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Finished it, and it took less than ten years. It seems better than the utterly awful Zerg add-on, but not by much. The plot is completely generic, on par with the ending of Mass Effect – you collect Pokémon, and then you win. And what's funny is that you spend 70% of the Campaign collecting Pokémon, while you defeat the countless fleets and armies of the Evil Villain in about one and a half missions.
It's uninteresting to look at the faceless, bizarre-looking characters adorned with trinkets. The missions are garbage, on par with Heart of the Swarm: destroy three buildings, press three levers, do it while a timer is running. Maybe I'm just getting old and I don't remember how it was in Wings of Liberty, but the imbalance seemed excessive.
Well, the only good thing is that I looked at the heroes they copied from Heart of the Swarm and figured out who's who.



You're a cat. That's basically it.



A visual novel with mini-games about how you're being gaslighted.

~mech
The exposition makes sense, but it seemed overly drawn out and tedious – perhaps the most significant flaw, and it also features the worst track from the otherwise decent soundtrack.
Most of the puzzles are completely childish, taking only five seconds to solve, and they are too standardized; the puzzle rooms are drawn poorly and blandly; the mini-game about answering questions is underdeveloped; the shoot 'em up-pseudo-danmaku levels are fun, but the overwhelming majority of the story-driven interludes between sections only rehash the same things and lead nowhere, because the characters' backstories fit into two sentences without any details or twists.
The art style is good, and there are surprisingly a lot of good voice acting performances, although I didn't recognize some of them until I saw them in the credits. Sugita is in his element – he once again played a degenerate. I'll also criticize the fox – she overacts so meaninglessly in some places that it's painful, and it's almost impossible to skip. If she toned it down a few notches, she would be an excellent host for excellent voice acting, and she would still stand out from the rest.
Overall, a 6-6.5/10. You can play it if you have nothing else to do and enjoy it, but only if you really have nothing else to do. If this is an attempt to launch a franchise, then it has potential, but the execution and content need to be seriously reworked.

You're a cat. That's basically it.

Okay, I'll add a little more.
It's like Half-Life 2, but without the shooting; the graphics are quite nice; the story is decent; the NPC hubs are suffocating in places; the stealth-acrobatic abilities of the cat are used in many places in a fun and, in a good sense, deconstructionist way compared to the usual games; it's also funny to see how the naive NPCs consider the cat to be some kind of full-fledged rational agent. I can also add that during the game, I had the thought that it's not so bad to play as a cat for once, instead of another unfortunate brown-haired girl who has fallen into a difficult life situation, which is what the indie adventure game industry is full of.
And it's worth keeping in mind that all 6+ hours that it takes to complete, I spent listening to a bunch of podcasts at 1.5x speed – that's why I started playing it in the first place, so it's possible that the game is more boring than it seemed to me.

I'll start by saying that this game has simply amazing legs, and despite the historical setting, I'm not talking about a nation, but about women's legs. It's a pity that, apart from the gallery, you can't see them anywhere else, because in the dialogues, only the upper part of the characters is shown. I really liked the illustrations; the style is unusual in a good way, and the clothes of this era, spiced up with fanservice details here and there, are very much to my liking.

Now, about the main thing: Cosette > Pauline > Zhenya/Laura/Rosa > Maria Theresa/Nicolette/Oscar > Charlotte/Ernestine/Leonora > Polette/Antoinette/Yulka/Anna (her shoes are great) > Eme/Adelaide/Brigitte > Pirate Girl.

Thanks to this game, I've regained some interest in European history and culture, which is a bit sad, because in our time it's hard to imagine such content from Europeans themselves, and we have to rely on Asians, who, for some reason, show more respect for other countries than even their own people. In general, if European countries had as developed a gaming industry and if they treated their past as, for example, the Japanese do, and if they had the same level of technology and aesthetic sense, then perhaps Euro settings would be as interesting as Asian ones, but alas. Although, it seems that here are strong, inspiring female characters, but apparently without a bad character, shaved heads, creepy faces, forced lesbian tendencies, brown skin, and other things that game developers seem to require now.

Regarding the text, it's difficult to assess how well the Chinese corresponds to the English, since there is no voice acting (and even if there was, I don't understand Chinese), but in terms of readability, I rate this work very highly. While playing, I sometimes thought about why not translate words like "monsieur" and "mademoiselle" as they do with Japanese suffixes for modern idiots? Something like, "Napoleon, dude, why are you such a toxic-narrative cringe lord, lol." In general, I didn't experience any negativity from the text, which is like a breath of fresh air among the terrible translations of Japanese games and subtitles in anime.

I liked the plot. There is nothing groundbreaking in it, but for a strategy game, it's very good. There is a moderately engaging premise, a consistent plot development, and a satisfying ending. There is a superficial exploration of certain themes, such as class struggle, and the protagonist's journey from a novice officer to a heroine of the French people is well demonstrated, as well as how, as she gains victories and career growth, she surrounds herself with loyal followers. Of course, if there were more filler content in the game, some bonding events between the characters, it would be even better.

