Bought two copies of the game so I can play with my girlfriend who was a lot more interested in the game than I was.
It was pretty okay to pass the time, but it has nothing amazing beyond going through surfaces with the pressure gun, then raging when you don't find the 4 missing atoms of dirt for 10 minutes. Also, campaign progress and new tool selection only apply to the current host, the second player doesn't get progress achievements, gets about 1/10th the money - but at least can use the tools the host bought.

As to shock of nobody, it's a "game" as much as Viscera Cleanup or Euro/American Truck Simulator is a game. It's a work simulator, that goes really well with music or podcasts.
It had some story sprinkled between the levels and in some popup during the gameplay, but tbh I barely paid attention, this game doesn't need a story.
Overall it's fine. I don't regret the 20€? I paid for it considering the time spent in the game, but it's not really a quality-time game, it's a game to be mindlessly played while doing something on the side, and as such a "proper" game with the same 20€ tag can hold a lot more personal value. (Still, at least that WH40k DLC looks pretty good…. more on that later)

To be perfectly honest I was so pissed off this game - got to the 3rd world on Steam Deck, but on the go I noticed it doesn't unlock / progress my achievements. Turns out, despite the game being marked as Steam Deck Verified AND supporting Steam Cloud Saves, the achievements are not working on the Deck, and the saves aren't compatible between the platforms. Great start, 5 hours down the drain.

Now about the game proper: It has some story which is not important. As far as gameplay goes, it's almost like MegaMan: go through levels, fight the boss at the end, usually unlocking an ability at the end. But the real "twist"is that the abilities are linked to your robot's pieces - so you can have a weaker helmet that gives you the ability to teleport, or one with a higher armor but no ability.
This mix and match piece system works relatively well within the standard gameplay loop - each world has 3 levels that are fixed as far as I can remember, but the loot from enemies is randomized. Whatever piece you keep in your inventory at the end of a level will get removed, and added to your collection to be reused later - but that also means that you can't have backup weapons mid-run because the end of the level "eats them up". Honestly I'm not a fan of that, especially with the game having a few abilities that allows you healing.

The combat overall is a letdown, it's mostly buttonsmashing. You have a Super Smash Bros-like health system that I think works in a way that you need to hit enemies hard enough into environment, or out of the map. "Less health" means you fly away easier, and die easier. You need to guess the health the enemy have, because they also have different weight? My point is, it's quite weird, not being able to guess enemy health. Nor really what enemy can kill you - sometimes you just bounce for 10 seconds after a hit, other times die in one crashing impact. Boss arenas were a special hell, bosses progressively had more and more health, more lives to retry, and had 3-4-5 gapcloser abilities to dash or fly back to the level, as the arena's actual walls were so far out you couldn't hit enemies into it without racking up incredible amounts of damage.

Had the potential with moves like hitting somebody so hard they go through 3 platforms then explode, but the combat was generally off. Buttonsmashing, attacks not connecting, enemies hitting you behind themselves while you weirdly missing. The levels were basically differently recoloured general platformer levels, there were barely any level identity through mechanics.

It's a hard no from me.

Honestly I have little to say about En Garde!. It's as good as it looks - a lighthearted, comical swashbuckler adventure with the usual elements. Be witty when insulting enemies, use your environment, fight dirty - because you're fighting for the good cause to begin with!
Definitely a recommendation from me, with its recent pricing it may even appear in bundles. It'd be a great addition to any.

I really missed a target lock during the gameplay because the gameplay involves breaking the guard of enemies, then dealing damage. When the targeting flickers between the enemies, it's exceptionally hard to get anything done. Took me around the game's end to accidentally find the target locking option in the controls layout, so the game either didn't tell me it exist, or I just missed out on it. But anyways, it's there!

Its value most definitely depends on what you're looking for.
It has a very personal story told through memories and reflections of the protagonist, but it isn't really a groundbreaking one.
It has lots of water (one could say too much water), boat travel, swimming around - either towards a goal, or away from monsters.
There are collectible-hunting and building-climbing

I don't want to talk too much about Sea of Solitude, it's one of those "depressed young protagonist goes through a journey that reflects to their emotional changes through maturity / they realize what really was going on". It was very pleasant on the gameplay level with good challenge and exploration, and the level design / looks worked really well - especially the water and the weather elements.
Make sure if this game is what you're looking for when you want a new game, but if you like these kind of a games, it's a really solid piece, and it's 2-3€ during sales.

