An awesome political space adventure with unbelievably likable characters.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Interesting, intergalactic setting
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Offers very little actual science
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Awesome, likable, interesting, unique, profound characters
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Doesn’t offer anything particularly groundbreaking
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Engrossing plot full of twists and surprises
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A solid story fueled by merciless politics of an unstable planet
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Pillars of Eternity II follows its prequel in its attempt to recapture the magic of Baldur’s Gate. Unfortunately, while it’s definitely loyal to the computer role-playing game tradition and offers quite polished combat, I felt like the world it constructed as well as the plot it followed weren’t really the best.
Ironically, the story itself was very interesting and held lots of potential, but it’s told mainly through semi-menial tasks with you helping various trading companies and locals fight for resources with neither of the sides being too interesting. On top of it, the companions are also quite underwhelming, with basically the least interesting ones from the original game making a reappearance.
That said, Pillars of Eternity II is still a good game that can scratch that traditional computer role-playing itch you might have, but it definitely could have been better.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Attractive 2D visuals
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The plot is not the most riveting
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An interesting world to explore
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The factions could have been more interesting
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A thought-provoking, epic story
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Underwhelming companions
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Polished, satisfying combat
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Sailing the map and looking for treasure is boring and ruins the pace
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One of the few remaining games that follow traditional RPG formula
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Role-playing an evil characters feels counter-productive
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A cool thriller that details a certain man’s relationship with a psychopath from their childhood up to their college years and adulthood.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Well-written, snappy dialogue
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The story is for the most part simple and very predictable
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Interesting, likable characters
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Doesn’t offer much insight into the mind of a serial killer
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Relatively involving plot
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Damn, I figured to check this show out since I’ve read that yakuza were involved, which is not very common for anime, but… this turned out one of the dumbest shows I’ve ever seen in my life with its lousy attempts at comedy literally hurting my brain.
Every line in this anime is so full of cringe I get shivers just from the memory.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Interesting premise?
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Below average animation
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Flimsy setting that barely makes any sense
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Irritating, poorly-written characters
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Awful, braindead dialogue
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There’s no plot
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The story goes nowhere
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Not funny, cringe-inducing attempts at humor
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An interesting account of a religious black family’s life in 1930s Harlem.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Interesting, likable, profound characters
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The plot is not always the most exciting
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Illuminating on the life of black families in early 20th century America
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Thought-provoking on life
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Though I thoroughly enjoyed the first Tomb Raider remake, I felt like the second had lost some of its charm through large chunks of poorly designed content, and the third game only seems to follow the same trend.
I could neither get into the story nor enjoy the game-play that much, even though it’s technically the same as the first Tomb Raider remake that I loved. There aren’t as many flashy action sequences, and the game is simply poorly designed with long stretches of dull content that even the shootouts fail to spark any life in.
It honestly feels more like most of the game has been designed by a random map generator rather than a human being.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Beautiful, high-end visuals
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The story is kind of dull
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Good climbing mechanics
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The characters are boring and not interesting
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Good shooting mechanics
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The game-play doesn’t utilize its mechanics and feels like a chore
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Known as the Harry Potter for adults, The Magicians, unfortunately, abbreviates most of its fun parts in the magic school to the benefit of dull adventures in a fairly standard high fantasy land in the latter half.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Interesting urban fantasy setting
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Dull and underwhelming latter half
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Likable characters
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Doesn’t really offer much that other better fantasy books hadn’t already
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The various hijinks of learning magic in the magic school are pretty fun
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Steins;Gate being among my favorite visual novels, I had pretty high expectations for Steins;Gate 0… and to say that they were not met would be putting it lightly.
Release: 2018 (5pb. Games)
Writers: Hayashi Naotaka, Takimoto Masashi, Tsuchiya Tsukasa, Yasumoto Tooru
Japanese difficulty: Medium
English: 5pb. Games & Committee of Zero
Ratings: VNDB (8.21); EGS (8.00)
The conclusion to Blazblue’s epic story that adds even more playable characters to a whooping total of thirty-six.
