id":"322682678650357324","title":"skribbl.io","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["browser"],"studios":["ticedev"],"genres":["Quiz/Trivia"],"startedDate":"2020-12-19","completedDate":"2020-12-21","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Perfect game to play with anyone, including colleagues. Light-hearted, browser-based (so nongamers can easily play), no complex rules. It's no fun playing with anonymous people online though as it's more about getting to know everyone you're playing with.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/skribbl-dot-io"},{"id":"333404601386533457","title":"Sniper Elite 5","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Rebellion"],"publishers":["Rebellion"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-06-02","completedDate":"2022-06-04","updatedDate":"2022-06-05","notes":"The Sniper Elite series has always reminded me of MGS5 if MGS5 was just about the infiltration in sandbox levels with an arsenal of weapons, ignoring any cinematic or story elements. Sniper Elite 5 is especially less about sniper rifles given the studio's aim to make the series more mainstream and pushes further toward the sandbox level design. Unfortunately, the game is fairly forgettable with little new added to the table and stays the same in every level.\n\n__Story.__ Forgettable.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nThe game is fairly standard in design for a stealth sandbox game. It has all the expected elements: verticality with climbing, mantling, cover system, mission loadouts, health regeneration, and a generic progression skill tree where kills and objectives reward XP. As a stealth game, it has a radar populated with enemies as blurs on radar and where tagging them lets you see their direction in the radar as well as track their movement.\n\nLoadouts have a high amount of customizability, especially in your guns.\n\nSniper Elite's most unique element are the more realistic shooting mechanics with bullet drop and wind for long range shots. This also includes a heartrate that controls you weapon's accuracy and stability if too high, and an Empty Lung mechanic to temporarily remove sway.\n\nAs a sandbox, the level designs are significantly better than MGS5's, which is a low bar. There's actual indoors and a variety of environments, not just flat desert or swamp landscapes.\n\nSound is pronounced as a mechanic, where guns are simply silenced vs not silenced, but there's an audible range behind each weapon.\n\nInvasion mechanic is a fun idea. Been having a blast watching Moonmoon play it to grief players. It's completely unbalanced however, veering wildly to the invader's favor as the player must still complete objectives and stealth against the NPC enemies. Unlike Dark Souls, you can very easily get ambushed in Sniper Elite; a simple good line-of-shot means death.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics are quiet detailed for a game that's not exactly AAA. The signature killcam shots are especially great. Graphics look like a slightly updated if not the same level of assets as Sniper Elite 4.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can tag enemies with your sniper, but it's only temporary. This incentivizes using your binoculars to scope a place out first in order to tag enemies.\n+ The silenced pistol as the default for close-range stealth and as your first silenced weapon. Using it plays like the classic MGS loop of stealthing with the fan favorite tranquilizer.\n+ Your minimap displays a white circle around your marker, indicating whether you may be visible to an enemy. I like this level of explicit stealth knowledge, similar to the light percentage indicator in Splinter Cell games.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Active reload mechanic. Seems unnecessarily game-y.\n+ All the additional game options, e.g., multiplayer modes, coop, invasions.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ For a game that makes sound an important element of stealth, sound design itself in terms of enemy movement (e.g., footsteps) and environments (e.g., flickering lights, burning torches) doesn't really exist.\n+ Focus. Detective mode as a stealth mechanic is always cheap. However, it's not easily exploitable here and is really only useful for finding enemies through walls in indoor areas. I would much prefer an approach based on sound design where you can noticeably hear footsteps, not rely on out-of-the-world visual cues.\n+ XP isn't rewarded for ghosting past enemies. You have to kill them in order to get XP.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Workbench locations](https://www.wepc.com/gaming/sniper-elite-5/sniper-elite-5-workbench-locations)\n\nI played on Sharpshooter (Medium) difficulty as it's the most balanced in terms of the game's intentional design. I played up to Mission 7 and delved a little into multiplayer.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/sniper-elite-5"},{"id":"322682678624167500","title":"Soma","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Frictional Games"],"publishers":["Frictional Games"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-07-04","completedDate":"2021-07-10","updatedDate":"2022-04-29","notes":"SOMA is a thriller. The gameplay gets repetitive, like traversing areas in Half-Life but without the engaging FPS gameplay. Without the horror elements like Amnesia, I really only was motivated to play to experience the rest of the story and completionism. The story is decent for a video game, with a great duo of characters and various existential questions in a scifi setting.\n\n__Story.__ The technological science fiction setting is a departure from Amnesia's western historical roots. It's noticeably more atmospheric---reminiscent of the later Alien: Isolation---rather than horrific and tense. The characters themselves and the overarching plot with an armageddon followed by an Ark of data stored humans is grim and well-portrayed. I also find it surprisingly realistic such as when your data is copied and you face the choice of killing your previous robot self as teleportation under the same being is just not possible. The themes can be rather on the nose at times, such as in the ending with the \"plot twist\" of a stranded Simon and Catherine.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Gameplay is similar to Amnesia and other horror games, where you navigate areas with mini puzzles and the occasional enemy. Stealth and enemy variety make it more game-y than horrific. Controls are simple and intuitive. You pick up items to venture access deeper areas and also see flashbacks to experience more lore.\n\nUnlike Amnesia, there are no limited items like candles or stress to handle. Adds to the less stressful experience albeit makes exploration less rewarding.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Like Amnesia, checkpoints are very generous. So once you die from an enemy, it's a bit less tense to know that you don't lost much progress.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The setting is supposed to be underwater, but when you're in the ocean, you're just on the bottom floor and moving around as if it were low gravity.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/soma"},{"id":"340403927790912080","title":"Sonic the Hedgehog","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1991,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["Arcade"],"studios":["Sonic Team"],"publishers":["Sega"],"genres":["Platform"],"startedDate":"2021-05-22","completedDate":"2021-05-22","updatedDate":"2022-08-19","notes":"It's a fun platformer alternative to the Mario style. Sonic is more accessible with its effectively infinite health as you long as you have a ring. Levels are more speed-based, and encourage speedrunning over collecting everything. The first Sonic game doesn't lean into its speedy momentum level design as much as it should have. There's too often a weird pacing.\n\nI played on a Sega Genesis emulator (Higan).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/sonic-the-hedgehog--4"},{"id":"2d313a8b-29b2-469a-8637-92a8c5325bda","title":"Split Fiction","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":927,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Hazelight Studios"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2025-11-02","completedDate":"2025-12-25","updatedDate":"2025-12-27","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/split-fiction"},{"id":"322682678652663372","title":"Star Fox 64","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["3DS"],"studios":["Nintendo EAD Group No. 5","Q-Games Ltd.","Nintendo"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","completedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/star-fox-64-3d"},{"id":"322682678652523084","title":"Star Wars: The Old Republic","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":8520,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["BioWare Austin"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts","LucasArts"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2011-10-31","completedDate":"2012-07-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"SWTOR most excels at instanced storylines, with interactive choices. I also liked their battleship minigame and version of WoW battlegrounds. Its fatal flaw was in not excelling at anything (PvE raids, PvP, new features).\n\n+: Single Player Experience (voiced quests, option choices, cool class areas, lore), no auto-attack, companions, objective-based PvP, AoE knockback.\n\n-: No rated PvP, custom UI, macros, transmutation, overworld, magic, mediocre PvE, bad world PvP, battle stats, prone to botting, gear/daily grind, level grind, useless low-level zones, planet loading screens, no duels, no transmutation, no guild features/bank, bad target frames, no inspect feature, no duel feature, dots/buffs/debuffs importance.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/star-wars-the-old-republic"},{"id":"322682678652450380","title":"Styx: Master of Shadows","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":1020,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Cyanide Studio"],"publishers":["Focus Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-07-02","completedDate":"2019-07-04","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"It's a decent classic Thief-style stealth game. Controls are minimal which I find great. Enemy AI is bad. Most notoriously, there's way too much asset reuse in the game: from AI voice acting and face templates to entire levels. Enemy variety is poor, and the cutscenes reek of mostly nonexistent animation, and poor animation whenever it is animated.\n\n__Story.__ Plain.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Stealth is good. It's a classic affair in stealth, where as a thief, combat is not really an option. Instead, it emphasizes use of lighting for specifically better camoflauge, sound, smell (distance from elf enemies), and open world approaches. This makes plain stealthy actions very core to the gameplay such as hiding in shadows and extinguishing torches. I also like the idea of leaning against a wall. Patrols feel a little too mechanical however. They follow an obvious pattern independent of one another and in a clear grid-like structure with up-down-left-right movements. Enemy variety is paltry.\n\nQuick save/loads are also helpful and a staple. But it leads to a save-scumming pattern where you vie for perfection and constantly reload the game. I feel like the game should not give player freedom in this. I would greatly prefer a more frequent checkpoint system so that you have to execute somewhat long scenarios and can't do ridiculous things with low chance but with infinite reload capabilities.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Rather plain medieval look. I do like that the main character is uniquiely a goblin. It was of the most interesting pieces that attracted me to the game. The cutscenes are slideshows with voiceover and feel cheap.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Borderless and ultrawidescreen support.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on the second highest difficulty and with keyboard and mouse.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/styx-master-of-shadows"},{"id":"322682678650379852","title":"Super Hexagon","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","Android","iOS","blackberry"],"studios":["Distractionware"],"publishers":["Distractionware"],"genres":["Music","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2020-11-06","completedDate":"2020-11-06","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Fun twitch game. Incredibly challenging but rewarding to learn the different patterns and progress, slowly but surely. Like learning to play a difficult musical piece. Musical 10-second bits can get annoying. I beat hard difficulty and gave up.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-hexagon"},{"id":"322682678652666444","title":"Super Smash Bros. Brawl","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2008,"playtimeMinutes":690,"platforms":["Wii"],"studios":["Sora"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Fighting","Platform"],"startedDate":"2007-12-31","completedDate":"2007-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-smash-bros-brawl"},{"id":"322682678652667468","title":"Super Smash Bros. Melee","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["NGC"],"studios":["Team Salvato"],"publishers":["Team Salvato"],"genres":["Fighting","Platform","Sport"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-smash-bros-melee-20xx-edition"},{"id":"322682678650383948","title":"System Shock 2","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":810,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Looking Glass Studios","Irrational Games"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts","Nightdive Studios"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2020-10-23","completedDate":"2020-10-24","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Playing the game, it's obvious how System Shock 2 inspired games like Bioshock, Dead Space, Alien Isolation, and the whole immersive sim subgenre like Deus Ex. These elements include atmosphere, nonlinear exploration, inventory and resource management, and upgrades. Playing in 2020, I found some elements of the resource management and the clunky combat too tedious to truly enjoy. However, I can appreciate its influence. The backtracking in getting lost, combined with enemy respawns, gets frustrating.\n\n__Story.__ Pretty standard ship gone wrong with AI and infestations. It's the presentation that makes it more interesting than the core story though.\n\n__Gameplay.__ System Shock 2 is about exploration, with build variety, FPS combat, hacking, resource management, psi skills. I enjoyed the core loop of exploring a new area, picking up PDAs and playing them as you continue exploring, killing off enemies while you scrounge for resources and complete the next objective.\n\nThe UI is needlessly complicated. Fortunately, it's at least a significant improvement from System Shock 1, which I found unplayable. Too many things seem neat in adding to the realism but ultimately add to the tedium in practice. For example, I like the idea of chemical storage rooms that are cluttered with resources, and limiting what you can actually pick up due to limited inventory space. However, it's just annoying to have to backtrack to this area, or otherwise wait in this area, as you research new unidentified objects to pick up the necessary chemicals.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics remind me of Deus Ex, which came a year later. Hit collision with the wrench is awful. Atmosphere ages well and clearly stands out. Lighting is terrible in some places, particuly Body of the Many.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Like other 90s games like Doom, there's a console for enabling cheats. I found this vital for rushing through the game when I got too bored and would otherwise abandon playing.\n+ In Easy difficulty at least, you get infinite revives so health is effectively infinite.\n+ There are mission objectives that give you some guidance on what to do next but aren't blatantly obvious.\n+ Surprisingly, you can mantle in this game.\n+ When you purchase from the vendor, it doesn't automatically go into your inventory. You have to pick it up.\n+ Resources like items, ammo, and chemicals appear realistically: corpses, storage rooms, enemies.\n+ Everything happens in realtime. I would occasionally get jumpscared when I'm busy managing my inventory, turn around, and there's an enemy jumping me.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You can't sell items at a vendor. You must rely on picking up a recycler.\n+ Radiation and toxic areas are a pain to explore if you're playing blind. Much save-scumming here.\n+ Default movement speed is abysmally slow. Fortunately the build I'm using starts the game with 2 Agility.\n+ Enemies respawn. Then again, this is the only way to accumulate otherwise finite resources.\n+ Implants require recharge. I wish they didn't so you didn't constantly feel time pressure to otherwise backtrack to the recharge station.\n+ Like the original game, grenades don't have their own hotkey making them a pain to use.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ most popular build on steam | https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=569509913\n+ https://shodan.fandom.com\n+ guide with pictures |https://portforward.com/games/walkthroughs/System-Shock-2 \n\nI played on Easy difficulty given the unforgivingness and tedium of old games. I played blind. After roughly 3 hours, I turned on `undead` (god mode) to just rush through the game. I hoarded ammo, only using it on strong enemies like turrets and otherwise save-scummed using the wrench and conserving HP.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/system-shock-2"},{"id":"322682678651438668","title":"Tales of Symphonia","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":2820,"platforms":["NGC"],"studios":["Namco Tales Studio"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Holdings","Nintendo","Namco"],"genres":["Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2019-10-18","completedDate":"2019-11-01","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Standing among the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series, the Tales series ranks as the third most popular JRPG series in Japan (with Atlus' rising Persona series closing in). Tales distinguishes itself by embracing anime culture and a real-time combat system, and where Symphonia pioneered the 3D battle with a 2.5D movement system. Symphonia shines most in its combat, chibi art style, and characters, which are all appealing but not necessarily genre-defining. Other elements also just don't stand out: the plot is lackluster; progression system, soundtrack, enemy, and bosses are all serviceable. The game also drags on with its repetitiveness, going through ever so many of the same similar-ish dungeons. Symphonia would be much better as a denser game without the 50 hour playtime expectation, where I felt going through the second half to be a chore as it continued to stretch its content. From what I've heard, Tales of the Abyss and Tales of the Vesperia are also victims of this problem.\n\n__Story.__ It's a trite story filled with high fantasy jargon of saving a world by uncovering Seals, betrayal, a twin world, and saving again while with a motley crew. It meanders over its 50 hour playtime and can be difficult to follow at times (\"wait, why do we need to retrieve this specific item again?\"). The characters are charming. This is my first \"anime\"-style JRPG, so it's interesting to see how the various tropes like a girl's clumsiness or tsundere behavior plays into a JRPG. Lloyd reminds me of an anime-based FFX's Tidus (although Lloyd came first). Wonder Chef is a fun side.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Most unique to the Tales series (and first introduced in Symphonia) is the 3D, fencing-like real-time battle system. I like the ideas here in hack-and-slash while controlling for defense via block mechanics, stagger, and positioning for AOE attacks, and aerial vs standing enemies. There's certainly still room for improvement compared to deeper combat mechanics games like Nier: Automata and Dark Souls: proper dodge, parry/riposte, environment (e.g., wall hit collision), clearer enemy attacks, skills that have more variety in their mechanics than simple moveset changes with a different damage stat. Enemies wander around in the map and battles are occur in a separate (2.5D) instance like Dragon Quest and Earthbound. Optional cooking mechanic after every battle. Unison attack as a party-based limit breaker. Gald currency. Grade system as a secondary currency, letting you carry over things to new game plus. Other RPG mechanics are standard, e.g., large party, each following a class archetype, HP, TP (mana), levels, status effects.\n\nProgression system is threefold: exspheres and T/S exskills act as skill upgrades; titles serve as an additional stat boost for levels similar to an exchangeable Pokemon EV system; and item customization allows the reuse of old weapons via upgrading them given additional crafting material. It's not great in that it's simply a matter of allocation with little build variety, but it's also not bad. The customization is flawed for completionists unfortunately as there's only a finite amount of crafting material (unless one looks through walkthroughs on what enemies to farm), making it difficult to ever make a decision on what to spend an upgrade for the customization. I ended up not ever using it.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I like the chibi anime artstyle; it makes the game distinctive. Mix of voiced and non-voiced dialogue. Cutscenes are almost all rendered ingame, which is good but also kind of dumb how stupid the interactions can be given the lack of facial expression and movement. Regions designed across the world are not as diverse and rich as, say, FFX. World map is also bland. Enemy bestiary lacks the unique designs that make certain races or enemies iconic in the FF and DQ series. Sound and enemy design is only serviceable. Camera angle is bad at times, especially on world map navigation.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Dreading the platforming in the Temple of Lightning, constantly falling off in the half-obscured rooms.\n+ The constant framerate dips, particularly in windowed mode if I don't have the game as the active window. Hard to tell if it's the vanilla game or the customization with, e.g., high-res textures injected in that caused all these issues.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+  I like the skits. They remind me of FF9's mechanic, offering more depth to the characters and their relationships via miniature happenstances.\n+ Nonrandom encounters. It allows you to control when to fight trash such as boss pathing vs grinding.\n+ Keeping old equipment is encouraged through the customization shop.\n+ When you pick up an item, although you don't get to see a description of what it does right away, the item appears as the first one in the Items inventory. This makes it easy to pick up, say, an upgrade, and instantly know who to equip it to.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Katz exploration team. NPCs you pay to get you any missed items or monsters.\n+ You need to optimize stats a bit by taking into specific stat boosts from titles in comparison. Fortunately, you can farm herbs end game in order to get perfect stats.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ You learn new spells by equipping a certain level of EX gem, using their previous spell a number of times, and reaching a prerequisite level. This is similar to FF8's junctions and FF9's abilities attached to equipment. I hate this mechanic because it requires micromanaging how to use items across your party rather than a per-character upgrade system.\n+ You can't speed up the text in skits or skip cutscenes. Annoying..\n+ A large number of missables such as titles and items. Tales games since then have reduced the number of missables.\n+ Skits can be hard to specifically trigger. This makes it difficult if you want to see all of them, especially ones that unlock certain items. It would be great if there were, e.g., a list of skits that you've unlocked so you can at least keep track.\n+ EX Gems are finite, meaning you need to deliberately select how to use them. You can only purchase them from the Grade shop, which is better spent for new game plus.\n+ Stats like Accuracy/Evasion seem largely worthless. Thrust/Slash seems like an unnecessary difference given the sameness of their combat mechanics.\n+ Navigation with vehicles like Noishe, boat, and Rheaird flight are intuitive and clunky.\n+ Guidestone monuments and long range mode seems largely worthless.\n+ Slide puzzles. What a pain.\n+ Getting lots of frame stutter and the occasional game crash.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ overall description about pc release | https://steamcommunity.com/app/372360/discussions/0/487870763319924065/\n+ tsfix mod | https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=618359790\n+ best guide (gamecube-based, does not include affection and monuments although not game-changing) | https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gamecube/561316-tales-of-symphonia/faqs/42708\n+ guidestones | http://www.kaoticsilence.com/talessymphoniaps2/tosps2monuments.html\n+ guide on gamecube to ps3 | https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gamecube/561316-tales-of-symphonia/faqs/32765/\n+ exskills guide | https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps2/920235-tales-of-symphonia/faqs/61238, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gamecube/561316-tales-of-symphonia/answers/36411-what-are-the-best-compound-ex-skills-for-each-charachter-and-how-do-i-get-them\n\nI started with this game as it's: the earliest 3D Tales game and therefore will let me appreciate future games' advances and not depreciate earlier games; is the best-selling title of the series; is ranked as one of the best (https://www.reddit.com/r/tales/comments/9ls7d0/which_game_is_the_best_to_start_the_series_off/, http://i.imgur.com/YBxYa9I.jpg). Other contenders to play as the best in the series are Abyss, Vesperia (Definitive Edition on Windows in 2019), and Berseria.\n\nI played on PC, which is the remastered version for PS3 but with more bug fixes and higher resolution. I completed the game in 34 hours (according to Steam). The remastered version includes improved textures and environments, dual-audio, more attacks, costumes, and sidequests. The only advantage of Gamecube original version is 60 fps over PC's 30. The TSFix mod apparently fixes framerate and other issues from the launch, but it's hard to trust given its autoinstaller and that the game has updated since then (it's unclear what benefits it does bring). I played with it as the game actually wouldn't launch natively. I also used the 4K texture mod as it doesn't seem to add any noticeable artstyle differences and is a strict upgrade (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-ig6iU1kwg). Like any JRPG, I played with a walkthrough and Japanese audio. I used a walkthrough for selecting how to allocate EX Skill Gems. As it was released originally on Gamecube, I played on controller. I played on Normal difficulty, the recommended one for first timers. I was originally motivated to play after having played Nier: Automata, and therefore being hungry for a story-based game with real-time action. I completed most missables/content but skipped any tedious ones (e.g., Colette the dog lover, Palmacosta Pro, Zelos the gigolo). Party composition-wise, I played with everyone with no strong preferences, cycling among them to equally distribute experience.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tales-of-symphonia"},{"id":"322682678652669516","title":"Team Fortress 2","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2007,"playtimeMinutes":18180,"platforms":["PS3","Linux","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["Valve"],"publishers":["Valve","Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2009-12-31","completedDate":"2011-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I never really got into Team Fortress 2. I dabbled but never spent days playing game after game in multiplayer FPS titles.\n\nAfter thoroughly enjoying Overwatch, there are a lot of interesting ideas in Team Fortress 2 that haven't appeared in other games. To be fair, I enjoy Overwatch's main pitch more: it's less of a death match, there are fewer players in a match, and time to kill is higher. But there are so many core ideas that came from TF2: modes such as payload and capture point with mechanics like overtime, classes, the lootbox system, the cartoon aesthetic, the pricing model of a one-time purchase.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/team-fortress-2"},{"id":"322682678651447884","title":"Telling Lies","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PS4","PC","iOS","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Furious Bee Limited","Sam Barlow","Half Mermaid"],"publishers":["Annapurna Interactive"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Simulator","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-08-24","completedDate":"2019-08-25","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Telling Lies adds a nice piecewise story similar to Her Story but unfortunately doesn't quite match up in terms of overall story depth, atmosphere, and experimental gameplay. The story overall is not nearly as compelling. I do appreciate its ambition in more dynamic scenes at varying levels of formality, conversations vs in person, and locations. Gameplay-wise, it had a worse video scrubber and one-sided conversations that unfortunately ruined a lot of atmosphere as you spent much of your time just in fast forward reading subtitles and in silence. I liked the higher budget recordings in that it involved multiple actors and locations.\n\nOne technique I found helpful was to stop a clip at a given phrase to take notes, then note that specific phrase so I can loop back precisely at that video timestamp. This makes it easier to track conversations from two videos.\n\nMy note-taking strategy used three bulleted lists: characters (each with subbullets for general notes and interactions to other characters); timeline; and todos for my stack of search queries.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Simple Memo has copy/cut/paste fortunately (and its clipboard works with the real system). I like this plaintext format over per-video tagging.\n+ Like the last game, I like how the foreground lights up to display the person navigating the computer when you uncover major clues.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Unlike Her Story, clips are minutes many longer and involve a one-sided conversation rather than single-clip answers.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ For being so sexually charged and use characters like webcam girls, the game is awkward in being PG-13.\n+ Unlike Her Story, you can scrub a video to pick a specific timestamp. You have to use the more imprecise fast forward and rewind. You have to manually rewind the video all the way to the beginning which is really annoying.\n+ You can't take notes while the video is playing. And when you start a video again, you have to play it back from the search term.\n+ Simple Memo (the Notepad) has cursor issues which is really annoying.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ chronological order with united dialogues | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuKBr8YNQpY\n\nI completed over two-thirds of the footage according to the report. I skimmed the chronological video compilation to watch juicy bits I missed and then read up on plot spoilers.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/telling-lies"},{"id":"322682678650356300","title":"Tenchu: Stealth Assassins","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":450,"platforms":["PS1"],"studios":["ACQUIRE Corp."],"publishers":["Activision Publishing","Sony Music Entertainment Japan"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-12-19","completedDate":"2020-12-19","updatedDate":"2023-08-14","notes":"Along with Thief and Metal Gear Solid in 1998, Tenchu pioneered the stealth genre. Tenchu particularly stood out with stealth kills, platforming parkour with the Grappling Hook, open mission-based levels, and emphasis on stealth movement controls. Tenchu is a stealth-action hybrid with a pretty strong block/parry/attack moveset system. \n\nPlaying in 2020, the game doesn't hold up: it features the worst view distance I've ever experienced where everything past a few feet of you is enshrouded in fog, bad camera control, no analog stick for movement and other wonky controls, blocky textures, formulaic story, and not even a hint of where to go. These all contributed to frequent frustrations.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Most unique to Tenchu's style of stealth over Thief and Metal Gear Solid, Tenchu emphasizes movement, stealth kills (and their many unique animations), camera control, pressing behind and climing up a wall (like Metal Gear Solid), and Ki meter to sense enemies (this happens before you see them especially with the limited view distance). There are several playable characters, with slight differences in movement speed combat damage/reach, and certain mission events. The Grappling Hook is a core platforming item. I think the idea of crouch as an impractical movement speed is interesting. Here, rolling is the approach to sneak as sneaking's movement speed is too slow, and you can run behind an enemy's patrol before they turn around to kill.\n\nThe alert system is local unlike Metal Gear Solid with its infinite respawning guards. Combat is basic but works well, with block, attack, and a number of items in your toolkit. You're strong enough that killing an enemy or two undetected is not a problem. There are no objectives, only vague ideas from the synposis on what to do, making it even more cryptic than Thief. At least there's a map that shows your current location.\n\nThe controls are wonky. Camera control is part of the gameplay difficulty: instead of a manual camera control as a standard for 3D games in the near future, you have to steer your character appropriately while also toggling with L1 to swap to the character's point of view (closer in but not quite first-person). Leaning against a wall doesn't work reliably (and it flat out doesn't work on even slight inclines). You have to exit crouch to turn left/right. There is no strafe. There is no native analog controller support (left) as it was released prior to DUALSHOCK being widely supported. Grappling hook doesn't always work, particularly for any horizontal movement on roofs instead of above you.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The graphics have enough realism to keep it interesting. The blocky textures and character models don't age well. Soundtrack is forgettable. Most noticeable from a gameplay perspective is the significantly narrow view distance, with everything enshrouded in fog, and everything overly dark. English voice acting and dubbed script is bad, with some hilarious B-rated lines.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Pause turns off all sound, ambient soundtracks included. Perfect for alt-tabbing/multitasking.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Moving bodies is possible, similar to Thief and Metal Gear Solid. However, because all performance is based on the player's point of view, if you move away enough from the body, no nearby guard will continue patrolling (let alone discover it).\n+ It's the first time stealth kills appeared in a game, and the mechanic has developed much further since then. Here, you can only do a stealth kill from a flat ground and sufficiently close to them before they notice, raising their weapons. You can't do a stealth kill from an above position to jump on them, or from a wall position, or crouched underneat something.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ For a stealth-action game, they force you to action with the bosses.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Moveset controls](https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Tenchu:_Stealth_Assassins/Controls)\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/tenchu/comments/79lua6/which_game_should_i_play_first\n+ [Lobos Plays Tenchu: Stealth Assassins](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMZm-sZlKW8)\n\nI played this as my first experience into the Tenchu series.\n\n__Version.__ I played with a Playstation 1 emulator: Mednafen with Beetle PSX HW (the RetroArch fork of Mednafen, which adds a GUI). Guide I followed for setup came from the [wiki](https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_emulators): [here](https://www.maketecheasier.com/retroarch-ps1-emulation) with internal GPU resolution set at 8x (roughly 1080p native; I'm playing on 2560x1440p so still need to rely on AA; my hardware showed consistently 30 FPS at 16x, but sound was choppy).\n\n__Playthrough.__ I played on Normal difficulty, and Ayame over Rikimaru as she's faster at the cost of worse range and combat damage. I played with [Japanese voice turned on](http://www.cheatcodes.com/tenchu-stealth-assassins-playstation) as the game has English subtitles (it works only partially).\n\nI extensively used the emulator's quicksave, treating it like a Deus Ex or Dishonored PC playthrough. It would be annoying to do full stealth playthroughs otherwise.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tenchu-stealth-assassins"},{"id":"334239195554906703","title":"The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Supermassive Games"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe","Bandai Namco Entertainment America","Bandai Namco Entertainment"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-06-11","completedDate":"2022-06-12","updatedDate":"2022-06-12","notes":"It's a fun albeit fairly standard romp in interactive fiction. The jumpscares and unnecessarily involved free roaming ruin an otherwise enjoyable rid.e\n\n__Story.__\nThe characters aren't chock full of tropes like your typical teenage flick. But they're also fairly bland and uninteresting.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nFree-roam movement has clunky controls, poor camera placement due to fixed angles, and the movement speed is too slow. Please let us run instead of toggling between walk and walk slightly faster.\n\nSo many unnecessary jumpscares. Just remove them and the game would be fine. It's like the game is afraid you'll get bored of the existing story and gameplay. I'm okay with jumpscares as long as they're not ridiculously loud, at which point they're just annoying.\n\nWhen I played, Conrad and Julia died.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-dark-pictures-anthology-man-of-medan"},{"id":"332258781553492560","title":"The Forest","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":960,"platforms":["PC","PS4"],"studios":["Endnight Games Ltd"],"publishers":["Endnight Games Ltd"],"genres":["Puzzle","Simulator","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-05-20","completedDate":"2022-05-21","updatedDate":"2023-07-25","notes":"The Forest is a survival sandbox that most thrives in weaving horror with the unknown of creatures and enemies as you explore areas or simply go about your day, farming resources.\n\nUnfortunately, I found there to be little interesting progression to make base building interesting, nor are there gear or weapons you can significantly upgrade to make yourself better. This makes the farming of resources and base building aspects fairly superficial.\n\n__Story.__\nUnlike, say, Subnautica, the story feels much more like an afterthought than integrated into the game. Most all story happens once you enter a certain area. It's basically just a sandbox game otherwise where you slowly complete all content such as explore the map and the caves.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nThe game feels too slow for me. You use up stamina to carry items, and there's no upgrades that make your grinding any more efficient. You'll never upgrade your movement speed with vehicles or gear. Only athleticism as a player stat slowly increases over time to let you sprint and swim underwater for longer.\n\nBase building is not very prominent in Forest. There's little gameplay incentive as the extra storage you can build doesn't help much (storage for more sticks, logs, rocks, meat, but why if you're not building in the first place)? You just need to build shelters or fires once in a while to sleep or hide from rain.\n\nThe enemies around the map that appear as you try to build your base and explore are great. They're intelligent in how they approach you and there's tension in their timing with ambushes and stalking.\n\nInventory screen is unique and adds to the immersion in its presentation. Even storage mechanics are unique in the game where unlike a single chest, there are unique buildings for different types of item storage such as an armor rack for skin, arrow basket for arrows, and drying rack for meat.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Level of detail is good, especially for an indie game. Sound design is natural.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ This game is not beginner friendly. The log cabin is a newb trap in costing way too many logs, requiring effectively a few hours of gameplay to grind to build a single house. By default, building destruction is on so the amount of time you spend early game building things can easily be wasted. Darkness is set too low by default in caves. The map is not available until after you die once. The rebreather and climbing axe, which gate progression in many caves, aren't available unless you go to specific caves in a particular order.\n+ There's only 4 hotkeys, and the way to set them is obscure.\n+ Mouse sensitivity settings are too high. I have to go from 800 to 400 DPI, which also makes menu navigation slower, and use 0% X and Y sensitivity.\n+ It's unclear when you can use the action to drink or dip a pot in a body of water.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://theforest.fandom.com/wiki/Building)\n+ [Map](https://theforestmap.com)\n+ [Campaign guide](https://theforest.fandom.com/wiki/Speedrun)\n\nI settled on the Sacred Tree near the coast and yacht as my permanent base. I spent roughly 4 hours just wandering around to get a sense of the game and trying to focus on base building and permanent upgrades. I didn't enjoy it due to the lack of progression. So I went immediately to complete the story.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-forest"},{"id":"322682678650409548","title":"The Henry Stickmin Collection","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["PuffballsUnited"],"publishers":["InnerSloth"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-08-14","completedDate":"2020-08-14","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Watched Sodapoppin play. THis is some hilarious Newsground/Kongregate shit.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-henry-stickmin-collection"},{"id":"322682678652701260","title":"The House of the Dead","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["Arcade"],"studios":["WOW Entertainment","SEGA AM1"],"publishers":["Sega"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Quiz/Trivia","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/loving-deads-the-house-of-the-dead-ex"},{"id":"322682678652460620","title":"The Last Guardian","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["PS4"],"studios":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2018-04-25","completedDate":"2018-04-26","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"As a one-sentence summary, The Last Guardian features a rich minimalistic story, beautiful environments, character models, music, and atmosphere, but at the cost of frustrating controls and overall bad gameplay to traverse from one puzzle platform to the next.\n\nLast Guardian's major flaw is its controls, making for such a frustrating experience that I couldn't enjoy the rest. This includes its most unique asset: Trico. I like the idea of having a beast to control, particularly in adding a good pacing as, for example, you feed him barrels and watch him look and then eat them; or you and he encounter a new area and he walks around to play a little; and I also love the ideas that it can enable for puzzle design. However, this is easily one of the most frustrating mechanics in video game history. The idea did not work well in practice, and I find it hard-to-believe that fans out there are willing to defend this as \"realism\"; you don't treat it like any other house animal, or just feed it and hope it's more willing to listen to your commands (this is symbolic AI, not an actual animal; the codes to program its commands are not nearly that complex). With video games, you already have a barrier in front of you based on the limited actinos your playable character can do. Now with a beast, you're adding an additional source of nuisance as the beast takes much longer to execute commands and can often deviate away from what you're trying to get at (e.g., it walks away when you're trying to approach a ledge). It's not even animal logic, but AI logic aimed to imitate animal logic. It's like an entire game made out of escort missions., and the escort is an animal. This can make puzzles tedious to solve even if you already found out the solution. Even the boy's controls can be really bad at times; and climbing Trico is always a nightmare in maneuvering your direction correctly. In addition, camera is noticeably bad in tight areas.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ The soft color palette and smooth textures not unlike Shadow of the Colossus and Ico.\n+ Water graphics as it soaks even just a part of Trico's tail.\n+ Bivbrations on the controller as the ground rumbles from Trico walking.\n+ Some sequences can be absolutely beautiful if they're not marred by controls. For example, the sequence where you're climbing trees and rope to get away from the other Trico. The music and beast below adds a tense, palpable atmosphere.\n+ I love the epic sequences like the cinematic flashback of how the boy and Trico got into the Nest. And when Trico overcomes his fear of the mirrors. And how it slowly grows its horns and wings.\n+ Cinematic sequences that feature your Trico (i.e., with spears and blood and all), and your movement on Trico. This makes it feel as part of the game and not just a video being played.\n+ The stumbling as the boy walks.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ No HUD or healthbar of any sort.\n+ Tossing a barrel up a hole in a railroad so Trico can eat and then move again. This is an example of just how frustrating this controls can be. And it appears again when you have to feed Trico after you fall from the tree.\n+ The water sequence. Holy shit getting Trico to dive is hard. And when yuo do get him to do it, you have to be holding below him, so you on top of his back doesn't get trapped on the top half of the hole as he enters through it. And the wave sequence is so convoluted.\n+ I just love it when you're trying to direct Trico to jump through a sequence of pillars. And Trico just jumps backwards and makes you lose progress..\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-last-guardian/\n+ I like this plot explanation as I agree with all of it as it's not so much ambiguity for these (sans the ratio for the number of people in a barrel; I can see it being interpreted as either people or just a natural resource in the land that the Master of the Valley witholds as a reward) | https://www.reddit.com/r/thelastguardian/comments/5liq6x/lore_of_the_last_guardian_massive_spoilers/\n\nI mostly followed the walkthrough if the puzzles were not immediately obvious. The game can be incredibly tedious in trial-and-error particularly as controlling Trico takes so long. So many of the puzzle solutions are convoluted too (see, e.g., the constant wait for Trico when you're stuck in the tree). Because you also don't know the leaping strength of Trico, it's hard to tell what parts are simply solved by getting on Trico's back, pointing appropriately, and being patient.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-last-guardian-vr"},{"id":"322682678624210508","title":"The Republia Times","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["browser"],"studios":["Lucas Pope"],"publishers":["Lucas Pope"],"genres":["Puzzle","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-02-15","completedDate":"2021-02-15","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Motivated to play since I love Lucas Pope's other works. The Republia Times clearly acts as a predecessor to the more mechanically complex and polished Papers, Please. The Republia Times is a fun, short game. It defines the core of what makes his games interesting: unique mechanics, with no combat typical in video games; biting commentary; and aesthetic.\n\nI love the ending choices. Side with the rebels and now it's The Democria Times, and now you lost your family with a suddenly new family. Now you're in it all over again.\n\n'The government cannot control the weather yet. As a result, articles about the weather do not affect loyalt.' :)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-republia-times"},{"id":"322682678652746316","title":"The Typing of the Dead: Overkill","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Modern Dreams"],"publishers":["Sega"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2022-09-08","completedDate":"2022-09-10","updatedDate":"2023-06-30","notes":"Cheesy action, even terrible voice acting amps up the B-rated game. Typing as the gameplay element works very well to this spirit. Can be fun romp. Not much more.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-typing-of-the-dead-overkill"},{"id":"322682678624170572","title":"The Vanishing of Ethan Carter","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["The Astronauts"],"publishers":["The Astronauts"],"genres":["Real Time Strategy (RTS)","Strategy","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-02-05","completedDate":"2021-02-05","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"A little too much walking simulator for me.\n\nI played the Redux version.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-vanishing-of-ethan-carter"},{"id":"322682678651415116","title":"The Walking Dead: Season 1","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["PC","PS3","X360","Mac","iOS","Vita","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Telltale Games"],"publishers":["Telltale Games"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-09-27","completedDate":"2020-02-21","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The Walking Dead is one of the pinnacle's of Telltale Games' style: the feeling of choice and consequence; a well-told albeit blunt narrative with an ensemble of developing characters; and a graphic art style of sparse environments with the occasional action.\n\nPacing in episodes 1 and 2 are too slow. The story runs into a lull every time you take rein of the character and wander around a static environment picking things up and having one-off conversations.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ You can't skip individual dialogue lines to speed up the conversations.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-walking-dead-game\n\nI played The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series (released in September 10 2019), which remasters Season 1-3 according to the final fourth season's new Graphic Black rendering engine.\n\nThis entry includes the 400 Days DLC.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-walking-dead-season-two-episode-1-all-that-remains"},{"id":"322682678651418188","title":"The Witcher","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":3090,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["CD Projekt RED"],"publishers":["WB Games","Bandai Namco Entertainment","cdp.pl","Spike ChunSoft"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-01-14","completedDate":"2020-01-20","updatedDate":"2022-10-26","notes":"It would be generous to say The Witcher hasn't aged well. I would go further to say that the game just isn't good. The story---what is often argued as The Witcher's highlight and certainly the highlight of the series---isn't nearly as compelling as in Witcher 3. There's only a rough draft here of the interactivity with dialogue trees/choices, narrative and character depth, moral quandaries, and political intrigue that the Witcher books and Witcher 3 revel in. The Witcher's poor voice acting and janky graphics diminish its narrative delivery. Combat is also a major flaw. Most of all, I would argue the game's quest design with massive amount of backtracking makes it even more of a slog to play: fetch quests without fast travel, quests being time-based and meditation being restricted to certain locations, NPCs not being at their quest marker depending on time of day, obtrusive quest UI even though you're forced to batch-complete quests at a time.\n\n__Story.__ It's not as great as people make it out to be. Chapter I is a slog. It sets up no interesting depth aside from the known setting building on the books. Chapter II is diluted in pacing with its constant backtracking, and while the idea of narrowing down suspects is interesting, nothing particularly distinguishes it in character development, mystery, or gameplay. Chapter 4 seems completely unnecessary in delving into Alina the noonwraith or the feud between the villagers and the other race. It's an okay story, but it plays out in depth like any side quest in Witcher 3 while detracting from the pacing of the main story. The main villain Aaar Javed and the subvillains like de Wett are not interesting. Salamandra as an evil organization lacks any depth outside of trite arguments like their genocide and crimes not being any different from existing rulers.\n\nThe story is a strange repeat of the books with twists that don't make sense (why not just use the original story?). Triss plays a worse Yennefer, Alvin is a terrible Ciri (he's so whiny with zero character development; perhaps the only redeeming quality is the subtle hint that he's the main villain by the end), and you even have to save the striga again.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Combat is a rhythm game similar to Neverwinter Nights/Dragon Age, stances, and is extremely wonky. So is the camera system, with weird option for over-the-top style that makes mouse navigation intrusive and movement slower unless you're holding W, and a classic RPG/action RPG (e.g., Diablo) isometric style that's less immersive as a point and click but is ultimately more practical. Armor is much more limited with just three available options in the game. Quest choices have downstream consequences, and decisions are based on limited knowledge of the circumstances and a setting of belief and morals. Instead of open world, it's a fixed zone per chapter.\n\nCompared to Witcher 3, what I like most about Witcher 1 are the character interaction options: bribing, drink contests, and giving food to solicit information from random old women NPCs; showing signet rings to display inclusion of certain memberships. Dialogue trees open up new quests and quest advancing.\n\nCombat is not the only janky aspect. Quests have way too much backtracking, where movement across a map has no sprint or fast travel. Certain areas are just awful: the Beast boss fight; Chapter II swamp.\n\nThe Dice Poker game is just bad. Literally 0 skill and all RNG, where difficulty of fighting certain NPCs is gauged by their more favorable RNG (a random roll to an immediate six-high straight; or playing off a pair and getting a full house). There are no interesting mechanics on betting or the hand strategy.\n\nYou can see the rough ideas that become polished in Witcher 3.Highlighting interactable objects is similar to Detective Mode. Combat has finishing moves. Potions, signs, and silver vs steel sword. Journal of characters, bestiary, and quest descriptions, and the descriptions are required to be read for completing Witcher contracts. Meditation with day-night cycles. No inventory load. No jumping or much verticality in environments. Contracts are kill-and-loot mobs similar to WoW, and less like the nice formula Witcher 3 has alongside some good occasional stories.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Hard to evaluate graphics for its time---looks slightly better than Oblivion particularly in facial models. Soundtrack is okay. Voice acting is really off---tone is bad lacking nuance in the delivery. Combine that with the stilted facial animations and the game can feel tone deaf. More reused assets in environments and NPCs than Oblivion in 2006.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Murking around (and dying often) in the swamps for the two longest chapters. What a pain.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Fog of war map.\n+ 21:9 aspect ratio is natively supported. No borderless though (stuck to windowed mode as alt-tabbing breaks with fullscreen) and need a hotfix to render cutscenes without stretching (https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/1462-the-witcher-aspect-ratio-fix-ultrawide-multi-mon).\n+ Most interesting AI being that NPCs hide under cover when it rains.\n+ Some of the specific environment layouts are similar from Witcher 1 to Witcher 3. For example, the spiral ministaircase up to see King Foltest and overall layout in Chapter V's Castle is the same as the Witcher 3's Nilfgaardian castle holding Emhyr.\n+ The wallpapers they show concluding a dialogue decisoin path.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ You can only meditate in certain areas like inns. Similar to Oblivion, you must also meditate to level up.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Missable quests. Tedious amount of bookkeeping in what items to keep as well as tracking quests in batch given the long treks making it impractical to do one quest at a time, and NPCs not necessarily being where the quest marker notes depending on the time of day. Dialogue paths can be entirely missed if you choose the wrong option.\n+ Too many loading screens.\n+ Lack of frequent autosaves (combined with the loading screens) makes restarting after a death a slog.\n+ Can't change difficulty. I wanted so bad to go to Easy and avoid the combat annoyances.\n+ Can't pause during cutscenes.\n+ No fast travel. Sometimes you have to run long distances only to meditate or make short conversations back and forth. There are teleporters, but they're limited.\n+ No recommended level on quests. Hard to sequence which ones to complete given an unstructured list.\n+ Crafting is useless in this game. You can only craft a meteorite sword, and it's quickly replaced with quest rewards.\n+ And I thought Witcher 3's female outfits were revealing. This and the generic big breasted European character models take the cake.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/The_Witcher_quests\n+ https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/The_Witcher_Shopping_List\n\nMy total playtime is 24 hours (according to Steam). I played it on Normal. I don't care much for max difficulty due to the outdated combat mechanics. I only played for the story, historical understanding of gameplay mechanics, and any interesting ideas that were not advanced in Witcher 3. Early game, I prioritized my orens on bestiary and herbarium books (no formula recipes as you can discover via self-experimenting and judicious use of the internet); and I prioritized skillpoints on base attributes. I didn't follow a specific build due to the ample amount of skillpoint, though I did have a tendency to spam Igni given infinite endurance and my impatience with this game. I did not complete all quests (by Chapter 4, I only did main quests).\n\nReaching the swamp in Chapter II, I couldn't stand the game's slow movement speed, back-and-forth pacing, annoying health regen at Normal difficulty. Therefore I added mods: 50% Faster Movement for Geralt; Infinite Health and Endurance; Genie Wish Mod.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt"},{"id":"322682678651468364","title":"The Wolf Among Us","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2013,"startedDate":"2019-07-28","completedDate":"2019-07-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I like that dialogue options have a time limit. And there are no checkpoints and reloading. Keeps choices spontaneous. With that said, there is also no pausing or rewinding, so you can miss a scene if you were distracted externally from the game.\n\nLove all the major choices and death reveals. Indidn’t expect the first two of Faith and Snow White. They were the closest ones I connected to!\n\nStory slowly unravels to be about politics and the town as a whole with corruption. I find this scale to be too ambitious. Dicrimination between social classes is hackneyed. Like Heavy Rain,the plot ties you in with an intriguing premise of a serial killer. I think for the plot to remain interesting, it should fish further in that direction.\n\nI love the Manhattan setting, specifically Upper West Side for Fabletown and what I presume is Washington Heights for the Farmland. I’m just a big fan pf the area overall as it adds a lot of culture to the game already swathing in fable history. The term Mundies for humans reminds me of the Muggle relationship in Harry Potter.\n\nGrungy colors and cell shaded aesthetics fit the fantasy noir well. I like how the recaps at beginning and end of every episode involves your choices. Makes it feel more personalized.\n\nI played the first playthrough blind. I then went back and read a walkthrough about the branching choices and their effects.\n\nI chose this for my first title by Telltale Games. The Walking Dead is the most popular but I already watched a good amount of seasons of the show and am bored by the story. This entry I'm writing about here spans all 5 episodes.\n\nNote there is no walkthrough for the game to understand the effect of different choices. Apparently, your choices don't really matter outside the scope of the existing cutscene most of the time in Telltale Games (e.g., there are no accumulating stats; \"X character will remember that\" and so on happens, but according to existing halfway complete walkthroughs and the overall trend of Telltale games, it's not clear they have any consequence; it's only a narrative stylistic emphasis)."},{"id":"340403810800239185","title":"Thief (2014)","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","PC","Mac","X360","XONE"],"studios":["Eidos Montréal"],"publishers":["Square Enix","Feral Interactive","Eidos Montréal"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-02-26","completedDate":"2021-03-06","updatedDate":"2022-08-19","notes":"Thief (2014) offers some fun as a AAA stealth game with elements borrowed from Thief, Dishonored, Assassin's Creed, and Uncharted. Ultimately, it leans too much toward streamlining, with the biggest problems being its linear level design, lack of enemy variety, and a collection of minor ones that hamper the experience (e.g., focus mode, of which disabling can make the rare area nonintuitive to navigate).\n\n__Story.__ The story is criticized by the community, and I agree it's forgettable. Most video game stories are bad though, and to be fair, the depth or nuance in this game's storytelling is not much different than Thief 1, Styx, Assassin's Creed, or Hitman. Dishonored does have identifiable characters with a history though.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Thief (2014) performs the core thief loop well of searching for loot, navigating areas, and stealthing past guards. It inherits Thief mechanics such as its weapon arsenal with blackjack and arrow variety, light system, different surfaces requiring one to move slowly to avoid being heard, lockpicking minigame, core controls, bad combat, and documents. It also integrates Dishonored and Assassin's Creed elements. A particularly new mechanic is Swoop, which quickly moves Garret a short distance in order to move cover to cover---like a gimped Dishonored's Blink. I think this mechanic works well. It adds to Garret feeling more nimble like a true thief; the longclaw, increased movement speed, and the general level design's asset placement to enable verticality also attest to this.\n\nThief (2014) leans too much to Dishonored, Assassin's Creed, and Uncharted in the style of mainstream stealth games rather than its Thief roots. For example: very linear level design with little forking paths; focus mode; minimap; there's a generic audio cue when a guard's awareness is rising rather than more immersive sound cues (\"huh?\", \"What was that?\"); a hub with collectibles; rope arrows are delegated to very specific locations, lacking the original game's flexibility in any wooden area; you can't jump on arbitrary assets as they're literally invisible walls or jump off arbitrary ledges. The blackjack is relegated to a takedown button, and while I like that it's a guaranteed one-hit, it restricts melee takedowns to be nonlethal instead of offering the choice. Enemy variety is also poor.\n\nProgression system-wise, Thief offers focus, tool, and trinket upgrades. I'm ambivalent whether they're worth having: the original Thief game didn't, but it also felt a little repetitive without that sense of progression through the game. Thief also features side missions outside the main levels with Basso and client jobs. I think side missions are great to enable some variety. The client jobs do this well but Basso's jobs are glorified fetch quests.\n\nHUD-wise, it's minimalistic like the original games which I like. The alert system now has a visual indicator on an enemy. I'm ambivalent whether the original Thief series' non-visuals necessarily made this more immersive through the reliance of only sound design or whether the lack of visuals made it more difficult. There are also now explicit objective markers like Dishonored, and I prefer this streamlining to an extent, as long as the markers are not micromanaging you but orient you toward a vague direction. Thief's item inventory no longer exists, which I greatly prefer as it required rather tedious management in cycling through it.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The textures and overall city environments feel significantly more lived-in than the previous games. Modern graphics engines also improve lighting. I also like that Thief finally has animations for various things you do: pick items up, climb ladders, etc. Thief 1 lacked this and felt janky instead.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Opened closets and cupboards are no longer interactable after you've searched it. Helps when you're navigating an open area and forget if you've already checked something.\n+ You can pickpocket a guard's items while he/she's patroling. This is like Dishonored---I don't remember if it was possible in original Thief.\n+ Custom difficulty and HUD settings. Allows for a significant amount of replayability and also finetune your level of preferred streamlining in stealth games (e.g., focus, objective markers).\n+ Unlike prior Thief titles, enemies can carry torches.\n+ Thief (2014) furthers the idea of variable sound depending on the surface with you knocking down jars and stepping on glass if you're not careful. I wish they had more surface textures making different sounds like Thief 1 in order to make this more of a challenge in the game, such as wood and metal making larger sounds than stone.