Octopath Traveler (2018) by Square Enix

Although Octopath Traveler is breathtakingly beautiful and has a really fun battle system, I can't recommend it simply because the way it manages its characters is so completely broken that it ruins the entire experience.

The game's often a joy to wander through, as the 3D pixel graphics and high depth of field serves to sculpt its atmosphere exceptionally. Each biome offers its own unique feel and enemies, and the pixel art bosses are often stunning to behold. It's clear that a lot of careful design went into making this game the visual powerhouse that it is, and it does a lot to carry the experience. Even something as minor as the art style and menus conforms to this general art direction; taupe, earth-tones, bold lines. I love it. The game looks amazing, plain and simple. I haven't been this enamored with a game's art style since I first played Darkest Dungeon. I really can't say enough about it.

The turn-based battle system is also quite fun. Each enemy having a weakness and a break state is quite compelling, and forces the player to think tactically and make difficult decisions as to when to use their boosts, or instead preserve them to break (the game's term for 'stun' for a few rounds) a tough damager-type enemy. It's very satisfying to navigate efficiently through a battle, and each character has their own utility, which I found a driving force to keep building my team and progressing through the map to find new buddies.

However, the buddies are where the game completely falls apart. The way this game handles its characters is mind-bogglingly awful that it makes the game, as a whole, feel unfinished. It's not that the character dynamics and interplay are bad, it's that they almost don't even exist at all. It's so, so awful I can't believe the game shipped in this state.

The entire point of the game is to recruit eight (hence the "octo" in "Octopath") main characters—each of whom has their own unique story—and join them together in a traveling band. What's so absolutely befuddling about this is that there is almost no character interplay whatsoever! You will come across a new character, they will say perhaps two lines to your main character, then simply offer to join up. And that's it. These characters will never speak to one another again outside of some awfully unnatural canned scenes in which you must press a button to have them play out. It's such an unnatural, obtuse way for party interaction to happen that it renders the entire game dry and sterile, which is quite the accomplishment for a game that looks as good as Octopath Traveler.

This game could easily have been a superb example of a JRPG revival title if it had just had some brief, organic character interplay that regularly occurred. Instead, everyone is silent for the vast majority of the game. Most of the time it's as if the other characters aren't even present. There's a huge missed opportunity here as each character is relatively unique and interesting, but in a vacuum, they read as very standard. It's such a massive disappointment and such a puzzling design decision that I can't believe the developers decided this was the best course of action. It kills the experience of the game for me.

If this game ever receives a sequel, it absolutely needs something akin to the Support system introduced in recent Fire Emblem games. Allow these characters to get to know one another, interact with one another, and be true comrades rather than simply individual stories all occurring in a vacuum, apart from one another. Without something like this, the entire experience is dead and worthless, and the party banter feature doesn't do nearly enough to alleviate things. These characters need to be engaging with one another in story sequences.

Prepare yourself for another boss fight that's going to take 30 minutes!

On top of this fatal flaw, the game also gets more and more tedious and grind-heavy as you progress. Not in that you're required to fight random battles to get stronger, but in that enemies seem to get higher and higher HP boosts, leaving boss fights to drag on for a catastrophically long time, and even forcing general random battles into taking far too long. The game abuses its battle system by keeping the player roped in to certain fights for far too long and upsetting its balance of exploration and battle. There were certain bosses which took me near 30 minutes to complete, the end of which I was ready to quit the session and simply play another game because I had grown so bored of the particular fight's formula of wearing down the boss's guard, disposing of whichever minions they happened to summon, building up boost, healing, rinsing, and repeating, ad nauseam. The game ends up leaning a bit too hard on its battle system, and although it's good, it can't support the entire game by itself, and it's constantly let down by its narrative, which carried no enjoyment for me whatsoever.

This is a pretty game that ultimately lacks heart and is forced to lean far too heavily on its good combat and jobs system. What results is a disappointment unless you're solely looking for a visual masterpiece with a decently entertaining JRPG-style turn-based battle system. If you want even the barest bit of quality story and characters, or find yourself tired out by the more tedious aspects of JRPGs, you'd best look elsewhere.

This is a pretty game that ultimately lacks heart. A catastrophic disappointment unless you're solely looking for a visual masterpiece with a decently entertaining JRPG-style turn-based battle system. If you want even the barest bit of quality story and characters, look elsewhere.

⭐⭐

Playtime: 37 hours

Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2019) by Intelligent Systems

I've long considered myself a fan of turn-based tactics. When done right, it tickles the section of my brain reserved for improving the efficiency of designs and making correct decisions. I love carefully managing the growth of my units and massaging them into unkillable machines of destruction. I've run cold-to-lukewarm of the Fire Emblem series in the past, enjoying titles such as The Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance, while liking entries such as Shadow Dragon and Fates far less. Turn-based tactics is a genre that's very easy to get drastically wrong, and Fire Emblem: Three Houses—like some of its predecessors—commits several of these cardinal sins, in addition to looking and performing at a level I consider to be sub par.

Three Houses' depth is readily apparent in how it presents you with its three titular houses from which to choose. Each features a set of characters given significant depth that you'll grow to form opinions about. These initially felt relatively shallow, but as you continue your support conversations with them, you begin to realize they've each got their quirks, their pains, and their strengths. Learning about the characters as I progressed was one of my favorite things to do, and continued to fuel my desire to dig through the game's undoubtedly Persona-inspired social sim mechanics.

Some of the new stuff here is a welcome addition to the classic Persona formula. Having a home-base to freely roam in the third person while seeing your units live their lives is a nice touch. Unfortunately, the game leans a bit too hard on fetch-questing to fill out their activities when you're at the monastery. I became unfortunately aware of the grind when, after completing a battle, I'd often stop playing the game rather than having to grind through a bunch of lost items—which I'd imagine are fun little side activities to do when you know all of the characters very well, but become a tedious grind of asking every single character on the map if a lost item is theirs when you're just starting out. The system doesn't really work, and the game should have leaned more heavily on its character interaction than simply having you deliver items to its characters as a way to pass the time.

Being able to increase your character's skills in the classroom while at the monastery is a welcome change to simply grinding out battles, and having your Support levels increased by spending time with these characters is excellent. I, for one, welcome the Personafication of Fire Emblem. Nearly all of the social systems added to this game work very well, and I found the writing for these characters to be suspiciously good. I've criticized the writing in Fire Emblem games very strongly in the past, and although the plot of this game features some of the same silliness as previous games, I found the characters to be markedly better written than those in any other Fire Emblem game I had played before.

Unfortunately, the game's actual tactical play features some pretty deadly warts.

Class parity and good balance is absolutely essential to crafting a class-based turn-based tactics game. And unfortunately for Fire Emblem: Three Houses, its class system suffers from a striking lack of balance.

After about a dozen hours of planning out potential class builds, I realized that skilling in swords is relatively worthless considering there is only one Master-level class which uses swords, and it also requires the character to have high skill in offensive magic. This is a big ask from physical-focused classes, and requires quite a bit of grinding. Additionally, the game features several strong pushes towards Lance- and Axe-focused physical characters, one of which being the ability Deathblow, which grants Brigands (an axe-based class) a whopping +6 Str whenever initiating combat. Class balance is imperative for a successful turn-based tactics game, and Three Houses unfortunately fails miserably at creating parity for its classes, making class builds a rote exercise in which you send all of your physically-focused characters down a nearly identical path.

The game also looks flat-out bad in most cases. I'm usually ready to grant some slack to Nintendo Switch games for running on relatively inferior hardware, but Three Houses looks even poorer than I was willing to expect. I long for the days when Fire Emblem featured charming, hand-drawn sprites, because the polygonal combat sequences have been nearly universally poor in every Fire Emblem game that has featured them. The characters in games like Awakening (which I actually liked) were famous for having no feet—something just as odd as it sounds. And the polygonal characters here, although obviously better than in the past, are still not all that well-done. The character portraits feature exceptionally good illustrations, which makes me wonder what could be if the entire game were done in such a style.

Further, it's not just the execution that's lacking, but the design. Several of the armor sets on these classes look the worst they've looked in several iterations. The Assassin—one of my favorite classes—has lost all of its coolness from older games, instead granted generic-looking fantasy armor. Similarly, the Knight classes have lost some of their thickness, making them look more generic as well. 'Generic' is a keyword, here—for some reason, the class designs of recent Fire Emblem games just don't feature the great art design which initially drew me to these games almost two decades ago. It hasn't been the same since the switch from sprites to polygons, and I wish the series would double back and go for a more classic look once again.

