But I won't remember False Hero for its slightly mismatched combat, nor for its inconsistent pacing. I'll remember it for its surprisingly great voice acting, and the way the ambient soundtrack swells when you pick a fight with something. I'll remember it for the drama of its world, and each boss's intro cutscene and bespoke second phase. I'll remember it for its killer title theme and the unfathomable aura of its final battle (you have NO idea). Sure, these are some of the most FromSoft flourishes to ever FromSoft, but that's the gig, and precious few replicate that care for the little details quite as earnestly and remarkably as False Hero.
Way of the Sword was destined for greatness either way. Its combat is gorgeous both in how it looks and how it plays, its boss encounters are electric, I don't remember the last time I spent time with a cast as magnetic and memorable, and genuinely, I struggle to imagine a game more deserving of its moniker. But the early Onimusha titles were short and sweet. They had backtracking and puzzles and exploration, yet they were tight-knit experiences that still hold up 25 years later because they weren't wasteful. Playing through Way of the Sword's filler, seeing how it pads its runtime, I have to wonder what an absolute juggernaut it would have been had Capcom thought to trim the fat.
Foundationally, Mortal Shell II is a very well-put-together videogame, its combat brings so much to love, and the reality is that, had it featured literally anything other than an open world, it very well could have become one of the best soulslikes out there. Instead, all that promise is marred by aspirations comically outside of its scope, and at risk of sounding like some cynical old stick-in-the-mud with Anor Londo as his lock screen, I think it's time we start treating Elden Ring as the cautionary tale it clearly is.
All this is not so much the absence of complexity as it is the space for creativity. Every animation is so detailed and fluid, the pixel art is always stunning, there are these dramatic title cards at the start of each boss, and gnarly, bespoke executions at the end. This isn't some less-is-more, shoestring-budget thing cobbled together and forced to make the best of what it's got. It's intentional; it's more because it's less, and while it might not be riddled with X factors and buzzwords and seventeen more interlaced genres, Rubinite is a much better game without them.
The reality of Dinoblade is that the second you find something not to like, you find something equally neat sitting right beside it—something that doesn't make the bad thing go away, but something that obscures it just enough. I'll be the first to admit that there's a lot Dinoblade drops the ball with, but counterpoint: there's a button that basically just grows you a mohawk and turns every second attack into a backflip
And that really is the crux of Elden Ring Nightreign. There are a billion oddities you can point your finger at, even more features included seemingly without thought or care, and it's hard to say for sure how many of its merits are simply the virtues of gaming with friends; yet, at the end of the day, it's a sharing platter based upon one of the most acclaimed games of this generation—jolly co-op in a game that needn't necessarily be much more to succeed.
I realise this isn't the most forthcoming review, and as tempting as it may be to go find someone a little more loose-lipped, I implore that you don't. Titanium Court isn't exactly the most 'stop reading and play immediately' affair, nor would I claim that it's ruined by learning the occasional narrative beat before it's appropriate, but everything from its recurring gags to its choice reveals is predicated on surprise and subversion. To give you examples is to rob you of them. To disclose any more of what you'll find is to consume the magic on your behalf.
I'm all for a bit of pacing, and god knows combat as relentless as this needs a little, but when the combat is this smooth and the pacing this mediocre, the split is just baffling. Like that nice restaurant or amusement park, once you get to the good bit, Homura Hime is absolutely worth the time—I just wish the rest wasn't such a slog.
Facing many of the same issues, it's not particularly insightful or convincing of me to write all this just to tell you that the difference between the first and second Code Vein is the extent of the problems, yet that really is the crux of the comparison. Code Vein's horrendous heavy-handedness was the pillow smothering its poor narrative's face, but the sheer likeability of II's cast narrowly averts the same fate. And while the first game's combat was crippled by Blood Codes so restrictive and grindy I'd hate to ever engage with them, the vastly increased modularity and complexity of the sequel's allows those build systems to inject some much-needed life into battle. In truth, I don't think there's a huge audience for a soulslike I'd recommend primarily for its story and characters, but for those few, I'd still recommend Code Vein II all the same, however muted that endorsement may be.
Nothing quite stings more than the inherent brilliance of the Nioh series just barely hanging on. The build systems are arguably bigger and better than they've ever been, the handful of bosses I didn't just steamroll were a pleasure to fight more than they weren't, and, despite feeling a little familiar, the core combat mechanics are still a stroke of genius, no matter how you slice it. But there's a snake in the grass—an open world structure so utterly banal, so profoundly vacuous, and so comprehensively incompatible with the franchise, it poisons and thoroughly corrupts everything that should have made Nioh 3 truly great. Team Ninja spent so long pondering what makes a shogun, they lost sight of what makes a Nioh game.
