Death's Door is a game with solid mechanics, great music, and great graphics. Characters are very interesting, though they might be a bit superficial. Overall world building builds an interesting concept, though I feel some of the elements and objects lack connective tissue to truly bring the world together. Still, Death's Door is an amazing game.
This game has among the most cohesive and liberating combat mechanics in any video game. It combined ideas from dozens of genres and games and created an extremely fun, fast, and ingenious combat system. You can choose which moves and attacks to bind to different buttons and thus create a personalized scheme. Each move changes the way you play by forcing you to be strategic and by giving you valuable tools that you can use in several different ways. The game world itself is also quite impressive. Although it’s a little empty by todays standards, the size of the environments and the detail in the assets still hold up. The monsters that inhabit the world are superb, having complex AI systems and detailed models. However, this game isn’t without flaws. I found it a little frustrating when mid-way through the beginning of the game I failed an important quest. While reading the wiki I discovered that certain quests need to be completed in order, however these 2 quests seemed completely unrelated, and the game never warned you that that could happen. Its character development is practically non-existent. Your companions (pawns) are so bland that the lore within the game literally strips them of their humanity. Even so, their knowledge system is quite interesting and can be useful at times. Also, the pawn system is quite broken on GOG, though I still decided to buy it here since it's drm free. Having a balanced party is very important and can easily change the course of a battle. However, combat strategy is quite lacking, and the available commands are quite superficial and not very useful for most situations. I hope that the rumors for Dragons Dogma 2 are true, and I will be buying it day 1 if the reviews show a worthy successor.
I added Metro Exodus to my wishlist as soon as it came out in 2019. However I was unsure if I should buy it on the you know who store. As soon as I saw it was discounted on the GOG store I jumped at the chance. The game is incredible, though I do believe that only a certain type of player enjoys this kind of game. It's a slow game, where a plan should be made first and the action comes later. It has many mechanics that make you feel conected to the world. It's one of those games where you can get extremely immersed. Each and every character has something to say and do, making this world feel extremely lived in. Events and actions that would seem scripted are actually different in each persons playthrough, since your decisions can impact how the story progresses. People talk to you differently and may treat you differently based on how you play. The semi-open world gives you enough space to feel free to make the decisions that you want to make. The episodic style map system allows the game to present intresting scenarios in a stuctured way making sure the story makes sense. Even so the game is not without flaws. For example, I find it extremely silly that the protagonist's wife is always the person in trouble. Everywhere you go she either winds-up captured by the enemy or hanging from a cliff. Regardless, the game always presents you with an intresting and creative problem which you will need to solve.
