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The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel
I wanted to write a huge, very detailed review full of all my numerous impressions with different, but exclusively bright shades. For certain reasons, I won't do that; instead, my verdict will describe this image:

If I have any reason to live on, it is to play the rest of the games in the series when they are released on PC.
Formally – 10/10, actually – the most wonderful game, the best of all that I have ever played. Despite worsening health problems, increased emotional suffering and, accordingly, a decrease in the level of positive experiences, I still received incredible pleasure from playing, admired the setting and music, enjoyed the gameplay, and fell in love with the characters.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II
What can I say? I could say a lot, but words about the actual elements of this game would be superfluous – this series has long become more than just a game for me and does not deserve anything other than an impeccable rating. The Legend of Heroes in general and Trails of Cold Steel in particular touches the deepest parts of my soul and embodies all my brightest dreams, desires, and aspirations... And precisely because of this, playing through the second part turned out to be a very exhausting experience. As with Automata, I was playing in a rather poor state of mental and physical health, and therefore this game and a certain element of it, representing the brightest light, scorched my heart drowning in dark despair. I haven't felt so bad in a very long time, but at least by the end, my overall well-being had more or less improved, and I was able to complete this part with some relief without unnecessary emotional suffering.

How much longer the main series will develop is unknown, but Trails of Cold Steel will get two more releases, and now I realize that in order for me to easily give myself over to euphoria and fully enjoy future content, I will need to improve my health and solve the problems that are bothering my mind. But, of course, it’s easier said than done, and as before, I don’t see any ways or opportunities for this.

Nioh

After 40 hours (or so, maybe more) of gameplay, I decided to put-on-hold this title indefinitely. I haven't dropped it, but I have no desire to continue for now. Why is that?.. There are several reasons, but let's take them in order. My experience can be divided into three points — first impression, early and late stages.

First Impression
I really didn't like it. The first location (the London prison) seemed very bleak to me, and along with boring knights/guards as enemies, the game didn't make a positive impression. Gameplay at this stage was sparse, and the game itself made it clear from the start that it wouldn't provide any interesting plot. Besides, Nioh is the first Dark Souls-style game I've dealt with (I still haven't tried the Souls games themselves), so the gameplay peculiarities (mob respawns, leveling at the fountain, etc., etc.) caused me a certain amount of frustration and, in general, I didn't like them. At this point, I thought about dropping it entirely, but...

Early Game
I decided not to do that and didn't regret the decision.
The hero sails away from dirty Britain and heads to Japan... Here everything becomes much more interesting. The style, folklore, setting. Exactly my thing. Sengoku, samurai, yokai, oni, and so on. They even remembered about cute girls. I also highly appreciated that it was a remarkably good port. To be honest, I didn't expect this from Koei, but perhaps Ninja is not the clumsy Omega Force after all. Almost everything works as it should and the mouse feels native, as if the game were made for PC. Subjectively and without basis, I assume it's many times more convenient than on consoles with gamepads. In general — we need more ports like this. Besides, by this point, I had not only gotten used to the gameplay peculiarities but even grew to love them for the challenge and the pleasure of overcoming them. Moreover, I've always preferred the concept of a player character fighting a small number of opponents; I've always disliked the one-versus-a-thousand system.

After ~twenty hours
At this point, two main problems began to surface: namely, repetitive gameplay and recurring content. Fine, reuse of locations is not great, but not super negative; however, the mobs repeating for dozens of hours became very tedious over time. The funny thing is that I started handling them worse than in the earlier stages of the game, all because I tried to breeze through the familiar content and therefore made many small mistakes due to carelessness. Then I got stuck on one boss, and when I decided to farm some gear/exp, I suddenly realized there are no proper ways to do it. In short, I need to rest for a couple of weeks or months, and then maybe try again.

Separately, regarding the port — although I wrote (and believe) that it is well-made, it wasn't without problems. For some reason, the game regularly freezes for about 5-10 seconds, and while this doesn't strongly affect the ability to progress, it's still annoying. Also, inventory management wasn't very pleasing.

And finally, about the bosses I managed to conquer.

Derrick the Executioner

Literally who? The only thing I remember about him is that he can rush in a straight line. Let's chalk that up to him being a London guy, which means by default he's not very interesting.