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Thieving challenges. They add more challenge but it's also an artificial arcade element.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Focus vision highlights interactable objects. I dislike this as it's effectively the video game's Detective mode. It disincentivizes actually sneaking around an area to see what blinks that you can steal or what you can climb up. I turned it off, but you can clearly tell certain areas were designed with focus in mind, particularly with assets you haven't seen as interactable before (e.g., a cog next to the side of a water pipe).\n+ Peeking mechanic requires first pressing Interact close to a wall and then leaning left/right. I much prefer the simpler and more flexible approach of always allowing peaking---wall or not.\n+ Object highlights. I dislike the blue outline as it ruins the game's environment, and it's necessary so you can't turn it off because you can't tell what you can jump/interact with otherwise.\n+ It's a little ridiculous that Garret is stealing a bunch of petty items rather than fewer but more expensive items like in Thief 1. For gameplay reasons, I can see the reason to percolate loot in the same way that the original games do. The amount of gold and the items themselves however are measly (with that said, the original Thief gets around this by having Diamonds unrealistically scattered around).\n+ For a Thief game with a connected world, there's too many loading screens.\n+ Gold is used for not only upgrades but also resources (e.g., arrows) which are not enough in quantity from picking them up. This encourages conservative itemless playthroughs rather than a set items every level in Thief games. Dishonored got around this by not having items altogether.\n+ Boss fights. They're so annoying to play.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Safes](https://primagames.com/walkthrough/thief-how-unlock-all-safes-and-vaults)\n\nI played on Master (highest) difficulty and disabled Focus mode and minimap. I did a ghost playstyle, not doing any takedowns unless forced to. Upgrade-wise, I prioritized new abilities and long-term budget ones (Basso's Bond, Wrench, Razor, Wirecutter). I played some but not all side missions as I found the game fairly repetitive.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/thief"},{"id":"322682678651414092","title":"Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":1680,"platforms":["PS4","Android","PC","iOS","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["CD Projekt RED"],"publishers":["CD Projekt RED"],"genres":["Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2020-02-16","completedDate":"2020-02-29","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The game is a fun mix of card mechanics and decently executed story.The repetitiveness and ease of difficulty bored me a bit from the end of chapter 3 and onwards however: no new mechanics. At that point, I found a good enough deck that I never felt incentivized to upgrade or find new cards---instead, it was an obligation.\n\n__Story.__ While the style is great, the story is serviceable with a strong queen and ample \"sidequests\" as you wander around. However, the worldbuilding is little beyond the lore/text descriptions---the exploration on the map itself feels arcade-y---and the characters and side quests do not show the brilliant depth that Witcher 3 does. I do like how moral choices can make various characters come and go along your journey, e.g., Rayla or Isbel, Eyck or the dragon.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Card games with more balance the the original Gwent in Witcher 3. There's also a significant emphasis on puzzle battles. Mechanics have more an emphasis, particularly offense making the card game feel more like an interactive battle than passive power-counting. The game overall balances well deck-building and playing the actual card game.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I love the story presentation: audiobook-style alongside a classic RPG-style isometric view for wandering and dialogue options. Battles proceed as card games, of which the assets are beautiful.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ In a miscellaneous side quest, assuming you take Rayla along with you, she ends up committing a war crime by slitting the throats fo 40 dwarven prisoners as a racist..\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ There are no manual saves, only autosaves. Interesting choice for a card-game RPG.\n+ Thronebreaker's gold and lumber quickly come in abundance, so you don't have to fret too much about making optimal choices in dialogue or gameplay upgrades.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Game is not that challenging even at the highest difficulty, both in the battles and in moral choices. For the battles, there's little incentive to try new synergy combos with the exception of puzzle fights, which are one-off.  I steamrolled through all of Chapter 2 with Strays Bomber + Strays Slinger, and especially once I got Black Rayla + Xavier Lemmons + Reynard Odo. For the moral choices, losing resources or morale has no long-standing impact.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Performance is quite a slog, which is surprising given that it's just a card game.\n+ Final battle is dreadful. It limits your gameplay options and was the only time I had to change deck strategies. I had to cheese my way with Adept+Forager (https://www.reddit.com/r/gwent/comments/a31q4u/guide_for_final_fight_using_in_thronebreaker_for/).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/248350-thronebreaker-the-witcher-tales/faqs/76925/walkthrough | Unlike the IGN walkthrough, this provides commentary/tips and more walkthrough detail.\n\nThronebreaker is the single-player mode of the Gwent multiplayer collectible card game which fleshed out as its own game. I like this as I'm not a fan of multiplayer so I have no intention to play any of the Gwent features. What interests me is the story, RPG elements, and the battle via Gwent.\n\nIn general, I made choices appropriate to the Queen's character. But sometimes I did optimize if there were more clearly an optimal choice without consequences. I gathered most but not all treasure chests as I did not need anymore for upgrades by the middle of Chapter 4.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/thronebreaker-the-witcher-tales"},{"id":"322682678652704332","title":"Time Crisis","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2002,"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30"},{"id":"322682678652702284","title":"Time Crisis 3","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["Arcade","PS2"],"studios":["Nextech","Namco"],"publishers":["Namco","Namco Hometek","Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/time-crisis-3"},{"id":"322682678652703308","title":"Time Crisis II","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["Arcade","DC","PS2"],"studios":["Namco"],"publishers":["Namco","Namco Hometek","Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/time-crisis-ii"},{"id":"338642120006959695","title":"Titan Quest: Gold Edition","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2007,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Iron Lore Entertainment"],"publishers":["THQ"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"startedDate":"2023-03-28","completedDate":"2023-04-03","updatedDate":"2023-04-03","notes":"Titan Quest is a great ARPG improving upon Diablo 2 in the 2000s, before the advent of Path of Exile and Grim Dawn. It particularly innovates in its unique historical setting and dual mastery system.\n\nFlaw-wise:\n\n+ Repetitiveness. Levels are rather same-y, and there isn't too much significantly new to keep the game sufficiently interesting across all the Acts, let alone a second and third campaign playthrough through the extra difficulties. The game is stretched out too long, with long paths of same level designs and enemies, slow map clearance with enemies and game speed, and slow XP gain. The DLCs with Act 4-6 at least offer more visual variety, though the fetch quests, poor enemy variety (reskins), and slow pace still harm the game.\n+ The only incentive for exploration is finding side quests; Grim Dawn improves upon this with devotion.\n+ Mediocre story with theme park settings and characters.\n\n__Story.__ The story itself is not that interesting. No NPC stands out, and you just follow a linear path to fight the next Telkine.\n\nThe setting is what makes it interesting. Unfortunately, it's somewhat theme park heavy given that the historical setting changes in each Act. It would have been better to focus exclusively on Greek and Roman lore.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Progression-wise, Titan Quest's innovation is the dual mastery system. This doesn't enable static fantasy class fantasies, but rather a combination of classes by virtue of leveraging specific skills and synergies in the mastery combination. The masteries are also not classic skill trees but must progress through Tier investments, followed by various available skills to learn.\n\nSome unique itemization ideas including item style (armor pieces protect individual areas), item style (upgrades of an existing item type such as tiers of daggers), material (metals and cloth), and rarity (common, rare, etc.).\n\nDifficulty-wise, the game follows Diablo 2 in that you start at Normal difficulty. Then after beating the game, you restart the campaign at the next tier of difficulty to Elite and then to Ultimate. This pattern is also followed in Grim Dawn, and in Path of Exile prior to The Fall of Oriath.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nGraphics age well, although I'm potentially biased since Grim Dawn (a game from 2016) uses the same engine. I don't like the cartoon aesthetic in textures, models, and sound effects. But I do like the colorful palette and the soundtrack works. I like the environments; the historical settings is really unique to this ARPG.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Built-in loot filter.\n+ Auto-sort inventory and stash.\n+ No missable sidequests, with [one minor exception](https://www.reddit.com/r/TitanQuestAE/comments/114zdmc/missable_questrewards).\n+ Sustained passive buffs. I love this idea over manually refreshing a buff.\n+ The double torches that light up on a path signal which path is the main path. It's a nice indicator to clue you in on to go the other direction if you want to explore.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Enemies respawn upon reloading game.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Minimap is too small. It's near functionally useless given that it's off to the side.\n+ Dialogue is scrolling text. You have to sit to listen to a bit more of the paced out voiced dialogue before reading the last line. I like this pacing, although I do sometimes wish I could just read and move a bit faster.\n+ No auto pickup gold.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://titanquest.fandom.com)\n+ [Steam: chris.ferrantegerard's Build Guides](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1883817533)\n  + [chris.ferrantegerard's Conqueror](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1741575491)\n+ [Almar's Guides](https://www.almarsguides.com/Computer/Games/TitanQuest)\n  + [Almar's Guides: Conqueror](https://www.almarsguides.com/Computer/Games/TitanQuest/Builds/Conqueror)\n\nGrim Dawn is basically the same game but with more features and more polished. Titan Quest still remains somewhat unique due to its setting.\n\nI played Anniversary Edition. It's the base game with the Immortal Throne expansion. The other three expansions are to be purchased on top of Anniversary Edition, and can be done any time: Ragnarok, Atlantis, Eternal Embers. I dropped the game during Atlantis (Act 6) as the game didn't seem very focused given the lack of a main questline. Eternal Embers is also only Legendary-only, and I'm not willing to grind all the way to Legendary.\n\n__Game settings.__\n\n+ By Act 2, I used the filter to \"Filter Common\" so only Yellow and above items appear, and I only pick up Yellow rings/amulets as they still sell for a lot and take only 1 slot. Gold is only useful in this game for respec, potions, and relics. You get plenty.\n+ I used the default game speed of Fast and then swapped to Very Fast in Act 4; Very Fast (roughly +35% speed over Normal) feels roughly the same speed of modern ARPGs like Grim Dawn and Path of Exile\n\n__Build.__ I played a Conqueror.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/titan-quest-gold-edition"},{"id":"322682678651442764","title":"Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PS3","PC","WiiU","X360"],"studios":["Ubisoft Toronto"],"publishers":["Ubisoft Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Tactical","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-10-09","completedDate":"2019-10-10","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Like Conviction, Blacklist is an action-oriented take on Splinter Cell's iconic military stealth. Certain combat mechanics such as light levels and leaving after infiltrating most missions are removed. Certain action mechanics such as cover system and Mark and Execute are added. Level designs are stale as is enemy variety. It all leads to a polished action but heavily streamlined stealth game. Like all Splinter Cells, it has as bad story and characterization as usual.\n\n__Story.__ Don't care for it as always. Tom Clancy stories are B-rated drama. Military babble. Technobabble. Gore. The game combines it with cheesy voice acting and choreography.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Splinter Cell missions are a chain of linear paths, each with a microstealth area to solve. Core stealth mechanics of crouch, run, sprint; controllable movement speed; interactable lights; on-vs-off stealthed lighting; cover system; distract; lethal and nonlethal takedowns; enemy alert system; hiding bodies. Progression system via loadout and plane upgrades.\n\nI don't know what's up with all the action elements, with clear inspirations from Uncharted like the platforming, chase sections, and various one-off minigame mechanics. I actually enjoyed Grim and Korbin's side missions more than the campaign. They were more sandbox-y and involved the core of what makes the game fun: stealth, ghosting, and takedowns.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Well-detailed and a clearly polished AAA title for 2013. Face models are clearly most aged. It definitely looks on par (e.g., lighting and textures) with Last of Us, Tomb Raider, and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag which are also 2013. Sound design is blaring and overly dramatic. Level designs are forgettable.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Checkpoint save system.\n+ Like Chaos Theory, you can control movement speed which subsequently controls footstep noise.\n+ You can shoot out lights.\n+ I like the mission scoring system with the three different playstyles of Ghost, Panther, and Assault, and that Ghost provides the most points with the specific approach of passing by enemies undetected providing the most.\n+ I like the progression system and loadouts, which offer more customizability than Chaos Theory's presets.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ I don't care for the action options that have been expanded upon ever since they were introduced in Conviction.\n+ Call of Duty-style health system.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ No light level like Chaos Theory. Just on/off.\n+ Hub between missions. It's just a waste of space and inefficient navigation.\n+ You can tag enemies which constantly provides you with their location. I never really liked this stealth mechanic ever since I first experienced it in MGSV and Far Cry 3. It makes games too easy and unrealistic, but it's not a gamebreaker like how much I despise a manual save system.\n+ Mark and Execute. Makes things too easy.\n+ Spy and Merc online feature which I don't care for. Same with the bloat of Ubisoft Uplay challenges. And Gone Dark missions.\n+ This guy climbs walls as stupidly fast and unrealistic as Uncharted.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/splinter-cell-blacklist\n\nLike most all stealth games, I played ghost (nonlethal no alerts) which is typically the most challenging and designed-to-be-fun in stealth games. I go lethal only when I must. I played Normal. I completed only the main campaign and the 4th Echelon side missions (except Briggs' which requires coop and Charlies' which is just action waves and is not why I play Splinter Cell).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tom-clancy-s-splinter-cell-blacklist"},{"id":"322682678650403404","title":"Torchlight","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":1230,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Runic Games"],"publishers":["Runic Games","Beijing Perfect World"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-08-30","completedDate":"2020-09-02","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"It has a lot of the highlights of the Diablo series with some mainstreaming. The pet is the most distinguishing element. Mid to endgame is stale.\n\n__Story.__ Forgettable and I didn't even bother to read the text a few hours in.\n\n__Gameplay.__  Most unique to Torchlight is the pet, which is a significant quality of life improvement for carrying loot and going back to town to sell them. Otherwise, however, Torchlight features standard ARPG elements coming from the mainstream that Diablo popularized: build-wise (mouse and action keys, inventory, stash, skill trees); HUD; enemy-wise; and quest structure (including identify and portal scrolls). It even has enchant, gems, transmutation, potion spam in heal over time and no cooldown, and waypoints. It's more streamlined than Diablo, without any durability, Diablo 2-style hubs with environment variety rather than a single large dungeon, and fewer character and item stats. Enemy variety and affinities on elites aren't as deep as Diablo 2.\n\nFame gives you extra skill points. Phase portals are rare spawns offering unique challenges. Whether they're fair in their limited corridors and massive amount of enemies is another thing. Map scrolls are one-off instances like Diablo's.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Blasting tons of enemies with Ember Lighting, my main spell. It's like Arc Elementalist from PoE all over again! It can even break LOS. Of course, it pales to the fast movement speed, fast cast speed, and AoE blow-up side effects that make the Arc Elementalist build so fun at endgame.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Left click to move item, right click to equip, shift left click to move to the next window, e.g., merchant or pet. You don't even have to open the pet window to shift left click to transfer items to the pet! You can't split item stacks though.\n+ You auto-pickup gold when you walk over it.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ There are multiple resurrect options instead of always incurring the XP and gold penalty.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ No borderless. I used Borderless Gaming and windowed setting which fortunately worked fine.\n+ No town healer.\n+ No respec options.\n+ Surprisingly, there are very few quests, with primarily just four questgivers following a formula throughout the game: Valeria's quests are main quest; Gar's quests are retrieval; Scholar's quests are ember retrieval; Hatch's quests are isolated portal dungeons.\n+ Ember sidequests don't tell you the level they're at. Without a guide, you can easily miss it and therefore the full quest chain.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://torchlight.fandom.com\n+ alchemist build | https://slashnblast.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/new-torchlight-1-build-arcane-alchemist\n\nFirst motivated to play in 05/2020 after really enjoying the Borderlands' class progression and RNG loot mechanics, which takes inspiration from ARPGs. Having already played Diablo and Path of Exile, I'd love to see Torchlight's approach to this. Thinking back to Freshman year at Berkeley, I wonder if this is the Torchlight that Justin(?) was playing in the dorms. It was Fall 2010 so it seems likely as Torchlight 2 is 2011. With that said, the game does not advance anything interesting however, so Grim Dawn seems like a better third option to Diablo and Path of Exile than delving into Torchlight, which especially took a bad reputation with Torchlight 3 (https://www.reddit.com/r/ARPG/comments/du5gv7/big_list_of_arpgs).\n\nPlaying the game, I was ultimately motivated from Sodapoppin after seeing him play Chronicron and RPing Flamewrath, a fire mage; that ARPG seems worse than others that I may as well play. There aren't many builds online, and I admire Soda's bravery to just dive straight into an RPG without research, instead learning on the way and allocating to builds based on the class fantasy. So I did that. I played on Hard difficulty as it is recommended to ARPG experts. I played Alchemist and allocated stats/skill points somewhat freely, although I did look at guides as I started accumulating them to make sure I was going generally in the right direction.\n\nAt Floor 31, I was triggered by being spawn camped and losing all my gold trying to kill the skeletons around me. Around Floor 30 I just felt the game felt too spongey with my damage taking 3-4 hits per enemy and me dying as a glass cannon. So I just decided to use cheats, turning on god and speed mode among others. The Dark Zealot guys are instant difficulty spike with their poison homing bolts being a one-shot-kill.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/torchlight-ii"},{"id":"322682678652678732","title":"Turok 2: Seeds of Evil","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":630,"platforms":["GBC"],"studios":["Bit Managers"],"publishers":["Acclaim Entertainment","Gradiente"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","completedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/turok-2-seeds-of-evil--1"},{"id":"322682678651398732","title":"Ultimate Doom: Episode 4 Only","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1995,"startedDate":"2020-05-12","completedDate":"2020-05-12","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Easily the worst of the episodes. Episode 4 was released two years after Doom (1993), and one year after Doom II, and it's clear from the progression that it's standalone and was designed in parallel by many folks. There's inconsistent difficulty in enemy balance. Level progression includes arbitrary difficulty spikes with too many spongey enemies, too little ammo, and bullshit traps such as enemies shooting from one-sided walls. It requires precise BFG and invulnerability suit usage (especially E4M1 and E4M2). I would be all for difficulty if it involved new enemy mechanics to master, not arbitrarily remembering how best to use limited ammo and secrets.\n\n In the first three episodes, there's a masterful sense of progression from scientific facilities (Episode 1) to a mix of facilities and hell (Episode 2) to hell (Episode 3), and with weapons, enemies, and overall difficulty. Episode 4 has none of that.\n\nI played all of Doom (1993) by saving only at the start of the episode. I abandoned that rule for Episode 4."},{"id":"322682678652446284","title":"Uncharted: Drake's Fortune","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2007,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["PS3"],"studios":["Naughty Dog"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-07-15","completedDate":"2019-07-16","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Uncharted sets the stage for the cinematic action-adventure genre: a decent story and set of main and supporting characters alongside great visual set pieces and orchestral music. Gameplay-wise, it's a platformer and third-person shooter. Platforming is decent; third-person shooter is mediocre at best and tedious otherwise.\n\n__Story.__ It's classic Indiana Jones rife with a charismatic humorish lead, good supporting characters, a mystery treasure plot and setting, and good mix of comedy and action-adventure. That dynamic with Elena Fisher is decent, as well as the best friend Sully. It's tropey but it works; I would watch it as a fluff film.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Gameplay comprises two forms: platforming; and third-person gunplay with a cover system.\n\nPlatforming controls are similar to Tomb Raider, e.g., controls available from a ledge. Platforming is decent but not innovative in any way, in fact just as similar as Tomb Raider 1 but with even less depth. Fortunately puzzles are fewer, and any puzzles are a lot more mainstream and less obscure, making it fun to go through. Overall, platforming in Uncharted series as a whole is nice compared to Tomb Raider in that there are not insanely frustrating jumps at occasion which hamper the experience. On the other hand, Uncharted’s platforming is so simplified that once can simply mash a button to jump and the autoaim always takes care of it.\n\nGunplay is standard fanfare and just a mediocre experience. All guns of a specific type (shotgun, sniper rifle, assault rifle, pistol) feel the same. It lacks freedom to approach areas with enemies and take down enemies. For example, there is no stealth to navigate around areas and assassinate (to be added in Uncharted 2 and all future games I guess). You just hide in an area and cover-shoot going from one area to the next. Lots of miscellaneous henchman as meat sponges. Zero enemy variety. The drive-by scenes provide a good change of pace but still only decent; there should be more alternatives like these. The switch between dynamic and fixed camera angles during platforming can sometimes be jarring.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Decent graphics that work even in 2019. Constrained face models and expressions are the most difficult to bear. Everything else is great. The sound is like a AAA film; love the orchestra.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ I like having the old man around to give hints whenever you're stuck (and then an in-game mechanic after he dies). It keeps the pacing on the story and action-adventure rather than puzzles which I hate.\n+ Minimal HUD.\n+ No underwater swimming mechanic. God I hate swimming in video games. It's such a different gameplay movement and battle mechanic than the rest of the game. And it's often just not good.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Treasures are missable. That said, you can replay chapters to find any you missed the first time through.\n+ Health system is Call of Duty like instead of a bar.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ That level where you must go up the river. Those controls, dodging barrels, and fighting rocket launcher enemies is frustrating.\n+ This game’s light hearted atmosphere clearly works best with less than normal difficulty. This lets you breeze by tedious gunfights.\n+ Zombies. What a dumb enemy.\n+ I really prefer the modern action-adventure approach of having white dots put on interactable objects in the environment like in Sekiro and God of War. Similarly, Dark Souls and God of Wars games have subtle highlights to mark items. It makes it easier to identify what's actually dynamic in the environment. Otherwise you can easily get lost and feel like you're just walking in a static world. There's a few highlights like sparkles in game, but not nearly enough.\n+ The running, jumping, swimming, and ratcheting from ledges animations are all pretty wimpy compared to Lara's in Tomb Raider Anniversary.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/uncharted-drakes-fortune/Walkthrough\n\nI played it on PS4, which is a remastered version including 1080p over the original's 720p and 60 fps over 30 fps: textures, higher polygon count, better lighting, the works; and also some improved cover+combat system which videogamedunkey likes! (6:22 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziUMJB3id8I). As of 2019-07-07, it's also not playable on RPCS3. I was most inspired to play this after just playing God of War, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and Tomb Raider: Anniversary, all of which set my platforming and cinematic action-adventures. I played on Normal difficulty up until Chapter 13 in which I played on Easy. Difficulties just change the amount of damage taken and damage output (https://uncharted.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty). Gunplay is not a great part of the game and can be tedious and occasionally frustrating. Playing on easy streamlines the experience for what matters most: the story and platforming.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/uncharted-drake-s-fortune"},{"id":"322682678652440140","title":"Uncharted: The Lost Legacy","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PS4"],"studios":["Naughty Dog"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-07-24","completedDate":"2019-07-25","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Uncharted The Lost Legacy is an interesting switch in pace by focusing on an unlikely duo. Unfortunately, it doesn't add anything new to the table in storytelling style, gameplay, or character dynamics---sticking instead to what has been shown to work in the series. And the story's villain drama remains insufferable as always.\n\n__Story.__ I like the focus on the duo of Chloe and Nadine. They make an unlikely but fearesome and well-matched duo as they bounce off each other in dialogue as you play the game. I actually enjoyed the story insofar as it provided depth into Chloe's background.\n\n__Gameplay.__ New lockpicking mechanic, C4, riding an elephant. Cool semi-open world in Chapter 4 that allows for a bit of freedom in the order of selecting things. Unfortunately, there's nothing to do in the open world so it's often a matter of point A to B while sightseeing. There's the additional pacing burden of driving around until you spot something, then getting out, doing something, then running back to get back in. I love it when Nadine (the AI) does tasks for you when they're nearby, e.g., pressing a button to get another stone out of the way. It adds to the constant dialogue the two are having in order to feel more immersive.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Beautiful environments like Uncharted 4. Indian urban environments and wilderness landscape is nice. It suits the backstory with Chloe well.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ I like that they take existing mechanics and subvert them. For example, there's a failed \"move the cargo to jump on top of\" and they joke about never doing it again. Or Chloe would try to pick a lock and Nadine would just smash the window to open the door.\n+ I like the use of a physical map to display where you are in Chapter 4.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ I'm not totally sure how I feel about the diversity card---what with a female Indian protagonist, female African second heroine, and an Indian villain. And clothing to not be revealing or show sexual fanservice.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Losing a 2-on-1.. and Nadine was supposed to be really good according to Uncharted 4. The scripted melee fights was also really boring.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/uncharted-the-lost-legacy/\n\nI didn't look for all Hoysala tokens to get the Queen's Ruby from the Mystery Ruin in Chapter 4. It seems tedious to drive around the map and pick up specific coins.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/uncharted-the-lost-legacy"},{"id":"322682678650397260","title":"Undermine","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":1110,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Thorium"],"publishers":["Fandom"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-09-08","completedDate":"2020-09-12","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Undermine is a solid 2D dungeon crawler roguelike with progression elements post-death, core battle mechanics, enemy and boss designs, and art style. Its 2D combat is much like Binding of Isaac and Hollow Knight. The game can be frustratingly grindy at times as you must redo the entire level to take another stab at a boss, and the reliance on damage mitigation like Darkest Dungeon and Dead Cells can make a single mistake frustratingly costly. I also wish there were more artifacts to enable stacking (there is little, at least up to Delvemore), and more bosses per location..\n\n__Story.__ Effectievly nonexistent, but I like the minimal context. Each try is a new peasant miner, and it's basically man labor thrown at the unknown to discover the cause of the tremors.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Roguelite progression mechanics. Core gameplay loop is great. Artifacts are what enable the emergent gameplay as they stack over levels. Levels follow the roguelike strategy of cell-by-cell, analogous to Binding of Isaac and Darkest Dungeon. Like Darkest Dungeon, Dead Cells, and For the King individual cell's combat is all about damage mitigation as your health pool ticks away and heals are limited. Progression follows a currency that you can purchase upgrades, artifacts, and new relics.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I like the 2D isometric sprite look. Reminds me of Link to the Past, Spelunky, and Binding of Isaac, which have a timeless art style.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ The gold stealing little fuckers. Keeps you on your toes. But annoying as fuck.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://undermine.gamepedia.com\n\nI got to the second boss and was almost finished killing him twice. Gave up afterwards the game didn't necessarily feel like I was improving, just improving on the single boss' mechanics, and progressively having my character simply be stronger as I grinded for gold.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/undermine--1"},{"id":"322682678652687948","title":"Wii Sports","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2006,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["Wii"],"studios":["Nintendo"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Simulator","Sport"],"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2011-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/wii-sports-plus-wii-sports-resort"},{"id":"322682678650366540","title":"Wolfenstein 3D","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":1992,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["Acorn Archimedes","?","PS3","PC","DOS","X360","GBA","XONE"],"studios":["id Software"],"publishers":["GT Interactive Software","BAM! Entertainment","Wiz Technology","Apogee Software","Activision","Imagineer","id Software","Bethesda Softworks","Powerslave Software"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2020-11-26","completedDate":"2020-11-26","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Wolfenstein 3D clearly pioneered the Doomlike genre and FPS as a whole in its core controls, environment navigation, weapon variety, and enemy variety. Flaw-wise from Doom (1993), it's clear why the latter ages better: Wolfenstein 3D's level designs are tedious 90-degree angle mazes with not enough variety or verticality, and arbitrary secrets gatekeeping progression in certain levels; enemies have significantly less variety and do not encourage diverse weapon usage rather than sticking to only one (no weapon is as iconic as Doom's).\n\n__Gameplay.__ The core gameplay is clearly where Doom (1993) took a lot of ideas: the core FPS controls with movement and interact key, navigating in 2.5D environments, weapon variety, enemy variety, keys, the stats screen at the end of a level, the theme of a fully evil entity that no one would have qualms killing, automap. Coming from the arcade times, treasures serve as a collectible.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Sprites age well. Walls don't.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Wolfenstein 3D was too early to have strafe left/right instead of turn left/right for its movement keys. This makes the original game abysmal in modern times unlike Doom (1993).\n+ All weapons share the same ammo, so you tend to just use the best weapon instead of them all.\n+ Like Doom (1993), dying means restarting the level and losing all your accumulated weapons/ammo.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ maps (but no keys) | https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1325446230\n+ maps with hints including keys | http://www.wolfenstein3d.co.uk/walk1.htm\n\nI played with a map. This helps with one of the most tedious elements of the game, which is navigating where exactly to go. I played on the lowest difficulty \"Can I play, Daddy?\" as I enjoy the power fantasy more than any difficulty in Wolfenstein games. I played on the source port ECWolf, with Borderless Gaming for borderless, and replacing the Steam filename so [Steam monitors my playtime](https://steamcommunity.com/app/2270/discussions/0/540740501104787799). ECWolf adds must-have quality of life features: fullscreen resolution that doesn't go back to windowed mode after alt-tabbing; strafe left/right controls; 16:9 support; always run option; exit in-game menu on pressing Esc again. I also love that it includes the in-game manual which the original game does not feature.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/wolfenstein-3d"},{"id":"322682678651391564","title":"Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":630,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["MachineGames"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-05-18","completedDate":"2020-05-22","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The New Colossus features solid gameplay polishing a few elements from the previous games. Unfortunately, the game's major downfall is its lack of gameplay. The story takes a frontseat, overwhelming a larger portion of the playtime with prerendered cutscenes and hub walking simulator gameplay, and the story is both inconsistent and occasionally hamfisted. In addition, the game occassionally suffers from difficulty spikes that I occasionally encountered but fortunately not nearly as much as what you hear from higher difficulties as mentioned regularly in the community. And the level designs can be repetitive featuring a sequence of commander areas.\n\n__Story.__ This game is weirdly both serious and silly for the series. It doesn't work because the storytelling is often too hamfisted and inconsistent in mood: one mission, you're headed off to execution and losing your body; another misison, you're recruiting New Orleans resistance fighters with a debate about hippy Bohevians against war; another mission, you're disguised as an actor who's auditioning to play yourself and the Hitler scene. The racist and alcoholic upbringing. Death of his mentor. Declining body and parenthood. Capture and execution. Overall, there are too many lengthy cutscenes, pre-rendered ones at that, and this interrupts the flow of gameplay.\n\n__Gameplay.__ The game operates likes its predecessors but with more polish such as increasing sprint's movement speed and reloading. There are also a few new mechanics: you can dual wield any combination of weapons; environment destruction for navigation via the Power Armor's Power Slam; contraptions (and their perks) for a tad more environment interaction. The Hatchet carries over from The Old Blood.\n\nOn weapons. There's now a SMG (technically machinepistole) for proper close combat dual wielding rather than dual assault rifle (my preferred style outside of stealth and the occasional assault rifle/sniper cover shooter). The rest of the weapons are the same. The weapons overall aren't as balanced anymore: I found it generally unnecessary to revert myself to the Bombadier and Dieselkraftwerk as the Assault Rifle with his armor-piercing rounds worked well enough, and the necessity for Diselkraftwek's platforming rarely appeared.\n\nOn progression. Instead of health/armor upgrades, there are now only weaopn upgrade kits which can you spend selectively. There are also body augments: crawl through small gaps; burst through vents; jump to high platforms.\n\nThere are two sets of side missions: Ubercommander missions and miscellaneous fetch quests that offer no rewards except for the 3 contraptor ugprades (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1188402276). Ubercommander missions are optional challenge missions reusing levels to kill a commander, and with the only gameplay incentive being the ability to replay missions to collect missed collectibles on the first playthrough, collect the two other contraptions and remaining Weapon Upgrade Kits, and achievements/trophies.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ These graphics are impressive. Lighting. Texture detail. Camera blur. Special effects. Performance is also excellent and no longer capped at 60 FPS, where I played at max settings with a consistent 75 FPS. The animations like takedowns are even more stellar.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ You can press G when you're lost to have objective markers appear on your screen.\n+ Like the first game, collectibles outside upgrades are all optional. Enigma codes offer Ubercommander missions, which are optional assassination missions, and there's an infinite supply of them. Others add lore or art.\n+ You can now stealth kill armored Nazis and tamper with robot Nazis!\n+ While you don't auto pick up health or ammo, you now auto pick up armor at least.\n+ Native 21:9 support including HUD and both pre-rendered and ingame cutscenes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9RQlCbrPi0).\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Hubs. Hubs in video games are often unnecessary, particularly one of this size.\n+ Sprint is no longer toggle by default in this game. This is super weird because it's hard otherwise to dash because you need to use two fingers, so I set it to toggle. You can press X to dual wield again as in The New Order but which was turned off in The Old Blood. Crouch is also back to Ctrl but still toggle. Also, LMB now shoots right gun in dual wield.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://wolfenstein.fandom.com/wiki/Upgrade_Kits, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USAcIfPpNXc\n+ on difficulty in wolfenstein 2 | https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/7dqsqr/can_we_talk_about_how_ludicrous_the_difficulty_in/dpzxe5u/\n\nI chose to sacrifice Fergus this time as apparently Wyatt's sideplot adds more to the story (https://www.reddit.com/r/Wolfenstein/comments/8drhb9/whats_the_difference_between_the_wyatt_and_fergus/). Plus, he gives a different weapon than the Laserkraftwerk, so more variety! Like The New Order and The Old Blood I played at normal (Bring 'em on!) difficulty. I only used a guide to get all weapon upgrade kits in a level and otherwise played blind for immersion. I chose weapon upgrades according to guns I just used more often. For contraptions, I started with Constrictor Harness mostly for Silent Step as the major benefits from the other two are health/armor regeneration for Ram Shackles and lack of overcharged health depletion for Battle Walker (https://wolfenstein.fandom.com/wiki/Contraptions). Missing first Weapon Upgrade kit in Manhattan Nuclear Bunker and Weapon Upgrade Kit for Rosewell Downtown; I'm missing a total of 3 for max upgrades. I only completed side missions in Eva's Hammer to unlock contraption upgrades and did I complete all ubercommander missions.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/wolfenstein-ii-the-new-colossus"},{"id":"322682678652481100","title":"Yakuza Kiwami","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":1050,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS3","PS4","Switch 2","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio"],"publishers":["Deep Silver","Sega Games"],"genres":["Fighting","Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-02-21","completedDate":"2019-02-23","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Yakuza Kiwami is unfortunately too serious for its strengths (Japanese quirkiness and minigame sidestories). Its story lacks character depth and a more interesting narrative: the girl Haruka is just not as interesting as the other characters of Yakuza 0 (Makoto was arguably as bad as Haruka, but fortunately had a more interesting tale around her and did not involve multiple fetch quests to save her once she inevitably gets kidnapped again); Yakuza 0's Tachibana and Oda are better characters than Yakuza Kiwami's Florist and Date. I already found Yakuza 0's story well-executed for complementing Yakuza's core strengths but not great by itself. Yakuza Kiwami suffers by relying more on the main story than the comedy, minigames, and substories. With the same map layout and fewer minigames/substories, Kamurucho overall doesn't feel alive. For example, while it has the same number of substories, the substory characters don't connect back to an overarching city minigame like Yakuza 0's Real Estate and Cabaret Club. In addition, the subplots with the Florist's son, and Date's daughter, are unnecessary for a story that's already made very short.\n\nWhy did they have to kill Reina? Seems unnecessarily edgy and dark..Also, making Jingu (basically a random person in the Yakuza lore) Haruka's father is dissapointing. It would have been more interesting to make it Nishikiyama. They killed a lot of people in this game in general, e.g., Sera, Shinji, Kazuma, the Omi Alliance villain, Nishikiyama, Jingu, Yumi. And of course they had to make the cucking husband the main villain. The finale is especially ridiculous in the monologues and contrivances. The love pentagon with Kiryu, Nishikiyama, Yumi, Reina, and Jingu is especially stupid.\n\nIn terms of details, this game feels like a successor to Yakuza 0 rather than a remastered version of the first entry to the Yakuza 0 series. Fighting is the same (and slightly refined with the Kiwami power action), menu is the same, locations and NPC AI are the same, characters are the same.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Most of the details that I like, am ambivalent about, and dislike from Yakuza 0 also appear in Yakuza Kiwami. Here, I only describe details unique to Yakuza Kiwami.\n+ With abilities to upgrade, they affect all styles rather than just one. This makes it easier to manage your budget rather than force oneself to commit to a style.\n+ Given the 10 year skip, Kiryu now carries a cell phone. He can save using the cell phone.\n+ After a fight ends, the screen freezes and turns blue. This feels more polished to me than Yakuza 0's color just flipping to turn negative.\n+ When fighting Majima, he has the same fighting styles and heat moves as in Yakuza 0 when you played him.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ It's not only Yakuza 0's game engine but exactly the same Kamurocho game map as Yakuza 0's. I don't know if I like that familiarity or am too bored of the redundancy.\n+ No score breakdown after thug fights on the street. This removes one arcade element of Yakuza. In general, I'm ambivalent about whether Yakuza should keep its arcade roots (like its brawler-style fighting) or drop it.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ You spend experience points rather than money to gain abilities. This effectively acts as a second currency, and I realize I don't actually spend the real Yen on anything substantial: healing consumables and others are inexpensive.\n+ I greatly prefer the AV cards found across the city than thee generic locker key. The former uniquely stamps one's own as a Yakuza game.\n+ While the game plays in ultrawide screen (21:9), the cutscenes still assume 16:9 aspect ratio.\n+ Everyone has a constant frown as the typical face expression. Man that's got to hurt to keep wearing it. It makes cutscenes feel overly static and dull.\n+ Ten years pass and yet all the character models remain exactly the same. Even the city and its culture remain the same. Very few things change--you would hope they would take the ten years to refine mannerisms, personalities, etc. Why not reduce the amount to 2 or 5 years?\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\n+ guides | https://www.neoseeker.com/yakuza-kiwami/walkthrough, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/181171-yakuza-kiwami/faqs/75194\n+ differences between yakuza kiwami (2016) and yakuza (2005) | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN74qYFV-7I\n\nI played it on Windows on its release date of Feb 19 2019. My total playtime is 16 hours, beating the base game in 16 hours (as recorded by Steam). I did most (~50) but not all substories and did not go completionist with my completionist list or Majima Everywhere. My expectations coming into this game is that it's less content-packed and polished than Yakuza 0, which was written at the height of the Yakuza series' budget, fan growth, and more. I expect to play it and grow tired of the game to appreciate Yakuza 0 as the best and only worthy in the series.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/yakuza-kiwami"},{"id":"322682678651433548","title":"Yakuza Kiwami 2","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":1110,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Switch 2","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio"],"publishers":["Sega","Sega Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-12-04","completedDate":"2019-12-19","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The story is not as good as Yakuza 0, and neither is the gameplay. It was a fun playthrough but not necessarily groundbreaking by any means. My favorite elements are the Cabaret Club and improved textures.\n\n__Story.__ More ambitious and less melodramatic than Yakuza Kiwami to its benefit. Clearly with its strong primary characters, Yakuza Kiwami 2 set the precedent for future titles' multiple protagonist take (to Yakuza 0's story benefit for example).\n\n__Gameplay.__ I like the combat based on Yakuza 6 rather than Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami's combat. Namely, there are no combat fighting styles for its simplicity, but I actually prefer the variety in trying out all three styles (each of which had some use case in Yakuza 0: moving around speedily; brawler-style CC and automatically picking up items when attacking; and the general-purpose one). Progression system is similar, spending experience points. New combat wise are charge attacks, more weapons, situation-based heat moves.\n\nCabaret Club 2.0 from Yakuza 0?? Yes please! Cabaret club is easily my favorite Yakuza minigame and one of the best parts of the series. I would play a game dedicated just to the Cabaret Club. In Yakuza Kiwami 2, Cabaret Club is also the most efficient way to get income, so there's a gaming incentive to grinding in it. They add to it just a bit with Oil Barons, four passive perk abilities that don't really do much, timed dialogue options, but otherwise the exact same structure. That core structure is excellent: progression/management with recruiting/lineups/leveling, platinum hostesses, a cheesy story, pseudo-dating, how the game interacts with the rest of the city making it feel overall more alive.\n\nSide quests aren't as memorable as Yakuza 0. They're fairly linear and not as spunky.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Incredible graphics upgrade from Yakuza Kiwami. Textures are mroe detailed, lighting is more realistic. HUD is cleaner. You can enter stores/buildings without a loading screen! I like the regional accents.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ Playing the Cabaret Club at 4am in the morning, just optimizing my arsenal of cabaret girls.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Unlike other games, there's an actual incentive to eating at restaurants aside from completionism, which is gaining EXP. Therefore you always want to fill his stomach when you can.\n+ Unlike Yakuza 0, there are no suboptimal answers during dialogue options in substories. This means you don't have to follow substory guides so you don't miss out on a reward.\n+ Native 21:9 support. The pre-rendered cutscenes are pillarboxed properly.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ You no longer need to go to a phonebooth to save. More streamlining, less lore/mechanics.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ I have mixed feelings about all the reused assets in this game borrowed from previous games. It makes the game feel less new and more already played out, whether it be the map, some animations, etc.\n+ While there's JAV actresses in this game for the Cabaret Club Grand Prix, there's less JAV/softcore content overall than Yakuza 0 (e.g., the nude girl telephoto cards that you pick up, Marina in the real estate game). I liked having these as it adds charm to the game.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.neoseeker.com/yakuza-kiwami-2/walkthrough\n\nI played on Easy as I don't find the combat difficulty necessarily fun. I like to play the brawling more mindlessly. Progression-wise, I favored life skills and then spread points around stats, battle moves, and heat moves. Playing a week in hiatus for NeurIPS, I found my save file corrupted (name of the save file disappears when trying to laod; playtime hour count is 0; https://steamcommunity.com/app/927380/discussions/0/1652170487948228129/). Luckily, one of my backup saves kept me close story-wise, and the major portion I lost was 100% progress on the Cabaret Club (had to redo Chapter 8; maybe 8 hours of screwing around from Cabaret Club).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/yakuza-kiwami-2"},{"id":"322682678652697164","title":"Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul","status":"Completed","score":6,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":870,"platforms":["GBA"],"studios":["Konami Computer Entertainment Japan"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I loved this game. I remember playing it on both Japanese and later English to its completion. The fast forward mechanic is a quality-of-life game changer.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/yu-gi-oh-the-eternal-duelist-soul"},{"id":"322682678652527180","title":"1080 Snowboarding","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["N64","Wii","WiiU"],"studios":["Nintendo EAD"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Racing","Sport"],"startedDate":"1997-12-31","completedDate":"1997-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/1080-snowboarding"},{"id":"322682678652528204","title":"Addiction Pinball","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1998,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Team17"],"publishers":["MicroProse Software, Inc."],"genres":["Pinball"],"startedDate":"1997-12-31","completedDate":"1997-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/addiction-pinball"},{"id":"322682678652786252","title":"Alan Wake","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PC","X360"],"studios":["Remedy Entertainment"],"publishers":["E-Frontier","Legacy Interactive","Namco Bandai Partners","Microsoft Game Studios","Remedy Entertainment","Nordic Games Publishing"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2023-04-15","completedDate":"2023-04-16","updatedDate":"2023-04-17","notes":"The vibes with a small town psychological thriller are Alan Wake's greatest strength. But even that's not that good, effectively B-tier with nothing that stands out.\n\nFlaw-wise, Alan Wake's combat is awful. Core combat loop of flashing enemies to take down their darkness armor, then shoot them is superficial and a worse approach than Fatal Frame. Action is too drawn out, enemy variety is low, ammo is too limited given the action pieces, and there's too much action for a game that should be more thriller than action. There's no combat progression, and you even lose all your items at various scenes and after every episode.\n\n__Story.__\nCharacters are fairly stock trope for a mystery thriller / crime fiction. The story dips its toes a bit too much in the surreal dream worlds to ground it much, and it's not unique dream surrealness like David Lynch's Twin Peaks.\n\nThe story is like a B/C-rated thriller.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\nSimple weapon variety of pistol, shotgun, and flare gun for AOE. It's not really survival horror in limited ammo, limited heals, inventory management, exploration, or combat progression. These are all streamlined.\n\nEnemy variety is simplistic.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Classic Xbox 360 graphics, aiming for realism at the time but does not age well. Serviceable. The remaster doesn't really seem all that remastered.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Limited sprinting stamina. And no meter to gauge when to conserve vs spend the energy.\n+ You can't change difficulty mid-game. I wish I were playing Easy instead of Normal difficulty given how tedious the combat is.\n+ Default third person view is on the right side, not the left side.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played the 2021 remaster. I played Normal difficulty. By middle of Act 3, I found the combat too unsufferable so I used a [CheatEngine trainer](https://fearlessrevolution.com/viewtopic.php?t=17754) to breeze through all combat. If I couldn't find something like this, I would probably drop the game. I stopped playing after Episode 4 completed and just read the plot summary online.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/alan-wake"},{"id":"322682678652531276","title":"Armored Core","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["PS3","PS1","PSP"],"studios":["FromSoftware"],"publishers":["Agetec","FromSoftware","Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Simulator"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/armored-core"},{"id":"322682678651459148","title":"Assassin's Creed II","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":1140,"platforms":["PS3","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["Ubisoft Montreal"],"publishers":["Ubisoft Entertainment"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-08-08","completedDate":"2019-08-09","updatedDate":"2023-06-30","notes":"Assassin's Creed II is apparently the pinnacle of the series alongside Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. But I found it to be deeply flawed, with a poor story, clunky combat and platforming, basic stealth with little freedom and variety, and with unnecessary RPG-like shop/equipment/town upgrading mechanics. On the plus, I do like Assassin's Creed historical setting and overall concept of assassination (excluding the modern scifi pieces). There are also certain moves and ideas from this game that have become staple in modern AAA titles like stealth kills from air, hiding spots, and ledges. For a game based on assassins, it's ironic that Assassin's Creed's claim to fame is not actually in its stealth; it's the [open world and RPG mechanics](https://www.reddit.com/r/assassinscreed/comments/92va26/an_assassins_creed_game_focused_on_stealth).\n\nEverything else, however, I found fault. Most problematic is the clunky platforming and stealth. I couldn't excuse these even when other games in 2009 had better versions. Tomb Raider in 1996 has better climbing and scaling. MGS4, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and 2009 titles like Uncharted 2 and Arkham Asylum have better stealth. Oblivion has a better open world and missions. In this game, I would often try to scale a platform only to fall down and have to redo a sequence again; or try to sneak up to an enemy but completely fail because there's no crouch mechanic, hiding behind walls, or light/percentage-based camoflauge. Missions are simple and lack variety: kill this guy in this one location, move around in the town escaping guards, fetch this, follow this escort, track this person. Both the story and RPG mechanics are mediocre.\n\n__Story.__ Story is stale---like the quality of a mediocre Netflix title. If this is the best of the series, then color me unimpressed. I like the overall premise of starting from a rambunctious young man and seeing over the course of an entire trilogy how he evolves. But the story itself is not well-executed, filled with tropes in the narrative and 1-dimensional characters and villains. My opinion is and has always been that Assassin's Creed would be a better game without the modern scifi story on top of it. It's completely unnecessary. Also, having Leonardo da Vinci as a character? Please. For an Assassin's guild, there is no other assassin or notion of membership and ranking that would have been interesting to push on. Ezio is touted as handsome, woman-conniving, and as you move, and the story involves characters constantly praising his powers, particularly the villains. Given the self-insertion, it's pathetic.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Gameplay comprises combat, stealth, platforming.\n\nCombat and platforming are mediocre. The animations, hitboxes, and pacing feels clunky as an old game. I do like the concept of the 4 buttons varying as left hand, right hand, head (so talking/interacting), and legs (so fast walk/run). Side step and the ability to just spam parry. I also hate Eagle Vision (detective mode in Arkham) in any game. Weapon selection tool, and pausing the game to change weapons, is bad. Combat is almost too easy in that you can destroy an arbitray mob of soldiers, which incentivizes Rambo mode more often than being purely stealth.\n\n[Assassin's Creed is a bad stealth game](https://www.reddit.com/r/assassinscreed/comments/a4hi8o/stealth_in_older_assassins_creed_games_was_not). The concept is interesting in that instead of the traditional stealth game where missions typically involve sneaking around enemies, you instead move around blending in crowds, sitting on a bench, hiding in tents, etc. in plain sight (Hitman-style). However, missions often do involve sneaking around (and anytime you're on rooftops). But you can't sneak so the game fails hard at it. Missions are also highly scripted without much freedom. The stealth elements are interesting however: for example, blending as crowds walk or stand around, sitting on benches, stealing as you bump into people, hidden blade, notoriety, stealth kills from air (was Assassin's Creed the one to popularize this move as well as the automatic freerunning?), stealth kills from hiding spots/ledges, hiring goons. I only wish there was real sneaking, which is a core flaw in the mechanic.\n\nThere's also a town renovation mechanic where you build up your shops and also provide the town more value which raises your regular income. I find this side gameplay completely unecessary. There's also horse and boat riding neither of which are particularly good. I would rather they refine the core combat, stealth mechanics, missions, and level design. There are also armor to upgrade, armor to repair, weapons to purchase, larger medicine pouches, and health consumables. Collectibles include treasure chests (which just add more money), glyphs (the main collectible), feathers, and codices (which upgrade your max health).\n\nI'm not a fan of \"open zone\" open worlds, including Assassin Creed II's. That said, the design is impressive for 2009, even larger scale than Arkham City which came out 2 years later. The cities all feel very same-y though, making the game feel large only for the sake of being large. I hate this aspect of open worlds, and this is true only more so in modern games, including all Assassin's Creed future iterations.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Hard to appreciate its graphics as I feel its age playing it in 2019. I don't like the \"science\" style for its HUD/interfaces. It adds a lot of bloat to the aesthetic and looks stupid (speaking as a scientist myself).\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ The ending is gated by collecting things.\n+ You can't skip cinematics. This makes replaying something whenever you fail tedious.\n+ PC version: Controller support is bad. The mappings in the tutorial and interfaces also don't correspond to your controller mappings so the learning curve of the button layout is steep. No windowed or borderless window mode. Fortunately Steam's Shift-Tab followed by alt-tabbing works although loading takes much longer.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/Gaming4Gamers/comments/b9fl9e/what_is_the_best_assassin_creed_game_to_start_on\n\nI chose this version as my first Assassin's Creed game. It seemed regarded to be [generally the best, along with Brotherhood (the third) and 4](https://www.polygon.com/2017/10/27/16554856/assassins-creed-origins-games-ranked). Choosing this lets me read the Wikipedia summary to understand the first, and follow along with the next sequels if I like the series.\n\nI used English audio with English subtitles. I would love to play in Italian audio, but it seems like the game was developed natively with English. I played on PS4 according to the Ezio Collection, which remasters the game with textures, lighting, and only is worse than PC in having 30 FPS instead of 60 FPS and no 21:9 support ([1](https://n4g.com/news/1958857/assassins-creed-2-the-ezio-collection-vs-pc-original-graphics-comparison), [2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JNJ1rSreV0)). I originally tried playing on PC with Xbox One Controller on February 2019. It has issues. Manual remapping of button works fine (following [these settings](https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed_II/Controls)), but the game does not recognize the Left/Right Triggers (so Contextual Camera / Weapon Selection; I mapped them to L3 / R3 instead; R3 has no use; L3 is previously First Person View which is useless). The [x360ce mentioned online did not help](https://steamcommunity.com/app/15100/discussions/0/34095684753143672). Resolution-wise, I'm pleasantly surprised PC supports the 21:9 aspect ratio for gameplay, even if it doesn't for cutscenes. I did not play the two Sequence DLCs. I did not complete Sequence 14 (the ending) either. It requires collecting all Codex pages, which is not content I'm willing to endure, and which gives one last mission: kill the pope. I decided to watch the ending instead.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/assassin-s-creed-ii"},{"id":"327950278983680577","title":"Blood: Cryptic Passage","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["DOS"],"studios":["Sunstorm Interactive"],"publishers":["WizardWorks Software"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2022-04-03","completedDate":"2022-04-09","updatedDate":"2022-08-06","notes":"Fun expansion with all the same elements of Blood's base game. New to Cryptic Passage, unfortunately:\n\n+ There are a lot more hitscanners in open areas in the levels. This makes for a much more frustrating experience against Cultists than the base game, where you have more ability to LOS them by hiding after corner peeking and luring them, or bouncing dynamite to get them in the corner.\n+ Enemy respawns are much more common in the levels here.\n+ Boss was an annoying bullet sponge and rocket firer.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ All the obscure level progression blockers such as interacting with buttons on random bookshelves.