You’d think with quarantine, I’d have more time to work my way through my backlog, but my gaming habits are still as slow as ever. In fact, started Kingdom Hearts 3 back in March and am still slowly working myself through it (which is funny considering how quickly I ran through Birth By Sleep earlier this year, but more on that below)

(Jan 1-May 1)

• Undermine - At time of playing, I purchased all of the available upgrades at the shop, as well as beating the end-boss multiple times. It has since had a few updates, but none that really give interest in returning anytime soon. The game, while fun at first, slowly ends up turns formulaic once you get used to the mechanics, and for a rogue-like/lite, that is a death sentence. The elements of a good rogue-like is replayability, giving you completely unique runs each time, however with this game, the bosses are all the same, the item pool is somewhat small, there is minimal synergy with the items, and more often than not, you will be going for a "gold run" thereby allowing you to buy out all the shops with minimal effort. Good for the first 20 or so hours (which isn't bad), but it does end up rather repetitive after reaching the end the first few times


• Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep - It had been a long time since I last played a Kingdom Hearts game, so after a quick refresher on the lore (KH 1, 2, CoM and 358 days), I decided to dive back into the universe, starting with one of the games that I had previously missed out on, Birth By Sleep.
  With this game, I can say without question, it is by far my favorite in the franchise. The story as a whole was solid, intertwining the 3 main characters adventures as they hopped around from planet-to-planet. Now for some, having to play through the game three times (once per character) to get the full story may seem daunting, because, yes, you are revisiting the same worlds on each of the playthroughs, but the experience feels completely unique each time, as your playstyle for each of the characters is completely different. Even if a majority of the abilities can be learned on each of the characters (Magnet OP), their core fundamentals are different -Terra focusing on heavy hitting melee, Ventus with quick strikes/magic, and Aqua being almost purely magic (oddly enough, hers is the most satisfying). On top of the different skills that you will be utilizing, many of the worlds will have vastly unique level designs as well, so even if some areas do look similar, you will soon be exploring brand new locations within those worlds.
  Finally, one of the other big pluses that I give this game, and this is kind of mixed with the fanbase, is the crafting of abilities. Upon killing enemies, you get material than can be used to create new/more powerful abilities to use, and if you know the right recipes (from your previous characters' playthroughs, or from a chart online), you can create some extremely powerful moves/magic fairly early on in the game - No need for hours of grinding/farming required for that one skill you loved using on your other characters... Something that Dream Drop Distance failed hard at.
  
  
• Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance - Here comes the polar opposite of BBS, in what may potentially be the worst KH in the franchise. I could go on and on about how badly written the story is in this game, but I don't really have the time. Suffice to say, this game retcons certain story elements of past games, and bits of this game get completely disregarded in future entries.
  This game is supposed to act as a bridge between 2 and 3, but fails miserably in every regard. First, the introduction of flow-motion, which completely breaks, coincidentally, the "flow" of this game. With infinite wall-jumps, you can access any part of any map from the beginning, so future skills like glide/double jump are completely worthless. This also means that many of the maps were designed to be large to accommodate this new feature in the game, but in reality, the emptiness just makes the game feel unfinished. Next, you have the "drop" mechanic which switches your characters after set periods of time, and doesn't really add much to the game since you can easily reset the timers with consumables. If anything, it just feels like a waste of time, even more so post-game when you are swapping between the characters dozens of times to find a specific portal. Which brings me to the next, and possibly biggest flaw of this game - the skill-unlocking system. In order to unlock a move/magic skill, you must find the recipe & material to craft a summon (with some material being very rare/in those portals), fight MANY battles with said summon for them to gain experience (or burn boatloads of candy in a repetitive minigame), and then put that XP towards the individual summon's skill tree/map (and if you want their passive abilities, you must keep them in your party... Passives that were permanent buffs in Birth By Sleep). It is a mechanic that is "supposed" to encourage you to constantly change your summons, but in reality, is an extremely slow process that discourages you from expanding your available deck.
  
  
• Kingdom Hearts: 0.2 Fragmentary Passage - Not much to say about this one, since it is a much shorter experience, mostly created as a way to introduce the new magic system, which worked rather well. I enjoyed my time with Aqua in BBS, so I was glad to get to play around with her some more. Sadly, many of the spells were removed and replaced with just elemental attacks. The only real nitpick I had was that the wardrobe didn't really do anything - as you play through the game, and complete certain objectives, you unlock different clothes for Aqua to wear, which never serve as anything more than mere cosmetics.
  
  
• Steamworld Quest - For whatever reason, this one just doesn't quite click with me the same way the other Steamworld games did. That's not to say that it was bad, as the gameplay was alright, but that's kind of the problem - it didn't really excel anywhere. The story felt familiar, and while there were some nice synergies/combos with the cards, nothing really stood out as unique. The only thing that felt even remotely different was mid-game when you could upgrade cards without increasing their casting cost. But that alone isn't enough to make me too excited about it. I don't know, I think I just yearn for another Steamworld Heist
  
  
• Uncharted 4 - Low point for the series. Between the introduction of Nate's brother ("the long lost brother that was never spoken of before"), and the grappling hook ("the long lost tool that was never spoken of before"), it feels like Nate was hit rather hard on his head by a boulder during one of his adventures, and must have forgotten his pre-UC1 days. The game is also very slow to get started, with the first 7 or 8 chapters having barely any gunplay at all, mostly sticking to platforming and walking/talking. When it finally does get started, the game encourages you to go stealth, which I do have to commend it for trying, but without the bottles/bricks from the Last of Us (Naughty Dog's other modern IP), it's far easier just to mow down the militia (and unlike Last of Us, there is no shortage of ammo). There are a few interesting encounters in this game (like being dragged behind a car), but for the most part, nothing on par with the bar that was set in the previous games.