Onryoki

This freak made me sweat quite a bit, and since I've gotten used to having everything handed to me on a silver platter in games over recent years, defeating him after numerous losses became a pleasant event. Although overall, I wouldn't say he's particularly interesting.

Hino-Enma

I want her to suck out my insides... Actually no, I don't; that would probably be unpleasant and she was unlucky with her face. My favorite boss — I liked everything from the graceful movement animations to the interesting attack patterns.

Nue

I can't highlight any interesting points about him, so I'll just say he's okay.

Tachibana Muneshige

The story fight with "him" was very boring and there's nothing to say about it, but I liked the side-quest duel. How many times did he defeat me when he had a pixel of HP left... Ugh. He forced me to use my brain and (abuse) bows and arquebuses in an honest sword fight... Now, how exactly did our honest duel begin? Did I already say this duel was honest? Well, basically, even before the greeting began, when opponents are supposed to bow to each other, I would pull an arquebus (or bow) from behind my back and shoot him in the head. He would lose consciousness and fall to the ground, then I'd run up on dashes and plunge a sword into his back, after which I'd retreat to a safe distance. But even so, I still couldn't defeat him in this honest duel... So I decided to add more honesty and started using the arquebus not only before the fight but during it: every time he prepared to use a strong attack, I pulled my gun from behind my back and repeated the procedure: shot him in the head, ran up, hit his back, and hid behind a stone wall. And so, finally, the honest foreign warrior won! It's just a pity ammo isn't infinite; it would have been easier that way. My #2.

Great Centipede

Bugged abomination, defeated without any problems. Well... Okay... I admit, once or twice I fell through the ground because I wasn't looking where I was stepping.

Umi-bozu

Speaking of falling through the ground/falling from heights etc. — I hate this in games; it's just maximum frustration for me since long ago. And this location, of course, was simply filled with such things, which is why completing it was accompanied by regular rage-quits on my part.
As for the boss himself — it took a long time. Not ten or even twenty attempts were spent before I finally realized that bonfires could be used to buff weapons — after that, I passed on the first or second attempt. Yeah. But overall, a good boss.

Joro-Gumo

Didn't feel it — turned out too simple. Although I won't hide that her appearance and movements looked quite disturbing, but maybe that's just because I'm an arachnophobe.

Yuki-Onna

Beautiful and interesting, but not too difficult. First place for looks (except for Ginchiyo, of course, but she's not a boss), but in terms of animation beauty, she still loses to number three.

White Tiger

At this level, I already started losing interest and perhaps for that reason Byakko gave me certain difficulties, although I didn't like him myself.

Giant Toad

In terms of the fight feel — just a mob, only faster and with more damage than usual.

Ogress

Meh. Seemed quite difficult and stressful to me. But still meh.

Okatsu

Couldn't overcome her :(. Probably my payback for preferring agile characters over strong ones in expansions (and everywhere else)...

For now 7/10. It would have been much better if it weren't so repetitive or if I were about four years younger.

A gulag simulator. Atmospheric, visually appealing, and captivating for many hours during the first playthrough. I forced children to work in mines, preserved corpses in ice, and transplanted organs from them to the wounded (actually, no, about four people died under my rule, and those were scripted deaths), fed people special baked goods – rations of blockade bread with sawdust and glue, built a spiritually-grounded camp with an inquisition and prayers, led processions around the generator in -150 degrees (realistic), helped everyone I could, improved living conditions, and didn't even descend into a dictatorship.
Very quickly, the mechanics became clear, and the challenge disappeared – you spend hours placing new buildings in the snow and assigning little people to workplaces.
I finished the scenario and started another – the same research and law trees, you place buildings in exactly the same way, extract resources, and assign little people, only in a slightly different location and with a minimally different theme – complete boredom.

You can stretch the first few hours to a 7 out of 10 for the atmosphere and the interesting experience of learning the game, if you can normally immerse yourself in it and while you're solving the initial problems, but after that it becomes almost unplayable. There is no motivation to repeat all the same things in other scenarios. There is nothing more to learn, and there is no variation in the gameplay. For this reason, I don't recommend buying it without a 60-70% discount. However, I didn't expect much more from this kind of indie game.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance
A good game. You can get drunk, play mini-games, beat people up, kill enemies with a sword, and spend time tinkering with a new piece of armor that you either took from a cold corpse or bought by saving up money given to you by a lord. The initial release suffered from a huge number of bugs, which severely damaged the game and spoiled the enjoyment. Nevertheless, I liked the game, although considering the number of bugs and the price on Steam, I wouldn't buy it.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Did you get the "Virgin" achievement?

