Although I would count both Tales from the Borderlands and The Wolf Among Us among my favourite character-driven experiences in videogames, I was admittedly quite hesitant when Dispatch was announced, despite being made by some of the former TellTale staff: A “superhero workplace comedy” just sounds like an odd choice. Considering the ongoing onslaught of superhero-themed multimedia content in the past few years, which has left me feeling oversaturated with the genre, I decided to only give the game a try once all story episodes had been released. Once I did give the game a chance, however, I was taken by surprise: Not only did I end up becoming heavily invested in the game’s cast but was also overjoyed that Dispatch avoided many of the superhero cliches I expected it to have.

Even from the first episode, it’s clear what the biggest draw of the game is – the characters. Despite the fairly generic superhero-supervillain setting that Dispatch sets up but doesn’t spend much time on, the overall story remains a joy to follow thanks to the excellent, eccentric characters you get to meet. Their conflicting personalities, the struggles they’re dealing with, and the resulting group dynamics are not only mature and exceptionally well-written but also accompanied by beautiful character designs and a stellar voice cast. Making decisions affecting the team as a whole became genuinely conflicting for me as the player, since I desperately wanted the best for the characters that steadily continued to grow on me.

A big albeit pleasant surprise for me was the protagonist, Robert, who, despite being controlled by the player's decisions, became a genuinely interesting and relatable character in his own right, rather than just a generic self-insert character for the player. With his own motivations, experiences and surprisingly sarcastic attitude, it felt less like I was overtaking his decisions and more like I was nudging him in the direction I deemed to be the best. While this meant that I wasn’t always in full control over what Robert would actually do next, I never experienced a situation throughout my playthrough where my chosen decision and the resulting actions diverged substantially.

The downside to having an excellent but huge cast of characters is that it can be quite tricky to give everyone the time in the spotlight they deserve. This is amplified by the comparatively small playtime of Dispatch, which – while mostly paced quite well (apart from a specific minigame I’ll talk about in a minute) – spends considerably more time on certain characters than others. The imbalance is quite noticeable when it comes to the two romance options in the game, the first of which is pushed onto the player quite early on while the second one takes a while to get going. While it’s understandable that these and certain others characters are prioritised during the story, I feel like the rest of the cast could’ve benefitted from additional scenes as well – they all seem like they got quite the story to tell, after all!

While I could go on praising the story and presentation of Dispatch, I also need to talk about the gameplay. As with previous Telltale titles, this type of episodic, story-driven game tends to prioritise an interactive movie experience: This means that players can only make decisions during cutscenes and are otherwise reduced to performing quick-time events or walking around small locations and pressing the interact button occasionally.

In the case of Dispatch, while much of the game is still made up out of pre-rendered cutscenes with occasional decisions to make, there’s actually a pretty decent minigame to participate in – the actual dispatching of heroes. While not the most complex, I enjoyed strategically sending out my team to deal with various threats as well as listening to the ensuing banter. Unfortunately, the dispatching is strictly tied to the story episodes, with no endless mode or other modifiers to enjoy the minigame on its own.

The other gameplay aspect Dispatch offers is a hacking minigame, something many videogames have featured by now, with varying degrees of success. Unfortunately, I found the version featured in Dispatch to be one of the less-inspired ones, featuring simple riddles involving a cube moving across a small grid, which go on for too long. Compared to the dispatching minigame, which integrates itself into the story quite naturally, the hacking feels more forced and frankly even like filler content.

Lastly, when starting Dispatch for the first time, you’re also given the option to turn on quicktime-events during the pre-rendered cutscenes. Having played through the game with activated quicktime-events however, would strongly recommend turning them off: Not only are they quite distracting even though they appear rarely but they’re also completely superfluous: Failing quicktime-events only results in a slightly different animation that takes no more than a few seconds and has no bearing on the overall action. They’re only there to simulate more interactivity while in fact doing almost nothing, so feel free to enjoy a more cinematic experience without them.

Concluding, Dispatch is an excellent choice for players who love character-driven stories, a strong presentation and don’t mind gameplay taking on a supporting role. It’s been a while since I encountered a character cast as enjoyable to watch and I can’t wait for a second season to see them develop even further!

Despite some room for improvements in terms of overall gameplay, I had a great time with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, as I detailed in my review. As such, I was eager to play the only DLC on offer and – considering its price tag of 19,99€, almost 30% of the base game price - expected a new small adventure that’d last me a couple of hours. However, after completing the DLC’s story in just around four hours (on par with the HowLongToBeat times[howlongtobeat.com]), I was left with more mixed feelings.