Additionally, the game tends to perform poorly on the Switch. When traversing the monastery (where you spend all of your downtime), the draw distance is relatively poor, and the framerate often tanks to levels below 30. Ditto during combat, during which battalions actions can tank the framerate as well.

These faults are damaging enough to a game of this sort when they all add up, but what finally broke me from the game is Three Houses' tendency to spring 'gotcha!' moments on the player in mid-battle. There were numerous moments in which I felt I was losing units to permadeath due to no fault of my own, but because the game sprung an event on me which was impossible to plan for, such as spawning multiple enemy units literally out of nowhere.

Playing through a combat encounter typically includes a lengthy period of pre-fight analysis, during which the player devises a strategy ahead of time, equips and places their units accordingly, and proceeds to attempt to execute said strategy. Sometimes it doesn't work, and you've got to alter it on the fly. At other times the player makes mistakes, which was fine—that's a part of the game, and often a source of enjoyment as you deal with new challenges on the fly. I personally enjoy living with my mistaken decisions when I enact a faulty strategy, or don't pay enough mind to a certain threat, or even when a sensible plot turn throws a monkey-wrench into the works. But Three Houses' propensity for springing enemy units out of thin air, directly ruining a carefully devised plan, is inexcusable and breaks the entire experience of playing a game like this.

I don't mind when there are doorways or staircases in the environment, clearly visible, from which reinforcements might arrive unexpectedly. The player is taught early that these need to be accounted for. I also don't mind dealing with fog, or forests, which might obscure enemy troops. The egregiousness of Three Houses' gaffes is that you will often send a thief-classes character to pick up boxes, or send only a unit or two on a flanking run, only to have the game drop multiple units literally out of thin air directly in their path, at a point from beyond which there is no return—these units will be ambushed and permanently killed. Now you've got a choice between continuing the game without this unit, or you've got to restart the entire encounter with knowledge of this mechanic in mind. And it's impossible to plan for these occurrences, since they can occur completely separated from any logical expectation. 

This is a terrible design philosophy on a game which lives and dies on how it challenges the player's ability to plan. It leads the player to either closely following a guide to avoid such occurrences, or engaging in multiple instances of trial-and-error as they discover where the game will cheat in order to trip them up—it forces the player either to cheat, themselves, with a guide, or to expect to replay content for no engaging reason.

There's clearly some stuff to like with Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but it can't withstand the assault of such poor design decisions and awful visuals. Hopefully the next entry of this series can straighten some of this stuff out, because it's got real potential. But at the moment, that's all it is—potential. Play Persona instead.

⭐

Playtime: 32 hours

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (2011) by CD Projekt Red

Witcher 2 is a mix of positives and negatives whose positives ultimately far outweigh the minor complaints I have with the game.

It shares some of this roughness with its predecessor, The Witcher, which I find to be so rough as to be almost unplayable nowadays. The Witcher 2 had similarly convoluted, poorly designed levels which make it a chore to navigate to and fro while completing quests and exploring. The forest outside Flotsam is guilty of this. It's exceptionally difficult to get where you need to go without circling around hedges and trees and carving through numerous cannon-fodder caliber enemies. Additionally, looting and interacting with the environment is a huge chore given the cooldown on your amulet scanning ability, and the way the game locks out looting for what feels like an eternity once combat starts. Crafting and inventory management is a gigantic chore due to the obtuse user interface, which I felt like I had to fight with constantly. I also experienced a few lock-ups in which Geralt would get stuck in an animation, and a few crashes here and there. Transitions into different areas of the map are bothersome as well. There are numerous small complaints like this that show some of the roughness the previous game also exhibited, albeit far less of them overall.

But there are significant improvements, too. This game looks beautiful, especially when compared to the previous game. I was surprised by how high a quality some of the textures were, and the art design in general is noticeably improved from the first game. The character and monster designs are fantastic, with some of the sorceresses and Geralt's outfits being particularly stunning. Even just the background of the dice poker board, or the deranged drawings on the wall of the burnt out asylum are artistically impressive. Due to this mix of artistic prowess and a powerful new engine, a lot of the visuals on display in Witcher 2 still hold up today, nearly a decade after its original release in 2011. This is made more impressive by the use of developer CD Projekt Red's in-house REDengine, which they developed and used for the first time with this game, to glorious effect. Although I dealt with a few crashes, the game otherwise runs superbly (I'm near 150 fps at all times with max settings) and it still looks great despite being nine years old. It's a pretty impressive achievement for what was a small studio at the time to develop such a solid engine, and the game is made much stronger than the first Witcher, which used the ancient Aurora Engine, licensed from BioWare.

The combat is also substantially improved, ditching the previous game's ridiculous and shallow faux-rhythm system for classic third person combat which is far more satisfying to execute. It feels a bit loose to me, especially when compared to The Witcher 3, but it's still miles better than the first game's combat and far more intuitive. Enough depth has been added to make things more interesting throughout.

Where The Witcher 2 really shines, though, is in terms of narrative, quest design, and providing the player agency. The strongest thing The Witcher 1 did was weaving its quests together, so you feel especially detective-like once you begin uncovering all the pieces. This is also true of Witcher 2. For example, in Chapter 1 you very quickly obtain a series of side quests very early, simply by talking to people. Almost all of these quests turn out to be intertwined in some way: An incense-maker turned fisstech dealer and a drunken troll turn out to be related. Sounds far-fetched, but the common ground not only turns out to be reasonable and compelling, but also teaches you more about the political situation in the game's setting of the Pontar Valley. And if you're looking for a game in which you have the power to impact the story with your choices, then look no further—The Witcher 2 features perhaps the best example of "your choices matter" that I've ever seen in a game.

CD Projekt Red took a massive chance in the way they designed this game, because there's a significant choice to be made at the end of Chapter 1 that leads to two nearly exclusive routes through the plot. Meaning that no matter your choice, you will end up missing out on about a third of the story content in this game because the two paths moving forward from this choice are so different from one another.

It's a ballsy choice by the developer, because these people had to be designing these entire areas and questlines knowing that half of their players would likely never experience them (unless you're a nerd like me and replay the game to take the other route). The consequences of this choice further reinforces the fact that you are actually impacting what is occurring in the narrative. Few games take player choice to this extreme, and the fact that CD Projekt Red did makes The Witcher 2 something special for that reason alone. Furthermore, the choice is packaged appropriately—you likely won't even realize that you just made a game-altering choice, even though you still realize the gravity of the choice when you made it. The game won't pause and give you any hint that a massive choice is about to occur, which I love. It's an exceptional, ambitious move that is perfectly executed and it makes this game far more memorable and impactful than it'd be without it. Bravo to the developers for making the difficult decision to include two branching paths like this.

If for nothing else, this game is worth playing due to the quality of its narrative. It's a politically-driven game with strong social commentary and genuinely interesting characters, and it gives you the opportunity to pass judgment and act within this world as you see fit. It's constantly satisfying in this manner and it left me thinking about my own moral code regularly. Although Witcher 2 does not feature the classic, epic story that is featured in Witcher 3, I appreciated the narrower scale and the stronger focus on the political machinations of this world's elites. It might take some concentration, but once you grasp what's going on in the narrative, it's quite compelling.

The Witcher 2 is not without its warts, but it shows a staggering improvement over its predecessor and it remains more than enjoyable today. If you're in the mood for a good story, check it out. You'll probably be well-satisfied.

⭐⭐⭐

Dragon Quest XI (2017) by Square Enix

I'm awestruck at the near-unanimously positive reception this game has received.

Maybe this is partly due to its looks. Right off the bat, it's incredibly impressive visually—especially on an artistic level. Toriyama's character designs are timeless. His style has aged like wine, from his Dragon Ball manga until the present day and pretty much everything in between. The game also features surprisingly good visuals on a technical level; the way it renders lighting and water will often surprise you.

Unfortunately, unlike Toriyama's art, the rest of this game has aged like milk.

