Recent reviews by Ketsuban

Kannagi Usagi is a charming little game that will keep your attention for a couple hours, and I'm astonished they're not charging money for it. Comparisons to Sekiro might sell this game a little short since it just reproduces the basic combat loop of that game (timed blocks/parries, mikiri counters and posture breaks) but it does it well that you can't help but be impressed.

The elevator pitch for this game is "anime Dark Souls" but don't let that sell you short - this game is engaging and fun with a deep character customisation system. Blood codes function like classes in other games and give access to magic spells called gifts, and once you master gifts by defeating enemies with them equipped you can use them with other blood codes, which makes for a combinatoric explosion in the number of options.

If you're the kind of Dark Souls player who does SL1 club runs there's plenty of challenge available simply by dismissing your AI partner - that alone will make the game quite a bit more difficult.

Skyrim on its original release in 2011 was... fine. It was clearly rushed to completion to meet the 11.11.11 release date, with the civil war in particular turning out to be hacked together from a much more dynamic and ambitious design, and unfortunately has gone on to embody Shigeru Miyamoto's maxim that "a delayed game may be eventually good, a rushed game is forever bad". While the Special Edition in particular improved compatibility and moddability substantially by lifting the memory constraints of 32-bit programs, it has stagnated appreciably.

Bethesda's games tend to reach for the stars, and every game in the Elder Scrolls franchise has developed an "unofficial patch" covering the bugs they never fixed. Skyrim's unofficial patch existed from the game's inception, however, and despite multiple opportunities (the Legendary Edition rerelease, the Special Edition rerelease, several updates to the Special Edition to add functionality used by Creation Club mods, the substantial Anniversary Edition overhaul) Bethesda have at no point taken it and implemented the fixes upstream to render it unnecessary.

What makes this worse is the divisive nature of Skyrim's unofficial patch itself - while there are some low-hanging fruit it quickly becomes a case of reading tea-leaves to try and divine authorial intent. If Redbelly Mine is supposed to be an ebony mine (as stated in Elder Scrolls Online) why do all the people who work there talk about iron ore? Is the Necromage perk granting benefits to vampire player characters intentional? Was archery moved to the Thief Stone, contradicting the effect of the Oghma Infinium and imbalancing the three basic standing stone effects, on purpose? Bethesda have the unique ability to reveal the truth ex cathedra, but they don't.

As such, I don't think I can in good conscience recommend Skyrim—while it's not a bad game, it's a game that requires interacting with a rather polarised and vociferous modding community to get the best possible experience, and there's other games you could spend your time on which don't have that rider.

Elite: Dangerous isn't a bad game by any means, but I think it gets away with a lot because it has no real competition. If someone came out with a space MMO that worked like someone married EVE Online's economic model with Elite: Dangerous' first-person perspective, I'd be all over it. If someone released a single-player game that works like Elite: Dangerous but without the online connectivity, I'd probably be interested. In trying to be both at the same time, Elite: Dangerous ends up not really delivering on either to the best of its ability. Instead it delivers 75% of each - if you're interested in what it does, then you'll probably enjoy it enough to spend money on hardware to increase the immersion; if you're not, then you're likely to leave frustrated.