First of all, essentially making the DLC a side-story of the first big location in the game is an unfortunate choice – it means we’re missing out on discovering an entirely new place set in a yet-to-be-shown country. While the game is technically switching states, from the Vatican to Rome, their closeness leads to almost no changes in terms of visuals (and potentially gameplay mechanics). This is also amplified by most of the DLC taking place underground for some reason, which only offers a boring mix of narrow corridors, canalisation tunnels and slightly larger caves to explore. Considering how The Great Circle featured arid deserts, damp jungles and snowy mountains among other locations, spending much of the DLC inside a mix of small rooms with almost no interesting visual features is a missed opportunity.

Another consequence of placing the DLC so early in the base game’s story is that it limits what the new plot can achieve by establishing a connection between them. By design, the DLC’s plot cannot be anything more than a side story without any lasting consequences, since the base game dictates how Indy’s adventure continues and what information he has up to this point. And indeed, The Order of Giants feels less than a standalone adventure than a somewhat superfluous extended edition of Indy’s dealings in the Vatican. It baffles me that MachineGames decided to go down this route, considering the base game’s plot never felt incomplete in any way – and let’s not forget how easy it would’ve been to string up a standalone adventure for Indy as well, due to the narrative openness of the Indiana Jones franchise. Lastly, if a story connection to the base game was desired, why not pick up on the secret ending of the base game, which was open enough to warrant a continuation?

That said, while I’ve laid down my reasons why I’m disappointed with the story direction of the DLC, I wouldn’t go as far as labelling the plot itself as completely uninteresting – the overall presentation and voice work is still really good and while the plot and new characters undergo predictable developments, it’s more of an slightly below average, small-scale Indiana Jones story that feels a lot like filler material. While I won’t remember much of it in a few days, it never missed the mark completely either.

In terms of gameplay, The Order of Giants is the type of DLC that offers more of what the base game entailed, without really switching things up. There’s a bigger emphasis on puzzle solving but none of them really stood out to me, as they continue to be entertaining but pretty straightforward to solve as well. Combat remains the same as well, with the two new abilities to obtain through adventure books doing pretty much nothing to change things up. While the DLC does introduce new enemies, they’re essentially just like the ones you encounter in the Vatican with a new set of clothes – another missed opportunity.

Lastly, The Order of Giants also features a special combat encounter that briefly got my hopes up but – just like the rest of the DLC – turned out to be pretty average, with an unremarkable way of finishing the fight. It seems like MachineGames was entirely averse from experimenting with the existing gameplay systems or adding something on top of them for this DLC, which is a shame as this would’ve been a great opportunity to do so. While I don’t expect DLC expansions to not rely on existing designs from the base game at all, I feel like The Order of Giants was intended to be made as cost-effective to create as possible, adding only what’s absolutely necessary in order to keep up the appearance of new content – which feels at odds with its price tag .

Overall, The Order of Giants is best described as an average DLC of the type that simply adds more of what the base game already offers, without any big surprises or new gameplay features. It’s enjoyable for those who loved Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and just want a slightly extended version of the game but doesn’t provide much more than that. If I could give it a verdict between a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, that’d be my choice – but having to chose between the two, I went for the “not recommended” variant due to it’s high asking price.

Note: The game was 100%ed on PS5 in 30h and shortly tested on the SteamDeck

If I were asked to name my favourite movies, an Indiana Jones one would definitely be among them – though I’d have a hard time choosing between Raiders of the Lost Ark or Last Crusade. As such, I was always disappointed that the licensed videogames never managed to stick out, given the storytelling potential of the IP (although Fate of Atlantis does deserve an honourable mention). With the underwhelming movies following the original Indiana Jones trilogy as well as the lack of new related video games (the last non-mobile one being 2009’s Staff of Kings), I thought the chance of a great Indiana Jones video game had truly passed – until The Great Circle happened. While the game doesn’t manage to hit all the spots, as I’ll point out later in this review, it’s easily one of the best games I’ve played this year and a dream come true for any Indiana Jones fan like myself.