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/cryptic-passage-for-blood"},{"id":"322682678652533324","title":"Bloody Roar 2","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["Arcade","PS3","PS1","PSP"],"studios":["Raizing"],"publishers":["Hudson Soft","Virgin Interactive Entertainment (Europe) Ltd.","Sony Computer Entertainment of America"],"genres":["Fighting","Arcade"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","completedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bloody-roar-2"},{"id":"322682678652534348","title":"Bomberman World","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":90,"platforms":["PC","PS1"],"studios":["Hudson Soft"],"publishers":["Hudson Soft","Atlus USA","Sony Computer Entertainment Europe"],"genres":["Arcade"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","completedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bomberman-world"},{"id":"327331644247638609","title":"Borderlands 3: Bounty Of Blood - A Fistful of Redemption","originalTitle":"『ボーダーランズ3』荒野のヴォルト・ハンター ～血だらけの懸賞金をつかめ","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"publishers":["2K Games"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2022-03-28","completedDate":"2022-03-29","updatedDate":"2022-03-29","notes":"I like the wild west setting. It's new unlike the other DLCs. Reminds me of Fallout New Vegas' Honest Hearts setting. The characters are forgettable as are the battles.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-3-bounty-of-blood-a-fistful-of-redemption"},{"id":"324868828392587855","title":"Borderlands 3: Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot","originalTitle":"モクシィのハンサム・ジャックポット乗っ取り大作戦","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"publishers":["2K Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2022-03-26","completedDate":"2022-03-27","updatedDate":"2022-04-06","notes":"Story and level design are forgettable. It's more of the same---at the least not as cringey as BL3's main story---but it has no interesting elements. The level design felt too much like Borderlands 2 and TPS to feel innovative. Handsome Jack as a character was interesting in BL2 but overly drawn out and unnecessary already in BL TPS and Tales from Borderlands. No need to keep milking the cow with a BL3 DLC.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Fl4K Endgame Builds Compilation](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MiGGa_HDpm_IzHWgfhIDkLxzqiL_7O5HRC8E8ICerQg/edit)\n+ [Zane Endgame Builds Compilation](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p9tA92kJx2ZOKJG8r7G2yEQi6XE9p8qjlWvJWoNgfu4/edit). I followed Violent Momentum build.\n+ [FromDarkHell's BL3SaveEditor](https://github.com/FromDarkHell/BL3SaveEditor)\n+ [Lootlemon](https://www.lootlemon.com) for item codes\n\nI started playing the Borderlands 3 DLCs, motivated by the release of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. I picked up where I left off in 2020 stopping after I beat the main game at level 35. I did side quests to get reacquainted with the game, then used a Save Editor to reach max level and experiment with classes and weapons so I can play DLCs with endgame builds. I played some but generally skipped side missions for all DLC.\n\n__Classes.__ For Fl4k, I’m not a fan of pets including when I played Mordecai in BL1. Its AI for being extra aggro is unreliable and managing their DPS targets is cumbersome. Fl4K builds center around Fade Away and involve running up close and firing, particularly with high fire rate guns or shotguns. The main advantage over other classes is crit; there’s also pet builds with Gamma Burst or Rakk Attack that I don’t care for.\n\nZane has high utility with two action skills and a diverse skill tree: clone build emphasizing splash damage; crit build with cannon emphasizing damage per shot or crit friendly high fire rate guns; and with barrier or drone as a useful secondary action skill. All builds feature speed demon skills to truly emulate the Doom run and gun. Zane’s crit build has better movement speed and survivability, making it the winner for questing and mobbing; Fl4k is superior for boss farming. Zane also features the best dialogue. \n\n+ Favorite weapons: Clairvoyance, Hellwalker, Light Show, Rowan's Call, Reflux, Unkempt Harold.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-3-moxxis-heist-of-the-handsome-jackpot"},{"id":"322682678652536396","title":"Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2005,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["WiiU","NDS"],"studios":["Nintendo SPD Production Group No. 2"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Puzzle","Quiz/Trivia"],"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2004-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/brain-age-train-your-brain-in-minutes-a-day"},{"id":"322682678652538444","title":"Burnout Paradise","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2008,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Criterion Games"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Racing"],"startedDate":"2008-12-31","completedDate":"2008-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/burnout-paradise"},{"id":"322682678652499532","title":"Call of Duty: Black Ops 4","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":450,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Treyarch"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2018-11-01","completedDate":"2018-11-09","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Standard fanfare. A bit boring, more than I expected. What I never liked: reliance on quick reaction time, spawn camping where you immediately lose control of your character within seconds of moving. It's infuriating, and it causes you stress. Also not a fan of special powers for each class. It's COD. Please no class system.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/call-of-duty-black-ops-4"},{"id":"322682678652542540","title":"Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["WiiU","GBA"],"studios":["Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo","Konami"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Platform","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/castlevania-harmony-of-dissonance"},{"id":"322682678652543564","title":"Chessmaster 10th Edition","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2004,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Ubisoft Bucharest"],"publishers":["Ubisoft Bucharest"],"genres":["Sport","Strategy","Quiz/Trivia"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/chessmaster-10th-edition"},{"id":"322682678652546636","title":"Cool Boarders 2","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":270,"platforms":["PS3","Android","PS1","PSP"],"studios":["UEP Systems"],"publishers":["UEP Systems","Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Racing","Sport"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","completedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/cool-boarders-2"},{"id":"322682678652547660","title":"Cool Boarders 3","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":330,"platforms":["PS1"],"studios":["Idol Minds"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment America","Sony Computer Entertainment Europe","UEP Systems","Sony Computer Entertainment America"],"genres":["Sport"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","completedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/cool-boarders-3"},{"id":"322682678650372684","title":"Dear Esther","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":90,"platforms":["PC","Mac","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["The Chinese Room","Rob Briscoe"],"publishers":["The Chinese Room","Curve Digital"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-11-13","completedDate":"2020-11-13","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I enjoyed the scenery and overall immersion of environment sounds. I did not care for the overarching soundtrack or the man occasionally speaking in obtuse messages. Walking speed can be a little infurirating especially if you're trying to figure out where to go next. Lack of character model makes you feel like a walking camera moreso than a walking person.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dear-esther-landmark-edition"},{"id":"322682678652497484","title":"Destiny 2","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["Stadia","Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Bungie"],"publishers":["Activision","Bungie"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2018-11-14","completedDate":"2018-11-14","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The predecessor Destiny is only available on consoles. Decided not to play as I was just not a fan of Halo and its scifi weapons setting. I do think the idea behind a shooter MMO is interesting, and I never got to play one. But this one remains very instance-based as a platformer with an intermission area.\n\nIt definitely does not play like an MMO. It's largely instance-based with a linear platformer pathway with goons waiting for you like Halo. And there is no loot per enemy drop where you can choose, e.g., quests and farm rares.\n\nStory is juvenile. I can literally hear the cliches line-by-line. I'm not sure if Halo was also this bad or if it's just that I never really paid attention to the story in these types of video games. I only really played for a few hours.\n\nGraphics (at max settings) are of course brilliantly shown. And I love the slightly triangular palette for displaying human faces.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/destiny-2"},{"id":"322682678652557900","title":"Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2005,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","PC","X360","XONE","Switch","PS2"],"studios":["Capcom Production Studio 1"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Shooter","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2007-12-31","completedDate":"2007-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/devil-may-cry-3-dante-s-awakening"},{"id":"322682678652560972","title":"Digimon Battle Spirit","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["GBA","WonderSwan"],"studios":["Dimps Corporation"],"publishers":["Bandai"],"genres":["Fighting"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/digimon-battle-spirit-2"},{"id":"322682678652559948","title":"Digimon World","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":2520,"platforms":["PS1"],"studios":["Bandai"],"publishers":["Bandai"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"So much nostalgia for the obscure evolution system and spending time nurtuoring the Digimon.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/digimon-world-3"},{"id":"322682678652561996","title":"Disney's Tarzan","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PS2","NGC"],"studios":["Ubisoft Montreal"],"publishers":["Ubisoft"],"genres":["Platform"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/disneys-tarzan-freeride"},{"id":"322682678650375756","title":"Donkey Kong","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1983,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["fds","3DS","Wii","famicom","WiiU","NES"],"studios":["Nintendo R&D2"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Platform","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2020-11-08","completedDate":"2020-11-08","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Classic characters. Core platforming over obstacles. Fall damage in 2nd level is annoying.\n\nI played it on NES using the Higan emulator.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/donkey-kong--1"},{"id":"322682678652565068","title":"Dragon Ball Z: Budokai","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2002,"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30"},{"id":"322682678652568140","title":"Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2005,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["Spike"],"publishers":["Bandai","Atari, Inc."],"genres":["Fighting"],"startedDate":"2005-12-31","completedDate":"2005-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-ball-z-budokai-tenkaichi"},{"id":"322682678652571212","title":"Extreme-G","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["N64","PC"],"studios":["Probe Entertainment"],"publishers":["Acclaim Entertainment"],"genres":["Racing","Sport"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/extreme-g-2"},{"id":"322682678651425356","title":"Fallout 3: Broken Steel","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Bethesda Game Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2019-12-25","completedDate":"2019-11-25","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Boring, dragged on main story which wasn't that good in the first place. A second final base is not that interesting.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallout-3-broken-steel"},{"id":"322682678651423308","title":"Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Bethesda Game Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2019-12-26","completedDate":"2019-12-26","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I'm always a fan of the premises that force you to abandone your previous items and/or campanions.\n\nBoring linear experience though. You were already imprisoned in The Pitt. There was nothing interesting about the abduction or alien designs in Mothership Zeta. The premise is there---abduction, funky aliens, mothership, characters across time periods. It's all not an interesting experience though.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallout-3-mothership-zeta"},{"id":"c2419f0b-5edf-45dd-a6e8-f8569e47017b","title":"Fears to Fathom: Home Alone","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Rayll Studios"],"publishers":["Rayll Studios"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2024-10-25","completedDate":"2024-10-25","updatedDate":"2025-05-11","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fears-to-fathom-home-alone--1"},{"id":"340404005936038480","title":"Forward: Escape the Fold","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2022,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","browser"],"studios":["Two Tiny Dice"],"publishers":["Asylum Labs","Two Tiny Dice"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Strategy","Indie","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2022-04-09","completedDate":"2022-04-09","updatedDate":"2022-08-19","notes":"I like the colorful assets and pixel art. The gameplay itself is intriguing at first glance but superficial. There's little strategy and no diverse playstyles.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/forward-escape-the-fold"},{"id":"322682678652508748","title":"Fruit Ninja","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["PC","X360","Android","iOS","Vita"],"studios":["Halfbrick Studios"],"publishers":["Halfbrick Studios","Perpetuum Media","Digital Games","Big Ant Studios"],"genres":["Platform","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2010-12-31","completedDate":"2010-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"A refreshing mainstream revival on defense games. Nothing new though. In fact, it seems to benefit from its limitation of general defense game mechanics.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fruit-ninja"},{"id":"322682678652578380","title":"Gauntlet Legends","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":2310,"platforms":["Arcade"],"studios":["Atari Games"],"publishers":["SNK","Atari Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2004-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gauntlet-legends"},{"id":"322682678652581452","title":"Gran Turismo","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":1740,"platforms":["PSP"],"studios":["Polyphony Digital"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Racing","Simulator"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gran-turismo--1"},{"id":"322682678652582476","title":"Gran Turismo 2","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":1740,"platforms":["PS4"],"studios":["Polyphony Digital"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gran-turismo-sport-spec-ii"},{"id":"322682678652583500","title":"Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":2190,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["Polyphony Digital"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Racing","Simulator"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gran-turismo-3-a-spec"},{"id":"322682678652584524","title":"Gran Turismo 4","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":510,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["Polyphony Digital"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. (SCEI)"],"genres":["Racing","Simulator"],"startedDate":"2005-12-31","completedDate":"2005-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gran-turismo-4-prologue"},{"id":"322682678651466316","title":"Gris","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Android","PC","iOS","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Nomada Studio"],"publishers":["Devolver Digital"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-08-01","completedDate":"2019-08-01","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I like the clean lines and color aesthetic. Some of the handdrawn art can look a bit janky though. Atmopsheric music seems like standard fanfare. Platforming is closer to the occasional puzzle. It's otherwise a walking simulator.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gris"},{"id":"322682678652586572","title":"Guilty Gear XX: Reload","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2002,"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2004-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30"},{"id":"322682678652587596","title":"Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2007,"playtimeMinutes":510,"platforms":["PS3","Wii","PC","Mac","X360","PS2"],"studios":["Vicarious Visions","Budcat Creations","Neversoft Entertainment"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Music","Simulator"],"startedDate":"2007-12-31","completedDate":"2007-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/guitar-hero-iii-legends-of-rock"},{"id":"9e5abf1b-ec14-435b-8b24-e1b4af050137","title":"Halls of Torment","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["Linux","PC"],"studios":["Chasing Carrots"],"publishers":["Chasing Carrots"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Indie"],"startedDate":"2023-09-19","completedDate":"2023-09-19","updatedDate":"2023-09-20","notes":"I'm disappointed by the game due to its marketing as a Diablo + Vampire Survivors game. While the Diablo aesthetic is there, there's little of Diablo gameplay that would have made this game stand out: distinguished class identity beyond stats and a main weapon, active class-specific spells beyond a single auto-attack, class skill trees, more involved level designs, and permanent gear progressions with loot as a key reward (e.g., loot drops based on how far you got in a round). The gameplay defaults to the Vampire Survivor mobile-friendly style.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nClasses and gear.\n\nI like the gear as an additional style of complexity. I wish some element of it was permanent progression similar to Escape from Tarkov and Darker and Darker rather than it being part of the roguelike.\n\nI wish this game had real abilities instead of a single auto attack followed by abilities that activate automatically around you. This is one of the core elements of ARPGs, and it's a shame there's any more gameplay complexity.\n\nLevel design is fairly boring given it's an arena survival.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nGraphics and sound are standard for an indie game. The art style nicely appeals to the Diablo 1 aesthetic.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nMotivated to play because it's a game in the style of Diablo 1? Yes please. There are already so few ARPGs in the market. It's that plus Vampire Survivors.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/halls-of-torment"},{"id":"333147704201839184","title":"Idol Manager","originalTitle":"アイドルマネージャー","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":1320,"platforms":["PC","Switch"],"studios":["GlitchPitch"],"publishers":["GlitchPitch","PLAYISM"],"genres":["Simulator","Strategy","Indie","Visual Novel"],"startedDate":"2022-05-30","completedDate":"2022-05-30","updatedDate":"2022-05-31","notes":"Played it because Kuiper is on the dev team. I'm not really into idol culture, so the setting didn't appeal to me. The business sim genre is an interesting take. It reminds me so much of SimTower back in the day. Playing this game is effectively fiddling with a million HUDs at once. It's UI the game.\n\nCloser to mid-to-endgame, the game feels fairly stale in lack of interesting content. There's also a number of meters that never quite made sense to me on their importance. For example, the point of maximizing the various idol meters. The game also felt fairly unbalanced in that a single concert sell could overwhelmingly pay for everything, and you're in the clear, you exponentially do much better. In the beginning, I struggled to even get to that stage and was nearing bankruptcy multiple times. At least this was interesting in that would need to rely on the loan system.\n\nI got out into ez more money = even more money mode in my second run by following the apparent meta of spamming followers, going near bankrupt, then getting a loan so i can launch a concert once i got at least 20k fans\nonce you do the concert you make so much\n\nMechanics that didn't seem used that much: loans, friendship/romance/influence, most of the shows/programs, rest action (literally just get a break room and/or physical doctor), mental stamina, satisfaction.\n\nStamina is a big factor why you go bankrupt super easy as a beginner. the rest action is just +2 stamina, which is dismal and if you only relied on that, you wouldn't make enough to pay for your cast (especially if you try to keep at 100%+ satisfaction). the tutorial never explains the break room or doctor.\n\nI also dislike that you had to spam Z/X/C for the daily activities throughout the game. instead of a queue, why not just implement a schedule (e.g., auto-Z, or even set up Z/X/C split for a full week)?","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/idol-manager"},{"id":"322682678652479052","title":"Into the Breach","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":330,"platforms":["Stadia","Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["Subset Games"],"publishers":["Subset Games"],"genres":["Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-03-02","completedDate":"2019-03-02","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Roguelike and with turnbased tactics at a micro scale compared to tactical RPGs like Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Advance Wars. I didn't find it necessarily innovative over other tactics games. It's closest in spirit to its developer predecessor Faster than Light.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/into-the-breach"},{"id":"322682678652594764","title":"Kingdom Hearts II","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2005,"playtimeMinutes":1920,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["Square Enix Product Development Division 1"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2005-12-31","completedDate":"2005-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/kingdom-hearts-ii"},{"id":"322682678652595788","title":"Kirby's Return to Dream Land","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":390,"platforms":["Wii","WiiU"],"studios":["HAL Laboratory"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2011-12-31","completedDate":"2011-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/kirbys-return-to-dream-land"},{"id":"322682678651396684","title":"Late Shift","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":90,"platforms":["PS4","PC","iOS","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["CtrlMovie"],"publishers":["Wales Interactive"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-05-15","completedDate":"2020-05-15","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Very average story that only slightly works due to its interaction novelty. The acting is too over the top. See Until Dawn for a better use of enabling interaction.\n\nDetails:\n\n+ You can't skip cutscenes? This makes the game absolutely not replayable.\n+ Interaction and imapct is very limited. You can tell the shared scenes because of how less precise they are and not necessarily suited if you make certain actions (e.g., if you ask for a cut and succeed; then later they proceed as if you're still a hostage).\n+ The protagonist's reliance on arbitrary numbers is a cringeworthy way of acting brainy.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://lateshift.fandom.com/wiki/Late_Shift_Wikia","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/late-shift"},{"id":"322682678652608076","title":"Mario Party 2","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["Wii","N64","64DD","WiiU"],"studios":["Hudson Soft","CAProductions"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Gradiente"],"genres":["Quiz/Trivia","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mario-party-2"},{"id":"322682678652611148","title":"Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["Arcade","PS3","X360","DC"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Virgin Interactive Entertainment","Capcom"],"genres":["Fighting","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/marvel-vs-capcom-clash-of-super-heroes"},{"id":"322682678652708428","title":"Math Blaster Episode I: In Search of Spot","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1993,"playtimeMinutes":60,"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30"},{"id":"322682678652709452","title":"Math Blaster Episode II: Secret of the Lost City","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1995,"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30"},{"id":"322682678652614220","title":"Mega Man Battle Network 2","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":1200,"platforms":["GBA"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Real Time Strategy (RTS)","Role-playing (RPG)","Tactical","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mega-man-battle-network-2"},{"id":"322682678652615244","title":"Mega Man Battle Network 3","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":1410,"platforms":["GBA"],"studios":["Capcom","Capcom","Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom","Capcom","Capcom"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mega-man-battle-network-3"},{"id":"322682678652616268","title":"Mega Man Battle Network 4: Red Sun","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2003,"platforms":["GBA","WiiU"],"studios":["Ubisoft Europe","Capcom"],"publishers":["Ubisoft Europe","Capcom"],"genres":["Platform","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mega-man-battle-network-4-red-sun"},{"id":"322682678652620364","title":"Mega Man X5","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2000,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PC","PS1"],"studios":["Value Wave","Capcom Production Studio 3","Capcom"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment","Capcom"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mega-man-x5"},{"id":"322682678652626508","title":"Metal Slug","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["Arcade"],"genres":["Arcade"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/metal-slug-super-vehicle-001"},{"id":"322682678652627532","title":"Metal Slug Advance","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":90,"platforms":["GBA"],"studios":["Noise Factory"],"publishers":["SNK Playmore"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform"],"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2004-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/metal-slug-advance"},{"id":"322682678652628556","title":"Monster Rancher","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":990,"platforms":["PS1"],"studios":["Tecmo"],"publishers":["Tecmo"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Strategy"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/monster-rancher"},{"id":"322682678652629580","title":"Mortal Kombat 4","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["Arcade","N64","PC","PS1","DC"],"studios":["Midway Games","Eurocom Entertainment Software"],"publishers":["Midway Games","Gradiente"],"genres":["Fighting"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mortal-kombat-4"},{"id":"322682678652630604","title":"Mortal Kombat Trilogy","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":90,"platforms":["N64","PC","DOS","Saturn","PS1"],"studios":["Midway Games","Point of View","Avalanche Software"],"publishers":["GT Interactive Software","Midway Games","Williams Entertainment","SoftBank"],"genres":["Fighting","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mortal-kombat-trilogy"},{"id":"322682678650398284","title":"Necrobarista","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PC","Switch"],"studios":["Route 59"],"publishers":["Route 59","Coconut Island Games"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie","Visual Novel"],"startedDate":"2020-07-22","completedDate":"2020-09-06","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The characters are great. The individual dialogue scenes have some spunk and great comedic timing. The art style feels timeless.\n\nPacing, however, may not be its strength in my opinion. It may just be me, but the game lacks a real sense of progression, even within chapters that I would expect for the slowest pace slices-of-life like Aria or Haibane Renmei. I don't enjoy this visual novel as much as I could.\n\n__Story.__ I think the premise of the story of a coffee shop as a medium between the recently departed moving from living to the afterlife is an interesting one. It reminds me of Koreeda's After Life (1998) film. Awkwardly when I first played this, I thought it would be a thriller with its necromancy/after life elements and opening scene. Boy was I wrong: it's a drama! Comedic timing and moment to moment dialogue is typically wonderful.\n\nPacing is not Necrobarista's strength. It sort of wanders without a clear sense of purpose. The choice of the story effectively representing a purgatory makes this aimlessness reasonable lore-wise. But it doesn't make up for the story not feeling fun to read. The prologue didn't super excite me enough to feel okay with blasting through to continue. I just don't get a sense of why the chapters keep on progressing. There's a cafe with a debt. And some patrons just lounging about, with one who recently came after he died. In one chapter there's a visitor to the cafe that you build some rapport with in a conversation. Then it happens again. Then again. But why? Even Aria and other slices of life have conflicts that are resolved per episode, so there is a notion of progression.\n\nCharacters are all pretty distinctive in their own personalities. Setting lacks variety, with it all happening in the cafe, and any notion of time passing by (e.g., morning, afternoon, night); this make the scenes feel a bit static. In typical \"no plot\" anime, you can still get a grasp of a character's day-to-day life. That helps I think.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I had no idea what I was doing when selecting words in Act I. I'm not sure how I feel about the RNG in collectibles to go into mini-side stories. It feels like artificial gamey-ness as an alternative to selecting routes in a traditional visual novel.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I like the art style. It ages well. The way the text appears dynamically also makes the game feel significantly more polished than typical visual novels, almost to the point of being an actual animated game if it had both voice acting and real animation between what are effectively \"key frames\". The soundtrack is also fun, albeit repetitive.\n\nSurprised at the elements where I can actually move around like a first-person game! And I thought this was purely a visual novel.\n\nDetails I like:\n\nThe three leg guys commenting inbetween chapters. Reminds me of Ghost in the Shell SAC's Tachikoma.\n+ Main girl's hexagon glass frame.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Necrobarista's menu features $3.50 a house coffee, not even an espresso drink. Holy shit that better not be USD.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Game's borderless/fullscreen minimizes when moving to another active window on my other monitor. To combat this, I used windowed mode and Borderless Gaming.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nPlayed this because my friend Kuiper wrote for the game.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/necrobarista-final-pour"},{"id":"337298312302428753","title":"Nun Massacre","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["PS4","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["Puppet Combo"],"publishers":["Puppet Combo"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-07-16","completedDate":"2022-07-16","updatedDate":"2022-07-17","notes":"Unfortunately, Nun Massacre falls into the same trope as Power Drill Massacre of making jumpscares extremely loud, which diminishes the horror from its other effects (e.g., approaching steps or blurry visuals). Because of the lack of audio mixing, you also have to play the game at a very low volume.\n\nIt's also a maze level that's slightly more interesting than Power Drill Massacre's but not that interesting.\n\nAt least it's the first Puppet Combo game in first person and with good controls (e.g., a workable sprint mechanic).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/nun-massacre"},{"id":"322682678652635724","title":"Pac-Man","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1980,"playtimeMinutes":570,"platforms":["PC","Android","iOS","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Hipster Whale"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment"],"genres":["Puzzle","Strategy","Arcade"],"startedDate":"1996-12-31","completedDate":"1996-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pac-man-256"},{"id":"322682678652714572","title":"Payday 3","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Overkill Software","Starbreeze Studios"],"publishers":["Prime Matter"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2023-09-22","completedDate":"2023-09-29","updatedDate":"2023-10-03","notes":"Payday 3 is one of those games where the core gameplay loop is a lot of fun. Heist levels, enemies, and combat appeal to the Payday series’ strengths. However, everything around the gameplay is problematic (not unlike Darktide). Payday 3 advanced in minor ways in stealth, stayed the same in most areas, and went back many steps in many areas.\n\nCore flaws at the time of release:\n\n+ Progression system is poorly designed in requiring challenges to gain infamy (player levels), and there's even separate progression for weapon levels and to unlock skills.\n+ Significant lack of content including levels and items.\n+ Server instability. It was so disastrous and lacking in content that it took only a few days before Payday 3's player count dipped below Payday 2's.\n+ Many missing quality of life features, particularly in matchmaking.\n+ Not much is that new from Payday 2. The improvements are incremental.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nMost notable changes:\n\n+ New stealth mechanics. Lockpicking and safe cracking minigames. Locked doors might involve cutting the right cables. Stealth zones now include public area, restricted area where you get escorted out if caught, and private area. There's phases which enable more of a spectrum between full stealth and full assault. This has a lot of potential.\n+ Lack of polish, including many missing quality-of-life features and bugs. Matchmaking is especially bad because of this. For examples:\n\n  + There's no quick play. You have to queue up to specific missions which effectively splits up the player base across both difficulties and levels.\n  + You can't join games that already started, meaning lobbies where players have left must continue with only bots.\n  + You can't kick players. This is important for AFK players but game-breaking for players that might grief or don't know how to play and they pick up a mission-required item like the USB keycard in Under the Surphaze.\n  + You can't keep playing with a lobby that you might have enjoyed playing with. I greatly enjoy Back 4 Blood's approach where the party automatically continues to the next campaign mission rather than being booted back to the main menu. At minimum, at least have it be like Vermintide where you're all booted back to the main menu as a party.\n  + No ability to communicate with your lobby while preparing. This makes it impossible to plan such as for stealth.\n  + Default start time for a lobby is 5 minutes. That's way too long if someone in your lobby doesn't ready up.\n  + See also [this collection](https://www.reddit.com/r/paydaytheheist/comments/16nfgbr/payday_3_a_list_of_missing_features_flawed).\n\n+ Player level (infamy) gains XP based on completing challenges, not heists. Heist completion does grant XP for skills and weapon levels though. Other progression includes cash and C-coins. Challenge-based XP is controversial in video games (e.g., Halo Infinite) because it incentivizes playing all parts of the game and toward potentially arbitrary challenges rather than following your own style (e.g., one build, potentially farming the same favorite levels). Instead of playing a heist to completion, players are incentivized to do other activities such as kill enemies, hold hostages, toss grenades, tag enemies, and use your Overkill weapon.\n+ Only 8 heists on launch. Weapon selection and build variety is also low.\n+ Dedicated servers instead of peer-to-peer.\n+ Not many changes to dated elements in Payday 2: for example, matchmaking requires queueing specifically for a heist and difficulty which splits up the player base. It's worse than before as there is no quickplay option and other quality of life features. No new enemy types either.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nSeems standard for a Unreal Engine game. It's certainly nice to see the graphical improvements since Payday 2, including overall textures, real-time lighting, and animations. Soundtrack is largely based on Payday 2 and works well.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ There is finally a radio counter to keep track of how many you have left.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [r/paydaytheheist](https://www.reddit.com/r/paydaytheheist)\n+ [Wiki](https://payday.fandom.com)\n\n__Version.__ I played the game at release.\n\ntodos\n+ check back in a year or two when the game is more polished and has more content","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/payday-3"},{"id":"322682678652514892","title":"Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney − Justice for All","originalTitle":"逆転裁判2","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2002,"platforms":["Wii","PC","NDS","GBA"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Adventure","Visual Novel"],"startedDate":"2016-12-26","completedDate":"2017-01-01","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Man. This game is inconsistent in gameplay; Reunion, Turnabout was a little crazy and obvious; Turnabout Big Top basically gave up on the use of Psyche-Locks and with no good characters. Contrived, and much obscure wanding around remote events. I liked the use of 2-1 as both a tutorial and segway as a mini-trial series. But man that trial is so obvious it's dull. I miss the previous series' soundtrack during the testimonies. Franziska is also quite a weak rival as she's so dull and lacking in characterization; she just whips everyone, lies all the time, and gets away with nonsense.\n\ni dislike how there are always leaps of logic one must take in any of the cases. there are always spternative possibilities and holes in the logic that one must suspend disbelief. the characters can also be rather shallow. rarely do they get further chracterized. we hardly know much about phoenix for example.\n\nIt's a minor detail, and I think this happens in the first game too, but I love that they sometimes play with the text speed. At rare occasions, it goes very punctuated and slow for emphasis or drolls on without the player having to hit a button to go to the next thing; the latter emphasizes a rant.\n\nFarewell, my Turnabout has poorer characters (and very few so you can deduce te killer by elimination) but the connections to previous characters, use of Maya as a playable character and the magatama, as well as the twist, all made it somewhat good. However, all the meandering on a basic moral principle gets tiresome so quickly. And it even has a cop out at the end too. I wish the bad ending were the true ending! Phoenix Wright should either not dabble in deeper themes or it should truly carry them out and execute the inevitable ending: Phoenix prioritizing truth over the client, thus killing Maya, or alternatively, Phoenix prioritizing the client over truth, thus saving Maya but destroying his principles. One minor quip in addition: They start off the case with the magatama as reliance on whether their client killed anyone; they should always use that if it's always correct! Super powers begone. I realize my opinion of 2-4 is a minority opinion in the community, the majority of which think that it is one of the best in the series. Here's another opinion agreeing with some of my points (I also enjoy the discussion): http://tay.kinja.com/a-lawyer-revisits-phoenix-wright-ace-attorney-justic-1695273699 I especially enjoy this quote:\n\nLawyers are hated in society for representing the unlikable or those who are “clearly” in the wrong, but this hate exists only because people don’t appreciate or understand why we have lawyers in the first place. Both the prosecutor and the defense attorney - and lawyers who represent insurance companies, and lawyers who represent patent trolls, and government attorneys who have to argue against same-sex marriage because their governor is conservative - are cogs in a much larger machine. We have a job to do. We perform a function. You might think that lawyers are dishonest and help people lie... until you need a lawyer, and “lying” becomes “helping me tell my side of the story.”\n\nBeing an attorney - especially a defense attorney - isn’t about picking the “right side” and only accepting cases from that side. A defense attorney is not gonna get to represent the innocent party every single time. That’s what makes case 2-4 such a missed opportunity. Instead of challenging the player’s concept of defense lawyers and teaching them about the profession, it actually plays into the negative stereotype. The moral ambiguity of Phoenix’s decision isn’t given enough space to exist in the first place; Maya’s kidnapping absolves him of all responsibility for representing Engarde in the eyes of the audience. And the writers’ message here - that the “correct” decision for Phoenix to make is to prioritize the “truth” over the requirements of his job - is wrong. That is not what a defense attorney does, and it’s borderline degrading to people whose job it is to uphold criminals’ rights regardless of their guilt.\n\nMan, in general Justice for All makes it clear just how well done the original game is in its turns and twosts in its case storyline and its excellent supporting characters\n\n[1] http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Phoenix_Wright:_Ace_Attorney_-_Justice_For_All","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/phoenix-wright-ace-attorney-justice-for-all"},{"id":"322682678652494412","title":"Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney − Spirit of Justice","originalTitle":"逆転裁判6","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2016,"platforms":["Android","3DS","iOS"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Visual Novel"],"startedDate":"2018-04-08","completedDate":"2018-11-29","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Standard fanfare in Phoenix Wright series. lack of Maya and Phoenix dynamic and more focus on Apollo and Athena for better or worse. I like the dynamic with Apollo who has a real background. But Athena and her power of therapy is plainly boring. Trucy is a great sidekick similar to Maya’s cousin Pearl. Athena just doesn’t fit.\n\nThere’s nothing innovative in this series. The anime cutscenes and 3D borrows from Dual Destinies. The zany characters are not as zany as previous games. The heavy-handed morals with the Defense Culpability Act are as bad as Apollo Justice’s Jurist system and Justice for All’s priority of “truth” over real defense lawyer and prosecutor responsibilities.\n\nThat last chapter is a doozy of melodramatic surprises. From Amar being alive to Dhurke being dead to Amara shot in court to Nahyutas hostage situation to Rayfas true parents to Apollo’s fathers death scene. Wow..","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/phoenix-wright-ace-attorney-spirit-of-justice"},{"id":"322682678652510796","title":"Plants vs. Zombies","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["NES"],"studios":["Nice Code Software"],"publishers":["Nice Code Software"],"genres":["Strategy","Tactical"],"startedDate":"2009-12-31","completedDate":"2009-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"A refreshing mainstream revival on defense games. Nothing new though. In fact, it seems to benefit from its limitation of general defense game mechanics.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/plants-vs-zombies--1"},{"id":"322682678652638796","title":"Pokemon Crystal","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2000,"playtimeMinutes":1770,"platforms":["GBC","3DS"],"studios":["Game Freak"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Oh man, I remember first playing Pokemon Gold in Japanese from a Gameboy Color emulator.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pokemon-crystal"},{"id":"322682678652639820","title":"Pokemon Diamond","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2006,"playtimeMinutes":1530,"platforms":["NDS"],"studios":["Game Freak"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2006-12-31","completedDate":"2007-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Man did I waste so many hours playing this game, optimizing EV/IV with Gameshark, and playing competitive starting on Marriland Forums, then one or two other sites that I knew from friends, and also the various PC simulators. Some names of people I remember: kawalski (IIRC, he records his battles: https://www.youtube.com/user/Kawalski25), leave1, untouchable, umbreonmonarchy.\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\n+ Marriland.com profile | https://www.azurilland.com/members/87885-187. According to my forum post history, looks like I was most active around 06/2007-11/2007. I'm facepalming looking at my post history now in 2019 (I'm 26). My communication is intensively tryhard, and my ego is dodgy, avoiding good players to boost my reputation. I remember even being in the official tournament and ragequitting (was it against leave1?). This is a good example of old internet me when I regularly communicated on forums for social interactions.. I don't regret it---if anything I find it hilarious that I can look back at logs of my previous self.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pokemon-diamond"},{"id":"322682678652642892","title":"Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":2100,"platforms":["NGC"],"studios":["Game Freak","Nintendo"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I played Pokemon Ruby.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pokemon-box-ruby-and-sapphire--1"},{"id":"322682678652643916","title":"Pokemon Stadium","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["N64"],"studios":["HAL Laboratory","Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Gradiente"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Turn-based strategy (TBS)"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pokemon-stadium"},{"id":"322682678652645964","title":"Pokemon Trading Card Game","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PC","Mac","Android","iOS"],"studios":["The Pokémon Company International"],"publishers":["The Pokémon Company International"],"genres":["Strategy"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","completedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pokemon-trading-card-game-live"},{"id":"322682678650417740","title":"Project Winter","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":3300,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Other Ocean Interactive"],"publishers":["Other Ocean Group"],"genres":["Strategy","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-07-23","completedDate":"2020-07-23","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Watched Sodapoppin play for quite a few hours. Game is way too confused and wandering with PvE. The social killing loop is not as intense and well-paced as Among Us.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/project-winter"},{"id":"322682678652564044","title":"Rampage World Tour","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["Arcade","PS3","Win Phone","N64","PC","Saturn","PS1"],"studios":["Saffire","Point of View","Game Refuge Inc","Digital Eclipse"],"publishers":["Midway Amusement Games"],"genres":["Platform","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/rampage-world-tour"},{"id":"322682678650352204","title":"Risk","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2010,"platforms":["C64"],"publishers":["The Edge"],"genres":["Shooter","Strategy"],"startedDate":"2021-01-17","completedDate":"2021-01-17","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"This game has too much number crunching and strategy/diplomacy for me. Not only do you manage soldiers per territory, but also different types of soldiers. Unlike the physical game, the Blitz auto-roll feature for battles greatly speeds up the otherwise arduous alternate rolling between two players which is time-consuming and boring. Flaw-wise, the worst part of the game is that once you're in the lead, it's very likely you'll stay the lead, and it'll take 4+ hours to complete the game.\n\nMotivated to play as it's among the most popular mainstream board games. I never played it though.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/risk--1"},{"id":"322682678652654156","title":"RollerCoaster Tycoon","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":3630,"platforms":["XBOX","PC"],"studios":["Frontier Developments","Chris Sawyer Productions"],"publishers":["Hasbro Interactive","MicroProse Software, Inc.","Atari, Inc."],"genres":["Simulator","Strategy"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/rollercoaster-tycoon"},{"id":"337298344925725263","title":"SCARY TALES VOL 1","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2019,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["Puppet Combo"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-07-16","completedDate":"2022-07-16","updatedDate":"2022-07-17","notes":"+ Night Shift: Too much waiting. But I like the day-to-day vibes. A worse Chilla's Art game.\n+ Spiders: Bad doom clone.\n+ Feed me Billy: I like the premise. It's a horror version of Hotline Miami. The gameplay itself is repetitive.\n+ Riverside Incident: This game had the best atmosphere. Limited FOV, lighting, and slow movement speed kept the anxiety high. I couldn't beat it because my game bugged halfway through though.\n\nAnnoyingly, the story mode game softlocked me twice because of bugs.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/scary-tales-vol-1"},{"id":"322682678652657228","title":"SimCity 2000","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1993,"playtimeMinutes":1380,"platforms":["?","?","PS3","SNES","?","PC","Mac","DOS","?","Amiga","Saturn","PS1","PSP","GBA","SFAM"],"studios":["Maxis"],"publishers":["Zoo Digital","DSI Games","Electronic Arts","Maxis","Mindscape","Fujitsu","Imagineer","Artdink","Sega","Tec Toy Indústria de Brinquedos","Black Pearl Software","THQ","ZIOSoft"],"genres":["Simulator","Strategy"],"startedDate":"1997-12-31","completedDate":"1997-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/simcity-2000"},{"id":"322682678652522060","title":"Slender: The Eight Pages","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2012,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["Parsec Productions"],"publishers":["Parsec Productions"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2012-09-30","completedDate":"2012-09-30","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/slender-the-eight-pages"},{"id":"322682678652707404","title":"Sonic's Schoolhouse","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1996,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Orion Interactive"],"publishers":["Sega Entertainment"],"genres":["Puzzle"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/sonics-schoolhouse"},{"id":"322682678652659276","title":"Spider-Man","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["GBA"],"studios":["Digital Eclipse"],"publishers":["Activision"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/2-in-1-game-pack-spider-man-plus-spider-man-2"},{"id":"322682678652664396","title":"Street Fighter II","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1991,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["PS2","XBOX","Arcade"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Fighting"],"startedDate":"1997-12-31","completedDate":"1997-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/hyper-street-fighter-ii-the-anniversary-edition"},{"id":"322682678652665420","title":"Super Smash Bros.","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":270,"platforms":["WiiU"],"studios":["Sora","Bandai Namco Studios"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Fighting","Platform"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-smash-bros-for-wii-u"},{"id":"322682678652670540","title":"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["3DS"],"studios":["Magic Pockets"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","completedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles--6"},{"id":"322682678652674636","title":"Tetris","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PS3"],"studios":["TBC Group"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Puzzle"],"startedDate":"1996-12-31","completedDate":"1996-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tetris--3"},{"id":"322682678650342988","title":"The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Supermassive Games"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-01-26","completedDate":"2021-01-26","updatedDate":"2022-06-14","notes":"Storytelling and presentation style is the same as Supermassive Games' Until Dawn. The story is weaker here. I do like that they immediately went supernatural instead of keeping it ambiguous. There's too many weird plot twists. I think I would've been okay with them like Until Dawn. But something about the story was too B-rated to make me feel any interested in the actual characters. And too much boring witchcraft happens.\n\nThe wandering enemies is so funny. They're literally moving at a crawling pace and yet you still can't outrun them.\n\nThe plot twist that it was the Reverend all along is not too surprising. The final plot twist that the third timeline of college students is actually fake, and it's really hallucinations of the second timeline, makes zero sense. The \"it was all just a dream\" trope doesn't work here: it doesn't fit given the multiple character perspectives, Taylor and Daniel being boyfriend and girlfriend despite being brother-sister in the true timeline (what?), elaborate college backgrounds for everyone, let alone the Salem timeline not tying into the house fire timeline.\n\nWatched Sodapoppin's stream of this, playing with Saiiren. Some of the scenarios are laughably stupid. Not only is there some weird bugs ruining immersion, but there's some weird plot armor where even if you purposefully aim to fail everything in order to kill a character, something magical happens to allow them to just run away.\n\nI played it on June 2022.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-dark-pictures-anthology-little-hope"},{"id":"322682678623088204","title":"The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Knights of the Nine","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2006,"startedDate":"2021-12-17","completedDate":"2021-12-17","updatedDate":"2023-06-20","notes":"Story itself is stale with no interesting characters or plot development. Linear quest. Some fetch quests, others were decent. The dungeon quests are boring as are all Oblivion dungeons."},{"id":"322682678652598860","title":"The Legend of Zelda","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1986,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["SNES"],"studios":["MottZilla"],"publishers":["Zelda Legends","The BS Zelda Homepage"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2011-12-31","completedDate":"2011-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bs-the-legend-of-zelda-mottzilla-patch"},{"id":"322682678652675660","title":"The Simpsons Arcade Game","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1991,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["Arcade","PS3","C64","DOS","X360"],"studios":["Konami"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Arcade"],"startedDate":"1996-12-31","completedDate":"1996-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-simpsons-arcade-game"},{"id":"322682678651467340","title":"The Stanley Parable","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":90,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Galactic Cafe"],"publishers":["Galactic Cafe","Klei Entertainment"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2019-08-01","completedDate":"2019-08-01","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I like the meta and ambition, where death states are repeated trials of the game and gameplay involves interaction with the narrator. I don't find it very fun to play though in trying out all the combinatorial number of choices to find each ending and experience the content. This seems like the type of meta humor appropriate for a high schooler or freshman in college. It doesn't offer any interesting mechanics. I'm not the only one with this impression (https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/7hx731/the_stanley_parable_just_the_stanley_parable/dquzmas/).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-stanley-parable"},{"id":"322682678652511820","title":"Theatrhythm Final Fantasy","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["3DS","iOS"],"studios":["indieszero Co., Ltd.","Square Enix"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Music","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2017-04-14","completedDate":"2017-04-16","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Mediocre rhythm mechanics.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/theatrhythm-final-fantasy"},{"id":"322682678650349132","title":"Ticket to Ride","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["Linux","PC","X360","Mac","Android","iOS","PS4"],"studios":["Days of Wonder","Next Level Games"],"publishers":["Playful","Days of Wonder"],"genres":["Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure","Indie","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2021-01-17","completedDate":"2021-01-17","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"It's a casual, easy to pick up game. There's not much strategy to the game, as you don't really adapt your approach according to other players much aside from them possibly taking your routes. However, it's hard to play adversarial to an person as you both don't know their routes and there's always two possible paths. Therefore the game is often chance-driven. The only two real strategies are: amorting the train line building across multiple routes; and attempting to block an opponent's route, especially if you can predict their long ones.\n\nMotivated to play as it's the 6th most popular on boardgamegeek and 2nd best seller from Asmodee Digital on Steam (as of Jan 2021). I vaguely remember playing this once when at a dinner-like party with Bob Carpenter, his girlfriend, and Alp Kucukelbir. I think it was this game (I also remember winning, mostly from sheer luck).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ticket-to-ride"},{"id":"322682678652676684","title":"Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2000,"playtimeMinutes":570,"platforms":["PC","iOS","Mac","PS1","DC"],"studios":["Neversoft Entertainment"],"publishers":["Aspyr Media","Activision"],"genres":["Sport"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tony-hawk-s-pro-skater-2"},{"id":"322682678652677708","title":"Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["XBOX","NGC","PC","Mac","PS2"],"studios":["Neversoft Entertainment"],"publishers":["Activision","Aspyr Media"],"genres":["Sport"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I especially remember the Foundry level. Seeing a video of it on GBA on Youtube with my red shirt and blue jeans is exactly the level I remember mastering the perfect grind multiplier for all 2 minutes.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tony-hawk-s-pro-skater-3"},{"id":"322682678624151116","title":"Twelve Minutes","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Android","PC","iOS","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Luis Antonio"],"publishers":["Annapurna Interactive","Netflix"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-08-20","completedDate":"2021-08-20","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Twelve Minutes is the Oscar bait of video games with its A-list cast and film inspiration. It's a good idea but annoyingly executed. Repeating events in the day quickly get repetitive, and with the occasional unintuitive puzzle solution. And the twists aren't all that interesting. The whole moralism against incest is also quite weird.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/twelve-minutes"},{"id":"322682678652679756","title":"Twisted Metal 2","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["PS3","PC","PS1","PSP"],"studios":["SingleTrac"],"publishers":["Sony Online Entertainment","Sony Computer Entertainment","Sony Interactive Studios America"],"genres":["Fighting","Shooter","Racing"],"startedDate":"1996-12-31","completedDate":"1996-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/twisted-metal-2"},{"id":"322682678652680780","title":"Twisted Metal III","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["PS1"],"studios":["989 Studios"],"publishers":["989 Studios"],"genres":["Fighting","Shooter","Racing"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","completedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/twisted-metal-iii"},{"id":"322682678652685900","title":"Wave Race 64","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["N64","WiiU"],"studios":["Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Playtronic","iQue"],"genres":["Racing","Sport"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","completedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/wave-race-64"},{"id":"322682678652684876","title":"Wii Play","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2006,"startedDate":"2006-12-31","completedDate":"2006-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30"},{"id":"322682678624135756","title":"World War Z","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Saber Interactive"],"publishers":["Mad Dog Games, LLC","Focus Home Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2021-11-03","completedDate":"2021-11-06","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"World War Z specializes in the horde of horde shooters. There are more normal zombies than in any other game, and they swarm to form pyramids to traverse areas. Unfortunately, level design feels somewhat bland as it's moving from one defense position to another (\"set pieces\"). Specials are also less deadly. Playing in November 2021 (only a few months after Aftermath's release), matchmaking feels dead; there are only 1-2K players on Steam and I rarely find a game with 4 human players playing Easy or Normal difficulty.\n\n__Gameplay.__ World War Z is a horde shooter introducing classes with perks and cosmetics through characters and weapon skins. It uses a level design of interconnected areas with defense against swarms, where you pick up heavy items and equipment to prepare yourself. The game is clearly designed with set pieces in mind. Stealth is poorly designed as it's unintuitive when an area can be stealthed. Specials are forgettable.\n\nPlaying a third-person game with first-person view is always a little different than a native first-person game. Movement feels sluggish compared to other first-person games as it feels like you're lugging on a body, e.g., as you strafe. In particular, no aim down sights. Animations appear in third-person.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Pretty standard realism graphics for its time. I'm impressed by the amount of zombies they can have at a single time without lagging the game. I do like the episode variety in covering different locations in the world. It at least enables assets to be varied, if not the gameplay.__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Infinite ammo crates as the approach to replenishing ammo.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Every interaction requires holding a button for a few seconds.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI was motivated to play with its recent Aftermath updates, including first person mode. This makes it basically like Left 4 Dead with classes and weapon upgrades, so taking progression mechanics from Killing Floor and progression through campaign levels instead of static arenas. I played the Aftermath version.\n\nI initially played on Normal, then Hard at level 15. I gave up on the game after roughly Episode 4.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/world-war-z-game-of-the-year-edition"},{"id":"322682678652694092","title":"X-Men vs. Street Fighter","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["Arcade","PC","Saturn","PS1"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom","Virgin Interactive Entertainment","i-Dreamsoft"],"genres":["Fighting","Arcade"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/x-men-vs-street-fighter"},{"id":"322682678652695116","title":"X-Men: Children of the Atom","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1994,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["Arcade","DOS","Saturn","PS1"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Acclaim Entertainment","Capcom"],"genres":["Fighting","Arcade"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/x-men-children-of-the-atom"},{"id":"322682678652696140","title":"Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["PS1"],"studios":["Konami Computer Entertainment Japan"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/yu-gi-oh-forbidden-memories"},{"id":"322682678652705356","title":"Zone of the Enders","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["Konami Computer Entertainment Japan"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Shooter","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/zone-of-the-enders"},{"id":"322682678652706380","title":"Zoombinis","status":"Completed","score":5,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["Android","PC","iOS","Mac"],"studios":["TERC"],"publishers":["Viva Media"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/zoombinis"},{"id":"322682678650444364","title":"Borderlands: Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PC","PS3","X360","Mac"],"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2020-05-29","completedDate":"2020-05-29","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Moxxi is the worst DLC. It features an arena, which is a nice feature, and a bank. This is fine in principle, but the arena is not executed well, and there are no enticing rewards aside from an extra skill point. And the arena is stupidly monotonous and unforgiving: you must go through 5 rounds with 5 waves each, and on 3 different arenas jsut to beat the first mission. If you die, you must start again at the previous round.  