The gameplay was very inspiring for the mechanics of future expansions (if there will be any, of course), and overall I liked it, although I can't help but note some problems. The AI, for example, seemed quite smart at the beginning (for example, it always targeted my most vulnerable units, which led to defeat a couple of times), but closer to the end, it noticeably became dumber, which is clearly seen from the fact that its units do not leave a certain zone and the player can kill its units right under its nose, and it will simply skip its turn. The difficulty of the maps is largely achieved by the fact that, according to the conditions of defeat, the player cannot lose units (usually one to three), which looks more like a crutch in terms of difficulty. And I didn't understand the point of artillery, especially in the context of upgraded light infantry that attacks only one cell away. Perhaps there is a point in defending on artillery cells due to the additional range, but in most cases, you have to play in attack.
However, the system itself was to my liking. All sorts of cool skills, equipment for units, weather effects, terrain features, and so on.

I think I can recommend Mentu, Loku, and Plesu.

I'm a bit bummed about replaying the same battles to see different outcomes in the second part. Otherwise, my adventure in this game was filled with purely positive emotions.

When I create a setting for an expedition:


But as always, let's get back to the main point:
Sheri (sweet, romantic, naive, responsible, and so on - very pretty, she would just look even better with longer hair) > Jessica (Egberto!!!... I really liked her in the first part, and she's still very beautiful; however, her role in the second part was a bit depressing) > Lucilis (there wasn't much of her, but I really liked her image) > Chris (I wouldn't say she stood out particularly compared to the other characters, but during reflection on some internal feelings, I had to rank her higher than many others) > Imelda (charismatic, that's for sure; it's good that she also has a kind side, otherwise I would have ranked her lower) > Namu > Liana (I really liked her in the first half, but then she slightly declined for similar reasons as Jessica) > Betty > Lana > Celia > Leticia > Sonya.
Among the guys, I liked the mage from the second part - I would like to have such a friend or be such a friend. Leon is also good, and in general, they are all good characters - each with their own beliefs, life situations, etc.

The plot - while you're playing, you might think that it's moderately engaging but quite straightforward in its presentation, and then, as you go through other routes, you realize that it's not that simple. I think that the conflict of ideals and interests is conveyed well here, and the ability to play for each side is great. Although, of course, now I wouldn't betray friends for some grand idea...

I liked the setting and its content, there are a lot of different classes, unique units with their own characteristics, and so on, but I would still like some kind of dynamic difficulty level or something like that, because when you start playing, you have to think a little about tactics, but once you level up, you don't even buy mercenaries - you just run around with the heroes so as not to waste time on extra actions. And there's also the same problem as in Banner - sometimes the mobs just skip their turns and don't behave very intelligently in general.

Imelda (charismatic, that's for sure; thankfully, she also has a kind side, otherwise I would have ranked her lower)

(c) Anselm

I used to spend quite a bit of time in Perfect World, which was a clone of the Lineage series. Now, years later, the same company is making a clone of Genshin, so it's fair to compare the two. The combat, animations, and interface are definitely better here. That is, everything related to the mechanical part. In my opinion, the setting is worse, and the characters are also less expressive in their design – of all of them, only Echo stood out and I remember her. I liked the narrative format more, not least because you play as a character with their own opinions and lines, rather than a blank slate, which is somewhat amusing since the character customization is available here and not in Genshin. I think I would have enjoyed playing it a few years ago, but now this format is definitely not for me anymore.

When I started playing, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing, and then it turned out that I was playing the censored version. After that, I installed the normal version and realized that the "content" is an acquired taste – there are some amusing sprites here and there, but the defeat scenes themselves didn't interest me, not to mention that I didn't want to intentionally lose just to watch them. Overall, on the one hand, it feels like a waste of time, but then you think – aren't gacha games and Skyrim also a waste of time? It's just that, for a couple of hours, you can relax and play – run around/shoot – if there are no other alternatives, or if those alternatives require too much effort, whether it's time or a specific mood.


A long time ago, I watched the anime based on this setting, and I liked it back then. So, I'm not entirely sure if the enjoyable Walkthrough is due to the game itself or some warm, nostalgic feelings. The gameplay is very smooth; everything has its purpose, and there's room to exercise your mind. It's one of the rare games where you can actually play with a bow.
I defeated the first three bosses by a hair's breadth, when I had only a sliver of HP left, and then I found out about the existence of "flow," and everything became much easier.


You lose your equipment when you lose, but you keep your skills; there are safes where you can store items that you don't take into battle. As you progress through the game, you can unlock and craft various things without grinding or straining yourself. It's cool, although the storyline is a bit short, and, accordingly, the number of locations is also limited. At first, it was difficult; I experimented with what was most comfortable to play with and came to the conclusion that "large" weapons are more powerful than any other due to their large range and the character's mobility; I played with them for most of the time. Then, on the winter level, I was lucky enough to craft a katana and an additional melee damage bonus, and later, an ultimate ability with a melee damage buff and a support "weapon" – immunity for 1.5 seconds. As a result, I created a kind of melee build for the final boss, and I completed the rest of the game without any problems.
I liked the art style. It has a "Korean" feel to it, in a good way.

Once, Locken shared a link to this game with me, saying, "I found a game for you." And now, some time has passed, and I've tried it. It's worth saying right away that this title isn't for the faint of heart, and not because of gore or the protagonist's semi-nude appearance, but simply because it's mentally taxing. In other words, it's a game that makes you think, both in terms of finding solutions and testing your brain's processing speed. There are a total of 36 levels, and throughout the game, it constantly throws something new at you, without any routine. In other words, instead of a difficulty progression, which I generally don't like (sometimes you reach the very end, but you're already too tired to spend several hours fighting the last boss, and in the end, you just give up), you're simply given new and new tasks. Overall, unexpectedly cool.

