Recent reviews by The Lone Fern

I'm not sure it's entirely deserving of all the accolades it got, but I enjoyed it. There's not a whole lot going on here but it doesn't overstay its welcome by any means. It's a nice little 4-5ish hour game where you play as a cat, and that's really most of the appeal. You get to go have a meow at robots. That's about all there is to say.

I knew I was in for a good time when one of the first things I saw was a warning screen saying "some parts of this game may be considered violent or cruel". Signalis is an unabashed love letter, mostly to Silent Hill 2, but also to other retro horror games. It's also one of the best horror games I've played in a very long time. It's upsetting, bleak, heartbreaking, and darkly beautiful, and it will stick with you. The art style is awesome and the sound design and soundtrack are even better. A lot of the plot details are open to interpretation and the less you know about it going in the better. If you like old school psychological/existential horror, do yourself the favor and pick this up.

I did not think they'd be able to pull it off, but Capcom has actually managed to deliver a remake of RE4 that improves on just about everything you can imagine about the original game, even things I didn't think needing changing or fixing, and even added a bunch of great new stuff. I do still have a few mostly minor/nitpicky gripes with it, namely:
- Yeah, Ada's new vocals are horrendous. I actually like her voice, but the performance for whatever assortment of reasons is really bad, and it stands out like a sore thumb.
- The new Salazar fight is really obnoxious and just not good. A bit of that spills over to Saddler too, but not nearly as badly.
- The shooting range also became really obnoxious and sometimes feels like RNG.
- I feel like they overcorrected a bit with how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ wiggly everything is now that you can move while shooting. I can't imagine trying to play some parts of this game on a controller without insane aim assist.
Those minor gripes aside though, this is exactly how a remake should be done. Unlike a lot of Resident Evil games including the also incredible RE2R and the original RE4 this one does manage to stick the landing and is pretty consistent from start to finish. The sound design is absolutely incredible, the gameplay feels good despite being slower due to prioritizing animations, and the environments are incredible looking and make much more sense than the original maps. It's both a faithful remake and one that was not afraid to make big changes, and I loved it. They managed to make one of my most-played games feel new and fresh and exciting again. Here's hoping they can fix RE5

I'm shocked at how much I -loved- this game. RE7 was a much-needed revitalization of the series, but I was still disappointed with certain things that I felt could have been much better, and the series as a whole has been... inconsistent. For every RE4 we get an RE6 and for every RE2R an RE3R... which is to say Capcom have not been generally been very good at following up the good games. This time, however, I feel they more or less nailed it. The game feels better, looks better, and is more consistent than RE7. It's a fun goofy horror-action schlock game, but this series has pretty much always been that, and here they executed some their best action as well as one of the most effective horror segments in the entire series. It's also one of the few times I've felt like the final act in one of these was only a SLIGHT falloff as compared to a big one. It's a bit all over the place in that it feels like every section is a completely different game, but I think they managed to somehow execute that in a way that works. It's a game that wears its influences on its sleeve in a fun way. It's not perfect, but it is in my opinion one of the most fun, most consistently quality, and most interesting things to come out of the series and as of right now I think I have to put it in my top 3 RE games alongside RE4 and RE2R. I expected a downgrade and I'm honestly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thrilled with what we got.

There's nothing I can say about the base game that hasn't been said already. It's probably the best roguelike that has ever been made and has continued to stand the test of time even since the original flash version's release in 2011. It's a classic and will be remembered as such.
As for Repentance, I would say my reaction to it has been similar to the launch of Afterbirth+, though maybe less extreme. Repentance is of course a much larger content package and pretty much all of the added content is great. There are a lot of very creative ideas at play there, and a lot of fun new stuff to play around with.
All of that is great, but there are definitely issues, much like AB+. Greed/ier mode is still a grind and still bad, and it has only been amplified by stuff added in Repentance like Tainted Lost . Having enemies spawn on top of you is unfair. Having enemies like the brimstone spiders spawn and blast you from off screen is unfair. Any damage you take should be a result of a poor choice you made or at the very least a gamble you take that you know can fail. Greed/ier mode is the #1 place in the game that will make you feel like you were cheated. As for the rest of the game, most of my problem with it comes down to balance issues as of right now. Some of the nerfs were stupid and unnecessary. I don't mind most of them, but why, for just one example, nerf Holy Mantle's i-frames into the ground? In many instances it may as well not even exist for all the protection it gives you.
I have faith that many of the issues, just like AB+, will be fixed given some time. I can only hope that some of the leftover problems from AB+ will be fixed as well, but I guess we'll see. Great DLC for the most part, hampered by some balance issues.

