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.

Impossibly good looking, creative worldbuilding & visual design, considering its a studio debut. Combat is cool, exploration is OK, puzzles are varied and good. English VA is intolerable. Pretty cool.

Starts off small in scope, but somehow just keeps expanding and delighting. Great characters, art, music and satisfying gameplay loop/s. Constantly surprising and funny.

Full of potential and has glimmers of greatness, but ultimately lands somewhere between dull and painful.

A simplified and more arcadey MH:W. Combat feels a bit more dynamic, navigation and traversal is easier/better, story is still mediocre. A good port considering its origins, and a pretty good game.

A lot of Nioh buildcrafting stuff has been simplified, some new stuff has been added. Morale system is clever, forcing further exploration. Combat is very satisfying. Story is passable. Good game.

An interesting take from atop the shoulders of Slay the Spire. Not quite as fun and somehow not quite as deep, but relatively addictive and room for lots of variety.

Loses some of the fat of its predecessor, and takes a bunch from DOOM (2016). Undoubtedly fun, but cringey dialogue and characters can sometimes make it a bit hard.

Somewhere between Journey and BOTW, but with a tighter and shorter focus. Great to look at, fun and satisfying to play. Could see it being repetitive and unrewarding for some, but its core is a nice.

You know what it is. Not as good as Odyssey, and that wasn’t particularly good either. They have to look at refocusing and reinventing the franchise at some point… right?