First, some necessary backstory for context so nobody mistakes me for simply being a JRPG-hater. The original Dragon Quest (called Dragon Warrior back in the '80s here in the states) was one of the first games I ever played back as a young sprout on my father's NES console. I played it at such a young age I had to wait for my father to come home from work so he could read me the text, because I wasn't able. Dragon Quest II introduced companions to accompany you on your journey; a novel idea at the time. Dragon Quest III had you put together a team of various different classes of warriors—whichever you liked! Incredibly novel for back then. And Dragon Quest IV, with its varying scenarios, was probably my first favorite game ever. The shock of the end of chapter 2! Playing as an actual storekeeper in chapter 3! The tragedy of the beginning of chapter 5! What a game. Incredibly inspired, perfectly paced. They executed on everything they sought out to do. To this day I'm a massive fan of RPGs, and turn-based games don't bother me. JRPGs are some of my favorite games of all-time.

But man, even given all that, the most unfortunate thing about this game is that it feels old. And not in the timeless, classic way that Toriyama's art feels. So much of what this game relies on as its core loop, as its reason for keeping people coming back for more, feels so stale and ineffective that I grew to hate it inside just a few hours. The turn-based combat feels slow and antiquated and made obsolete by games like Persona 5, the music sounds incredibly bland, uninspired, and poorly mixed (despite the game being peppered by some original sound effects from the old NES games, which I enjoyed). And perhaps most damning; the story writing is of substantially poor quality. Although some of the characters are charming and well-acted by the voice cast, the main plot includes some of the most ridiculous, childishly contrived, video-gamey nonsense I've played in years. Most of the characters in the story regularly make stupid and puzzling decisions for no other purpose than the developers creating this story decided it should go in one direction or another without giving any thought as to how plausible said direction felt. It feels like something a child would write. It feels like fan-fiction. No, it's worse than fan-fiction.

There are numerous instances of moment-to-moment actions making little logical sense. A couple of early examples:

The prophesied hero finally shows up! But you know what, we should throw him in jail because his appearance means the bad-guys are gonna show up, too! He's not The Luminary! He's The Darkspawn!

I'm sorry, what? How does this make any sense whatsoever? What human being would make a decision like this?

This thief is in jail, and he's been tunneling through the floor to escape (presumably a process taking many years of painstaking, Andy Dufresne-esque hard work and suffering to complete) but he's able to instantly steal the guard's key to his cell and unlock his door simply punching him in the gut through the bars—punching him through the guard's steel plate armor and chain mail—to knock him unconscious! And not only that—the door's now unlocked and he's free to go straight out, but instead, he'll use the tunnel he dug, which requires going through the sewers and a dragon's den. He'll go that way instead of simply leaving through the door he just opened.

Games are no stranger to contrived writing. But this isn't just excusable as, "well, it's a video game, I can put up with some contrived nonsense if it's fun". Dragon Quest XI's caliber of writing is so bad, so utterly amateurish, that it pulls you straight out of the experience and prevents you from taking anything in the story seriously. And without a compelling story as context to fall back on, this game is nothing more than a series of old, stale systems dragged forth to the present from the 1980s, including archaic turn-based combat, monotonous fetch-quests, and dry overworld travel from point to point through an uninspired, linear, tunnel-and-corridor style map.

Look, my games don't have to be literary. I'm not some high-minded snob who refuses to dirty himself with anything not to the caliber of War and Peace or King Lear. The games I play don't even have to have high-minded themes or make moral or political points. That stuff is completely unnecessary to a medium which puts you straight into your player character's shoes and hands you agency over his or her actions. But what my video games do have to do is make sense! And they have to tell a story with real stakes, with events that seem real, and threatening, and compelling! And they have to give me characters that I can relate to, that I can care about and root for and sympathize with when they fail and triumph alongside when they succeed! They can't give me a silent, d e a d - e y e d protagonist who acts so unnaturally through it all that he may as well be a puppet being moved around by a ventriloquist; an ambulatory anime body pillow with so much plot armor he may as well not take damage in battles!

I have so much nostalgia for this series and I wanted so badly to love this game. It's not even that far-gone! I could have put up with everything else as-is, if only the story was well-written, emotionally affecting, and inspired. The flaws Dragon Quest XI exhibits may have worked in the '80s and skated by on name merit in the '90s, but packaged with such awful writing, it just doesn't float the boat anymore in a world in which games like Disco Elysium, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Witcher 3 exist. And I'm not saying every game has to have the caliber of writing as those games, either. But damn it, can't they at least try!? There's no longer any excuse for the awful writing, for the tinny, uninspired music, for the empty, silent protagonist, or for the lame, busywork chores that are the fetch quests that populate Dragon Quest XI. This stuff doesn't cut it in video games anymore, and people searching for quality Japanese roleplaying games shouldn't be settling for this kind of trite, stale drivel. A charming, well-executed art style is not enough to carry a video game with such uninspired gameplay, sound, and story as Dragon Quest XI.

If you're a Dragon Quest mega-fan and all you want is another formulaic Dragon Quest game, then by all means, purchase this. You'll probably love it. It's exactly the same game Enix (and now Square-Enix) has been making for decades. But this game can't stand with other, modern roleplaying games. It's not even in the same building as the better RPGs being developed today—much less on the same level.

This game is a colossal disappointment and doesn't deserve to have a single minute wasted on it by any player out there.

⭐

Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) by Square Enix

An enormous amount of personal nostalgia can't make up for Final Fantasy VII Remake's shortcomings

Note: My screenshots are rather poor since this is a console game rather than a PC release.

I'll state up-front that I don't have a problem with this being just part one of a remake. It felt like it had enough to warrant the full price tag to me. So, if that is your only concern, you can buy without worry. But if you're interested to hear whether or not the game is good, read on for further detail.

I played the original Final Fantasy VII in 1997. As you can see from the photo above, I still have my original black back discs and jewel case. Some parts of the Remake game carried for me on pure nostalgia. Others were not so good. Others still were so awful that I have no idea how any adult making the game could have examined them and thought, "yes, this is good, this should go in our game."

I'll start with the good stuff. Some parts of the Final Fantasy VII Remake are really exceptional. Number one is that it starts off amazingly well, and feeds fans of the original tons of fan service and nostalgia right off the bat. A tear came to my eye playing the opening few hours. The new combat system, although far different from the ATB of the original, is pretty fun! Animation is amazing- really stunning, and that extends from combat, to NPCs, to cutscenes. Great soundtrack, of course, as the original was fantastic as well. And the art direction is fantastic. Despite the PS4 showing its age and several areas featuring really bad, low-resolution textures, Midgar has come alive for me. It looks phenomenal and feels like the city in the original game did. There's also an exceptional level of polish here. There are very few bugs and there's a deep attention to detail in every part of Midgar.

However, a lot of the game is a complete mess narratively whenever it's not re-creating scenes from the original.

The only time the writing was hitting for me and felt good was when depicting the original characters. Square Enix has a lot of character designers from the original working on this team, and it shows. Not once did the characters say a single line of dialogue that felt out of character for them. The writers clearly still know these characters deeply, and the voice actors nail every single one of them and are casted perfectly.

But that's where the good stuff ends. I won't spoil the game here, but suffice it to say that almost all of the new content added to flesh out the original story is bad. It's full of inconsistent rules and plot holes (being stuck in the area in Chapter 17 after falling and having to spend the entire chapter climbing back up, and then just next chapter watching Cloud jump literal hundreds of feet), full of MacGuffins (Chapter 4 is guilty of this, along with Chapter 13 which makes zero sense whatsoever, and Chapter 14 which could have been cut completely and the game would have lost nothing), and rampant use of deus ex machina for anything and everything whenever the ghosts show up, culminating in an event near to the end of the game that made me roll my eyes and literally groan aloud because of how awful it was.

The real problem with all of the stuff they've added is that it completely torpedoes the pace of the Midgar portion of the original game. I expected this bloat to be represented by the side quests, but those were actually fine. This bloat shows itself in the main quest, which I did not expect. Entire chapters of this game feel like a complete waste of time, and a lot of the writing in these new chapters is so amateur as to feel like fan-fiction. The moment-to-moment scenarios are often just cornball video game nonsense that's impossible to take seriously, eg. "monster stole the key, go chase him down", or "this bridge you are crossing just fell down, now you have to go through this entire level, routed through conspicuous combat rooms with enemies". Lots of random nonsense to move the plot forward that feels contrived and unnecessary and impossible to care about. Compare this to modern story-driven games like Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, or God of War (2018) which are using every single moment, every single line of dialogue, either to tell a compelling story or develop their characters further. Final Fantasy VII Remake feels bloated with tons of fatty, disposable content when you compare it to other titles that strive for great storytelling. It's extremely disappointing, because I consider the original Final Fantasy VII to be fantastic at storytelling, tone, timely comic relief, and pacing. And the Remake fails in all of these aspects.