Carto is an amazing little game, you most definitely should play it at some point if you have it, if you like puzzles with a heart. Great for CJ's Monthly in a Month events :)
Carto's story start out simply - she gets separated from her grandmother, and has to find her. During her journey she'll find new friends who'll help her in some way, and people she can help out as well.

The gameplay sounds simple - you open your map, grab the little (mostly square) tiles, and place it so it creates a fit with another tile. While it sounds a bit boring, the game uses this as its only way of progress, and as such the developers tried to make it count. You can find new map pieces at certain locations that are essential for your progress, but the really fun part is when it comes to puzzles. You can cross a river by standing at a correct place, and by moving-rotating that map tile. When you're looking for a guy in "the forest near the house" then if you place the forest tile near the house tile, the game uncovers a new tile with the guy on it. It's a really interesting setting that you have to think with nears, betweens and to-froms instead of using the usual compass.

Not every level was created to be equal, not every mechanic to be the same fun. But overall the game uses its creative mechanic well through its runtime, only once or twice had to look up solutions - because knowing that you have to rearrange rocks is one thing, figuring out the correct way between rock placement, , symmetry, carving and tile form can be a bit challenging.

This game was one of the biggest surprises of the recent years for me.
It has all the clichés - young adults, in a very likely imagined, surreal environment, basic time control mechanics so you can call it a puzzle.
The story is simple as it is - basically just the two friends reliving their friendship, but it's presented in such a lovely way that perfectly mixes with the gameplay. You'll climb the couch, tip over the popcorn bowl, run past the television and the game console to show how they spent their afternoons. Fight the wild rivers of the sewers as they relive the day when the rain took the jacket of theirs. It's the little events of their life made into levels, with just a bit of a cutscene after the level is done.

But the gameplay was such a surprise! It uses three buttons only - action and move the time forward or backwards. This simplicity allows to an aspect of the game the developers were aware of and clearly capitalized on - handcrafted animations. The characters walk, run, gallop, trip. Stop and wait for the other, slower one. The two characters even have fundamentally different animations for even just jumping through a gap.

It's just a lovely, lovely game. The level design, the beautiful and unique animations make it a sight to behold, and the simple controls ease in the player, while there are still puzzles that require multiple back and forth "timeskips" to solve, with a few unique solutions on the way. It's a rarity how a great mix of looks, mechanics and puzzles work together in such balance.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of Sea Horizon. It IS a good game, but I'm not sure exactly what it wants to be.
It has two/three game modes: single hero mini-campaign, 3-hero campaign on the surface (exploration) or in dungeons. The party-based one seems to be the real deal after playing 4 or so campaigns, but it doesn't advertise itself at all as such, so idk.

The gameplay is genuinely good. You get your hero, and you get some abilities - you unlock more as you level up, or buy new abilities. The combat is turn-based, basically as Slay the Spire's system, with a few changes: you choose your abilities as fixed skills for a fight, this is not a deckbuilder. Instead you get equipment as loot, which give you different number of dices with different faces (plus extra skills and stats, but they are spelled out). In each round you roll your dices, and use the mana/resources you get from it to cast your abilities - some can be used once a turn, others multiple times, as long a you have enough mana.

Different characters focus on different types of mana, different bonuses and methods of attacking, even within a single class multiple gameplay types seem to be viable. Each character has heals, buffs, attacks and curses, and many of the buffs have a very clear synergy between classes and attack types.

With this in mind, I'm a bit unsure what the game wants to be. Its campaigns are "roguelike" ones, you always start from zero, but you keep the increased selection of items from previous runs, and characters level up between adventures that means a bigger skill pool to get a pick from when you level up in-campaign. You can also unlock coins by performing well in the personal campaigns, and use those coins to unlock alternate versions of the heroes with different (additional?) abilities.
The Party-based adventuring makes me think of Darkest Dungeon, but it doesn't have the narrative and the town-aspect, furthermore you have to beat individual mini-campaigns to unlock new heroes so you even have 3 for a bigger adventure.

