Pretty fun. Doesn't do anything especially amazing but I had a good time. Destroying structures and stuff was fun to do in between missions as well. My only real complaint is that there's way too many structures, and that 90% of the cutscenes end suddenly.

Personally I did not like Ghost of Tsushima at all. During maybe 10–20% of my playtime, I had a decent time and was looking forward to seeing what more there was to offer, but I just found nothing. The open world feels exactly like a Ubisoft game, with an absurd amount of POIs that you don’t have to complete but will try to for maybe the first half of the game, before realizing it’s all pointless. Camps are littered everywhere and are somewhat fun to engage with purely for the bit of combat they offer, but there are so many of them that they all start blending together and just get dull. The open world is beautiful though, for the most part, so I did appreciate that aspect.

The mission design is too generic and repeats itself way too often. I got annoyed by this maybe three hours in and it never got any better. It basically boils down to: arrive at the mission area, find someone to talk to, usually search an area or follow a trail, fight, talk again, and that’s it. Sometimes it dares to deviate from this incredibly experimental structure, but never enough to matter. I wouldn’t have minded it as much if it were only the side missions, but the main missions use the same formula. And those side missions are so barebones and empty, with maybe 5% worth doing at all, that I genuinely don’t understand why they were included. It’s all quantity over quality.

The dialogue is horrible as well. Most games already suffer from conversations feeling like characters are taking turns waiting for their cue, one short line at a time. But here it feels so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ artificial. Add to that that 99% of the dialogue sounds like it was written by a chatbot that’s never heard real people speak, and the fact that you can’t skip it, and it becomes a chore every time anyone opens their mouth.

The combat is the only somewhat enjoyable part of this game for me, but you can master it after just five hours or less, and that’s not enough to carry it until the end. It feels like a Sekiro-like with extra gadgets tacked on to make it easier, combined with a basic stealth system that trivializes everything. It got boring fast.

I could go on about things I didn’t like, such as the cheap-looking cutscenes, especially the awkward transitions, or the main story that could have been interesting but never digs into anything or takes risks. But I think that gets the point across.

It’s a great game overall. There are more ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ moments than in Hollow Knight, but I didn’t mind them much. Maybe that’s thanks to the patches, but it never felt as difficult as people make it out to be.

What’s driving me insane, though, is getting to act 3. It’s a pile of tedious errands that feel like a complete waste of time. If they actually wanted people to reach it, you wouldn’t need ten guides just to figure out how. I’ve beaten the final boss six times now, hoping I finally did enough, but no luck. I’m pretty sure there’s only one thing left, but I’m done. I’m not enjoying it anymore, and honestly, I doubt I’ll enjoy act 3 after all this.

Still, the first and second acts are great, and I’d definitely recommend it if you liked Hollow Knight.

Such a strange little game. I didn’t enjoy the gameplay all that much, but I’d still recommend it for how uniquely absurd the world is and how unusual the combat feels.

I came for an enjoyable boomer shooter, but I stayed because it turned out even better than expected and actually has an interesting Lovecraftian story.

Gameplay-wise it’s ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amazing. I played on Brutal, which hit the perfect balance for me. I tried the difficulty above that for a bit, but it was just too unforgiving and frustrating. The variety is great overall, with more than enough enemy types and weapons. Each of the three acts feels distinct with its own soundtrack, enemy lineup, level design, and tone, so it never gets repetitive. The last act in particular is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good. You can tell they just went balls to the wall with how creative they could get.

The story works well too. It starts out silly and lighthearted but gradually shifts into something more existential with a genuinely good attempt at Lovecraftian horror.

Visually it looks nice. I’m not a big fan of the art style, but it never really bothered me. The soundtrack is fantastic, and I was excited to play my first game with Geoffplaysguitar on the composer list.

Pretty fun

Pretty good overall. I still didn’t enjoy the gameplay all that much while I was playing it, but once I moved on to MGS4 I actually missed the more open-ended levels where stealth felt almost required. The story also has less melodrama. Overall, very good.