The textures are absolutely awful in certain cases (click to maximize)

Despite how good this game tends to look, a lot of these failures make it feel old and outdated, which is ironic, of course, because it's a remake of an old game! These are the exact problems the remake was supposed to fix! But these arise not just because it's a remake, because this flaw primarily exhibits itself in the new stuff. The classic scenes from the original game which are re-created here are as timeless as ever and work really well. But the structure of the new portions they have added for the remake feel like they've been designed by a bunch of guys who are stuck with '90s video game design philosophies—Everything feels way too gamey and arbitrary, put in place by a developer's decision rather than organically arising from the story and characters, and because of this it becomes impossible to take seriously and fails to have the emotional heft that good storytelling often does. Look, I don't mind if you make me chase a MacGuffin every once in while, but it has to serve either to develop the mechanics of the game and teach me something new, or develop the core characters or story further, or even lead to a relevant, specatcular set-piece. Too much of the pitfalls of Remake lead to none of this, and the game feels like it spends half its length spinning its wheels as a result.

So a lot of this game is a mess and inconsistent from moment to moment with what it wants to be, whether it wants to be a faithful remake head nodding to its original fans, or a new story all its own. I thought they executed on the former very well, the latter was pretty disposable, standard video gamey stuff. This is very relevant to the game's ending, which I won't spoil here, but suffice it to say that the ending was the culmination of this kind of poor writing, as it seems to go completely off the rails with the most obvious, heavy-handed pseudo-artistic statement to the point where I'm not even really interested to continue playing the next episode. I've heard that Nomura is famous for this kind of stuff, which does no favors for his talents as a director and a writer in my eyes. I really hate disliking the ending because I just know people are going to rag on anyone who doesn't like it for being perpetually angry gamers or whatever, but it's seriously bad. Think Game of Thrones Season 8 bad. I honestly cannot believe that the game got out the door with this ending. Someone high up at Square Enix needed to tell whomever was responsible for writing this ending that it was not going to work. It's a failure of epic proportions.

To summarize: All of the best stuff is from when they re-create the original scenes, most of the stuff I didn't like was new writing injected into the framework of the story which already exists. So if they're going to tell their own story now with these characters, from here on forward, I'm really not interested in that, because I don't find their storytelling up to par in most cases and the bombastic, campy style with which they tell it is really not for me. Others may feel differently.

Basically, it's neat that this thing even exists, and it's got a lot of polish. But it's very inconsistent, and I'm surprised it's been so well-received both critically and among fans new and old. Maybe it's because it starts off so well, and ends so poorly, and most of the hearsay surrounding the game is taken from statements made when players are still in the first half of the game? Nevertheless, if you were a fan of the original, it's still probably worth playing—warts and all. But it disappointed me greatly by the end.

⭐⭐

The Witcher (2007) by CD Projekt Red

I feel really bad doing this because I absolutely love CD Projekt Red and I enjoy later games in the series such as The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, but I just can't recommend this game. It's not a terrible game, but its age and some of the mistakes made by the developers working on their first game do a lot to make it a terrible experience to play.

Most notably is that the combat is awful. It's incredibly easy for the most part, but also very bland. Potions are all but useless, leaving you to whack with your sword repeatedly in its faux-rhythm game. I was completely exhausted of it by the beginning of the second chapter and was beginning to choose just to run past enemies.

There are a number of side quests that are worthwhile as far as story and character development, but too many are simple fetch quests and just not worth your time despite the experience and money they reward you with. Too many "fetch 10 wolf pelts", and "find the 10 sephirahs" here—the latter of which broke me for good and had me uninstalling the game.

Probably most tiresome is the fact that the maps are some of the worst designed playing areas I've ever seen in an RPG. I am not exaggerating when I say that 90% of my gametime here was spent running around the map. They are not cyclical at all, but require you to run end-to-end, which is incredibly boring and frustrating. The maps that are open, such as the swamp, often have shrubbery and fences blocking paths that you might use to get somewhere more quickly. I don't mind padding out some gametime, but you've got to be smart about it; give me some good dialogue with NPCs, or entertaining combat. Here even the skill trees—one of my favorite parts of an RPG—feel ineffective, and like a waste of time.

There are minor annoyances as well, such as the awful character models, or poor dialogue writing. The game also starts off about as terribly as possible, with awful, generic, clichéd fantasy dialogue, and bad animations and storytelling.

I used to think of this game like the first Mass Effect—a good game, but very rough around the edges. But while it does do some good things, it's nothing like Mass Effect, which has competent levels, character building, and far better writing and dialogue.

Pretty much all The Witcher has going for it is some interestingly complex quest design and a great setting. Aside from that, this game is nearly completely skippable. Witcher 2 is a far better game, and probably even a better starting place for the series. But if you're dead set on playing the entire trilogy, you can give this one a shot—It's going to be all but impossible to play once you've experienced the later, better games and CD Projekt Red's maturity as one of the best game developers on the planet.

⭐

Dota 2 (2013) by Valve

I finally feel qualified to write a review of Dota 2, since I'm just exiting the stages of being an absolute beginner in Dota 2 and finally progressing into the "novice" stage.

After nearly 1,500 hours over a period of 6 years.

I remember reading a news story a while back during the release of the hugely popular Witcher 3 in 2015 that was speaking about how many other games had lost thousands of players, all of whom had flocked to the big new game and were engrossed by it. Except for Dota 2 players, who continued to play to their normal numbers and weren't distracted by another game releasing. The writer came to the humorous conclusion that Dota 2 players are probably just not aware of the existence of other games.

Although I love other video games, that's still easily understandable for me, because Dota 2 is by far the best competitive game I've ever played. It sucks people in and devours them, dominating their every waking moment. I know people who don't play any other games, just Dota. And I understand why.

The sheer amount of variance between games and the bevy of differing mechanics enables the player to continue playing for thousands of hours—as I have—and still feel utterly amateurish. There's so much to learn, and so much to think about while you're in the game. The game isn't so much a test of how mechanically skilled you are, or how fast your reflexes are, but your ability to multitask and make a multitude of complex decisions in a small amount of time. Do you have vision? Are smokes of deceit available? What's your next item? Who is killing you in fights, and what can you do to prevent that? Have you used your shovel when it's off cooldown? What about midas? If you win a fight, should you Rosh, or take objectives? When's the proper time to split up and farm? And those are just the in-game, micro-decisions. You've got vaster ones to make as you continue to play the game. Which heroes feel stronger this meta? Which items? Which strategies are working?

Friends and I often talk about our "forever games", ie. the game that you will probably play for decades into the future, because you'll just never get tired of it. And that's Dota 2, for me. I began playing in 2014 and I've taken a significant amount of time off here and there (most recently, for the past 2 years, only to come back once again). If you're looking for a forever game, Dota can certainly be that for you. But there are a few significant hurdles in the way.

First off, I don't think I've ever engaged in anything with a steeper learning curve than Dota 2. There are more than a hundred heroes, of whom you must learn every single thing. All of their abilities, the items they will build, their power scale timings. And then there are hundreds of items you must learn as well. And you've got to apply all of this thinking on the fly to how it affects not only your hero, but your teammates' heroes. It's such a massive amount of knowledge to compile, and it's changing all the time. Nine out of ten players will try this out for 5-20 hours and set it down, utterly bewildered by what they're doing wrong as they get mercilessly brutalized over their first 10 games or so. So it certainly helps to play with a more experienced, exceptionally patient friend who can show you the ropes. And if you stick it out, and play a few hundred hours, you'll find that you can begin to gain an appreciation of why this game so dominates the passions of so many players around the world.

I can talk about how the sound design is fantastic, how I dislike some of the character designs, or any other of normal-video-game-things, but the real focus on reviewing Dota should talk about two things: 1) The incredible job IceFrog and Valve do at balancing a game with so many disparate parts and how having such a deep set of mechanics to learn keeps players coming back for tens of thousands of hours, and 2) the infamously cancerous community surrounding the game.

