"London Bridge is falling down.. falling down.. my fair lady.."

The Letter is an episodic Visual Novel game, about a diverse group of people who are affected by a strange curse. The game is full of decisions the player can take to further the story, which immediatly reminds one of japanese horror classic "The Ring" - not at least because of the black haired ghost woman herself. Besides this resemblance though the story has enough novelty, and most important a good cast of characters as well as a gripping presentation and atmosphere to make you want to play it through.
The decisions mostly impact the relationships between the different characters, which in the end impacts the story as you play through it and finally will lead to different endings for each one, but also can lead to a quick and bloody ending sometimes. This also can happen through some Quick Time Events, which are thankfully optional to play through.

The characters are well enough defined and each of them is presented during their representative playthrough. Regarding the Presentation one can only say that the backgrounds are nicely drawn as are the different faces and poses of the characters, which helps transporting their moods, beside the well done voice actors, who are doing a good job bringing their alter egos to live. The atmospheric music rounds up an good impression and is especially during horror scenes very fitting (together with the grisly done ghost appearances).

Rounding this up "The Letter" has quite some achievements to get, the decisions really influence the game somewhat so more than one playthrough won´t get boring. With around 15 to 20 hours for the intial playthrough you get your moneys worth here for sure. Technically the game is well done too.. despite some missing audio at a few speeches and a few typos here and there.

Conclusio: I am someone who get´s bored easily, but the Letter had me gripped enough to make me invest quite some hours into it to get my first endings.. not exactly those i was aiming for either, but the characters are rich enough that initial likes or dislikes even change during the game. Also i very much enjoyed the thrill this game could provide, together with the voice actors, who really fit their characters (i especially liked the Police Chief/ Bartender speaker ;) ). So all in all i can really recommend The Letter to players who like a good VN or also Telltale Games.. or just a good ghost story.

Point Scale: 8/10

War.. War never changes..?

Ok, in fact the Total War series changed quite much, often to get better, sometimes for the worse (Empire and it´s clone armies, i´m looking at you). Anyway, arguably one of the biggest changes was CAs turn from historical to Fantasy warfare. By far not all fans of the series were happy about that (and some still are not, but hey, you can never please everyone). But they implemented it quite well.
The Heroes were born, for one - which can influence every Battle, quite more drastic than every General was ever able to. Also storyline elements from Warhammer lore were implemented - the Quests, which pepped up the dry warmongering days, quite a bit. Last but not least CA used the biggest advantage of the Fantasy world to it´s full extend - Variety!
If i mentioned Empire above, of course many of the historical games (Shogun, Three Kingdoms etc) had the problem of very similiar looking and feeling sides and armies. In Warhammer they lived the variety of the world to it´s fullest, so that you even have different UIs for each faction and quite different gameplay tweaks.
This way each playthrough with a different faction, feels quite different and offers you new possibilities and tactics. This is what they continued also in most of their DLCs and what needs to be appreciated to keep a game alive in over three years, with really new content, in nowadays fast living gaming society. At once i only could name Paradox, for a similiar longelivity of their products, by providing fresh content (without speaking about MMOs etc ofc).

Graphically and technically the game improved quite well too, as at the beginning there were quite some ugly animations and ofc bugs, which are - mostly - corrected by now, so that you can even have a nice multiplayer campaign by now.
The one and only drawback for me is CAs typical "endgame" modus operandi, in bringing some new and overkill enemy as "final boss", here the Chaos Invasions. I never liked this forced way, but this can very well be personal taste.

Conclusio: If you like Total War gameplay and or (Warhammer) Fantasy, you should give the game a try - and look forward to the third part, which hopefully will bring among other things the diplomacy improvements Three Kingdoms had.

Rating 9/10

ps: 100th Review - goes to a deserving game :)