So overall it's a really nicely made turn-based combat game with good ideas, but it weirdly misses meta-narrative that I think should be there, instead of just being options from the menu. It's worth picking up, even if it's a bit on the easier side.

The game is not available to purchase anymore, as far as I know, which is a pity for a few and most doesn't care, I think.

It's a Warhammer 40,000 game with mostly text-based game, and crude visualization of the enemies. In Warhammer 40k's world, humanity's solution for faster than light travel is to go through a dimension that is basically the dimension of emotions (also called Sea of Souls), or the Warp. It's basically hell, with demons who'd really like you not having an anti-demon shield around you. This Warp doesn't really care about time and space, and the unfortunate ships stuck in it can collide, and be mutated, melded, combined. With all the shinies and horrible things on them combined, you get a Space Hulk (also a Wh40k game's name) which then gets burped back to real space. With a group of the supersoldiers of humanity, an Adeptus Astartes, a Space Marine (also a Wh40k game's name), it's your command to destroy that unholy amalgamation of ships before things go awry.

The gameplay is super simple. You make choices as in many choose your own adventures games and books, and you progress through the game, get loot, upgrade your tools, get into fights or get horrendously murdered. The combat itself has a very slight tactical glaze, but it comes down to the luck of the roll, it's disappointing to be honest. At a point I missed a 44% to hit attack 7 times in a row - the chance of that series to happen is less than 2%. But as the reviews already told me that, so it wasn't a surprise. Finished a game with a proper (not so good) ending on the easy difficulty. But as it turned out activating the in-game cheats doesn't block any progression or achievements, and cuts out the slow, ugly and unfun combat, I could focus on exploration of the game - and it was both awesome and kind of bad, depending on who you ask.

You see, the game has 3 big sections - each section is a different ship, a different race and different enemy. Skeletal space Egyptians with incredible technology, good ol' merry orcs who just want to 'ave fun while tearing you apart, and basically Wh40k's Zergs (and the surprise final baddies, the BDSM elves who really, REALLY like the S part of it). So it's a smorgasbord of enemy factions - the game setting makes sense of it, but it's a confusing mess for somebody new to the setting, and at some points I think the game expects you to have some in-world knowledge.
It's even more confusing if we consider how MANY different enemy types appear, equipment gets mentioned, even some pretty obscure lore-elements such as the Pain Glove, a gauntlet your chapter uses as a training / punishing / meditative tool to build character.

Everything considered - the game has really good writing, and it shows that the writers took their time to prepare from the lore, and they expected it from their players to keep up. But it makes the game daunting for everybody else, and to be honest, without the health recharge in-game cheats the clunky combat is fun only for the most adamant and patient fans.

To be perfectly honest, I had trouble focusing on this game, it didn't really make the cut as a "game" for me, it was clunky, minimalist and simplistic. So as I usually do with games like this, I played it slowly, wandering off from the PC… but I got to its end.
And the story itself was pretty interesting, though I didn't understand some elements, but still, the game felt to be very… personal. So did some wikipedia delving, read the in-game artbook that included a lot of information about development, gathering stories, going out to the backlands and photographing locations, animals, plants, people - and then working these into the game.

The game is planned to be a trilogy, I hope that the second game will be a bit more than collecting resources and running from A to B, but it's still a really respectable first game with good intentions behind it.I'm not sure if it's a good game if I approach it from a game's angle, but rather an art project, where the creators choose that it will be presented as a game. But I genuinely, really hope that they'll drop the survival elements because I really don't feel like having to eat or drink every 15-20 minutes really mixes well with the personal story. It's just an annoyance to gamify something in a way that hurts it.

LEGO Batman wasn't my first lego game, but despite the rich story and setting it could have used it felt very formulaic and just flat. Though it was a lego game, so it's still at least tolerable, I had luck and didn't have to endure the bugs people reported around me.
Good things about the game: it's lego . Fun, beat everything up, get lego studs, unlock stuff, replay level with unlocked stuffs to unlock EEEEEVERYTHIIING.

