Metro Exodus is an immersive and terrifying game that haunted me in my dreams when I was done playing it, but honestly, I didn't mind. It stuck with me often after playing it, even after I tried a palate-cleansing JRPG before bed. It really hooked me. No one creates atmospheric ruined hellish landscapes and buildings quite like 4A Games. Some folks may not like some of the minutiae the Metro series games force you to interact with, but I love it. The tension this creates is ingenious. There's nothing so freaky as trudging through a water-filled basement also filled with monsters in pitch-black and your flashlight runs out of batteries, and you must swap to your battery-charger, spend several valuable seconds charging it and watch your flashlight come back to life. You must swap gas mask filters and pump up your air-driven Tikhar rifle. When you find a workbench, you should clean your weapon so it doesn’t randomly jam or overheat. I find these things to not be obnoxious in this game, but rather it does wonders for the immersion. The game is not perfect. The writing and dialogue are hit or miss. I played with the English voice acting, and I grew to love the characters even though the acting wasn’t always amazing. There is plenty of heart in Metro Exodus though, even though so much of the setting is so depressing. It’s a wonderful thing. The DLC Chapters, Two Colonels and Sam’s Story were also very good and well worth playing through for more story and horror to play through. Well worth playing.
Yeah it took me a while to get to this one, but I'm glad I did. I actually played through the entire Ys series in 2020 and while they were all wonderful in their own way, Ys VIII was by far the best and most complete of the series. I recommend it as an entry to the series if you're not really up for playing through the older games first. I played through all of the content I could, but there were some things I missed that will have to be collected in a second playthrough someday. I spent over 70 hours in the game on the first playthrough, but I am very much a completionist that doesn't like to look up the answers in a guide. I recommend testing the default button layout and changing it to something that suits you a little more. The action is fast and furious, so you need to be comfortable and not frustrated. I changed almost every default button on my Xbox One controller in the game settings. That said, the movement felt very good after that and the combat is nice and fast, very snappy, and you feel powerful as any one of the six in your party. They all have some amazing abilities! The game starts simple and adds new characters and complexity to the plot as you go through the game. There are lots of skills to learn which improve as you use them in combat, and there is plenty of equipment to improve as progress. Adol can spend time with each of the characters, even the pet parrot, so it really feels like a complete and satisfying experience by the end. Ys VIII is highly recommended, and it was my game of 2020 even though it was released years ago!