Each round interests a new gameplay-altering rule, which is neat in principle, but it forces your character to be much more diverse in terms of his equipment and strategy than has been asked before. For example, elemental increase followed by decrease of all other damage, forcing you to have a strong elemental weapon.\n\nInterestingly, it is also the first introduction to the character Moxxi who becomes core to the series.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-mad-moxxis-underdome-riot"},{"id":"322682678652537420","title":"Bust-A-Move 3","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":60,"startedDate":"1997-12-31","completedDate":"1997-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30"},{"id":"322682678652541516","title":"Casper","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":150,"studios":["Microids","Planet Interactive"],"publishers":["Natsume"],"startedDate":"1997-01-01","completedDate":"1997-01-01","updatedDate":"2022-07-06","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/casper--1"},{"id":"322682678652552780","title":"Dance Dance Revolution 2ndMix","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":1800,"platforms":["Arcade"],"studios":["Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Music","Puzzle","Simulator"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dance-dance-revolution-2ndmix"},{"id":"322682678652553804","title":"Dance Dance Revolution 3rdMix","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["Arcade","PS1"],"studios":["Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Music","Puzzle","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dance-dance-revolution-3rdmix"},{"id":"322682678652555852","title":"DDRMAX Dance Dance Revolution 6thMix","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2002,"platforms":["PS2","Arcade"],"studios":["Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Music","Puzzle","Simulator"],"startedDate":"2002-12-31","completedDate":"2002-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ddrmax-dance-dance-revolution-6thmix"},{"id":"322682678652556876","title":"Dead or Alive 3","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["XBOX"],"genres":["Fighting","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dead-or-alive-3-plus-plus"},{"id":"322682678652563020","title":"Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["PS1"],"studios":["Tose"],"publishers":["Bandai","Atari Games"],"genres":["Fighting"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-ball-gt-final-bout"},{"id":"322682678652566092","title":"Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["NGC","PS2"],"studios":["Dimps"],"publishers":["Bandai","Atari, Inc."],"genres":["Fighting"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-ball-z-budokai-2"},{"id":"322682678652567116","title":"Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":630,"platforms":["PS2"],"studios":["Dimps"],"publishers":["Bandai","Atari, Inc."],"genres":["Fighting"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-ball-z-budokai-3"},{"id":"322682678652570188","title":"Excitebike 64","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2000,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["N64","WiiU"],"studios":["Left Field Productions","Nintendo"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Gradiente","iQue"],"genres":["Racing","Sport"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/excitebike-64"},{"id":"322682678652577356","title":"Frogger","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["PC","PS1"],"studios":["SCE Cambridge Studio"],"publishers":["Hasbro Interactive"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Arcade"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","completedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/frogger--1"},{"id":"322682678652588620","title":"Guitar Hero World Tour","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2008,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["PS3","Wii","PC","Mac","X360","PS2"],"studios":["Neversoft Entertainment"],"publishers":["Activision","Aspyr Media"],"genres":["Music"],"startedDate":"2008-12-31","completedDate":"2008-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/guitar-hero-world-tour"},{"id":"322682678652505676","title":"Heroes of the Storm","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":1440,"genres":["Simulator","Strategy"],"startedDate":"2017-02-02","completedDate":"2017-02-02","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Seemed generic. Gave up after <5 games.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/conflict-of-heroes-storms-of-steel"},{"id":"322682678652600908","title":"Lego Racers 2","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":240,"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2004-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/lego-racers-and-lego-racers-2"},{"id":"322682678652601932","title":"Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["GBA"],"studios":["Griptonite Games"],"publishers":["EA Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-two-towers--1"},{"id":"322682678652603980","title":"MapleStory","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":35760,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["Wizet","Nexon Korea"],"publishers":["Shanda","Nexon Co. Ltd.","AsiaSoft","Gamania","Nexon America"],"genres":["Platform","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2005-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/maplestory"},{"id":"322682678652607052","title":"Mario Party","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":270,"platforms":["Wii"],"studios":["Hudson Soft"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Puzzle","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mario-party-8"},{"id":"322682678652612172","title":"MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":1995,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["PC","Mac","DOS","Saturn","PS1"],"studios":["Activision","Quantum Factory"],"publishers":["Activision","Activision","Bandai Visual","Tec Toy Indústria de Brinquedos S.A."],"genres":["Shooter","Simulator","Tactical"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","completedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mechwarrior-2-31st-century-combat"},{"id":"322682678652753484","title":"Overwatch 2","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":1980,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"publishers":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Strategy"],"startedDate":"2022-10-04","completedDate":"2022-10-04","updatedDate":"2023-05-17","notes":"This is easily the worst \"new game\" Blizzard has ever released. It's a reskin worthy of a patch, not a sequel.\n\nTo evaluate:\n\n+ Hero levels/PvE campaign with sentry enemies each with unique mechanics and can even be chain hit. And a talent system.\n  + Update (2023-05-16): Now scrapped lol. What a joke of a game.\n  + [r/gaming](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/13jgh5x/blizzard_is_scrapping_overwatch_2_coop_missions/)\n  + [r/games](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/13jdoap/blizzard_has_cancelled_their_planned_overwatch_2/)\n  + [r/overwatch 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/13jdd8d/discussion_overwatch_2_devs_announce_that_most_of/), [r/overwatch 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/13jdx0l/gamespot_overwatch_2s_pve_mode_is_being_scrapped/)\n  + [r/livestreamfail](https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/13jmnm2/overwatch_2_devs_announce_the_pve_gamemode_has/)\n\nThe changes to PvP are laughable. It's closer to a major patch than what you'd expect from even a game DLC or expansion. The most significant change is the move toward 1 tank in a 5v5 scenario, and this does solve a lot of problems I had in OW1: tank composition defined the meta; too many shields; several cheese characters like one-hit Doomfist and facing shield+Bastion in solo queue; visual clutter; and your role being insignificant (here it's now roughly 20% instead of 16%). At times the game feels closer to a team deathmatch however with every character being closer to a brawler as many tanks are just heavier HP DPS targets and support are mixed DPS healers.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ \nLargely the same but just reskins. There are also new weapon sounds, including per-room/area sounds.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ They put back in the team stats page. This lets you know who's performing and underperforming. I also find it particularly helpful as a support as it lets me know who to prioritize keeping alive.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played the Overwatch 2 PvP Beta on April 27 2022. Then I played it on release.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/overwatch-2"},{"id":"322682678652637772","title":"Pokemon Battle Revolution","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2006,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["Wii"],"studios":["Genius Sonority"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Fighting","Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)"],"startedDate":"2006-12-31","completedDate":"2006-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pokemon-battle-revolution"},{"id":"322682678652644940","title":"Pokemon Stadium 2","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2000,"playtimeMinutes":1170,"platforms":["N64"],"studios":["HAL Laboratory","Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development"],"publishers":["Gradiente","Nintendo"],"genres":["Simulator","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pokemon-stadium-2"},{"id":"337298296748900945","title":"Power Drill Massacre","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Puppet Combo"],"publishers":["Puppet Combo"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-07-15","completedDate":"2022-07-15","updatedDate":"2022-07-16","notes":"What a chore to play through. Unintuitive maze navigation. A killer that spawns out of nowhere, sometimes directly in front of you, and you're basically dead as it's unlikely you'll be able to master the clunky tank controls to be able to make sharp turns and outrun them. No story either.\n\nThe jumpscare is way too loud. I had to make the game barely have any volume in order to even playing it without getting earraped by the killer.\n\nAt least the camera is third-person over-the-shoulder, meaning it's not as wonky as the fixed camera angles of Babysitter Bloodbath.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/power-drill-massacre"},{"id":"322682678652652108","title":"Rock Band","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["iOS"],"studios":["EA Montreal","Harmonix Music Systems"],"publishers":["MTV Games","Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Music"],"startedDate":"2007-12-31","completedDate":"2007-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/rock-band--1"},{"id":"322682678652653132","title":"Rock Band 2","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2008,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["PS3","Wii","X360","PS2"],"studios":["Harmonix Music Systems"],"publishers":["MTV Games"],"genres":["Music"],"startedDate":"2008-12-31","completedDate":"2008-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/rock-band-2"},{"id":"322682678652656204","title":"SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":1991,"playtimeMinutes":120,"startedDate":"1997-12-31","completedDate":"1997-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30"},{"id":"322682678652671564","title":"Tekken","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":1994,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","X360","XONE"],"studios":["Bandai Namco Studios"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment"],"genres":["Fighting"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tekken-x-street-fighter"},{"id":"322682678652672588","title":"Tekken 2","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":1995,"playtimeMinutes":90,"platforms":["PS3","X360","Arcade"],"studios":["Bandai Namco Entertainment"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment"],"genres":["Fighting"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tekken-tag-tournament-2"},{"id":"322682678652673612","title":"Tekken 3","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["Arcade"],"studios":["Namco"],"publishers":["Namco"],"genres":["Fighting","Arcade"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tekken-3"},{"id":"322682678651417164","title":"Warcraft III: Reforged","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":1650,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"publishers":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"genres":["Real Time Strategy (RTS)"],"startedDate":"2020-01-30","completedDate":"2020-02-06","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I shouldn't make this its own entry. However, I'm making this its own entry so 1. I don't forget to start playing this in 2019 and when there's all community and Twitch hype; and 2. I can make long comment contents about a separate entry. This is evaluating purely the additions of the actual revision, which is not really much.\n\nI only just played custom maps. A few that I particularly liked: Trolls and Elves. Dodge this shit. Random tower farm defense.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/warcraft-iii-reforged"},{"id":"322682678652535372","title":"Wii","originalTitle":"Bomberman Land","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2008,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["Wii","WiiU"],"studios":["The Pokémon Company","Creatures Inc."],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2007-12-31","completedDate":"2007-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pokepark-wii-pikachu-s-adventure"},{"id":"322682678652686924","title":"Wii Play: Motion","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["Wii"],"studios":["Arzest","Good-Feel","Prope","Nintendo","Chunsoft"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Sport"],"startedDate":"2011-12-31","completedDate":"2011-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/wii-play-motion"},{"id":"322682678652691020","title":"WWF SmackDown!","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2000,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["PS1"],"studios":["Yuke's"],"publishers":["THQ"],"genres":["Fighting","Sport","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","completedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/wwf-smackdown"},{"id":"322682678652692044","title":"X-Men Legends","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":1110,"platforms":["XBOX","NGC","PS2"],"studios":["Raven Software"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2003-12-31","completedDate":"2003-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/x-men-legends"},{"id":"322682678652699212","title":"Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards","status":"Completed","score":4,"releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":450,"platforms":["GBA"],"studios":["Konami"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/yu-gi-oh-the-sacred-cards"},{"id":"322682678652554828","title":"DC Universe Online","status":"Completed","score":3,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":6900,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS3","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Daybreak Game Company","Sony Online Entertainment"],"publishers":["WB Games","Daybreak Game Company","Sony Online Entertainment"],"genres":["Fighting","Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2011-11-30","completedDate":"2011-11-30","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dc-universe-online"},{"id":"322682678652631628","title":"NBA Jam 2000","status":"Completed","score":3,"releaseYear":1999,"platforms":["N64"],"studios":["Acclaim Studios Salt Lake City"],"publishers":["Acclaim Entertainment"],"genres":["Sport"],"startedDate":"2000-12-31","completedDate":"2000-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/nba-jam-2000"},{"id":"322682678652632652","title":"NFL Blitz","status":"Completed","score":3,"releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":930,"platforms":["PS3","X360"],"studios":["EA Orlando"],"publishers":["EA Sports"],"genres":["Sport","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/nfl-blitz--1"},{"id":"322682678652693068","title":"X-Men: Reign of Apocalypse","status":"Completed","score":3,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":90,"platforms":["GBA"],"studios":["Digital Eclipse"],"publishers":["Activision","Gradiente"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/x-men-reign-of-apocalypse"},{"id":"322682678652698188","title":"Yu-Gi-Oh! Dungeon Dice Monsters","status":"Completed","score":3,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["GBA"],"studios":["Konami"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Puzzle","Strategy","Quiz/Trivia"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","completedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/yu-gi-oh-dungeon-dice-monsters"},{"id":"4099fd3f-f1e6-4907-b4d9-3ed2a2f2a0ac","title":"Darkwood","status":"Dropped","score":8,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":1080,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","PS4","XONE","Switch","PS5","Stadia"],"studios":["Acid Wizard Studio"],"publishers":["Crunching Koalas"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2023-08-27","updatedDate":"2023-09-07","notes":"Darkwood excels at atmosphere, creating that unique feeling of stress and dread. Everything is driven toward it, including the minimal story and brooding characters, limited supplies, need to scavenge and lock down during nights, and explore to progress the game.\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\nThe core gameplay loop involves exploring at daytime in order to scavenge and unlock new items and locking down at nighttime to defend against any enemies. It's the tight level design with items, enemies, and new events that keep the core gameplay loop exciting.\n\nSurvival and crafting elements work well. Limited supplies encourage exploration. You need essentials such as gasoline and crafting supplies. Everyday exploration involves a weapon with repair supplies or ammo, a light source, lockpicks, and a watch.\n\nCombat is standard for a survival horror and isometric action game.\n\nProgression mechanics include leveling up and accumulating items.\n\nSemi-open world is procedurally generated.\n\nPlayer death penalty varies among difficulty, where harder difficulties have finite lives. Otherwise you drop items, and even dying in your safehouse has some [drawbacks](https://steamcommunity.com/app/274520/discussions/0/1473095331492019712/#c1473095331492119576).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nAtmosphere is on point. It does an excellent job with its moody soundtrack, lighting, and subtle sound cues. Static graphic screenshots appear in slide deck format for cutscenes.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ There's a time freeze phase after every night, and the generator also doesn't consume fuel at this point. This lets you prepare such as re-barricading, moving furniture away from doors, and refueling.\n+ As quality of life, the [Bike Bell](https://darkwood.fandom.com/wiki/Bike_Bell) can be used to transfer items when moving from one hideout to the next.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://darkwood.fandom.com)\n\n__Build.__\n\n[Skills](https://darkwood.fandom.com/wiki/Skills).\n\n1. Tier 1: Eagle Eye, Moth. Shadows as negative trait.\n\nProgression.\n\n+ [Beginner's Guide](https://darkwood.fandom.com/wiki/Beginner%27s_Guide)\n+ Trader items to prioritize: Watch, Fabric (for inventory upgrade).\n\nI dropped the game shortly before fully moving to Silent Forest hideout. The game is good, especially in atmosphere, and with solid systems. But the gameplay didn't do it for me.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/darkwood"},{"id":"322682678652891724","title":"Amid Evil","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Indefatigable"],"publishers":["New Blood Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-02-21","updatedDate":"2022-07-30","notes":"\n__Gameplay.__ Amid Evil's unique weapon arsenal is perhaps its greatest appeal. A dual homing missile projectile; a workhorse sweeping projectile sword; overkill-AoE hitscan; rocket launcher; fractal shotgun with a shoot delay and momentarily stops enemy; and BFG. Gone are the prototypical shotgun or assault rifle. The most similar shotgun equivalent is too single-target DPS focused for most encounters. This not like Heretic where the weapons are effectively Doom reskins. This means less reliance on hitscan, high rates of fire, and close-up one-shot-kills. Enemies can block projectiles and you cancel enemy projectiles with yours. At high difficulties, all enemies take more than a single shot to die making it feel hectic but slightly spongier than your typical Dooming like Dusk.\n\nI have mixed feelins about the platforming-style level design. It's cool that it's somewhat unique. Though it's an annoyance doing combat during the such as on narrow ledges. It goes way beyond Doom Eternal's which has fairly casual platforming, and never during the thick of battle.\n\nUnfortunately, I found the enemy variety fairly hit or miss in actually encouraging diverse weapon usage. The only real mechanism was limited ammo, but weapons share ammo so you don't need to use the full variety.\n\nAlso gone are power pickups in select locations, but rather Soul Mode that acts like an \"ultimate\" cooldown meter.\n\nLike Dusk, core controls are minimal and excellent, with movement speed making you feel like a god but with enemies able to move just as fast.\n\nLevel design is surprisingly intuitive, and I like how involved the levels are in opening areas with verticality. It's not just an endless tream of corridors.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Environments are colorful, arcane, and well-drawn as medieval temples. The enemies are fantastical. Surprisingly, the music is pretty forgettable. The game doesn't ooze atmosphere like Dusk or attain the high octane adrenaline that is its gameplay or Doom games.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Drop down is a separate key than Interact (E).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nThis entry does not include the DLC. I loved Dusk and Ultrakill, and Amid Evil reigns among the top of classic FPS/boomer shooter games in the recent resurgence. I played on Evil (highest) difficulty as although I'm a fan of Ultra Violence-style gameplay, Hard didn't seem very difficult in early game so I may as well ramp it up further. I tried to explore all areas and collect loot, but I didn't go out of my way in maximizing this. I'm particularly gimped without a map or focus.\n\nI stopped playing after E3M3. I couldn't get into the projectile combat although I like the game's overall design.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/amid-evil"},{"id":"5ca88c8d-65ed-4d8d-9dfd-09b0f9529c06","title":"Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":1920,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Troika Games"],"publishers":["Sierra Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)"],"startedDate":"2023-05-14","updatedDate":"2023-07-04","notes":"You can clearly see Arcadum's point in game design history following up on Fallout 2 and before Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. Arcanum takes on the immersive roleplaying pioneered in Fallout to a new level. It excels in its questing and freedom of choices, worldbuilding, and build variety and systems. It features high replayability.\n\nFlaw-wise, it has dated combat and tedious inventory management.\n\n__Story.__\nTODO summary\n\nTODO main story\n\nTODO side quest\n\nFor worldbuilding, there are so few steampunk games, and Arcanum is interesting because it doesn't just add cogwheels and top hats as if a steampunk theme park. Arcanum considers social issues, the balance between technology and magic if both could exist in a real society (a more grounded take than Shadowrun).\n\nSo many and rich themes.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\nBuild includes gender, race, character background, primary statistics, technical vs magickal aptitude, skills, spells, and technical degrees. There is also alignment and reputation. Other permanent options include blessings and curses, fate points, and certain quest rewards. The options remind me of a combination of Fallout's SPECIAL and skill system, fantasy CRPGs' race and spells, and KOTOR's light vs dark alignment.\n\nOptions that may seem cosmetic and minor stat boosts also influence an NPC's reaction score with you:\n\n+ Gender. Dialogue reacts to your gender, including flirting and some misogyny. ([reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/arcanum/comments/yhoyri/all_the_differences_between_male_and_female))\n+ Race. Certain NPCs may shut down dialogue as racists against certain races (e.g. Human and Elf vs Half-Orc and Ogre). Or become more suspicious. Or inns may charge more. Some NPC quests may also open up.\n+ Being magic or technology-heavy starts to ban you from usage of the other. For example, with sufficient magic, you can't take the train and no technology trader wants you in their shop.\n+ Stats like beauty, and even the gear you're wearing, affects dialogue.\n\nArcanum features high replayability due to its many playstyle choices ([reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/arcanum/comments/ykqdna/arcanum_rating_of_everything_part_1_stats_skills)):\n\n+ Archetype \"classes\" of melee combat, ranged combat, thieving, and social\n+ Aptitude approach of magick, technology, and neutral, and tree choices within each of magick and technology\n+ Special case builds like stupid build\n+ Solo vs companions\n\nCombat is poorly balanced. Fights can range from trivial to extremely tough at random spikes.\n\nControls age decently well. As with CRPGs, it's designed like a point-and-click adventure with some power user hotkeys. Having played Fallout 1 before this, the very fact that movement and interaction is combined in the mouse primary button, and no hold left-click to select among interaction options, feels so nice. There are still various nits (see details below).\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nServiceable. Muted and washed out colors not unlike Fallout. It's a joke in the community with how annoying the sound effects are due to how often they trigger.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Arcanum has possibly the best stupid build (\"Special Person\") playthrough than any other game, including Fallout 1 and 2. Content isn't just disabled for you, and there's unique dialogue (including voiced ones) for stupid characters.\n+ Starting choices include not only stat allocations but also a budget of 400 to spend on initial gear. I'm surprised I've never played an RPG since Arcanum that has this feature. It intuitively makes so much sense.\n+ The window to escape inventories is quaint: a snapshot of your character rather than a simple X button.\n+ NPC aren't named when highlighted until they introduce themselves.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Like Fallout, Arcanum has no item highlighting key. I prefer this because it's less tedious and out of place for exploration. However, it relies on good environmental and asset design to make items stand out, which the game is not always good at.\n+ Different merchants can be sold different item types.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Controls/UI\n  + The game is designed with point-and-click in mind. Many common actions don't have a keyboard shortcut. For example, no loot all hotkey or dialogue line hotkeys.\n  + You can't customize keyboard controls. For example, you can't set WASD to pan the camera; you have to use arrow keys or put the mouse to the edge of the screen. For another example, quicksave/load is F7/F9.\n  + Examining the map is a pain. You have to spam click the directional button to move the map inch by inch, and there's no zoom capabilities. Makes it difficult to get an overview of an area. Fortunately, the wiki has map images of each area.\n  + No log describing XP gained or loot gained from quest rewards.\n+ Many bugs, even with the unofficial patch.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Arcanum Fandom Wiki](https://arcanum.fandom.com)\n  + [Controls](https://arcanum.fandom.com/wiki/Hotkeys)\n+ [r/arcanum](https://www.reddit.com/r/arcanum)\n+ Quests/Walkthrough\n  + [GameBanshee](https://www.gamebanshee.com/arcanum/walkthrough.php)\n  + [Lilura's blog](https://lilura1.blogspot.com/p/arcanum-of-steamworks-and-magick-obscura.html)\n+ Build\n  + [Reddit: Arcanum Rating of Everything](https://www.reddit.com/r/arcanum/comments/ykqdna/arcanum_rating_of_everything_part_1_stats_skills)\n  + [Complete Overview of Arcanum Spells](https://terra-arcanum.com/forums/threads/complete-overview-of-arcanum-spells.4136)\n+ Setup\n  + [PCGamingWiki](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Arcanum:_Of_Steamworks_%26_Magick_Obscura)\n  + Steam version comes in version 1.0.7.4 (see Version.txt in game files). This is the [latest and final official update](https://arcanum.fandom.com/wiki/Modding_and_Patches).\n  + Apply the [Unofficial Arcanum Patch 2.02](https://terra-arcanum.com/drog/uap.html): during installation, select the High Resolution Patch and official DLCs. I also included the level cap remover from 50 to 100 as a quality-of-life: you reach the level cap by midgame, and although you're already overpowered by 50, it's fun to keep leveling and continue your build.\n    + Configure High Resolution Patch. See also [[HOW TO] Patch Arcanum with UAP and other essential extras](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2311393823). Borderless works with UAP's windowed mode and Borderless Gaming. But this requires the native monitor resolution (mine is 2560x1440), which scales poorly as UI/dialogue does not scale. I use 1366x768 recommended by PCGamingWiki and MandaloreGaming. I find even 1600x900 to lead to too small font size and UI.\n    + Disable Steam overlay.\n    + Disable G-sync (on a [per-game basis](https://www.reddit.com/r/arcanum/comments/o4ymtr/arcanum_multiverse_editionuap_202_not_working)) or [use the latest ddraw.ddl](https://www.reddit.com/r/arcanum/comments/z6im6j/patch_crashes_game/iy5fe2h). I wasn't able to get the latter to work though.\n  + The [Multiverse Edition] mod adds more mods, including some gameplay ones. I chose to omit it in order to experience the vanilla game; can always try it on a second playthrough.\n+ [Books, notes, etc. to keep](https://terra-arcanum.com/forums/threads/books-notes-etc.17418)\n+ [Recommended storage locations](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/914155-arcanum-of-steamworks-and-magick-obscura/53637806)\n\nMotivated because it’s one of the rare CRPGs that’s played solo like Fallout rather than party based. And it comes from Troika Games who developed Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines.\n\n__Playthrough style.__\n\n+ I played Moderate (normal) difficulty as it's the default.\n+ I played blind, though I resorted to the wiki to find any missing quests I didn't complete in an area. I try not to look at the wiki until after having completed quests in order to not spoil myself of potential outcomes and metagaming my decisions.\n+ I played turn-based as a default as I find it easier to manage my spells and fatigue. I swap to real-time when the encounter is trivial.\n\n__Build.__ Charisma mage build. See also [the wiki's Beginner Build](https://arcanum.fandom.com/wiki/Beginner%27s_Build), [Lilura's mage build](https://lilura1.blogspot.com/2021/02/Arcanum-Best-Build.html).\n\n+ Gender: Female (+1 CN / -1 ST)\n+ Race: Elf\n+ Background: Charlatan's Protégé (CH +6 / ST -2 / CN -2 / Melee -1 / Dodge -1 / Bow -1 / Throwing -1)\n+ Stats: Charisma (dialogue/# followers) = Willpower (spell level req/HP/magic res/fatigue) = Dexterity (defense/speed) > Strength (HP/carry weight, mitigated by using followers like Fallout) = Intelligence (# active spells) = Constitution (poison res/fatigue) > Beauty = Perception (useless)\n+ Aptitude: 100+ Magickal\n+ Skills: Persuasion\n+ Magick Spells: Force, Fire and Conveyance colleges\n  + Harm, Stun, Agility of Fire, Fireflash, Unlocking Cantrip, Healing, Disintegrate, Teleportation\n+ Technical Degrees: None\n+ Alignment: Lawful Good as a default, though I didn't reject quests if they weren't too evil \n+ Equipment: \n  + Chargen or Starting Barter purchases: Staff and Rapier and Lockpicks for Virgil.\n\nTechnology is complex and not as strong as magick. It's better on a second playthrough.\n\nI dropped the game roughly after reaching Tarant. The writing is good but I couldn't get into the dated combat and tedious inventory management.\n\ntodos on future playthroughs\n+ builds\n  + technology\n  + stupid\n  + necromancer, full mage, and high charisma for maximum minions\n  + bows\n  + melee\n  + stealth/thieving\n+ mods\n  + other modules, including Vormantown and DLCs\n  + multiverse edition mod","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/arcanum-of-steamworks-and-magick-obscura"},{"id":"5d6c3b11-e016-4bf2-a643-755446d39c19","title":"Baba Is You","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":1260,"platforms":["Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["hempuli"],"publishers":["hempuli"],"genres":["Puzzle","Strategy","Indie"],"startedDate":"2024-10-13","updatedDate":"2025-07-21","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/baba-is-you"},{"id":"09952805-00aa-4284-924b-c912c42c433d","title":"Blue Prince","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":1300,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Dogubomb"],"publishers":["Raw Fury"],"genres":["Puzzle","Strategy","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2025-06-26","updatedDate":"2025-08-17","notes":"A puzzle roguelike. What an amazing idea. However, it's quite a bit RNG dependent, not necessarily a lot of skill in strategizing or game knowledge involved.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n+ First-person puzzle.\n+ Roguelite with progression via permanent upgrades.\n+ Tile-based map building.\n+ Drafting mechanics like decks.\n+ Writing with worldbuilding.\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/blue-prince"},{"id":"322682678653492812","title":"Brogue","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":2009,"platforms":["PC"],"startedDate":"2022-01-09","updatedDate":"2023-04-26","notes":"Brogue is a streamlined Nethack made as an easy entrypoint but still with the core essence of emergent gameplay and random level generation.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ This game was developed in 2009, and I think it inherits roguelike aspects that in my opinion shouldn't be part of the genre: ASCII graphics, text UI, and no sound. The turn-based combat, tile level design, and global camera view are fine. But the art assets can be significantly improved in order to make the game more immersive and intuitive. The following are all elements that I'm glad modern roguelikes have removed (thanks Derek Yu):\n\n1. ASCII is a strictly inferior visual UI. Tiles are graphically more explanatory compared to arbitrary symbols such as all the various letters to denote an enemy instead of a sprite.\n2. The UI could be more intuitive to better know what controls map to what, and the inventory could be follow a standard RPG's GUI inventory window.\n3. The lack of soundtrack and sound effects removes immersion. It also removes the ability to provide sound cues about lurking enemies that appear in your field of vision (and roguelikes could further expand on the game design for a more immersive experience).\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Instead of only doing verb-noun, Brogue also lets you go to your inventory, click on an item, and then perform one of the available verbs (noun-verb). I think this is a good idea for my own game too (highlight an item, then perform a context-sensitive text query to eat, apply, drop it, etc.).\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The auto-explore feature. On one hand, it's a nice quality-of-life. On the other hand, it shows how much repetitiveness is in the game as you traverse through empty areas looking for items, monsters, traps or other similar effects. \n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Brogue](https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame)\n+ [Brogue Wiki](https://brogue.fandom.com)\n\nI started Brogue to play as my first \"true\" roguelite in Rogue/Nethack fashion. It's a good starter before playing far more complex games like Nethack and Dwarf Fortress. I played with the Oryx tileset. \n\nCouldn't really get into it.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/brogue"},{"id":"c179177f-69f8-47aa-a94a-50d387d84eb9","title":"Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["PC","PS5","Series X","Stadia"],"studios":["CD Projekt RED"],"publishers":["CD Projekt RED"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2023-09-21","updatedDate":"2023-10-29","notes":"The Phantom Liberty DLC and version 2.0 update have done quite the overhaul to redeem Cyberpunk:\n\n+ Version 2.0 smoothens out major flaws in the original game since version 1.5. It improves the superficial combat and stealth system, shallow RPG mechanics, bad enemy AI, and janky bugs.\n+ Phantom Liberty adds story content for more activities during the mid to endgame. It has all of the original game's strengths, including solid writing, varied quest design, and a highly detailed setting.\n\nFlaw-wise:\n\n1. The game has not made any improvements in exploration. While the semi-open world is excellent, there remains little incentive to venture into it with few dynamic events to encounter. Rather, you're still completing a quests already made available to you and map markers like a checklist. Gigs and NCPD scanner hustles also remain as quantity over quality.\n2. The RPG mechanics are improved, particularly in builds feeling more tangible and varied. They're still somewhat superficial. This is especially true in player choice during quests and where levels aren't designed with many approaches (e.g., an immersive sim's stealth, hacking, or loud via multiple corridors; or a pacifist's speech checks).\n\n__Gameplay.__\nThe new changes in Phantom Liberty and 2.0 are the following.\n\n_1. Redesigned skill trees, new perks, and a relic skill tree._\n\nThe perks in the skill trees are significantly more impactful on your playthrough style. Many provide active abilities which change your gameplay loop beyond what passive gains do.\n\n+ Body: Adrenaline Rush provides temporary health as a buffer; Obliterate can occasionally trigger to instantly kill and dismember enemies; Quake is a stagger AOE; Savage Sling is a finishing move to restore health (similar to Doom (2016)).\n+ Reflex: Dash replaces dodge; Air Dash; Lead and Steel blocks projectiles with your blade; Blade Finisher is a finishing move to restore health.\n+ Intelligence: Overclock allows quickhack to use health if you have insufficient RAM.\n+ Technical Ability: Ticking Time Bomb activates an EMP for a stun AOE when you activate cyberware; Bolt provides a charged shot.\n+ Cool: Focus removes stamina cost while shooting while Deadeye mode increases headshot damage and critical hit change when you have a certain amount of stamina; Ninjutsu enables crouch-sprinting.\n+ Relic: Vulnerability Analytics highlights weakspots; Optical Camo makes enemies lose track of you during combat; Jailbreak has new cyberware abilities.\n\nThe skill tree's organization of major and minor perks also makes strategizing builds more streamlined as you largely plan for the major perks.\n\n_2. Cyberware has a new capacity system, crafting to upgrade tiers, and itemization has changed: notably, armor is on cyberware and clothing is largely cosmetic. Among the clothing that do make a difference, you can wear \"outfits\", which serve as transmog._\n\nI greatly enjoy the new itemization changes. Specifically:\n\n+ An overall cyberware capacity is more intuitive than the previous RPG setting of specific slots for each cyberware. It's closer to what I think is the best execution for Cyberware. Namely, in the Shadowrun series, cyberware has a capacity limit, and more usage of cyberware trades off essence for spellcasting. This means builds don't end up being all cyberware but rather somewhere along the spectrum. A similar implementation could be done in Cyberpunk 2077 where more cyberware might trade off, say, cyberpsychosis symptoms.\n+ Armor and stat modifiers are determined by cyberware and not clothing.\n+ Crafting has more impact. You upgrade your cyberware's tiers to improve their overall effect, and you can also choose among several stat modifiers to best suit your build.\n+ Cosmetic outfits let you roleplay more and experiment with Cyberpunk's wide fashion variety.\n\n_3. Dogtown district with a new storyline, characters, and quests, and with the level cap increased to 60._\n\nIt's a fantastic linear experience. It takes you on a cinematic adventure not unlike single player FPS titles. I particularly like that the area is small and dense unlike the majority of Cyberpunk's base game. Even gigs have their own unique and well-written stories. They're no longer simple \"destroy everyone in this area\".\n\n_4. Police system. It's largely based on Grand Theft Auto: a rating out of 5 stars determines the crime level, and where you escape proximity in order to drop your stars._\n\n_5. Vehicle missions and airdrops, combat, car chases, and overall combat AI improvements._\n\n_6. Various UI and UX improvements._\n\nThese are nice quality-of-life improvements but not very significant. For example,  [there isn't a key reason to engage with the police system](https://www.reddit.com/r/LowSodiumCyberpunk/comments/16okqs6/the_police_revamp_is_cool_and_all_but_is_there). It's like the bounty system in Bethesda games or the occasional violence in Grand Theft Auto games. They do add to the overall immersion.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nThe same. The mechanics increasing dismemberment makes combat feel more visceral.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Flash and smoke grenades. Finally there are grenades  for utility and not AOE DPS.\n+ Cyberware is no longer gated by hard attribute requirements. Rather, their stat bonuses are determined by how high the attribute is.\n+ You can now trigger the \"first equip\" animation at any time.\n+ New radio stations (including Community Radio Station Growl FM).\n+ You can no longer buy crafting components. You must dismantle items to get them, which makes acquiring them to be more deliberate over time. This makes dismantling the main approach for Tier 4 (epic) and higher items. Previously, you would always sell as it was more economic to buy your components.\n+ Health items and grenades are cooldown-based charges rather than limited quantity items. The streamlines its inventory management.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Level scaling both in terms of enemies and items. This is a nice quality of life for endgame. As with all level scaling, however, I have mixed feelings about its use for general game progression. It would be better to be able to turn it on/off, or have it activate only after beating the game.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ [You still can't turn off tracking of Nocturne Op55N1 to meet Hanako at Embers](https://www.reddit.com/r/LowSodiumCyberpunk/comments/q03p84/stop_telling_me_to_meet_hanako_at_embers_i_will). It's the most annoying facet of endgame play as completing a quest defaults to that objective as the next quest. There should be a feature to disable quests altogether.\n+ Still a number of visual glitches during my playthrough.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Infographic summary](https://www.reddit.com/r/LowSodiumCyberpunk/comments/1678oaw/new_infographic_for_20_and_phantom_liberty_and)\n\nThis entry evaluates the Phantom Liberty DLC along with the simultaneously released version 2.0 update.\n\n__Playthrough style.__\nI continued with Normal difficulty. Hard can be frustrating at times and I enjoy steamrolling through the quests with a powerful build. There's also no inherent reward for higher difficulties. At times I bumped up the difficulty when I found the combat too trivial.\n\nI started off from my original game's save and completed all remaining side jobs. I did some but not the majority of gigs and NPCD scanner hustles. This added roughly 15 playtime hours before even accounting for content from Phantom Liberty.\n\n+ Katana with the Airstrike mod consistently crashed my game. I experienced at least 5 crashes before I Googled to find others who experienced the issue and pinpointed it to this one. Otherwise no major game crashes or bugs.\n\n__Build.__ I played a loud melee build focusing on blade weapons ([link](https://www.cyberpunk.net/build-planner?a=kk3ki&b=11111000000000000000031110000001&r=1110100000211101211100000031131110011&i=&t=111020110211111100000310000000001&c=01000000000000000000000003&e=313010031)).\n\nI primarily went stealth with pistols in the base game; and I was unimpressed by playstyles involving sniper rifles, SMGs, or assault rifles. Loud and melee lets me try something new alongside the [newly advertised perks](https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/news/48958/build-planner-craft-your-cyberpunk-2077-and-phantom-liberty-builds) which focus on melee and hacking. Netrunner (hacking / breach) is also a viable build to try.\n\n+ Attributes: 20 Body / 20 Reflexes / 3 Intelligence / 20 Technical Ability / 18 Cool\n+ Skill tree and perks: 12 / 28 / 0 / 20 / 4. 16 perk points are remaining for secondary playstyle options: for example, stealth with crouch movement options in Cool (minimum 15) and highlighting cameras in Intelligence (minimum 4); alternative weapons; and quickhacking.\n+ [Weapons](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberpunk_2077_Weapons): Jinchu-Maru\n+ [Cyberware](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberpunk_2077_Cyberware)\n  + Frontal Cortex: None (3 open slots)\n  + Operating System: Militech \"Apogee\" Sandevistan\n  + Arms: Gorilla Arms\n  + Face: Basic Kiroshi Optics\n  + Skeleton: Epimorphic Skeleton, Bionic Joints, Para Bellum\n  + Hands: Tyger Claws Dermal Imprint\n  + Nervous System: Adrenaline Converter, Stabber (1 open slot)\n  + Circulatory System: Heal-on-Kill, Microrotors, Adrenaline Booster\n  + Integumentary System: Optical Camo, Pain Editor, Subdermal Armor\n  + Legs: Reinforced Tendons\n+ [Clothing](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberpunk_2077_Clothing): Mostly cosmetic\n+ [Vehicles](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberpunk_2077_Vehicles): Kusanagi CT-3X, Caliburn\n\nThe playstyle is to start encounters with playing stealth aggressively in order to get close and kill some initial enemies, then continue killing loud. Regarding the build's active abilities:\n\n+ The movement abilities (Air) Dash, crouch-sprint, and double jump provide more maneuverability.\n+ Sandevistan, Flash and Thunderclap, Lead and Steel's projectile-blocking helps close the enemy distance. Sandevistan also assists when focusing on an enemy to kill quickly.\n+ Blade Finisher assists in enemy DPS and health regen.\n+ Gorilla Arms is a stun AOE whenever overwhelmed or near many enemies.\n+ Optical Camo assists in stealth as an opener to get close or to throw off enemies during combat.\n+ Stuntjock lets you exit moving vehicles.\n\nOld\n  + Frontal Cortex: Limbic System Enhancement, Visual Cortex Support (requires 6/8/12/16 Intelligence)\n  + Ocular System: Kiroshi \"Cockatrice\" Optics\n  + Circulatory System: Bioconductor, Syn-Lungs\n  + Nervous System: Nanorelays, Reflex Tuner\n  + Skeleton: Microvibration Generator\n\nI got burned out of the game around You Know My Name, which is 1/3 of the way through the DLC. The game seemed fine, but I played for a few consecutive days completing previous side missions, gigs, etc. and also doing everything in the DLC. I can pick the game up again when I'm re-interested.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty"},{"id":"e2541a6b-20f2-4cd6-b936-41ee83ea07d3","title":"Dark Souls III: Cinders","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":1920,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["FromSoftware"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment","FromSoftware"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-01-01","updatedDate":"2023-07-04","notes":"Cinders is touted as an overhaul and often described as a Scholar of the First Sin for DS3. However, while Cinders adds a lot, it's more in a bloated \"more of everything\" fashion with nothing particularly innovative (e.g., mechanics, new areas, new enemies) and with a vision toward a specifically catered experience. You're mostly retreading the same grounds but with more build options. The newest mechanics like the magic's FP regen and Spell Ascension are debatably useful in making a pure caster build more viable than it is in the original game.\n\nI'm not interested in \"more X\" mods. Mods I find most interesting are: entirely new levels with new enemies (much like a DLC, c.f., Elder Scrolls' mod expansions), newly viable builds (e.g., archer-only build, Convergence's magic schools), and innovative mechanics (e.g., Quick Souls).\n\n__Gameplay.__ Cinders adds new of most everything: classes, starting gifts, bosses, weapons, armor sets, battle arts, friendly merchants and hostile NPC enemies, base mechanics like defense and equipment load, covenants. Many of these new items are texture dumps from prior Souls titles.\n\nCinders does not do much that's actually new in terms of mechanics. Its most notable changes are:\n\n+ Progression path in a given level is different along with different item placement. There are also some new bosses.\n+ Magic is buffed with FP regen (so you don't have to rely only on consumables) and Spell Ascension.\n+ Equipment includes passive stats beyond defense, enabling more varied usage.\n+ Bosses are significantly tankier (to a detriment, as it's often a complaint online).\n+ Lord of Cinder mode. Increases max HP to 130% by using an Ember, much like previous Dark Souls titles.\n+ Poise is added and made passive, unlike hyperarmor and more like previous Souls titles.\n\nSome other changes but are situational or aren't very useful:\n+ Perfect block, allowing a block that doesn't consume stamina if timed like a parry.\n+ Curses allow increasing difficulty under varied mechanics and which rewards soul increase.\n+ Separate game modes, particularly the Gauntlet which is a boss rush. You can also skip directly to different levels of NG+.\n\nThere are also new bonfire and enemy placements, and there are several shortcuts through areas so that progression does not have to be the same linear path as in the original game.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Bloodthirsty items act as an infinite replenishible approach to limited consumables. I dislike limited items in Souls games as it encourages hoarding instead of active usage.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](http://ds3-cinders.wikidot.com)\n\nI played Cinders v2.15. I played a pure caster build. Due to Cinders' FP regen, this is a build you can't really play in the original game as it encourages a hybrid instead, relying on melee when you run out of FP---not unlike running out of casts in DS1 and DS2. I also used [EMU Light](https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls3/mods/83) for spell quickcast keys.\n\n+ Starting class: Forlorn Mage. Seemed the best in terms for an INT build, with minimal stats in FAITH/LUCK.\n+ Gift: Bloodthirsty Sparking Knife.\n\nI dropped the game around Road of Sacrifices. The game felt same-y. Still fun in the usual Dark Souls 3 way though.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dark-souls-iii"},{"id":"322682678652941900","title":"Dead Space 2","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Visceral Games"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-08-06","updatedDate":"2023-07-04","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\nDead Space 2 adds many new weapons. With a diverse upgrade paths per weapon and the ability to spend your credits on power nodes and sell inventory items, you can choose to focus on less than the 4 weapon slots (e.g., a Plasma Cutter only run) or commit to a certain set of 4. This adds significant replayability as you can choose different weapons and their upgrade paths on each run.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [PCGamingWiki](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Dead_Space_2), including mouse fix for raw input and skipping intro video\n\nI initially played a bit of it in 2012. But I wasn't into the horror survival genre at the time like that of Silent Hill, Half-life, and Resident Evil. I played on Survivalist (Hard) difficulty, which is somewhere between the default Normal and the Zealot (hardest) difficulty for second playthrough veterans. Third person shooters are situational in whether mouse and keyboard is better than controller; I used mouse and keyboard here as I enjoy the aiming and analog movement isn't as important.\n\n__Build.__ I favored weapons that drop lots of ammo and handled the majority of situations. I didn't more unique weapons that fit more niche situations such as the Flamethrower, Ripper, or even the Doom BFG-equivalent of the Contact Beam.\n\n+ __Plasma Cutter.__ General DPS. Prioritize damage, then capacity.\n+ __Pulse Rifle.__ Crowd control.\n+ __Seeker Rifle.__ Single target high damage, for elite enemies and bosses.\n\nI played roughly midway and stopped. It felt a little too repetitive; I got bored of linear shooters.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dead-space-2"},{"id":"322682678652782156","title":"Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes","originalTitle":"完全爆弾解除マニュアル: Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["Meta Quest 2","?","PS4","Linux","Gear VR","PSVR","Android","PC","iOS","Steam VR","Mac","?","?","XONE","Switch","?"],"studios":["Steel Crate Games"],"publishers":["Steel Crate Games"],"genres":["Puzzle","Simulator","Indie"],"startedDate":"2024-06-09","updatedDate":"2024-07-06","notes":"Great coop game, a classic for dates: a game is short and self-contained, the idea is simple to learn to play, accessible to casuals, the graphics are cute and not video-game-y/immature, you can play LAN so it's an excuse to invite them over.\n\nPlayed on a date with Joelle and Marisa.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/keep-talking-and-nobody-explodes"},{"id":"330885689176490575","title":"Persona 5","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":5850,"platforms":["PS3","PS4"],"studios":["P Studio"],"publishers":["Atlus USA","Deep Silver","Atlus"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-11-02","updatedDate":"2023-04-26","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\nPersona is a little too vanilla JRPG for me in melodrama and shallow turn-based combat.\n\n__Story.__ The characters are the highlight. The drama is classic Japanese high school anime drama.\n\nThe formula is rather repetitive as well. It stays the same as a new character and conflict is brought as effectively a new arc. It's also effectively the same story as it was in past titles.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Combat and visual novel mechanics are largely the same.\n\nOne new change is the addition of a gun that you can utilize with limited ammo at the start of each fight.\n\nThere's no longer randomized loot as a way to obtain more XP, gold, items, or Persona cards. Instead, you recruit these as dialoge options as an alternative to the All-out Attack. \n\nAs part of the down options, there's also Baton pass. Technical Attacks. Showtime.\n\nCrafting infiltration tools. Ambush and hiding strategies.\n\nDisaster shadows. Red elite-like enemies. Challenge battles in the Velvet Room. Will seeds.\n\nFusion alarm. Train persona.\n\nLevel design in palaces are significantly more varied than previous titles, feeling like actual levels. It's the Mementos that take from prior games' random level generation.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ It's largely in the same style of previous Persona games but with higher definition upgrades. The game is partially voiced. Anime scenes and voice acting is great as usual. You can clearly see the age of the graphics being for the PS3 generation.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The game automatically highlights the spells that an enemy is weak against. You no longer have to rescan enemies to recall this info, which is extra steps.\n+ New to Persona 5, the assist menu tells you what confidants are available on a given day. You no longer have to run around and remember each person's schedule.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Confidants no longer have a weekly schedule but vary across the months. This is more realistic and doesn’t require you to memorize a schedule. But it makes ranking confidants less predictable and often based on whether they reach out to you rather than the other way around.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Unlike previous Persona games, you need a matching Arcana in your inventory in order to obtain the highest points when selecting good dialogue options when you meet with confidants. This is annoying to micromanage as it limits your Persona inventory with you artificially carrying low-level Personas just for this. To further complicate things, there are exceptions of arcana you don't need to match: story-based (Fool, Magician, Justice, Judgment), Sun, Moon, Strength.\n+ There's no notification for the activities you do regularly:\n  + every 16 days, re-fertilize your plant for Kindness\n  + on select Thursdays, watch the TV for a quiz for Knowledge\n  + on Sundays, visit the Drink Stand for stat-boosting aojiru\n  + every month, see a movie as they refresh\n  + on select days, solve a crossword puzzle for Knowledge\n  + on select days, trade with Barter Sakai\n\n  At least there's a notification for the Home Shopping Program.\n+ You can safely sell most all old equipment. However, you still want to keep equipment with secondary stats that are useful or equipment with transmutation. This is an unnecessary detail.\n+ The DLCs provide Personas at the start of the game which are absurdly overpowered. Several at level 80+: Izanagi-no-Okami Picaro, for example, is level 89 and has Myriad Truths (a massive damage AoE) and Victory Cry, which fully restores HP/SP after battle. Using any DLC Personas is akin to skipping combat altogether.\n+ Like previous titles, there are important activities to prioritize before doing others that the game doesn't tell you above: Speed Reading for reading books, Art of Cinema for watching DVDs.\n+ You have to spam entering between levels in order to find Jose. It's annoying they don't just put him at the entrance because you need to find him every time before you exit Mementos in order to spend all your flowers.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [General strategy to max confidant ranks](https://www.reddit.com/r/Persona5/comments/l3hicr/algorithm_to_maxing_all_confidants_in_a_single)\n  + [Day-by-day guide](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/260936-persona-5-royal/faqs/78212/). I only used this in early game to get a handle of the many activities.\n  + [Confidant dialogue guide](https://hardcoregamer.com/features/persona-5-royal-confidant-guide/370507)\n+ [Strength confidant fusion guide](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/260936-persona-5-royal/faqs/78212/strength)\n+ [School Exam and Quiz Answers](https://underbuffed.com/school-test-and-quiz-answers-persona-5-royal-guide)\n+ [Crossword Puzzle Answers](https://underbuffed.com/all-crossword-puzzle-answers-persona-5-royal/)\n+ [Home Shopping Program](https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Home_Shopping_Program). Useful for knowing what the items in each set you might purchase do.\n+ [Negotiation Guide](https://joyceychen.com/persona5-negotiation/royal.html)\n\nI played the Persona 5 Royal version on PC. Like my previous Persona playthroughs, I played on Normal difficulty; I maximize social stats for school answers as they come up first; I complete dungeons as soon as possible, typically in 1 day; and I try to level all confidant ranks equally, prioritizing confidants with tighter schedules. The limited time encourages me to minmax, but I try not to care about maximizing all ranks as it requires even more tedious micromanagement with day-by-day walkthroughs. I went the harem route just to see all the romance scenes (I don't care about the friendship ones); later, I watched all the Valentine's day scenes I missed on YouTube.\n\nI dropped the game around November 10.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/persona-5"},{"id":"ffd14992-7ca3-42df-b3f6-4f8bafab1c11","title":"Red Dead Redemption 2","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":3000,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Stadia"],"studios":["Rockstar Games"],"publishers":["Take-Two Interactive","Rockstar Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2025-12-27","updatedDate":"2026-03-01","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Writing.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\nGetting bored of the linear missions, pacing, and somewhat stale mission stories in Act 3.\n\nSame main mechanics and controls as RDR, such as horse riding, walking around, and shooting. Major changes:\n\n+ Bigger bet on worldbuilding. Immersion is critical.\n+ Survival mechanics: eating, bathing, brushing or bathing your horse, cleaning guns.\n+ More cinematic, including cinematic camera fixed angles, camera focus on characters.\n+ Health and stamina levels. Cores. Satchel and camp upgrades, gear.\n+ Fishing.\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\nLooks incredible for a 2018 game. Many elements of it look as if they were released in 2025.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Like RDR1, fast travel is more immersive (and onerous), requiring you to go to campfire at minimum first.\n+ You can power game by quickly entering and exiting Dead Eye to instantly reload any gun.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The game has detective mode (\"Eagle Eye\"). This mechanic sucks.\n+ Like RDR1, shotguns are a useless gun category.\n+ Horses can die. For realism, they should be able to die even more often, but they’re right now at the stage of too infrequent that it’s just annoying and is better to reload the game than to consider it normal and to buy a new horse.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://reddead.fandom.com)\n+ https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Missions_in_Redemption_2\n+ https://rdr2map.com\n\n__Version.__ Special/Ultimate Edition provide only [minor additions](https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Dead_Redemption_2#Special_Edition) to the base edition. Most notable are the extra bank robbery mission and gang hideout and a handful of quality-of-life items. I played the Ultimate Edition as Special Edition is no longer available and if only for the completionism given how much I enjoyed RDR1.\n\nI played honorable.\n\nUpgrades in priority:\n\n+ Fast travel waypoints (Stagecoaches and Train Stations)\n+ [Horse](https://www.reddit.com/r/reddeadredemption2/comments/9ylw60/all_horse_stats_and_ranks_rdr2) | [Ch. 2-4] White Arabian (find), technically Black Arabian is available, [Ch. 4-6] Black Arabian ($1050), [Ch. 6] Grey Arabian ($1250)\n  + Upgrade with familiarity.\n+ [Talismans & Trinkets](https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Talismans_%26_Trinkets) | Buck Antler Trinket, the rest\n+ Hunting | Springfield Rifle (big game, Ch. 3 quest or buy), Varmint Rifle (small game, free with Ultimate Edition or buy)\n+ [Horse Tack](https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Horse_Tack) | Beaver Saddle\n+ Legend of the East Satchel | Increased carrying capacity to 99 per item.\n  + An optional grind for quality of life. I only do satchel upgrades as I go.\n+ Rifle | Lancaster Repeater (Ch. 2 quest), but experimented with many\n  + Upgrade all guns at gunsmith and with familiarity.\n+ [Revolver](https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Weapons_in_Redemption_2) | [Ch. 2-4] Schofield (find or buy), [Ch. 4] LeMat, but experimented with many\n+ [Reinforced Equipment](https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Trapper#Reinforced_Equipment) | Explorer set. The others for up to level 10 Health, Stamina, Dead Eye are an optional grind for quality of life. The equivalent to outfits and kit items in RDR1.\n+ $3500 | Collect gold bars at burnt town, crashed train, and statues puzzle.\n+ XP to level up Health, Stamina Dead Eye\n+ [Honor](https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Honor) for vendor prices\n+ Inventory | items for Health Core, Stamina Core, Dead Eye Core, Horse Core\n+ [Outfits](https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Outfits_in_Redemption_2) | Unlike RDR1, no in-game effects.\n\n[Camp upgrades](https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Camps#Camp_Upgrades) in priority:\n\n1. Dutch’s tent | Camp morale for donations.\n2. Arthur’s tent | Camp fast travel.\n3. Leather Working Tools | To donate to Pearson for upgrading satchel per category for increased carrying capacity.\n4. Everyone’s tent | Camp morale for donations.\n6. The rest.\n\ntodos on future playthroughs\n+ dishonor","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/red-dead-redemption-2"},{"id":"324411388795552336","title":"Resident Evil 2","originalTitle":"バイオハザード２","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":510,"platforms":["PS3","NGC","PC","PS1","PSP","DC"],"studios":["Capcom Planning Room 2"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Virgin Interactive Entertainment","Capcom"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-02-23","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/resident-evil-2"},{"id":"322682678653493836","title":"Spelunky 2","originalTitle":"スペランキー２","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":1650,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["BlitWorks","Mossmouth"],"publishers":["Mossmouth"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-01-03","updatedDate":"2025-07-01","notes":"__Gameplay.__ Spelunky 2 adds many new gameplay elements to Spelunky's original system. Includes a slightly deeper story, quests, multiple rooms, swimming.\n\nBoy is this game hard. The first zone is even more difficult than Spelunky 1's mines due to extra and tougher enemies and the punching totem. It's such a strange difficulty curve as Spelunky 2's first zone is actually the hardest zone. This was a large wall that prevented me from really getting into the game.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Spelunky 2 pushes further on Spelunky's theme of an arcade-like dungeon crawler with a cute, quirky, and colorful art style. Animations are also solid.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://spelunky.fandom.com\n\nI dropped it after finishing Act 1 and only 4 hours. I couldn't get into it. I picked it up again on 2025-03. Still couldn't play more beyond finishing Act 1.