The bad part is that they made a Batman game where you spend literally half of the game playing Batman and Robin, who are the most boring characters in the campaigns, has the least smooth gameplay and barely add any personality to the game, other than the well-known face/mask. Why?
The story is 3 chapters, each of the chapters having a gang of supervillains escape and setting up an intricate plan, organized by a super-supervillain. With B&R you go after them in 5 missions and foil their plan. Then in the another 5, you play as the supervillains and play almost the same levels, but your evil plan succeeds. This leads to an important consequence: you play half of the game (15 levels) with B&R, and the much more interesting, fun and viable villains get like 2? 3? levels on average.

For one, the game is so formulaic that there's a vehicle level (twice, as it's from both sides) in every chapter, those levels have no identity, you don't even see your character. Second, Batman and Robin doesn't have superpowers. They have a shitty "wind-up" batarang attack, while supervillains have instantenously firing guns / superpowers. You need to build, then use power-up platforms to change your suit so you can hover, have magnet boots, glass-shattering sonic gun, etc. But after you use them, or after the level ends, your suit just resets to the simple, boring one. Only so you can later unlock and use it again, then cast aside again.

To emphasize how flat they are, the very first level in the villain campaign you start with Clayface you has double jump AND superpower so can throw away blockades AND does double damage to enemies. It was a joy to play with him, only to then go back to boring old bats in the next chapter.
And Clayface isn't the sole enemy with double damage. Poison Ivy, Dr Freeze, Cat Woman and technically the Joker all have either double damage, attacking a lot faster than the heroes, or in case of the Joker having two guns = double the damage. And you need this damage because the game SWARMS you with copy-pasted henchmen, lackeys, thugs and goons. Most of them have guns, and it's really not that fun to play against guns with mostly melee characters. At points I was fighting 10-10+ enemies who barely add anything to the game. And playing with the double damaging villains is what makes the tempo really enjoyable, imo.

Overall it's one of the most meh lego games, but it's still kinda fine if you get to avoid the bugs. I think the main issue is that it was the first game, maybe was underfunded, but definitely did not try to be creative with the story, at least Batman's side is extremely repetitive other than the bossfights. You don't get to play Bruce Wayne, Gordon, Batgirl, Nightwing, where difference of their personality and role / job would have made a real variety - but they are available for characters to buy. Maybe I missed something, maybe they were planning ahead? I don't know.

My review seems to be the 2366th on Steam, and the 98th negative one, as the game sits at a whopping 96% positive review rate. As far as math and meme reviews go, it should be outstanding. And for whatever reason I really, really doesn’t feel like that. And I feel so weird about this that I have to write it out of myself. So please, treat this as a very subjective, very personal rambling of “wtf and why”, not a proper review.
Everhood is a game where you walk around and talk to people/monsters, and if it’s needed, fight them by defeating them in reverse-guitarhero.
I have two things of note about the combat: why there are no rebindable controls? The game uses 4 directions, E and escape on the map, and the 4 directions in fight. Even the classic NES had 4+2+2 buttons, why are we stuck to hardcoded 4 in combat? It’s so weird to dodge/attack with movement buttons in a quite chaotic manner.
Second: what is up with the pacing? At the beginning you have no idea where you are, who you are, you are thrown into 2-3 fights in mere minutes, then barely anything follows it up throughout the game, until the point where the game turns into almost only constan fighting.

