Recent reviews by LThesaurus

It's pretty chill. Basically you just wrap yarn around pegs, and it can feel pretty satisfying when I make smooth motions from peg to peg. There's no loss condition, no pressure, it's just about following their instructions to make these cute little yarn things. After you complete a puzzle, you can restart it in order to gain the ability to change how the yarn and background looks, although it requires 5 completions to unlock all the options for just that one puzzle. I found it pretty fun to mess with color changes anyway, though. It's a nice, super low pressure way to do something a little artistic.

That said, outside of any relaxation/artistic merits the game has, it's not going to be challenging or intense by any stretch. There aren't really puzzles or anything. The most you can do, if you happen to be feeling competitive, is optimize yarn movement or something. Basically, don't go into it expecting a challenge-- you play the game to set your own goals, or just to unwind.

This is one of the most overly complicated RPGs I've ever played, to the point I found it exceptionally stressful to play for a long time... But, once it clicked, it actually got really fun, and I started making good use of all the mechanics. But, if you want a simple RPG, or a simple action game, this ain't it. It's got some serious pacing issues as well, with long stretches of the midgame where the story just doesn't really go anywhere at all. but, when the story peaks, it's VERY strong.

All-in-all, it's something of a mixed bag, but overall it's been a very positive experience. If you think you can handle it.

Of course I recommend Final Fantasy IX, why would I not

I would love to recommend the game, it is fundamentally really good in every way... except, the current version of it just kicked me back to the title screen and reset my mission progress because "I lost connection", even though I didn't.

So, they added always-on DRM that does not work reliably. This is a hard pass. Do not buy this game.

I Hope You Like Coins.

This is a pretty cute platformer, I get pretty strong speedrun vibes to it, but I got pretty stuck on basic progression playing through the first time, and practically accidentally got 100% completion while trying to figure out where to go. You do need to absolutely collect every normal-sized coin in the game. You'll probably need to backtrack and wander a lot. You will almost certainly get lost. If those don't sound good, then, well, it's a no.
Unless, you like speedrunning, in which case, you might start having a lot of fun with the game once you already know where to go. I did a second run for achievements, and it was actually pretty fun to route through the map once I knew what I needed to do ahead of time.

I mostly just want to chat about the story because it drives me nuts hearing other people talk about it.

Story's basically nonexistent until you get to Heavensward (first expansion), and then it starts feeling a bit more like a traditional JRPG-- not the deepest in the world, but it's alright. If you're here for story hype, expect it to start incredibly slow. As in, 100 hours before anything super exciting happens, that slow. But, once you get to Heavensward, it's alright, and once you get to Shadowbringers, it actually gets pretty great.

But, a little bit of extra stuff about mechanics: No customization whatsoever, but you can change classes whenever you want (though you must level each class separately, and leveling is very slow outside of daily random dungeon runs). The open world combat is very shallow, but bosses range from decent to among the best in the genre. If there's a boss in any piece of content, do it. It'll probably be a good time unless it's Binding Coil.

Tenuous recommend: The caveat is what I outlined before. It's very slow to get going properly.

I don't have an explanation for why this game's so good, It just is. It's good. It's pretty hard, but very learnable. Play it. Love it.

It's pretty sweet, it feels fairly accessible if you want something souls-y and are scared of Dark Souls. Co-op is free and is basically a given, you're able to put together spells in any way you want with more or less any build, and the game's overall just a lot more forgiving.
Also like, the customization is really wild, there's a ton of toys to play with, and you should experiment-- it's basically free to do!

If you're still not convinced, just play the demo. It's actually fairly huge.

Fairly accessible minesweeper-like game. Tons of content, and it's free!

Good: The writing and sense of humor is great, but don't expect a deep story! The combat mechanics are cool, and the game makes some innovations and QoL changes that were much needed in the JRPG genre-- encounter limits, quick travel to towns, saving anywhere, and full HP restoration between battles (with MP limits being the main attrition you suffer as you explore). Enemies escalate in strength the longer a fight goes for, encouraging you to use special moves to end it as quickly as possible! It's pretty refreshing overall, for those of us who mashed attack and chugged potions, and never delved any deeper.

There's also plenty of replay value, if you get into the game enough, including a mode that incentivizes defeating bosses while as underleveled as possible, and an alternate story campaign!

Also, among the QoL features, I forgot to mention that you can just fight a random encounter any time you want-- no wandering around necessary.

Bad: The dungeon design's pretty... old-school. Huge mazes, no maps, treasure scattered about at random, and few really notable features... until later in the game. The lategame dungeons are cooler, and have their own gimmicks to them, and are much more fun to explore, however. Battles can get a little repetitious if you're overleveled on normal mode. I figure that's pretty much par for the course in RPGs, but it bears mentioning. There's not much bad about this game unless you're looking for an in-depth narrative... just be wary of the dungeons.