No :(

No :(

You have lost my respect.

Resident Evil VII

I installed it in the first half of January this year, played for about half an hour, and it didn't quite appeal to me right away, and there were many other things I wanted to try at the time. I launched it again... just a couple of days ago, that is, six months later.
I saw a common opinion on the internet that "this is no longer Resident Evil." I laugh at the fools because, in its concept, it is the same RE1, only transferred to a modern format. I, however, have always had a positive attitude towards both the old and new games in the series, and therefore I would also gladly play the continuation of the shooters in the style of 4-5-6, despite the fact that after the sixth game, the plot of the series has degraded to the level of utter nonsense. Well, I hope they don't abandon the storylines that have been created over the past two decades.
Returning to RE7, I will name the two most important things that I liked here: the atmosphere and the level design. The visuals, sound, and environment were all at a very high level. The levels are made in the style of the same RE1, which could not but please.
The downsides are that starting somewhere in the second half, it stopped being "scary" and became a bit boring. And the redneck theme is still not for everyone; from the very beginning, I got the vibe of a trashy horror movie that I watched about 10 years ago.
Overall, 8.5/10, the game is short and not very suitable for repeated playthroughs, but as a single experience, it is very good.

DARK SOULS: REMASTERED

I've wanted to play it for a long time, but I couldn't find the time, but now that the remaster is out, it seems like the perfect time to give it a try.
My overall impression is that it's like a modern and significantly improved Diablo. I feel like replaying it with different builds. I liked the gameplay, level design, bits and pieces of the plot here and there, exploration, and I especially want to mention the style – the equipment/weapons, including their icons (and especially the rings, they are really cool) are very well done. What I didn't like was the running from bonfire to boss, which was especially noticeable in the Crystal Cave and in Izalith. When I was replaying a section a million times, the finger that was holding down the "W" key really started to ache – it shouldn't be like that. Overall, like in most other games, the first half was more enjoyable than the second.
Oh, and yes, I liked that the game holds the player accountable for everything they do in it, and that despite the lack of an obvious plot, a lot of things happen in the game depending on the player's actions.
In my first playthrough, I played with this:

I found this set very early on and completely by chance, and I played in it for a very long time until I found a replacement.

When I found this armor, I immediately preferred it over my old one, as it was many times better in terms of stats. Then I maxed it out to +5, and closer to the end of the game, I could move around very freely in it.

I wore this when I needed to run somewhere far, or in situations where blocking incoming attacks was useless and mobility was needed instead of defense (I probably could have run around without armor at all, but that wouldn't have been as cool).

I used it only once when I was browsing the inventory in search of armor with the highest curse resistance. I didn't expect much, but it turned out to be very effective – one-shotting the boss turned into negligible damage.

I couldn't find a reason not to use this ring; it seemed too good to me. I used the others depending on the situation.

Thanks to Plues, I had to take the life of an innocent NPC in order to take this sword from him. I played with it for a very long time until I finally upgraded it to Chaos Blade. I didn't really like the constant self-damage, but since I didn't have other options due to one unpleasant event, I had to use it. With 40 dexterity, the damage was huge and it cut through all enemies like butter.

The simplest bow, later upgraded to a meager +5. I abused it in many places.

I used it, as it is probably intended, for parrying. I used it on Silver Knights.

9/10, I'll play 2 and 3, and then maybe I'll replay 1 if I feel like it.

Oh yeah, I was convinced that Nioh was a clone of DS and almost identical to the original, and in what it didn't match, it was noticeably worse (for example, in level design, which was many times worse, less variety of enemies, questionable gameplay decisions, etc.), and there are no particular reasons to finish it now.

Thanks to Ples, I had to take the life of an innocent NPC in order to take this sword from him.

I just told you where you can get this weapon...

The evil tempter, Mold.

how does the remaster differ from the old version?

Price.

How does the remaster differ from the old version?

I don't know about the old version, but the remaster is at least a better port than parts 2 and 3.

As far as I know, there were some issues with the multiplayer in the original game, and the remastered version was supposed to fix that. But I can't say for sure if they succeeded. And, of course, the graphics have been updated.