With that aside - I liked the story, but it felt so little and so insignificant in the hours that I spent playing the game. The characters are flat and one-dimensional, there is no real time to build them up, which makes the ending feel incredibly flat. I liked the storyline, but I genuinely dislike how badly and ineffectively everything led up to it. From the goal that you get when you get your arm back to the endgame “plot twist” all I could think about was “I understand the implications, but why should I care?”. I don’t want to spoil much about the story as at least as an idea it’s pretty neat. Let’s just say how should I feel the weight of changing something that was unchanged for eons, if I’m just thrown into it and a few hours later I’m told to do it, with no other options? I can understand it, but I can’t sympathize, especially that the game made it pretty clear at many points that this world does not think the same as we do.
So I just pushed through the game, then the big reveal was that X is actually Y that was mentioned maybe twice in the whole game.
I genuinely don’t know what to think of this game. It may be the biggest rouse about emotions fading from an eons-old world, and making every character flat every reveal weightless and me not caring is the biggest meta-achievement a game ever done, or it just sucks and was made to be pseudo-deep for a demographic… I’m not sure. It has stuff like achievements for superhard no-hit fights, grind like 150 000 jump rolls or “troll” achievements for walking for hours in a corridor. I don’t think a game is focusing on multi-level hidden messages with such arbitrary goals that are exactly the other way as thinking about the message would be.
I frankly disliked the game and felt relieved to finally finish it. Can’t think of it as maybe two paragraph’s worth of fortune cookie-wisdom, with lots of subpar and unfun gameplay slapped to it, but judging from the reviews I’m in vast minority with it. So go, look around a bit, read more reviews because there are a lot of people who liked the game a lot more than I did.

Spiritfarer is a huge game - howlongtobeat lists it as 23-36 hours long depending on completion, but can be a lot more. For me it was 48 hours spent with the game running, and likely 43ish hours playing it. And at some points during that 43 hours, I would have written a different review. It surely has its ups and downs.
For starters, the game begins extremely fast. You’re dropped into an unknown world and get your “job” in maybe 3 minutes. Then you’re gradually presented more options, more locations, more resources, more upgrades, new spirits, as the game goes on, in a loop, until the end.
Some things I wish I knew sooner:
Progress: The game is only as big as the currently unlocked map if you don’t follow the spirits quests. There are three milestones to get past: ice, rocks and fog. Game gets really nice after the ice, and stunning after the rocks, with many options and goals.
“Economy” don’t try to “break the economy” by pushing yourself farming resources or money at the beginning, the game will only give you more as it progresses, and it’s vastly better to collect whatever you can compared to buying.

With those out of the picture: I was miserable at the beginning of the game. So little to do, so few places to go, the ship stops at night. You see, I love my game mechanics, and there were barely anything to do. And while the spirits have stories, they only drop 4-5 blocks of story after progressing their quests, outside of it they are mostly there to demand food.

Then after I started focusing on the character stories, the game started opening up, which made it a lot better in many ways. New abilities are granted quite rarely (also linked to spirits’ stories) but new resources, buildings, resource-collecting minigames get unlocked. The game starts acting like a game with stuff to do, and I started to enjoy it a LOT more.

But as the game progressed, it became clear that it has some issues with storytelling. It’s not entirely sure if you have some adventuring done between story “segments”, or you get some story between adventuring. Many, if not most spirits don’t have a personality, they only have things that they say.. They still have a quite well laid out character, but they don’t really act it, because they have so few non-storydump dialogues. And what they have, most of that is linked to food.
Also an interesting issue of mine - the game’s narrative is like a reverse Murdered: Soul Suspect. In M:S.S. you are collecting info and memories that the main character knows but you don’t, and it breaks immersion. In Spiritfarer everyone treats Stella as they know her, which builds connection, but you have no idea who they are, and it comes off like you’re amnesiac and it’s kind of weird, it surely made me distanced from many characters. I want to like them for what they do now, not what they tell me about what they did. Game is pretty lacking in the “show, don’t tell” thing.
Overall, after the bad start and getting the game known better, it became quite a solid one, I ended up enjoying the second half a lot better than I expected from the start. Would give it a 7 or 7.5 / 10. It was great looking and pleasant -I liked to sit down and continue the game, but wasn’t thrilled to do so.

Assassin's Creed 2 is not an easy game to review 12 years after its release, but to be really upfront: it's a genuinely interesting game. Has a few hiccups in various departments, the faces aged…not super well, but there is so much fun and awe to be had. Great point to start the series, and one of the best games of the series, according to the many.