I'm going to be generous here and forget the glaring technical issues and behind the scenes and release aftermath controversy, because it's been talked to death and everyone and their dog knows exactly how bad it is.
Let's be real here - Cyberpunk 2077 is just not that good of a game. Probably about 50%+ of the content seems like it's been cut from the final product. The main campaign is half-baked and rushed and probably about the length that it takes to even to get to the end of the Baron's segment in Witcher 3, and while some of the side quests are fine, there's not enough there to redeem it. The game itself is a pretty mediocre cookie-cutter RPG and while the gameplay isn't bad it's nothing to write home about either (and I've seen plenty of people uploading clips of them running around just one-shotting the braindead AI enemies with shotguns or the blades and going "SEE THE GAMEPLAY IS REALLY GOODDDDD"... lol).
That's not to say there isn't good here. There are some great sequences, a handful of which are probably the most effective use of tension I've seen in a while. The characters and dialog are mostly pretty damn solid. The city itself and the environments and world are beautiful if you ignore how little there is to actually do in them. There are some cool ideas here too in many places, though they're pretty much all just surface level and undeveloped.
And that's why this is a huge disappointment. There was an absolutely exceptional game here had it been finished, but it wasn't. What we got quite literally feels like an Early Access game, except that those generally have development roadmaps, direction, some level of transparency about the process and stuff like "feature incomplete" warnings. Instead we got some half-assed apologies and a half-assed chart with vague promises of patches, updates, and free DLC. This game doesn't need extraneous DLC, what it needs is to actually be FINISHED. It needs to be filled out and made into a whole experience rather than pieces of what could be cool things, and I don't believe for one second that they are actually going to take the amount of time required to make that happen.
This game deserves better.

It's a Souls game. At this point, you probably already know whether you like it or not.

I'd say that this is only just slightly behind Bloodborne for me, and is probably the best of the Dark Souls games looking back on them all with some distance. There are a small number of issues gameplay-wise (*cough*poise*cough*) and some pretty unoriginal and relatively uninspiring areas (we really needed another of the same spooky skeletons catacombs area huh) as well as some bosses that are laughable for various reasons (which is nothing new for FromSoft; the bosses have always been kind of a mixed bag, some games worse than others) but overall the game is fantastic. Like the other FromSoft Soulslike games, the atmosphere is thick, the environments are well designed and breathtaking, the enemy and boss design is incredible visually if not always gameplay-wise and is incredibly varied even all the way up until the very end of the game, playing with all the different weapons and builds is fun and rewarding, the healing and death mechanics as well as the storytelling method are so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good they launched legions of copycats, and the DLC is fantastic and worth every penny of the extra money.

If I'm comparing it to Dark Souls (I like DS2 still but it's just not in the same league as these two) I think I do prefer DS1's more contained, dark and grimy world to DS3's big epic high fantasy deal, though that's completely personal preference. I also think DS1 is probably a better first experience in terms of sheer atmosphere and world building, which to me is the major strength of that game. Where DS3 wins big over DS1, though, is in the gameplay. DS3 feels fluid and smooth, the controls are tight, and the game overall feels very good to play, especially in comparison to DS1's stiff jank controls. The build variety and viability also seems to be better on the surface level, though I don't minmax this game as hard as some people do and could be wrong there. This game just continues to show why FromSoft are special, and though many of the copycats are good, none will ever be able to do it quite like From can. This is a top 5 game of all time for me. Hard recommend if you're willing to be challenged a bit

This is probably one of the best JRPGs ever made. To get my personal gripes/mehs out of the way: the combat is nothing to write home about (though completely serviceable and not bad by any stretch), the dungeons as most people have noted many times are tedious one-or-two-tiles-copy-pasted-repeatedly affairs and easily the worst part of the game, and there were a sparse few plot or character things I thought could have been fleshed out a bit better to have more impact. Almost everything else, however, is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ incredible. The story, the characters, the atmosphere, the setting, even the soundtrack... all absolutely top tier. It's not very often that you come across a game that can completely suck you in and get you fully attached the way this game does, but you will care about every character, the town, and the mystery very quickly, and when it's all over you will be thinking about all of it for days or weeks. There are moments and sequences in this game that will stick with me for a long, long time. Not everything here is perfect, but the good stuff is SO good that it elevates the whole thing. If you like well-written characters, incredible atmosphere, and an engaging story with a lot of heart and an emotional core that will stick with you long after it's done, get this game. Even if, like me, you're not usually a fan of very anime kinda stuff, give it a chance. I was hesitant at first, but got over the hump very quickly, and I'm glad I did. Phenomenal experience and I'm hoping for P5R on Steam sooner than later.

Is it good? Sure. Is it better than RE2R? Not by a long shot.
It's a solid game. It plays well, it looks incredible, and it's well optimized and bug-free (so far as I could tell). It is by all accounts a decent experience. It's an enjoyable enough one-time playthrough and I'm leaning more towards recommending it than not.
However, I have some big problems with it. This is a much more action oriented and linear experience than RE2R was, and while that's not really the remake's fault so much as the original game's, this is really short and underdeveloped and I feel there was a lot that COULD have been done here to push it to the next level. It's unfortunate that they actually decided to cut content from the original game when they could have taken this opportunity to actually expand on and flesh out some stuff and add some cool new ideas/enemies/bosses/areas/etc. They could have made this game what the original RE3 SHOULD have been, but instead we got a barebones rushed asset swap game made by their B team as quickly as they could to capitalize on the hype from RE2R and make a bunch of money. There is absolutely zero replayability here. This is a game you play one time and then never again and I have no desire to come back. I do like it, but as far as I'm concerned it's disappointing that this was Capcom's shot to really give this game the big epic revamp that it deserved and they failed to make it any more than a quick one-off playthrough.

This is the best Resident Evil game since RE4 and may even be better. It's not perfect, but it is gorgeous, feels good to play, and is a lot of fun but also just the right amount of nerve-wracking, stressful, and scary. 9/10, I hope the RE3 Remake can be just as good and hopefully improve on it