Dota 2's infamously contemptible community is easily the games worst aspect

I'm not going to blow smoke; many of the players populating Dota's servers are unkind and delusional. I've had literally hundreds of games in which I've watched a player roam into the enemy jungle, try and fight 3-4 enemy heroes, die stupidly, and then proceed to flame their teammates for not following. Or the players who, the moment you die, will jump on your mistake and adopt an air of superiority in scolding you, and trying to correct the way you play—despite being the same rank as you. Everyone playing Dota 2 seems to believe that they belong at a far higher rank than they are, and everyone else is at fault for their placement.

The core component to the toxicity surrounding this game is a stunning lack of awareness of the player's own deficiencies, and the deflection of blame towards anyone else possible. Sure, there are trolls who run down mid, and there are people who refuse to actually support. But these are relatively rare in my experience. What wears me down from playing Dota consistently is the sheer amount of toxic communication and blame-game playing. If you play this game, you've got to have a thick skin. You'll be criticized mercilessly and blamed incorrectly. And it's constant. This happens nearly every game, even if you have a decent behavior score (8000+), as I do. Even I'm not exempt from this behavior—there have been plenty of times in the past when I've engaged in bitter exchanges with teammates. It's something that just comes with the territory of playing such a difficult, highly competitive, intensely human game. Emotions run high and we say things we regret.

That said, I do believe the game's in a better place now than it has been in years past. Supports are more likely to pull, gank, and buy smokes and deward. Individual couriers have done a lot to improve player relations in-game and prevent arguments—it's hard to believe now that you'd sometimes get games in which supports would refuse to buy a courier. And, perhaps most important, Role Queue is a huge, fantastic development—you now no longer have 5 carries every single game. And to deal with such rampantly poor communication etiquette, all you've got to do is mute other players liberally. My personal rule of thumb is to mute anyone who begins suggesting items to other players (these people often have a false sense of superiority that leads to flaming teammates when things go poorly), or begins to broadcast the slightest amount of negativity. I've never regretted muting a player, but I have frequently regretted not muting them. I've even gone through dozens of games with everyone muted on both sides, just enjoying the game itself in lieu of any communication whatsoever. Learning to use the mute buttons liberally is the fastest way to truly enjoy playing Dota 2. But you'll still likely end up having days where Dota 2 is the best game you've ever played, and days where Dota 2 is the worst game you've ever played.

There's also the esports scene around Dota, which is incredible. The International is the best esports tournament in the world, and the Dota client itself has amazing features for spectating games by high-level pros, whenever you want to. I personally enjoy spectating games from Player Perspective, so I can analyze what high level players are doing differently than me when I play.

Reviewing Dota 2 is not like reviewing any other game. It's the deepest, most rewarding competitive experience I've ever had with a video game. But it's also the most infuriating and mood-ruining. Striking a healthy balance between these things is key. If you have the determination to learn the game, a thick skin, and a modicum of intelligence, you'll probably adore this game. And, best of all, you can get all these thousands of hours of enjoyment out of the game without spending a single dime. All the heroes are free so you have a complete playing experience right out of the gate, unlike other, similar games on the market.

And maybe you'll play it forever, like I will. Give it a shot. It's free, after all.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Dark Souls (2011) by FromSoftware

Though I always had interest, I always avoided Dark Souls on PC because Prepare To Die Edition had a poor reputation for stability and graphics options. Dsfix was a thing but I figured it would eventually be patched or remastered and decided to wait instead of deal with the hassle. I didn't really care enough to read any further.

I finally bought Remastered recently, and despite its reputation the game is really not all that difficult compared to what I expected. I think players are just used to the forgiveness and handholding that modern games provide and this game has none of that. It's designed like older games, where you are expected to have a modicum of intelligence and figure things out for yourself, sometimes via trial and error, and sometimes remaining stuck for a significant portion of time, which forces you to try new things or explore different avenues of advancement. The difficulty thing seems to just be a lazy meme, or perhaps a marketing tool adopted by publishers. Saying Dark Souls is difficult is very shallow. There's more to it than that.

Dark Souls does a lot of big things really well. Like many great games, its level design is phenomenal; gorgeous, inventive, and logically sound. Its combat balancing is excellent and insures a satisfying experience in which everything moves with a weight, creating a satisfying impact whenever physics collide, weapons scrape against shields, or characters fall to the ground. The art, inspired by grimdark manga series such as Berserk, is fantastic and the graphics look great in the remaster.

But what's most impressive to me are that there are so many small design choices that are very minor in the grand scheme of things, but really brilliant from a philosophical game design perspective, and executed upon perfectly by the team at FromSoftware.

For example, the way communication via messages and bloodstains mirrors pre-internet gaming, when you were reliant on the advice and experience of the other kids on the block to get through games. Or how the game ties dying into its fiction, and punishes the player with reasonable loss to remove the constant reincarnation superpower that so many other action games feature: "Oh, you died? Just reload the last save, as many times as you want, with losing nothing but a minute here and there. No big deal." Dark Souls solves this problem of balancing failure with a reasonable loss of progress and currency, without being overly harsh like the retro games it calls back to and doing something like sending the player back to the beginning of a stage, or the game, and frustratingly costing hours of progress. Dark Souls strikes a perfect balance: Dying without reaching your bloodstain costs just enough to add tension and make you struggle to avoid dying, but not so much that dying becomes an experience frustrating enough to put the game down for good. This balance must have been monumentally hard to manage, but the game absolutely nails it and leaves you in a flow state while playing of gathering souls, levelling up, getting to a point where you're comfortable with trial-and-error, dying, and then finally making it to the next bonfire and feeling triumphant before beginning the process again. Its core gameplay loop is absolutely wonderful, whether you're analyzing the game from a design standpoint like I am, or whether you're just a casual player looking for a fun time.

Another small aspect done extraordinarily well is how death involving the loss of certain resources pushes the player to use them, rather than hoarding them all game long without ever touching them like players do in RPGs. I always finish every Fallout game with a practically infinite amount of stimpaks, for example. In Mass Effect 2 on Insanity, I'd be banging my head against the wall and dying repeatedly but still refusing to spend any medigel in case I needed it for some impassable moment in the future. In Dark Souls, if you didn't lose humanity when dying, I'd have tons of it saved and probably would never use it. This also trickles down to regularly using consumables such as bombs or arrows in a desperate, last ditch effort to make it back to your last death spot.

Everything is very tight in this manner, all these systems tie into one another, and the execution and balancing of the planning room philosophies is perfect. The little things like this add up to create the feel that so many people half-jokingly claimed has ruined lesser games for them. I played the latest Assassin's Creed game before this, and while the scale of that game is mindblowing and it's gorgeous, so much of it just felt bland and repetitive in comparison to Dark Souls, a game that came out 7 years and a generation earlier. I'd prefer a smaller, tighter experience like Dark Souls any day of the week.

At the risk of donning my beret and sounding too pretentious, Dark Souls at its best strikes me as an allegory for life in general. Continuing to push onward, failing repeatedly, relying on the help of others who have come before, and eventually succeeding in one monumental push only to begin the struggle anew at the next bonfire. Dark Souls is proof video games are art, but in order to realize this, you need to be intimately familiar with video games. So unfortunately the Roger Eberts of the world will continue, in their ignorance, to disregard it.

I won't call it a perfect game, though, because it's not. There are several instances where the game takes its trial-and-error a little bit too far by kicking the player in the groin for no real reason. These "gotcha" moments occur when the game kills the player out of nowhere, and provides no hint beforehand that something like this is about to occur; a prime example being the infamous bridge moment early in the game. Trial-and-error is fine in most cases, since it puts the onus on the player to experiment and learn, but in these cases the learning is so one-dimensional that these deaths seem more like unwarranted punishment rather than opportunities to learn. They take the fun out of the trial-and-error present throughout the game and render it more frustrating than enjoyable.

That said, I'm still very impressed with Dark Souls. I'm pretty old among the modern day "gamer" demographic, but I've loved games for a long time (nearing 40 years now) and try often to think about them critically when I'm playing them and I believe Dark Souls is one of the most well-designed games I've ever played. You can tell the people who made it have thought long and hard about the medium and regardless of potential profit or popularity set out to design a game that improves upon the general faults so many games exhibit today. It lives up to its reputation, in my opinion, and it's a game that everyone who enjoys video games should give a shot, regardless of their personal tastes.