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/spelunky-2"},{"id":"322682678652912204","title":"Super Mario Galaxy 2","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["Wii","WiiU"],"studios":["Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development","Nintendo"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-04-21","updatedDate":"2023-04-26","notes":"Super Mario Galaxy 2 feels like a larger-than-typical-sized DLC. It adds more levels and with polished designs in knowing what did best. It did not really innovate though: just refinements (see below for details). The biggest addition is Yoshi as a playable character and additional powerups. Enemies are the same. Even some bosses resemble in mechanics.\n\nI don't know if it's because my gameplay improved, I adapted to the Mario experience, or the sequel's just better (e.g., better camera control). However, I found playing this game extremely fun. It didn't feel like a chore unlike when I played the first game. It could also be the streamlining, which stuck to SMG's core and removed fanfare like the overhead of the hub world spending 30s to hop over to the same galaxy and choose the next level, and story cutscenes.\n\n__Gameplay.__ I love the new mechanics: Yoshi, flip switches that change when you Spin, Drills.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ Deliberate checkpoints via flags. I didn't like the previous system where you didn't know if you reached one.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ Less story than the original and no hub world.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ You have to find Comet Coins to activate the Prankster Comet levels. That's bad design. Either you follow a guide at every level you playthrough to make sure you're not missing anything, or you backtrack. Both are tedious.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/super-mario-galaxy-2\n+ https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-super-mario-galaxy-2-hd-texture-mod\n\nI only got into 30 stars before recognizing Mario, despite the creative level designs, artwork, and platforming skill cap, I just don't like platformers like these, in favor of the more casual paced collectithon like Spyro. And it's why while I enjoy Banjo Kazooie, the Super Mario 64 elements diminished my enjoyment.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-mario-galaxy-2"},{"id":"322682678652856908","title":"Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":1050,"platforms":["SNES","Wii","WiiU","SFAM"],"studios":["Square","Square Enix"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Playtronic","Hyundai"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2023-11-23","updatedDate":"2025-03-24","notes":"Standard fun JRPG in the theme of Mario. It hits all the beats you'd expect with a light casual tone, fun yet fairly plain dialogue, and one-dimensional characters.\n\n__Story.__\nStory is fairly light and standard for the Mario franchise.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nIt's classic turn-based. There are levels, with stat increases and special abilities granted at certain levels, items, party members.\n\n+ Attacks and defend include timing. Reminds me of Legend of Dragoon but streamlined in terms of the attack, and I like the ability to timely defend keeping the overall combat more engaging. Each weapon and ability requires its own timing.\n+ Roaming enemies.\n+ Occasional events. Exp gambling system by picking Yoshi in a shell. Stat boosts after downing an enemy.\n+ Fun minigames throughout the adventure.\n\nThere are no significant complexities or innovations here. Just a classic JRPG in the theme of Mario.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nThe remake has a colorful albeit generic palette. It's par for the course, playing the usual Mario tunes, but still fun as a casual experience. The original SNES title certainly has a more distinctive style.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Downed and inactive party members still gain XP.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Downed characters revive after battle.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Hidden treasures](https://www.mariowiki.com/Hidden_Treasure) ([Polygon](https://www.polygon.com/guides/23945255/super-mario-rpg-hidden-treasure-locations-boxes-invisible))\n+ [Toadofsky songs](https://videogames.si.com/guides/super-mario-rpg-frog-melody-songs)\n\nMotivated to play as one of the first mainstream western RPGs and starter to mario RPGs (e.g., Paper Mario). I played the remake. This is a good description of Super Mario RPG vs Paper Mario: \"Paper Mario is like the Mario team made an RPG. Mario RPG is like Squaresoft made a Mario game\" ([source](https://www.reddit.com/r/snes/comments/w16nwh/super_mario_rpg_vs_paper_mario)).\n\n__Version.__ I played its 2023 remake. I played on the Yuzu emulator (version 1630 2023-11-23). I used default settings, changing only the resolution to 2x (1440p). Ryujinx is also an option ([compatibility](https://github.com/Ryujinx/Ryujinx-Games-List/issues/4811)). I chose Yuzu if only because it's more popular.\n\n__Build.__ For stat choices, I generally selected the stat with the highest increases on that level ([discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/MarioRPG/comments/17yrrsy/stats_choices), [2](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/588739-super-mario-rpg-legend-of-the-seven-stars/45528590)). For Flower items, there's also more than enough to maximize FP in the game ([discussion](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/588739-super-mario-rpg-legend-of-the-seven-stars/45760876)).\n\nI dropped it during the 6th star piece entering Nimbus Land.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-mario-rpg-legend-of-the-seven-stars"},{"id":"322682678652940876","title":"Undertale","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":390,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","Vita","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["tobyfox"],"publishers":["8-4","tobyfox"],"genres":["Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2018-09-24","updatedDate":"2026-04-27","notes":"## Review 1 (2018-09)\n\nThis game is underwhelming. It's a one-trick pony in trying to stereotype tropes, and it's not very clever in how it achieves it. The graphics are subpar (the aesthetic to me isn't very interesting), and I find the Homestuck-esque humor off-kilter and off-putting. The battle system and the story just isn't very good either. I appreciate the earnest attempt to push the RPG genre, but it's so uninspired in its way of doing so. It also really isn't an RPG. There's a leveling system that doesn't actually work (it's there to poke fun at leveling); the bullet hell is just so boring; and the western RPG choices of pacificist or genocide are not interesting.\n\nListening to the community is tiring as well, with the same shared interests as Homestuck, Deviant Art, Tumblr, Rick and Morty, Adventure Time, Venture Brothers. It's amusing to hear well-constructed criticisms followed by them saying it's your opinion, and that they do like it.\n\n## Review 2 (2025-04)\n\nI started playing it again with Marisa on 2024-04-24.\n\n+ I dislike the puzzle combat gameplay. Just a bullet hell.\n+ Writing is OK.\n+ Visuals and soundtrack are the biggest highlight for me.\n\n__Writing.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/Undertale/comments/3szvui/my_undertale_save_files\n","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/undertale"},{"id":"0ad52c7c-2cb7-43ea-96c6-02fe019336eb","title":"Victor Vran","status":"Dropped","score":7,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Haemimont Games"],"publishers":["EuroVideo Medien"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2023-09-20","updatedDate":"2023-11-07","notes":"Victor Vran takes on its own interpretation of ARPGs with its stronger emphasis on action much like third-person combat games.\n\nFlaw-wise, levels can feel samey during mid to endgame. There isn’t enough progression elements.\n\n__Story.__\nMinimal.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n+ Reaction-based action with action type controls: jump (including wall jump), roll.\n+ Demon powers based on overcharge meter.\n+ Enemies have more complicated movesets so you have to weave in and out to get attacks in.\n+ Interactable camera that's still isometric but not fixed like most ARPGs.\n+ Weapon choice determines the ability moveset. All the weapons are solid.\n+ The campaign progresses like a standard linear game with checkpoints, unlike the hub-style with quests that's standard in ARPGs.\n+ There is some build variety but the progression mechanics and itemization are not as deep as most ARPGs.\n+ Map challenges encourage gameplay variety, including using different weapons.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nGraphics are serviceable but not great. The artless style of the 3D CGI models reminds me of Grim Dawn and Bloodstained, which are also not great in graphics. Dialogue is particularly noticeable in its budget quality where you see a screenshot of the person you're speaking to followed by the dialogue. Same goes for soundtrack. Witcher's Geralt voice acting suits the Victor Vran style well.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Hexes provide varied difficulty modifiers and that extra risk provides the reward of 10% XP gain and 5% item drop rate.\n+ Death penalty is respawning at last checkpoint, where any enemies you killed since then don't respawn. I like that it keeps this tradition of ARPGs rather than needing to redo part of an area until you can master it without dying. It especially helps as quality of life during the early part of hard mode. It seems almost impossible to get through early hard mode effectively without running by enemies.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Game relies on autosaves which happen frequently ([source](https://steamcommunity.com/app/345180/discussions/0/358415738204507677)). No manual saves or save checkpoints. Map progress including enemy spawns and challenge progress restarts whenever you go to the Hub or leave the game.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Steam: Map secrets](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=444466574)\n+ Builds\n  + [Steam: \nMaerarde's Extensive Endgame Guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=493549265)\n+ [Steam: Some End Game Builds](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1737201334)\n\n__Version.__ I played the base game. The DLC are separate worlds and fairly incremental. Can decide whether to play the DLCs later as they don't modify the core campaign.\n\n__Playthrough style.__\n\n+ I played on controller. The analog movement and more action-y third person combat makes the game feel better on controller compared to a standard ARPG where movement is not as significant.\n+ I started by playing Hard mode. Hard mode is not recommended for the first character per the game suggestion, but you can downgrade from Hard to Normal but not go up ([source](https://steamcommunity.com/app/345180/discussions/0/2992043384047042737)). Hard mode has a low epic buff increasing enemy stats ([source](https://steamcommunity.com/app/345180/discussions/0/458604254449453224)), and it permanently actives all 5 hexes. It's challenging most in the beginning due to Hex of Tenacity (static 120 armor enemy buff + regeneration) and lack of gear but becomes more reasonable.\n\n__Build.__\n\n+ Outfit:\n+ Talisman:\n+ Consumables:\n+ Weapons:\n+ Demon Powers:","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/victor-vran"},{"id":"841f004b-c1ac-4dd7-87ca-ae5c852c5ddb","title":"Avowed","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":990,"platforms":["PC","Series X"],"studios":["Obsidian Entertainment"],"publishers":["Xbox Game Studios"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2026-02-01","updatedDate":"2026-03-01","notes":"A good but not great game. Very whelming in its combat, superficial RPG elements, writing. Better than Veilguard but still not a great RPG. [This is a good summary.](https://www.reddit.com/r/avowed/comments/1iuz9o0/finished_the_game_very_disappointing_and)\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n+ No real stealth mechanics. You can sneak attack to kill one enemy, but the rest are immediately alerted to your position and fight. It's not like Skyrim or Fallout where you can stealth kill each enemy at a time.\n+ No alignment or companion relationship system. So your choices don't have consequence beyond the specific quest.\n+ Writing quality is bare lore and has little to do with gameplay, comes through lore dumps in dialogues or the Ancient Memories. Your choices have little impact so there's not much incentive to pay attention to read it all.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nAA graphics quality and animation jank/polish.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Limited crafting materials by endgame. You can't fully upgrade everything.\n+ Some decisions are irreversible, such as breaking down or selling unique gear, or enchanting unique weapons.\n+ Option-wise, it's always in your benefit to choose \"[Attack]\" in the dialogue options. You get more XP from killing the enemy, and you get their unique loot that you wouldn't get otherwise. They don't show up anymore in the game anyways.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://avowed.wiki.fextralife.com\n+ [Youtube: RedGael Avowed Builds](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjw14T6Y6YgfXPyiCzLjdm_Wx3z2gP7LP)\n+ [Reddit: Sell or break down gear?](https://www.reddit.com/r/avowed/comments/1j9ob0n/is_there_a_point_to_breaking_down_gear/). Always break down. Materials are always needed, you quickly have more than enough gold. Technically it's better to just sell everything, then buy materials as needed, but it's more annoying to have to wait for shops to refresh to always buy things. You can do this strategy too.\n+ [Ancient Memories](https://www.ign.com/wikis/avowed/Ancient_Memories)\n\nA first-person fantasy RPG by Obsidian and in the setting from Pillars of Eternity? Yes please.\n\nI dropped the game after starting the third area.\n\n__Gunmage build.__\nUse guns for single target (burst) DPS, spells for AOE, crowd control, and defense/buffs.\n\n+ Attributes: \n  + Start: Might 3 / Constitution 0 / Dexterity 3 / Perception 1 / Intellect 3 / Resolve 0\n  + Priority: Dexterity > Might > Intellect > Constitution > Perception (weak point is already auto crit).\n\nResources\n+ [Nizar GG: Gunmage build](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwEFJZO9HlI)\n+ [Gunmage build](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcvsiZVG5j4)\n  + https://hacktheminotaur.com/guides/best-gun-mage-build-for-avowed","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/avowed"},{"id":"994d33b2-8c26-4e59-bd2e-5461c457b101","title":"Black Myth: Wukong","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":2628,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Game Science"],"publishers":["Game Science"],"startedDate":"2024-11-27","updatedDate":"2025-05-11","notes":"Its major standout is the setting. Otherwise it is a a very standard, high production Souls game. Level design is forgettable, and it is mostly a boss rush. Combat abilities and enemy design is serviceable.\n\n__Story.__\nSurprisingly, there’s a decent story. Better than Sekiro for example. Quite above average for a Souls game.\n\nThe worldbuilding setting is of course quite unique in fantasy from most western games.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n+ Fundamentals are Souls-like: weak and strong attack, dodge, refillable heals, save point shrine, levels with no map.\n+ Heavy attack. Works differently out and inside combos.\n+ Stances.\n+ Cooldown abilities.\n+ Transformations. Like Nioh 2.\n+ Level design is forgettable. Everything looks the same. Enemy mobs are not designed to be challenging or interesting. And it is mostly pathways that are not that interesting to lead you to the next boss in the boss rush.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nGreat graphics.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ No cost to respec, and you can do it at any shrine. This is the best quality of life for games like this, where there is not really build variety and you only plan to play once.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ No death penalty.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You don’t pick up many substantial items by walking around. Little gear or noticeable drops from chests. Just gold and mats.\n+ No parry.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://blackmythwukong.wiki.fextralife.com\n\nDropped it during Black Wind Cave.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/black-myth-wukong"},{"id":"322682678653495884","title":"Blasphemous","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["The Game Kitchen"],"publishers":["The Game Kitchen","Team17"],"genres":["Platform","Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-04-28","updatedDate":"2023-08-30","notes":"It has a unique setting with handcrafted visuals, gore, religious gothic symbolism, and deep Castlevania-inherited combat. \n\n__Story.__ Souls-like.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nCombat feels almost shallow due to its single hit attack animation, and where defensive maneuvers only include dash and parry. The damage moveset is basic like something out of Aria of Sorrow (which was restricted due to being on the GBA). You don't have much agility for horizontal or vertical manuevers like Hollow Knight, and platforming just feels bad because of it: there is no sprint, double jump, or aerial dash. Combat abilities also feel weak or lack in variety compared to Castlevania's special items. There's also not significant ability gating and accumulation of new abilities that really change the way you play the game like Metroid's.\n\nThere are a number of resources to collect, including health and weapon damage upgrades and items.\n\nLevel design differences between areas don't feel very significant. Instant death spikes are annoying especially due to the poor movement capabilities, and the level's enemy and checkpoint placement don't stand out.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I love Blaphemous' handdrawn art and abstract vision toward a medieval tale of sins. Screenshots from the game look like they're from an auteur's animated film. Animations are also really good.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Death penalty is forgiving in that you go back to your previous checkpoint but keep all your earned Tears. If you don't pick up your guilt fragment, then your max mana and Tear gain decreases and you must go to a Guilt Confessor statue. This is more forgiving than Dark Souls 2's permanent max hp decrease until the next boss.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Lantern jump. Bad animated mechanic. They should just do the pogo stick animation from Hollow Knight.\n+ No pressure-sensitive jump like Castlevania games where you can jump higher or lower depending on how long you hold the button.\n+ There is no equivalent of Hollow Knight's late game Collector Map to mark grubs you found on the map. Here, it's easy to miss Children of Moonlight and not know which one you missed.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Progress route](https://www.reddit.com/r/Blasphemous/comments/d46p12/general_progression)\n\nI finished Mercy Dreams and got to Jondo.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/blasphemous"},{"id":"f552c33e-8396-4dcc-a04f-1a87a9cb76de","title":"Bread & Fred","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["SandCastles Studio"],"publishers":["SandCastles Studio","Apogee Entertainment"],"genres":["Platform","Indie"],"startedDate":"2024-06-29","updatedDate":"2024-06-30","notes":"Played with Marisa. Coop Jump King. Wow what a hard game.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bread-and-fred"},{"id":"322682678652859980","title":"Deus Ex: Mankind Divided","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":930,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","XONE"],"studios":["Eidos Montréal"],"publishers":["Feral Interactive","Eidos Montréal","Square Enix"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-08-26","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Mankind Divided is like a derivative of Human Revolution. It doesn't do enough new and its serviceable story and characters make for an enjoyable albeit forgettable experience.\n\n__Story.__ A government espionage story with sabotage and racism against augments. It's not a story I find quite interesting as it's done many times over.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Most of the gameplay is the same as Human Revolution: the stealth loop with an enemy detection system, open level designs, upgradeable weapons, a hacking minigame, and a collectible incentives for exploration, where Praxis Kits and XP serve as the form of RPG progression. Crafting is new. New augmentations including experimental augmentations with an overheat mechanic.\n\nLevel design is gorgeous and large with lots of detail. It feels like streets from a real city. As a consequence, it can be difficult to explore and find meaningful content however (e.g., side missions). Different parts are emphasized depending on main campaign progression, and it's all open for little reason.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Customizable HUD. For (lossless) immersion, I set all bars such as health to Timed Fade Out.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ There still isn't an indicator for whether your Ghost bonus is no longer active. It can be hard to tell if something you did triggered it to fail, encouraging an unfun playstyle of save scumming.\n+ Object pickup outlines are way too intrusive compared to Human Revolution. And if you turn it off, it's much harder to find the objects that provide you ammo and other resources.\n+ Aiming sensitivity when scoped is significantly lower than when not zoomed in. You can't set the scoped sensitivity.\n+ Ragbody physics is annoying to move bodies. Just let Jensen carry them over their shoulder like Thief.\n+ Dialogue options use a dialogue wheel with no one-handed keyboard shortcuts.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Side Missions](https://www.ign.com/wikis/deus-ex-mankind-divided/Side_Missions)\n\nI played on Medium (Give Me a Challenge) difficulty. Like Human Revolution, it only scales stats: player health, player health/energy regen, and enemy health and accuracy. So it doesn't affect stealth detection or enemy AI aggression. A more difficult experience would rather be HUD-less, which I can always experiment with later in a playthrough or future playthroughs. I played blind.\n\nI did a non-lethal stealth/hacking playthrough, killing on emergencies rather than savescumming (I still do to an extent). I favored non-lethal takedowns for ammo followed by tranq rifle and stun gun headshots (same max of +30 XP as takedown, unlike Human Revolution); 10mm pistol for distractions; and revolver or Typhoon for bosses. Augmentation-wise, I prioritized new options (e.g., Hacking, Heavy Lifting, Jump Enhancement, Punch Through Walls, Social Enhancer, Rebreather, Remote Hacking).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/deus-ex-mankind-divided"},{"id":"322682678652839500","title":"Dragon Quest III","originalTitle":"ドラゴンクエストIII","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":1988,"playtimeMinutes":1680,"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2025-02-28","updatedDate":"2025-03-24","notes":"It's innovative for its time. But playing in 2025, it's too classic with minimal interesting story and characters, and basic bestiary, combat, and progression. I prefer Dragon Quest 8 or 11 for the true \"golden age\" experience. The game feels 10% story 90% slogging through random encounters.\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ First person view during battles. Far less animation and cool sights to see.\n+ Encounter rate is too high, making it a slog to play.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.neoseeker.com/dragon-quest-iii-hd-2d-remake/walkthrough\n\nI played the HD-2D remake. The DQ3 remake are much approved and beats the Super Nintendo's DQ5 graphics (it was based on the DQ6 engine). In terms of original, the Super Famicom is the best version (https://youtu.be/ZYRbm0Px0XE?t=380), and in particular the enhanced 1996 remake. Marisa and I dropped it shortly after Chapter 2.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-quest-iii-hd-2d-remake"},{"id":"a8ff77b4-4302-4758-bcfd-9f82668eb574","title":"Elderborn","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2020,"platforms":["PC"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Indie"],"startedDate":"2024-09-21","updatedDate":"2025-02-25","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nThe kick comes back from Dark Messiah. It's not always as useful unfortunately, and it's missing environmental interaction as a general theme that Dark Messiah benefited form. For example, picking up all sorts of random objects so you can throw and stagger enemies. This combined very well with kicking, which was really just one component overall of environmental combat.\n\nClearly has soullike elements: bonfire and souls to level, pick up fallen souls, circular level design, no map.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nServiceable graphics and animations for an indie game. Music is generic and not good.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played a few hours and collected a few weapons.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/elderborn"},{"id":"f6e82fa8-a612-4929-96f9-29d4e90fe201","title":"Fallout: London","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":1530,"platforms":["PC"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2025-02-26","updatedDate":"2025-03-08","notes":"Fallout London presents an interesting world with the setting, items, and characters all fitting that world. Writing quests are too by the book without freedom, and easily its weakest element. Gameplay is standard Fallout 4.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nThe quests are great as a mod, lackluster treated as a game itself. It's a chain of typical quests, bring one thing to one person, so that he will direct you to another person, bring another thing to that one, you are doing small favors for everyone. There is limited freedom of choice. Basically the same level of innovation as Fallout 4.\n\n> I really appreciate what they've made and the world and gameplay is a lot of fun but the writing quality is so inconsistent. People keep comparing it to New Vegas but I just don't see it. I don't think I've been presented a single meaningful choice in the 20 hours I've played the game, and some quest just feel meaningless.\n> \n> Take the election quest for example:\n> \n> -You get a quest to talk to an unofficial leader of a settlement.\n> \n> -The player really wants him to be the official leader for some reason even though he doesn't seem to care.\n> \n> -You then have to travel to a government building to get ballots so they can hold an election. Why you need official pre war government ballots for a post apocalypric mayoral election isn't explained.\n> \n> -Then you have to convince 10 people to support him. They all do without any need to convince them. None of them even seem to care.\n> \n> -Not a single person runs against him or takes any issue with him being made the leader.\n> \n> -Then he's declared the leader without an actual election and declares that he's bringing back the \"Good Samaritans\".\n> \n> -You talk to five more people and ask them to join, they all say yes.\n> \n> -Quest ends.\n> \n> No stakes, no antagonist, no driving force, no conflict of any kind, and you don't get the sense that anything has changed as a result of this. Which is crazy because versions of this quest already exist in other fallout games which had multiple choices and endings. The quest just exists because they wanted a quest for this area and it feels like the further into the game I get, the more quests are like this one.\n\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/fallout4london/comments/1eigq0c/thoughts_on_fallout_london_after_the_first_week/lg7fmjh\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nIncredible setting. Voice acting is solid. Great as if it were a real DLC, amazing as a mod.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Explicit dialogue options, like Fallout New Vegas rather than Fallout 4.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Many game crashes.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://fallout4london.com\n+ https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Mod:Fallout_London\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/fallout4london\n+ https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Portal:Fallout_4\n\n__Installation.__\nI followed the standard setup. A few issues:\n\n+ Steam vs Fallout London launcher. Launching from Steam gives 10 FPS which was [unplayable](https://www.reddit.com/r/fallout4london/comments/1eh6tgu/fallout_london_potato_fps/lhckqat/). The Fallout London launcher gives 30-40 FPS at lowest settings on 2560x1440 windowed borderless.\n+ Windowed borderless vs full screen. Full screen attains 120-140 FPS. Windowed borderless' low FPS has to do with [monitor refresh rate during startup and the game speed being tied to FPS](https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/1c7z2h1/horrible_low_fps_when_playing_windowed_borderless).\n+ High FPS Physics Fix. This unlocks FPS being tied with game speed which fixed my FPS issues during windowed borderless. It also reduces the somewhat long load times.\n+ Settings. 120-130 FPS at high settings excluding [shadow distance and godrays quality](https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/3skr7o/ultimate_fallout_4_pc_tweak_guide), 110-125 FPS at ultra settings excluding those two, and 140 FPS at lowest settings on 1920x1080. I adopted the ultra settings option.\n\n__Build.__\n\n+ SPECIAL stats: 2 STR, 5 PER, 3 END, 2 CHR, 5 INT, 6 AGI, 5 LCK.\n+ Major perks: Rifleman, Sneak, Ninja, Mister Sandman, Sniper, Better Criticals\n+ Minor damage perks: Action Girl, Lone Wanderer, Critical Banker, Concentrated Fire, Bloody Mess, Black Widow, Grim Reaper's Sprint, Four Leaf Clover, Penetrator, Gun Fu.\n+ Utility perks: Gun Nut, Armorer.\n+ Companion perks: MacCredy's Killshot, Deacon's Cloak & Dagger.\n\nStorage:\n+ Early game, [Cigarette Machine](https://www.reddit.com/r/fallout4london/comments/1erlslg/where_can_i_store_stuff_safely_at_the_swan_mitre/lhznyrk) at Swan & Mitre.\n\nI played 4.5 hours before dropping the game, after Thameshaven.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallout-london"},{"id":"330331364920394321","title":"Fatal Frame","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":450,"platforms":["PS3","PS2"],"studios":["Tecmo Co.","Ltd."],"publishers":["Tecmo Co.","Ltd.","Wanadoo Edition","Microsoft Game Studios"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-04-29","updatedDate":"2022-04-30","notes":"I more or less enjoy Fatal Frame's exploration, capturing non combat ghosts, and exploring the house with Japanese lore pick ups and using the camera. However, I abhor Fatal Frame's combat. Maneuvering and fighting ghosts with a camera is too clunky leading to a frustrating gameplay loop. You can't easily see ghosts and corridors are too tight to easily dodge them. So you often have to look around, hope you get enough charge to land a hit, and then if they get close you just hope you can run around them. Inevitably you miss and they hit you, and you can only tank it through the consumables and ammo they give you.\n\n__Story.__ Fairly standard premise of finding your lost brother. Fatal Frame's setting is unique for its time, providing scares based on Japanese mythology rather than the western settings of Resident Evil and Silent Hill.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nThe camera mechanic is Fatal Frame's most significant idea. It acts as a way to capture ghosts (both combat and noncombat ones) and as a way to explore, unlocking areas as you see through mystical effects like hidden doors. Upgrades serve as a light progression system with multiple limited powers as well as different ammo types.\n\nUnfortunately, the combat loop is way too clunky. The controls for aiming at enemies, your limited movement, and the inability to easily find ghosts makes shooting them an exercise in frustration (especially if you try to go for the Fatal Frame shot for more spirit power).\n\nCamera perspective is a mix of fixed angles and dynamic camera like Silent Hill, but fortunately it doesn't have as nearly the wonky dynamic camera of Silent Hill, relying more on fixed angles. Fatal Frame also lets you use strafe instead of tank controls, and in fact, it's the default for this game. The camera first-person controls are wonky as you aim with your left analog stick and move with your right. There's also no auto-run option.\n\nMovement speed is slow, but the game provides a deliberate pacing that works well to add tension. This includes a marginally lengthy animation for opening every door, not unlike Resident Evil 1.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Blurry visuals due to the low resolution. It's almost charming in the same way watching a low resolution found footage movie is more horrifying than if it were professionally captured and in high resolution. The detail is noticeably worse than in Silent Hill 2.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The time window to capture non-combat ghosts can be vanishingly small. This is annoying as they're quite useful for obtaining Spirit Points.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Combination locks are unintuitive. They're in Japanese characters, start indexed by 0, and increment counter-clockwise.\n+ Audio tapes are a hassle to listen to. You can't skip their dialogue lines or make the recording go faster. And you have to pause the game to listen to them.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [GameFAQs Camera guide](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps2/529305-fatal-frame/faqs/17028). I followed its upgrading advice of prioritizing speed, then power and area alongside the Paralyze bonus function for tougher enemies.\n\nI played on PCSX2 emulator (PS2 version). It's a game by Japanese developers, in a Japanese setting, and first released in Japan. The English voice acting is also corny in its slow pace and monotonous pitch. So I used an [undub patch](https://github.com/wagrenier/ZeroUndub) enabling Japanese audio with English subtitles.\n\nI gave up shortly after the first night.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fatal-frame"},{"id":"322682678652950092","title":"God of War","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":1230,"platforms":["PS4","PC","PS5"],"studios":["SIE Santa Monica Studio"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2004-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/god-of-war--1"},{"id":"322682678652808780","title":"Grand Theft Auto V","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":1890,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS3","PS4","PC","PS5","X360","XONE"],"studios":["Rockstar North"],"publishers":["Take-Two Interactive","Rockstar Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Racing","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2024-02-09","updatedDate":"2024-06-19","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Story.__\nIt's like all GTA stories where the banter and cultural relevance is on point, but the overarching writing and characters don't stand out. The city setting of Los Santos works wonders for the GTA series, much like San Andreas. There is no significant interesting development or character growth.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\nVarious gameplay changes:\n\n+ Stats are brought back from GTA San Andreas.\n+ To GTA 5's benefit, the world map is smaller than both San Andreas and GTA 4. This makes for a denser and richer world.\n+ Heists, including crew members.\n+ Back from San Andreas, you can purchase real estate again, customize cars, and get tattoos.\n+ More options in cars, car customization, other vehicles (planes, jets, tank, submarine), weapons, clothing, haircuts, and more.\n+ You can talk to random pedestrians. This was rarely an option in San Andreas and only an option in terms of side missions in GTA 4.\n+ Animals.\n+ Additional mini activities: marathons, mysteries and easter eggs like ghosts, UFOs, and secret murders.\n+ First person view mode.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ More frequent mission checkpoints. This is something missing in all previous GTA titles.\n+ For the first time in a GTA series, you can purchase a car. Amazing it took this long. It's a shame car ownership remains unreliable though.\n+ You can swap characters in certain missions.\n+ Finally unlike GTA 4, you can enter and exit vehicles while still on your cell phone such as during mission dialogue.\n+ Police evasion involves hiding from police line of sight for a period of time. Much more realistic than having to escape some predetermined radius.\n+ Unlike GTA 4, there's little to no waiting required for missions to be available. And most missions don't require a specific time of day.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Like all GTA titles, you still can't permanently save a car. You can save it in the garage, but once you take it out, you have to rely on the despawn mechanic to properly impound your car which can be often during missions. This makes having a car you truly own a hassle instead of jacking a car to get everywhere. For rare cars it's impractical to use them during missions.\n+ Flying controls aren't any better than in San Andreas and GTA 4. Still a hassle to play through.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Missions_in_GTA_V\n+ [Reddit: Guide to getting the highest possible take for each heist](https://www.reddit.com/r/GrandTheftAutoV/comments/1n04ut/guide_to_getting_the_highest_possible_take_for)\n\nI dropped the game around \"I Fought the Law...\". I wasn't that interested in the story. And going from point A to B felt repetitive to me.\n\n__Version.__ I played the base game on Steam. GTA 5 has no content DLCs, and unlike previous titles, there are no essential mods to fix game setup like widescreen, visual effects, or restore licensed music.\n\nGTA 5 has a huge mod scene. I figure I can experience them in a future playthrough or if I ever delve into multiplayer.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/grand-theft-auto-v"},{"id":"322682678652887628","title":"Griftlands","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":630,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Klei Entertainment"],"publishers":["Klei Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Indie","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2021-07-15","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Griftlands is a unique mix of deck-building roguelike combined with RPG dialogue elements. Cards play a role both in negotiations and actual combat. Unfortunately, the cards and enemy attacks aren't very interesting. I also typically enjoy card roguelikes as a casual experience while watching Twitch streams, and Griftlands' story-intensive experience makes this incompatible.\n\n__Story.__ The overarching story stands out along with its interactive reputation with hostility/admirations from each NPC as a consequence of the quests you take. Cards have XP and level up.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Card fights include enemy intent, card energy, and grifts (relics) like Slay the Spire. Combat allows a surrender mechanic.\n\nDeckbuilding isn't as diverse as Slay the Spire or Monster Train. I found the core gameplay rather stale, with the various cards not being all that engaging. It's a different gameplay style as you're ultimately incentivized to play by maximizing XP on cards, which may make suboptimal plays for a certain fight in order to improve progression.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Standard Klei animation style.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nMotivated to play the game because of its unique pitch of deck-building and dialogue. And the studio's previously excellent game of Mark of the Ninja.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/griftlands"},{"id":"1232c268-b7fa-4d3f-86f5-c6d12b8dde72","title":"Hermit and Pig","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2026,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["Heavy Lunch Studio LLC"],"publishers":["Heavy Lunch Studio LLC"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2026-08-08","updatedDate":"2026-08-09","notes":"Earthbound-inspired cozy RPG. Cute and cozy atmosphere, like the visuals and dry humor. Gameplay has a few interesting bits. The mostly woods and timer-based gameplay is fun but a bit stale. Dropped it after 2 hours.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/hermit-and-pig"},{"id":"322682678652774988","title":"Horizon Forbidden West","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":1740,"platforms":["PS4","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Guerrilla Games"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2024-10-03","updatedDate":"2025-03-25","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Story.__\nGoofy bad writing with anachronistic plot elements, illogical worldbuilding, weird character and culture designs that make no sense.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nMore of the same. Some new elements such as the grappling hook.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nGame engine looks and sounds similar as the previous title.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI prefer PC to console. I disliked the finicky controller aiming on the PS4, which is especially necessary in the Horizon games due to their emphasis on enemy weak spots.\n\nThis game requires a certain mood, namely, the grind with an Ubisoft formula-style game.\n\nI started playing with Marisa on PS5. Only got a few hours in myself while Marisa played for about a dozen.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/horizon-forbidden-west"},{"id":"322682678653491788","title":"Kentucky Route Zero","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":10,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Cardboard Computer"],"publishers":["Cardboard Computer"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-01-30","updatedDate":"2023-07-04","notes":"__Story.__ The story is lackadaisical, meandering quite a bit without necessarily gripping personalities of characters or a plot. It's almost like Murakami, maybe closer to Beat poets and Hemingway given its emphasis on Americana.\n\nKentucky Route Zero has perfected atmosphere. It knows how to use silence and soundtrack alongside its magical realism.\n\n__Gameplay.__ It's a point-and-click adventure. The driving itself uses a network of intersecting routes, and you follow a journal keeping notes of where destinations are. Nothing particularly revolutionary. The dialogue choices to affect bits of story itself is what keeps the interactivity engaging.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The colors and minimalist art works wonders. I'm particularly in love with the crisp font rendering.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nThis game requires a mood to enjoy. It's all about the moment-to-moment boringness in appreciating each conversation, not unlike a Murakami novel where nothing really happens but the moments themselves are enjoyable. For this reason I also found the game more enjoyable when only playing in bursts.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/kentucky-route-zero"},{"id":"322682678652952140","title":"Killzone 2","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":450,"platforms":["PS3"],"studios":["Guerrilla Games"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter"],"startedDate":"2008-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/killzone-2"},{"id":"329784744768176721","title":"Little Nightmares: Secrets of the Maw - Expansion Pass","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Tarsier Studios"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-04-23","updatedDate":"2022-04-25","notes":"This entry includes all 3 DLCs. I gave up during the middle of the Depths. It was far too puzzle-heavy and no story, just the same environment. This leaned on the part I disliked most in the base game and leaned away from the part I liked most.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/little-nightmares-secrets-of-the-maw-expansion-pass"},{"id":"322682678652906060","title":"Luigi's Mansion","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":840,"platforms":["3DS"],"studios":["Next Level Games","Nintendo SPD"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-11-12","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Luigi's Mansion has a great premise and core gameplay loop. The controls are so bad however that I just couldn't get used to it to enjoy the game enough. I stopped playing during the middle of Area 2.\n\n__Story.__ Luigi's Mansion has a unique premise over the damsel in distress typical in Super Mario games. It's about being tricked by winning a contest Luigi never entered, Mario being trapped (so still technically damsel in distress), and Luigi aiming to save him.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Core gameplay loop is quite fun: explore a new room, encounter a ghost, then stun the ghost followed by sucking it in. There are plenty enemy types and light puzzle solving encouraging exploration that keeps the variety interesting. The controls are easily Luigi's Mansion's worst part. It's frustrating trying to aim the flashlight and suction at a ghost within the limited time frame of stunning followed by sucking them in. The aiming is just way too clunky, compounded with the default of an inverted y-axis. You often just have to the rely on the auto-aim to hopefully work. It would be better if they removed vertical aiming altogether, simplifying a dimension, on relying instead on autoaim.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Love the cartoon styles: ages well even playing it in 2020. The orchestral soundtrack with a gothic theme is awesome. I also love the details like Luigi humming to the beat of the songs.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can exploit going to Chauncey's room for a 50 HP refill, then going 3-4 rooms away for it to respawn.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Camera angles default to inverted y-axis and you can't change it. To work around this, I changed the controller settings.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Gamecube vs 3DS vs Dolphin vs Citra Comparison](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTj6TNKBRmk)\n\nI played the original Gamecube version over the 3DS remake, and using Dolphin with a USA ROM. The 3DS uses a lower native resolution (Gamecube's 480p vs 3DS' 800x240p), therefore muddying textures, but it does have more vibrant colors and some additional game options. Ultimately, playing on PC, it's more convenient to play a console with one rather than split screens.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/luigi-s-mansion-dark-moon"},{"id":"322682678652944972","title":"Machinarium","originalTitle":"マシナリウム ","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","Vita","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Amanita Design"],"publishers":["Amanita Design"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2017-01-04","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I love the focus on visual elements, with minimal text and exposition. The built-in walkthrough which is accessible through a minigame is awesome. More games need to do that. I find puzzles which use buttons to be quite annoying; those systems are essentially a black box where you have to learn by trial and error. The strength of the other puzzles is how you can solve them through intuition.\n\nI'm not sure if I really find the format all that appealing. Maybe I'm just not into puzzle games altogether. I just don't find it very fun.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/machinarium"},{"id":"322682678652888652","title":"Metroid","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":1986,"playtimeMinutes":360,"startedDate":"2021-07-14","completedDate":"2022-04-09","updatedDate":"2022-04-09","notes":"I played for about an hour and gave up. Metroid doesn't age well. It's very difficult to know where to go next, with no map and all levels looking similar. Combine this with all the flying enemies whom you can only shoot horizontally and vertically, and death meaning restarting from the beginning zone with no save rooms for checkpoints.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ No ingame map, and this especially makes you lost in the game as the levels all look similar.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Walkthrough including maps](https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Metroid)\n\nI am most motivated to play them as it's a genre starter for metroidvanias. I also decided to play this as my first entry to the series. I played an NES ROM on the Higan emulator.\n\nI played with a map guide. This helps with one of the most tedious elements of the game, which is navigating where exactly to go. I also savescummed as I would find the gameplay more frustrating in starting all over than enjoyable."},{"id":"324256275879690832","title":"New Super Mario Bros.","originalTitle":"New スーパーマリオブラザーズ","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2006,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["WiiU","NDS"],"studios":["Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development","Nintendo"],"publishers":["Nintendo","iQue"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-02-22","updatedDate":"2023-04-26","notes":"__Gameplay.__ It's a return to the 2D platforming design of Super Mario Bros. games, with elements such as the the multi-star objectives in Super Mario 64.\n\nMario's moveset is restricted and closer to the core sets typical in Super Mario Bros. games: it's just acceleration, Jump, Dash, Wall Jump, Ground Pound, and various power ups. Unlike Super Mario World, there's no spin jump for bouncing on spiky enemies/obstacles and gliding. \n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The first Super Mario game to feature 3D assets in a 2D game.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Unlike Super Mario 64, you don't exit the level after accumulating a star. Makes the game much more casual when you can just go into a level, grab everything, and then go to the next level.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Like previous Super Mario Bros. games, you can't save after every level, only by spending 5 coins to unlock a hut or after beating a castle stage.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Levels wiki](https://www.mariowiki.com/World_1_(New_Super_Mario_Bros.))\n\nI played on melonDS emulator (bin files [here](https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Emulator_files)). In 2022, it's more actively developed than DeSmuME where 0.9.10 was released in 2013 and which doesn't even support increased internal resolutions; one quality of life improvement is melonDS' hybrid layout so you can place more screen space to the primary one. Neither supports separate windows on Windows OS, so you can maximize your primary window on your main monitor followed by a separate window on your second monitor ([GitHub issue](https://github.com/Arisotura/melonDS/issues/1112)).\n\nI dropped the game in World 5. It got repetitive.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/new-super-mario-bros"},{"id":"322682678653485644","title":"Ninja Gaiden","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PS3","X360"],"studios":["Team Ninja"],"publishers":["Koei Tecmo Games"],"genres":["Fighting","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2004-12-31","completedDate":"2022-04-14","updatedDate":"2022-09-08","notes":"## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ I like this [retrospective review by Sumonix](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgXjeCvAqQY).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ninja-gaiden-3"},{"id":"9f7e7935-68a7-415b-bd45-370d740dbbc7","title":"Octopath Traveler","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":4800,"platforms":["Stadia","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Square Enix Business Division 11","Square Enix Business Division 6","ACQUIRE Corp.","Team Asano","Square Enix Business Division 9"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2026-03-02","updatedDate":"2026-03-27","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Writing.__\nFairly standard.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nBreak system reminds me of Persona. Dual job classs is fun.\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\nGorgeous visuals.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Secondary class assignments aren’t permanent. You can freely swap as desired.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Dead party members don’t gain XP, only active party members gain XP, and XP is shared equally and not divided among active party members.\n+ Unlike games like FF9(?), no boss or enemy in general is worth stealing from. There isn't unique weapons or items you can only get from stealing. Not an incentive to really Steal.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ itemization in chests are annoying.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Interactive map](https://frontiernav.net/wiki/octopath-traveler/visualisations/maps?m=map-of-orsterra)\n+ http://octopath-traveler.wikia.com\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/octopathtraveler/wiki\n+ [Best starting traveler](https://www.reddit.com/r/octopathtraveler/comments/girq3a/who_do_you_think_is_the_best_first_pick_traveler)\n+ [Reputation: you can steal with up to 5 failed attempts](https://octopathtraveler.fandom.com/wiki/Reputation)\n+ [Secondary class combos](https://www.reddit.com/r/octopathtraveler/s/ZlkRjvywWb) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/octopathtraveler/s/LVpLl0c5aa)\n  + Warrior / Apothecary\n  + Dancer / Cleric\n  + Scholar / Merchant\n  + Hunter / Thief\n  + Early game strat: Olberic with Thief's Steal SP/HP for winning underlevelled challenges.\n+ [Nuts strategy](https://www.reddit.com/r/octopathtraveler/s/Oo1yApQJeu). Generally, offense goes to highest offense, defense goes to lowest defense.\n+ [Level grinding areas](https://www.reddit.com/r/octopathtraveler/comments/qmj6ng/best_way_to_grind/hjxpu5i)\n+ [Reddit: Slot Machine Leveling: A Guide to Understanding Bewildering Grace](https://www.reddit.com/r/octopathtraveler/comments/93k5qb/slot_machine_leveling_a_guide_to_understanding)\n\nI picked Therion as my starting traveler.\n\nI dropped the game after just getting into Chapter 3, finishing Olberic’s. The grind was a bit too much for me.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/octopath-traveler"},{"id":"7177a172-376b-453e-8101-5eadf7c033f9","title":"Ori and the Will of the Wisps","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":1029,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Moon Studios"],"publishers":["Xbox Game Studios","iam8bit"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2026-08-10","updatedDate":"2026-09-13","notes":"Plays like a less polished Hollow Knight.\n\n__Writing.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Press X to start dialogue, A to advance dialogue. You can't accidentally spam dialogue to exit and trigger the dialogue again.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The light on Ori to make the player avatar more explicit given the small sprite, feels too fuzzy.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ori-and-the-will-of-the-wisps"},{"id":"328899066537706065","title":"Outer Wilds","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":960,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Mobius Digital"],"publishers":["Annapurna Interactive","Limited Run Games"],"genres":["Puzzle","Simulator","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2026-08-08","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ The game is designed for controller, where certain elements don't work as well with keyboard and mouse: you can't control the ship's strength or suit thrusters (it's full blast or nothing, and finer control is especially important for dark bramble) and flight control mechanics aren't as precise.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nTried playing again with Marisa on 2026-08-07. Didn’t like the gravity controls, too annoying moving around including to repair your ship. Not enough immediate progression. Too much puzzle for me.\n","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/outer-wilds"},{"id":"344037728181027409","title":"Oxygen Not Included","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":5220,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Klei Entertainment"],"publishers":["Klei Entertainment"],"genres":["Simulator","Strategy","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-10-13","updatedDate":"2023-07-04","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ Unlike RimWorld, you can roll for a given roll. This helps reduce some of the tedious rerolling for a certain position but not so much that it removes randomness from the equation.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ You can't move buildings. You have to deconstruct and rebuild them. At least deconstruct is 100% efficient, so you don't lose materials in moving. However, it requires a sequence of two commands rather than one, which is inconvenient as you have to wait until the first command completes before sending the next.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://oxygennotincluded.fandom.com)\n\nI was motivated to play as it's a colony management game similar to RimWorld. Even [FrancisJohn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Cq013hkNo) has a great tutorial. I couldn't get into it. Can try later.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/oxygen-not-included"},{"id":"44b7d65c-8005-4e87-86e1-52818d15094c","title":"Palworld","originalTitle":"パルワールド","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":1800,"platforms":["PC","XONE","Series X"],"studios":["Pocketpair"],"publishers":["Pocketpair"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2024-01-26","updatedDate":"2024-06-19","notes":"Surprisingly good game with strong core mechanics.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nIt's a survival open-world in the style of ARK and in the theme of Pokemon. This works surprisingly well.\n\n+ Pals automate the monotony common to open-world survival games like assembling crafting materials.\n+ The progression loops with technology, levels/stats, acquiring Pals, base upgrading, and exploring the world are all tightly connected and keep the cyclical feedback and gameplay rewarding.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nServiceable but not anything great. Clearly a budget indie game.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI dropped it a few hours in. It felt a bit grindy and too much complete-the-map as an open world.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/palworld"},{"id":"c69712a5-bad0-4f93-acd2-d0fd56a350c7","title":"PlateUp!","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":1080,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["It’s happening"],"publishers":["Yogscast Games","Gamersky Games"],"genres":["Simulator","Strategy","Indie"],"startedDate":"2024-05-08","updatedDate":"2024-07-06","notes":"Great coop game, a classic for dates: a game is short and self-contained, the idea is simple to learn to play, accessible to casuals, the graphics are cute and not video-game-y/immature, you can play LAN so it's an excuse to invite them over.\n\nI played it on a date with Loki. It was surprisingly hard. I'm bad at cooking multi-tasking games.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/plateup"},{"id":"322682678652935756","title":"Pokemon White","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":1920,"platforms":["NDS"],"studios":["Game Freak"],"publishers":["Nintendo","The Pokémon Company"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-03-06","completedDate":"2022-02-22","updatedDate":"2022-02-22","notes":"Pokemon games are all effectively the same. They only vary significantly in graphics, Pokemon generation, region, and minor characters to an archetype story.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ TMs are infinite. Gone are the days of a single TM which you can only give to your favorite Pokemon in a team.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Grinding has been in this game forever (grind level Charmander to level 26 for Slash to beat Misty). Playing Pokemon in 2019, I re-realize just how much boring brainless grinding there is in the game. It's not something I would do now with my limited time; but I can see it being a cathartic timewaster as it requires little attention over hours.\n+ HM slaves still exist. That this is a reality suggests something wrong with requiring HM mechanics in a main party to progress.\n\n## References and Miscellanea\n\n+ differences between pokemon games (next to little, which implies if you're nostalgic just play a new Pokemon game for updated graphics and a fresh set of Pokemon/region) | https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-differences-between-all-the-Pok%C3%A9mon-games\n+ wiki | https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/\n+ database and news | https://www.serebii.net/\n+ competitive battling community | https://www.smogon.com/bw/\n+ tier list | https://www.smogon.com/ingame/guides/bw_ingametiers\n\nI chose to play White over Black only because I prefer the legendary. It also seems like there's more wild Pokemon. I played on the DeSmuME emulator, generously taking advantage of Save Slots for faster saves than in-game saves; and Fast Forward for grinding levels.\n\nI started with Oshawott who's generally regarded as the best starter, and because I want a change of pace from Fire: Charizard, Typhlosion, Blaziken, Infernape (Emboar is yet another Fire/Fighting). I followed tier lists to get a sense of my final 6. I played the game building up that team and catching any new Pokemon I did not already catch. I do not actively try to catch them all however (that's pointless, particularly on an emulator). I also did not game for optimizing EV/IV. Long term it doesn't matter anyways because I need Action Replay/massive grinding for optimal nature/IV/EV, and an actual game for trading and competitive battles.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pokemon-white-version-2"},{"id":"337556189194748495","title":"Stray","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Switch 2","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["BlueTwelve Studio"],"publishers":["Annapurna Interactive"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2023-06-18","updatedDate":"2023-06-20","notes":"Cat gestures and atmosphere is nailed well. Platforming gameplay is boring; there's no real action as you just point your camera and see where you're allowed to jump next. It's all predetermined. Gameplay is overrated.\n\nThe cat premise is unique. The scifi setting and voiced robots is an unneeded setting. I think the story would have gone just fine if it was fully unvoiced and was about a cat living in a modern city.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nGood.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/stray"},{"id":"322682678653496908","title":"The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":1830,"platforms":["PS4","3DS","Android","PC","iOS","Switch"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Puzzle","Adventure","Visual Novel"],"startedDate":"2021-07-29","updatedDate":"2023-07-04","notes":"__Story.__ What a wonderful setting to put the Ace Attorney games in with its imperial industrialized Japan where court case technology and policy are just beginning. It's great seeing the spiritual remake of every character like a Jojo title.\n\nEpisode 2 was a drag. Gameplay-wise, I frequently quit during that Episode as I find Investigations the most lackadaisical and uninteresting part of the game. It needs more elements of critical thinking like Sholmes' Great Deduction trains. It's supposed to be building up to the climax with the Court Trial, but there isn't one in this episode. Searching rendered scenes to collect clues and moving from one area to the next is not very exciting: it's the deduction. Story-wise, it's an uninspired copy of Mia Fey's death. I also found the tone strange since the whole premise is that your best friend is dead! And yet they barely think about Kazuma are in a state of depression. It's light-hearted. And Miss Pavlova isn't tried for this? It's manslaughter, in addition to covering up the scene!\n\nFor similar reasons, I found Episode 4 a drag as it continues the investigation phase for too long. Unlike previous Attorney games, Great Ace Attorney doesn't break up the poor pacing of the Investigation phase with Trial phases.\n\nI enjoyed all the characters and setting in Episode 3. Ryunosuke's pursuit of \"truth\" over actually performing his job of defending his client irritates me in the same way a previous Ace Attorney episode did this. In addition, there are a lot of double standards you have to continue to take with a grain of salt, such as all the requirements of substantiated claims from the defense side but Ryunosuke firing back whenever the prosecutor makes claims of tampering. It's strange that it's the defendant who has to attest to these legal rights, and a defendant in particular who's portrayed as the bad guy!\n\n__Gameplay.__ No major changes since the core titles. Similarly, Trials in London feature a jury. On top of enabling an ensemble cast for more quirky characters and a more visible state of the court's opinion of the verdict, this adds a slight mechanic of using their words to contradict them as an added form of cross-examination. The newest mechanic is Pursue where you can press witnesses when multiple take a stand at once. Sherlock Holmes' Great Deduction trains make you correct a line of reasoning instead of contradict it like in a testimony. Unfortunately, it's not so much evidence-based as much as it is searching the scene for more clues.\n\nAs usual, there are options to make a choice but the game shoehorns you into a particular choice regardless. I think this is fine for such a well-crafted linear narrative.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The cel-shading and facial detail clearly looks like a 3DS game. It ages pretty well like an art style not unlike Telltale Games'. Soundtrack is excellent as usual.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ It's my first time playing an Ace Attorney port on PC. I love that you can use both keyboard or mouth to control everything. Works well if you just want to play casually with one hand.\n+ Unlike the original Ace Attorney games, there's an option to skip the waiting time for animating the next line of text. This was only possible after completing the game once. in the trilogy's 3ds remake, this was possible from the get-go by holding B to speed up the text. While I like the unique cadence of Phoenix Wright text compared to other visual novels, particularly as it's used for dramatic effect, the universal reading speed can be and on the slow side.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI dropped it on Episode 4. The overall writing and gameplay felt repetitive.