Recent reviews by Choya

I'm a total newcomer to this franchise, so I don't put much stock in this being AoE's black sheep and it doesn't even irk me that much that they canceled the plans to create new expansions. But this game hangs for 2-3 seconds every 30 seconds or so, and that's absolutely intolerable.

DOOM 64 has some of the engine's most creative and atmospheric levels. It also has some of the most inscrutable level design. Headphones are strongly recommended, because if you don't pay attention to what direction noises are coming from you'll frequently be left to hunt for what changed when you press a button.

Metaphor's story really blew me away. The game is set in a fantasy kingdom comprised of several species of demi-human, ruled over by a King and the state church of Sanctism. The King, weak and unpopular in his old age, is assassinated in the game's opening moments. At his funeral, his spirit announces a special contest to determine the next King. About six months from then, he will peer into the hearts of his people, and whoever holds the faith of the majority will be crowned. Thus begins a countrywide journey to become a people's hero and win this literal hearts and minds campaign.

During this contest, all the top contestants are protected from harm by the King's magic. Which turns out to be an issue, since the King's assassin is the clear front-runner. He, Louis, is a common-born man who rose to prominence through sheer military brilliance and promises an egalitarian kingdom should he be entrusted with power. Despite owning up to his crimes and promising to raze the kingdom to its foundations, many of the disillusioned people of Euchronia still see him as their best shot. Plus, he looks and acts like they transplanted Griffith out of Berserk's Golden Age arc and into a Final Fantasy game. It's great.

You, a young man from the underclass Elda tribe, set out to keep that man from power by any means necessary. Along the way you draw inspiration from a diverse cast representing many of the kingdom's demographics, as well as a novel that describes a modern utopian society. The just, equal world your party aims to bring about contrasts starkly with the blind, brutal egalitarianism promised by the villain.

This game touches on many political themes throughout its story, ranging from racial persecution to the pitfalls of both monarchy and democracy. They're as ubiquitous as Persona 5's themes of the old and powerful exploiting the young and vulnerable. Though things get a little Political Science 101 at times, it's executed well and leaves the player feeling like these characters are real people fighting for real ideologies.

Does it even need to be said how nice this game looks and sounds? If you can trust these devs for one thing, it's to do their RPGs with panache. Every menu, screen, song, and UI element is dripping with style that helps to reinforce the game's aesthetic. The soundtrack might not make it onto everyone's playlists the way Persona's always seem to, but that rapping monk definitely got me hyped up to fight some uphill battles.

Admittedly I kind of bounced off of Persona 3 Reload because of its dungeon crawling experience. I really prefer a handcrafted adventure over floor after floor of repeating tilesets. Luckily, Metaphor provides exactly that. The main dungeons are all excellent, and though many of the side dungeons are cut from the same cloth they didn't really bore me either.

Metaphor derives most of its gameplay very directly from Persona. If you've played Persona 3-5, you know exactly what Metaphor's combat is going to be like. One of largest departures from that system is the replacement of the "One More" reward for hitting a weakness/critical with a party-wide action point pool that… effectively does the same thing.

Truly the biggest change-up in combat, though, is the Archetype system that replaces Personas. This game has brought in the classic Final Fantasy style of job system, where each party member can freely (outside of combat) swap between a couple dozen Archetypes. Each has its own set of abilities, along with elemental weaknesses and resistances. Additionally, leveling up the Follower Bond with the character associated with a job will unlock up to four slots where you can stick any ability you've unlocked on another Archetype. It's not as robust as the huge demon catalogue of Persona or SMT, but it does give the entire party a level of flexibility usually reserved for the main characters of Persona games.

I was extremely pleased with how the life sim aspects of Persona have been sculpted into something more resembling a classic globetrotting fantasy adventure. The foundation is all the same: the story is structured around several hard deadlines for completing major dungeons, and in the meantime the player is given an open world and a large degree of freedom with how to spend their time. Most days will be comprised of an Afternoon and Night time slot, with each having a handful of things that can only be done during that time.

In Persona, this ticking clock goes hand in hand with the high school simulation aspects. You go to class, get a part-time job, court a half dozen girls, and so on. But the main character of Metaphor is on a very different journey across a very different world. Metaphor eats up those precious deadlines with mechanics like travel time. Heading out to a dungeon or a new town might take multiple days, during which the party is cooped up in their vehicle with little to do except talk, cook, and work on their social stats.

Social Links, Confidants, or whatever you want to call them also make a return with very little change. Each party member and a number of other folks around the world have a little 8-part character arc where they bond with the player and unlock a number of gameplay-altering abilities along the way.

Peak character action. Even if a good third of the enemy types annoy the ♥♥♥♥ out of me, that only helps me get immersed because Bayonetta's just as annoyed as me that she has to kill them.

A great movie-length horror story, paired with an art style that makes the most of the inherent creepiness of late 90s 3D graphics.

This game was kind of a wild card on release, coming from an unknown Chinese studio with a well-reported big budget. I, like most others, figured I'd bide my time and see if it panned out on release. What we ended up getting is a surprising hit.

Pros:
* Rides the line between Souls-lite and Spectacle Fighter with its flashiness and cooldown abilities.
* Gracefully adapts Journey to the West to the archetypal Souls game plot.
* Absolutely gorgeous.
* Tons and tons and tons of interesting bosses.
* Offers enough abilities to allow for varied combat.

Cons:
* Cliffs aren't dangerous... until they are. The game usually doesn't let you fall off a cliff by any means, but on occasion there are deadly falls despite that.
* Very demanding on my high-ish end hardware (see my profile for specs). Frequently dips from 60s to the 40s. Without DLSS I'd probably be screwed.

This game is absolutely frying my eyeballs with all the glitch effects and chromatic aberration it uses in every single cutscene. But it's still a great time, and a worthy sequel to the original games in spite of lacking that distinct Remedy touch (and the comic book sequences).

Camina Drummer was one of my favorite characters on The Expanse, and if you liked her too you ought to consider this. But like most Telltale games, it's not much of a game and choices don't really feel that important. Think of this more like a nice-looking CGI miniseries about Drummer. From that perspective, it's pretty good.

I'm two episodes in with three (and the Archangel minisode) to go. I'll update this review if my thoughts change at all - right now the story feels very much like the kind of B-plot Camina Drummer always got on the later seasons of the show.

MGS2 plays much like MGS1 with a few new tricks up its sleeve, such as holdups and first-person aiming. Similarly, the story unfolds in an intentionally very similar way to MGS1... at first. As it progresses, this game turns into a beautiful, unhinged, Kojima-tastic commentary on what it means to make a blockbuster sequel.

MGS2 also contains some of the series's most prescient social commentary, touching on subjects like the information age's ability to divide people into echo chambers and propagandize them. Considering how this game came out in 2001, when the internet was an entirely different ballgame and most people's idea of socializing online was using an instant messenger, it's kind of shocking how much of it has aged well in an era of social networks and ChatGPT. On that note, this game also kind of predicted 9/11 to the point that when 9/11 happened two months before its release, Kojima Productions had to scramble to remove the most egregious similarities.

Also, I still can't believe some people hate on this game over Raiden. He's no Solid Snake but his arc across 2/4/Rising is honestly pretty good. And the surprise twist that you play as him for most of the game instead of Snake happened almost quarter century ago, so it's whatever.

the poor man's MGSV (but with co-op)