But I'm not here to miss the forest for the trees. I'm well aware that a mountain full of life and covered in stuff makes for a far better game than the alternative—and what an extraordinary game Cairn is. Nothing else has ever quite captured the freedom of the mountain, the sense of scale as you pan the camera out to analyse your path, or the feeling of just finding a place to plop down and gaze at the horizon for a while. If an irritating protagonist and slightly more human influence than I'd like is all I have to suffer for objectively the finest, most accurate climbing sim ever made, that's a bargain I'll never grow tired of striking.
The brilliance of The First Berserker: Khazan is almost paradoxical. Flashy yet deliberate, intricate yet effortless, it's an utterly singular experience perfecting a style of combat I thought could not be perfected. Wrapped in a narrative so wonderfully bleak you can't help but feel something by the end, Khazan is far and away the best game I played last year, and perhaps the finest combat I have ever played, soulslike or otherwise.
As odd as it sounds, I think Death Howl's side questing best sums it up. The first you'll find asks you to return a bird to a tree (don't question it), and, of course, that bird manifests as an expensive card that worms its way into your deck, conveniently reviving fallen foes if left in hand at the end of your turn. Whether you simply wound enemies until the thing's safely in your discard pile or you perhaps opt for a deck built around cards that can dispel it from your hand, that damn bird is a problem set upon you for only four battles—a curveball that knows exactly how long it's interesting for, and disappears forever when its time is up. The deckbuilding delights through its constant flow of transient new cards. Ro's loss resonates in the smallest interactions. A quiet corner of the spirit world will offer something flawed and beautiful, and not expect you to linger. Much like the life Ro desperately fights to save, Death Howl is a collection of fleeting but precious moments, and an experience I strongly recommend.
Constance is proof that the pursuit of the new is not the only path that matters. Conceptually, you've seen almost everything it tries running rampant across the genre, but rarely have you seen its strengths executed to such a degree, and rarely have you seen its stumbles offset by such transparent passion. All told, I don't imagine Constance will knock anyone's socks off, but between its stunning presentation, deft handling of heavy themes, truly fantastic movement, and stalwart vision, it's a metroidvania you certainly won't regret spending time with.
Despite a lot of expectations, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers isn't just another soulslike. It iterates on things the genre should have never left behind, and its innovations are actually new and refreshing in a space widely known for how derivative it can be (it's in the name!); yet, with From Software's crown looking ever more untenable, you have to make good on your pitch. Wuchang's level design may be up to par, but between its clunky combat and nebulous, practically incomprehensible storytelling, I struggle to find anything else worth recommending.
Yet, it speaks a lot to Silksong's obscene quality that its biggest flaw is largely a matter of calibration—something subject to change. Sure, there are a bunch of menial fetch/kill quests now because is it really a sequel if we don't get some random new feature nobody asked for? And yes, there are little things here and there I never liked about the first game that slipped through. But any shortcomings aside, I'm just in complete awe of what a conceptually perfect sequel this is. Team Cherry had almost no room to build on the shoulders of Hollow Knight, so they went sideways, masterfully recontextualising everything that came before, crafting an experience somehow familiar and appealing yet completely its own, and well and truly cementing themselves as the gold standard for indie game development.
When all's said and done, you simply can't deny the excellence of Cataclismo's individual systems, and no matter what it is you're looking for in an RTS, you're all but certain to find a brilliant rendition of it somewhere in all this; however, you simply can't ignore the tremendous lack of cohesion either, resulting in a game that's barely more than the sum of its parts. You still feel every strength of Cataclismo's ambitious design, enough for me to recommend it at the very least, but it's sadly far from the genre-defying masterpiece it had every potential of being.
Look, Everhood 2 is still Everhood; if you love the first as much as I do, you won't get nothing out of the sequel, and if you're up for some mindless entertainment, you're likely not going to run into many of the same roadblocks I did. Yet, when there's such a perfect example of all this game could have been right there, it's impossible to look at this with anything other than jaded cynicism. More than anything, it feels like Foreign Gnomes don't understand the balance that made the original so superb. It feels like they didn't have anyone with the courage to tell them no. It feels like they value meaningless absurdism over good storytelling. Everhood 2 has, at the very least, soundly escaped Undertale's shadow, but I'm not so sure it should be all that happy with where it's wound up, and I can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone but the most diehard fans.