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The Banner Saga 2 is an excellent sequel that improves on the original in many ways. Starting a new game allows you to choose which of the two characters you want to play as, with both giving you the same starting companions, items, renown, etc. The better option is to import your play-through of the first game, doing so causes the game to remember many of the choices made, the characters you have with you, the items you have gathered, renown you saved, experience of your characters, and it even carries over how many NPC clansmen and fighters remained with your former group.

Characters can gain higher levels and learn passive chance based abilities that I mostly just ignored, stat caps remain the same however, promotions now cost less renown and allow you to learn a second ability of their class while some of the main characters learn unique skill. The game has the same great art and music as the first title with backgrounds during travels getting more detailed and being more varied. Battles have been improved with new enemies, new classes, obstacles, objectives, etc.

Different events and conversations happen based on who your main character is and you see the other characters taking a more active role in events. Clansmen now can help by actively foraging for food and they can be converted into fighters by spending some time at your trainer. There are no more poorly done war sections where you choose the obvious choice to save more people, instead clansmen saved is based on your number of fighters and you get bonus renown depending on how many you are protecting. Items have also been made affordable in markets though you can still ignore them.

The game has you controlling two separate caravans with one being lead by either Rook or Alette and another being lead by a character who was only introduced near the end of the last game, a character with a very different way of doing things than either Rook or Alette. The Banner Saga 2 ends up being even better than the first game.

The Banner Saga has you leading a group of warriors and civilians to escape the horde of Dredge that have been making their way through Human and Varl lands. You have to make choices and watch your supplies throughout your journey that will effect your caravan and the lives of those that fight in battle with you, certain choices can lead to characters leaving or being killed.

Making certain choices and winning battles will gain you renown which you can use to buy items in markets, buy supplies, or level up your characters. The renown system is one of the things that could use work as you never really have enough or have any need to buy items from the markets (except for supplies), characters that you spend a large amount of renown on can be killed or leave based on your choices or from story events, and there are a lot of events and stretches of area where supplies are scarce. Running out of supplies means that morale will go down, which effects the willpower stat in battle and will cause civilians and soldiers to die every day they go without food. Civilians aren't actually used for anything though and soldiers only matter when you run into large groups of enemies where you will enter a "war" and have to choose how to fight, you should always take the option to charge your enemies with your main characters because it will gain you the most renown and lose you the fewest soldiers, making the choices very uninteresting. Even the finale of the game that has you holding a town for a few days gives you a lot of what should be interesting options but the best thing to do is to always fight on the battlefield.

The battle system is turned based and has some good ideas, such as characters having armor and strength where strength represents how much damage someone does and their health. They also have a stat that shows how much armor they can break and willpower that can be used to fuel their active class ability and that can be used to move further, increase armor damage, or to increase strength damage. Trying to do strength attacks on a unit with higher armor will only do one damage and their armor may deflect the attack completely. It's a good system but is kind of ruined by the weird meta game it creates where you want to run around wounding all of the enemies instead of killing them due to the terrible turn order system the game uses. The turn order has one of your men goes followed by one of theirs, what this means is that if you are down to two enemies left they will keep getting turns while you have to play through your six characters, some that might be too far away or too wounded to attack the enemy. Luckily when you get down to one enemy your entire force gets to move before they do. Characters that lose all their strength in battle are wounded for 1-3 days and have their strength reduced by the number of days if they take part in a battle again, it's more of an annoyance than anything else, often they will heal during your travel between fights and it seems to go against the feel of the game where anyone could be killed. Battles are often very easy as well, which makes the war battles even stranger when hundred of enemies fight your hundreds of soldiers, and you easily win often losing only losing a dozen NPC soldiers by the end.

The game has you controlling two different forces throughout it and you end up not getting much time or interaction with most of the game's characters. Battles can still be fun when the turn order isn't causing problems and the game has great art, music, good writing, an interesting world, and some good choices to make along the way.

