Recent reviews by A Real Dragon Girl

It's cute, it's cozy, it's got enough build diversity and stat management to make my brain sparkle, the visuals and music put me in a trance, and it just FEELS good to play. I didn't know I needed a fun low-stakes ARPG like this in my life but I can confidently say that hole in my library has been filled.
I am 100% the target audience for this thing and playing big thick characters makes me extremely happy and cozy, it's so up my alley.
This one's a keeper.

Played the heck outta this back on Xbox way back when it first launched and had a total blast getting my ass handed to me on repeat. The Edge is a genuine skillcheck/IRL level up moment and I'll treasure it forever. Furi absolutely rips, its got simple but incredible combat, excellent boss and area design, and as everyone already knows, an unbeatable soundtrack.
It just really falls apart at the VERY end: The Beat is a narrative pushover but an extremely frustrating bullet hell platforming section, and The Star being one of the worst experiences I can't bring myself to finish.
At least The Flame is a solid enough DLC.
All told, worth the money and skillchecks.

It's Warframe but worse. It's Destiny but worse. It's ANTHEM but worse.
If you like endless grind looter shooters with lots of character kits to sink hours into and don't give a thought to any other design elements besides what guns to use and what mods to plug in, you'll like this. If you have anything that keeps you from enjoying noncohesive gameplay systems and the progression therein, and chafe at the prevalence of nondescript PNGs and poorly explained statuses and bolded verbs and adjectives you need to pay attention to, go elsewhere.

It's flashy and energetic and full of the most overly-designed characters and guns and setpieces that UE5 can render, but without any meaningful substance to back any of it up. Guns sound meaty but have no feeling for handling, character movements are weightless even with heavier classes, ability use has little meaningful feedback and impact and just sort of occurs, and all the animations for every character are just too much. There comes a point where the big armor pauldron has simply moved around and CLANKED too much. Sound design overall is alarmingly poor but also overengineered; booms and techno fwooooms are way too loud and frequent to be enjoyed and guns just sound like modern "insert sci-fi weapon type here" stock packs. The only sound that has any serious chop to it is the hitmarker and headshot SFX which are suitably crunchy and satisfying.

Character kits have all the hallmarks of classic archetypes we've been seeing for a decade and there's little in the way of anything new and exciting. The tank makes a big wall and sometimes a dome and sometimes does a big stomp, the damage guy has explosives and fire damage for DoT, the CC lady makes lightning jump around between enemies for big clears, you've seen all of this before. Other characters have more stock kits and very few look to be a worthwhile grind; I wouldn't know, I'm not made of enough money to buy any of these things comfortably.

When you're actually running around shooting stuff with your team of randoms or friends it can feel like there's something to latch on to. Your abilities are going off, you're shooting the same big boys together and whittling down their health bars, you're clearing groups of enemies with accidental symbiosis, and you can feel that there's something here you can latch on to. You'll pick up your new guns and mods and compare stats that mean nothing but make numbers go higher, so you'll at least feel some sense of your strength as a character getting higher. In these moments, First Descendant may finally feel like a fun time.

And then you'll be ripped out of the experience to talk to the next poorly-voiced NPC who gives you a new quest to go shoot the next Florbo, Scourge of Bungo but only after you watch another overacted cutscene and talk to 4 other NPCs who do nothing but fill out objective markers that are "Talk to Scrungo to upgrade your Bits". You'll have to talk to the one NPC who can make your mods stronger for an increasing fee every time because the idea of you upgrading anything without having to run around the social area is seemingly too much for Nexon. At least that way you can maybe see a player wearing that other character you REALLY want to play with and feel pressured into spending money to get them faster.

You've seen this grind a dozen times by now: get the Small Bit to make the Bigger Bit to make the big newest Toy to play with. Run the same activities over and over and over to collect PNGs that may not be the PNG you need right now, but at least you're collecting stuff! If you're impatient, you can pay money to skip the "research" time so you can use your new Toy sooner. Uh-oh, what's that? The rush payment is just a little too much for just one pack of premium currency? Hope you don't work minimum wage to afford that rush AND the new skin that other player was using that looks REALLY cool. And the premium battle pass, because it's free to play but not free to progress.

It's nothing new, it's the same stuff we've seen time and time again from these kinds of games. It's slop. It's artists turned loose with no oversight and designers answering to overlords trying to make a functioning videogame out of the disparate art assets being turned in. A producer steps into the office to see a demo and leaves 5 minutes in because it runs. An investor is at his own little desk running projections and salivating. If you get enjoyment out of this type of stuff, then you'll be comfortable here. If you're at all tired of modern looter shooters and especially F2P ones at that, you've already skipped this.

I've played this game maybe 7 times over the last 14 years. I can sing its praises until I'm blue in the face and still have positive things to say about it. It might be one of the most perfect videogames in my opinion. But if you want some real serious endorsement:
I nabbed Fallout 4 because I haven't played it in any serious capacity since I finished it on Xbox back in 2016-ish, and wanted to see how my feelings on it have evolved in the near decade that I haven't looked at it or thought about it. I loaded some mods in to take care of issues I remember having, loaded in and started rambling about. In about 6-ish hours I uninstalled, and moved back to New Vegas and have had a more consistently excellent experience. The world is better, the art direction is better, the sound design is better, the writing is WAY better.
This is Fallout. This is one of the quintessential videogames.
If you're here because of the excellent show, then you should be playing this one.

Upfront: I strongly STRONGLY recommend this game and it's my new favorite of FromSoftware's titles.

