Note: this is a review specifically for DDLC+ content. I rated the base game of five out of five and if you want to see why you can click here. I'm going to assume that you've read that before you read this one.

https://channel3.gg/post?id=278398

The highs: it's always fun seeing more of our favorite characters in a context that's not quite so awful. I really like all of the extra features as far as the gallery and the music player, especially since I'm currently working on a YouTube video about this game and it makes my job a lot easier. I also appreciated that this isn't just a straight up port of the original game, but they actually had to rebuild the game from the ground up in a new engine and they made the graphics better, and the additional content looks beautiful.

The mids: the side stories are OK. But it's sort of like the Star Wars prequels where because you already know that things are going to go completely off the rails it kind of feels like a lot of the stuff doesn't matter, especially because the protagonist from the first base game is nowhere to be seen here. A large part of what made the base game work was the fact that you were actually taking part in the story so while yes, it was technically more of a visual novel, the game did a good job of distracting you from that. Here it's basically just a visual novel about cute anime girls, which for me personally was never really the point

The lows: I really, really hated the meta-verse stuff. It makes the side content completely meaningless because you eventually learn that the side stories take place in like an alternate universe, where Monika was never given self-awareness. In general, I feel like in popular media over the last 5 to 10 years, there's been a huge push to make everything part of some cinematic universe, and I just felt like it was totally unnecessary here, specifically because DDLC was such a character driven story in such a small setting, which is part of what made it work so well. I didn't actually get the plus version of the game until after fully completing the base game because the base game was just such an amazing experience, but as soon as I started encountering all of this Multiverse stuff I immediately lost interest

The other thing this does is it makes all of your experiences in the base game meaningless because in the base game, everything took place within the literature club for the most part and even Monika being a self-aware AI really was just motivated by a desire to be with the player. The Multiverse stuff introduces all of this added lore that'a like she's trying to actually escape to save parallel versions of her friends that are in the "real world" in some other universe and it's just like what the hell is even going on anymore. It's not that the additional law is poorly written, and in fact, I think it's actually quite well done. I just didn't really see the point. This has the additional impact of making everything from the base game suffer from "it was all a dream" status where it's like even within the context of the original game now everything that you did was meaningless

Now honestly, you really don't need to go through any of this and the vast majority of people won't be able to find this content unless they're specifically looking up spoiler guys online, but still that's kind of beside the point

I guess in summary, the Multiverse stuff really takes away from your experiences in the base game, but it's so well hidden that it doesn't really matter all that much in the end, and the extra content has enough heart that I think the plus version deserves some credit

I played this for @video-game-book-club and man what an emotional ride this was. Before getting into the review proper I want to be very clear that if you are especially sensitive to dark / disturbing themes that you should probably not play this game. You can check content warnings online and the plus version has additional content warnings that add more context, but I don't really wanna say more here both because you should go in with as little information as possible to get the full experience.

Now with that out of the way... this is an absolutely amazing game. It's a bit weird to call it a game because genre wise it's really more of a visual novel. Technically it's a psychological horror game masquerading for a while as a dating sim, but in reality there aren't that many choices for what you can do. The game mostly consists of clicking through dialogue and occasionally doing a simple word selection mini game to write a poem to try and appeal to the waifu of your choice, but no matter who you choose the game mostly plays out the same.

This might sound kind of sucky but honestly I felt like this made the emotional experience of going through the game much more impactful because there are certain events that you're going to really wish you could change, but you just can't, which I think makes those moments hit much harder than they otherwise would have if you could just save + reload and make everything sunshine and rainbows.

There are a lot of other really crazy fourth-wall breaking things that the game does that I won't go into detail on here because again you should really go into this as blind as possible. What I will say is really try to pay attention to all the things the characters talk about and especially with the poems they write because it gives you a lot of background into their characters and also kind of foreshadows what's going to happen with them as the game progresses

The last thing I want to talk about is the music. I mentioned that this is kind of a psychological horror / visual novel style game, and to be honest, there's really not a lot of like... jump scare type stuff or things that are actively terrifying. It's more of a deeply unsettling type of horror, and a big part of what makes the moments hit so hard is that they're being set to one of THE MOST cheerful soundtracks I've ever heard in any game. And man is the music catchy. Been stuck in my head pretty much from the moment I started playing.