Pony Island is an adventure/puzzle/platforming game where after attempting to repair a malfunctioning arcade machine you end up trapped playing a game designed by the devil. A game with some similarities to something like The Stanley Parable or The Beginners Guide in how it plays with normal gaming concepts and ideas to make something interesting. Pony Island is easily worth trying for the low asking price. Near the end the game uses Steam in the best way that I've seen.

Metal Gear Rising is easily one of the most fun hack and slash games I've played with good combat mechanics, a very fun to use blade mode that has to be used for defense as well as attack, great boss fights, and a soundtrack that goes very well with the action. That alone would make it a game I recommend but Revengeance not only manages to be a great hack and slash game but it manages to be a great Metal Gear game if not the best, not just with the kind of plot and characters you would expect from the series but from the entertaining codec calls, being able to use stealth while hiding in boxes and barrels, to comedic moments in cutscenes and the collectibles that would be common in a Metal Gear game such as a soldier becoming distracted by and petting a cat as his boss goes on the series usual rant about his ideas or finding hidden MIBs (men in boxes).

Where The Water Tastes Like Wine starts with you losing a poker game which ends up causing you to be turned into a skeleton that has to travel America collecting and spreading the stories of the people. The game features great music, voice acting, backgrounds, and writing. You will collect over 200 short stories that can morph into more farcical tales twice after you tell them to 16 main characters who then go on to share the stories you told them. These main character will show up at campfires and telling them the kind of stories they want to hear will allow you to get to know their true selves better until you complete their storylines. The varied short stories with a diverse cast of characters are often interesting or entertaining which is impressive for the number of them in the game.

On the negative side the movement over the map of America is slow and reflective but doesn't work as well in a game this size, it doesn't help that the art for the map also gets very dull fast. You can pay for train rides or hitchhike in cars but even when you get in a car you are stuck riding in it until the next town even if you start passing things you would want to get out for. A health, stamina, and money system feels like like a pointless addition since you just respawn in the last major city you were in if you die, which just ends up adding more time to game that already starts to overstay its welcome. It can be very difficult to tell genre of some stories unless you try to use them and then remember what it was so you can just keep telling that story over and over which is a more dull way to play the game.

I enjoyed the game and respect the work that a lot of the people that wrote for this game have done over the years but some of the odd design choices and the playtime likely lasting over 10 hours is not something most will appreciate. This really would have been better a a twine or point and click style thing rather than whatever they were trying to do adding all these "gamey" elements to it.

Work as a bartender in a cyberpunk dystopia setting. Serve drinks while learning about your character, customers, and co-workers, and finding sparks of hope and optimism through your interactions with your regulars. News, blogs, and message boards at home give more details about the city and world. Great writing, art, and music playlist. Good variety of characters discussing their life, job, class, sexuality, politics, existentialism, mortality, family life, sex work, AI, etc. Nice to see a sex worker portrayed positively and as nuanced person.

Somewhat dull mechanics, most interesting thing you're going to have to do is remember something about your regulars drink orders to unlock their ending or happen to have bought tea to serve someone from the game's store in between going to work. What drinks you serve can effect a person's mood but knowing when to deviate from someone's stated order or having to know to do something to be prepared for a future event to reveal more of the story as opposed to taking things in an alternate but still narratively satisfying route is a bit limiting.

Mafia 3 is easily one of the strongest games I've played when it comes to voice acting and scene direction, with character expression and emotions perfectly acted and visually displayed in the game's cutscenes. A good story with well fleshed out characters with some great moments and lines, you even get some side supporting characters that aren't seen much but that has such strong dialogue and acting that you get to know them well in their brief appearances. Even a few of the main supporting characters and villains you go after can have sympathetic moments despite being terrible people. Lincoln's back and forth with his associates almost always manages to perfectly convey what kind of relationship they have and nails humorous or emotional moments very well.

