Why even have an in-game notebook with such incomplete notes?

Last year, I was intrigued by Return of the Obra Dinn's mystery, but didn't solve much of it because of the frustratingly unhelpful in-game notebook.

The Case of the Golden Idol is mechanically similar: exploring a crime scene unlocks words, and you fill those words into Mad Libs-like forms - attach names to faces, develop the context of relevant evidence, reconstruct a sequence of events - to solve that scene. The vital difference is that Golden Idol's cases are small; an individual case's virtual "notebook" is only a couple of pages, so it doesn't take much effort to re-scan the evidence and connect all of its dots.

Still, by the end of its free demo, Golden Idol was starting to ask for a "solve" that didn't seem solve-able by deductive reasoning; an answer I had to guess and check and guess again for. You know, adventure game bullshit.

And unfortunately, The Rise of the Golden Idol - its brand-new sequel - looks like it may embrace that guessing-game angle even more. Where the first game's cases were clearly building up a bigger mystery (about the titular Idol) in the background -- the demo for "Rise" was already starting to include its own over-arching plot in individual case solutions, making logical leaps in individual scenes feel premature.

While I like the small, self-contained crime puzzles in the early parts of these games, I'm not exactly eager to sign up for their bigger mysteries which seem to sacrifice playability for the sake of drama.

Progress: Finished both demos.

I hate when story content is taken from me; when some seemingly-insignificant event, like a flap of a butterfly's wing - or even inaction, like walking past an NPC - results in a locked door or a dead character and a swath of narrative is gone forever. Poor Counsellor Florrick, I'm sorry I missed you in Act 1, and you never got the chance to pull me into a prison break.

So I can't feel too bad about reading guides online that spoil quest events and possible outcomes. Wish I'd done more of it before Act 3! Because BG3's story content is great, amusing and enthralling and well worth the effort to research and prepare for.

It's the party's strong personalities and intricate backstories, really, that tie the 150-hour experience together. And I love how those backstories all get extra-special attention in Act 3.

The overall plot is fine, too, I mean... a world-ending monster threat with light political conspiracy, assembling allies and collecting magic macguffins, ain't exactly groundbreaking. Expository scenes do well at conveying danger, as dialogs with high-profile NPCs make you feel small in the face of grave evils; and it's got fascinating ties into the world's deep lore (plus a few callbacks to the previous games).

But, for the most part, the main quest is just an excuse for your motley crew of party members to banter and bond and solve mysteries together.

And to swing axes and shoot fireballs at enemy chumps, of course -- but the turn-based combat honestly feels less compelling towards the end of the game, especially after reaching the level cap (only 12? really?). It was a little disappointing that so many Act 3 quests dumped their experience point rewards into the void, although I get that Larian didn't want me getting too overpowered and trivializing endgame boss fights.

(I still would've liked to, though. To get too overpowered.)

The combat, while fun and more-or-less easy to approach, isn't really the point though. The point is that I saved Karlach from her doom in Avernus; opened Lae'zel's eyes to the truth of her oppressors; rescued Wyll from his devil's bargain; helped some helpless, toppled some big bads, found some long-lost treasures, and generally inhabited the world of Baldur's Gate 3 in a way that felt ... impactful.

I saved that world, in my own, personal way. (With some help from the internet.)

Better than: Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 2, Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition
Not as good as: Well. It's the best turn-based RPG I've played, I think.
Let's call it, on balance, as good as: Disco Elysium: The Final Cut and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Way back in 2006, when I played Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow then the preceding Aria of Sorrow, Aria felt familiar but simple and "kind of short." This year, playing Aria's modern re-release then Dawn's, the sequel feels familiar but ... complicated and slightly long. Huh.

Weapon Synthesis is a cool addition to the 'vania power grind, giving you a clear series of goals for incremental weapon upgrades, but the fact that upgrades consume souls - sometimes even one-of-a-kind boss souls - makes some of them not worth the cost.

And broadly speaking, your inventory and the map and the bestiary (and even the story) are all "bigger" but not necessarily better; scrolling through shop menus still sucks, fast-travel points are still of mixed convenience, and a lot of enemy souls (even rare ones) seem like low-value filler.