Dark Souls is an all-time great game. It's a genre defining experience and a medium-pushing landmark. You should give it a try, even if you hate dark fantasy, RPGs, or difficult games. Put in 8 hours, press forward, and if you don't like it after that, then maybe it's not for you. But you owe it to yourself and to this game to give it a shot anyway. If it doesn't look like something you'd be interested in, wait for a deep sale and pick it up then.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Final Fantasy XII (2006) by Square Enix

I first played Final Fantasy XII upon its release in 2006. I was a college senior at the time, too preoccupied with my longtime girlfriend and my brand new (and godawful) full-time job to really focus on video games. As a longtime Final Fantasy fan since childhood (I had first played Final Fantasy on the NES with my father as a child), I expected to love the story but was enthusiastically unenthused by what I'd seen of the gameplay demos. No turn-based combat? Pshaw! Nonsense! I ended up being entertained by the interesting gambit system and disappointed by the dry story and monotonous pacing. I never finished Final Fantasy XII. Life got in the way and I wasn't driven towards the checkered flag.

Enter 2018. Square-soft -- sorry, Square-ENIX -- has released a remastered, HD version of Final Fantasy XII. I'm now in my mid-30s, comfortable in my career and my life and greatly enjoying gaming again. I figure I'll give XII another shot.

Probably the most important thing every fan of the original game wants to know: The remastered graphics are pretty fantastic. This isn't just a cheap, shoddy port like Steam's Final Fantasy VII. The team has upped the resolution on all of the environmental textures, and the settings look great. The art has an oil painting feel that comes from upscaling the resolution and blurring the lines just enough. As a result: aside from a few overly square corners, the game looks like it could have passably been released this year. The animations are passable but the models are beautiful. If you loved Final Fantasy XII on PS2, you'll love it on Steam.

I am such a fan of good music in games, and I'd be a fool not to mention XII's brilliant score right up front as a huge pro. I had forgotten how beautiful it is. It's so wonderful, that it'll make you blink twice when I tell you it's not by Nobuo Uematsu. Wait, what!? That's right, Uematsu sat this one out and ceded his nearly 20-year stranglehold on the reigns of the Final Fantasy series' scores to Hitoshi Sakimoto. And boy does Sakimoto absolute slay it. Sakimoto turns in -- no hyperbole -- a veritable John Williams effort. This is one of the best scores I've ever heard in a game, up there with Amon Tobin's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory or Jesper Kyd's Assassin's Creed II. It's been fully reorchestrated and remastered specifically for The Zodiac Age, and it's even better than the PS2 OST from 2006. The track Eruyt Village is a particular standout.

The combat system is good. I remember hearing that it was real-time back before the game released in some preview coverage and being disappointed that they were moving away from Active Time Battle, but it works. No JRPG since has managed to succeed with the fast-paced, exciting system that Final Fantasy XII tries for. Ironically, the game that most closely accomplishes this is Dragon Age: Origins; BioWare's last private hurrah from 2009 prior to being staked through the heart by EA. If you were a huge fan Dragon Age: Origins' combat system and feel you can put up with some JRPG tropes, you'll appreciate this game. I always preferred Origins for its story, though, so the combat system of Final Fantasy XII was not quite enough to keep me playing the game by itself.

The licensing board, differing from our North American release in 2006, is the biggest argument to try this if you didn't like the original release. It's a better twist on the original, open board. However, that brings me to another huge criticism: You're forced to choose your job for each character almost immediately, without knowing what the pros and cons are between them, and without being able to change, ever. It's simply asinine that the designers didn't have some sort of respec system in this game. It's impossible to choose the correct job combinations (you're later able to choose a second job for each character to compliment their first, which is, of course, not even hinted at when you first choose the job for each character) led me to spending literally 4 hours researching online before I even played through my first hour of the game. It's one of the worst design choices I've seen in a game.

After playing through a few hours what I was most surprised about my first playthrough of the game back in 2006 was just how fantastical the environments in this game are. Final Fantasy XII is one of the best games in the series at putting a fantasy twist on medieval settings. The only other title that really comes close to making you feel like you're in an oddly realistic, yet foreign world is Final Fantasy VII (or perhaps Final Fantasy XIII, but that game has a ton of issues aside from its setting, and its Steam port is awful, so I wouldn't recommend it). XII has cities reminiscent of the Dwarven thaigs from Dragon Age, but with humans living in them, it's got long-abandoned mechanical derricks pumping oil from the ground, and entire armies floating around in zeppelins. It has Zeal from Chrono Trigger, powered by supercharged magicite from Final Fantasy VII, populated by Yang Fang Leidens from Final Fantasy IV. While nobody will mistake this for a world designed by Mervyn Peake (nothing is quite like Gormenghast, anyway), it stretches the imagination in the right ways and depicts some of the better non-epic fantasy worlds that have been shown in video games. So if that sort of thing floats your boat, you might find this game worth playing.

My biggest criticism of the game, and the reason I can't recommend it to anybody, is that the pacing is downright awful. Between narrative cutscenes you're going to travel through between 1-3 different locations, each with 5-8 different maps, filled with maybe 3-5 different types of respawning enemies each. These areas, while sometimes inspired in their design, are almost universally way too large, or cramped and repetitive, and the combat in these areas consists of repeatedly killing loads of generic bad guys you have to hack through dozens of times before you get to any dialogue or story once again. There are literally hours of this gameplay with no dialogue. And the story isn't good enough to carry this.

This game, overall, is a slog.

If you've played Final Fantasy X, think of the feeling you got when you first got to the Calm Lands and start to run across it, only to hit random battle after random battle, over and over. If you liked that, then you'll probably like Final Fantasy XII. If you, like me, hated it, then stay far, far away from this game. Because it's basically just that in every single area.

To me, it is absolutely monotonous and will cause all but the most hardcore of fans to put the controller down around 35 hours into the game. It's a real shame because it starts off so well, paced alright with some good story beats, but falls apart in this boring agony of running into the same generic areas, hacking the same generic enemies to death numerous times around the time you depart for the Dawn Shard.

I started this game enthralled at enjoying what I was never able to finish before, and I'm now trudging through the seemingly endless maps of the Ozmone Plains, nodding my head knowingly, and mumbling to myself: "Yup, this is it. This is why I stopped last time. I remember now." It's a huge disappointment to me -- a rabid fan of Ivalice -- And it left me wanting to go back to Final Fantasy Tactics and devour a game set in such an interesting world that wasn't plagued by such absolutely awful pacing and monotonous gameplay. The first few hours are intriguing, but the pacing gets worse from there. I can only recommend this to the most hardcore of fans, and even then, your time is better spent elsewhere.

For me? I'll replay Dragon Age: Origins instead.

⭐⭐

Playtime: 52 hours

Total War: Warhammer (2016) by Creative Assembly

I'm not a classic fan of the Total War series.

The only game I've played in the series was Rome II, which is referred to by many of the series' longtime fans as the overall worst game in the series. I actually liked it quite a bit, but just couldn't get around the various glitches, bugs, and jankiness and eventually stopped playing the game in frustration of having battles stolen from me by units glitching out and getting slaughtered.

I decided to pick up Warhammer after seeing it on sale last week for $15, and boy am I glad I gave the series another shot because I'm really enjoying this game.

I have no attachment whatsoever to the Warhammer world. I'm such a neophyte that I didn't even realize a fantasy element to this fiction existed; I thought for almost a year that this game was a Total War based on the Warhammer 40,000 variety because I didn't know there was anything else. I believe that coming from such ignorance allows me to judge the game purely based on its merits rather than viewing it through the rose-shaded goggles of a Warhammer fan.

The things that ruined my experience most in Rome II are completely removed from Warhammer. The bugginess of combat and the convoluted way that some of the strategic layer worked are gone, all refined and streamlined into a system that's very easy to understand when compared to that game. I find myself greatly enjoying battles now that they aren't plagued by units bugging out on walls or geometry or getting themselves killed when they don't do what I'm telling them. The scale is also far longer here. In Rome II, you can only have units be so powerful when at the end of the day they're all just, at most, human beings riding horses. In a fantasy setting, though, you can go balls-to-the-wall. You've got nearly indestructible emperors riding huge winged beasts, wizards that can blast apart entire enemy lines by themselves, giant cannons capable of raining destruction upon enemies. Which is great, because you're going to be fighting some pretty terrifying, giant monsters on the other side of the map. It adds an entirely new level of flavor to the Total War system. It's fantastic.