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-great-ace-attorney-adventures--1"},{"id":"322682678652945996","title":"The Legend of Dragoon","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":2940,"platforms":["PS3","PS1","PSP"],"studios":["SCE Japan Studio"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"1998-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-legend-of-dragoon"},{"id":"cc6fc2d7-eb42-49a3-a018-0ae222d4c8cd","title":"The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2023,"platforms":["Switch"],"studios":["Nintendo EPD Production Group No. 3"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2025-01-18","updatedDate":"2025-02-19","notes":"It's like a DLC expansion, with more of the same of Breath of the Wild. Unfortunately, the world is not new enough to be interesting, and I find the new mechanics to be more tedious.\n\n__Story.__\n\nAlmost the exact same story as breath of the wild. No originality here.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\nNew gameplay mechanics are interesting in the idea, particularly because they are like the more flexible version of the original game’s. However, they are more clunky and therefore not fun to use. The Hand is annoying to attach things at the right angle, rotate, move around. The Ascend is annoying to look for and use compared to Revale’s Gale.\n\nTraversal in the game feels more tedious de to the need to stop, build things with a clunky interfacf, and then use your constructions in a clunky way.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nSame engine and style.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ The chest lets you swap items. But you still have to go to your inventory for all other swaps which is a pain.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/ShouldIbuythisgame/comments/13qruuj/tears_of_the_kingdom_vs_breath_of_the_wild/l9pfvkp\n+ heals: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/266202-the-legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom/80502422\n\nWe stopped playing after Wind Temple. We also did a fair bit of map exploration and grinding shrines.\n\ntodos\n+ identify best farm heal guide\n+ ifentify best farm rupees guid e\n+ farm armors","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-collectors-edition"},{"id":"322682678652845644","title":"The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2006,"playtimeMinutes":2250,"platforms":["Wii"],"studios":["Nintendo EAD Software Development Group No.3"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2023-04-27","updatedDate":"2023-06-30","notes":"I like it, it just felt too by the books as a Zelda game.\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__ I like some of the new wolf mechanics. Otherwise it plays like any other Zelda game.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ I love the character artwork. Possibly my favorite designs in the series given its slight penchant to more detail and less cartoon.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ [There are missables](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/928519-the-legend-of-zelda-twilight-princess/48770983). See also the [wiki title](https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Permanently_Missable_Items#Twilight_Princess).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Zeldadungeon.net walkthrough](https://www.zeldadungeon.net/twilight-princess-walkthrough)\n\nI played the HD remaster on the Wii U with the Cemu emulator, and with the Resolution graphic pack set to my native resolution (2560x1440p). Finding a compatile ROM (RPX, WUD, or WUX format) is difficult; I downloaded from [Ziperto: \"The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess HD WII U ISO (Loadiine) (EUR)\"](https://www.ziperto.com/the-legend-of-zelda-twilight-princess-hd).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-legend-of-zelda-twilight-princess--1"},{"id":"68e6f40e-cce5-4a07-8042-bf10fb0f8356","title":"The Midnight Walk","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":340,"platforms":["PS5","PSVR2"],"studios":["Zoink Games"],"startedDate":"2026-04-19","updatedDate":"2026-04-22","notes":"A bit bored of the walking simulator, environment, puzzle solving, marginally ok scary atmosphere. A 3D little nightmares.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-midnight-walk"},{"id":"9510bdad-a7ce-4eb6-8d0a-ee6892f78295","title":"The Outer Worlds 2","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":2680,"platforms":["PC","Series X"],"studios":["Obsidian Entertainment"],"publishers":["Xbox Game Studios"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2026-04-22","updatedDate":"2026-04-26","notes":"Bored by the writing and stale combat. It is very much like OW1 in structure, not any innovation since then. I've gotten a bit less patient for these old mechanics and have a hankering for more innovation at this point. The world is generic, combat is too easy and stiff, writing is as you would expect. Reminds me of Starfield.\n\n__Writing.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\nChanges:\n\n+ Double jump.\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n__Build.__\n\n+ Background: Roustabout\n  + I thought it was the funniest and most unique.\n+ Traits: Brilliant, Lucky, Dumb\n+ Skills\n  + Specialization: Gun > Sneak > Observation\n  + Other skills: Lockpicking > Speech > Science >  Medical\n  + Dumb skills locked out: Engineer, Explosives, Hack, Leadership, Melee\n\nResources\n+ https://fextralife.com/the-outer-worlds-2-sniper-build\n+ https://hacktheminotaur.com/outer-worlds-2/best-sniper-build-the-outer-worlds-2\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/theouterworlds/comments/1ojzt1x/theorycraft_sniperpistol_stealth_build","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-outer-worlds-2"},{"id":"322682678652911180","title":"Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 (2020)","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Vicarious Visions"],"publishers":["Activision"],"genres":["Simulator","Sport"],"startedDate":"2020-09-02","updatedDate":"2022-08-06","notes":"Game felt a little repetitive, and most reliant in chaining combos where a single combo can determine the entire score. If you know the right meta per level, and general sequence of chaining, then you master the full game.\n\nPlaying THPS, I'm reminded of how much I occasionally like skateboarding culture. I wish flatground/freestyle skating were more popular though. This borders more toward artistry than technicality that modern street skating competitions embody and feels more soulless. The amount of shin damage and boomers at the top level makes this clearly a dead culture though, and not a great sport as a competition but a leisure activity. These were made possible in Tony Hawk's Pro Underground 2, and it's great to see some although not all functionality newly added to this remake (no spacewalk to connect flatland and other moves in combo).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tony-hawks-pro-skater-1-plus-2"},{"id":"322682678652927564","title":"Transistor","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","iOS","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["Supergiant Games"],"publishers":["Supergiant Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2016-12-22","updatedDate":"2023-04-26","notes":"Like SuperGiant Games' Bastion, Transistor excels in its polish for the isometric action RPG style: excellent artstyle, music, dynamic level designs and enemies, and crisp controls. I Just can't stand the slow movement speed and reliance on the freeze time mechanic. There's something about SuperGiant Games that I can't get into.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Refined Bastion combat mechanics. And similarly sparse in story with a narrator providing most if not all of it (although not as iconic). I like that the level designs this time aren’t narrow. Also the addition of music really elevates the indie style of the game.\n\nI don't fer the terminals you click in the game.\n\nThe death system of losing functions seems brutal.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Love the art style, just like Bastion. Love that Red is an opera singer, rendering some awesome classical music scenes.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ 1080p is max, and there is no borderless support. So you either have to suffer with fullscreen mode or windowed mode, not able to use Borderless Gaming app.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played originally on iPad on 12/23/16 but couldn't get past the first few hours. Touchscreen controls on a game like this feels wonky, and I got bored of the mechanics in this and Bastion very quickly. I would rather use a controller; SuperGiant Games just feel like they would play way better as an isometric action game on PC.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/transistor"},{"id":"05f5461a-0f09-4e39-a9e7-5384d842828f","title":"Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide","status":"Dropped","score":6,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Fatshark"],"publishers":["Fatshark","Nordic Games Publishing"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2023-04-22","updatedDate":"2023-04-23","notes":"Dark atmosphere is interesting.\n\nYou really see VT2's improvements. Can be hard to enjoy the game due to lack of features: class abilities/talent tree, special ability.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/warhammer-end-times-vermintide"},{"id":"322682678652919372","title":"Crysis","status":"Dropped","score":5,"releaseYear":2007,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Crytek Frankfurt"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-05-23","completedDate":"2022-04-09","updatedDate":"2022-04-09","notes":"Clearly a visual powerhouse for its time and many years beyond, Crysis doesn't stand out much as a video game for its own gameplay. Contributions regarding new technology does not age well. It plays like a Far Cry but before Far Cry 3 (2012), ultimately being an annoyance in stealth assaults. Its rudimentary stealth system and bad enemy AI sealed the deal.\n\n__Story.__ Tropey.\n\n__Gameplay.__ Crysis' distinguishing factor is its Nanoarmor. The game otherwise follows modern shooters with Sprint, Crouch, Prone, regenerative health, some light stealth, standard weapons. The stealth in this game is awful, acting as an alert two system of two permanent stages (normal -> alarm) with few things inbetween in terms of warning. You also can't pick up corpses to hide them, and it's never clear when hiding in bushes or behind cover is sufficient. There is no stealth melee attack either until you turn on Maximum Strength. Enemy AI is also bad with its pathing, detection system, infinite ammo, and some enemies acting as bullet sponges.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The level of detail is astounding, particularly faces. Looks like a 2015 game.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ N/A\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ N/A\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ You must manually pick up weapons and ammo.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ For game ahead of its time graphically, it doesn't support Windows 10 well (https://www.reddit.com/r/Crysis/comments/b40oaw/crysis_1_on_win10/). It does not support borderless full screen, so I used windowed as otherwise Alt-Tab would cause the game to go to windowed mode. I had to use Borderless Gaming (https://github.com/Codeusa/Borderless-Gaming/releases, https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Glossary:Borderless_fullscreen_windowed#Borderless_Gaming). It does have native support for 21:9 though.\n+ You have to install two ridiculous programs: GameSpy Comrade and one more.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI tried the game on hardest (Delta) difficulty as recommended online, including Gmanlives. However, I think the stealth is obnoxious with alerts being instantaneous and line of sight somewhat arbitrary. So I changed it back to normal. An hour in I found the game rather tedious to play, so I just stopped.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/crysis"},{"id":"02e1d53a-a7dc-46c1-9ceb-8fba4f64f029","title":"Dragon Age: The Veilguard","status":"Dropped","score":5,"releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":1620,"platforms":["PC","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["BioWare"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2025-12-25","updatedDate":"2025-12-28","notes":"The worst of the series, like Dragon Age Inquisition but even more superficial and safe in its writing, quest design, level design, mediocre combat, and unrewarding progression.\n\n__Writing.__\nVery bleh ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1gocdpg/ori_director_says_dragon_age_the_veilguard), [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonage/comments/1j3gpn7/veilguard_is_a_great_game_but_a_terrible_dragon/mg07yc9)).\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\nCombat is hack-and-slash, removing the tactical elements even more than in DAI. Enemies target your character relentlessly, and your companions are like invulnerable add-ons to your character.\n\nMelee combat feels floaty. Could also be because of my high standards with the precision combat and movement in Hollow Knight Silksong. But it is overall a hack and slash where you spam your weak attack and use abilities on cooldown. Enemies aren’t significantly different. I didn’t necessarily enjoy Perfect Defense as much as I thought.\n\nQuest design is standalone bite-sized content, designed for casual handful of hour playthroughs at a time.\n\nLevel design is highly linear and closed-off, with each quest being in its own area. The Eluvian traversal immediately starts quests, where you jump into the middle of some traversal. It feels the most game-y of the Dragon Age games, where at least Inquisition had semi-open world design elements.\n\nSide quests aren't fun to do: rewards don't feel meaningful, world isn't interesting enough to learn more, you're not engaged to experience more content with certain characters.\n\nDialogue and roleplay elements have little consequence, being the worst in this game.\n\nItemization doesn't feel very meaningful. I just pick up whatever item has green signs above it, indicating a simple ability or defense increase.\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\nI dislike the graphics. It has too clean and cartoon-ish of an aesthetic, reminding me of Fortnite.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ More forced wokeness with gender ambiguity and trans-identity being made explicit.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Loot is miscellaneous \"valuable items\" that are a bit useless beyond incremental gold gains. Feels highly game-y so more things to pick up are scattered throughout the game. Very much like God of War (2018).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [RedGael: Spellblade build](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1-s3aYkxQU)\n+ https://www.ign.com/wikis/dragon-age-the-veilguard/Rare_Stat_Boosting_Foods\n\nI experienced this on my home PC. I think it's ultimately -[performance-related](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1845910/discussions/0/4635985982183831676/?ctp=2#c4635986167856220567). Limit FPS helps.\n\nTried Champion first from reading build gameplay videos. Then tried Mage as I didn’t like the melee. Similarly, I started at Underdog difficulty. But found the enemies spongey and combat to drag on, so I toned it down to Adventurer difficulty.\n\nChoices:\n\n+ Save Minrathous.\n\ntodos on future playthroughs\n+ nightmare difficulty\n+ warrior or rogue","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-age"},{"id":"4bfc3525-bf4e-4891-be2b-775b1fd5b129","title":"Dying Light: The Beast","status":"Dropped","score":5,"releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":1300,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Techland"],"publishers":["Techland"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2025-11-08","updatedDate":"2025-11-08","notes":"Basically the same game with beast powers as a new cooldown mechanic. Open-world exploration, survival mechanics, movement and combat, and barebones writing.\n\n__Writing.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nFor brainless open world RPG progression in a fantasy wilderness setting. I got bored of it shortly before 2 hours to refund the game on Steam.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dying-light-the-beast"},{"id":"322682678652953164","title":"Mario Kart Wii","status":"Dropped","score":5,"releaseYear":2008,"playtimeMinutes":330,"platforms":["Wii"],"studios":["Nintendo EAD Software Development Group No.1"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Racing"],"startedDate":"2008-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mario-kart-wii"},{"id":"eb120b5d-e23e-4c8c-8bba-2269a72e230b","title":"Mortal Shell","status":"Dropped","score":5,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Series X"],"studios":["Cold Symmetry"],"publishers":["Playstack"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Indie"],"startedDate":"2023-03-26","updatedDate":"2025-05-11","notes":"Serviceable, standing out most in its shell mechanic. Level design is bad.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You have to use items in order to learn what they do, and this is increasing levels of item familiarity. What a nice throwback to classic roguelikes like Nethack. I love this feature because it encourages use of items and not item hoarding.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nTo play if I ever have an itch for soulslike games.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mortal-shell"},{"id":"327601998039876161","title":"Prodeus","status":"Dropped","score":5,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Bounding Box Software"],"publishers":["Humble Bundle"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-10-14","updatedDate":"2023-02-20","notes":"The game is rather uninspired. Both weapons and enemies are largely based on Doom. All levels look and traverse roughly similarly. Game is forgettable after a dozen or so levels.\n\nProdeus has an annoying weapon switch system of multiple guns binded to the same number key, and hitting the number key cycles them. This is clearly a signal that there's too many guns in the game. It's better to have dedicated keybinds for each.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on Ultra Hard difficulty. I didn't find it too challenging, somewhat like a Nightmare difficulty of Doom but assisted with the corner peeking strategies of Build Engine games.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/prodeus"},{"id":"327879243029545551","title":"Redneck Rampage","status":"Dropped","score":5,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["PC","Mac","DOS"],"studios":["Xatrix Entertainment"],"publishers":["Interplay Productions","Logicware"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-04-03","completedDate":"2022-04-03","updatedDate":"2022-04-03","notes":"Redneck Rampage is most unique in its hillbilly setting. It doesn't age well however, with its major faults being shooting and the health system.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nHit detection feels noticeably off where your shots can easily veer away from the center for no reason. It's a game apparently designed with autoaim and [fails massively if you turn it off with a source port](https://forums.duke4.net/topic/11610-redneck-rampage-hit-detection).\n\nShotgun is terrible with RNG in its damage due to a horizontal rather than circular spread. It ranges from 1-3 shots to kill the simplest enemies. The pistol takes 3 or 5 shots and has a slow fire rate.\n\nThe health system is unique. Drinking alcohol with beer and whiskey replenishes your health but at the cost of making your character movement more erratic. Food such as cowpies also replenish health but at the cost of increasing your gut, making you fart and therefore make enemies easier to notice you. This health system is a cute idea but terribly annoying to play with. You're better off save-scumming.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nI like the setting. Textures feel fairly bland though.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played using the RedNukem source port, and with the original files automatically obtained after purchasing the game on Steam. Another popular port is Raze, but it's effectively built on RedNukem with no major changes. Dropped the game on the first level.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/redneck-rampage"},{"id":"322682678652947020","title":"RuneScape","status":"Dropped","score":5,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":127680,"platforms":["browser","Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac"],"studios":["Jagex"],"publishers":["Jagex"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2002-12-31","updatedDate":"2023-07-30","notes":"I only played an hour or two back in middle school in the computer lab.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/runescape"},{"id":"322682678652866124","title":"S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky","status":"Dropped","score":5,"releaseYear":2008,"playtimeMinutes":810,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["GSC Game World"],"publishers":["Deep Silver","GSC World Publishing"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2021-12-16","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Dropped the game. I couldn't get into the core gameplay loop of savescumming during an encounter and relying on the RNG for the weapon to actually hit according to the crosshair.\n\nFlaw-wise, Clear Sky shares the same issues of weapon accuracy and dull sidequests.\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n Core gameplay system and style is the same. Biggest change is faction system where you play as part of Clear Sky. This includes random encounters with allies against another faction as well as faction reputation.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ No change from Stalker SOC.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Weapon accuracy at the beginning is still terrible, relying on RNG rather than skill to control for any amateur handling.\n+ Like SOC, I had to use Cheat Engine to obtain a good mouse sensitivity. My SOC setting was only applicable to my pistol; I set to .035 overall as heavier weapons require more sensitivity. Due to the handling stat (control inertia factor), it's even more annoying that [weapons have different mouse sensitivity!](https://www.reddit.com/r/stalker/comments/pfyuze/is_there_a_way_to_have_same_mouse_sensitivity_for).\n+ No Take All hotkey.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played Master difficulty. Like SOC, I remapped Flashlight to T, Inventory to Tab, PDA to M.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/s-dot-t-a-dot-l-k-dot-e-r-dot-clear-sky"},{"id":"322682678652908108","title":"Serious Sam: The First Encounter","status":"Dropped","score":5,"releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["XBOX","PC"],"studios":["Croteam"],"publishers":["Gathering of Developers"],"genres":["Shooter","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-09-25","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"\n\n__Story.__ Doom (1993) style of shit storytelling.\n\n__Gameplay.__ An onslaught of running enemies at you, kiting, and frantically shooting at them all. That defines the core gameplay loop of Serious Sam. The enemy spawns behind you, and arbitrarily triggered on enemy pickups, are incredibly annoying.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ N/A\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ N/A\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ N/A\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Saving pauses the game and the music. Given the frequent saving, it takes you out of the immersion.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played the HD remake on PC. I started at Hard difficulty. Serious/Mental are even more challenging, but seem like when you already did a playthrough, know Serious Sam mechanics, or are willing to wade through occasionally bullshit design. I couldn't go after the first two levels for how redundant the game felt.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/serious-sam-the-first-encounter"},{"id":"342929068862210640","title":"Sid Meier's Civilization VI","status":"Dropped","score":5,"releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":1380,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","iOS","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Firaxis Games"],"publishers":["Aspyr Media","2K Games"],"genres":["Simulator","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)"],"startedDate":"2022-09-16","updatedDate":"2022-09-17","notes":"I can't get into strategy games. Civ plays like a turn-based Starcraft but with more macro strategy elements due to upgrade trees in science, civics, and multiple non-combat victory conditions. There's still unit exploration and a video game-y sense of level design and resources. I much prefer the simulation and emergent gameplay elements of Crusader Kings, and which also has RPG elements.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ It looks too cartoony, like a generic digital board game.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI chose to play the newest Civ title as my first entry in the series. The newest Civ games are always more accessible than previous games.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/sid-meiers-civilization-vi"},{"id":"21ff5a76-4ec5-4593-a4c3-7b940314a7b4","title":"Tetris Effect: Connected","originalTitle":"テトリス® エフェクト・コネクテッド","status":"Dropped","score":5,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch","PS5","Series X","?","Meta Quest 2","PSVR2"],"studios":["Monstars","Resonair"],"publishers":["Enhance"],"genres":["Music","Puzzle","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2023-08-16","updatedDate":"2023-08-21","notes":"It's Tetris with flashy particle effects and a pretentious soundtrack. Highly overrated. My favorite version of Tetris anyways is competitive Tetris where you combo instant hard moves to defeat your opponent, and default line speed is normal.\n\nIt's no better than the [popular Tetris websites](https://www.reddit.com/r/Tetris/comments/v4oxn0/whats_the_best_modern_tetris_appwebsite): Tetrio for multiplayer competitive and Jstris for single player maps.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tetris-effect-connected"},{"id":"337287760851239504","title":"The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes","status":"Dropped","score":5,"releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Supermassive Games"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-11-22","updatedDate":"2022-11-29","notes":"I watched a few hours of it on Moonmoon's stream in November 22, 2022. Did not find it very entertaining.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-dark-pictures-anthology-house-of-ashes"},{"id":"322682678653487692","title":"Tomb Raider II","status":"Dropped","score":5,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":930,"platforms":["PS3","PC","Mac","PS1","PSP"],"studios":["Core Design"],"publishers":["Eidos Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tomb-raider-ii"},{"id":"322682678653488716","title":"Tomb Raider III","status":"Dropped","score":5,"releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":1110,"platforms":["PC","PS1","PS3","Mac","PSP","Vita"],"studios":["Core Design"],"publishers":["Eidos Interactive","Aspyr Media"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"1999-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tomb-raider-iii-adventures-of-lara-croft"},{"id":"322682678652781132","title":"Yakuza: Like a Dragon","status":"Dropped","score":5,"releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":2700,"platforms":["XONE","Series X"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2025-06-21","updatedDate":"2025-07-15","notes":"The Yakuza games are mostly the same in terms of a soap opera main story, the same semi-open world map, and brimming with quirky side quests. The main changes is a soft reboot with a new protagonist and turn-based combat.\n\nFlaws:\n\n+ The turn-based combat is even more superficial than the beat-em-up. The pace also slows down an already grindy game.\n+ The game is quite grindy, requiring you to accumulate XP and yen to gain levels and gear before progressing.\n+ The usual melodrama writing.\n\n## Resources & Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/yakuzagames/wiki/home/game_order\n\nI dropped the game at the end of Chapter 4.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/yakuza-like-a-dragon-job-set"},{"id":"322682678652923468","title":"DuckTales: Remastered","status":"Dropped","score":4,"releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["PS3","Win Phone","Android","PC","iOS","WiiU","X360"],"studios":["Capcom","WayForward"],"publishers":["Disney Interactive","Capcom"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2019-08-08","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Like other classics in the 80s, this game is brutal. Hit box is bad, controls are inconsistent, level designs are basic, death after all lives punishes you by forcing to restart the level which can make the game feel redundant. THe overall control system is simple and intuitive: D-pad movement, jump, and pogo. The easy difficulty's infinite lives to avoid this helps a ton. The game has fun characters and music.\n\n+ https://www.neogaf.com/threads/im-playing-ducktales-remastered-right-now-and-seriously-what-the-fuck.750386/","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ducktales-remastered"},{"id":"328796436698235457","title":"The Evil Within: The Assignment","status":"Dropped","score":4,"releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","PC","X360","XONE"],"studios":["Tango Gameworks"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-04-14","updatedDate":"2022-04-14","notes":"Assignment expands on the story campaign, fleshing out details to fill in the vague plot in the base game. It features Juli Kidman as the main playable character, providing an alternative perspective during the course of the base playthrough.\n\nGameplay-wise, the DLC is a significant departure focusing on stealth instead of combat. There's an active flashlight you control and can focus on certain areas to unlock the next door, as well as explicit enemy awareness indicators and a cover system.\n\nWhile I like the atmospheric change to focus more on horror, the gameplay is not good. It's rudimentary stealth. The level design does not provide interesting stealth, nor are you given enough variety like items or skills, and even the new cover system doesn't let you do something as simple as move from one cover to another. The game should've went the route of immersive sims like Alien Isolation and System Shock, where horror is still a key element and there's still combat on top of excellent stealth, and not simply the route of Outlast.\n\nI stopped playing after Chapter 1. The gimmicky stealth is not worth spending another hour on, and certainly not the second DLC of more of this.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-evil-within-the-assignment"},{"id":"322682678652942924","title":"The Legend of Zelda: Adventure of Link","status":"Dropped","score":3,"releaseYear":1987,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["Wii","NES","3DS","WiiU","fds"],"studios":["Nintendo EAD"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2011-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/zelda-ii-the-adventure-of-link"},{"id":"322682678652949068","title":"Croc: Legend of the Gobbos","status":"Dropped","score":2,"releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PC","Saturn","PS1"],"studios":["Argonaut Games"],"publishers":["Fox Interactive"],"genres":["Platform"],"startedDate":"1996-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/croc-legend-of-the-gobbos"},{"id":"322682678652951116","title":"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets","status":"Dropped","score":1,"releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":450,"platforms":["PS2","XBOX","NGC"],"studios":["Electronic Arts"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2001-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/harry-potter-and-the-chamber-of-secrets--3"},{"id":"322682678652855884","title":"1994","originalTitle":"Disney's Aladdin","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":1994,"playtimeMinutes":180,"genres":["Pinball"],"updatedDate":"2025-05-11","notes":"Game reminds me of beat-em-up side scrollers like Simpson's in the arcades.\n\nI remember watching Jenny play this I think, and maybe Danny was I was around 5 years old. I don't think I ever played it though. I played it using the Genesis Plus GX emulator and with the RetroArch frontend.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/world-cup-1994"},{"id":"331068421949096527","title":"Aka Manto | 赤マント","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":60,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Chilla's Art"],"publishers":["Chilla's Art"],"genres":["Simulator","Strategy","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-07-01","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/aka-manto-chi-manto"},{"id":"328796375857758785","title":"Alan Wake II","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":1080,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Remedy Entertainment"],"publishers":["Epic Games Publishing"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-16","notes":"Wasn't really a fan of the original.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/alan-wake-ii"},{"id":"322682678652890700","title":"Amid Evil DLC: The Black Labyrinth","status":"Dropped","updatedDate":"2022-01-30"},{"id":"9a7302b4-a1b7-46b3-9596-65e0ebb7a139","title":"Amnesia: The Bunker","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Series X"],"studios":["Frictional Games"],"publishers":["Frictional Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2024-11-03","updatedDate":"2025-06-14","notes":"Got bored of it. Felt a bit too similar to the usual formula. A different setting but all the same beats.\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The finite fuel and need to keep the generator on (or ambiguity on whether you should keep it on).\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amnesia/comments/17pv47y/the_bunker_mechanics_players_should_be_aware_of/\n\nPlayed on Marisa's PS5.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/amnesia-the-bunker"},{"id":"337374967260774991","title":"Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":1680,"platforms":["PC","PS4","Switch"],"studios":["Gust"],"publishers":["Koei Tecmo","Koei Tecmo America Corporation","Koei Tecmo Europe"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-07-16","notes":"I chose this game as my first in the Atelier series.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/atelier-ryza-ever-darkness-and-the-secret-hideout"},{"id":"099b2c13-3c73-4144-9953-7641cf2e301c","title":"Atomfall","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":1320,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","PS5","Series X|S"],"studios":["Rebellion"],"publishers":["Rebellion"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2025-12-27","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/atomfall"},{"id":"0e59c405-b7a4-4e1f-b0ed-c6bfb0387204","title":"Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":1200,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["BioWare","BioWare Edmonton","MumboJumbo"],"publishers":["Interplay Entertainment","Black Isle Studios","MacPlay"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy"],"startedDate":"2023-05-09","updatedDate":"2023-05-09","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/baldur-s-gate-ii-throne-of-bhaal"},{"id":"322682678652880460","title":"Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2008,"playtimeMinutes":930,"platforms":["X360"],"studios":["Rare"],"publishers":["Microsoft Game Studios"],"genres":["Platform","Racing","Quiz/Trivia","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/banjo-kazooie-nuts-bolts"},{"id":"322682678652881484","title":"Banjo-Tooie","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2000,"playtimeMinutes":960,"platforms":["N64"],"studios":["Rare"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Gradiente"],"genres":["Platform","Quiz/Trivia","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I played the Remastered version on an Xbox 360 emulator (Xenia).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/banjo-tooie"},{"id":"322682678652930636","title":"Batman: Arkham Origins","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":750,"platforms":["PS3","PC","WiiU","X360"],"studios":["WB Games Montréal"],"publishers":["WB Games","Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I decided not to play this game as Arkham Origins (and the final title Arkham Knight) are said to be worse than the first two, but opinions are mixed (https://www.reddit.com/r/BatmanArkham/comments/88hb1c/why_does_everyone_prefer_arkham_city_or_asylum/). Arkham Origins is a cut and paste of Arkham City: \"While Asylum was groundbreaking on its own, City evolved a lot with a huge open world. Origins didn't add anything that is, at face value, unique or game changing to the overall, free roam world\" (https://www.reddit.com/r/BatmanArkham/comments/2go6qa/arkham_origins_vs_city/). I generally hate open world designs; few games like Skyrim do it well as it requires a careful balance of pacing and percolating content to warrant large open spaces to explore. If I would play, I would have played on PC.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/batman-arkham-origins"},{"id":"336655401408791119","title":"Beyond: Two Souls","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PC","PS3","PS4"],"studios":["Quantic Dream"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment","Inc. (SCEI)"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-07-07","updatedDate":"2022-07-09","notes":"Watched a playthrough from Moonmoon's stream. Didn't find the writing that captivating.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/beyond-two-souls"},{"id":"322682678652884556","title":"BioShock 2 DLC: Minerva's Den","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2010,"updatedDate":"2022-01-30"},{"id":"322682678652883532","title":"BioShock Infinite","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":690,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","X360","XONE"],"studios":["Irrational Games"],"publishers":["2K Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bioshock-infinite"},{"id":"322682678653503052","title":"Bloodborne PSX","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["LW Media"],"publishers":["LW Media"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-07-30","notes":"What an surreal mix of Bloodborne with the PSX retro era.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nIt's amazing how dedicated the graphics are to PS1: limited view distance, many loading screens, 20 fps, pixellated graphics and limited colors, even the control scheme uses L2/R2 for a camera instead of an analog stick.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bloodborne-psx"},{"id":"327236624548102736","title":"Borderlands 3: Psycho Krieg and the Fantastic Fustercluck","originalTitle":"『ボーダーランズ3』サイコ・クリーグのカオスな脳内で大暴れ！","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"publishers":["2K Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2022-03-29","updatedDate":"2022-03-29","notes":"Not impressed by the other DLCs.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-3-psycho-krieg-and-the-fantastic-fustercluck"},{"id":"1a821eaa-2f9e-493b-b324-c73ca8a95ed2","title":"Borderlands 4","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":2850,"platforms":["Series X|S","Switch 2","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Gearbox Software"],"publishers":["2K"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2025-12-27","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Writing.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://borderlands.fandom.com/wiki/Borderlands_4\n+ https://maxroll.gg/borderlands-4/getting-started/best-vault-hunter-for-you","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/borderlands-4"},{"id":"322682678652824140","title":"Bravely Default","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":3330,"platforms":["3DS"],"studios":["Silicon Studio","Square Enix Product Development Division 7"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-07-21","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bravely-default"},{"id":"b41ffc12-410c-4acc-945e-3f32125217fa","title":"Cairn","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2026,"playtimeMinutes":915,"platforms":["PC","PS5"],"studios":["The Game Bakers"],"publishers":["The Game Bakers"],"genres":["Simulator","Sport","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2026-07-18","updatedDate":"2026-07-24","notes":"Got bored of the gameplay loop. A few years ago I could see myself somewhat enjoying this.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/cairn--3"},{"id":"322682678652902988","title":"Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2005,"playtimeMinutes":690,"platforms":["XBOX","PC"],"studios":["Headfirst Productions"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Not necessarily a pinnacle of horror games. So I'm not pressured to immediately play, maybe after I exhausted the staples.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/call-of-cthulhu-dark-corners-of-the-earth"},{"id":"337298369801093712","title":"Christmas Massacre","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Puppet Combo"],"publishers":["Puppet Combo"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-07-15","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/christmas-massacre"},{"id":"328452124487713360","title":"Control","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":690,"platforms":["Stadia","Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Remedy Entertainment"],"publishers":["505 Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-17","notes":"Motivated because of its polish. And story-wise, it features powers like SCP Foundation mixed with X-Men as a Jean Grey simulator. I was not impressed by the writing in other Remedy Entertainment titles like Alan Wake however.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/control"},{"id":"329570653154837071","title":"Cruelty Squad","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":330,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Consumer Softproducts"],"publishers":["Consumer Softproducts"],"genres":["Shooter","Simulator","Tactical","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-05-06","updatedDate":"2022-05-09","notes":"Controls are surprisingly good for such a visually ugly game with intuitive actions and feeling responsive. I just couldn't get into it. I don't know if the game would really stand out if it weren't for its art style.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\nMy eyes bleed when I look at the graphics. The color palette is purposefully ugly and the assets are a random assortment of flesh and industrial design in low poly texture style. Sound effects are also grating on the ears.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ The purposefully bad reload mechanic.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/cruelty-squad"},{"id":"322682678652864076","title":"Crypt of the NecroDancer","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":870,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","iOS","Mac","Vita","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Brace Yourself Games"],"publishers":["Spike Chunsoft","Brace Yourself Games","Klei Entertainment"],"genres":["Music","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2021-11-06","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Popularized the idea of battle + rhythm games. Good on them to even get a Zelda successor.\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__ As a roguelite, uses gold as per-life currency during shops and diamonds as permanent currency to unlock upgrades shared throughout runs.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can train against enemies individually to learn their moveset.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ You're forced to spend diamonds as the diamonds will reset to zero on a new playthrough\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nFollowing recommendation, I played through each zone, making general progress such as unlocking characters. Then I played All Zones is the \"real\" game. I didn't play any of the other modes as they seem more like challenge runs (e.g., multiple All Zones modes back-to-back). I dropped the game as I just couldn't get into the rhythm.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/crypt-of-the-necrodancer"},{"id":"322682678652901964","title":"Cultist Simulator","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":1140,"platforms":["Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac"],"studios":["Weather Factory"],"publishers":["Weather Factory"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Adventure","Indie","Card & Board Game"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/cultist-simulator"},{"id":"f5e18422-af3a-47ce-9bda-4b74874c1d16","title":"Dark and Darker","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2023,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["IRONMACE"],"publishers":["IRONMACE"],"genres":["Fighting","Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Tactical","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2025-06-17","notes":"I watched playthroughs on streams in 2023. In 2025, I heard it got really bad though.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dark-and-darker"},{"id":"342200880817242705","title":"Darkest Dungeon with all 3 DLCs","status":"Dropped","startedDate":"2022-09-07","updatedDate":"2022-09-08"},{"id":"322682678652861004","title":"Deus Ex: Mankind Divided DLC: A Criminal Past","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2016,"studios":["[stealth; immersive sim]"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30"},{"id":"322682678652862028","title":"Deus Ex: Mankind Divided DLC: System Rift","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2016,"studios":["[stealth; immersive sim]"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30"},{"id":"322682678652897868","title":"Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":270,"platforms":["SNES","Wii","WiiU","New 3DS","SFAM"],"studios":["Rare"],"publishers":["Nintendo","Gradiente","Playtronic","Hyundai"],"genres":["Platform"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/donkey-kong-country-3-dixie-kong-s-double-trouble"},{"id":"322682678652900940","title":"Doom mod: Sigil","status":"Dropped","studios":["John Romero"],"startedDate":"2022-08-19","updatedDate":"2022-08-19","notes":"Apparently, it goes further in the theme of Episode 4 and further amps up the difficulty. I despise Episode 4, and I hold no idolatry like others do for John Romero, so I'm not interested at all in Sigil."},{"id":"186ce08b-e080-430c-8196-fee63db934a6","title":"Dragon's Dogma II","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":2895,"platforms":["PC","XONE","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2024-07-06","notes":"Heard it's trash, worse than even the first.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragons-dogma-ii"},{"id":"323071408393421393","title":"Dying Light: The Following","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":1200,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Techland"],"publishers":["WB Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-02-06","updatedDate":"2022-02-08","notes":"Got burned out of the repetitiveness after completing the first game. If I ever want to get into the Following and Dying Light 2, it would be months from now.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dying-light-the-following"},{"id":"6716d7be-43b2-49ca-b47c-ca6252d033ae","title":"Elden Ring: Nightreign","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":1584,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["FromSoftware"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2025-06-15","notes":"I heard it's not very good.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/elden-ring-nightreign"},{"id":"322682678652725836","title":"Eldest Souls","originalTitle":"Eldest Souls(エルデストソウル)","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":270,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Fallen Flag Studio"],"publishers":["United Label","CI Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2025-05-11","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/eldest-souls"},{"id":"322682678652726860","title":"ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":750,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["adglobe","Live Wire"],"publishers":["Binary Haze Interactive"],"genres":["Platform","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-12-10","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ender-lilies-quietus-of-the-knights"},{"id":"322682678652920396","title":"Enter the Gungeon","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":1290,"platforms":["Stadia","PS4","Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Dodge Roll"],"publishers":["Devolver Digital"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure","Indie","Arcade"],"startedDate":"2020-05-07","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Motivated after really enjoying Risk of Rain 2 and Dead Cells. I couldn't get into it however. Something about shooters, bullet hells, and progression feeling relatively same-y.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/enter-the-gungeon"},{"id":"322682678652934732","title":"EverQuest","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":1999,"playtimeMinutes":31800,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Daybreak Games"],"publishers":["Daybreak Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Everquest is one of the earliest MMOs popularizing the genre, in the likes of Ultima Online (1997), Asheron's Call (1999), Dark Age of Camelot (2001). Good description why it's not worth getting into these days (https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/7wibch/what_was_the_original_everquest_like_how_is_it/du0n91n/). Its only strength is as an innovator in starting the social worldly aspect. But this is gone now given the population. The lack of instancing seems to be a major contention: the pro is more immersion and with ideas like selling loot rights; the con is gatekeeping by the most hardcore guilds and players. (Classic) WoW is a polished version of the game.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/everquest-ii"},{"id":"322682678652868172","title":"Fallout 4: Automatron DLC","status":"Dropped","playtimeMinutes":240,"studios":["[western rpg; fps]"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30"},{"id":"df1e4633-6ed5-4616-8900-1ef0ae10e37f","title":"Fallout: New Vegas - New California mod","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Radian-Helix Media"],"publishers":["Radian-Helix Media"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2023-07-22","notes":"It's the most popular standalone mod game. Hard to say whether it's really worth playing though ([source](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/hbovk9/is_fallout_new_california_worth_playing)).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallout-new-california"},{"id":"322682678652928588","title":"Far Cry 5","originalTitle":"ファークライ5+ニュードーン ダブルパック","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":1080,"platforms":["PS4"],"studios":["Ubisoft Montreal"],"publishers":["Ubisoft Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I admire the few changes that they did to the mechanics, and I think for the better: no radio towers; no minimap. I only did the research (never played it).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/far-cry-5-plus-far-cry-new-dawn-double-pack"},{"id":"322682678652915276","title":"Far Cry Primal","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Stadia"],"studios":["Ubisoft Montreal"],"publishers":["Ubisoft Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-07-23","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nLike previous Far Cry games, I played on normal difficulty. Far Cry is always hardest in the beginning and easy at the end; and the point of the game isn't really the challenge but the end-to-end progression with crafting, stealthing/takedowns, and occasional fire fight. Like Wolfenstein, I enjoy being more powerful than other enemies and being reckless.\n\nAfter playing an hour, I immediately got bored of the game as it felt exactly like Far Cry 3 and 4 but under a slightly different setting and with more primitive weapons.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/far-cry-primal"},{"id":"329496742790693456","title":"Filcher","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Johan Hjärpe"],"publishers":["MythoLogic Interactive"],"genres":["Simulator","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-04-21","updatedDate":"2022-06-03","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/filcher"},{"id":"322682678652943948","title":"Final Fantasy II","originalTitle":"ファイナルファンタジーII","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":1988,"playtimeMinutes":1470,"platforms":["3DS","Wii","famicom","WiiU"],"studios":["Square"],"publishers":["Square Enix","Square"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2007-12-31","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/final-fantasy-ii--1"},{"id":"322682678652825164","title":"Final Fantasy Tactics","originalTitle":"ファイナルファンタジータクティクス","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":2370,"platforms":["PS3","PS1","PSP"],"studios":["Square Product Development Division 4"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment","Inc. (SCEI)","Square","Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Tactical"],"updatedDate":"2023-07-28","notes":"__Version.__ I played the version, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions. It is an updated version of the PlayStation release.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/final-fantasy-tactics"},{"id":"322682678652938828","title":"Final Fantasy XIV","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":6180,"platforms":["PC","Mac","PS4"],"studios":["Square Enix"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"From research, it seems to excel most as a classic RPG. Unfortunately, it still relies on a slow-crawling leveling stage with story, rotations for combat (one which is even more complicated than WoW's), and an even slower GCD of up to 2 sec compared to WoW's already dreadful 1 sec. The aesthetics are very Asian (specifically Korean) MMORPG-like, with anime-based looks and a traditional job and crafting system. The UI is way too dense. There are no innovations here. (Note main contenders as of 2019 are World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls Online, Black Desert Online, and Final Fantasy XIV.)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/final-fantasy-xiv-stormblood"},{"id":"322682678652841548","title":"Final Fantasy XV","originalTitle":"ファイナルファンタジーXV","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":1680,"platforms":["Stadia","PS4","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Luminous Productions","Square Enix Business Division 2"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-01-01","updatedDate":"2022-03-29","notes":"## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI'm skipping it similar to FF13. Reading online, new to the series are open world and action RPG combat mechanics. Con-wise, the story and characters are bland, the inconsistency of the story from open-world to linear last half, boilerplate side content, and the combat is not very deep with magick especially taking a backseat.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/final-fantasy-xv"},{"id":"2aa10dff-ecc8-425c-b8db-871888756c5d","title":"Final Fantasy XVI","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":2220,"platforms":["PC","PS5"],"studios":["Square Enix"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2023-06-30","notes":"Waiting until PC port.\n\nI heard it's not that good. [Example](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/14mv301/final_fantasy_xvi_has_been_out_for_a_week_now/jq3wr2i). This also aligned with [Moonmoon's thoughts on the game](https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/14l5uva/moonmoons_thoughts_on_ffxvi).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/final-fantasy-xvi"},{"id":"322682678652922444","title":"Five Nights at Freddy's","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":150,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Scottgames"],"publishers":["Scottgames"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Simulator","Strategy","Indie"],"startedDate":"2020-03-05","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Fun gimmick concept, and which lasts well for its short playtime. I hate restarting a level though; it takes so long to re-complete (8 minutes 37 seconds per level). I couldn't get through level 2 for this reason.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/five-nights-at-freddys"},{"id":"322682678652914252","title":"For Honor","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Ubisoft Montreal"],"publishers":["Ubisoft Entertainment"],"genres":["Fighting","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"This game is purely for its PvP, and I never really gotten into Dark Souls PvP.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/for-honor-season-13-hope"},{"id":"322682678652885580","title":"Fortnite","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":4050,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Switch 2","Android","PC","iOS","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Epic Games"],"publishers":["Epic Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Simulator"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fortnite"},{"id":"322682678652886604","title":"Gloomhaven","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":4860,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Flaming Fowl Studios"],"publishers":["Asmodee Digital"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Tactical","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2021-03-21","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"\n\n__Gameplay.__ The gameplay is much like D&D (in my mind, Divinity) in its turns with initiative, resources (here, cards), advantage, and positioning. There isn't much of a level and gear progression, questing, or environmental combos. Due to its scripted scenarios, Gloomhaven plays like more of a series of puzzles than tactical combat.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ A weird contrivance is needing to spend actions during the battle to loot, which you will lose when you end the battle otherwise.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nMotivated to play as it's ranked 1 and the 29th most popular on boardgamegeek, and 1st best seller from Asmodee Digital on Steam  (as of Jan 2021). I played in Early Access when it had no Campaign mode and just Guildmaster mode. I couldn't get into the game so I decided to wait until Campaign was ready.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gloomhaven"},{"id":"322682678652762700","title":"God of War Ragnarök","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":1560,"platforms":["PS4","PC","PS5"],"studios":["SIE Santa Monica Studio"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2025-12-27","notes":"I waited until it comes out on Steam similar to the original title (released on Jan 2022 while released on PS4 on April 2018).\n\nI've heard it's similar to God of War (2018) with some gameplay improvements. And worse story. I was not interested enough in God of War (2018) to see more of the same.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/god-of-war-ragnarok"},{"id":"9c349ae9-0f92-4fb4-8d9e-f0f5828bec3e","title":"Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["PC","PS3","X360"],"studios":["Rockstar North","Rockstar Toronto"],"publishers":["Rockstar Games","Take-Two Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Racing","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-09-19","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/grand-theft-auto-iv-the-ballad-of-gay-tony"},{"id":"f7352c53-a5e5-444a-b9eb-22ec4859afef","title":"Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PC","PS3","X360"],"studios":["Rockstar North","Rockstar Toronto"],"publishers":["Rockstar Games","Take-Two Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Racing","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-09-19","notes":"I played roughly 10 minutes in and got the same vibes as GTA 4. Would not enjoy all the pointless driving to get to the mission checkpoint, complete some objective, then go to the next waypoint. The story did not interest me that much either enough to get through the gameplay. I figure if I do play this game, I would mostly benefit from watching a playthrough so I can skip and not have to deal with the gameplay itself. ","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/grand-theft-auto-iv-the-lost-and-damned"},{"id":"9ffe4da0-d260-4e9e-8f42-f5e89a042218","title":"Graveyard Keeper","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":2700,"platforms":["PC"],"genres":["Strategy","Indie"],"startedDate":"2023-07-25","updatedDate":"2023-07-25","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://graveyardkeeper.fandom.com)\n\nI was motivated to play as it's like a gothic Stardew Valley. The fact that the game is so long, and so few have played it, is demotivating. It may not be a very good game, certainly not one that significantly innovates and has staying influence, and it's such a long time investment. I heard it's fairly [grindy](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShouldIbuythisgame/comments/of4dz0/sib_graveyard_keeper).\n\n__Version.__ I played the base game with all 3 DLCs included from the start. This is the recommended method as the DLCs are integrated into the base game and, not, say, standalone adventures ([source](https://www.reddit.com/r/GraveyardKeeper/comments/12cdo1a/which_of_the_dlcs_should_i_get_first)).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/graveyard-keeper--1"},{"id":"322682678652917324","title":"Great Turnabout Trial: The Adventures of Ryūnosuke Naruhodō","originalTitle":"大逆転裁判 -成歩堂龍ノ介の冒險-","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2015,"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://scarletstudy.gq/2019/03/30/3ds-only-full-game-release-android-slightly-delayed\n\nTo play, I'm waiting on an English pre-patched ROM to exist on the internet. You can find the original JPN ROM online but it's unclear how to patch it as the official translation steps assume a 3DS."},{"id":"322682678652724812","title":"Grime","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["Stadia","Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Clover Bite"],"publishers":["Akupara Games"],"genres":["Platform","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2022-07-24","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/grime"},{"id":"322682678652715596","title":"GTFO","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":840,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["10 Chambers Collective"],"publishers":["10 Chambers Collective"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-03-29","updatedDate":"2022-10-19","notes":"I played a bit with a full bot lobby and wasn't impressed. There's stealth, exploration, and small parts of combat which is limited due to resource management. Why does the game want you to stealth your way through an entire level while implementing little to no stealth mechanics? Why have bad gunplay? I didn't find this gameplay loop necessarily interesting. \n\nSteam stats show that as of this writing's date, there's only roughly 600 active players so matchmaking is going to be difficult.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gtfo"},{"id":"337556879984034384","title":"Gwent: Rogue Mage","originalTitle":"グウェント：ローグメイジ","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["Android","PC","iOS"],"studios":["CD Projekt RED"],"publishers":["CD Projekt RED"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Adventure","Card & Board Game"],"startedDate":"2022-07-24","updatedDate":"2022-07-24","notes":"A sequel to Thronebreaker? Yes please! Unfortunately, it isn't. This is less narration and more toward a roguelike in the style of Slay the Spire. It's these roguelike elements rather than a curated campaign that make the game have mixed reviews.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gwent-rogue-mage"},{"id":"322682678652894796","title":"Half-Life 2: Episode One","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2006,"playtimeMinutes":210,"platforms":["PS3","Linux","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["Valve","Valve"],"publishers":["EA Games","Valve"],"genres":["Shooter"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I am not impressed by Half-Life 2 to be motivated to play its DLCs.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/half-life-2-episode-one"},{"id":"322682678652869196","title":"Halo 3","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PC","X360","XONE"],"studios":["Bungie"],"publishers":["Microsoft Game Studios"],"genres":["Shooter"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/halo-3-odst"},{"id":"322682678652737100","title":"Halo Infinite","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":630,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","XONE"],"studios":["343 Industries"],"publishers":["Xbox Game Studios"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2022-05-06","updatedDate":"2022-05-06","notes":"Heard the single player campaign isn't that good.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/halo-infinite"},{"id":"7f655444-876c-4822-9658-8e50053d0bee","title":"Helldivers 2","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2024,"platforms":["PC","PS5"],"studios":["Arrowhead Game Studios"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Tactical"],"startedDate":"2024-03-02","updatedDate":"2024-03-23","notes":"I feel the game is rather overrated. There's not much to it. And the core gameplay doesn't have a high ceiling or all that much fun to it.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\nI'm not a fan of the open level design. I prefer linear level progression like that of Left 4 Dead 2, Vermintide 2, and Darktide. Open levels cause more meandering. This design is not unlike Deep Rock Galactic but smaller and with less gameplay incentive to have randomly generated sameness.\n\nEnemy variety doesn't have the iconic specials that makes identifying and knowing how to respond to the enemy types tactically actually important.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/helldivers-2"},{"id":"322682678652899916","title":"Hexen: Beyond Heretic","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":1995,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["PC","Mac","DOS"],"studios":["Presage Software","Raven Software"],"publishers":["GT Interactive Software","id Software"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Motivated to play as a sequel to Heretic, one of the most popular Doom clones. It's one of the most challenging FPS of its time. Flaw-wise, it chooses to have sequence unlocking that spans levels rather than restricted to a single level. This increases confusion even further than what the odd level in the Doom design can do.