Recent reviews by Big Yabae

Welcome back, Ravens.
It's been a long ten years but we're finally back in the seat and engaging combat mode.
I do wish we had access to gen 3's customisation like insider and extension parts, and I wish we still had heat as a mechanic along with radiators, but this is still one of the best AC games to date and an instant classic.

My favourite Frictional game, right above Amnesia TDD and SOMA.
The first couple of hours are butt-clenchingly tense and had me anxious over every little noise.
Even as you build more confidence and become more familiar with the layout of the bunker, you still will find yourself sweating as you balance moving quick enough to not get caught in a blackout with keeping slow and quiet enough to not draw the Stalker's attention.
At one point I found myself in a situation where I needed to head out defenseless into the darkness of the bunker because I was out of fuel for the generator and it was one of the most tense and anxious moments I've experienced in any game.
Though relatively short, you can get a ton of playtime out of it with how much there is to find and collect.

good
great, even
and as an SA2 fan I am obligated to tell you I dislike SA1

Game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ excellent.
Would compare it to DS3 cross with Sekiro in an open world, but with your classic Souls dungeons strewn throughout.
Fun mechanics, fun bosses.
I can only imagine people are dissing the game because they didn't check the minimum specs before buying.

10/10 it's okay I guess

My favourite racing game ever, bar none.
Too bad you need Origin to play it.

I really enjoy what this game is trying to be.
The gameplay loop is fun, the resource management isn't overbearing but just enough to make you reconsider wasting bullets and the level design is generally good.
What I don't enjoy however is the awful optimisation and general performance of the game.
My PC isn't exactly high-end anymore, but when I've got an i7-6700K, a GTX 1080 and 16GB RAM with the game running at 1080p with medium texture quality, no ray tracing, no hairworks, no motion blur, no PhysX, no tessellation and 4x texture filtering, I shouldn't be getting any stuttering or lag whatsoever, yet every time a new area loads in or I turn around too fast, or a bunch of particle effects are happening at once (like during a gunfight), the frame rate slows to a slide show.
Not to mention the abysmal load times which can take a minute or longer to load one level, as well as microfreezes and long loading times just for changing graphics options.
There are also game-breaking glitches like a consistent game crash/freeze when exiting a cave on a particular level.
I want to reiterate that I really want to enjoy this game.
I've been a fan of the Metro games (and books) for years now and have bought Metro 2033 and the Limited edition of Last Light for Xbox, then 2033 again on Steam, and then also the Redux versions of both games.
I think the gameplay and concept of Exodus are fantastic, but the performance is a major, major issue.

If you liked previous Ace Combat games, you'll like this one.
Good for veterans and newbies to the series but I will make some complaints:
Vague spoiler warning.

-Not enough good jet-vs-jet boss dogfights.
There are three encounters with Mister X, but you can only actually beat him on the last one.
There's one decent fight with a drone boss about half way through, but you fight two of the same boss again later, only they do physically impossible maneuvers making the fight more frustrating than fun.
This brings the dogfight boss total to 5, but since you fight the same enemies every time it's more like 2 different bosses that you just refight.
There are also two encounters with the giant Arsenal Bird bosses, but those consist of you trying to shoot weak points while 100 drones fire missiles at you and spoil the music with the constant
MISSILE
MISSILE
MISSILE
MISSILE
MISSILE warnings.
Compare this to Ace Combat Zero from 2006 where you had 12 different dogfight bosses, plus a giant airship boss that wasn't tedious like the Arsenal Bird.

-Only two attackers, no jammers.
You either choose a fighter, a multirole, or one of the two attackers: A-10 or SU-34.
Previous games had much more variety.
AC7 (2019): 32 planes (4 of which are DLC only) = 18 Fighters, 2 Attackers, 12 Multirole
AC5 (2004): 53 planes = 28 Fighters, 14 Attackers, 3 Jammers, 8 Multirole

It's still a good game and the game mechanics are solid, I just feel it lacks in places that older games did much, much better.

The movement and combos take a little bit of getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes a fast-paced and amazing Metroidvania.
The music is beautifully arranged and the artwork is all done by the incredibly talented Tea-Basira.
Adorable little character sprites and gorgeous character portraits of the Touhou girls.

it gud