A big change that I love is that the leaders of armies are now single units with upgradeable equipment rather than elite groups of spearmen, cavalry, etc. There is truly nothing more bad-ass than watching the Emperor swoop in on a giant, man-eating Griffon to save one of your infantry units that is about to rout by smashing half of the enemy's and routing it almost instantly. I also like that there is no concept of passing time in this game, as it allows you to become more attached to your leaders rather than levelling them like in Rome II only to have them eventually die of old age even if they're your best units. It's wonderful and the light RPG leveling system adds a lot of attachment to units that could otherwise remain pretty generic.

The different factions in the game operate so differently from one another that it's almost unbelievable. The way Chaos and Greenskin factions work is so different from the humans and dwarfs that it may as well be another game. It's really astounding just how much meat is on the bone with this game. I never had much desire to play units other than the Empire or Bretonnia, but the sheer variance in their gameplay styles provide literally hundreds of hours for somebody who wants to try them all. That is an amazing amount of value considering I paid $15 for this game.

But the thing I love most about the game so far is the incredible tense feel it has. You're told pretty much from the beginning that there is a Chaos invasion coming and that you'd better prepare for it. As a Warhammer noob, I had no idea what that meant. But holy hell did I find out. Your first campaign in this game is pretty much doomed to fail, and I kind of love that. Rather than leaving me deflated and frustrated as I would have expected, it left me feeling challenged. Could I play again and, knowing what I know now, succeed? It also left me with a completely different feeling playing through a second time, like there was a dark shadow on the horizon, and I better get my crap together and be ready for it. It adds one more additional quirk to what is already a very competent turn-based strategy/real-time tactics game and makes it a truly great one in my opinion. I've seen some people complaining about the Chaos Invasion mechanic, asking for an option to turn it off, and I can see how it would be frustrating if you're a fan of the series and are looking for not much more than what you've gotten in the past. But for me, it led to an extremely tense, dread-inducing experience, like the pressure was on and I was the only one on the map who could deal with it. It feels very much like Mass Effect 2 on Insanity; a creeping sense of being completely outgunned and wondering how the hell you're going to deal with the onslaught that's coming your way, and desperately trying to make the most efficient moves possible to tech up as quickly as possible and equip yourself for the great challenge ahead.. From a narrative perspective, it feels remarkably like the oncoming invasion of the Others in Martin's ASOIAF fantasy series, or Sauron's and Saruman's war in Tolkien's LOTR series.

I found the Warhammer fiction to be really intriguing as well, and far more inspired by reality than I expected it to be. While Tolkien's Middle Earth is not tethered to anything but his own imagination, and Martin's Westeros is loosely inspired by British history, Warhammer seems to be clearly inspired by the early Holy Roman Empire and its struggle with the Viking invasions of Europe, at least from what I see in this game. I'm lukewarm on fantasy but a huge fan of historical fiction, and Warhammer piqued my interest enough to make me want to pick up a few Warhammer fantasy novels and see what they're like.

I do have some complaints about this game, though. Though not as bad as Rome II, it still runs somewhat poorly on my GTX 1080, with most battles hovering somewhere around 50 fps at 1440p. Additionally, this game has some of the grimiest DLC I've ever seen. Blood and gore has actually been removed from the base game to sell at a $3 price point, which is just as ridiculous as it sounds. I've got a feeling that this is more on the publisher side rather than the developer side, but whoever is responsible for this reprehensible practice should be ashamed of themselves. That said, a lot of the DLC is actually really good, as the additional factions freshen the game after a few playthroughs.

I really enjoy the game despite having no attachment to its fiction. It's deep technically, well-balanced, and a whole lot of fun, with a great setting and an excellent, tense campaign. And if I, someone no real interest in RTS or Warhammer, am enjoying the game this much, then I can confidently recommend it to pretty much anybody. This game is worth paying full price for in my opinion, but if you find it on sale for around $30, you'll be getting a steal. There are potentially hundreds of hours here, so if you're a fan of turn-based strategy, real-time tactics, or anything in between, pick this up without a second thought.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Playtime: 96 hours

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) by CD Projekt Red

I try only to write reviews if I've got something to add about a game that I haven't seen many other reviewers already noting. I'll make an exception with Witcher 3.

This game is just as good as every media outlet and amateur reviewer says it is. It might actually be, all things considered, the best game I've ever played.

This game creates an experience that's far more than the sum of its parts. The excellent visuals and music, the lovely sound design, and the painstakingly well-crafted environments, NPCs, and quest and dialogue writing all combine to give this game a lived-in, realistic feel that very few games have been able to exhibit. Every corner of the world feels real. There's so much to experience across the several maps that you can simply wander from place to place for hours upon end, taking in all that there to experience. None of this is procedurally generated, either. It's all hand-crafted, and for those willing to look, there are some incredible things to find.

Early in the game, the player character Geralt meets a gung-ho historian off to chronicle the war. Geralt tells him not to go, that the warzone is a chaotic, anarchic wasteland and he'll be killed simply for the quality of his boots. The historian laughs it off, and offers to play a Gwent card game with Geralt. If Geralt wins, he can win a unique card from this NPC. Later in the game Geralt and Vesimir find themselves underneath a tree full of hanged civilians. Upon searching the foot of the tree, Geralt can find a half-finished history book, and the Gwent card the historian was carrying if it wasn't won from him earlier. The entire game is littered with moments like these; very subtle, missable details that only a minority of players will experience, yet CDPR has worked hard to place in the game anyway because they truly care about the depth of their world. I've played it through to completion several times and each time I find something new.

The quality of writing is so good that it will propel you to finish the game regardless of whether or not you like the combat. The characters are so likeable that you'll grow attached to them before too long, and the quality dialogue and voice acting makes the plot points hit that much harder. The unique thing about this game is not so much the quality of its writing, as there are quite a few games with solid writing, but the depth to which this quality of writing goes. From the main questline to the most minor sidequest, you can always expect to be pleasantly surprised. I was hooked by the very first monster hunting sidequest in White Orchard when you discover just why this Noonwraith is roaming around the well in this small village. Each NPC seems to have a lovingly crafted backstory of their own, and even the most minor fetch quest has its own wrinkle to make it interesting. The high quality of these quests is even more impactful in a world of Mass Effect Andromedas with their disposable, MMO inspired, procedurally generated fetch-quests. They don't make them like this anymore. This is a game in which the most minor sidequest you take on will take you nearly an hour, and it will make you stop and think about a dilemma, or a question it poses, through its quest writing. It's amazing just how much quality content the writing team put into this game. Nothing is disposable, everything in the game serves to garner an emotional reaction or ask an important question. It's packed to the brim with quality content to experience.

The most criticized aspect of this game is the combat, which I actually find to be quite enjoyable. I recently finished my first Death March playthrough and I found the challenge to be quite satisfying. I very rarely felt cheated, never had to cheese the game to get past a particularly difficult section. The difficulty was very well balanced and I felt a strong sense of accomplishment upon completion. The abilities scale very well, going from utility in the beginning to being overpowered within the game world if you focus solely on improving one aspect. Aard, my favorite ability, becomes an absolute world-wrecker if you continue to improve it, allowing you to force blast a small city of enemies at its highest levels. All other abilities are equally useful, and they allow you to build Geralt in whichever way you choose without feeling like you're missing out on anything. Very few RPGs are as balanced as this one is. The combat itself is enjoyable as well, requiring quick dodges and counters the way you would expect a witcher to fight. Each monster type is unique and requires its own strategies, allowing you to fall back into similar patterns whenever you face one type, but there are enough different types of monsters that you'll never face one type for long enough to get bored. To me, the humans were always the most challenging.

When it first released there was some talk of graphics downgrades, bugs, and obtuse UI. However CDPR have completely eliminated all of these issues with the most extensive round of post-release patching I've ever seen for a game. Every major bug I remember encountering has been eliminated from the game, it looks phenomenal and runs very well, and the UI flows like a dream whether you're using mouse and keyboard or a controller. In addition to this they added a ton of free DLC, so make sure you've got all that stuff set to download after you purchase the game.