Added after 1 hour 41 minutes

Another confirmation that cute anime girls can make even the most realistic setting not so depressing... In general, every time I play such games, I regret that I never seriously considered game development, but now I'm too old, etc.

whining on far-off 6



It was a bit tough to get started because the introduction is very stifling, and then there's the Caribbean setting, which means Spanish flavor with its palette, music, names, and accent—one of those things I'm allergic to.

At first, I was put off by the abundance of useless side content. In the sense that before, there were secondary quests of various types, but not that many, and they rewarded you with something more or less substantial or at least tangible. Here, you walk across the map, and every 50 meters you stumble upon a marker for some other mini-side quest that might take a minute to complete and gives you almost nothing in return—well, maybe you can farm a bit of random resource, or a random piece of gear/attachment for a random gun. The same goes for the various types of random collectibles that give nothing. On the plus side, they finally removed the towers that annoyed everyone except me.
Overall, this caused some confusion at first, but then came the realization of freedom—essentially, aside from outposts and checkpoints (outposts on a minimal scale) and AA guns, you don't actually need to do anything beyond the main quests to play comfortably, and even these points aren't strictly mandatory. Outposts and checkpoints are just fast-travel/airdrop points, and considering the distance a wingsuit can carry you, you can cover the entire map having captured only a few bases; AA guns don't matter if you aren't flying planes or helicopters, and even if you are, the whole gun is taken out in five seconds—run up, throw a grenade from 20 steps away, and run back. Plus, if transport is needed, you can call a Roach-car with a whistle at any moment, just like in Cyberpunk.

Regarding the shooting—it's as excellent, juicy, and pleasant as before. Guns and attachments are looted from collectible crates scattered here and there or given for quests, and they serve more of a cosmetic function. I didn't bother much and played through with one starting gun—a semi-automatic rifle with a homemade silencer from the tutorial—and a simple Kalashnikov that I managed to find within the first few hours and used to replace the second tutorial assault rifle; fortunately, with armor-piercing bullets, all enemies, even the toughest ones, go down clearly from one headshot. The only thing I changed on the "three" several times during the game was the grenade launcher/explosive sniper rifle as soon as a new anti-vehicle option became available.
Regarding gear—in this part, perks are tied to it, although they aren't very diverse or impactful on the gameplay—like, plus resistance to a certain type of damage, plus stamina for running, and so on; meanwhile, the perk trees with skill point upgrades from before are gone. I liked this approach because while it was cool to upgrade things before, on the other hand—am I playing D&D or a shooter-sandbox? Why are you locking game elements behind progression? Not to mention that in old parts, the character starts off more stripped down than they should be, as you spend initial ability levels just barely bringing your health and armor up to an average level, crafting those stupid ammo pouches without which you carry one gun with one magazine, and so on. In the end, here, separate and most unusual perks from the final progression levels of old parts are tied to specific gear, but even then they aren't OP or a must-have, just for those who like them; essentially, no one forces you into anything.
The role of vehicles has also been strengthened—you have to fight helicopters constantly and occasionally tanks, and you have the appropriate weaponry for this, and you can easily get a tank or a combat helicopter/plane yourself, and every second jeep has a turret, albeit a useless one. Plus, enemies have automatic turrets, mortars, and so on, much of which you can personally seize. I enjoy all of this—it's quite brisk.

As for the world—it's beautiful, not boringly designed, diverse, with locations thematically divided by terrain and plot concept, featuring land, water, and air, several small towns and a capital; overall, it's surprisingly interesting to be in. Some locations are completely unlike others and provide a special atmosphere. Perhaps the best of the worlds from previous parts so far; it's clear they worked on it very well, although this only starts to become noticeable closer to the middle or second half.
You can also play dominoes with workers or fight in cockfights, or run around as one of the three previous villains in pseudo-plot additional gore missions on maps from those parts.

