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When you first played Halo, were you blinded by its majesty?

My go-to game when I follow the smoke toward the riff-filled land.

- No video game's prologue should last 20 hours.
- Hinterlands is a terrible starting area and the game as a whole didn't benefit from the open world design.
- MMORPG-like, filler, time-consuming, mindless fetch quests all over the place. Hundreds of side-quests, sure. But they're solved either killing the thing(s) or picking the thing(s). Long gone are story-driven or choices matter quests.
- You barely see anything from Val Royeaux, the most important city of southern Thedas, but a small market square and a few alleys. In fact, it feels like they're avoiding big cities on purpose.
- You can finish the game never venturing beyond Hinterlands, Crestwood and Western Approach. That's right, you can get enough Power from this compulsory areas to continue with the main quest and skip the best (Emprise du Lion, Emerald Graves) and worst (Hissing Wastes, Exalted Plains, Oasis) optional areas with no impact to the plot whatsoever.
- In the end, it doesn't matter what you do outside the main quest, because only your party (3) will show up for the finale. You sided with templars/mages? They won't show up. Did the Grey Wardens join the Inquisition? They won't show up. Orlesian and Inquisition armies fighting venatori and red templars (and sentinels) in the Battle of the Arbor Wilds, always. While in Dragon Age Origins the factions you took sides with, as well as ALL your companions, not just your party, do have a purpose in the Battle of Denerim.
- Playing mage feels utterly straightforward and boring. Dragon Age Origins had arcane, primal, creation, spirit and entropy spells; plus arcane warrior, blood mage, shapeshifter and spirit healer specializations. Whereas Dragon Age Inquisition only has primal (splitted into inferno, storm and winter) and trimmed down spirit spells; as well as less specializations (rift mage, necromancer and knight enchanter).
- Background stories are predeterminated by race: You're a dalish elf, a tal-vashoth qunari, a surface dwarf, etc.
- They shoehorn you into Andrastianism, or, at the very least, Maker-belief. "Perhaps your elven gods are aspects of what we call the Maker". Cringe.
- It carries on from Dragon Age 2 the limited, unintuitive dialogue options and lack of tactical combat. With each entry the series deviates further and further from tabletop-inspired RPG.
- There's a very limited variety of armours, so they all look the same after a while. Which is a shame, because Dragon Age Inquisition has a great art direction, when it wants to...
- In the same vein, no lances or pole arms, eventhough the game does have fully animated lancers and javelineers (Trespasser DLC).
- Caravaggio's tenebrism up to eleven in unlit places.
- Cutscenes and party banter are scarce.
- The ending, the real one, is on the Trespasser DLC.

I can't see myself playing the next Dragon Age. I'd rather read the wiki or watch a playthrough.

The sequel to your favorite electro-industrial metal album; more complex, more aggressive...
but, for some reason, it has thematically shifted to facetious high fantasy.

Parrying is the same as kicking in Dark Souls. Thank me later.

Better than Cyberpunk 2077.

Total War: WARHAMMER II - The Carrot & The Stick

In general terms, the grand campaign (Mortal Empires) makes it the best "Total War: WARHAMMER" of the first two entries if you own both, but still, as many other reviews point out, this should have been an expansion or season pass rather than a fully priced sequel with even more DLC on top. Not to mention the recent price hike for Total War: WARHAMMER (2016), back to 59,99€ (since august 2019) three years after its release, which is required only to play the aforementioned Mortal Empires campaign, because most factions are still locked behind DLC -even the infamous day-one DLC for Chaos Warriors-.
This is at the very core the same vg, with the same engine and recycled animations, just new factions and minor mechanics; but they rejected to upgrade the first Total War: WARHAMMER campaign while still selling DLCs for it.
Creative Assembly shows a greed that'd make Games Workshop blush with shame.

Let's pretend someone has bought everything up to this point because they want to have a complete vg –you know, that kind of utopia nowadays–, even the terrible mess that Total War: WARHAMMER standalone version was.
Total War: WARHAMMER (2016): 59.99€ just for access to uncomplete Empire, Dwarfs, O&G, Vampire Counts and Bretonnia's Free-LC; 18.99€ (x2) if you want to unlock the poorly implemented Beastmen and Wood Elves, 7.99€ for the infamous Chaos Warriors day-1 DLC and another 9.99€ for an actually functional Chaos faction posthumously splitted up and released as Norsca.
Total War: WARHAMMER II (one year later): 59.99€ just for access to uncomplete High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizardmen and Skavens; 18.99€ (x2) for Tomb Kings and Vampire Coast as well –which for once are properly fleshed out, but still overpriced–.
8.99€ (x7) to complete your Dwarfs, O&G, Empire, Vampire Counts, Dark Elves, Skaven, Lizardmen and High Elves; plus that RoR nonsense.
And finally, since the main marketing target are children and adolescents –as implied by the lost of features / mechanics and how arcade the TW series has turned since Rome II–, a 2.99€ DLC for the gory content, thus avoiding a mature rating for the base game and the concern of those conservative parents who have to pay.
That makes 279,84€.
I don't value a video game by how many hours of entertainment it gives me for each $ I have invested on it, neither am I a MMORPG player nor the kind that'd buy virtual stuff in a F2P; but even if I were, it would strike me how abusive this pricing is.

In Total War: WARHAMMER II - Mortal Empires you can still interact with all the factions and units you don't own from both Total War: WARHAMMER and Total War: WARHAMMER II. You can engage in diplomacy with them or fight battles against them. You can even confederate some factions from the same race you are playing and, if you are lucky enough and their AI Lords have recruited them beforehand, play with DLC units –but anyway you won't be able to upgrade them with your Lords' red-line skills, buildings, technologies, etc.–.
It's carrot and stick.

P.S.: I recently read a r/Sigmarxism post asking why Games Workshop miniatures are so expensive, to which a former GW Staff replied "They have a stranglehold on a dedicated market, selling a cheap [to produce] product, to a willing audiance, at a profit margin that is honestly shocking, so they won't stop and don't have to stop". And that seemed like a fitting conclusion for this review.

> play the game
> get stone trophy 90% of the time
> tell Kamiya you love the game on Twitter
> get blocked for being a foreign insect

The true Bayonetta experience

From: Matthewmatosis Extra, "How to Enjoy Bayonetta".

The missing link between Arkane's first RPG, "Arx Fatalis" -a tribute of sorts to "Ultima", heavily influenced by Ion Storm's "Deus Ex" and Looking Glass Studios' "Thief"-, and the nonlinear stealth / action of their following opera magna, "Dishonored", in the rebooted "Might & Magic" high fantasy setting.

In Devil May Cry 5 you are the boss fight.
Otherwise, you're doing something wrong.