But, even with rough edges, Dawn of Sorrow remains a satisfying and substantial example of the IGA-vania formula: exploring and slaying and collecting and upgrading your way to becoming an over-powered superhero.

This re-release is absolutely the best way to experience it, too, because - aside from awkward touch-screen "seal" sequences - the Castlevania Dominus Collection has brilliantly re-evaluated how to organize this game's visual information. Instead of simply replicating the NDS's top and bottom screens, where originally one screen swapped between "map" and "status" modes, this collection's default UI cleverly displays both support screens right next to the main action.

Short of something like a full-on remake in a modern game engine (which does kinda exist, in Bloodstained), Dominus Collection has done a really impressive job of upgrading the DS Castlevania games while still preserving their original content.

I'm really looking forward to the next one.

Better than: Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (2021), I mean, even if not much better; Dawn is still a successful sequel.
Not as good as: a "real" new Metroidvania, I guess? maybe Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night?
While I'm still waiting for Ritual of the Night 2: at least I've got plenty more Dominus Collection to go.

Progress: Killed Menace, 100% map, 100% souls. (But gave up on Julius Mode, I'd rather collect more souls!)

No Man's Sky is now infamous for its underwhelming release, and - more shockingly - extensive post-release make-up efforts. It's a hell of a story! Shame the game itself isn't that interesting.

The feature-set is really impressive, technologically: that you can seamlessly jump from planets to space and back, that your custom buildings and terrain modifications persist anywhere, that your character and inventory are portable and can share in another player's universe freely...

But why?

I won't say that there's "nothing" to do in No Man's Sky, 'cause it certainly ticks the Open World Survival Craft boxes of Survival, and of Craft -- there are plenty of life-support meters to manage, tools to charge, crafting resources to collect and convert and upgrade and et cetera. If you're into that kind of game-loop, juggling supplies while building a sci-fi mansion, this is a great place to do it.

Personally, I'm not interested in that. Fallout 4's base-building was a chore I skipped, and in Palworld I only made what I needed for gear upgrades (and for my Dragonite's missile launcher). Hell, my co-op partner and I turned off the survival mechanics - kudos to the game for these options - because they got in the way of exploration.

And No Man's Sky doesn't seem to have anything else worth doing. Its vast, awe-inspiring space only goes so far -- the terrain and wildlife and salvage that's procedurally generated on each planet ultimately feels bland, and so exploration for its own sake just isn't satisfying.

The game's storyline, following mystery signals across the universe, is threadbare and tropey. Compared to the compelling drama of Outer Wilds's sci-fi mystery, No Man's Sky's narrative is like an afterthought. ... well, yeah, I guess much of it literally was added a year later.

In the end, while I can admire how No Man's Sky (eventually) followed through on its ambitious designs, the core game of it is still pretty limited: build a house in space. Meh.

... like I was just saying, Aria of Sorrow's introduction of collectible soul-powers, its variety of equippable weapons and fighting techniques, and its modern setting are all refreshing and exciting changes to the Castlevania norm.

Back when I first played it, I'd already finished Dawn of Sorrow, so Aria couldn't help but pale in comparison. Now that I've blissfully forgotten the details of the sequel -- I can really appreciate how strong this game is on its own.

Even if some aspects of its storytelling and user interface feel a bit outdated, the foundations that would become "Igavania" - the same principles which eventually made Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night so compelling - are all accounted for, and already working well.

No joke: I said that in Bloodstained,

It almost always feels like you're accomplishing something, even if only in small increments, toward the ultimate goal of overpowering evil. Bloodstained is at its best when it's giving you plenty of opportunities for continuous improvement.

And that's just as true all the way back in Aria of Sorrow; true enough for me to enjoy late-game grinds for experience and gear and souls, completing the game's checklists, and overpowering myself enough to turn the final bosses into total chumps.

It's a great formula, and its execution here is quite good, in spite of the GBA's limited horsepower (and number of buttons). Now, a couple decades and multiple sequels in this game's future, I could lament that some quality-of-life annoyances - like hidden progression requirements, and inconvenient fast-travel locations - still haven't seen much improvement.

But I love IGA's castle-crawling adventures all the same, and even after a dozen hours in this one, I still want more.