But where it falls short is when trying to empathize with the story characters. Or rather, that attempt doesn't even happen due to certain narrative features.
From the perspective of world design, the characteristics of the country and the local ecosystem built by the dictator and his sycophants, everything looks quite organic, and not as crazy as in the fifth part, where several thousand rednecks sniffed lilies and set up a branch of "the same horror" on some undefined territory.
The images, motivations, capabilities, and forms of abuse of the local population by the villains are quite clear and explainable here, while the side of the fighters consists of such utterly derailed cliques of degenerates as have never been seen before. And I don't mean "oppressed coarse uneducated workers," but specifically mental and moral degenerates—not all, but about half of the named characters, on the level of Hurk from previous parts or the idiots from 4 who give corresponding quests. It's probably supposed to look like they have hot Latin American blood and were so crushed by the yoke of dictatorship that they went slightly crazy, but they look like cringe TikTokers. Moreover, all this is heavily seasoned with "the agenda," which wasn't in the last part, though not so much pushing something as really just checking a box, purely so game journalists wouldn't complain.
Now I'll try to list from memory the buzzwords from the manual to make it clearer: slavery, Western colonialism (these two are at least organically and well integrated into the plot, so they're forgiven); "light-skinned" privileges (in the context of the local smoked population); a female/female homosexual couple in a side quest, a female/FTM homosexual couple (together with their fat scumbag friend, they are the main clique of degenerates; added as a phenomenon purely to check a box without any influence on the plot, while in terms of conversation, appearance, emotions, and behavior—they are utterly derailed animals), just some important plot homosexual in another location (moreover, against the background of the previous couple, the Overton window is already cracking so much that this one isn't even perceived as something special); I separately chuckled at how after a couple dozen hours, one of the female characters suddenly rolled out a "by the way, I'm vegan" thread, kind of like in that meme with urinals, and an additional chuckle that 15 minutes after this revelation, she was suddenly killed for plot reasons. Well, as for the number of strong women who survived while strong men died—I'll keep quiet about that; it's long been standard practice. It's good that I chose a male character this time; at least one decent sausage fell into the bowl of vareniki. The only thing I can't remember is climate change—but I didn't do all the side quests, maybe there was something somewhere, or maybe the game was just made several years ago when it wasn't as acute on the agenda.
Overall, I got the feeling that the writers really decided to troll and for fun threw together a fanfic taking into account everything currently relevant on Twitter (an extreme organization banned in the RF). Probably because of this, due to the caricatured lightness and comicality, these things weren't nitpicked, but rather caused a smile a few times from the deliberate absurdity of what was happening—as if you're watching some 80s-90s cartoon after school where characters run around, do crazy stuff, an anvil falls on their head, and so on.
Also, upon the very first launch, in addition to the brightness settings common for modern games, the game offers a whole bunch of settings for various disadvantaged people, like colorblindness or voice-over for menu items (you never know, maybe a blind person wants to play).

In other respects, summing up, one can completely ignore the previous section, and if someone liked the previous parts and doesn't mind shooter-sandboxes, then this title is capable of providing a very brisk and engaging experience. They worked well on the mistakes of the previous part and pulled it out of that gloom they dipped into last time, and even moved in the direction of more free gameplay and a significantly cooler world. And I even got used to the Spanish flavor by the end, although I still had to turn off the radio and music in the options.





A casual game for housewives. Fart through rolls like in another casual game Aid; in between levels, click around a happy farm—talk to mobs, water flowers, sweep up some crap, chop a bush. I thought it would be more fun given the hype, but no.
The only emotion other than neutral in a positive direction I got was when I named two cultists Arandor and Plesen, and at one point they became friends, and then I almost missed the time limit for a courier quest for Ples; he got offended and became a heretic who confuses workers. After which Arets gave me a task to kill him, I fed same poison to Ples, he died, and Arets was happy and ate a dish made from his corpse.

and there was also this moment

Dropped it after the boss of the first biome—completely bored.

Unlike the first one, which I enjoyed but didn't find particularly outstanding compared to other works by Uchikoshi, this one was truly excellent, even in that comparison. Here, Uchikoshi deviated significantly from his favorite themes, which sometimes repeat in his other works, and still managed to create something interesting, intricate, and cohesive, even with connotations and messages for the most discerning expert fans. And perhaps the fact that the setting was already familiar played a positive role.

Great. Since the last time, a lot has already been forgotten or buried in the back of my mind, so in addition to the new experience, this game reminded me of many good old things. In short, it's just fun, it's a pity that the translation, as always, couldn't avoid some awkward moments.

...Aiba said that Mizuki doesn't have sex appeal, but the opinion of a computer in such matters is, of course, not very reliable; otherwise, I wouldn't be constantly admiring her model... and looking at it 😁😁😁

A little off-topic.
I played the Japanese and Russian versions to avoid supporting unfriendly countries, and it turns out this game is actually quite good.

6.7 out of 10.
It's childish and not very engaging. The combat isn't particularly rewarding, with a limited number of moves, repetitive side quests, and uninteresting progression. The main selling point on the PlayStation five years ago – the freedom to move around the city using webs – is detailed but not fully polished and can be tiresome at times.
The boss fights, regardless of who they are, involve dodging to the side and spamming web-shooters until a cutscene is triggered.
It's unclear where you are in the story and what happened there before; it seems to be taken from the movie franchise for those who are familiar with it. And if the movies are similar to this game, then after 12 years, I wouldn't recommend watching them anymore. Although, I guess they probably have a similar rating anyway.

I'll start with something topical, so I don't have to keep coming back to external factors. I played with a fan translation, and for the umpteenth time, I was amazed at how it turns out that dedicated enthusiasts working for free do the job faster and better than so-called "professionals" for money. Yes, there are typos, and in some places, the translation could have been better, but overall, the text corresponds to the original audio, and there was no embarrassing modern slang, as in the last two official releases. It's truly a pity that the axiom "the market will decide" often doesn't work in reality, because we live in a world of monopolies, where the quality of the product sometimes does not correlate with its profitability. On the other hand, if I were Japanese, I probably wouldn't care much about what's happening with the global version...
The fan translation, by the way, is incomplete. It seems to be about 98-99% complete. Information about characters and monsters in the notebook, a new series of books, and several locations with secondary characters have not been translated. One of the untranslated parts was the second one, which made me feel a little down and I even thought about stopping and waiting for a more complete version, but fortunately, it got better later on. I was also glad to note that I can still read many everyday dialogues, which means that the dream of learning the language and replaying these games in the original is not so unattainable.

