Recent reviews by Veylann

(Small meta spoilers involved) Finished first playthrough. Felt really long despite me hearing it's just 20 hours long, then I checked time played and it was 20.8 hrs. That's nice. Immersion is what I should call it, perhaps?
First boss reminded me of Magrit from Elden Ring. Felt just as OP and seemingly unbeatable. Out of exasperation I looked up a guide, changed my build a bit and got the rythm of it. Still it was the hardest for me. It made me a better AC pilot in the end. Rest of it went down like fine wine.
Admittedly, there's a certain fat AC frame availible in the last 3rd of the game that made fights too forgiving. You can actually amp up the challenge, by going for swifter builds that have half the AP value and I imagine it can be more satisfiying, but armor is worth the tradeoff. There are also tetrapods and tanks. Tetrapods are interesting to diverse things up. Tanks I didn't try, but I heard those are good for bruitforcing.
The game seems to be branched in meaningful ways and at least some of those are not an illusion. I certainly have a burning desire to go on 1 or 2 more playthroughs to experience the game in it's entirety. And I will, when the time allows.
TLDR: DS/ER level of combat in an arcade shell with a bit more classic approach to storytelling, but engaging and profound lore and worldbuilding. Great build variety.

Unfortunately, the only advantage it has over DS4W is somewhat more flashy design and coloring features. Disadvantages are many. The most annoying one being create button not working in any mode aside from xinput, which nullifies the point of being a dual sense/dualshock app. Dev did say back in 2022 that they'll fix it, yet they never did. It didn't have analogue stick deadzone setting (last year anyway), which sucks with my older dualsense that got left stick drift after short period of usage. Also it seems they're pushing 3.0 as a dlc, which feels scummy especially when it had issues to begin with.
Tbh, that most be my first ever negative review on steam. Don't like dissing other's work, but it's time to make an exception.

If you like Key's visual novels you could like this. Gacha is pretty poor. Higher ssr rates (3% I think) with lack of proper guarantee system (200 pulls give guarantee, but that's too much and doesn't carry over to next banners). Getting 2 copies of each SSR seems important. There are known Chinese alternatives on the gacha gaming market that require way less investment.
I was hyped about the game initially, but now I think it'd have been nicer if Maeda stuck to visual novels. Story is pretty evocative and full of fun SoL tropes that you can meet in other Key's games. The grind loop feels worse than majority of other gachas I played as at the time when I quit you had to mindlessly grind components for gear craft that's also a gacha with top rarity being, well, for the lack of the better phrasing, extremely rare.
Stay away if you can't read Japanese. It's not worth it in the slightest as reading is all the fun unless you enjoy gambling large sums of money.

A short game about meaning of life. It has a lot of SF and philosophizing in it, which may at some point be too much. And yet when I got to the end I was in love with the game. It's beautiful and carries a nice well formulated message. And also it's completely free. I'll probably be going back for more character episodes and to chill.

7 years of waiting to get a prequel to a prequel's prequel of a story I waited for. Yet I'm glad AiD is writing visual novels again. Hopefully I'll see it all at some point.

One of the better horror games of the last decade. Puzzles get brutal the farther you get in the story and it hurts. I kept looking up stuff episode 2 and onwards and decided to go into last episode blind. I killed all playable characters and botched the episode. 9/10 would lose hours of progress out of carelessness again.

Short and entertaining. Not particularly scary, though, with all threats being visible and predictable. Multiple endings. Best one is easily missable should you merely skip an important trigger in the first half of the game. First Korean game I played and I enjoyed it.

Starts way too slow for my liking, but does get rather good in the latter half. It has a bit of everything from JK throwing people from a rooftop at the MC to Nietzsche discussions and lethal chemical solutions.
It is, apparently, a mobile game from a while ago, but I, being a Russian pleb, can't play it on android with play store being divided into regions and all that. God save the GabeN. Also it's a part of a trilogy and the only one that's on steam. Being free it is a treat.

Not Dark Souls, but a cool game nonetheless.
Pros: Strong presentation, plenty of directions for leveling, great setting, cool bosses, lore and Sengoku period trivia.
Cons: level design has an overall bleak and dreary feel to it, as does most of the soundtrack; combat feels somewhat routine and unexciting, random nature of loot complicates gear management, late game requires grinding to feel comfortable at all times (I was underleveled 40 levels or so when I beat all main game missions, decided against doing dlc at that level and quit).
I feel like someone who digs Japanese history might enjoy it somewhat more.