Better than: Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
Not as good as: well, the next one, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
... so, it's a good thing: the Castlevania Dominus Collection is finally here, and I can play that again too!

Progress: Killed Chaos, 100% map, 100% souls.

Castlevania Advance Collection is a faithful re-packaging of the GBA Castlevanias -- as is M2's way, it emulates the original games and wraps them with minimal modern conveniences. These are essentially the same games I played 20 years ago, for better and for worse.

(Though being able to play them on large backlit screens and with a more ergonomic gamepad is quite nice.)

Circle of the Moon was, in its day, a pretty impressive first try at bite-sizing Symphony of the Night's nascent Metroidvania formula. But its movement and combat mechanics haven't aged well; Nathan Graves feels frustratingly stiff and unresponsive to control, especially with this map's surprising abundance of pits to get knocked back and fall into.

The "Dual Set-up System" gameplay gimmick is more confusing than engaging, and the story is too threadbare to keep things interesting. So... while revisiting Circle of the Moon unlocked some fun memories of juggling my GBA, a flashlight, and GameFAQs printouts, I don't feel like I'm missing much by setting this one back down.

And then there's Harmony of Dissonance: Juste Belmont is more satisfying to control than Nathan was, but the gameplay mechanics available to him are comparatively plain. It just feels dull. And the distinctly poor audio quality of the soundtrack doesn't help.

Trivia time! While Circle of the Moon's soundtrack has that "classic Castlevania" feeling, it wasn't composed by Michiru Yamane, who followed IGA all the way to Bloodstained.

But Harmony of Dissonance was composed by Yamane, so that game's decision to "... sacrifice the music and focus more on the visual side of the game" (interview source) is, in retrospect, a real shame.

Of course, it shouldn't be surprising that Aria of Sorrow is what makes this collection worthwhile. It finally ditches the ancient sub-weapons, replaced by (a ton of) new soul abilities; it makes collectible equipment interesting, with weapon varieties that actually change how you play; it's got a story that, while still light, twists the usual Belmont-clan plot in a fascinating way...

But I'm getting ahead of myself, 'cause Aria of Sorrow really merits a post of its own.

NieR: Automata is unusual, quirky, and intriguing - weird, in good ways - but not consistently. Its moments of riveting mystery and exciting surprise are sparse, with boring drugery filling the space between.

The hack-and-slash-plus-bullet-hell combat action is bewildering at first, but then once you've made some sense of the controls and complexity, ... it's still bewildering, due to wonky camera movement, unpredictable lock-on targeting, and outright visual noise.

When enemies and bullets and lightning are filling the screen, well, the good news is that fights never get impossibly difficult -- because you can slash through, or dodge to evade, all of it. The bad news is that hectic fights have so much going on, including stuff you can't see, that they become functionally equivalent to button-mashing; big encounters end up feeling tedious, rather than exciting.

And the story is, I mean, I don't want to oversell it; if you've seen end-stage-humanity sci-fi anime like Evangelion (or Zone of the Enders), Automata's themes will feel familiar and its twists won't exactly be jaw-dropping. Its storytelling is still interesting, though! Convoluted as the plot is.

Except to get to the next story beat, you have to run through a bland abandoned factory, or the bland ruins of a city, or bland desert wasteland -- sometimes wandering haplessly through maze-like levels (like that factory) since the map is completely unhelpful with pathfinding. Frequently, the game will force you to backtrack through areas you've seen before (like that goddamn factory) and will even disable fast travel to make you walk through old areas again.

(Don't get me started on Automata's sidequests, which tease opportunities to meet colorful characters and uncover deep lore, but take even more slow and tedious backtracking to get there.)

And then, after about ten hours and a climactic boss fight and rolling credits, the game isn't really over! NieR: Automata asks you to play it again, purportedly to continue the story and keep pursuing its unanswered questions.

But given the first playthrough already felt like a chore, I can't bring myself to sit through "the same story ... [where] most of the events will be similar" (according to this Route B walkthrough). Better to just read it all online and move on to better games.

NieR: Automata isn't bad, but its highlights - a fascinating narrative and unique mechanics - are weighed down by dull environments and uninteresting gameplay.

The soundtrack is pretty rad, though.