To top all of this off, this game has the best DLC offerings I've ever seen in a video game, period. Better than Minerva's Den, better than Lair of the Shadow Broker. The writing in Hearts of Stone is the best I've ever seen in a DLC, and is the high point of the entire Witcher series in my opinion. And the sheer amount of content added in Blood and Wine is mind-boggling. If you buy Witcher 3, buy the Game of the Year edition without any second thoughts.

This is a game you'll put hundreds of hours into without regret. You'll be missing the characters long after you've finished it. Any time you hear a music track from the game on YouTube you'll immediately become nostalgic for the game. Witcher 3 is truly a towering achievement in every sense of the term, it's one of the very few games in which I can't find anything to criticize. It's an absolute masterpiece, and no matter what types of games you enjoy, you should buy it and give it a shot.

It might actually be better than everyone says.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Downloadable Content: Hearts of Stone (2015)

The most compelling aspect of this expansion is the characters it includes, the story it tells, and some of the art direction—the last of which is something far different from what you find in the main game.

The character of Gaunter O'Dimm introduces something that all Witcher games have lacked, in my opinion: A compelling antagonist! O'Dimm is a well-nuanced villain and extremely compelling for that fact. In addition to him, the character of Olgierd von Everec and his brother Vlodimir may be some of my favorites in the entire Witcher series. It's tough to say too much more without spoiling it, but the presence of these characters in addition to Shani from Witcher 1 made this content a joy to play through. Learning about their backstories kept me interested the whole way through—especially Olgierd's—and I think they're worth the price of admission alone.

AHHHH! Spooky.

In addition to this, the sheer artistic muscle of the design of some of these characters and locales—Iris von Everec, the Caretaker, and the von Everec estate—are all superb. They're so dark and horrifying in the way the main game was not, that I can only assume the artists were either let completely off their leashes, or some fresh blood was brought into the team specifically to help design some of this stuff. I never really found myself spooked during the main game (save for maybe the Rats in the Tower quest on Fyke Isle), simply because in most cases Geralt is so powerful and in-control of what's happening that I ended up sharing his confidence. Hearing his bewildered reaction to the horrifyingly creepy content of the von Everec Estate led me to having a similar reaction. I loved the experience of that.

It's not all rosy, though. The new enemies added by Hearts of Stone are often way too spongey. I'm not sure the answer to complaints about the main game being too easy was necessarily, "make them take more hits to kill". Some of the Fallen Knight enemies are a complete chore to whack through—even on lower difficulty levels—taking a dozen or more hits to kill and not offering any difference tactically from human enemies in the main game.

In addition to this, the new gear and runecrafting abilities are nearly completely ignorable and don't offer significant change to the way you build Geralt's gear loadout or abilities. This was later fixed in Blood and Wine with some really inspirational additions, but don't come into Hearts of Stone expecting a huge revamp.

Olgierd and Geralt finna drop the hottest hip-hop album of 2015

In the end, this is well worth playing just on the strength of its characters, its antagonist, the darkly compelling new locales it adds in the northern Novigrad area. Although it can be played after the conclusion of the main game, I feel it fits best when played during the main campaign, somewhere within the Novigrad storyline, before completing Triss's quests and before leaving for Skellige. The end of the game provides significant changes to the world depending on your choices during the endgame quests, and it can feel jarring to go directly from the world of the epilogue into Hearts of Stone, where things are set back to how they were before the conclusion of the game.

Hearts of Stone rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Downloadable Content: Blood and Wine (2016)

Blood and Wine provides an historic, beautiful send-off for one of the greatest games ever made

This is the best piece of downloadable content I've ever played, and it's not close.

Blood and Wine hearkens back to a time when developers released on-disc expansions rather than simply pieces of DLC—which are often disposable nowadays. There's an unfathomable amount of new content present here; a brand new map that's the equivalent in size and content of Velen/Novigrad and Skellige of the main game, making equal to around a third the size of the main game. There are also dozens of additional quests, an entirely new storyline filled with new characters, new ways to upgrade your skills, new gear, new monster types, a completely different setting, an all-new soundtrack. Blood and Wine probably could have been called Witcher 3.5 and that wouldn't have been an exaggeration.

Players who have experienced the main game can be confident that the level of storytelling in Blood and Wine's main quest is equal to that which you've come to expect from CD Projekt Red. It provides an exceptionally satisfying conclusion to Geralt's story, and introduces some new characters who are as interesting as you'd expect. That said, one of the most disappointing things about Blood and Wine is the drop in quality present in most side quests here when compared to the main game. By far the strongest aspect of Witcher 3 is the universally high quality of its side content. Nearly all of the side quests in the main game are extremely compelling and feature a high level of writing quality. Sadly, Blood and Wine falls a bit short of this standard. The Vintner Contracts are all disappointingly similar; speak with the vintner, take the contract, go kill a monster in a cave. There are disappointingly few narrative wrinkles added. Additionally, some of the side quests fall victim of the "Help 5 Stonecutters", or the "Complete 15 Camerlengo tasks" type of open world bloat that always serves to bore. While this drop in quality from the main game was disappointing, they're often still at least as satisfying as other open world games, and in most cases, more satisfying. Compared to other open world games, they're pretty good—but compared to Witcher 3's main game, they fall a bit short.

The lower quality of side quests aside, what I find most compelling about this expansion is the way in which it fixes some of the mechanical, gameplay side of things that I thought fell short in the main game. One of the things I love most about RPGs is how addictive it can be to continue exploring and unlocking higher, more devastating skills. In the main Witcher 3 game, this is more subtle; often the new skills you're unlocking progress Geralt in small ways, and you have such limited ability slots that you're forced to specialize. The most impactful change in Blood and Wine, for me personally, is how it blows up this subtlety and grants Geralt some extremely powerful changes in the form of Mutations via one of its side quests. These mutations unlock new, powerful modifications to Geralt's abilities, such as adding a freezing effect to the Aard spell, which is capable of devastating crowds with ice akin to a Northern Wind bomb in absurdly satisfying fashion. It also unlocks new ability slots, allowing you more diverse powers. These new abilities are very expensive, and require a large investment of Ability points and Greater mutagens, but they're worth it, and they gave me that strong addicted feeling that I get from RPGs with great skill progression systems that I felt was missing in the main Witcher game. It's by far the best skill system ever in a Witcher game, and it's on par with what I consider some of the best skill trees in gaming—something like Mass Effect 3, for example.

CD Projekt Red has also fixed a common complaint I have regarding Witcher gear. I never want to wear anything aside from Witcher swords and armor sets, because they seem appropriate narratively, look really cool, and have great ability buffs. However, in the main game, it's very easy to level to the point where they become obsolete. They've changed this with the Aerondight sword, which levels alongside you—a welcome change—and Grandmaster level Witcher gear, which provides significant bonuses when all items of the same set are equipped, for example; being able to add 3 different blade oils at once (Grandmaster Wolven gear), or strongly buffing the Quen spell (Grandmaster Ursine gear).

In addition to this kind of addictive stuff, you also acquire a villa, which you can pour money into to improve. Another thing I've loved in games ever since Monteriggioni in Assassin's Creed 2.

Tying this all together, of course, is the superb world and narrative design, giving you a stunning locale and populating it with vast, incredible stories to experience. The new enemy types are very fun to fight against, and seem to have more involved twists in fighting them than those of the main game—which were very simple—and those of the prior expansions, Hearts of Stone—which were too spongey to really be enjoyable to fight against. The Shaelmars are fun to bait and dodge, the new vampire units in the Alps and Bruxae provide ample challenge and force you to approach the fights tactically and prepare with oils and potions (at least on Blood and Broken Bones, my preferred difficulty level). And the main plot of the expansion takes some very unique twists and turns that I didn't expect, including one setting that was so superb and unexpected it literally knocked my socks off. They flew off my feet, at force. That happened. I swear.

It's really, really hard to find fault with this expansion. If you liked Witcher 3, it's an absolute must-play. I'd gladly pay $40 for it and not second-guess my decision—it's that good. At $20, it's an absolute steal, and if you can find it cheaper than that, then go for it. If Witcher 3 wasn't your thing, this isn't going to change your mind, as it's just more of what the main game did well along with a further refinement of the RPG elements that were already present.

Unlike Hearts of Stone, I'd wait until after the conclusion of the main game to play this one. It's essentially the final chapter in Geralt's story, and it'd feel weird playing some of this stuff before completing the events of the main game.

Blood and Wine rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