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Having just beaten Ori, it's easy to see why this game is so beloved. It is an incredibly beautiful and well-paced game that does most things right, but I think it suffers a bit when put under the microscope in a few aspects. Not enough to make it bad, not enough to warranting a thumbs down or not recommending it, but enough to prevent it from being a masterpiece.

First, praise where praise is due. Let's start with the visuals, which, for the most part, are absolutely top-notch. It's been a while since I've seen a 2D game look that good. The parallax and depth of field is insane, always gorgeous and making you feel you're actually inhabiting a real world, not a 2D slice of one. The environments are varied, and the animation for all characters (but in particular for Ori) is mindblowing. The gracefulness of its movements is something you don't see every day. Effects overall are also really well done. My only criticism in regards to visuals is also a criticism I'll come back to when talking about combat - there's a bit too much visual noise at times to allow for effective combat/platforming. This was mostly an issue when enemies shot projectiles at me, and I either couldn't see them against the background or against all the visual effects already on the screen. While this is not game-breaking in regular gameplay, I can see that being a MAJOR issue if you're going for the no-kill achievement.

When it comes to sounds, there's nothing groundbreaking here, but what's on display absolutely delivers. Ori mostly features an orchestral score that dictates the mood of each scene and action sequence without being too intrusive. It's beautiful, it's haunting, it can get your heart pumping in the right moments, and in summary, works. It does what it has to, but is not a soundtrack you'll be remembering for ages, I guess. Could be good background music for studying or meditation, but hardly rises above that.

The lore is partially delivered via short sentences and long visual storytelling. The devs excel at 'show, don't tell', and it's pretty easy to follow what's happening and get invested in the world and its characters. I was still a bit confused about what really set all the events in the game in motion and I'm not sure I know the answer to that, having beaten the game, but that never prevented me from enjoying the story or getting excited about its developments. Personally I don't think Kuro works as a great villain / antagonist, but that's probably more a matter of personal preference. Last but not least, I thought the endign was a bit abrupt - I was sure there would be a final dungeon after you beat the three legacy ones, but no, credits rolled when I was still craving for more. The pacing towards the end is a bit unclear and I think the tension doesn't build as high as it could if you're expecting that kind of final challenge gauntlet, so the whole endgame experience was a bit jarring for me, but I can also see that being an issue for how conditioned I am with Metroidvanias pulling the point-of-no-return-last-dungeon trick over and over.

And finally, the area where I reserved most of my criticism - gameplay. I always review Metroidvanias saying they have three jobs that MUST be done right - combat, movement, and exploration. Exploration is the easiest so I'll start there - Ori is fine. There is a lot to find around the world, and most of it is not super hidden, so you immediately know there'll be backtracking. The map is really useful in keeping track of it for you, but the abilities that you get to unlock further exploration feel a bit tacked on - it's like, you know there's a breakable wall as soon as you start the game, and eventually you get the breakable wall ability, so it's a key fitting a hole and not an eureka moment. It works, but is not incredible.

Movement is 8 or 80: moving around with Ori is a blast for most of the time, in particular as you start to combo abilities. Bash is one of the most incredible moves ever created, and combined with double jump and hovering, it's a lot of fun. What brings movement down for me is that some areas (in particular chase sequences) don't communicate really well what they want from you, requiring prior knowledge of the obstacles in order to avoid them. I hate when you get to a point and die to an unfair obstacle without any chance to avoiding it, and I hate when the game uses that as a way to teach you what to do in the next attempt. A fair game will always let a skilled player clear a challenge like that in the first go, and Ori refuses to do that in pretty much all escape sequences. It's a bit frustrating that such a good moveset is hampered by somewhat obtuse level design, but it's not enough to abandon the game.

And finally, combat. Which is the weakest link. Combat is just not satisfying here, and I'm glad it's not a bigger part of the game. What you do is spam the attack button, since enemies are spongy from the beginning to the end of the journey and you don't get significant improvement on your combat options outside of Bash. To make matters worse, there's not a huge variety of enemies. There's the guy that jumps and you run under, the armored guys that rush you, the guys that rush you and explode, the slugs that don't move and shoot bullets you can bash, and the slugs that move but which bullets you cannot bash, the frogs and the owls. And they just keep repeating over and over and over with different palettes but the same strategies. To make things worse, some projectiles are bashable and others aren't, so even bash is not dependable throughout the game. Combat is at its best when you're taking full advantage of your moveset to avoid enemies mid-air and hitting them with their own projectiles, but very often you'll be on ground having to hold on to ledges to take poke shots at enemies while barely seeing their attacks. Again, it works fine for a regular gameplay, but I can see that being infuriating in a one-kill playthrough.