When The Great Circle was initially announced, I was both excited and worried at the same time: On the one hand, MachineGames was the developer, which was promising given their previous experience with anti-fascist heroes like B.J. Blazkowicz of Wolfenstein fame. However, The Great Circle was supposed to be a first-person adventure, which, while interesting, was far from a safe choice, considering how well the Uncharted third-person formula had worked for these types of stories before. Having played and 100%ed The Great Circle though, I can only agree with the design choice taken here: Experiencing the deteriorating crypts, damp tombs and hidden sacred sites through the eyes of Indy himself is incredibly immersive and suits his exploration-focused adventuring style better than that of his more action-oriented colleague, Nathan Drake. The Great Circle isn’t about bombastic set-pieces, although they do exist, but about carefully exploring a variety of locations and solving creative puzzles. This naturally leads to the (revisitable) locations offering different ways for the player to engage with.

Broadly speaking, The Great Circle offers a mix of smaller, more linear levels, which are mostly visited for the main story, and larger, more open maps, which offer players a lot more optional side content. This comes either in the form of side-quests, which are seamlessly integrated in the main story and expand upon certain plot points in a meaningful way without feeling tacked-on, or many collectables, ranging from improvements for the protagonist (ability upgrades, health/endurance increases, disguises) to flavour items (notes, photos, artefacts). While the main story of The Great Circle can be completed in [/url]around 16 hours[/url], my 100% playthrough took around twice as long – mainly due to the large number of less important collectables (e.g. 497 journal notes) spread across all locations to discover.

Having compared my experience of 100%ing completing the game with that of just playing through its story and side quests, I’ve come to the conclusion that The Great Circle could’ve benefitted from a “less is more” approach when it comes to the side content – which is mainly responsible for why the game falls just short of being “truly exceptional” for me. When it comes to collectables in video games, ideally, they’re both fun to discover and offer meaningful rewards for obtaining them. In the case of The Great Circle, many collectables are just there for flavour (e.g. recipes that can be found even if there’s no way to use them in the game) and are simply scattered across the maps, with no puzzles or other obstacles to overcome – which means obtaining them is simply a matter of walking down every corridor and hoping you don’t miss one; otherwise you’ll need to backtrack later.

Considering that some of the side content is actually tied to solving optional puzzles or discovering hidden tombs – with the side-quests in particular even offering additional characters to meet and secrets to uncover – I would’ve preferred more of these involving activities and less of the scavenger hunt busy work. This is also amplified by the lack of interesting means to travel, as you’re mostly on foot or sometimes on an underwhelming boat, which can get tedious during backtracking especially. Of course, if you’re just mostly focusing on the story and side quests – which I’d recommend unless you want all achievements – this becomes less of an issue, although you might want to grab some of the health and ability upgrades if you’re playing on harder difficulties like I did.

The core gameplay loop of The Great Circle consists out of solving different types of puzzles – from matching symbols to connecting pipes –, light platforming and defeating enemies. While I personally found the puzzles to be on the easier side, I enjoyed their variety and how well most of them fit into the world – such as unlocking a secret door by pulling ledgers inside a bookcase in the right order. The platforming on the other hand is a little too basic, even with the iconic whip involved: It’s mostly just some forced linear climbing, minor jumps and an occasional whip swing, all of which does fit the protagonist but isn’t that exciting in terms of gameplay.

The combat system on the other hand is a delight, both matching Indy’s fighting style and being a lot of fun. Despite The Great Circle being a first-person adventure, you’ll find yourself rarely using the couple of guns in the game: As firing one alerts all surrounding enemies, which now proceed to use their deadly guns as well, using stealth and melee attacks is usually the way to proceed. While stealth does consist of the basic first-person “crouch to be less spottable” approach as well as disguises, it’s coupled with a large variety of objects to use in melee combat, which not only feature different animations and properties, but can also be used to devastating effect once you’re detected. Thanks to combat options such as counterattacks, evading, using Indy’s whip to various effects and throwing weapons apart from downright smashing them into your opponent’s face, I found the brawls to be both extremely entertaining and cinematic at the same time. I do wish the boss battles during the story would be more interesting however, as they mostly boil down to “enemy with more health than usual”.

In the story department, The Great Circle is an outstanding success however – not only offering excellent cinematic presentation and authentic voice acting (at least in German), but also featuring a plot that feels incredibly faithful to the original Indiana Jones movie trilogy in terms of stakes and characters. Everything just feels right, from the visuals to the sound and music, even down to the sidekick characters being not that helpful more often than not. From punching fascists to uncovering ancient secrets, all while exploring locations all over the world, Indiana Jones fans and everyone who likes this kind of adventure story is in for a treat. While the final act could have been a little less predictable, I was fully immersed in the story events overall and longed for more once the credits started rolling.