Now, a little history. I fell in love with this series in the spring of 2017 when I played both parts of Trails in the Sky, then the third part came out in August, and Trails of Cold Steel in September. Half a year later, the second part was released. All this was an incredible adventure for me, full of the most diverse positive emotions, although not without a touch of sadness that this fairytale world and the people who inhabit it are so different from what I have to deal with in life. Over time, this feeling only grew stronger, and after the release of the fourth Cold Steel last year, I wanted to dissolve in blissful oblivion. Together with this game and the two Crossbell games, by the way, there are already ten games, and considering that the average completion time for one part is ~100 hours, this is a journey that lasts at least a thousand hours. At the same time, now it's like only the middle, so I really hope that the same people who are working on the series now will continue to work on it, and that they will not lose their approach to it.

My personal perception of the "Legends" has hardly changed in these five years, but if in Trails of Cold Steel III and IV I played with a feeling of unprecedented delight, then now the state of my soul was somewhat colder, but not because I didn't like anything or lost interest, on the contrary - everything was just great, and in terms of satisfaction, this part is not inferior to the previous nine. Maybe it's because there was a bigger break between the games in the past, maybe because this time I sat down to play spontaneously and didn't wait for the long-awaited release, or maybe it's because antidepressants have dulled my emotionality... This was mainly expressed in the fact that ラウラ, for one reason or another, no longer evoked such strong feelings in me as before, which is, of course, a little sad, because it has been exactly five years since I met her. And if we set aside the strong feeling of attachment and look at the characters according to some objective, but consistent with personal preferences, criteria, then the situation does not look very optimistic. For example, you can compare her with リーシャ according to my taste preferences.

	ラウラ	リーシャ
Name		⭕
Voice		⭕
Clothing style	⭕
Combat style		⭕
Figure		⭕
Character		⭕
Occupation		⭕
Origin	⭕
Role in the plot		⭕

In general, I am disappointed in myself.


The developers, apparently, heard my many years of whining and finally added a difficulty level higher than nightmare, which seemed very easy to me since Cold Steel. Now there is a "Abyss" difficulty level, which I played on. But, of course, if at the beginning it was very difficult in some places, then closer to the end, when you work out a strategy and properly select quartz and equipment, it becomes as easy as before. The auto-attacks of the last boss, for example, dealt 0-3 damage to one of my protagonists, while he had more than 40,000 HP. So, maybe it's a good thing that after ten games, the developers decided (sort of) to switch to real-time battles. After all, during this time, they have already tried everything that can be tried, and this is especially noticeable in this part. There is a lot of good and diverse equipment with quartz, weak items have been buffed, new upgrades have been added, etc., you can come up with all sorts of different builds for yourself and play however you want, but in the future I would like to see something new. Black Crystal and Aeon Shield, by the way, are more broken than anything I've had in my experiences.

Speaking of the protagonists, there are three of them here. There are much fewer city patrols than in any of the previous parts (except for the third Sky), and you just switch from one to another as you progress through the story. I thought that the third protagonist would be エステル and her friends, but I was surprised to find out that the third route turned out to be a team of new characters. However, they all quickly became very dear to me, and it was just as interesting to play with them as with the routes of ロイド and リィン.

Separately, I would like to note that in this part there are many mini-games and side stories, where attention is paid to certain characters outside the main storyline, which could not but please. There is even a gacha, but fortunately, since this is an offline game, you don't have to pay for it...

It wasn't easy to find an unfinished English patch either. It feels like it's about 85% complete – the plot, interface, side quests, and bonding events are fully translated, but that's about it, and even in situations where you can take companions with you, that option is missing. In terms of quality, it's better than the official translation for Steel III and IV, but I still liked it less than in the previous game. In some places, the translation could have been more elegant or accurate; there was a lot of spamming with caps lock, like in Muv Luv, and so on. But if we're being completely fair, complaining about a free fan translation seems a bit much.

Overall, it's mind-blowing, as always, although I liked the new art style a little less than the old one, and the music seemed less memorable.

The real-time combat (as I initially assumed) only occurs during interactions with mobs on the world map, while the overall gameplay style remains unchanged. I liked the mechanics of these interactions; they make grinding and exploring combat locations more intense. In full-fledged battles, a new mechanic has been added – you can't spam S-Crafts as much, and there's less need for them. Overall, it feels more dynamic in terms of not having to abuse the same spells or crafts. Various customizable passives and other things have been added, but at the same time, there isn't a particularly noticeable effect from customizing equipment and quartz, at least not as much as before.

Regarding the characters:
The protagonist – it seems like they either raised the age rating or something, because this time, more "adult" themes are explored than usual, which partially affects the character's personality, making him more hardened than the previous ones.
The blonde – this is the first time I've liked the "main girl" so much; she's very pretty, both on her own and as a couple with the protagonist.
The blue-haired girl – she's not Tioska, Altinka, or Fi, but she's still cute.
The red-haired guy – he made me feel like I wasted my youth on nothing... very relatable.
The light blue-haired girl – finally, Ishikawa has a significant role.
The gray-haired guy – he seems okay, but I haven't gotten attached to him yet.
The orange-haired girl – well, her outfit is something else... sexy + funny + charismatic, but she somehow gets lost in the crowd of other girls because there are more sexy, more funny, and so on.
The "Sh" character – she's like a princess from a fairy tale... I fell in love again. It's a shame there's so little of her.
The "E" character – in a way, she's what I wanted "L" to be in this setting, but alas... She has a very warlike but feminine image, full of grace and adorned with cuteness.
As for the rest, it might be too much of a spoiler, so I'll stop there.

