Game Reviews: Celeste, Inside and Yakuza Kiwami

MadaraUchiha

Akatsuki
Staff member
Celeste:
It's a 2D platformer about Madeline who wants to reach the top of the mountain. It has precise controls, inventive level design and introduces great mechanics as the game goes on. It has a god-tier soundtrack, the difficulty doesn't spike randomly and is steadily increased although it's not an easy game. Every stage is great as well. My only complaint is that the very last portion of the main section of the game, maybe the last 15 minutes were slightly underwhelming, which was intentional but it didn't do it for me. Its story and characters were decent too but they weren't exactly highlights for me, it was the platforming.
Overall: 4.5/5

Inside:
This is 2D game about a boy in a dystopic world. It's a tense and haunting game that does some great visual storytelling, with amazing environment and art design and neat puzzles. It doesn't introduce a lot of new mechanics and is a simple game but fortunately it's barely 3 hours long so I highly recommend finishing this in one sitting to keep the tension up.
Overall: 4/5

Yakuza Kiwami:
Remake of the first installment in the series. Kiryu Kazuma takes the blame for his boss' murder and is expelled from his clan and arrested for 10 years. When he gets released, he notices that his friends and fellow members have gone missing.

The game is basically a brawler where you have to gain XP to unlock skills in 3 of the 4 fighting styles. The 4th style moves get unlocked by "Majima Everywhere" in which you have to fight a characer called Majima to gain abilities. There's also a ton of side missions, activities you can do like hot wheel racing, bowling, darts, dating, gambling, baseball and coloseum fighting,

Pros:
Solid story and characters
Kiryu, the main character is very likeable
Combat has 4 styles and all of them are great and pretty useful. I recommend investing EXP in all of them.
Not as many mini games as other entries in the series but bowling, darts and baseball were pretty fun
The world is small but dense
The game is generous with XP

Cons:
Side missions are fetch quests or brawlers
Random encounters get a bit annoying
The animations/loading screens when you enter a door get repetitive and stale
There are weird difficulty spikes in a couple of places

Overall: 3.5/5.
 
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