Concluding, while the gameplay aspects of The Great Circle do leave room for improvement, it’s outstanding and immersive presentation, beautiful graphics and sound design as well as the incredible faithfulness to the IP make it a great first-person adventure and a must-play for every Indiana Jones fan.

Originally planned as DLC according to indie developer Team Cherry[www.teamcherry.com.au], Silksong was announced to be the second game of the studio in 2019. Soon afterwards, as development commenced, the studio went radio-silent for the most part – ironically resulting in only ever-increasing hype over the next years, caused by a dedicated fan community. After almost every game publisher online presentation was met with a live chat constantly asking for “Silksong when???”, the game finally released to high expectations – and now, having achieved 100% completion in roughly 57h of playtime, I can finally say: The wait has been worth it… as long as you are the type of player who enjoys videogames of higher difficulty and doesn’t mind the resulting occasional frustrations in the long run.

Before diving into the questions of the game’s difficulty however, which has been increasingly dominating Silksong discourse in the past two weeks, I want to mention other aspects with an impact on enjoyment first, as they require less room to talk about.

Unsurprisingly for those who’ve played Hollow Knight, it’s sequel is once again a hand-painted delight to look at, coupled with smooth animations and a fitting soundtrack by the returning Christopher Larkin. From the get-go, the expansive kingdom of Pharloom draws you back into the mysterious world of bugs and silk and almost immediately allows the player to explore every nook and cranny, without forcing them to sit through much of a limiting tutorial.

While protagonist Hornet plays different from the Knight of the previous game, being more agile and air-focused, I found her movement to be snappy and responsive – although the diagonal down slash of her initial combat style took some getting used to, especially during platforming. Thankfully, the game features different combat styles to unlock, with the “Reaper” offering heavy attacks (and a “proper” down slash) quickly becoming my favourite.

My personal highlight of Silksong would easily by the exploration, however – Pharloom offers a large variety of different biomes to traverse, even offering alternative paths to reach certain main story objectives. I particularly enjoyed the first half of the game, when the map was only partially filled and I never knew where a new route would take me. While exploring every nook and cranny wielded rewards of varying usefulness – some locations granted me game-changing abilities or upgrades while others only included a bit of in-game currency – slowly uncovering the interconnected areas was the best time I had with the game.

At this point, I have to talk about the difficulty of Silksong however – which can easily be considered the most divisive of its aspects right now. And there’s a good reason for that: Unless you resort to modding the game on PC, Silksong offers players no way to adjust the difficulty through its settings, e.g. by manually reducing the damage of enemies or changing the game speed to allow for easier platforming. As such, all players are presented with the same challenges – which, depending on their design, may not fit their varying preferences.

Now, as a Metroidvania with Soulslike influences, Silksong offers many gameplay aspects with unique challenges – there’s the combat of course, ranging from normal enemy encounters in the wild, fights against multiple enemies in gauntlets – or boss fights, of which over 40 (!) are in the game. There’s platforming, with late-game areas usually requiring you to chain most of your movement abilities together to make it through their dangerous environments. Or there are the various side quests (“wishes”) that require you to complete certain tasks – although most of them are unfortunately some kind of fetch quest, others might require you to complete certain minigames in order to progress. Personally, it was the combat that ended up detrimental to my enjoyment at times.

Many of contributing factors to the combat challenges have been discussed already, like the overtuned environmental damage (which was nerfed during the game’s first patch), bosses dealing contact damage even when they’re staggered, unnecessarily long boss runbacks upon death - or the need to farm currencies in order to use your tools, as they’re not handed out as rewards for beating a boss anymore.

What I feel that Silksong as a Metroidvania is lacking the most however, is a way to make boss fights easier by spending more time exploring. While Silksong does offer health and damage upgrades obtaining through optional exploration for example, they’re few in number and take a long time to obtain. Other games in the genre usually offer a lot more upgrades, which allow the player to be significantly more powerful than bosses if they want to – allowing players to challenge bosses whenever they feel they’re sufficiently equipped. Another example would be Dark Souls, famous for its difficulty level, especially when it comes to boss fights: Despite the lack of difficulty adjustment options in the settings, these games allowed the players to grind in order to upgrade their stats/equipment if they wished to – meaning they could “brute-force” bosses through other means if they didn’t find enjoyment in learning attack patterns through constant trial-and-error approaches.