Better than: Transformers: Devastation
Not as good as: Sine Mora
Might be better: as an anime series. Oh, there is an anime series?

Progress: Forced myself to complete Route A.

Stormgate's game-mode ambitions are pretty grand - narrative campaigns and ranked competitive and PvE co-op missions - its ex-Blizzard creators evidently aiming to make The Next Blizzard-Style RTS themselves. And while it's certainly normal for Early Access games to feel unfinished, well, Stormgate's got plenty of work left to do.

What I find funny is the game's apparent lack of ambition in faction designs. The Infernal Host grow drones into Giger-esque structures just like the Zerg; the Celestial Armada have glowing power networks and robotic, aloof moods just like the Protoss; heck, the Vanguard's worker units quip "In the rear with the beer" in un-subtle homage to the Terran SCV's "In the rear with the gear" line.

Sure, designing new themes and mechanics in the RTS space can be risky, but to so clearly ape a genre legend risks disappearing in its shadow. Like they say, you come at the king -- you best not miss.

Given I couldn't get into Baldur's Gate or Divinity: Original Sin - I was years late in both cases, but, still - I was initially skeptical of Baldur's Gate 3, even despite the "universal acclaim." Now, after dozens of hours of magic missiles and reckless attacks, chatting up goblins and demigods and livestock, searching abandoned temples and haunted houses and random corpses for quest clues -- after I realized, more than 30 hours deep, I was still in the game's first act; I couldn't be more glad I was wrong.

There are, I have to say, some parts of this game I still don't care for. Things I'd call legacy genre baggage, like an overabundance of options with unclear consequences; from the character creator's enormous menus and lengthy list of abilities at level 1, through to mid-level upgrade selections and sub-selections -- just as an example, I reset and re-leveled my barbarian after using a feat to unlock heavy armor, then finding out that heavy armor disables raging.

And of course I have to complain about narrative dice rolls, which can hide interesting content just 'cause of bad luck. You'd better believe I'm save-scumming just like I did in Disco Elysium. (Heck, sometimes just to get a better combat outcome, too.)

But! Those gripes are easy to get over because of how enthralling Baldur's Gate 3 is, in its storytelling and worldbuilding.

The game opens strong with grandiose cinematics and a straight-into-the-deep-end intro scene -- and rapidly starts weaving in compelling characters, particularly the sparkling personalities who join your party. Then as events progress, plot mysteries deepening and companions' backstories accumulating, NPCs and sidequests are all-the-while tossing out more and more plot threads to pull on.

There's so much writing in this game's conversations, scripted scenes, and notes, not to mention ambient storytelling in the environment; the world feels alive, and huge to boot. And it blends dire, epic themes like the main storyline with fun and silly shit like bribing entrepreneurial ogres.

Plus, as a role-playing sandbox, there are tons of opportunities for your own choices to impact that world and its stories. Often with even more significance than my choice to give Gale magic gloves which increase armor "when unarmored."

The world of Baldur's Gate 3 is so, so full of content to explore and lore to find, and I can't wait for my bumbling party of wackos to discover more of it.

Progress: Exploring the Shadow-Cursed Lands.

If "The Defenestration Trilogy" wasn't clear-enough branding, Tactical Breach Wizards - based on the free demo - is very up-front with its tone: magic-wielding special-ops soldiers trade irreverent banter, then knock down doors and blast baddies. (Yes, often out a window.) Like Gunpoint, this game's narrative elements are unflinchingly sarcastic and irreverent, and I love it.

But the tactical gameplay ... I dunno, I'm not "feeling" it. Even though it completely avoids the unpredictable dice-roll fuck-ups that I often associate with tactical games - "high-hit-percent missed-shot bullshit" as I lamented in Shadowrun: Dragonfall - because all actions are totally deterministic, and you can even rewind turns to try a different approach.

Really, Tactical Breach Wizards combat is more like a chess puzzle, asking you to figure out the right moves to stay alive and kill the bad dudes. And I guess that "figure out" part is what I'm not feeling: staring at the map to plan out each move is kinda boring. (Rewind-ability means I could just try stuff, too, but I'm not stoked on the idea of retrying moves over and over again.)

As much as I like the game's personality, its fully-predictable game mechanics are ironically too dull to hold my interest.