Anyways... if you are able to handle some pretty dark stuff, this is a 5/5 game for me for sure. It's an incredibly unique game and one of the most memorable that I've ever played

Played this one for @video-game-book-club (which if you're not a member of... join it!)

The game is honestly not bad, but it's not great. And unlike a lot of older games I don't really think this is a function of its age.

Probably my least favorite thing about the game is that most of the weapons hit like wet noodles, and the only one that doesn't (the shotgun) has like no range. This problem rears its ugly head on the third level, Truth and Reconciliation, where you're supposed to clear out this room of Covenant before a door opens up allowing you go to to a hangar and finish the level. Problem is many of the enemies are far away on the upper levels of the room, and it takes FOREVER to kill them. And time is not on your side here given that Jackals LOVE to spam the charged plasma pistol shot. I guess I just remember this being a lot more of a shoot-em-up style game than it ended up being and I found myself frequently annoyed by how long it took to kill a lot of the enemies in the game and how often the game loaded you up in big open areas with tons of enemies sniping you from far away while not providing you the tools to really fight back.

I've got a few other individual complaints, but to not leave the impression that it's all bad, there are quite a few things that the game does very well. One of my favorite things is how the game uses subtle lighting and enemy placement to guide the player where to go, where a lot of modern games use literal yellow paint to accomplish the same thing (Looking at you FFVII Rebirth). And in the rare circumstances where you are in an open area and it's not clear where to go the game will provide a Nav Point.

All in all not as great as I remember, but not as bad as I've heard people on reddit say

Will finish this review later just checking something xD

But yeah pretty god game with a handful of things that kinda pissed me off (Sigrun being one of them though I did beat her on hard)

The opening of this game was pretty solid. Then you switch to the doodoo monkey that has no abilities and it's just such a drag

I mean like... it's a fine game but the combat gets stale real quick since none of the bosses get stunned by regular attacks so you either need to rely on the really finicky parry system or else wait for your cooldowns to pop

It just felt like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be Kingdom Hearts or Elden Ring so it opted to be a worse version of both

One of my favorite games on the 64, and yes, I rate it above Mario Kart 64

I could probably write a dissertation as to why but I'll try to keep things as concise as possible. The basic story is that I absolutely love its single player mode and how the races are all part of a hub world instead of just cups that you select from the main screen. The main reason this stands out to me so much is that for one it was just a really creative design choice, but for two, there's a ton of collectables and secrets everywhere. I also really enjoyed how the game has karts, hovercrafts, and planes, and that some of the levels are totally different if you use the plane versus let's say the car for example.

The only thing I think it's lacking in (and the reason I didn't give it 5 stars), is the multiplayer. The item system is pretty cool in that you can collect multiples of the same item for a more powerful effect, but really the only attack item you have is essentially green shell, red shell, and 10x green shells, which can make the races and battle modes feel pretty stale after a while. That being said, I do like how there were multiple different battle mode types, I just didn't like how they were locked to specific courses. It's still fun, just not as fun as MK64's battle modes.

So in conclusion DKR Multiplayer < Mario Kart 64 multiplayer, but DKR single player >>>>>> Mario Kart 64 Single Player

Originally had this as a 3/5 but that's too low. I would give this like a 7 / 10 or 7.5 out of 10

Still working on this one, but I gotta say after spending hundreds of hours in Elden Ring I'm really not a huge fan of this one, but I'll try and review it as an evolution of DS1/2 without thinking about the games that came after it (DSIII, Sekiro, and Elden Ring). And even with that restriction, I still think Bloodborne falls short in a lot of ways. I WILL CAVEAT THIS by saying that apparently it's not a super uncommon opinion that the DLC massively elevates the game and I haven't gotten to it yet. However a lot of my problems with this game are in its actual design so I don't expect my opinion to change much, but if it does I'll update this review

First the good. The setting is awesome. I don't dress up for Halloween anymore but if I were to, I would 100% try and find / make a costume based on this game cause it's just so freakin cool. I also really like the parry system and how so many attacks are parryable, though I do wish this was explained a bit better. Lastly I like the rally mechanic (where you hit people after getting hit to restore health) not only because I just like the fact that I have a chance to restore health, but also because it's sort of a subtle way that the game teaches you how it wants to be played. Many enemies can be stunlocked in this game, and many of the bosses even stagger quickly if you're aggressive enough, and I think that the rally mechanic is a really creative way to get players to find that out on their own. I also like how you can get some really good weapons really early on because you don't have to worry so much about misusing your upgrade materials. Find a weapon you like and 9 times out of 10 it's gonna be able to carry you through the whole game without issue.