Pretty good overall. I couldn’t stand the controls, so I dropped the difficulty to very easy just to focus on the story. There’s a bit too much yapping at times, especially the melodramatic moments that drag on longer than they should. Aside from that, it’s great.

Very tough game to rate yes or no for me. I really liked the first one when it came out almost ten years ago and hoped for a similar experience. In a way I did get that, but maybe I’ve just become more critical over time, because the things that used to slide by now annoyed me enough that I didn’t enjoy this nearly as much as the original.

It took about fifteen hours before it finally started to feel fun and interesting, and even then that didn’t last long. Looking back, I can honestly say I only enjoyed maybe thirty percent of the whole game, and that’s not enough for me to recommend it.

The biggest problem is the story. I couldn’t care less about the premise, the setting, or the characters. Even calling them characters feels exaggerated. I don’t want to sound rude to the writers, but it genuinely feels like they asked an AI to generate a sequel to the first game and slapped a sea-planet theme on it. There’s never any real build-up, no compelling conflicts, nothing memorable. It’s all just background noise.

The core gameplay is mostly the same as the first, which is fine, though it only started to click for me after those fifteen hours once there were enough mechanics to make me think tactically. The missions constantly revolve around alarms, and while maybe the first game had more of these than I remember, here it felt like the norm.

The new overworld feature with the submarine is the main change to the gameplay, but it quickly became tedious. Exploring, running into enemy ships, collecting loot, finding secrets, after only a few hours it felt like doing chores, and by the final zone I was so bored that I just dropped the naval difficulty to minimum.

Visually, the game looks good. That’s really all I can say about it.

The audio is fine overall, nothing great or horrible, except for the tavern songs. These are so ♥♥♥♥ that I can’t believe they weren’t AI-generated. The writing, the vocals, the instrumentals, the progression, everything about them is so flat and repetitive that I ended up turning all the music off completely. Ironically, that made the game more enjoyable, since taverns became less grating.

In the end, I think the game is fine for what it is, and I don’t feel too burned because I got it cheap in a bundle. But I don’t think it’s worth anything close to full price, at least not for me. If you loved the first game, you might like this one too, but for me it was the opposite.

If I had to choose whether to recommend this game to my past self before playing it, I would say no, so I’m going to press that here as well. There’s nothing I’d call a major flaw, but I just didn’t enjoy it compared to other CRPGs I’ve played, even though I’m not the biggest fan of the subgenre to begin with.

The story feels very Baldur’s Gate–like, with Act 1 set in the woods and smaller townships, and Act 2 shifting to a larger capital city. It’s almost like a modern retelling of BG1. The downside is that it dumps a lot of lore on you early and often, which overwhelmed be pretty quickly. Personally, I only found the first act somewhat engaging, while the later parts never managed to pull me in. Most of the side quests are simple, one-and-done tasks with very little depth or memorable writing.

I did like having my own keep, which gave a sense of progression outside the main quest. The AI companion system is fairly simple, but it’s still more useful than having none at all. I’m not the biggest fan of CRPG combat in general, and this didn’t change my mind, but I could still play through on Normal without too much difficulty. One minor annoyance is that it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference between actual NPCs and the avatars of campaign backers, which was annoying to accidentally interact with one of them or potentially miss a side quest.

The audio is a bit mixed. The Caed Nua theme sounds very similar to The Shire from The Fellowship of the Ring. While that’s one of my favorite pieces of music ever, it also feels a bit cheap to lift it so blatantly. There are also moments where parts of a conversation are voiced, but others are not, even within the same dialogue exchange. I assume this was a budget decision rather than an oversight, so I don’t hold it against the game too much.

I ran into a few bugs, though nothing major. A couple of reloads here and there fixed them.

Overall, this isn’t a bad game at all, but it never did anything for me. If you’re into CRPGs, you might get a lot more out of it, but for me it was a middling experience I wouldn’t revisit.