Hot Takes

Sigh, it’s happened again. I love Metaphor: ReFantazio’s worldbuilding, atmosphere, cinematics, and a genuinely breathtaking UI, and I can see why it’s critically lauded. But, much like their other games, I just couldn’t get hooked for much the same reasons - laborious busywork and constant interruption to the actually-engaging parts of the gameplay. Outside its cutscenes, the world surprisingly feels oddly drab and empty (I often felt like I was in Pokémon Legends: Arceus), lacking the visual richness to match its ambitious themes. Despite admiring its vision, I sadly found it hard to stay engaged or connect deeply with its characters.

I tried. I really did. Being so critically lauded, I battled with the feeling that I must be missing something. Many hours of unsatisfying combat, constant interruptions from either robotic or otherwise insufferable characters and eyerolling minigames. Turns out; it’s nostalgia and anime-brain that I’m missing, and if you don’t have those, the game is an admirably wide-scoped and gorgeous to look at chore. I get it, there’s a great game here for those predisposed to its sensibilities… but sadly that’s not me.

I really want to like this game. It has a really well defined and executed identity and the overarching gameplay loop is super fun at a high level. What stopped me from having a great time won’t stop everyone: the gunplay and movement is chunky and cumbersome by design - and indeed fits the tone well - but it’s a bit too heavy and laborious for me. Still think it’s a super cool game, but it’s not my preferred feel.

Bafflingly, just like with BOTW, I have no idea how Nintendo pulled this off. The mechanical additions are creative and wildly impressive. Somehow though, as a sequel, it never quite hit me as hard. I was constantly amazed, but sometimes struggled to find or maintain the fun.

The world and indeed all visuals are stunning, but at the end of the day the entire experience is hampered by its pedestrian and tired commitment to the conventional openworld formula. Love the production, don’t love the game.

The actual gameplay is amazing; clever, frantic, elegant, demanding & creative. Unfortunately for me it was punctuated by insufferable characters and dialog (which is thankfully now skippable). Cool, but didn’t get the hype.

Undoubtedly gorgeous and definitely an… OK game, but very simplistic and predictable. Would have preferred more subversion of a story I feel like I’ve heard before.

Artifact was as rewarding as it was deep. RNG was handled well, and over large sample sizes played little part in outcome. Monetisation was misunderstood IMO, and - very sadly - basically rendered the game dead on arrival.

I had to install this and try to like it five times. I’m sure theres a good game somewhere among the dotted line GPS, braindead quests and interruptions at every turn, but I kinda can’t be bothered finding it.

Full of confidence and style, this game knows what it wants to do, and for most, probably achieves it gloriously. Personally, while it had its moments, unless you’re partial to the anime tropes, pretty painful. I’ll likely try again at some point.

To be clear, this is a very good game. I couldn’t get into it, however. The design is clever and ‘endings’ very cool. But the setting, characters, movement & navigation frustrated me to a distracting degree.