Ok so the bad. IMO the game makes exploration way more frustrating than it needs to be. There are a TON of places to explore, and lots and lots of split paths to check out. This is cool and I like how there are a lot of situations where you'll be towards the end of an area and open up a shortcut to the start of the area with the lantern. But the problem is it's almost never obvious what the intended path is and so just as an example after getting to the first area in Yarnham, I ended up making it halfway to Father Gascoigne and losing all my blood echoes before being like "bro where the FUCK is my next checkpoint," looking up a guide, and realizing that if I would have just turned left instead of right I could have opened up a shortcut back to the starting area. I realize this is something people love about the game, but I just wish there were maybe one or two more lanterns in each area. Speaking of lanterns, needing to warp back to the main hub area to rest is dumb. As is the decision to keep forcing people to warp back to the hub instead of letting them spend their echoes at any lantern similar to what you could do in DS 1

I'm also *really* not a fan of the fact that healing pots are limited in quantity. In other Dark Souls games, when you get to a difficult boss, usually you can expect to die at least a few times. But the way you learn is by trying to react to what they're doing, and learning when your punish windows are. And in those games, if you mess up a punish, no big deal, just pop an Estus and try again. Maybe after going through one set of flasks you realize "oh this attack really isn't that safe to punish, but on THIS one I can get a charged heavy"

Bloodborne's flask system makes this process take exponentially longer because if you use all your flasks, you're fucked on your next attempt. This puts you in a Catch-22 where you basically don't want to use any of your flasks until you're confident that you can actually win the fight, but by that point you don't really NEED your flasks anymore. Now I know that flasks are farmable off of enemies and in the store, but farming has never been required in any other game or in Elden Ring, so why should it be required here?

This to me is one of the worst design choices across the entire SoulsBorne franchise, and the only saving grace here is that after spending hundreds of hours getting my ass kicked in Elden Ring, the bosses here are really easy by comparison and I've never needed more than a couple of attempts to basically get the fights down as well as I need.

I know... I sound like a massive hater, but I keep seeing people talk about this being not only the best game in the series (even over Elden Ring), but one of the best games of all time, and honestly I just don't see it.

The one thing I really... REALLY dislike is how if you click Undo or Restart this Game it doesn't take moves away so you have to select a new game and pick the same game number. Other than that pretty fun lol

Since I was reminded about Elden Ring because of the QOTD lol

Elden ring is a great game, but some of the boss designs, particularly around the end of the game were just so over the top in bullshit that it kind of defeated the purpose for me. And there was also stuff that was legitimately just broken, like rolls not coming out until like half a second after you press the roll button or hitboxes that don't line up with attack animations AT ALL

For an example of this check the picture I dropped where you can clearly see that the Crucible Knight's sword was NOWHERE NEAR me but this is the frame that I died

Again though I would say that the vast majority of my time spent in the game was awesome, just feel like I need to justify not giving it 5 stars lol

Can't believe I haven't rated this yet. Might be surprised that I'm not giving it the full 5, but hear me out. Awesome game, love messing around with different materia combinations, some awesome set pieces, story has some of the craziest emotional beats I've ever experienced in gaming... buuuuuut

Man was the final disc a let down. You spend the entire game being antagonized by Sephiroth, physically and mentally, and then when you finally get to him, zero words are had. It's just like "Here's the dude... and now he's a gigantic monster for no reason... and then he's a gigantic angel for no reason. I also wish that after the massive emotional train wreck that was disc 1, they did more with Cloud processing Aerith's death. Feels like she's largely forgotten about by the main group immediately after disc 1.

Just being real I'd rate this closer to like a 4.75 or something but that's not an option so I'm rounding down haha

Used to destroy people in this game. Was a lot of fun, but not quite as good as MW2 which is my favorite CoD of all time