I'll start with the bad, because there's only a few, mostly annoying little things. The game is really easy - people around me thought it's super hard or something, because it's one of the most "gamery" game series and apparently everyone heard about it. But the game gives you tons of upgrade options, buries you under money and helps you out with the side of borderline braindead AI.
The bad thing is, that the real enemy in the game is the controls. In Crypts and challenge maps sometimes the rotateable camera turns into tank controls and you have to jump without watching, where you jump; along with this, rooftop ropes were my bane. There is just such a middleground-angle that you're not jumping on them from the side, not hoping on and walking from a 90° angle, just jump down like there is no tomorrow. Super small, but very consistently annoying thing, but I think that is the biggest recurring issue I found.

Kinda neutral points:
-As I mentioned in the beginning, many / most character faces are just ugly, likely weren't too pretty in 2009 either.
-Starting phase of the Ubisoft collectathlon. Not too bad, not super overbearing, but back in 2009-2010 I quit the game because I was so obsessed with chests, having enough money to get everything, going for the races that I barely played the story. And it was horrible. Don't do that with yourself, just pace the chests between the story missions ;)

The good:
Oh lord, there are so, so many.

I was very hesitant about the game, for me it's essential to play a game in peace, and raving fanboys and fangirls can really make an impact of my enjoyment. So the game being that old left me in the bubble of "why u play old gaem lol" and that was so good.

The game - weirdly - is a lighthearted adventure game. The one with a great treasure to be had, climbing mountains, buildings, outwitting your enemies, being cheeky like a swashbuckler. And the easy to abuse AI, repetitive combat and the lovely Florence does that.
And suddenly renaissance history combined with alternate history comes crashing down, with treasons, assassinations and plotting and politics. The game has beautiful, bustling streets, as you unlock cities and travel around, the music, the building style, the cleaniness of the streets change city by city. At points you just catch yourself sightseeing - it's such a weird feeling in an game about assassins :)

The music is incredible - never annoying, but it's always present, a treat to listen to. And the same is true for characters too - they have great voice actors that bring a lot of style and personality to each character. I was really happy each time when I could hear Mario or Leonardo, both such enthusiastic support characters. Huge, huge bonus points for leaving so much Italian in the game - and I guess the Italian accent was also well done? It felt really natural, and not comically overdone.

One other point I want to mention, that I didn't really expect: as the game goes on and plays through years and years, Ezio, the protagonist really goes though a change in personality. A bold, careless and hasty character turns into a more tuned back version of himself, who still appreciates his allies and is genuinely thankful for their help. This sounds weird when written down, but when dozens of hour of gameplay separates start from the end, and the change is gradual, it's interesting to think back and realize, what a change happened.

At this point I don't really know what else to write. I loved cllimbing buildings and getting ancient treasure. Enjoyed upgrading the villa to have then mostly useless mountains of gold. Adored Leonardo's and Ezio's talks with the accents. It was great reading the history logs of the badasses and the pests of the era. Loved Caterina Sforza's portrayal, and maybe the best moment of the game for me was returning to Florence, and out of nowhere the theme music blasting as the memory getting build.

They okayest okay game that ever okayed, and it took me 29 disappointing hours in two gos (played once and stopped halfway because of boredom). I'm kind of upset that they made it only okay, with the great ideas they were working with.
Jokes aside, it's a lukewarm game made out of a great idea, but it misses the mark in basically every single aspect so much that it's a perfect 6/10 game.
The basic issue with the game that they try to do everything with collectibles (There are 242 collectibles). To tell you creepypasta/camp fire stories, to solve investigations, to uncover ghost graffities because ghost kids gonna be ghost kids, and also to get information about your beloved past wife, the love of your life…wait what?
Jokes aside the game really is tone-deaf. Opens up with a super badass intro about the past literally scarring a person, then constantly talks about redemption (of a past criminal, to a detective), the love of Julie that made it possible. One of the main goals of the game is to get closure, so you can move to the afterlife and reunite with her. And while you're doing that, you have to collect 50-something "notes" to get memories of her. Talk about ludo narrative dissonance, the game is actively breaking immersion as the troubled Ronan collects stuff so the Player could know the stories. And you also need to stop playing and go to a menu to check them out.