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/hexen-beyond-heretic"},{"id":"27fc1e9a-0b80-4238-afc9-b93a333abcf7","title":"Icewind Dale","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2000,"playtimeMinutes":2100,"platforms":["PC","Mac","iOS"],"studios":["Black Isle Studios"],"publishers":["Interplay Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy"],"updatedDate":"2023-05-19","notes":"Motivated to play as one of the most prominent CRPGs. I didn't truly enjoy playing any Infinity Engine game, so I'm not sure why I'd play this one which is of the lesser important titles, particularly as the era was in its swan song in contrast to the rise of western RPGs like Morrowind.\n\n> The Icewind Dale games are really AD&D combat titles. The plot is minimal, basically the bare minimum required to get you from setpiece fight to setpiece fight. They consist of very tough fights against well-designed, puzzle-ish encounters, ones you can probably beat, but you're gonna have to work hard at it. It's sort of the Fallout Tactics of the Forgotten Realms; you're there to kick ass, not for any wussy story crap.\n\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/c0yitq/which_games_and_in_which_order_to_play_from_the/\n\nThat does not.. sound appealing. Combat is one of the parts that aged worst in Baldur's Gate.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/icewind-dale"},{"id":"322682678652896844","title":"Invisible, Inc.","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","iOS","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["Klei Entertainment"],"publishers":["Klei Entertainment"],"genres":["Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Tactical","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Motivated to play due to Mark of the Ninja. I couldn't get into the game. Tactical games, particularly with turn-based combat and managing a team is something I can't get into very often. It at least needs RPG elements like FF Tactics but even then, real-time strategy games I can't get into.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/invisible-inc"},{"id":"327878932321796673","title":"Ion Fury: Aftershock","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Voidpoint"],"publishers":["3D Realms","1C Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-04-03","updatedDate":"2022-04-03","notes":"Not sure if interested to play given I got bored of the base game midway through. The DLC doesn't add much more.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ion-fury-aftershock"},{"id":"322682678652728908","title":"It Takes Two","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Switch 2","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Hazelight Studios"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2024-08-07","updatedDate":"2025-02-26","notes":"Played with Marisa.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/it-takes-two"},{"id":"322682678652878412","title":"Jak 3","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["PS4","PS2"],"studios":["Naughty Dog"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/jak-3"},{"id":"322682678652879436","title":"Jak II","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":1050,"platforms":["PS4","PS2"],"studios":["Naughty Dog"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/jak-ii"},{"id":"6d2d54e0-1646-479e-9a19-d02cf8c68cc6","title":"Killing Floor III","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":1440,"platforms":["PC","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Tripwire Interactive"],"updatedDate":"2025-08-05","notes":"Heard a lot of bad things about this game. Not quite Payday 2 to Payday 3 but that it's a mediocre experience.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/killing-floor-iii"},{"id":"322682678652937804","title":"Kingdom Hearts III","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":1740,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Switch 2","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Square Enix Business Division 3"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Surprised by its poor reception (https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/aol6nq/was_kingdom_hearts_3_a_disappointment_im_shocked/), which makes me almost not want to play this game to sully my memory of the previous excellent ones. It's unfortunate it blew past Kingdom Heart's initial promise to mix FF and Disney; now there's just Disney and a bunch of Kingdom Hearts-specific lore of angsty teenagers. There's no Cloud, Squall, or Cid. There's no Sephiroth endgame boss.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/kingdom-hearts-iii"},{"id":"4cb8e8c2-afdd-4ab3-9300-5a2f6b615996","title":"Little Nightmares III","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":372,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Switch 2","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Supermassive Games"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2025-12-06","updatedDate":"2026-03-01","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/little-nightmares-iii--1"},{"id":"ffcea02a-7d03-4077-8c5f-0b68f248b5f1","title":"Lost in Random","originalTitle":"ロスト・イン・ランダム","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Zoink"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2024-09-26","updatedDate":"2025-05-10","notes":"I played it initially on 2024-09-26 but only got 1 hour in with Marisa.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/lost-in-random"},{"id":"fad8f7fa-a532-4c21-864c-153353f66973","title":"Marvel's Spider-Man 2","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":1020,"platforms":["PS5"],"studios":["Insomniac Games"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-12-08","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/marvels-spider-man-2"},{"id":"322682678652778060","title":"Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":450,"platforms":["PS4","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Insomniac Games"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-12-08","notes":"It has the same strengths and weaknesses as the base game. Miles Morales is largely the same but with an addon story.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/marvels-spider-man-miles-morales"},{"id":"16c871c4-da2f-4567-8631-f0c212e6f920","title":"Marvel's Wolverine","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2026,"platforms":["PS5"],"studios":["Insomniac Games"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2026-09-13","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Writing.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nUnfortunately it reviewed poorly.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/marvels-wolverine"},{"id":"322682678652873292","title":"Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PC","PS2","PS3","XBOX","X360"],"studios":["Remedy Entertainment"],"publishers":["Rockstar Games"],"genres":["Shooter"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/max-payne-2-the-fall-of-max-payne"},{"id":"322682678652872268","title":"Max Payne 3","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["PS3","PC","Mac","X360"],"studios":["Rockstar New England","Rockstar Vancouver","Rockstar London","Rockstar Toronto"],"publishers":["Rockstar Games","Take-Two Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/max-payne-3"},{"id":"322682678652905036","title":"Monster Hunter World: Iceborne","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":2190,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/monster-hunter-world-iceborne"},{"id":"322682678652909132","title":"Mordhau","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2019,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Triternion"],"publishers":["Triternion"],"genres":["Fighting","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mordhau"},{"id":"322682678652823116","title":"Myst","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":1993,"playtimeMinutes":330,"platforms":["?","Philips CDI","PS3","Win Phone","PC","3DO","Mac","?","Amiga","?","Saturn","PS1","PSP"],"studios":["Cyan Worlds"],"publishers":["Acclaim Entertainment","Tec Toy","Brøderbund Software","Mean Hamster Software","PXL computers","Panasonic Software Company","Philips Interactive Media","SoftBank","Psygnosis Limited","Sega Enterprises, Inc.","Sun Corporation"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Puzzle","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-08-04","notes":"There are many versions. Specifically, I played realMyst: Masterpiece Edition on iOS. (As a sidenote, this version naming is horrible; first it goes from myst to realMyst, then realMyst to realMyst: Masterpiece Edition, then to v2.0.) I would get v2.0 but that requires PC, and I prefer iOS for convenience.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/myst"},{"id":"322682678652932684","title":"Netherwing Realm","originalTitle":"World of Warcraft: Atlantiss Private Server","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2019,"studios":["Blizzard"],"startedDate":"2019-04-28","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ The nostalgia that hits me whenever I'm randomly buffed by a stranger and I buff them back.\n+ Seeing people quest, and me sending a party invite while actually chatting with them to do the local quests together.\n+ Weather effects. This didn't appear in WoWCrack because of lack of code. I'm sad this was removed in modern WoW.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ It's a very grindy game. Patience is required to spend hours with kill X mobs, loot X things, kill X miniboss, progress to new zone. That sums up leveling. Endgame is not different as one grinds gear and miscellanea (professions, mounts, reputation, map exploration) via dungeons, raids, battlegrounds, and arena.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Common to all WoW games, traversing towns to find a person, and there's verticality in the leve, is frustrating. Maps are flat.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.dkpminus.com/wow/private-servers/\n+ https://atlantiss.eu/\n+ http://tbcwowaddons.weebly.com/\n\nI decided to play this game as I'm currently in a lull of games (in needy of something slightly grindy, familiar (I could care less for FF14 and ESO), and as a massively multiplayer and open RPG). I wish WoW Classic came out sooner! Watching Twitch streamers for too long like Sodapoppin, Asmongold, Esfand, Mizkif, and others certainly influenced this decisions (Sodapoppin played this one!). I chose the server according to the best for The Burning Crusade expansion. I didn't want to do vanilla WoW to avoid burnout and still keep something new when WoW Classic is released. I played Wrath on the Lich King on retail. I'll go super nostalgic and enjoy The Burning Crusade again---which was my first experience but on WoWCrack, which had zero scripts and 15x leveling rate.\n\n__On Class and Faction to Play.__\n\nI decided to play a Human Female (primarily Fire/Frost) Mage. This would be my choice for WoW Clasic, with the main contenders being Human Female Rogue and Human Female (primarily Fury DPS, sometimes Protection for Dungeon tanking and Raid offtanking) Warrior.I wanted to play Alliance, Female, and Mage to experience new aspects as I played rogue and tank warrior before (although I didn't study to play a tank warrior very well).\n\n__Leveling.__ I go to zones by zone level, then each hub within the zone, and pick up all quests. I follow Quest Helper for quest pathing. I follow WoW wiki's quest pages to see if I missed a hub's set of quests (e.g., https://wow.gamepedia.com/Elwynn_Forest_quests) and Wowhead if I get stuck.\n\n__Addons.__ I play minimally so as to experience the game authentically and only with quality of life improvements. Below are in order I found them obligatory:\n\n+ Change interface/keybindings for larger camera view, strafe left/right, no backpedal, toggle autorun, numbers in player/enemy frames.\n+ Map with quest solutions (Cartographer, Quest Helper).\n+ Cast bar with seconds.\n+ Advanced stuff for later: Cooldown counter (OmniCC), Damage, Healing, and Threat Meters (Recount), Auction house (Auctioneer), Chat, DeadlyBossMods, and more.\n+ Combat text (Mike Scrolling Combat Text).\n+ Auto-sell greys and repair.\n+ Equip compare."},{"id":"322682678652831308","title":"Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":2670,"platforms":["PS3"],"studios":["LEVEL-5"],"publishers":["LEVEL-5","Namco Bandai Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-30","notes":"I decided not to play it as I heard the game is actually not that good. Beautiful animations. But boring story and mediocre combat system, occasionally with frustrating difficulty spikes.\n\nCombat is not turn-based, inheriting from both Tales' open-field combat and Pokemon's recruiting system. \n\nI played it on Windows following the 2019 remaster. I played on controller.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ni-no-kuni-wrath-of-the-white-witch"},{"id":"322682678652889676","title":"Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139...","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":1170,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Toylogic","Square Enix Creative Business Unit II"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/nier-replicant-ver-dot-1-22474487139-dot-dot-dot"},{"id":"322682678652812876","title":"Nioh 2 DLC: Darkness in the Capital","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PC","PS4","PS5"],"studios":["Team Ninja","Koei Tecmo"],"publishers":["Koei Tecmo","Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"updatedDate":"2022-07-10","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/nioh-2-darkness-in-the-capital"},{"id":"322682678652811852","title":"Nioh 2 DLC: The First Samurai","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PC","PS4","PS5"],"studios":["Team Ninja","Koei Tecmo"],"publishers":["Koei Tecmo","Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"updatedDate":"2022-07-10","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/nioh-2-the-first-samurai"},{"id":"324530976545833552","title":"Nioh 2: The Tengu's Disciple","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["PC","PS4","PS5"],"studios":["Team Ninja"],"publishers":["Koei Tecmo","Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Fighting","Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-07-10","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/nioh-2-the-tengus-disciple"},{"id":"322682678652936780","title":"Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty!","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":450,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Linux","Android","PC","iOS","Mac","WiiU","Vita","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Just Add Water"],"publishers":["Oddworld Inhabitants"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I decided not to play this game, in favor of the original instead. Unfortunately, the remastered version sacrifices several core ideas in the original. First, the art direction, animation, and sound is changed to be a lot more colorful and generically dynamic. Second, Abe's character background no longer has the ton eof a possibly-delusional messiah, and is now made canon in the intro as being revived and enhanced by a shaman (it was previously unclear what this was his hallucination; that uncertainty is important).\n\n__Art/Visuals/Sound.__ I greatly prefer the original's art direction: modern, grungy, alien in both colors and sound design. Here, palettes are colorful and sketchings almost cartoony. The new version overall is a lot more colorful and clean, feeling like any other modern game. The architecture is more now than the futuristic one set up, feeling closer to a comic like Ratchet and Clank's. Even checkpoints are more clearly established and feel video-gamey. Sound is botched: the signature chanting noise is dulled; the Scarab's roar is now a generic lion roar and no longer alien. The original atmosphere just isn't there.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ The original version was primarily 2D. This is a 3D platformer.\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Levels have a moving camera closer to modern day platformers. I much prefer the original of dividing levels into a set of still screens. This adds an artistic feeling to it with a sense of tweaking/refinement at each still such as shadows and detail, and it paces the game as a sequence of puzzles. In contrast, the dynamic camera requires more filters and continuity.\n+ Movement is analog instead of using shoulder buttons. This makes precise movement more difficult, which is required at times for the platforming (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4x8YK9dnj8).\n+ I greatly prefer keeping the quirky mechanics from the original game as they're memorable and iconic in the game: unforgiving deaths, quick save, fewer checkpoints.\n+ The new game has multiple difficulty modes. I greatly prefer the original version's single difficulty and an unforgiving one at that.\n+ Why give health display to triangle? The control scheme is so finicky here.\n+ The new ending credits are so... loud.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.reddit.com/r/oddworld/comments/915sgp/oddworld_abes_oddysee_vs_oddworld_new_n_tasty/\n+ comparison video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOKyGVwoUJA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkhDrngAQZ0, https://www.reddit.com/r/oddworld/comments/75e4w2/opinions_on_new_n_tasty_and_fears_for_soulstorm/dq0lukn/. Found the note about extragavant uses of bloom at 4:50 very interesting and well-said. Also true of the pre-rendered artisty of the original compared to the newer game's rendering using generic algorithms/filters for textures and lighting.\n\nI'm motivated to re-get into Oddworld as I have fond memories of playing the first two games and greatly enjoying them. I'll start with the original, and then go on to the sequels.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/oddworld-new-n-tasty"},{"id":"322682678652833356","title":"Odin Sphere","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2007,"playtimeMinutes":1830,"platforms":["PS3","Vita","PS4"],"studios":["Vanillaware"],"publishers":["Atlus","Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2022-07-16","notes":"I played the 2016 remake Odin Sphere Leifthrasir. Note it's not turn-based. I played it on PS3 (RPCS3) as I prefer playing on PC over PS4. Apparently there's not much difference between the PS3 and PS4 ports, particularly if you use higher native resolution in a PS3 emulator.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/odin-sphere-leifthrasir"},{"id":"98742db6-94d3-459c-9a3f-61cd52010cf7","title":"Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":3300,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch","Series X"],"studios":["Owlcat Games"],"publishers":["Owlcat Games","Prime Matter","META Publishing"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Tactical","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-10-09","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\nMajor changes:\n\n+ Removal of time limits. There’s a 3 day time limit for Chapter 1, but it otherwise no longer exists. I find the time limit to force a gameplay order and be too restrictive for Kingmaker.\n+ Crusade management replaces kingdom management. It is much less tedious.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ You can rotate the camera 3D, and the level’s assets are designed to support it (unlike Kingmaker with a mod).\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Backer quests. The [1 in Kingmaker](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/10j6zod/replaying_kingmaker_just_revisited_the_deal_with) sucked, and there are 3 in WOTR.\n+ [Mods disable Steam achievements](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/vp7fnp/does_enabling_mods_disable_steam_achievements).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [r/pathfinder_kingmaker](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker)\n+ [Wiki](https://pathfinderkingmaker.fandom.com)\n\n__Version.__ I chose to play the base game. As of this writing (2023-09-12), there are four DLCs: the first two are standalone adventure campaigns and the third is a roguelite mode (it can also be integrated to the main campaign, but it has little consequential story and focuses on combat and rewards). They have no bearing on the main campaign and can be played at any point later. The fourth adds a class with new spells, companion, and playable area to the main campaign, so it’s debatable whether to pick up. Pathfinder games tend to be too long and drag out their content, so I decided not to pick it up.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pathfinder-wrath-of-the-righteous"},{"id":"75e6ef6b-5f90-4fbb-9b6f-32eb2f6b0061","title":"Pico Park 2","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PC","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["TECOPARK","Gemdrops","Inc."],"publishers":["TECOPARK"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle"],"updatedDate":"2025-06-20","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pico-park-2"},{"id":"f2c61598-7f23-42d1-b340-85eed6cfa933","title":"Pragmata","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2026,"playtimeMinutes":917,"platforms":["Series X|S","Switch 2","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2026-04-29","updatedDate":"2026-04-30","notes":"Interested for first few hours but seems a bit gimmicky. Dad adventure optimism writing, generic scifi level design, linear campaign, a bit arcade-y but simple quality of life combat / hacking / progression.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pragmata"},{"id":"322682678652931660","title":"Professor Layton and the Curious Village","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2007,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["Android","iOS","NDS"],"studios":["LEVEL-5"],"publishers":["Nintendo","LEVEL-5"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Puzzle","Visual Novel"],"startedDate":"2019-05-25","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I played the \"HD for Mobile\" version on iOS. I dropped it within the first hour.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/professor-layton-and-the-curious-village"},{"id":"322682678652718668","title":"Project Warlock 2","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2022,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Buckshot Software"],"publishers":["Retrovibe"],"genres":["Shooter","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-07-04","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/project-warlock-ii"},{"id":"322682678652796492","title":"Pyre","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Supergiant Games"],"publishers":["Supergiant Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie","Visual Novel"],"updatedDate":"2023-07-05","notes":"It's like a sports game. As much as I admire Supergiant Games' gameplay variety and art style, the genre isn't for me.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pyre"},{"id":"586167df-7985-444e-9d20-7c507f13b088","title":"Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PS3","X360"],"studios":["Rockstar San Diego","Rockstar North"],"publishers":["Rockstar Games","Take-Two Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-07-04","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/red-dead-redemption-undead-nightmare"},{"id":"c07ab616-4632-42c3-b01f-0f8f0b6625b5","title":"Redfall","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["PC","Series X"],"studios":["Arkane Austin"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-05-02","notes":"I'm so sad this game flopped.\n\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1355mp9/redfall_review_thread\n\nArkane is like the last studio pushing on immersive sims. And the premise sounded so cool (l4d2 meets dishonored/thief). It's a shame to see Arkane try to dive further into mainstream with Deathloop and Redfall, and it continues to take a quality dive since Prey. While I don't like Oblivion and Skyrim as much as Morrowind (or Fallout 4 as much as Fallout 3 or New Vegas), at least Bethesda figured out the strategy to be successful.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/redfall"},{"id":"331335085379813967","title":"Risk of Rain 2: Survivors of the Void","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2022,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Hopoo Games"],"publishers":["Gearbox Publishing"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2022-06-02","updatedDate":"2022-06-03","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/survivors-of-the-void"},{"id":"4dcb5044-a2a6-41c6-a763-3b1206955992","title":"S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":4332,"platforms":["PC","Series X"],"studios":["GSC Game World"],"publishers":["GSC Game World"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2025-12-27","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/stalker-2-heart-of-chernobyl"},{"id":"331199770081100353","title":"Salt and Sacrifice","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["PS4","PC","PS5","Switch"],"studios":["Ska Studios"],"publishers":["Ska Studios"],"genres":["Platform","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-06-01","notes":"I've heard that this game is a steep drop departing from many strengths in the first game: [r/patientgamers thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/13xec0t/salt_and_sacrifice_might_be_the_worst_sequel_i), [r/saltandsanctuary thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/saltandsanctuary/comments/v103ct/sanctuary_or_sacrifice). Salt and Sacrifice transitioned from the first game's 2D Dark Souls 1 metroidvania to a Monster Hunter mixed with Dark Souls 3/Demon Souls.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/salt-and-sacrifice"},{"id":"177db12c-4270-40c7-9e47-c08d47248892","title":"Samurai Warriors 4","originalTitle":"戦国無双4","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":1620,"platforms":["PS3","Vita","PS4"],"studios":["Omega Force"],"publishers":["Koei Tecmo"],"genres":["Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"updatedDate":"2023-03-26","notes":"I was not impressed with my first entry to the musou genre with Dynasty Warriors 7. So I don't intend to play this game although it would be the best starter for this spinoff series.\n\n__Playing order.__  What's the best title to play first in the Samurai Warriors series? Unlike DW titiles which all the same story, SW titles tell [different parts of the Sengoku period](https://www.reddit.com/r/dynastywarriors/comments/wd8js7/what_sw_game_should_i_play_first/iihztdo/). The major titles are:\n\n+ SW2. It includes not only SW1's early part of the era but the pushed to the final parts. It's hailed as the best \"classic\" title, similar to DW5/3.\n+ SW4. It's the biggest story-wise, providing [clan-based story modes](https://koei.fandom.com/wiki/Samurai_Warriors_4) not unlike DW4/7/8, where the major focus are on the unifiers of Japan; in contrast, there are character-based story modes as in SW1-3 and DW3/5/6.\n+ SW5. Like SW1, SW5 focuses on the early part of the era, and focused on Nobunaga's character perspective. \n    \nI chose SW4.\n\n__Game version.__ SW4 (original) on PS4 is the best. However, since there is no PS4 emulator, SW4 on a RPCS3 is a solid contender.\n\n+ On version, DX includes all content for the base game, but it was never localized outside of Japan. There is also [SW4-2](http://koei.wikia.com/wiki/Samurai_Warriors_4-II), but [SW4](https://koei.fandom.com/wiki/Samurai_Warriors_4) is preferred by fan due to its story presentation (clan-based rather than character-driven).\n+ On port, SW4 on PS4 has superior graphics and performance (e.g., more enemies on screen, bigger draw distance, improved textures) than the PS3 and Vita; SW4DX is only offered on PS4 or Switch.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/samurai-warriors-4"},{"id":"a27710ed-8b33-414f-9e86-deef4ec38530","title":"Satisfactory","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":5520,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Coffee Stain Studios"],"publishers":["Coffee Stain Studios"],"genres":["Simulator","Strategy","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2023-01-26","updatedDate":"2023-07-04","notes":"I played a bit in order to do coop with Danny and Dalton. I only got a few hours in.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/satisfactory"},{"id":"334297778430673488","title":"Scorn","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["PC","Series X"],"studios":["ebb Software"],"publishers":["ebb Software","Kepler Interactive"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-15","notes":"Have seen some playthroughs and discussion, and it's apparently not a good game. The art and atmosphere is gorgeous. The gameplay itself is bad from unintuitive level design to terrible combat.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/scorn"},{"id":"322682678652921420","title":"Sniper Elite 4","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["Stadia","PS4","PC","iOS","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Rebellion Developments"],"publishers":["Rebellion Developments"],"genres":["Shooter","Tactical","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2020-03-26","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Graphics are quiet detailed for a game that's not exactly AAA. The signature killcam shots are especially great.\n\nSpecific memories:\n\n+ N/A\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ N/A\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ N/A\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played on Sniper Elite (Hard) difficulty. At minimum Sniper Elite (Hard) difficulty is required in order to account for both wind and bullet drop. The next hardest difficulties of Authentic and Authentic Plus don't include mission objectives, which suggests it's not for a first playthrough. If I really like the game, I'd play with Aim Assist off, no tagging enemies, and an immersive HUD in any case. Played for the first mission and I couldn't get into it. Sniping isn't for me. I prefer melee stealth.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/sniper-elite-4"},{"id":"333882344074117711","title":"Star Wars Jedi: Survivor","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":1200,"platforms":["PC","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Respawn Entertainment"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Adventure"],"startedDate":"2025-05-11","updatedDate":"2025-05-11","notes":"I hear Fallen Order is [generally better](https://www.reddit.com/r/FallenOrder/comments/138v1cd/survivor_vs_fallen_order_which_one_do_you_prefer). It has solid gameplay improvements, with a weaker world and writing. I didn't find Fallen Order all that exceptional. It was only a decent Soulslike benefiting from a Star Wars setting.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/star-wars-jedi-survivor"},{"id":"83902153-a8a5-46d5-8918-494ad69574ef","title":"Starfield: Shattered Space","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2024,"platforms":["PC","Series X|S"],"studios":["Bethesda Game Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2025-01-06","notes":"Not interested enough in the base game to want to play the DLC.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/starfield-shattered-space"},{"id":"339502892257904207","title":"Stoneshard","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":7020,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"publishers":["Ink Stains Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Tactical","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2025-08-07","notes":"Waiting until it exits early access. It looked interesting to play when I saw Sodapoppin play it in 2020. As of 2025, it still hasn’t exited Early Access and seems to have largely slowed development.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/stoneshard"},{"id":"324256382936154704","title":"Super Mario 3D Land","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["3DS"],"studios":["Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development","Brownie Brown","Nintendo"],"publishers":["Nintendo","iQue"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2025-05-11","updatedDate":"2025-05-11","notes":"Motivated because this title spawned its own subseries: Super Mario 3D world, Bowser's Fury.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-mario-3d-land"},{"id":"322682678652821068","title":"Super Mario Odyssey","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["N64"],"studios":["Kaze Emanuar"],"genres":["Platform"],"startedDate":"2025-05-15","updatedDate":"2025-08-04","notes":"To evaluate:\n\n+ World map to progress from level to level rather than a hub.\n\n+ I like videogamedunkey's super-high praise and details appreciating the game | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7Z2I9x4Pd0\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Super Mario Odyssey movement guide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7HZT2lmL04)\n\nIt seems fun. I'm just not a big fan of the floaty acceleration-based movement and art style of Super Mario games. It also takes me to have a certain mood to enjoy platformers. Dropped after a few levels.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/super-mario-odyssey-64"},{"id":"341850561742635601","title":"System Shock","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":1994,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["?","PC","Mac","DOS"],"studios":["Looking Glass Studios"],"publishers":["Origin Systems","Electronic Arts","Dong Seo Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)"],"startedDate":"2020-05-24","updatedDate":"2022-09-04","notes":"The game is a clear innovator in atmosphere, building elaborate 3D environments with a sinister feeling with a decent lore. Unfortunately, the game is god awful to play because of its overly complicated controls.\n\n__Story.__ I like the premise of a hacker and a rogue AI. Lore is scattered through data logs and audio logs.\n\n__Gameplay.__ System Shock plays like an exploratory adventure with action/FPS elements.\n\nThe ability to control this much loot, pick up corpses, reload, and more is clear innovation. But the general use of the free cursor movement is a mess from environment interaction to inventory managemen to savingt. There are two control schemes: free cursor movement for inventory management and picking up items; and FPS. For example, how to throw a grenade by toggling modes to select the item from the inventory then dragging it to the main screen; reloading; or navigating the multiple inventories. The range of movement abilities such as walking, running; stand, crouch, prone; and jump are nice but unnecessary.\n\nEnemies have hitscan. Death penalty is reloading at select chambers.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The 3D-esque pixel art are astounding, especially compared to games in this era like Doom (1993) and Doom 2 (1994), and that does age well. Voice acting is also decent and novel.\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ I like the Online Help HUD that points out all the interactable things.\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ N/A\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ Defaults keybindings. Stand up, Crouch, Prone are R, C, V, and not toggle or held.\n+ No option in the Enhanced Edition to always be running.\n+ The fullscreen view is infinitely better but not the default.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ walkthrough | https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1761349780\n\nI played the Enhanced Edition, which among other things provides a higher resolution with 21:9 support, higher frame rate (I played at 75 FPS), and Free Look controls. I played at normal difficulty. 20 minutes into the game I found the controls way too tedious. So I just decided to watch a playthrough instead by the developers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LDiTZ89j-Q). The first 30 minutes are incredibly scuffed however in the audio setup. The commentary is all about crediting too, which just detracts from the gameplay experience itself. So I watched a no commentary version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJK5nt4rIRc).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/system-shock"},{"id":"335100259531227713","title":"The Callisto Protocol","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Striking Distance Studios"],"publishers":["Krafton"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-03-05","notes":"Motivated to play as it's by a co-creator of Dead Space. No longer interested as it bombed on release. Turned out to have many flaws.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-callisto-protocol"},{"id":"322682678652924492","title":"The Dark Mod","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2009,"platforms":["Linux","PC"],"studios":["Broken Glass Studios"],"startedDate":"2022-03-29","completedDate":"2022-03-29","updatedDate":"2022-03-29","notes":"Motivated to play as a recreation of the best of Thief 1 and 2 according to the core community.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-dark-mod"},{"id":"cf6a49cf-bbd8-4b37-b971-a29b81c3d634","title":"The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Supermassive Games","Supermassive Games"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe","Bandai Namco Entertainment"],"genres":["Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-28","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-dark-pictures-anthology-the-devil-in-me"},{"id":"9e8b0ec5-a3a5-405e-9637-ee72c37525c2","title":"The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":3880,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Virtuos"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2025-12-27","notes":"+ https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Remastered_Changes\n\nI didn't like Oblivion enough to want to replay it immediately, compared to other titles like Morrowind or Skyrim. But if I do replay, I'd try this version next.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion-remastered"},{"id":"322682678652939852","title":"The Elder Scrolls Online","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":7020,"platforms":["Stadia","Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE"],"studios":["ZeniMax Online Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"startedDate":"2018-10-12","updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"From research, it seems to excel most as a classic RPG with excellent story (relative to other MMOs, it pales in comparison to other Elder Scrolls games). Like Elder Scrolls, it has a combat system based on timing and blocking. There is no rated pvp or as good raid progression system as WoW.\n\nIn choosing a class, I narrowed it down to Sorcerer and Nightblade. I went with Sorcerer to spice things up given I almost always play the Rogue class (the only exception is really Diablo, where I mained a Sorceress and Amazon). The melee combat in ESO doesn't seem as intensive as, e.g., Black Desert Online. So I don't think I'm missing much by going for ranged DPS.\n\nVisually, the colors are drab. With everything taking a brown hue, all the architecture and world lacks vibrance.\n\nI played up until level 4 and just got bored. The MMO elements are not that interesting, at least for leveling. And the RPG elements seem better in a single player. Like, e.g., WoW, it's a chain of quests to level, with a main storyline, and options for dungeons and PvP. If I were interested in a western RPG, I would be better off playing, e.g., Skyrim, Witcher, or Fallout.\n\nThe daily rewards for logging in, and have a subscription which gives you monthly rewards, all feel.. desperate.\n\nResources\n+ community | r/elderscrollsonline\n+ wiki | https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/\n+ builds | https://alcasthq.com/","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-elder-scrolls-online"},{"id":"337298327581229647","title":"The Glass Staircase","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["Puppet Combo"],"publishers":["Puppet Combo"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-06-24","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-glass-staircase"},{"id":"322682678652734028","title":"The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":2010,"platforms":["PS4","3DS","Android","PC","iOS","Switch"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Puzzle","Adventure","Visual Novel"],"updatedDate":"2023-07-16","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-great-ace-attorney-2-resolve"},{"id":"3aca8297-148a-4844-83f8-d5df5c4d0f4f","title":"The Last of Us: Left Behind","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["PS3","PS4"],"studios":["Naughty Dog"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2025-06-17","notes":"Adding this as a separate entry as I want to experience the remake with new graphics and gameplay elements. I never played the DLC.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-last-of-us-left-behind"},{"id":"322682678652846668","title":"The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":1993,"playtimeMinutes":870,"platforms":["GBC","3DS"],"studios":["Nintendo EAD"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-28","notes":"I played the 2019 remake on the Nintendo Switch, which is apparently very faithful.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-legend-of-zelda-link-s-awakening-dx"},{"id":"322682678652844620","title":"The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":2280,"platforms":["Wii","WiiU"],"studios":["Nintendo EAD Software Development Group No.3"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-28","notes":"\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__ The most significant change to the series is the Wiimote sword control, greatly changing the core combat with how you strike and how enemies block. There are now Mario-like power-ups such as invincibility.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI first played this on 10/01/12. I remember just completing up to Earth Temple (roughly 30% progress). I then played it on Dolphin, which supports MotionPlus emulation since 2019 so I played with a keyboard and mouse. I prefer mouse and keyboard over a controller as the controller relies on the right analog stick to swing your mpuse. This is the entire concept of Skyward Sword's combat, so your controls should have similar emphasis or otherwise it doesn't feel as smove.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword"},{"id":"322682678652877388","title":"The Operative: No One Lives Forever","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2000,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["PC","Mac","PS2"],"studios":["Monolith Productions"],"publishers":["Fox Interactive","MacPlay","Sierra Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I was motiated to play as it's well-known for its spy story---even if its stealth and shooting mechanics aren't that good.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-operative-no-one-lives-forever"},{"id":"322682678652907084","title":"The Sims 3","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":4860,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["The Sims Studio"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Strategy"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"If I want to get into a life simulator game, this is rated the best one. Simulators have so many systems in place though: it takes so much research to get started.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-sims-3"},{"id":"322682678652857932","title":"Vagrant Story","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2000,"playtimeMinutes":1410,"platforms":["PS3","PS1","PSP"],"studios":["Square Product Development Division 4"],"publishers":["Square Electronic Arts","Square Enix","Square"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-07-28","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/vagrant-story"},{"id":"322682678652863052","title":"Valorant","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":5460,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Riot Games"],"publishers":["Riot Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Tactical"],"startedDate":"2021-12-27","updatedDate":"2023-07-31","notes":"Valorant is a innovative combination of CSGO and League of Legends/Overwatch mechanics. Building on CSGO as its core, Valorant adds streamlined weapon variety and aiming, while adding heroes to encourage a different tactics. Like CSGO, Valorant is very much a twitch shooter where reaction time and aiming precision is most valued.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\nMinor differences and gameplay effects compared to CSGO:\n\n+ Hero abilities make the game less exact, memorizing angles and optimal plays. For example, supportive abilities like heals and revives make the game more forgiving. Heros add more emphasis on team composition and execution.\n+ Slower movement speed than CSGO. This makes wide peeking more effective than jiggle peeking\n+ Counter strafing is negligible in this game as it automatically applies deceleration.\n+ Flash bang effectiveness diminishes over distance.\n+ Spray pattern is random, meaning spraying and >5-shot bursts are discouraged.\n+ Tagging enemies with fire slows enemy movement speed more than CSGO.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The polished, cartoon style works well for the game, appealing to a consistent art style for Riot games.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ Unlike CSGO, tap fire is less an option because recoil resets too long. For medium range encounters, you're better off burst firing.\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ Initially when playing I was getting a consistent 120ms, which is unplayable for low TTK games. My ping is fine in other games (e.g., consistent 30ms in Overwatch). Turned out Riot thought I lived in Bulgaria as it was an old account(?).\n+ You can't jump into a practice range while in queue.\n+ Counter-Strike's counter strafing isn't a thing.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI played a few deathmatches in 2021-12-27 but did not get far.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/valorant"},{"id":"322682678652802636","title":"Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":1110,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Hardsuit Labs"],"publishers":["Paradox Interactive"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2026-02-01","notes":"I've heard it's very disappointing, not enough RPG elements. Just a superficial fun action RPG if you want to brainlessly enjoy the lore.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2"},{"id":"343213612935938640","title":"Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":1560,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Team NINJA"],"publishers":["Koei Tecmo Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-02","notes":"I heard it's even worse than Nioh 2 in the repetition and grind.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/wo-long-fallen-dynasty"},{"id":"322682678652916300","title":"Wolfenstein: Youngblood","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["Stadia","PS4","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["MachineGames"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"I didn't play immediately after playing other entries in the series as The New Colossus just burned me out in its lack of contributions. Therefore I'm leaving to the future when I might be craving for mindless FPS again. I hear Youngblood is even worse than the others: unnecessary RPG element of leveling, dialogue and villains, cringy and poorly substantiated protagonist sisters. There are some potentially interesting mechanics: coop, different progression ideas such as cloak devices and weapons; Arkane Studios' effect on the level design. Unlike The New Colossus, Youngblood fortunately does spend more time on the gameplay than the story.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/wolfenstein-youngblood"},{"id":"322682678652904012","title":"World of Warcraft: Shadowlands","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":3750,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["Blizzard Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The buff stacking effects with a roguelike behavior of Torghast seems most promising. Honestly, World of Warcraft is way past its prime. I also have no social incentives (friends) to play and make this last; I'd just play solo and/or slowly accumulate friends when joining a guild. The only reason I'd still be interested in playing is from the hype as I watch streamers play it like Sodapoppin or Moonmoon.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/world-of-warcraft-shadowlands"},{"id":"322682678652875340","title":"Wrath: Aeon of Ruin","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["3D Realms","KillPixel"],"publishers":["Fulqrum Publishing","3D Realms"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2025-05-11","notes":"I was motivated to play because it's a new shooter on the Quake engine? And music by Andrew Hushult? Sign me up.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/wrath-aeon-of-ruin"},{"id":"8e876ec4-5e9d-4f18-b2dc-52ba12a2cd7e","title":"Zoochosis","status":"Dropped","releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":180,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Clapperheads"],"publishers":["Clapperheads"],"genres":["Simulator","Adventure","Indie"],"startedDate":"2024-09-01","updatedDate":"2025-02-25","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/zoochosis"},{"id":"474894ce-3d38-4e4a-bcb7-58020be11a2d","title":"Fallen Aces","status":"To play","score":1,"releaseYear":2024,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Trey Powell","Jason Bond"],"publishers":["New Blood Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter"],"updatedDate":"2025-05-11","notes":"It's like a first-person beat-em-up. Very cool style and gameplay ideas. Plus, it's from New Blood Interactive.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fallen-aces"},{"id":"322682678652751436","title":"Gloomwood","status":"To play","score":1,"releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["New Blood Interactive"],"publishers":["New Blood Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2024-09-25","notes":"Motivated to play because New Blood Interactive and David Szymanski.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gloomwood"},{"id":"70721674-dc18-43c0-b73d-267a53d5bac2","title":"No Rest for the Wicked","status":"To play","score":1,"releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":2000,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Moon Studios"],"publishers":["Moon Studios"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2026-05-28","notes":"An ARPG by the Ori studio.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/no-rest-for-the-wicked--1"},{"id":"97bbb273-5573-46f7-9273-13815379dc89","title":"Selaco","status":"To play","score":1,"releaseYear":2024,"platforms":["Linux","PC"],"studios":["Altered Orbit Studios"],"publishers":["Altered Orbit Studios"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2025-06-15","notes":"Waiting until it exits Early Access. Apparently the game that Phantom Fury should have been, with a mix of SiN.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/selaco"},{"id":"5e2c01fd-7d3d-49af-936e-8cf96c83521d","title":"Subnautica 2","status":"To play","score":1,"releaseYear":2026,"playtimeMinutes":1260,"platforms":["Series X|S","XBOX","PC"],"studios":["Unknown Worlds Entertainment"],"publishers":["Krafton","Unknown Worlds Entertainment"],"genres":["Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2026-05-27","notes":"Waiting until it exits Early Access.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/subnautica-2"},{"id":"322682678652765772","title":"2018","originalTitle":"Shadow of the Colossus","status":"To play","releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":1020,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Cyanide Studio"],"publishers":["Focus Home Interactive"],"genres":["Simulator","Sport"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Unlike the PS3 remaster who improves the resolution of the PS2 original game, this is a remake.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pro-cycling-manager-tour-de-france-2018"},{"id":"910d66ed-e1d4-4457-a400-f159b1ea5a5f","title":"Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon","status":"To play","releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":1080,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["FromSoftware"],"publishers":["FromSoftware","Bandai Namco Games"],"genres":["Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-06-01","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/armored-core-vi-fires-of-rubicon"},{"id":"04c1723f-ccac-4041-9eba-648e1ba7176c","title":"Arx Fatalis","status":"To play","releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":1200,"platforms":["PC","XBOX"],"studios":["Arkane Studios","WizarBox"],"publishers":["DreamCatcher Interactive","Arkane Studios","JoWooD Entertainment AG","Mindscape","Capcom"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2024-09-25","notes":"Possibly the only AA/AAA title building on Ultima Underworld and King's Field most directly as of this writing (2023).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/arx-fatalis"},{"id":"06e1cdd1-7e3d-4894-abd4-2b4dd4a6fef4","title":"Astro Bot","status":"To play","releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":948,"platforms":["PS5"],"studios":["Team Asobi"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2026-08-09","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/astro-bot"},{"id":"b6a3c04c-2ff0-4e90-802d-1c0e29049f33","title":"Big Walk","status":"To play","releaseYear":2026,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["House House"],"publishers":["Panic"],"genres":["Puzzle"],"updatedDate":"2025-11-09","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/big-walk"},{"id":"327950304099172944","title":"Blood: Plasma Pak","status":"To play","releaseYear":1997,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["DOS"],"studios":["Monolith Productions"],"publishers":["GT Interactive Software"],"genres":["Shooter"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-26","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/blood-plasma-pak"},{"id":"322682678652810828","title":"Bloodborne: The Old Hunters","status":"To play","releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":510,"platforms":["PS4"],"studios":["FromSoftware"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-06-08","notes":"## Resources and Miscellanean\n\nI haven't touched my Bloodborne save file since 2019, so before playing the DLC it's probably useful to play the game from scratch again.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bloodborne-the-old-hunters--1"},{"id":"322682678652749388","title":"Boneworks","status":"To play","releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["Oculus VR","PC","Steam VR","?"],"studios":["Stress Level Zero"],"publishers":["Stress Level Zero"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Simulator","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/boneworks"},{"id":"322682678652795468","title":"Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow","status":"To play","releaseYear":2005,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["NDS"],"studios":["Konami"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Platform","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Its flaws are its anime art style and touch screen gimmick for seals and ice blocks. Fortunately, I played the Definitive Edition ROM hack which bypasses these.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/castlevania-dawn-of-sorrow"},{"id":"3ae0816d-3471-4a9e-84dd-ccd4b6d15e76","title":"Clock Tower: Rewind","status":"To play","releaseYear":2024,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["WayForward","Human Entertainment"],"publishers":["SUNSOFT","Capcom","WayForward","Limited Run Games"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Puzzle","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2026-04-27","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/clock-tower-rewind"},{"id":"3e780a60-82e9-4815-864e-19204f592468","title":"Cocoon","status":"To play","releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":330,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Geometric Interactive"],"publishers":["Annapurna Interactive"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2025-07-12","notes":"From the creator of Limbo and Inside.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/cocoon"},{"id":"333068019111559745","title":"ConcernedApe's Haunted Chocolatier","status":"To play","platforms":["PC"],"studios":["ConcernedApe"],"publishers":["ConcernedApe"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator"],"updatedDate":"2022-05-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/concernedapes-haunted-chocolatier"},{"id":"322682678652838476","title":"Conker's Bad Fur Day","status":"To play","releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["N64"],"studios":["Rare"],"publishers":["THQ","Rare","Gradiente"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Puzzle","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"The Live & Reloaded remake censors cursing which adds to the charm of the game. The advantage is improved visuals, control scheme, and multiplayer (https://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/8bjh9x/conker_live_reloaded_vs_bad_fur_day/). Unfortunately, there's no good Xbox emulator (as of 2019) and unlikely to feature one for many more years. Instead, I decided to play on a Nintendo 64 emulator.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/conker-s-bad-fur-day"},{"id":"342929102619017808","title":"Crusader Kings II","status":"To play","releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":3840,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Paradox Development Studio"],"publishers":["Paradox Interactive"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Strategy"],"updatedDate":"2022-09-16","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/crusader-kings-ii"},{"id":"c42f8d11-d85f-4dcf-8942-45bcc1397414","title":"Ctrl Alt Ego","status":"To play","releaseYear":2022,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["MindThunk"],"publishers":["Klabater","MindThunk"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2026-08-09","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ctrl-alt-ego"},{"id":"000741f3-1abe-4bc1-b2c9-8c790cd794ad","title":"Cultic","status":"To play","releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":300,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Jasozz Games"],"publishers":["3D Realms"],"genres":["Shooter"],"updatedDate":"2025-06-14","notes":"Interested mostly because it's in the niche retro shooter genre, it's published by 3D Realms, and it's inspired by Blood one of my all-time favorite retro shooters. It also stands out in not just being a Doom clone, but also largely taking from survival horror, particularly RE4. There’s more horror elements, and shooting can often be medium to long range rather than close to medium range corridors and arenas like in standard retro shooters.\n\nI played Very Hard difficulty. It is the highest difficulty with [enemy behavior changes](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1684930/discussions/0/4424309823753392283). Extreme only increases the enemy damage multiplier and enemy aggression.\n\nI played the demo on 2025-05-14.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/cultic"},{"id":"4a9227c6-c7f6-4af3-9575-7b1b7a279e1d","title":"Cultic: Chapter 2","status":"To play","updatedDate":"2025-05-13"},{"id":"324411038144397905","title":"Dark Souls III: The Convergence","status":"To play","releaseYear":2020,"platforms":["PC"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2022-08-19","notes":"__Gameplay.__ Notable mechanics:\n\n+ Convergence changes the three magic schools in the original game to be split into four sub-schools, and each with differing covenants catered to them.\n+ FP regen.\n+ Alchemy crafting.\n+ Changed enemy and item placements. A handful of new bosses.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](http://the-convergence-mod.wikidot.com)\n\nI played a pure caster build. I treat Convergence as if it were any other DS3 playthrough, but as a caster build with particularly new spells quite unlike those of the existing INT, FAITH, and Pyromancy lot.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dark-souls-iii-the-convergence"},{"id":"337502483289997904","title":"Dark Souls: Nightfall","status":"To play","updatedDate":"2022-07-18","notes":"Some new gameplay elements:\n\n+ Everything is generally faster: attacks, dodges, heals.\n+ Two-handed aggressive stance with 4 different move abilities (no more block), and where you can't heal until you exit the stance.\n+ Majora's Mask time rewind mechanic.\n+ Bloodborne's rally mechanic.\n\nFrom the developers of Daughters of Ash as well as other mods like Quick Souls."},{"id":"322682678652760652","title":"DayZ","status":"To play","releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":3720,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Switch 2","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["Bohemia Interactive"],"publishers":["Bohemia Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Tactical","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-26","notes":"\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\nDetails I like:\n\n+ N/A\n\nDetails I'm ambivalent about:\n\n+ N/A\n\nDetails I don't like:\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ https://dayz.xam.nu/\n\nI initially played on October 2020 as Dalton, Danny, and I wanted to play together. I did not get very far.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dayz"},{"id":"4f90428c-584c-4797-b955-799296ece1ed","title":"Deadlock","status":"To play","releaseYear":2024,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Valve"],"publishers":["Valve"],"genres":["Shooter","Strategy","MOBA"],"updatedDate":"2024-09-21","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Gameplay.__\nIt's League / DOTA as a third-person shooter. And it works quite well due to the solid gameplay and animations from a strong studio like Valve.\n\n+ Faster speed on lane rails.\n+ Walkers as second tier defense being stronger than the first tier guardians.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/deadlock--2"},{"id":"712b2ada-661d-4c96-b3f3-2843b29c8de0","title":"Death Stranding 2","status":"To play","releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":3080,"platforms":["PS5"],"studios":["Kojima Productions"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2025-07-12","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/death-stranding-2"},{"id":"324648156697461329","title":"Demon's Souls (2020)","status":"To play","releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":1410,"platforms":["PS5"],"studios":["Bluepoint Games"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-07-30","notes":"+ [Gripes with Demon's Souls](https://www.reddit.com/r/demonssouls/comments/h7wvz9/as_someone_with_1300_total_hours_in_demons_souls)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/demons-souls"},{"id":"e0c9fad0-bb5e-4a6a-ae97-76a1e30e408d","title":"Diablo II: Resurrected – Infernal Edition","status":"To play","releaseYear":2026,"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy"],"updatedDate":"2026-05-02","notes":"Major changes:\n+ Warlock class and items.\n+ Gems, materials, and runes stash tabs.\n+ Loot filters.\n\n+ [Youtube: MrLlamaSC gameplay overview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlRn0uNiUQU)\n+ https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/fire-warlock-leveling-build-guide","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/diablo-ii-resurrected-infernal-edition"},{"id":"2cf70df5-7488-421f-9071-8b0c33bd3878","title":"Divinity","status":"To play","platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Larian Studios"],"publishers":["Larian Studios"],"updatedDate":"2026-01-01","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/divinity--1"},{"id":"48c6eb09-ac3d-48cf-bd18-d4f4a5097a1a","title":"Don't Starve Together","status":"To play","releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":2100,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","PS4","XONE","Switch","Series X"],"studios":["Klei Entertainment"],"publishers":["Klei Entertainment"],"genres":["Simulator","Strategy","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2024-09-25","notes":"I decided to play DST over DS first. DS is single player only with 3 DLCs to extend the content with bosses and new worlds. DST gets new content has partial content from DS like Reign of Giants DLC as well as content not included in single player. DS is really only if you want to play Shipwrecked and Hamlet DLCs.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dont-starve-together"},{"id":"322682678652854860","title":"Donkey Kong Country Returns","status":"To play","releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["Wii","WiiU"],"studios":["Retro Studios"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Platform"],"updatedDate":"2025-05-03","notes":"I played the 2025 Switch remaster.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/donkey-kong-country-returns"},{"id":"322682678652853836","title":"Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze","status":"To play","releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["Switch"],"studios":["Retro Studios"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Platform"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/donkey-kong-country-tropical-freeze--1"},{"id":"a4fc5f66-0dcd-4b50-81f3-9ab1c4fa11de","title":"Doom Eternal: KaiserCampaign","status":"To play","releaseYear":2020,"updatedDate":"2025-06-20","notes":"## Resources & Miscellanea\n\n+ https://www.nexusmods.com/doometernal/mods/69\n\nI first encountered it from watching Moonmoon play a bit after he finished Dark Ages."},{"id":"f909047b-748a-4049-93df-8b351b7ba3c2","title":"Doom mod: Bloom","status":"To play","releaseYear":2021,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Bloom Team"],"genres":["Shooter"],"updatedDate":"2025-03-08","notes":"I learned about it from [Gmanlives](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL0YOvsZchA) and [Mutant Mods](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6HJe01xmj4).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/bloom--3"},{"id":"115b6ad2-345f-4fb8-9f5a-83bcb881f038","title":"Doom mod: Total Chaos","status":"To play","releaseYear":2018,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Wadaholic"],"genres":["Shooter"],"updatedDate":"2025-03-08","notes":"Learned about it as I was playing Voxel Doom, Doom Infinite, and then started to look up the best or most drastic Doom mods. This is certainly up there, looking nothing like Doom and feeling closer to a standalone game. It's also often stated to be better than Cry of Fear, an infamous horror total conversion mod for Half-Life.