Especially for a Metroidvania title, I expected Silksong to offer more options for the player to upgrade their base stats like health, mana, damage, etc. – while there are plenty to find on paper, I was surprised by how challenging boss encounters in particular could be during the endgame in particular, even when Hornet was maxxed out in terms of upgrades. While I did manage to 100% and beat Silksong, I encountered quite a few encounters that were more frustrating than fun – and this is coming from someone with lots of experience with both Metroidvania and Soulslike games. This is not to say I didn’t enjoy most of the boss encounters in Silksong, especially the First Sinner – but I prefer having options to shape them to my liking.

As such, despite the other qualities of Silksong, I would only recommend the game as long as you are sure that you can enjoy the challenge - even when the only option left is constantly throwing yourself at a boss (& the runback on death) until you beat it. If you prefer Metroidvania games where exploring can result in your character even ending up overpowered instead - Silksong might not be a good choice for you.

Despite being released in 1997, the original Final Fantasy VII remains one of the most influential and popular JRPGs to this day, with a dedicated fan-following and various multimedia spin-offs such as Crisis Core. While the original game still holds up, thanks to mods, there’s no denying that it shows its age in multiple ways, not only in terms of graphics but gameplay systems as well. Consequently, the announcement of a remake at E3 2015, was met with an overwhelmingly positive reception.

Jumping forward a few years, after the game called Final Fantasy VII Remake first released on PlayStation 4 in 2020, it also made its way to Steam in 2021, although only as the DLC-complete version called Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. However, although both game titles imply that Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade includes the entire 1997 game brought up to modern standards, the truth is that this “remake” only covers the first 7-8h of the original Final Fantasy VII game. Thankfully, this fact continues to be highlighted by multiple Steam reviews, but it can’t be emphasised enough: After all, there’s no other game is misleadingly titled “remake” while only featuring the first portion of the original game.

Adding to this “remake” confusion, some of the new story elements introduced in Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade only serve to expand upon the original plot, while others deliberately deviate from the 1997 game. I’ll refrain from spoilers here, but it’s fair to say that these deviations are clearly intended for players who are familiar with the original Final Fantasy VII and turn Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade into something other than just a modernised version of the cult classic JRPG. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is unplayable without having experienced the 1997 game first, but being familiar with the original plot does elevate the experience by a significant margin in my opinion.

With these warnings out of the way, having played the game twice – once during its release on PlayStation 4 in 2020, now on PC - let’s talk about what the game does right and where’s still room left for improvement.

Right away, from the minute the game starts, the most obvious highlight would be its improved presentation. With modern graphics, a beautiful soundtrack reminiscent of the original and great voice acting, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is joy to look at and listen to. It’s amazing to think that even Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, the CGI-rendered movie from 2005, isn’t even close to looking as good as this PC version does.

On the other hand, it has to be noted that Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is only able to achieve its graphical fidelity by being a semi-linear game that’s mostly corridors or small, interconnected areas. In that sense, it feels very similar to the divisive Final Fantasy XIII, which also managed to look great for its time but paid the price by being mostly linear.

Then again, the revamped combat system that Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade offers is very fun to play around with: While also offering a “classic” mode for those who prefer a turn-based experience, the intended style features real-time combat, with the option to issue commands to your party members if they’re ready. To take things up a notch, you can also take control of your other active party members at any time during combat, meaning you can seamlessly switch from Tifa launching enemies into the air with her firsts to Barret shooting them with his gun arm from afar. While I did love how different each character plays like, it’s noticeable how the game constantly makes up excuses to restrict the party size to a maximum number of three, which is a shame considering the combinations possible otherwise. For fans of customisation, a Materia system is in place, which allows you to equip all party members with different abilities, spells and stat boosts. However, while the weapon selection is fine and even offers specific weapon skill trees, I feel like the remaining equipment and overall Materia options are lacking in variety and more interesting combinations.

Although Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is mostly main story focused, a few minigames and side quests serve as optional content to offer more variety. While the original 1997 game also featured both later on, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade offers entirely new optional content to enjoy – or not, as the side quests in particular can be pretty barebones experiences such as “please walk here and kill these enemies, thanks!”. It also doesn’t help that even if you’re just focusing on playing through the story missions, the game can feel really padded, with lots of chapters included that are basically filler content: On occasion, you spend hours just slowly traversing an area and fighting monsters for no real reason except the game likely needing to extend its runtime.