The game makes use of it's setting, location and time period, and is full of small world, conversation, and gameplay details that are used to tell a story focused on race relations, returning from war, the changing times of the era which also frequently echoes modern era, and, like the other Mafia games, that the American dream is often more like a nightmare. People complain about the fair housing act and affirmative action on the radio and during conversations the same way they did back then and the same way they do now, you can get shot at or have the police called on you for going into the wrong store or for loitering, characters talk about police abuse of protesters and the Black Panthers, a contact that hates communists and wants you to stop supplies to Cuba just happens to be former secret police for their previous US backed dictator, the police response is slower in poor or primarily black areas, and one of the side quests talks about how the only time guns were being restricted in America was when black people wanted them. Mafia 3 is a game where you hear on the radio about a black kid getting shot and killed for knocking on a white man's door to ask for directions in the 60s and then you see the same thing in the news when you minimize the game and look at social media. You get multiple subtle hints at the main character's PTSD from Vietnam as well as one of the main characters talking about trying to cope with his. They make great use of the soundtrack both during main mission gameplay segments and on the radio and there is some very strong lines and acting in the parts of the story that are filmed as a documentary telling the story of what happened during the game years after the fact.

Full Review: https://www.backloggd.com/u/Kennan/review/139171/

Has the strong art, music, world building, character design the studio is known for as well as well written characters and scenes. Vocal tracks tell the story of the game's main characters and credits song is a combination of the story of your group's journey and destinations. Re-playable due to different location options and characters that you can send off after winning matches, as well as having the ability to lose matches which can narratively feel as much like a victory and loss as winning often does.

Actual gameplay is more sports like and while there are some good ideas it isn't great and is easily exploitable. Both sides only being able to move one character at a time makes it a bit dull and the computer just can't react to certain things well, an ability of one of your characters can end up causing the enemy team to stand confused around your "goal" with them not understanding how to score anymore. With an excellent narrative and world design that is more of the focus though, I'm fine with what feels like a quick simple mini game that doesn't drag down the experience.

One moment marvel at the beauty of the world and creatures, the next kill all the larvae that burst from a defeated enemy's chest.

One of the best metroidvania games I've played. It offers a large game with a lot of extra content and lore to discover with extra boss battles and side characters you can run into in your journey that reveal more about themselves or their journey as you meet with your meetings possibly effecting their and your endings. You can equip a wide variety of powerups/modifiers that help you adjust your character to fit how you like to play or you. Beautiful world and backgrounds with well designed, and often grossly beautiful, enemies with a nice lore book to fill that gives you more details about the setting. Combat is quick and responsive with some varied and tense boss fights.

A standout feature of the game is the freedom it gives you in the possible routes that you can take through it. Most medtoridvania style games are almost completely linear other than side or extra content you might discover or have to backtrack for. Hollow Knight can allow you to conquer multiple possible areas in different orders both through casual exploration that can give you a few routes but those choices are increased by just understanding how the game and its systems work by default, allowing some players to get to areas early that might not seem accessible in the early game. Both allowing for potentially interesting ways through the game for those that don't follow a more obvious path as well as interesting paths for challenge or speedruns.

Hollow Knight's soundtrack can match the beauty of its world with City of Tears being a highlight and one of the better tracks I've heard in a game and the bench resting theme Reflection standing out as a memorable sanctuary area theme that is up there with Resident Evil 4's Serenity.

The only minor complaint I have is the odd way it seemed to want to get on the Dark Souls bandwagon where they make poor use of the FromSoftware style mechanic where you lose resources when you die unless you get to your body in one life to recover them. This hasn't even been an interesting or meaningful mechanic in FromSoftware's own titles since Demon Souls. In Hollow Knight you aren't even losing experience, just what is essentially money that you can spend on equip-able modifiers. At one point you will need to buy a lantern but nothing else is ever important and certainly not needed for completion, so it ends up being little more than a potential waste of time if you just lost your resources and were delayed in trying some alternate strategy or upgrade out. I never ended up dying outside of boss fights so I never lost anything but I suppose if you were really doing poorly at the game you might need to farm a little to buy that lantern which could make it more frustrating.

A well written and acted story of a "cursed" eccentric family and the influence family traditions can have on people. Story is told through excellent use of exploration and by narrating the family history while allowing you to experience the final moments of its characters with varied, interesting, artistic, and unique scenarios that can give you the details of what happened while also doing an putting you into a character's state of mind, all while often introducing a new control scheme that is intuitive enough to not need to be explained.