I can't say I'm a longtime fan of Armored Core. I started playing the series as a whole shortly after the announcement for 6 and within minutes of picking it up and opening a garage screen for the first time, I fell so madly in love with this series that it practically dominated my gaming experience for a majority of the year.
I was worried that 6 would commodify some of the more characteristic edges that have been foundational to the series, but within 2 hours I found that not only were those edges intact, they were tuned so tightly and treated with the utmost love and care by the team. The customization is as in depth as it has always been (sans some VERY specific options) and making just one change to your build will make so many other changes follow suit and drastically alter your playstyle. The difficulty is on-point (most of the time) and encourages creative thinking and application and mastery of your playstyle and build. The mission design is consistently fresh and fun, with both long and short missions feeling as perfectly designed as the series' previous highs and constantly asking at least one new approach to your objectives. The story is actually thoroughly gripping and suitably mysterious if you're paying attention and following along with its markedly abstruse delivery method and flow; it naturally builds your connection to the various factions and characters through repeatedly bringing you into contact with select individuals and fleshing out their identities in such a way that you're able to piece together what's happening when you aren't embarked on missions. Pay attention and you'll be just as richly rewarded as when you make your perfect build for the mission and get the clear.

The optional challenges are genuine blasts to partake in; chasing S-ranks, competing in the arena, finding hidden parts and combat logs and lore tabs, it's all consistently engrossing and effortlessly drags you deeper into the game's world - to the point where the edifices of the game itself slowly melt away and you find yourself unable to think about anything more than the environment your cool robot is traipsing through.

I only have 2 issues with this game: the difficulty spikes are sometimes far too high, even when going back and adjusting your build and playstyle to overcome them, and you will end up hitting walls more often that not that feel insurmountable. Of course this just encourages even more creative applications of your skills, trying some new off-the-wall crazy idea that may just be what carries you to victory. And secondly, while the music is good and often times excellent, it's a radical departure from what AC used to sound like. Armored Core's identity was threefold: the customization, the combat, and the music. Nothing quite sounds like Armored Core on the market anymore, and the older titles especially make this clear with their dance/electro/acid/drum-and-bass soundtracks that give them a wholly unique identity. AC 6's soundtrack is a worthy addition to the series' lineage, but I can't deny that I wanted more of the crazy frantic energy that older titles brought.

But if my only complaints are that the game's sometimes infrequently too difficult and the music isn't as bopping, then this game's damn near perfect for me. I love it so so so very much and cannot recommend it enough, even if you've never played one of these games before.

Welcome back, Ravens.

Came into this one a skeptic: there's no way this jank-looking funny Ukrainian videogame, with it's squashed-looking guns and cheeki breeki etc etc, is a classic. I haven't heard a damn thing about the gameplay loop or story from anyone ever, so why the hell would this be considered a masterpiece? So I bought it, cynically thinking it'd be marginally difficult but mostly boring and wouldn't hold my attention long enough.
And then I didn't stop playing it for several days straight. It feels so cliche to say that, but it's the honest fact.
This is one of the most intensely atmospheric and perfectly crafted interactive worlds ever constructed; it's brutally effective at unnerving even the most hardcore, it's relentlessly challenging just to exist in the Zone, and every firefight or duel with mutants feels like a genuine fight for survival until the very end of the game. I lost count of the number of times my blood ran cold hearing the roar of a snork or a bloodsucker, the way my skin crawled when I looked down a darkened hallway in an irradiated bunker and not knowing if I saw something moving down there, and how this overwhelming wave of dread and panic washed over me as my gun jammed and forced me into a frenzied dash to avoid gunfire. In many ways the Zone itself is a character, laughing at your attempts to make sense of it and the myriad of times you think you're in control of a situation only for it to spiral wildly out of your grasp.
But when the game isn't being one of the most terrifying experiences I've ever had, it's delivering shockingly compelling character-driven stories. All the major characters are written so well you can immediately understand their stances on the Zone and current happenings, where their allegiances skew toward, and whether or not the Zone has broken them or not. When the voice acting can't quite deliver, the writing of it all just feels so authentic.
And the modding scene, good lord. There're so many STALKER mods that wildly enhance the experience that to go over them all would be a Herculean task. STALKER can offer heaps of gameplay opportunity on its own with its core systems, like a proper sandbox game, but with mods it can easily become one of the single greatest gaming experiences you can find on the market.
You owe it to yourself to at least try this. Getting past some of the rougher edges may take time, it's definitely got its share of jank, but once you're in there's no way you're letting this one go.
GSC Game World are masters of their craft and their efforts then and now deserve the highest commendations. Even with their ways of life so thoroughly uprooted by situations beyond their control.

Literally never played a fighting game in any serious capacity before this. Tried Revelator Xrd but didn't get past the tutorial, and Dragonball FighterZ had way too much going on to come to grips with. Friend picked up Strive for me because I expressed mild interest in wanting to give it my final honest attempt at these things, and boy howdy has it paid off. I actually SORT OF get it this time and I can play the videogame now. All the efforts ArcSys have gone to to make this game accessible to babies like myself has certainly been a success and it feels very very good to just play this thing.

You don't need me to tell you it also looks incredible, that much is self-evident. This is one of the best-looking games I've ever seen, it's so CLEAN it's almost unreal. Soundtrack absolutely bangs, character design is top-notch, and the mechanical depth is amazing.

This is a good-ass videogame.

Potemkin and May scare me.

decade just began and we got a strong contender for shooter of the decade aleady
you need this
you didnt know you needed this
but you need this

pretty cool videjame
fun shooty
pretty people
pretty planet
the aliens are hot
good game

This game makes me absolutely furious. More so than other games. I have very rarely screamed in pure agony, and over the simplest thing. My ball stopping short of the hole by 3 inches when it should have been a hole-in-one, bouncing over the boundary, getting knocked out of the way by my "friends". This game is absolutely infuriating. But I love it. It's the friendship destroyer, but I love it. Suffering is fun.
I may be insane.