The whole game cries "B studio". There are great ideas in the game, and the cutscenes look and play good, but everything else is just not so good. There are NPCs walking around with rigid backs, acting if they were humans. People straight out of the Uncanny Valley are hugging each other with dead faces, looping in animation. 90% of the NPCs don't move from their spot, and all of them have 2 thoughts. Do you feel lucky to have mindreading instead of talking? Are you happy that the protagonist being a ghost is how actively being used to deliver unique presentation and narrative?
The NPCs are blatantly copypasted, like out of three cops two are clones of each other, having the same thoughts. At least 5 random passerby has the same quotes. Did they run out of money? Couldn't get 5 more people, or just 10-15 new lines with the actors slightly changing their voices? You can poltergeist electronic items to lead/distract NPCs, but they only react to that when the game tells you to do so. You can cover the police HQ in printer paper, they won't notice until you need to do that to cover up a jailbreak.

And it gets weirder. They made a fridge to be unique by having kid drawings and photos on it. Then copypasted in the Apartmans location's every flat. They made special post-it notes to hide small jokes and ideas - then copied it over the police HQ, the museum, and a few other places. They made genuinely funny books instead of just coloured blocks to show on a bookshelf - then copied the same group of 4-5 books THREE TIMES ON THE SAME SHELF.
I just don't get this game, it's… just baffling. Such a mix of attention to detail, and cutting corners to an incredible level at the same time. And I think there are unfinished content too - you can use ghost residue solely to hide from demons, and half of the game is filled with the ghost-spots, but no demons. And as there are 2D pictures(???) of ghosts being around and disappearing as you get closer (and a few real ghosts) you wouldn't need the ghost residue to show you that you aren't the only one "alive". Also in the Quarantine Hospital area there is a super talkative ghost, someone who needs help, and a lot of items to examine - as with the other ghost quests, but this one is just there… both of these smells like abruptly cut content.

All in all, I guess hurried release / development hell / lack of funds is the culprit here. It's a pity, genuinely.
So many things could have been used - if the game sticks with the use of many NPCs, they could have just have interesting or funny thoughts, like normal people have (Like the little notes of random people in Watch Dogs). What to eat, oh-so-hating Jeff, wondering if they left the oven on… not 5 people thinking in the same 2 sentences, and 3 asylum patients sharing the same ideas.
Or just have fewer, but more interesting NPCs (VtM Bloodlines did it really well).
FFS, you can walk through cars, walls and closed doors - call me shallow, but nowhere a funny easter egg, an interesting world detail, just collectibles and copy-pasted assets. Such a lack of creativity, nothing to do with the ghost powers but follow the script and collect collectibles.
Oh, and the ending has a fucking amazing plot twist that should have happened at least an hour earlier. Then it could have any effect on the player, not just finishing the game in a cutscene and maybe in a QTE-like sequence, not even really leaving them time to process it.

It's a game not made to be interesting, but to have X amounts of hours for the player. It's serviceable, it works well, but it could have been so, so much more.
(Posted on Steam as a positive review. There aren't really things in the game that are objectively horrible. I liked it well enough to feel disappointed about it, and I don't regret playing it)

This game was a blast!
If you happened to be on the officially unofficial discord around the time when I played / finished it, I barely could stop talking about the game. It's "Japanese-crazy" with all of its ups and downs.
Slightly tone-deaf in some parts, going into Bioware-buttshot levels of ogling on the eyecandy sniper girl.
Having huge bossfights with crazy designs and action pieces that are up in the MGS WTF levels. Like giant snake-like transformer road robot that shoots missiles at you while you're escaping with a futuristic garbage truck.
Again, Bioware-level of awkward romance/sex scene
Again-again, Bioware-like "who comes with me" missions where you can earn your teammates trust to unlock scenes, story options and make them perform better.
Joke aside, the game really smells like what if Bioware made a shooter that is barely an RPG (use nanomachines (son!) and upgrade your gun) and it works weirdly - really well.

It's weird to see in a shooter, but the team members actually have personality. Some a bit too overtuned and meme-worthy, but everyone likes Big Bo. But the game also has recurring jokes, and making jokes of the jokes, like how a character is usually grumpy about "only I know what a covert operation means?" then blows up a manhole in the middle of a café when escaping the sewers, and then suddenly nobody cares. I don't know if this is deliberately written in this way, or just gets awkward, but makes the game have super strong Alpha Protocol vibes. It may contribute to the over-the-top-iness (hehe..piness) that the studio absolutely understands the importance of making a cutscene good. Camera setting, movement, close ups, team-ups - everything is highly cinematic, effective and suggestive and print-worthy.

