1. Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon [ PS5 ] - 9
2. Dragon Quest [ SNES*] - 7.5
3. Another Code: Recollection [ NS ] - 6
4. Trace Memory (7th Replay) [ DS ] - 9
5. Celeste 64: Fragments of the Mountain [ PC ] - 3
6. Silent Hill: The Short Message [ PS5 ] - 4
7. Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice (4th Playthrough) [ NS ] - 6 - 1st Switch
8. Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies (3rd Playthrough) [ NS ] - 9 - 1st Switch
9.- Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice (3rd Playthrough) [ NS ] - 10 - 1st Switch
10. Baldur's Gate III [ PS5 ] - 10
11. Infamous: First Light [ PS5 ] - 6
12. Resident Evil Village + Shadows of Rose [ PS5 ] - 6
13. Ufouria: The Saga 2 [ NS ] - 9
14. Elden Ring [ PS5 ] - 10
15. Detective Ridelle [ PC ] - 7
16. This Bed We Made [ PS5 ] - 7
17. Carpathian Night starring Bela Lugosi [ PC ] - 8
*18. Dragon's Dogma II [ PS5 ] - 10
Finished a second playthrough of it and yea, it is peak overall.
19. Withering Rooms [ PS5 ] - 9
A fairly impressive 2D action horror RPG title.
As Nightingale you explore around a mansion and its surronding areas trying to escape from a dream, there are inspirations from a lot of titles, American McGee's Alice, bit of Fromsoft's Souls series, and a handful of horror games that I haven't played but know about.
Gameplay wise, you have a pretty simple melee attack and you have magic attacks, the later being more powerful but it comes with downsides, first of all magic has to be crafted from material drops and having a parchment, but using magic will also take mental toll on Nightingale, she has a form of sanity bar that the more it is filled out the location around you starts turning into a more sinister place and spirits might pop up to attack you (these ones you can only defeat by using a camera), fill the bar completely and you get a rot effect that drains your health overtime, you need some special candles that you place on the floor and have to wait there in order to reduce the mental toll. All these elements help elevate the admittedly pretty jank melee combat.
There are also some elements of stealth, hiding from monsters under tables or inside a closet, you can peek into the next room you might want to check out to see what kind of enemies you'll encounter and plan around that.
The game has a bit of a roguelike thing to it, I say bit because is pretty inconsequential and for me that is a positive overall. In the layout of the house you have floors marked by a lenghty hallway in which you can enter various rooms, those rooms in each floor get shuffled around every time you die or when you decide to let a night pass, also enemies respawn, but again is something fairly minimal in the grand scheme of things and the game doesn't really encourage to die over and over, you can get plenty of materials and upgrades without it, personally around late chapter 2 I just stopped dying as a whole.
There is a level up system which is based on tiers within each chapter, you'll find NPCs or a tool that will allow you to level up only a set amount of levels, so say one will allow you to level up 5 times, then you have to wait till you find another tool/NPC to continue levelling.
Dying does mean losing your normal inventory, your costumes/gear, some permanent amulets/rings (accessories basically) and key items when noted will be kept no matter what, unless you get remembrance tears that allow you to remember items after you die, so you can slot in a weapon you like, an useful non permanent accessory, and even start with some healing items already or a rare material if you don't want to fight an specific monster again at the moment.
Game also features some cool sidequests and a good amount of optional stuff to play around with.
The soundtrack is pretty unique is something I'll say and it is kind of hard to nail it down. The game has a good art direction that nails giving it that off putting and oppressive atmosphere when needed.
Besides the jank with some hit boxes and the melee combat, plus some polishing issues (ran into a handful of bugs), Withering Rooms was a really good time and it kept me engaged the whole way through with its interesting story, characters and breadth of mechanics.
*DLC. Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide
Lost count of how many "this is Soken's best boss theme yet" I have gone through with this game alone, which is impressive considering some of his stuff in XIV.
Also embarrassing amount of noises of joy from me during the Leviathan fight. Hit me with your next game after Dawntrail CBU3, I'm ready.