In terms of story, leaving behind the aforementioned question of whether Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade was only made for players familiar with the original or not, the game does a great job at introducing both its characters and setting. While the pacing can suffer at times as noted above, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade manages to expand upon both the city of Midgar and previously minor characters in particular, offering new insights into the non-main cast members of Avalanche for example. Especially long-term fans of the Final Fantasy VII-universe are going to be delighted by the amount of new information present here.

To sum it up, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is going to be a delight for those who already fell in love with the original, offering an expanded look at Midgar and its citizens, an overall gorgeous presentation and a fun combat system with the potential of being even better in the sequels. While some of the optional content as well as the pacing are in need of improvement, there’s a great basis for the remake sequels to build on here.

Apart from the main game, this DLC-complete version of the game includes episode Intergrade, an additional two-chapter story centred on Yuffie, who only appeared much later in the original game. However, just as the name implies, this is essentially a side-story built on slight variations of the gameplay from the main game, even partially recycling locations. If you loved the main game and don’t mind a more immature protagonist due to her age, you’re likely to have an about equally good time, although the story might feel more anime-like overall, especially in regard to the antagonists. However, if you hoped for a more of a departure from the previous offerings, you’re unfortunately out of luck, even if a ninja is the protagonist here.

It takes only a few minutes of playing Thank Goodness You’re Here!, developed by the two-person (!) studio Coal Supper, to realise just how much love went into creating this satirist take on British town-life: The charming caricatures that are representing common townspeople, the absurd events highlighting the ridiculousness of everyday life and, of course, accents that requires subtitles if you’re not familiar with this part of the world. This is the type of humour that can only be made by people all too familiar with the matter they’re depicting.

Throughout the 2-3h long adventure, the protagonist – a salesman asked to meet the mayor of the fictional English town of Barnsworth - ends up helping the eccentric local villagers with their various problems, which range from not being able to make fish & chips to getting their hand stuck in the gully when trying to grab a pence piece. In terms of gameplay, this translates to some light puzzle solving, as the all the protagonist can do is move around, jump and slap things/people.

Unsurprisingly for this type of game then, the humour takes front and centre. While the gameplay aspects aren’t completely gone and there are even achievements for going out of your way to perform certain actions, your enjoyment of the game depends almost entirely on how much you enjoy the increasingly absurd jokes that make up the quite linear story: The game’s puzzles, if stripped of their unique presentation, are simply too shallow to entertain on their own.

As such, Thank Goodness You’re Here! is the type of game where I heavily recommend watching about 10-15 minutes of gameplay before making a decision on purchasing the game. As humour is extremely subjective, reviews can’t translate well whether you’ll like the game or not if it’s mostly a constant stream of interactive jokes. In my case, I bought the game based on one particular scene involving a pair of lowers – only to find out that the rest of the game was made up of more absurdist humour, which didn’t match my personal taste. Subsequently, while I still finished Thank Goodness You’re Here! due to its short length, I didn’t really enjoy my time with the game.

However, I realise that this is simply a matter of personal preference in terms of humour, which is why I’m still recommending this game after all: Even if you really should make sure that you’re part of the target audience before playing, which I unfortunately didn’t, the labour of love that went into creating Thank Goodness You’re Here! should be acknowledged.

If I had to summarise Expedition 33 in one word, I’d call it “refreshing”. Not only does the game feature one of the best and innovative takes on a turn-based combat system I’ve ever had the pleasure to experience but it also offers just the right amount of content, surprises and sheer artistic creativity to keep me hooked right until the end of the game. After 100%ing the game in terms of achievements after near 50h of playtime, I’m pleased to say that developer Sandfall Interactive blew it out of the park with their first (!) game. While I wouldn’t call the game flawless, as I’ll discuss later in this review, it’s criticism on a very high-level: Expedition 33 is one of the few gems that leave me wanting for more even after experiencing everything the game has to offer.

To start off, while Expedition 33 might be an AA game, fitting in the niche between smaller indie games and big AAA blockbusters, you wouldn’t know apart from a few janky animations and moderate asset-reuse: The gorgeous visual direction of the game falls nothing short of AAA games and immediately brings the unique setting to life, while the 8 hours (!) of original soundtrack are packed with fantastic songs that just kept getting stuck in my head – making me hum along even after closing the game.