The characters just doesn't care and go full absurd - and this was another huge surprise, that the game is absolutely outstanding and setting up, and delivering timing based comedy, along with some crazy dialogues. (Sadly it went Fallout 4 before Fallout 4, you communicate through picking short prompts and then saying nothing, just waiting for the reply. It's weird as the protagonist is super talkative in the cutscenes)

Attention to detail is remarkable: the manhole gets cordoned off after you exit it, the lights light up when you stand to a urinal that is not even on the main path, the location uses Japanese and/or English text at various locations, depending on the location's function - Café for foreigners, international labs, or local undercity.

The combat felt great as well. By blowing up limbs of the robots you can disarm them, make them crawl around, or by removing their heads they shoot eachother. The last one is great, as you can "flank" robots who carry riot shields with this trick, opening them up for an attack.
This feature, coupled with the special personal weapon of yours with a stun/shockwave option, the ability to fire from cover, and commanding your team makes a pretty tactical, and proactive shooter.
DAAAAAAAAMN meme as the pretty chinese sniper appears
Kain, the best boy and baddest ass french ever
Just one thing the gang has to put up with

TBH I didn't even write a review about this on Steam, I don't really know what to say, and it's not helpful for people.
I played this game as a teenager, maybe 12-13. Or something like that, because I barely understood English, and repeatedly got surprised that the pink blob I needed to reach is a car once, another time a guy who should be taken into a car, or that they just shot me. So I was stuck on the first island, mostly driving around, and using panzer + guns cheats to murder people and yeah, that was the game. Also couldn't drive for shit because always went 100 on gas.
Now I understand the story, every word. I was driving as I should, I remembered the location of respawning weapons and boosts, and (with a guide) collected enough mystery packages to have a few weapons + body armor on my base, +2 bribe stars.
And suddenly the game is easy. With preparation and/or using the obviously bad AI it's an easy game for the most part, which let me appreciate the storyline more.

It's a very well made game with some really, really ugly and dated character models. While it was a huge thing on its own when it got released, I don't think it has a lot of things for someone today, if they never played it. It's likely the subject of the "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny phenomena. I enjoyed playing it, but compared to the joy of remembering AC2 as I wrote its review, thinking about GTA 3 fills me with only closure, but I think that's fine.

Gave the game another try after years left it on the backburner, but it did not got better.

The game is a rhythm-based RPG which mixes a puzzle-like rhythm game and a very generic and base RPG system with loot, equips and stats, and the oh-so mandatory crafting system.

The game offers you a safe room from which you can explore The Tower and fight enemies of your choice to grind resources, to craft equipment and spells (Generic attack also comes from a spell) and then make a key to open a door and get to a higher level.

The combat is spent on a 3-window screen, you change between them with the Q and E buttons. Directional arrows fall from the windows, each doing different things - defense window's arrows damage you if not pressed at the proper time, mana window's arrows recharge mana on hit, and you cast your spells by pressing all the correct arrows of the selected spell in the spell window.

One of my main problems was that the game tries to be "hip". Or "radical". By being so clever and sleek that it plays the self-awareness card, the "lame hero who got transported into world, and who has a woman sidekick who constantly mocks him". Conveniently, she is the narrator as well, who has a varied amount of knowledge, based on what the tutorial or plot requires. Talks through only an intercom? I wouldn't be surprised if there's a reveal-surprise-twist. Anyway, it was a bit jarring how many times various drugs were mentioned even before the tutorial, at one point the protagonist accusing the narrator of being a date rapist, which is a very, very weird tone one wants to set in a rhythm RPG with colourful and silly characters.

The final nail in the coffin was how tediously stupid menus are, and how often button presses do not get recognised in battles. Not super often, more like 1/10-20 times, but it adds up, and makes the game feel really sloppy.

Likely there's an okay, tolerable game under the surface, but it's just not fun to play for me.