Overall, Ori does many things right and while hard, can be a good first Metroidvania for people getting into the genre. It's beautiful to look at and to listen to, there's an engaging and well told story, exploration is fine, movement is quite expressive although level design frequently plays against it, and if you can endure combat here, it mostly only gets better in other games of the genre. It's a great game that stops a few steps away from being a timeless classic.

The inspiration for Balatro. Finally managed to play it. It's fun, in a kind of brainless way. It feels that most of your decisions are micro-decisions, like "Should I pick another symbol or skip?", "Should I remove a symbol?", "Should I re-roll?", and it might seem the game is limited because of that, because of the limited choice of verbs you have to interact with the game. But when you learn how to make combos and start to try your hand at building them, it gets really funny.

My first two runs were blind, one on Floor 1 and one on Floor 2. I lost on Floor 2 and decided to read a guide, and the tips helped a lot to beat it in my third run. After all, it's not a super stimulating game, but it's a game I can see myself playing while I have Youtube running in the back, since it doesn't require a lot of attention. I'm playing on itch so luckily I can only see the cheevos in game, otherwise it would bring me severe anxiety hahaha

At the fundamental level, State of Decay 2 is very much just more State of Decay. Aesthetics are polished a bit, some annoyances and/or exploits are cleaned up, and there are some new features and mechanics, but this game is basically the platonic ideal of a sequel

State of Decay 1 was great though, so this isn't a bad thing (if it works, keep milking it i guess). I enjoyed the interesting blend of zombie apocalypse community management / survival action back then, and i enjoyed it here once more. There's a bit of a leaning towards playing over and over again, with characters and bonuses being (optionally) carried over, and a bunch of new maps to settle in - including the main map from the first game

Like the first game, there's two extra play modes: Daybreak, which is a defend-the-wall horde mode aimed at multiplayer, which i played once; and Heartland, which is a more narrative-focused run, set between the events of the two games. "Narrative focus" here means your base, survivors, and quests are all pre-defined (barring a few story-choice changes), leaving you to focus on keeping everyone alive, while pushing for quest progress

I'm not sure that i appreciate the skew towards the action side in the extra modes though. I do enjoy the zombie shooting and whacking here, but i don't think it's good enough to carry it the whole thing - i much prefer how it's balanced against base management in the main game. State of Decay 1 had a similar skew with its extra modes too, so i guess it's another sequel thing

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I really, really tried to give it a fair chance, but Semblance never rises from the status of "cool-idea-on-paper-but-not-enough-to-justify-a-full-priced-game". The premise of shaping the world to complete your platforming goals sounds great, until you start to notice the controls are not finely tuned to challenges/mechanics, and you're suddenly trying to beat the controls, not the levels. This reminds me a lot of Hue, a cool gimmick that become a chore when it's forced into a full game.

The main issues with Semblance are that you can't finely control how you deform the ground, and that later on it requires precise timing without giving you precise controls to achieve that. It's one of those games where you're presented with a puzzle screen (puzzles hardly are bigger than one screen), look at it for a while, and probably is able to figure out what to do in a few seconds, but take minutes to actually achieve it with the given controls. In the worst case, you look at the screen and has no idea what to do, and decide to just try everything to see what sticks.

This is a puzzle design philosophy that is the opposite of great games such as Baba Is You, Snakebird, or Stephen's Sausage Roll. Those games are evergreen puzzle games for a reason, and it is because they take out all the mechanical difficulty of a puzzle (be it precision control or timing), relying solely on BRAINZ. Which is not what could be said of Semblance.

Arguably, the visuals are pretty good with great use of color and minimalistic, geometric environment and props, and the music is quite atmospheric and relaxing, fitting the game's world really well. Some say the best stories are told wordlessly, but Semblance's plot fall to the ground if you try to inspect it too closely. If the gameplay was good, I would be willing to overlook all of that but in the current state, it's not a puzzle game I'd recommend

Played on GOG. I'm trying to play all of Supergiant Games I own, which is all except for Hades II.

First on the list was naturally Bastion. It's definitely a solid game and I had fun most of the time (except when I decided to equip more Idols, and the difficulty ramped up too quickly, but this was quickly addressed by removing most of them and proceeding to beat the game without a hitch). I really enjoyed the narrative, although as a non-native English speaker I rely a lot on subtitles, and it's impossible to pay attention to lore dump during combat, so I missed a lot of important stuff. The structure of the game with the constant return to the base and the range of systems available for upgrades is really fun, and you'll be getting new weapons almost all the way to the last level. By the way, the weapons are all very different and pretty fun to play with. The combat system was the weakest part for me, mostly because there's no punishment for holding the shield all the time besides being vulnerable from the back, which you also is without the shield so no big deal. I felt combat was mostly positioning and managing attack timing vs. proper parrying or staming management as some of the more modern games in the action-adventure genre. Anyway, it's enjoyable and I really liked it.

Very excited to play Transistor sometime soon!