Detroit Become Human

I first saw the trailer for E3 back in 2017, and it immediately caught my interest. I had played Fahrenheit by the same developer before, and I liked Fahrenheit, mainly because of its detective elements, like gathering clues that would affect the gameplay for another character, where you play as the criminal and hide those clues. What I disliked most about Fahrenheit was the lack of real consequences for your choices, except for very minor things, and also that the plot, from a certain point, turned into utter nonsense. So, when I saw the trailer, I thought it would be nice to play some cool detective elements again, and I hoped that this time the plot wouldn't be utter nonsense, but I didn't believe in non-linearity for a second. I skipped Heavy Rain because of its long-term exclusivity, so I can't judge how well it served as a link between Fahrenheit and Detroit. Even after it was ported to PC and the game was cracked, I wasn't in a hurry, because my expectations were quite moderate. I played it, and in the end, I liked it, and my minimal expectations were more than exceeded. The detective elements are, of course, a little too easy because all interactive objects are highlighted, but overall, it's a very convenient thing, and when playing as other characters, I definitely wouldn't refuse it. Plot-wise, it's quite solid and doesn't falter much, and at the moment of the shooting of the peaceful android march, I was even touched; it's very emotionally done – the music, the staging. They even added non-linearity – which definitely exceeded my expectations. The overall Gameplay is maximized, the developers have made games in the "interactive movie" genre and honed their skills, bringing the pleasantness of the process in this genre, if not to perfection, then to a very high level. A completely unexpected bonus is the interaction with the main menu; some time ago, I watched a review by Seth about another game, where he said that they don't make such interactive menus anymore; here, of course, it's a little different, but still unexpected and cool.
In general, I liked it very much, and I even feel a little silly because I had a certain negative bias towards this title for a long time.

I tried it a few years ago, but didn't like it; now, with the release of the expansions, I decided to give it another chance.


In the next installment, you'll probably get penalties for not switching to eating insects and for not banning meat. But overall, it's good, roughly like the fifth game, only it plays a little differently. I liked that the technologies are divided into two branches, and the district system is cool. In the previous games, there were always optimal solutions for any situation, but here you sometimes have to think ahead, as the slots are limited, and the districts have different capabilities. And it's also cool that you place wonders directly on the map. The AI seems even dumber to me than in the previous game - I played on 5 out of 8 difficulty levels on the largest map and was ahead in all victory conditions. In the third game, it wasn't even easy on the second difficulty level...

Victoria 3

Straight to the point — I liked the game; I played it with pleasure. In my feeling, there isn't much to add, and there's not much point in overanalyzing specific game mechanics and such. Therefore, instead of a standard review, I'll simply write my report on my last run, and that will probably make it clear why I liked the game.
I started as Russia; my goal was to create the highest possible standards of living, and as a bonus, grant plenty of civil liberties. I love fantastic scenarios.
At first, everything went well—or rather, I sat there amazed at the state of the country: many regions had limited access to the internal market, tax collection was barely functioning anywhere, many territories were not incorporated, and the entire economy relied on the most inefficient grain production and its total sale abroad, leaving the own population starving—in short, a very historical start. I began slowly undermining the nobility. This process consisted of two elements: on one hand, weakening the nobles themselves (and, if possible, their eternal ally, the church), and on the other, creating new social groups that could serve as a counterweight to them. Additionally, I needed to start pulling the people up from the rock bottom they were at. To do this, I tried to solve at least the food problem; I imposed higher tariffs on grain exports (didn't help), and began mass-building farms instead of those garden plots worked by serfs—that didn't help either. I decided that for a real leap forward, I would need to research intensive farming, and without it, there was nothing to be gained, so I continued building farms and such by inertia, and while waiting for the technology (which was far off), I focused on legislative reforms.
Since abolishing serfdom right away would have angered the nobility, I started approaching from other angles. First, professional army and police were created instead of peasant conscription. This, firstly, took away one of the nobles' levers of pressure, and secondly, created a class of professional military personnel who would be loyal to the government regardless of the peasants' serfdom status. The police, however, proved useful not only as an addition to the army but also for solving very real problems on the other side—initially, the standard of living in the country began to get slightly worse, so the gendarmes went in to perform damage control. Besides laws, I also paid attention to the army generalship—when old noble generals retired or died, I tried to replace them either with career military men or left the positions vacant if there were no alternatives. Among other reforms, I introduced public schools—this was absolutely necessary since our literacy rate was one of the lowest in Europe, which in the long run meant no engineers. But the absence of a capitalist class in the early stages turned out to be a plus—before I had time to fatten them up myself, I quickly pushed through a law on compulsory primary schools instead of legalized child labor. And I began to quietly push the church aside, starting by declaring freedom of religion in the country, though without making a final break yet (priests still had the right to work in government institutions).
At some point, we finally unlocked the intensive farming technology; here it is worth explaining why the mass construction of farms yielded no results. The thing is, Victoria has a free market (unless you introduce total isolationism), which means anyone who wants can buy goods from your market. Therefore, the more grain I produced, the more our esteemed Western partners bought for a pittance. Since isolationism was not an option—not only because of the need to purchase certain goods abroad, but also because tariffs provide huge opportunities for earning revenue for the state budget—my solution was to raise grain production to a level where there was enough both for sale (so they could choke on it) and for domestic needs. In principle, my hopes were more or less justified; of course, the intensive production method alone was not enough, but the expansion of the construction sector, as well as new technologies within it, made it possible to build farms en masse, and collectively these measures helped create a grain surplus. Having a surplus was important not only because it led to lower prices for the domestic consumer, but also because while the nobles utilized serfdom, they could squeeze extra grain from the peasants for sale, and after its abolition, there was a forecast for a significant decrease in bread production. Nevertheless, I decided it was enough, and around '58 (I don't remember exactly), I carried out that most famous of Alexander II's reforms (but in my case, Nicholas I did it because he turned out to be long-lived). Perhaps this reform acted as a true turning point, as it heavily impacted the power of the nobility and gave a significant boost to the growth of the standard of living in the country—it turned out that peasants live better when they don't have to perform corvée labor and when they work for themselves. From that moment on, the nobility began to wither, and as time passed, they had fewer chances to ever again become a real threat or even just a political force. I also decided to finally sideline the church and implemented a complete separation of state and religion. For a while, it seemed that a golden age had arrived.
Growth in the country occurred across all indicators. New factories and enterprises were constantly being built, new deposits were developed, and the country began to become a world leader not only in grain production but also in the production of more complex goods—fertilizers, explosives. More productive production methods were implemented as quickly as possible at all levels, because the stronger the economy grew, the more raw materials it needed—iron, lead, sulfur, wood, coal. Fortunately, within the territory of the Russian Empire (which by '70 had become the Russian Republic with the exit of the Grand Duchy of Finland), all necessary resources were in full abundance. All except rubber. Creating a source of rubber for my industry was set as a task for the future, and meanwhile, I continued to develop the internal strength of the country. Discrimination against small nations was abolished, the independence of the Caucasus was finally suppressed (mostly for pretty borders, not due to actual necessity), the right to free speech was introduced, pensions based on age, public hospitals, there was a rejection of traditionalism in the economy and we moved to mercantilism, and a progressive tax was introduced, which would place the main burden on the wealthy. This last measure, combined with taxes being set at a minimum, led to the lowest strata of society paying no taxes at all, which further accelerated the growth of their quality of life. The tax on alcohol consumption had been abolished long before this. Money from tariffs flowed like a river; I didn't know what to spend it on, salaries for officials and the military were set to maximum, there was a huge expansion and modernization of the army, the construction sector was expanded to the limit, and still, the treasury was overflowing with money. The level of satisfaction with the situation in the country was the highest; unfortunately, I didn't take screenshots, but one random one from that period was found:

In the screenshot, a war is taking place in Central Asia for the purpose of annexing these territories to Russia and growing opium there—no, not for what you're thinking; this was one of the consequences of the army's modernization. I created a system of field hospitals that used morphine as a painkiller, the synthesis of which required opium, one of the few goods unavailable for mass production on Russian territory. Of course, after creating these fields, opium use quickly extended beyond just the army, but that is a completely different story. And yes, looking at the screenshot, I realized that I lied above and the public healthcare system was only just being introduced at that time, but those are just nuances.
Something else is important, namely this line:

From left to right — GDP, percentage of literate population, standard of living, population, number of radicals, number of loyalists. For comparison — in 1836, Russia's GDP was 39.2M, literacy 19.6%, population 58.8M. Now for the less obvious things — the standard of living in the screenshot is the national average, but it is still different for the lower, middle, and upper classes. I don't have specific data per class for that period, but most likely for the poor it was something around 19. A bit more context — in most countries, including Russia, a standard of living of 20 at the start is held by the middle class, i.e., officers and officials. That is, by 1900, I managed to raise peasants and laborers to the level once enjoyed by the middle class. More on this later; lastly, I'll just say that at the start, Russia's average standard of living is 9.4, and specifically for the lower classes 8.6, which corresponds to survival. Radicals and loyalists are those who are respectively ready at any moment to take to the streets to overthrow the regime (but they still won't go anywhere until a leader is found, so their number itself is not a threat) and those who are ready to defend the current regime in the event of a civil war. By itself, this is not an indicator of the standard of living; for example, if you have, ahem, a population with not very liberal views there should have been another word here, then extremely liberal laws will turn them into radicals. However, these groups also depend heavily on the standard of living — as long as it grows and exceeds the expected level, there is a high chance of loyalty increasing, and vice versa. Therefore, I like to use the number of radicals and loyalists as a measure of population satisfaction, and in this regard, without false modesty, I achieved stunning success — for most players, there are always more radicals than loyalists.
Now about the standard of living, I promised to explain in more detail. To grow it, you first need to work with the lower classes, since the middle and upper classes will buy everything they need themselves. In the later game, you can think about their needs, but at first — the poor. Their needs are small — bread, vodka, clothes, and some firewood for heating. And my economic growth, which was by no means an end in itself, began precisely with attempts to satisfy these needs. I already mentioned farms; for vodka production, food factories were built, for clothing, textile mills, for firewood — sawmills. At the same time, an extremely important note — in this game, goods are not produced by the state (unless you have a command economy) and the state does not manage their flow at all. Therefore, to provide the population with a product, you must ensure low prices for it — then the population will buy it on the market themselves. And to ensure low prices, it was necessary to build all these productions that would produce a lot of goods and lead to a price drop. But these productions were needed in great quantities, and to keep this system in order, railroads had to be built; railroads need coal and locomotives, so we build coal mines; locomotives need steel, so we build factories plus steel mills; for those, iron is needed, so we build iron mines. Once all this was built, a bunch of jobs appeared, people went there to earn money, and owners began to make income from them. Western partners saw that I had developed industries where they lagged behind — they began buying the produced products, and tariffs flowed into the treasury. To satisfy demand, all existing enterprises expand, more wages for workers, more income for capitalists, more tariffs for the state. Just a win-win-win situation. Unfortunately, the AI in the game is too stupid to develop its own industries the way a player does, so the most effective way to obtain raw resources is to seize lands and build resource structures yourself. And if opium could be grown in Uzbekistan without violating pretty borders, then for rubber I had to go to Africa, seizing territories first from the locals, and then from France:

As a result, I got these modest colonial possessions, which aren't very pretty in terms of borders. But don't worry, all local residents were granted civil rights equal to other Russians, and provision was ensured as in the metropolis. It turned out quite amusing — initially, after conquering those territories that were independent, the natives dreamed of returning their local "pynya" and rebelled, but literally within a few months after providing cheap food, vodka, and clothes, all riots instantly vanished and the population became absolutely loyal. Over time, they were fully incorporated as territories of Russia, so in this happy world, there are perfectly natural Afro-Russians, to the delight of Russian Natashas.
Frankly speaking, around 1890, I started wondering if the game was becoming too easy; I mean, yes, of course, I had access to almost all natural resources in the world and thanks to that I was able to build a strong economy, but isn't that too simple? But in the screenshot from a prosperous 1900, you might have noticed a figure that I ignored in my story, namely -405K. At that time, I wasn't worried about it because there was still plenty of money in the treasury and I was sure it was just temporary market fluctuations. But years passed, and the problem remained unsolved. Gradually, I had to raise taxes back to normal and lower the salaries of civil servants. But all this helped only temporarily, and then the budget deficit returned. In a panic, I studied various expenditure items, decided to cut benefits and completely ban migration — thinking that too much money was going toward unemployment benefits, and also that unemployed migrants create new dissatisfied people (this was already after '10 and the number of radicals was growing rapidly, by a million a year). However, the migration ban changed absolutely nothing — the economic decline neither accelerated nor slowed down, but continued at exactly the same speed as before. So it turns out that the decline was caused not by migrants at all, but by the reckless economic policy of the government? Oh, video games — a thing where the most fantastic scenarios become reality...
Until the very end of the game, I never understood what caused this decline. It reached the population a bit later; the growth of the standard of living continued and peaked at 25 — this was the highest standard of living in the world — and then it began to fall. After the game ended, I tried to analyze the reasons for what happened and came up with several possible causes:
1) Too aggressive expansion of the farming sector. Since the population's standard of living rose, so did their needs. As a result, I massively replaced the peasant class with farmers, producing mass construction of slaughterhouses and vineyards. Peasants, deprived of their native plot of land and forced to work for farmers, were unhappy with what happened and heavily boosted the number of radicals. But this doesn't explain the economic decline, only the growth of discontent.
2) Too aggressive foreign policy. I didn't seize that many lands, but overall I imagined myself as the guy with the biggest, ahem, army in the neighborhood, and therefore ignored the opinion of Western partners. And when digging into the details of market prices, I discovered that France and Germany had placed embargos on me — and that's just among the Great Powers. Not only did this severely limit tariff income, but it also cut off access to sulfur from Germany; they were a major supplier upon whom an entire sector of my economy relied.
3) The most interesting theory was put forward not by me, but by another player with whom I discussed the situation. He suggested that by 1900, an economy under a player's control undergoes "overheating." Due to constant economic growth, incomes of all population strata increase, and as a result, wages rise. Wages rise, and prices for goods fall — I mentioned above that low prices for consumer goods are needed so the population can buy them. However, at some point, this starts working against the economy — expected wages became so high, and prices for goods so low, that their production ceases to be profitable. Enterprises begin laying off workers, workers cannot buy goods, demand falls, prices for goods fall even further, and the economy enters a spiral. The only way out is to stop expansion at some point so that prices for goods rise slightly. Honestly, I don't know how true this is, but it sounds extremely curious and perfectly explains why, despite continuing to expand production, the situation only got worse and worse.
In the end, Russia entered the end-game on a far less optimistic note than I had hoped for. Yes, the economy is simply huge, but GDP has already begun to fall, as has the standard of living. Discontent is simmering in many regions, a huge number of dissatisfied people are held back only by an expanded police apparatus, and an open rebellion has begun in Turkmenistan. What awaits this country in the future? Could it be that history repeats itself with a 30-year delay and a revolution occurs, plunging the country back into poverty? Who knows...


Rebellious Turkmens on the bottom right. And yes, the huge budget income is not at all because I managed to return the economy to its former glory. I simply introduced taxes on all types of services provided in the country...
If you haven't realized, Victoria 3 turned out to be a great game for me, otherwise I wouldn't have spent time writing all this. And a few more screenshots:


These are the laws. Everything is very liberal, but you may notice that I never reopened the borders for migrants.



The final screen; it's important because it shows that the decline in standard of living and economic growth has begun, but it was so great before that.



In this world, the meme phrase on goods is "Made in Russia".