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/total-chaos"},{"id":"9a8d48be-19d4-4cb2-879b-bbfe5ede38d0","title":"Doom: The Dark Ages - Revelations","status":"To play","releaseYear":2026,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["id Software"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter"],"updatedDate":"2026-08-09","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/doom-the-dark-ages-revelations"},{"id":"337485427640369745","title":"Dragon Quest XII: The Flames of Fate","originalTitle":"ドラゴンクエストXII 選ばれし運命の炎","status":"To play","studios":["Square Enix"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2022-07-18","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dragon-quest-xii-the-flames-of-fate"},{"id":"e9fc7166-597c-4ff7-b6fd-62ccfcff64fd","title":"Dredge","status":"To play","releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Black Salt Games"],"publishers":["Team17"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-12-10","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dredge"},{"id":"33cd6195-2fe3-4a94-af40-088ce09216a2","title":"Dwarf Fortress","status":"To play","releaseYear":2006,"playtimeMinutes":3960,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Bay 12 Games"],"publishers":["Bay 12 Games","Kitfox Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-12-09","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/dwarf-fortress"},{"id":"d85f0cf6-20c6-4d98-b4c9-1c7cf0047ded","title":"Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree","status":"To play","releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":1200,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Switch 2","PC","PS5","XONE"],"studios":["FromSoftware"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2024-09-02","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/elden-ring-shadow-of-the-erdtree"},{"id":"0c4bc3db-21c8-4416-8105-c3041b8ffa86","title":"Enderal: Forgotten Stories","status":"To play","releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":3000,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["SureAI"],"publishers":["SureAI"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2024-09-25","notes":"The most popular Skyrim total conversion mod, and one of the top rated mods of all time, effectively its own RPG set with Skyrim’s engine. Useful to play to satisfy any Elder Scrolls/Bethesda open world RPG itch.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/enderal-forgotten-stories"},{"id":"322682678652770892","title":"Escape from Tarkov","status":"To play","releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":10440,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Battlestate Games"],"publishers":["Battlestate Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Tactical"],"updatedDate":"2024-01-18","notes":"The depth in weapon customization, loot economy, survival mechanics (including weapon animations, freelook with fixed weapon, blind firing, looking over corner, stamina, health body parts) is interesting. Almost every animation makes a sound, including moving into iron sights. Fights are drawn out, tense, and fast.\n\nWipes occur roughly every 5-6 months and are similar to seasonal resets in ARPGs.\n\nEFT has RPG elements:\n\n+ Stat-based gear/combat system\n+ Quests, XP, etc.\n+ Heavy emphasis on loot\n+ Heavy focus on developing your character\n+ Damage system including critical hits\n+ Skill system\n+ Inventory and storage system\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://escapefromtarkov.fandom.com)\n  + [How to play](https://escapefromtarkov.fandom.com/wiki/How_to_Play_Guide_for_Escape_from_Tarkov)\n+ [Customs map](https://tarkov.dev/map/customs-3d)\n\nThinking about trying SpTarkov mod.\n\n__Faction.__ I chose the BEAR faction. There's no real [difference](https://www.reddit.com/r/EscapefromTarkov/comments/zprhgx/any_reason_to_go_bear_over_usec/j0ubb7r) aside from English (USEC) vs Russian (BEAR) voicelines, and the Russian can be helpful to fool randoms at times in thinking you're a Scav. It can be changed after each wipe.\n\n__Playthrough.__ As a beginner, I started with scav to loot, then PMC with the stolen loot to gain PMC levels, then back to scav. I focused on Customs map. ([tips](https://www.reddit.com/r/EscapefromTarkov/comments/bpl3u1/scav_or_pmc_when_new)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/escape-from-tarkov"},{"id":"cbe49696-3450-499b-9cc4-9b102d372d72","title":"Esoteric Ebb","status":"To play","releaseYear":2026,"playtimeMinutes":1200,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Christoffer Bodegård"],"publishers":["Raw Fury"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2026-03-22","notes":"A CRPG most like Disco Elysium in a Discoworld world and is apparently rated well.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/esoteric-ebb"},{"id":"ca636dee-bc44-4fa8-b854-5d18ee6a425c","title":"Europa Universalis IV","status":"To play","releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":6180,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Paradox Development Studio"],"publishers":["Paradox Interactive"],"genres":["Real Time Strategy (RTS)","Simulator","Strategy"],"updatedDate":"2023-07-04","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/europa-universalis-iv"},{"id":"30b950fe-93db-488d-95ad-48f530beab0a","title":"Fable","status":"To play","releaseYear":2027,"playtimeMinutes":750,"platforms":["PC","Series X"],"studios":["Playground Games"],"publishers":["Xbox Game Studios"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2023-12-09","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fable--1"},{"id":"343119353652183633","title":"Factorio","status":"To play","releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":2940,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["Wube Software LTD."],"publishers":["Wube Software LTD."],"genres":["Simulator","Strategy","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-07-28","notes":"+ [Wiki](https://wiki.factorio.com)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/factorio"},{"id":"334680788654098001","title":"Final Fantasy VII Rebirth","status":"To play","releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":5840,"platforms":["PS5"],"updatedDate":"2023-06-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/final-fantasy-vii-rebirth"},{"id":"a0c0e14c-34d7-4f1c-b7df-ff50a220679d","title":"Fire Emblem Awakening","status":"To play","releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":2157,"platforms":["3DS"],"studios":["Nintendo SPD Production Group No. 2","Intelligent Systems"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy"],"updatedDate":"2024-12-25","notes":"Recommended as the first best Fire Emblem game to play ([1](https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/5s5nh1/new_to_the_series_where_should_i_start_the)). I was particularly motivated to play Fire Emblem because I watched Danny play Advanced Wars 1+2 Remake in Dec 2024, and it gave me a hankering for grid-based tactics and fun heroes characters.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/fire-emblem-awakening"},{"id":"a040f8f7-ebc2-40de-8161-01b8c47f582e","title":"Gothic","status":"To play","releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":1380,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Piranha Bytes"],"publishers":["Xicat Interactive","Nordic Games Publishing","JoWooD Entertainment AG","Egmont Interactive"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2026-08-11","notes":"Motivated to play because of constant comparisons to Elder Scrolls, especially Morrowind, online. Also Veibae played it. I played the remake.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/gothic"},{"id":"414ec4d5-c461-4f3a-abda-8aa68ae15e9c","title":"Grim Dawn: Fangs of Asterkarn","status":"To play","releaseYear":2026,"studios":["Crate Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2026-08-09","notes":"The third expansion to Grim Dawn. This is a separate entry as I played this on a separate playthrough from back when I originally played Grim Dawn, when it had already released two expansions.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/grim-dawn-fangs-of-asterkarn"},{"id":"86ed887f-d8a9-4383-b52b-a2399ae56adb","title":"Guild Wars 3","status":"To play","releaseYear":2027,"platforms":["PC","PS5"],"studios":["ArenaNet®"],"publishers":["ArenaNet®"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2026-06-07","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/guild-wars-3--1"},{"id":"322682678652784204","title":"Half-Life: Alyx","status":"To play","releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":720,"platforms":["Steam VR"],"studios":["Valve"],"publishers":["Valve"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-07-28","notes":"There’s a mod for no VR, but the game is really designed for VR so it won’t be appreciated as well or even balanced well given, for example, ease of reload, ease of mouse precise aiming, and what would be tedious scavenging of interactible objects on mouse and keyboard ([discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/12h6ajh/half_life_alyx_is_now_fully_playable_without_a_vr).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/half-life-alyx"},{"id":"322682678652777036","title":"Hitman 2 DLC: Expansion Pass","status":"To play","releaseYear":2019,"studios":["IO Interactive"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-26","notes":"Includes two locations (New York and Haven Island), two Sniper Assassin maps, and four Special Assignments (similar to the Escalations game mode)."},{"id":"322682678652776012","title":"Hitman 3","status":"To play","releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["Switch"],"studios":["IO Interactive"],"publishers":["IO Interactive"],"genres":["Shooter","Puzzle","Tactical"],"updatedDate":"2022-06-08","notes":"Hitman 3 is effectively a Hitman 2 expansion, with the same controls, mechanics, and graphics.\n\nNeed to play Hitman 2's DLC first as well as more of Hitman 2 base game's scenarios and different playstyles (see list in my Hitman 2 comments).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/hitman-3-cloud-version"},{"id":"327602278663979585","title":"HROT","status":"To play","releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Spytihněv"],"genres":["Shooter","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2025-05-11","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/hrot"},{"id":"322682678652830284","title":"I Am Setsuna","status":"To play","releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":1230,"platforms":["PS4","PC","Vita","Switch"],"studios":["Tokyo RPG Factory"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Other relevant JRPGs at this time are Octopath Traveler and Bravely Default.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/i-am-setsuna"},{"id":"322682678652834380","title":"Ico","status":"To play","releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":390,"platforms":["PS3"],"studios":["Team Ico"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ico--1"},{"id":"9a3edb09-9774-4309-bd64-ea3e7418a72f","title":"Ill","status":"To play","releaseYear":2027,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["CLOUT Games"],"publishers":["CLOUT Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2025-06-08","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ill"},{"id":"0bd62e5d-1f7a-4262-bf84-44382294d2de","title":"Indiana Jones and the Great Circle","status":"To play","releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":1763,"platforms":["Series X|S","Switch 2","PC","PS5"],"studios":["MachineGames"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2026-08-20","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Writing.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/indiana-jones-and-the-great-circle"},{"id":"1bb4570b-8e44-4ed9-a4e2-eb3e618e6e6a","title":"King's Field","originalTitle":"キングスフィールド","status":"To play","releaseYear":1994,"playtimeMinutes":1020,"platforms":["PS1","PS3","PSP"],"studios":["FromSoftware"],"publishers":["FromSoftware","Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2024-09-25","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/king-s-field"},{"id":"d5fcf8b7-e13b-4a11-a9b4-7f3d56ba8085","title":"Legend of Grimrock","status":"To play","releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":1380,"platforms":["Linux","PC","iOS","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["Almost Human Ltd."],"publishers":["Almost Human Ltd."],"genres":["Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2026-08-11","notes":"Motivated after watching Chris Wilson play (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUf1eUBnlKs).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/legend-of-grimrock"},{"id":"5e20ee55-7ef1-4101-91e8-96d427204f73","title":"Lies of P","status":"To play","releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":1800,"platforms":["PC","Mac","PS4","XONE","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Round8 Studio"],"publishers":["NEOWIZ"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2025-08-18","notes":"Often argued to be one of the best soulslikes.\n\nSummary paragraph here.\n\n__Writing.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ When leveling up, you can use your stored soul items from the UI without having to manually click away and count how many you need.\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://liesofp.wiki.fextralife.com)\n  + [Lies System](https://liesofp.wiki.fextralife.com/Lie+System)\n+ [r/liesofp](https://www.reddit.com/r/LiesOfP)\n\nPlaystyle choices\n\n+ Combat style: Dexterity\n+ Lies system: I went with all lies (or at least, the most human responses) in order to get a good ending.\n\nI played up to the first boss on 2025-08-17. Gave up as I wasn't in the mood for a soulslikes.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/lies-of-p"},{"id":"322682678652797516","title":"LittleBigPlanet","status":"To play","releaseYear":2009,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["PSP"],"studios":["SCE Cambridge Studio"],"publishers":["Sony Computer Entertainment","Inc. (SCEI)"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-26","notes":"I played on [RPCS3](https://wiki.rpcs3.net/index.php?title=LittleBigPlanet).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/littlebigplanet--1"},{"id":"d1d157a6-c26f-46be-a5f0-783d7be32584","title":"Lunacid","status":"To play","releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":600,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["KIRA"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-11-12","notes":"A modern game that's highly reviewed building on the ideas of old RPGs like King's Field. Nice.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/lunacid"},{"id":"205002cd-7da6-4f4e-8e7a-130eb21befd9","title":"Luto","status":"To play","releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Broken Bird Games"],"publishers":["Broken Bird Games","Selecta Play"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2025-10-05","notes":"I hear it’s a good PT-like.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/luto"},{"id":"336733992253391440","title":"Madison","status":"To play","releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","Switch","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Nosebleed Games"],"publishers":["Nosebleed Games"],"genres":["Puzzle","Simulator","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2022-07-09","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/madison"},{"id":"e40c7a4e-118b-448a-80c9-ff7a0d08642d","title":"Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance","originalTitle":"メタルギア ライジング リベンジェンス","status":"To play","releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PC","PS3","X360","Mac"],"studios":["PlatinumGames"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Shooter","Strategy","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-08-14","notes":"Motivated to play if ever I want a fun action flick or something in the MGS universe.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/metal-gear-rising-revengeance"},{"id":"963771e9-a9e1-4498-aab5-8a3226dde831","title":"Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater","status":"To play","releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":880,"platforms":["PC","PS5","Series X"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Shooter","Tactical"],"updatedDate":"2023-05-27","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/metal-gear-solid-delta-snake-eater"},{"id":"322682678652815948","title":"Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker","status":"To play","releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":1110,"platforms":["PSP"],"studios":["Kojima Productions"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Shooter","Strategy","Tactical"],"updatedDate":"2026-05-28","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n+ Recruitment system, including ballooning enemies to recruit them. This would later be expanded upon in MGS5.\n+ Individual mission-style gameplay, later also done in MGS5.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nTo be played after MGS4 in terms of release date, but not mandatory. I should probably also replay MGS3 (and therefore MGS1/MGS2) before getting into Peace Walker too.\n\n__Version.__ The HD edition on PS3 from the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection title is best. I played with the emulator RPCS3 (version TODO, 4.90 firmware). I used default settings followed by the RPCS3 wiki's game-specific settings ([link](https://wiki.rpcs3.net/index.php?title=Metal_Gear_Solid_HD_Collection)) and a resolution scale of 2x (from 1280x720p to 2560x1440p).\n\nTODO Waiting on the Master Collection.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/metal-gear-solid-peace-walker"},{"id":"322682678652792396","title":"Metroid Prime","status":"To play","releaseYear":2002,"playtimeMinutes":840,"platforms":["Wii"],"studios":["Retro Studios","Nintendo"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-09-04","notes":"Motivated to play as one of the best Metroid games. It's most unique due to the first person point of view and is generally more linear than previous Metroid games.\n\n__Version.__ I played the remastered version on Switch using an emulator (Yuzu)."},{"id":"9b6161b4-c7c4-4183-a675-1fd9cb6fc454","title":"Mewgenics","status":"To play","releaseYear":2026,"playtimeMinutes":3360,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Edmund McMillen","Tyler Glaiel"],"publishers":["Edmund McMillen","Tyler Glaiel"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2026-02-27","notes":"Another banger from Edmund McMillen.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mewgenics"},{"id":"21fddac1-90c6-4e88-8b98-24b29f4333b6","title":"Mina the Hollower GBC Demake","status":"To play","releaseYear":2022,"platforms":["GBC"],"studios":["Jan Klečka"],"publishers":["Jan Klečka"],"genres":["Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2026-08-09","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mina-the-hollower-gbc-demake"},{"id":"4637cbca-35c2-4a14-9236-6202662f8109","title":"Monomyth","status":"To play","releaseYear":2023,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Rat Tower"],"publishers":["Rat Tower"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2024-09-25","notes":"A popular King's Field inspired RPG.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/monomyth"},{"id":"6770b158-c4b6-4394-b3a6-a116b9922489","title":"Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord","status":"To play","releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":2730,"platforms":["PC","PS4","XONE","PS5","Series X"],"studios":["Taleworlds"],"publishers":["Taleworlds","Prime Matter"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Strategy","Tactical","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-12-10","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/mount-and-blade-ii-bannerlord"},{"id":"322682678652848716","title":"NetHack","status":"To play","releaseYear":1987,"playtimeMinutes":660,"platforms":["Linux","PC","DOS"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Nethack defined roguelikes more than even Rogue did. It also set the standards for emergent gameplay.\n\n__Emergent gameplay.__ The emergent gameplay has three major innovations standing the test of time: a player verb (action) system, enemies and NPCs as players themselves, and the number and variety of nouns (objects). Player verbs, enemies, and objects all work together to create the systemic game.\n\nMost games interact by asking you to select a thing and then decide how to interact with it. This might be a single interact button to click on a door to open it, or with multiple options given an object (e.g., in Project Zomboid, you can open/close window, climb through, walk to, and dig with hands). Nethack's system is the opposite. You select among a large fixed set of verbs and which are applicable to arbitrary objects (e.g., loot, name, pay, open, eat, kick, rub, wield). This makes the learning curve difficult in that with the object-first approach, you immediately know how an object can be interacted with rather than applying a bunch of buttons to see what's (in)valid. It's an extension of [text adventures](https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Text_adventure) where commands are things like \"Look under the rug\" and \"Put the key on top of the refridgerator\".\n\nOn the other hand, the power of the verb-first approach is emergence. Experimentation with object-verbs leads to unique interactions: for example, eat ring, throw money, put on not a pair of glasses but a towel so you can avoid being petrified by medusas. Consider a potion. You can quaff (drink) it, but this is dangerous if the potion is unidentified. So you might try throwing one so enemies are your guinea pig. Or you can dip items in it, dilute them with water, or even drop them so enemies pick up and drink them so you can identify them. Not all verbs are applicable to all objects: you can't drink a book, talk to a wall, soldier ants can't read magic scrolls, and you can't eat a ring (in human form). That said, over decades, Nethack developers have handcrafted incredibly complicated responses to rare situations.\n\nEnemies and NPCs are the same as players in that they can do all the types of verbs you can do such as pick up items, be bribed to leave you alone, or even be romanced. You can also eat them to gain their powers or wield their corpses as weapons. Nurses will hit stubborn patients who refuse to disrobe but will heal naked patients. Leprechauns will steal your money and throw it away, and a viable strategy against them is to drop your money somewhere out of reach before engaging with them. Even violent enemies can differ from just hitting you, e.g., the Kraken will attempt to drown you.\n\nObjects are various and with multiple use cases. A can of grease can protect players from grabbing attacks if applied to armor; protect contents from water damage if applied to containers; protect spellbooks, scrolls, or potions from blanking and dilution if applied to them; untrap squeaky boards; and any grease-applied item may slip when you attempt to throw it. Swords rust in water. Potions will boil and explode when you're hit by flame. There are even special interactions: for example, if you have a magical bag that holds more than its physical dimensions would suggest, putting a wand of magic cancellation in it will explode the bag.\n\nFrom what I've seen so far, most of the emergent gameplay arises from item interactions. Emergent improvements could be made in the following.\n\n+ Combat itself is only tactical insomuch as preparation and positioning matter. The actual combat does not vary as you just press forward and the game does a rote Attack verb. Like Noita's spells, Dwarf Fortress' body part damage, Dark Souls' timing and endurance, the core combat loop could be significantly richer and emergent. For example, you could have attacks take up multiple tiles so you can damage multiple enemies at a time, or different varieties of spells with fire speeds, spell radius, and status effects.\n+ There's also not much environment interaction like in Deus Ex, where you can stack crates or throw bottles to distract a guard. Also see Divinity 2's environmental effects.\n\n__RPG elements.__ Build. Level. Gear progression.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ The no-sound text-tile ASCII surprisingly ages well. It's easy to mod the game with a tileset.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [nethack.alt.org](https://alt.org/nethack)\n+ [NETHACK: The dev team thinks of everything](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjuTyJlgLJ8). It describes the emergent gameplay elements well.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/nethack"},{"id":"33eed868-786d-43bd-afb1-6efed5d7dab2","title":"Neverwinter Nights","status":"To play","releaseYear":1991,"playtimeMinutes":3060,"platforms":["DOS"],"studios":["Stormfront Studios"],"publishers":["Strategic Simulations"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2023-05-15","notes":"+ [Lilura's blog](https://lilura1.blogspot.com/p/neverwinter-nights-aurora-engine.html)\n+ Setup\n  + [PCGamingWiki](https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights)\n\nMotivated to play as one of the most prominent CRPGs.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/neverwinter-nights--1"},{"id":"106eba46-5baa-4e2c-8a8b-48f8249423e4","title":"Nine Sols","status":"To play","releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":1536,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Red Candle Games"],"publishers":["Red Candle Games"],"genres":["Platform","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2026-08-09","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/nine-sols"},{"id":"322682678652759628","title":"Noita","status":"To play","releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":1560,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Nolla Games"],"publishers":["Nolla Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Adventure","Indie","Arcade"],"updatedDate":"2024-10-26","notes":"The concept of physically simulating all pixels for a truly dynamic world is very interesting. I played a bit in January 2022 but never spent more than an hour.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/noita"},{"id":"337285700782129743","title":"Ōkami","originalTitle":"大神","status":"To play","releaseYear":2006,"playtimeMinutes":1980,"platforms":["Wii","PS2","PS3"],"studios":["Clover Studio","HexaDrive"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-26","notes":"I played the high-definition remaster on PC, which is a port from its PlayStation 3 2012 release.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/okami"},{"id":"322682678652933708","title":"Old School RuneScape","status":"To play","releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":127680,"platforms":["PC","Mac","Android","iOS"],"publishers":["Jagex"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2024-03-14","notes":"Apparently Old School Runescape excels most in feeling a sense of adventure by completing quests that mean something. This isn't kill X mob or go to point X. The content of the quest is the reward, not the gear.\n\nOther notable gameplay elements are:\n\n+ Isometric camera angle with point-and-click movement and interaction.\n+ Survival elements including harvesting materials like cutting down trees, fishing, and mining; and crafting such as cooking, smelting, and smithing.\n+ Huge community with developers listening to them\n+ Alternatives to completing quests such as PvP.\n+ Wilderness zone always has PK enabled.\n+ If you die while skulled, you drop everything your character was carrying.\n+ Prayers.\n+ Iron man option (like Path of Exile's Solo Self Found) and Hardcore option.\n+ Combat features of melee, ranged, and spells.\n+ Significant grinding.\n\nVanilla WoW originally had this reward system by unlocking and completing new dungeons/raids you couldn't do with worse gear. BFA doesn't as the spirit of modern WoW is for causal gamers to experience everything; hardcore players only achieve more difficult scales like heroic and mythic.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI watched Moonmoon play this on 2023-07-30.\n\nI'm not super into quests for MMOs. What I like most is the social aspect of banding a group together to complete dungeons/raids and/or to do battlegrounds/arena. I also don't know if I can dig the graphics and point-and-click interaction including combat.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/old-school-runescape"},{"id":"5b0b9269-7666-4352-b914-b5e7d0cb6bfb","title":"Onimusha: Way of the Sword - Deluxe Edition","status":"To play","releaseYear":2026,"platforms":["Series X|S","Switch 2","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2026-09-13","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Writing.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nHeard good things about it from soulslike enthusiasts like FightinCowboy.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/onimusha-way-of-the-sword-deluxe-edition"},{"id":"322682678652727884","title":"Overcooked 2","status":"To play","releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":420,"platforms":["PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Ghost Town Games"],"publishers":["Team17"],"genres":["Strategy","Arcade"],"updatedDate":"2024-09-25","notes":"It's largely the same game but with several core features: online multiplayer, dash and throwing mechanics.\n\nGreat coop game, a classic for dates: a game is short and self-contained, the idea is simple to learn to play, accessible to casuals, the graphics are cute and not video-game-y/immature, you can play LAN so it's an excuse to invite them over."},{"id":"322682678652730956","title":"Phasmophobia","status":"To play","releaseYear":2020,"playtimeMinutes":930,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Kinetic Games"],"publishers":["Kinetic Games"],"genres":["Puzzle","Tactical","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Flaw-wise, the game is not friendly to new players. The tutorial does not nearly describe enough detail about how to use and the mechanics behind items and how different enemy types react. Social-wise, it can also be very hard to join a game with randoms unless your level is high enough.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/phasmophobia"},{"id":"322682678652850764","title":"Pikmin","status":"To play","releaseYear":2001,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["NGC"],"studios":["Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development"],"publishers":["Gradiente","Nintendo"],"genres":["Real Time Strategy (RTS)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pikmin"},{"id":"0f3218b2-7cce-4b8f-a83f-8d5bb28e50ee","title":"Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire","status":"To play","releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":2520,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Obsidian Entertainment"],"publishers":["Versus Evil"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-08-10","notes":"Changes from Pillars of Eternity 1:\n\n+ Second half of a D&D-like campaign, with a level cap of 20\n+ Multiclass and subclasses\n+ Option for turn-based combat. However, it was implemented after the fact, so it can be unbalanced at times and overly tedious in the frequency of mob random encounters compared to RTWP.\n+ Improved party AI such as the ability to select skills they use. This greatly streamlines RTWP. Real time combat with party members crucially relies on the customizability in the party members you can’t easily control (e.g., FF12, DA2).\n+ Fully voiced\n+ Expanded skills system\n+ Various gameplay overhauls. For example, an emphasis more on per encounter abilities rather than per rest abilities. This makes fights more dynamic and engaging than one of resource management.\n+ Sidekicks, to expand set of companions. They sit somewhere between a companion and a hired adventure in terms of depth of detail.\n+ Romance (albeit minor)\n+ Class-specific trinket equipment slot\n+ New graphics, including more detailed character models and real time lighting\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com)\n  + [Histories](https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Histories), which is how save data from POE1 affects POE2 in terms of story. Character builds and equipment doesn't carry over.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire"},{"id":"9660afce-58dc-4889-b5d9-7ad8148b4ccb","title":"Pizza Tower","status":"To play","releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":390,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Tour De Pizza"],"publishers":["Tour De Pizza"],"genres":["Platform","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-12-10","notes":"Saw Moonmoon play this on 2023-02-26. Looks fun.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pizza-tower"},{"id":"1f5e287e-3566-487d-8ead-9af7f0689085","title":"Pokémon Sword","originalTitle":"ポケットモンスター ソード","status":"To play","releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":2346,"platforms":["Switch"],"studios":["Game Freak"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2025-01-06","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pokemon-sword"},{"id":"a4e7c244-49f8-4388-8515-bc69d4ee7c74","title":"Pony Island 2: Panda Circus","status":"To play","releaseYear":2027,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Daniel Mullins Games"],"publishers":["Daniel Mullins Games"],"genres":["Puzzle","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-12-08","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pony-island-2-panda-circus"},{"id":"322682678652851788","title":"Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time","status":"To play","releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["GBA"],"studios":["Ubisoft Montreal"],"publishers":["Ubisoft Entertainment"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/prince-of-persia-the-sands-of-time--1"},{"id":"339323239795786320","title":"Project Zomboid","status":"To play","releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":1980,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["The Indie Stone"],"publishers":["The Indie Stone"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2022-08-07","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/project-zomboid"},{"id":"322682678652754508","title":"Pummel Party","status":"To play","releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":390,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Rebuilt Games"],"publishers":["Rebuilt Games"],"genres":["Indie","Arcade","Card & Board Game"],"updatedDate":"2022-06-08","notes":"Great game for 3-4 players.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/pummel-party"},{"id":"03e7cf7d-2719-4143-8c8c-a676da9e494e","title":"Rain World","status":"To play","releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":1380,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Videocult"],"publishers":["Adult Swim Games"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2026-08-09","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/rain-world"},{"id":"70733ea3-2d13-42cc-87a5-1106b84aa6c3","title":"Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways","status":"To play","releaseYear":2023,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2026-04-18","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/resident-evil-4-separate-ways--1"},{"id":"322682678652870220","title":"Resident Evil 6","status":"To play","releaseYear":2012,"playtimeMinutes":1290,"platforms":["PS3","PC","X360"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2026-04-14","notes":"Control-wise, RE6 pushes further on action by giving more mobility (dodge, dash, slide, moving while shooting, more extended cover system), quick-shot, one-button melee. Context-sensitive actions are extended further with counters.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Resident Evil 6 Ultimate Survival Guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=136986886)\n\nI played Veteran difficulty. I played on keyboard and mouse; but this game above all makes the most use of QTE, and I already found QTE frustrating in RE5 so I may swap.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/resident-evil-6"},{"id":"ea5b8f2d-61e6-4cbd-9009-3c93f822ca95","title":"Resident Evil: Revelations 2","status":"To play","releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":539,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","PC","Vita","X360","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Capcom"],"publishers":["Capcom","Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2026-04-14","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/resident-evil-revelations-2"},{"id":"b59289fc-4127-4dc7-af98-488f597d864f","title":"Returnal","status":"To play","releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":1900,"platforms":["PC","PS5"],"studios":["Housemarque"],"publishers":["Sony Interactive Entertainment"],"genres":["Shooter"],"updatedDate":"2026-09-03","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Writing.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nMotivated after playing Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart and thinking about Doom Eternal.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/returnal"},{"id":"1c353427-2ee0-4312-9223-09d0caf09b77","title":"RimWorld: Biotech","status":"To play","releaseYear":2022,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Ludeon Studios"],"publishers":["Ludeon Studios"],"genres":["Real Time Strategy (RTS)","Simulator","Strategy","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2024-09-25","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/rimworld-biotech"},{"id":"322682678652769868","title":"Rust","status":"To play","releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":1440,"platforms":["PC","Mac"],"studios":["Facepunch Studios"],"publishers":["Facepunch Studios"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Rust was initially created as a DayZ clone, so should play DayZ first although not necessary as they're very different (one survival heavy; one more arcade-y and with minecraft's building elements). I hate online gaming communities. So if I were to ever play Rust, it would be on a PvE (no-PvP) server to get acquainted with fundamentals and then explore PvE-style mods like zombies and bosses.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/rust"},{"id":"322682678652756556","title":"Scythe","status":"To play","releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":240,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Erik Alm","Kim Bach"],"genres":["Shooter"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Motivated to play as it's the 16th most popular and ranked 14 on boardgamegeek, and 4th best seller from Asmodee Digital on Steam (as of Jan 2021).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/scythe"},{"id":"322682678652832332","title":"Secret of Mana","originalTitle":"聖剣伝説2","status":"To play","releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":1320,"platforms":["PS4","PC","Vita"],"studios":["Q Studios","Square Enix Business Division 8"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-26","notes":"I played the original, which is widely regarded as better than the 3D remake. Notably unlike other JRPGs, it features real-time battles with a power bar mechanic and pause when you select things in a menu (not unlike the RTWP systems in recent Final Fantasy titles like FF7R).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/secret-of-mana--1"},{"id":"4ecc3899-dc80-4f5e-8f59-6d552f216916","title":"Shadowrun: Dragonfall","status":"To play","releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":1200,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","Android","iOS"],"studios":["Harebrained Schemes"],"publishers":["Harebrained Schemes"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy"],"updatedDate":"2023-07-03","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__ Same as Shadowrun Returns.\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Shadowrun Series Wiki](https://shadowrun-series.fandom.com). This covers the video games. There’s also a Shadowrun fandom wiki, but it’s for Shadowrun overall, including the tabletop RPG. And it’s not very detailed.\n  + [Controls](https://shadowrun-series.fandom.com/wiki/Controls). Not explained in the game.\n+ [Steam: General Strategy Guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=257755690)\n+ [Steam: Kickstarter Backer Reward Codes](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2754372205)\n+ [Reddit: Dragonfall Etiquette Analysis](https://www.reddit.com/r/shadowrunreturns/comments/ceguah/dragonfall_etiquette_analysis)\n+ [Steam: Best programs](https://steamcommunity.com/app/300550/discussions/0/483367798499527160/)\n\nI played the version \"Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut\", which is Dragonfall on an updated game engine.\n\n__Build.__ I played a mage and shaman build.\n\n+ Race: Dwarf\n  + For the higher Willpower cap.\n+ Archetype: Custom, but playstyle is Mage / Shaman.\n+ Starting allocation: 4 Body / 1 Quickness / 1 Strength / 4 Charisma / 1 Intelligence / 8 Willpower (3 Spellcasting). 3 Karma leftover\n+ Stats: Willpower > Charisma > Body. Quickness and Strength are at 1. Quickness is the dump stat after.\n+ Skills: Prioritize Spellcasting, Spirit Summoning / Spirit Control, Conjuring, Dodge.\n\nTODO: Update.\n\nEndgame\n+ Body: 4\n+ Quickness: 8 (and +3 from Ganger Mask and Alpha left/right legs)\n  + Ranged: 8, Rifle: 8, Dodge: 8 (and +2 from Alpha left/right legs)\n+ Strength: 1.\n  + All skills are 0.\n+ Intelligence: 7\n  + Decking: 7 ([6 maximum for terminal rewards](https://shadowrun-series.fandom.com/wiki/Decking); 7 required for Fairlight Excalibur)\n+ Willpower: 1.\n  + All skills are 0.\n+ Charisma: 4.\n  + Etiquettes are Academic and Socialite.\n  + All skills are 0.\n+ Equipment\n  + Weapon: AK-74 → FN HAR → Ares Alpha\n  + Outfit: Ganger Mask\n  + Cyberware: Datajack, Alpha left/right legs, Alpha eye\n  + Cyberdeck: Renraku Kraftwerk-1 → Fairlight Excalibur\n  + Programs: Suppression Lvl 1, Killer Lvl 3, Erosion Lvl 3, Blast Lvl 3, Medic Lvl 3, Shield Lvl 3\n  + Considerations\n    + High Grade Street Armor's +10 armor is a top-tier alternative to Ganger Mask's +6 armor +1 quickness +5 hp. It hits the armor cap. Assuming alpha left/right legs, Ganger Mask's 3rd +1 quickness saves 9 karma whereas High Grade Street Armor has 4 more armor.\n    + With 1-2 essence, you can pair Ganger Mask with Alpha body's +2 armor +1 body and High Grade Street Armor with Wired Reflexes With Reflex Trigger +1 Movement / +1 dodge first attack for 3 rounds. However, Alpha legs/right legs (4 essence) and Alpha eyes (0.5 essence) is much better.\n    + Colt M23 (Smartlink) would be third weapon as a secondary. However, you only get it by the last mission, in which you need to carry around the Aegis Mk. 1 Launcher.\n\nTODOs on future playthroughs\n+ gunner build\n+ decker / rigger build\n+ melee adept build","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/shadowrun-dragonfall"},{"id":"00fc622b-b594-4e32-bf1e-8adc6f5ad670","title":"Shadowrun: Hong Kong","status":"To play","releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":1260,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["Harebrained Schemes"],"publishers":["Harebrained Schemes"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Tactical","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-06-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/shadowrun-hong-kong"},{"id":"322682678652798540","title":"Shovel Knight","status":"To play","releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":390,"platforms":["PS3","PS4","Linux","3DS","PC","Mac","WiiU","Vita","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Yacht Club Games"],"publishers":["Yacht Club Games"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2022-06-08","notes":"Motivated to play this as it's a pixel art game with melee/platforming, borrowing elements from NES classics: Megaman's level design, bosses, color palettes; DuckTales' and Ninja Gaiden's combat; Super Mario Bros 3's world map; Zelda 2's town exploration and upgrading.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/shovel-knight"},{"id":"42cf8582-4b80-4d54-b2bc-2306233e38b8","title":"Signalis","status":"To play","releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":825,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["rose-engine"],"publishers":["PLAYISM","Balor Games"],"genres":["Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2026-08-09","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/signalis"},{"id":"be59ee20-0ce6-4e18-8386-d70dfbd4bdcf","title":"Silent Hill 2 (2024)","status":"To play","releaseYear":2024,"playtimeMinutes":1113,"platforms":["PC","PS5"],"studios":["Bloober Team"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2025-01-06","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/silent-hill-2--1"},{"id":"329998948858069585","title":"Silent Hill 3","originalTitle":"サイレントヒル3","status":"To play","releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":360,"platforms":["PC","PS2"],"studios":["Team Silent","Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Puzzle","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-26","notes":"I played the PC version, obtained from an abandonware website as it's no longer sold. I followed this guide to play it on [modern Windows setups](https://www.reddit.com/r/silenthill/comments/oxix5s/silent_hill_3_pc_besteasiest_way_to_play_in_2021), where it uses a few mod fixes for, e.g., widescreen resolution and XInput controller support.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/silent-hill-3"},{"id":"330131096000791121","title":"Silent Hill 4: The Room","originalTitle":"サイレントヒル ザ・ルーム","status":"To play","releaseYear":2004,"playtimeMinutes":540,"platforms":["XBOX","PS3","PC","PS2"],"studios":["Team Silent"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-04-27","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/silent-hill-4-the-room"},{"id":"322682678652789324","title":"Skywind","status":"To play","platforms":["PC"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-elder-scrolls-renewal-skywind"},{"id":"a9781c66-8468-43ed-a4e2-4b3cd5421bc7","title":"Slay the Spire II","status":"To play","releaseYear":2026,"playtimeMinutes":1830,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Mega Crit Games"],"publishers":["Mega Crit Games"],"genres":["Strategy","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2026-02-01","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/slay-the-spire-ii"},{"id":"5e457a3e-c54a-490a-b61f-6d4ea8ea80d5","title":"Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic","status":"To play","platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Arcanaut Studios"],"publishers":["Lucasfilm Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2026-01-01","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/star-wars-fate-of-the-old-republic"},{"id":"335238832717824592","title":"Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - Remake","status":"To play","platforms":["PC","PS5"],"studios":["Aspyr Media"],"publishers":["Lucasfilm Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2022-06-23","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic-remake"},{"id":"fd31308f-97e7-4a22-810f-5d38c1639bd8","title":"Stellaris","status":"To play","releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":1800,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["Paradox Development Studio"],"publishers":["Paradox Interactive","DMM GAMES"],"genres":["Real Time Strategy (RTS)","Simulator","Strategy"],"updatedDate":"2023-08-04","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ It astounds me that for such a complicated and modern game, there is no built-in tutorial except to explain individual UI elements. CK3 was much more accessible by providing an entire tutorial game that walked you through actions for the a good portion of the early game. This is common in most simulation games (e.g., RimWorld, Total War Shogun).\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [Wiki](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com)\n  + [Beginner's guide](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Beginner%27s_guide)\n\n__Version.__ I played the base game. I can always add the [DLCs](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Downloadable_content) later to add in complexity and appreciate their additions later in the same playthrough or in future playthroughs.\n\n__Playthrough.__ I initially picked it up on 2023-07-04. However, I only got roughly an hour into my first campaign, still learning the basics.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/stellaris"},{"id":"322682678652828236","title":"Suikoden II","status":"To play","releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":2010,"platforms":["PS3","PC","Vita","PS1","PSP"],"studios":["Konami"],"publishers":["Konami"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/suikoden-ii"},{"id":"328937325066191439","title":"System Shock (2023)","status":"To play","releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":780,"platforms":["Series X|S","PS4","Linux","Switch 2","PC","PS5","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Nightdive Studios"],"publishers":["Prime Matter"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-08-19","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/system-shock--1"},{"id":"e7af723d-4dc1-4392-9826-f73a532365fa","title":"Tactics Ogre: Reborn","originalTitle":"タクティクスオウガ リボーン","status":"To play","releaseYear":2022,"playtimeMinutes":3360,"platforms":["PC","PS4","Switch","PS5"],"studios":["Square Enix"],"publishers":["Square Enix"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Strategy","Tactical"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-26","notes":"The predecessor to Final Fantasy Tactics. I played the Reborn remake as it is effectively a remaster, so the same as the original but with improved graphics and sound. For reference, the original release is best played using a PSP emulator (PPSSPP). The PSP port is largely argued to be the best, which enhances various features since its original release.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tactics-ogre-reborn"},{"id":"bcbd5c11-37b2-4d3e-9a75-00e0a6689997","title":"Tamriel Rebuilt","status":"To play","releaseYear":2006,"platforms":["Linux","Android","PC","Mac"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2025-05-02","notes":"Motivated from this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1kchb3a/tesiii_morrowind_tamriel_rebuilt_update_2505.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/tamriel-rebuilt"},{"id":"322682678652757580","title":"Terraforming Mars","status":"To play","releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":120,"platforms":["Android","PC","iOS","Mac"],"studios":["LUCKYHAMMERS Entertainment Inc."],"publishers":["Asmodee Digital"],"genres":["Simulator","Strategy"],"updatedDate":"2022-06-08","notes":"Motivated to play as it's the 8th most popular and ranked 4 on boardgamegeek, and 3rd best seller from Asmodee Digital on Steam  (as of Jan 2021).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/terraforming-mars"},{"id":"336060865309573712","title":"Terraria 2","status":"To play","updatedDate":"2022-07-02"},{"id":"336060791956439632","title":"Terraria: Calamity Mod","status":"To play","releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":3000,"platforms":["PC"],"genres":["Platform","Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Strategy","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2022-10-10","notes":"+ [Wiki](https://calamitymod.wiki.gg)\n\nI could play from scratch with a new character or just play the post-Moon Lord content by effectively rushing everything until then with a preexisting character. Calamity adds a lot of bloat often copying vanilla enemies with slight variants and a rename, and it’s more often touted for its post-Moon Lord content. I may rather replay vanilla Terraria if I wanted to start from scratch.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/terraria-calamity-mod"},{"id":"a997645c-e33e-4a19-834e-fa0baa461aef","title":"The Age of Decadence","status":"To play","releaseYear":2015,"playtimeMinutes":810,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Iron Tower Studio"],"publishers":["Iron Tower Studio"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Tactical","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-08-04","notes":"Motivated to as a good modern CRPG. This one is particularly more unique in its historical Roman Empire setting with low magic and post-apocalypse; and it's a short game.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-age-of-decadence"},{"id":"faf87af4-138a-42a7-8c69-10d2c97131cf","title":"The Blood of Dawnwalker","status":"To play","releaseYear":2026,"playtimeMinutes":2400,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Rebel Wolves"],"publishers":["Bandai Namco Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2026-06-09","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-blood-of-dawnwalker"},{"id":"3504fce5-34b9-4eaa-999c-179eba5e1704","title":"The Duskbloods","status":"To play","releaseYear":2026,"platforms":["?"],"studios":["FromSoftware"],"publishers":["FromSoftware"],"updatedDate":"2025-04-03","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-duskbloods"},{"id":"8a9304bc-1efa-4a44-9994-50eb3b76f9bc","title":"The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall","status":"To play","releaseYear":1996,"playtimeMinutes":1860,"platforms":["PC","DOS"],"studios":["Bethesda Softworks"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-05-12","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-elder-scrolls-ii-daggerfall"},{"id":"322682678652806732","title":"The Elder Scrolls VI","status":"To play","platforms":["PC","Series X"],"studios":["Bethesda Game Studios"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-elder-scrolls-vi"},{"id":"1d42c469-ea2f-49ab-af39-0a57ead2c7f7","title":"The Elder Scrolls: Arena","status":"To play","releaseYear":1994,"playtimeMinutes":1560,"platforms":["PC","DOS"],"studios":["Bethesda Softworks"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2023-05-12","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-elder-scrolls-arena"},{"id":"328796345185862225","title":"The Evil Within 2","status":"To play","releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":810,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE"],"studios":["Tango Gameworks"],"publishers":["Bethesda Softworks"],"genres":["Shooter","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-26","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-evil-within-2"},{"id":"d9a2f1db-5ac6-4483-8a48-c22ba3334c31","title":"The First Berserker: Khazan","status":"To play","releaseYear":2025,"playtimeMinutes":2550,"platforms":["Series X|S","PC","PS5"],"studios":["Neople"],"publishers":["Nexon"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"updatedDate":"2026-09-13","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Writing.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Visuals & Audio.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nHeard good things about it from soulslike enthusiasts.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-first-berserker-khazan"},{"id":"ae8086be-ab91-4bcb-b47f-6af71c80e8f4","title":"The Witcher","status":"To play","playtimeMinutes":2100,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["CD Projekt RED"],"publishers":["CD Projekt RED"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-07-04","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/the-witcher--1"},{"id":"322682678652926540","title":"Thief II: The Metal Age","status":"To play","releaseYear":2000,"playtimeMinutes":1260,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Looking Glass Studios"],"publishers":["Eidos Interactive","Square Enix","Eidos Montréal","Acer TWP","SAT.1 New Business Development","Sold Out Sales & Marketing","Mindscape","Noviy Disk"],"genres":["Shooter","Simulator","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-26","notes":"From reading online, it seems Thief II is largely the same as Thief and which removes my most hated part of the game: undead levels and maze navigation. The only major difference are the levels (\"It's Thief 1 with a new map pack\"). These new levels feature less paranormal and more thieving.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\n+ [T2Fix](https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149669)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/thief-ii-the-metal-age"},{"id":"0d9ae1cf-3036-4f30-a610-fd8e530b2f2a","title":"Torment: Tides of Numenera","status":"To play","releaseYear":2017,"playtimeMinutes":1560,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["inXile Entertainment"],"publishers":["Techland"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-05-01","notes":"Motivated to play as one of the more prominent CRPGs in the 2013-2020 era revival. Waiting to play Baldur’s Gate first.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/torment-tides-of-numenera"},{"id":"322682678653489740","title":"Total War: Shogun 2","status":"To play","releaseYear":2011,"playtimeMinutes":1620,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac"],"studios":["The Creative Assembly"],"publishers":["Sega","Feral Interactive"],"genres":["Strategy"],"updatedDate":"2024-09-25","notes":"Summary paragraph here.\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI initially played this in 2011-12-31 but barely got past the tutorial.\n\n__Playing order.__ I decided to play this title as my first entry to the Total War series. It's an older titles that's widely touted as one of the best, alongside Medieval 2 (2006), Rome 2 (2013), and Warhammer 2 (2017).\n\n__Version.__ I played the base game on Steam. I did not play any DLCs as they were either standalone mini-campaigns, extra clan playthroughs, or more units. None seemed strictly necessary, which I could always augment my base game if I find wanting more.\n\n+ [Bigger Font](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=165017051) mod is necessary as the game uses a fixed pixel size for its text/UI. This doesn't scale well to modern resolutions. The mod isn't perfect, as the larger size leads to some text being cutoff.\n+ The game natively supports windowed, but includes the window bar which offsets the rest of the 2560x1440 such that the bottom is cut off. You can't move or get rid of the bar. Fortunately, Borderless Gaming with \"Full Screen\" and \"Adjust Window bounds\" to be -5 at the top and 5 at the bottom works.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/total-war-shogun-2-saints-and-heroes-unit-pack"},{"id":"fea3e806-092a-43c0-afed-8139d08a04fd","title":"UFO 50","status":"To play","releaseYear":2024,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Mossmouth","FourbitFriday","Moppin","Jon Perry","phubans","Eirik Suhrke"],"publishers":["Mossmouth"],"genres":["Shooter","Platform","Puzzle","Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Adventure","Indie","Arcade"],"updatedDate":"2024-09-26","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ufo-50"},{"id":"aec0fc68-e58f-4778-a918-24b7ac276d9a","title":"Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss","status":"To play","releaseYear":1992,"playtimeMinutes":1140,"platforms":["DOS"],"studios":["Looking Glass Studios"],"publishers":["Origin Systems"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2024-09-25","notes":"The classic of all first-person RPGs and immersive sims.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/ultima-underworld-the-stygian-abyss"},{"id":"adad538d-a4b7-47ae-9c1b-62c91c4ed44d","title":"UnderRail","status":"To play","releaseYear":2013,"playtimeMinutes":3870,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Stygian Software"],"publishers":["Stygian Software"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-08-04","notes":"Motivated to as a good modern CRPG. This one is particularly more unique in that it's spiritually most like Fallout 1 and 2.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/underrail"},{"id":"76765f31-185d-4cc8-811f-7705b6e370e4","title":"Unravel Two","status":"To play","releaseYear":2018,"playtimeMinutes":321,"platforms":["PS4","PC","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["ColdWood Interactive"],"publishers":["Electronic Arts"],"genres":["Platform","Puzzle","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2026-04-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/unravel-two"},{"id":"760387b9-a045-4e91-9ae0-c4cab14fdded","title":"Valheim","status":"To play","releaseYear":2021,"playtimeMinutes":4560,"platforms":["Linux","PC","XONE","Series X"],"studios":["Iron Gate Studios"],"publishers":["Coffee Stain Publishing"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2026-03-01","notes":"As of 2026-03, it's still in Early Access. But not sure if it will ever go full release any time soon.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/valheim"},{"id":"f13ad6e0-a42e-4f86-84b3-a5efd5b7f93d","title":"Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors","status":"To play","releaseYear":2026,"playtimeMinutes":1200,"platforms":["Series X|S","Switch 2","Android","PC","iOS","PS5","Mac","Switch"],"studios":["Poncle"],"publishers":["Poncle"],"genres":["Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure","Indie","Card & Board Game"],"updatedDate":"2026-04-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/vampire-crawlers-the-turbo-wildcard-from-vampire-survivors"},{"id":"322682678652761676","title":"Viewtiful Joe","status":"To play","releaseYear":2003,"playtimeMinutes":480,"platforms":["NGC"],"studios":["Team Viewtiful"],"publishers":["Capcom"],"genres":["Platform","Hack and slash/Beat 'em up"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"Flaw-wise, the save points are too infrequent, and Viewtiful Joe's notorious difficulty can make the experience often more frustrating than it needs to be (similar to Dark Soul long run backs to boss fights).\n\n__Story.__\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nI started in 11/25/20 but did not get far. I played on Dolphin emulator, and on Kids difficulty. Apparently Kids is already hard and can be frustrating, and Adult and further is even worse. I wanted to play it safe as you can't change difficulty after you start nor can you skip cutscenes, and you don't see the real difficult until roughly Chapter 5 as it ramps up and with infrequent save points. I'm not sure I want to go through the frustration of mastering Viewtiful Joe mechanics. I'm here more for the experience; I'd reserve higher difficulties for future playthroughs, particularly on games I love such as Doom and Dark Souls.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/viewtiful-joe"},{"id":"341203621590860368","title":"Void Bastards","status":"To play","releaseYear":2019,"playtimeMinutes":510,"platforms":["PS4","PC","Mac","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Blue Manchu"],"publishers":["Humble Games"],"genres":["Shooter","Strategy","Arcade"],"updatedDate":"2022-08-28","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/void-bastards"},{"id":"3d3f850d-80a0-479c-aca2-698ac8299752","title":"Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader","status":"To play","releaseYear":2023,"playtimeMinutes":8580,"platforms":["PC"],"studios":["Owlcat Games"],"publishers":["Owlcat Games"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Tactical","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-12-09","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/warhammer-40000-rogue-trader"},{"id":"f64eae71-d36c-4802-9ff0-900c7993b56b","title":"Wasteland 2","status":"To play","releaseYear":2014,"playtimeMinutes":2520,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","PS4","XONE"],"studios":["inXile Entertainment"],"publishers":["inXile Entertainment","Deep Silver"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2023-05-11","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/wasteland-2"},{"id":"96f7203b-edfd-48ea-bb2e-db5ba1c7c60f","title":"XCOM 2","status":"To play","releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":2040,"platforms":["Linux","PC","Mac","PS4","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Firaxis Games"],"publishers":["2K Games","Feral Interactive"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Simulator","Strategy","Turn-based strategy (TBS)","Tactical"],"updatedDate":"2023-05-11","notes":"I chose this as my first title in the series. According to [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/jm6eyc/should_i_play_xcom_before_xcom2), you don’t miss out on any story. Only the mechanics are slightly dated in XCOM 1 which may make it harder to play in the future. Given that I didn’t play much of tactics or turn based games, I may as well start with the best possible and polished titles.\n\nSlightly motivated after playing the turn-based combat in Shadowrun Returns. XCOM 2 apparently has deeper and more tactical combat.","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/xcom-2"},{"id":"322682678652858956","title":"Xenoblade Chronicles","status":"To play","releaseYear":2010,"playtimeMinutes":4110,"platforms":["Wii","WiiU"],"studios":["Monolith Soft"],"publishers":["Nintendo"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure"],"updatedDate":"2023-04-26","notes":"I played the 2020 remake on the Switch (Yuzu emulator).","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/xenoblade-chronicles"},{"id":"322682678652711500","title":"Xenogears","status":"To play","releaseYear":1998,"playtimeMinutes":3360,"platforms":["PS3","PS1","PSP"],"studios":["Square Product Development Division 3"],"publishers":["Square Electronic Arts","Square","Square Enix","Sony Computer Entertainment"],"genres":["Role-playing (RPG)"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","notes":"\n\n__Story.__ Story is really a series of episodic retellings. Only really serviceable in the gameplay with iconic westerners.\n\n__Gameplay.__\n\nCombat is real-time and involves button combos with Weak Attack, Strong Attack, and Fierce Attack. They use Action Points which define the set for a turn.\n\n__Aesthetics & Sound.__\n\n__Details I like:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I'm ambivalent about:__\n\n+ N/A\n\n__Details I don't like:__\n\n+ No ability to skip through or speed up dialogue.\n+ No ability to auto-run.\n\n## Resources and Miscellanea\n\nMost inspired to play this game for its Evangelion feels, PS1 JRPG era, and as the first to the Xeno series where Xenoblade Chronicles for example is of high praise. With that said, its dated visuals and archaic gameplay based on a button-combo system like Legend of Dragoon may sour your experience. According to this [order guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/Xenoblade_Chronicles/comments/bfoth2/a_recommended_order_to_play_the_xeno_games), this is the first game and a good entrypoint to future entries in the overall series like Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenosaga.\n\nI played a ROM with the [Undub patch](https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5284). I played on RetroArch Beetle PSX HW, the same emulator when I played Castlevania SOTN and Tenchu. I used these [Xenogears-specific settings](https://www.reddit.com/r/XenoGears/comments/oz1x3s/xenogears_in_4k60_with_pixel_perfect_sprites_pc)","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/xenogears"},{"id":"322682678652835404","title":"Yooka-Laylee","status":"To play","releaseYear":2016,"playtimeMinutes":900,"platforms":["PS4","Linux","PC","Mac","WiiU","XONE","Switch"],"studios":["Playtonic"],"publishers":["Team17"],"genres":["Platform","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2022-01-30","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/yooka-laylee"},{"id":"89bafc76-d6d2-4638-99cd-9be0efd752e9","title":"Zero Parades: For Dead Spies","status":"To play","releaseYear":2026,"platforms":["PC","PS5"],"studios":["ZA/UM"],"publishers":["ZA/UM"],"genres":["Point-and-click","Role-playing (RPG)","Adventure","Indie"],"updatedDate":"2026-08-09","url":"https://www.igdb.com/games/zero-parades-for-dead-spies"}]}]}