In case you've been living under a rock these past 3 years, the best RPG ever came out in 2023. I'm sure everybody has already seen most of the cutscenes on YouTube as well as combat videos; I'll try to focus on my own special circumstances, the story and small flavorful moments.
Titus is back! Once again, this game does what few do: completely capture the atmosphere of what it is trying to do. You don't play as a space marine. You ARE a space marine. All the environs are perfect. You only ever talk about courage and honor. You never sneak: your boots thud on the ground with each step. Immersion: here I come!
I know it's an old one... but at the time my PC wasn't good enough for it. I played a lot of the original Total War: Shogun, so I'm not going to miss this one. Sengoku Jidai, here we go!
Welcome to janky looter shooter town, now with no inventory management! The game is really fun though.
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Remember my gushing review of the first installment? Yep, it's happening again. Only this time, it took even longer. I started my playthrough August 2025 and finished February 2026.
Continuing the tradition of playing and reviewing old games, here's New Vegas from 15 years ago. Now I played Fallout 4 a couple of years ago, and I thought I'd skip New Vegas. 76 is out of the question, MMO trash. But then the Fallout tv series happened, and that's clearly the Vegas outline at the end. So I just had to play through this as well, to experience the story and understand why fans were so upset at the nuking of Shady Sands.
Well let me tell you, this is Fallout as I love it. Keeping the trend, I made a female character called Lucy. This is her outfitted with an explosive collar.
The story in short: some guy shoots you in the head, you survive and go find him. It escalates quickly.
Literally 10 years late, but we're getting there. Spoiler: this was so much better than Unity. TL;DR loved it.
Alright, prepare for a gushing review. It took me about a month to play through this game, partially because I went ahead and did - literally - everything. I enjoyed it through and through.
I know, I'm only about 10 years late. But I played all the previous games, and I just finished this one.
Unlike my other reviews, this is for a fairly modern game. Buckle up, this will be long-winded.
After the gushing review I gave XCOM 2, you will not be surprised that I had high expectations of this game. It was... not what I expected.
In short, the game is easier, cartoony, and has a completely different theme. Instead of the ever present alien menace, we now instead have aliens who had integrated into Earth society, and human extremists threatening the planet. Your force will include humans and aliens, with their special abilities that you experienced during previous games. None of them are customisable.
The mechanics are also greatly simplified, but you still have inventory management, skills etc.
Now, I could have raged at the corruption of the XCOM ideal and quit. Instead, I chose to play. I still liked it. Embrace the goofy dialogue and humor.
And in the end, I triumphed.
This was my game of choice for 2022. Based on the number of XCOM-like games I played since, it's also one of my favorite formats.
I played this game so much, it was The Game for 2023. I took a lot of screenshots and shared stories with my friends. Too bad I didn't keep any.
I played The Stick of Truth a couple of years ago, and it's a game I'll remember for a long time. Besides the South Park-y graphics, it has everything that a modern RPG needs: classes, skills, spells, party building, inventory management. The gameplay is relatively simple, but so many novel elements are added over the course of the game that it kept me plugged until the end. I even went for collectibles and such. South Park humor is a thing of its own, and if you don't like it, you won't like the game. If you do, and you like RPGs or just video games in general, this is the thing for you.
We still make references to it during our D&D sessions and we still play the OST when we need combat music.
So this was my background as I set down to try out The Fractured but Whole. It was completely underwhelming. A few new mechanics, but mostly the same. Novel elements that I couldn't figure out. The theme wasn't enough to keep me hooked. I quit after a couple of hours.
... not saying it's a bad game. If you don't play The Stick of Truth before, it might have the same novelty element. It no longer did for me.
Everybody said play Total War: Warhammer. So obviously I played Total War: Something else. It's great, but strange. Let's dig in.
Another XCOM-like. Yeah, I really like these. Some points similar to the Necromunda game.
This game is such a beautiful mess and I loved it - although I may be a bit biased due to external factors.
The same article of mobile game reviews that recommended This War of Mine also recommended this. I didn't like it. It's a jumbled mess that I did not manage to figure out. Unlike This War of Mine which also had no tutorial, but felt very rewarding when figuring something out, Cultist Simulator seems to lack direction and is so random that whatever your learn during one attempt seems useless at the next. I never understood the purpose of the game either. Having zero graphics did not help at all. Zero stars.
My usual approach to mobile games is: when a period comes up where I don't have access to my regular hobby stuff, e.g. holidays or whatnot, install a bunch of games, play each until I hit the pay-to-win wall, delete, repeat. There are very few that make the cut - as in, they're not cash cows, but actual enjoyable games. This is one of them.
It will also depress you.
While everybody was already starting on Baldur's Gate 3, I was still in the middle of this old thing. Is it great? Not on the level of Dragon Age: Origins. Is it worth it? I loved the first two, I loved the world of Thedas, so I think yes.