…And the English localization seems to have improved slightly since Chronophantasma.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Attractive 2D visuals
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Almost no game-play in the story mode
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Awesome soundtrack
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Fascinating sci-fi setting inspired by quantum mechanics
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Interesting, likable characters
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An extremely convoluted but awesome story
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Fantastic 2D fighter game-play
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Great multiplayer
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I don’t know what I expected, but the story of this show is pretty much on par with its game counterparts.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Dark, gothic setting
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Awful dialogue
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Some cool music from the original games
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Poorly-written characters
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Painfully dull plot
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Pitiful story
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A fascinating hard sci-fi account of a future where mankind has colonized the solar system which unfortunately follows a cast of really poorly written characters and a plot that’s somehow both bland and all over the place.
You definitely read this book for the world and the science behind it… not what’s actually happening in it.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Fascinating, well-researched setting of a far future
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The characters, especially the protagonist either act like children or are painfully dull
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Lots of awesome hard sci-fi concepts
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The plot is all over the place and fails to captivate you
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It’s been a while since I checked any of the Yakuza games as they always felt clunky and full of redundant boring content that bloated the experience… but apparently, unknown to me, they’ve been improving with every release as Yakuza 0 feels like a Yakuza game with most of the grievances I had with the previous installments in the series fixed.
It has an interesting story with likable characters, side-quests are actually kind of funny (though still a bit too unnecessarily plentiful), and the game-play feels tight and rewarding.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Beautiful, high-end visuals
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The map you explore is small and reused from previous games
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Interesting, likable, profound characters
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The amount of side-quests can be overwhelming and turn you off from the game
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A relatively engrossing plot
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Exploration is not very fun
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A solid story inspired by Japanese underworld
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Satisfying brawling game-play
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Let’s you have a taste of Japanese culture quirks, such as hostess clubs
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A resurrection of Evil Dead that captures the feel of the original pretty much perfectly. It’s a tragedy and a complete mystery to me why the channel ended up cancelling the show after three seasons as it was only getting better and better.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Lots of hilarious explicit gore
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The story’s utterly simplistic and a bit repetitive
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Groovy atmosphere
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Incomplete
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Interesting, likable characters
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Relatively engrossing plot
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Genuinely funny
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A quirky adventure game where you relive a single day to save guests of a certain casino from murders.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Interesting concept
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Exploration tends to get tedious at points
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Awesome, wacky soundtrack
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The conclusion turns out to be a bit of a copout
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Engrossing mystery
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A fascinating true crime story that follows a man fighting for his own execution.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Pleasant, flowing prose
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Doesn’t offer many surprises due to the nature of the genre
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Interesting, likable, extremely profound characters
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Engrossing plot even if you know where it’s going
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Thought-provoking on human condition
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Shin Megami Tensei IV returns to the roots and tells a very similar story to that of the original SMT… which is kind of underwhelming after Nocturne, but then it also retains the characteristic dark atmosphere and the awesome hardcore game-play that just never grows old.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Beautiful artwork
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Outdated visuals
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Cool soundtrack
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Doesn’t offer much in terms of story that prequels didn’t already
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Dark, creepy atmosphere
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The game-play is pretty much the same as the prequels
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Thought-provoking on human society
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Low-effort side-quests artificially extend the play time
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Fantastic, hardcore turn-based combat
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Challenging difficulty
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An entertaining horror story centering around a haunted school and a bunch of kids involved in the affair set in 60s, somewhat reminiscent of Stephen King’s “It.”
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Light and conversational, but pleasant and flowing prose
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The story doesn’t offer anything particularly unusual
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Likable, relatively profound characters
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Immersing plot with an odd surprising twist here and there
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Genuinely spooky, unnerving atmosphere
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As an early access game Visage is very rough around the edges, but holds a lot of potential. It’s without doubt one of the scariest games I’ve ever played and I imagine it could outright stop your heart in VR.
I just hope it gets finished properly as there was a sense of developers running out of ideas toward the end of even this demonstration version of the game.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Beautiful visuals
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Awful controls
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Genuinely scary
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With no indication of where to go, you end up walking in circles a lot
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Potential VR support
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The latter part felt like a bunch of random stuff thrown together
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A relatively entertaining account of a quirky town with quirky characters, though at times it feels like the story lacks cohesiveness and with the amount of characters it sometimes can become hard to follow.
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Positive:
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Negative:
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Quirky, interesting, profound characters
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Hard to keep track of all the characters
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Relatively interesting plot
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The story feels a bit all over the place
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Thought-provoking on life
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Visual novel & other stuff impressions 