While Expedition 33 is a French production and thus can’t be called a Japanese RPG, it sure feels like one, as I was constantly reminded of Final Fantasy X while playing it (one of my favourite Final Fantasy titles), featuring similar story themes, a unique fantasy world shaped by death as well as some truly annoying minigames (looking at you, raft volley). In fact, I’d even go as far and say that Expedition 33 is what Final Fantasy XVI probably should’ve been: An astonishingly creative, modernising take on classic JRPG systems.

Take the overworld, for example. Instead of a simple menu to select locations to travel to, in Expedition 33 it’s actually fully realised in 3D at a miniature scale – which means it’s basically a giant level for the player to explore, with lots of optional content hidden away, from dungeons to merchants or even superbosses. Or the trading system, which only allows you to purchase the highest quality goods from a merchant if you best them in 1v1-combat first!

The list goes on but due to limited review space, I’ll immediately jump to the gameplay highlight of Expedition 33, which would be its battle-system. While turn-based games have had a hard time as of late - apart from the ever-lasting Pokémon games or occasional Octopath Traveller II – due to the rise of action-RPGs, Expedition 33 manages to smartly combine the best of both worlds: While the tactical-strategy of turn-based games remains fully intact, added real time actions such as parrying or dodging enemy attacks to escape incoming damage keep the player involved at all times, not only when going through battle menus.

But the smart design choices don’t just stop there, as the game also features amazing systems to customise your party member builds as well as overall strategy: From weapons that all feature unique effects depending on their level to appropriately big skill trees and especially the Picto/Lumina system that allows you to get creative with stat boosts and numerous passive effects – while fully engaging with all these systems may not be required to beat the story even on the intended “Expeditioner” difficulty (especially if you’re doing great at dodging/parrying), it sure is lots of fun to create a strategy that even manages to melt the most powerful enemies in one turn. Additionally, as each party member comes with their own unique playstyle, forming various party compositions noticeably changes what the party does!

Tying it all together is a plot that already starts out strong due to the unique and intriguing setting of Expedition 33 but gets even more captivating throughout the game thanks to great character writing and story developments that strike a nice balance between being surprising while simultaneously never really feeling out of place. But what I was most amazed by is the overall atmosphere of Expedition 33, an intense and unique melancholy that’s felt throughout its entire world, strengthened through the visual and auditive presentation of the game. I always have a soft spot for videogame worlds that are perfectly crafted to the point where even the locations themselves manage to evoke emotions (think Dark Souls, Dishonoured, Half-Life 2, etc.) and this one such case.

While I could definitely go on praising many different parts of Expedition 33, due to the aforementioned limited space, I do want to spend the rest of the review talking about some parts that I didn’t enjoy as much.

For one, the map systems or rather lack thereof in Expedition 33 is a bummer. Only the overworld features a map and not only does it not feature any kind of marker or notes system to remind yourself of locations to visit later, e.g. because they’re high-level areas, but it also doesn’t show the names of individual areas if you zoom out. And while the dungeons may feature a somewhat boring level design, being mostly hallway labyrinths, fully exploring them can be a bit annoying without a map at all, as many of the hallways tend to look quite similar.

Speaking of looking similar, while I don’t mind Expedition 33 reusing many of it’s assets due to its limited budget, making one story dungeon consist entirely out of previously visited areas is a bit much, especially considering that it’s quite a lengthy one.

My last criticisms mostly concerns the endgame of Expedition 33. As the game opens up considerably before the final story parts, allowing you to engage with a lot of optional, high-level content, it unfortunately lacks proper guidance on when to tackle which of these new challenges. The game only features an abstract “danger!” warning on areas deemed too tough for your party – probably by comparing the party’s level – but it’s basically useless. For one, enemies in the open world – including superbosses – don’t feature a similar warning, which means you will only find out if you’re at the intended level range by engaging them. And second, the “danger!” warning doesn’t tell the player if they’re just below the intended level range or quite far away – which again leads to a lot of useless fights trying to figure out where I should and shouldn’t go at this point.

Still, overall Expedition 33 is the best turn-based game I’ve played in a long time. I was constantly impressed throughout the entire experience and even went straight for 100% achievement completion, which I rarely do these days. If you're even remotely interested in JRPGs, a story dripping with atmosphere and great character writing or want to experience a refreshingly modern take on a turn-based combat system - buy this game. I am absolutely looking forward to whatever Sandfall Interactive is up to next after this brilliant first showing!