Neha K.'s reviews

Dropped · PlayStation

I have beaten every Souls game. I could not beat this one and it has caused me to reassess what I thought I was good at. The realisation, about twenty hours in, was that I have never actually been good at these games — I have been good at being patient, overlevelling, and rolling. Sekiro removes all three of those and asks a question about reflexes that I, at 38, cannot answer. Every attempt at Genichiro was the same. I was not getting closer. I was getting the same result faster. The game is not at fault here. It's beautifully made, the sound design on a successful deflect is one of the best noises in the medium, and I completely understand why people call it a masterpiece. A B is me saying: this is excellent and it has a hard requirement I cannot meet. I'd rather write that than pretend I bounced off it for design reasons.

Completed · PlayStation

Contains spoilers

Dropped · Nintendo

I got to a boss called Nightmare King Grimm, watched him do a thing, closed the game, and have not opened it in eight months. Up to that point I adored it. The world is astonishing, the soundtrack is the best thing on my phone, and I was genuinely invested in a silent bug's emotional life, which I did not see coming. But this game has a habit of being gentle for four hours and then presenting a wall that requires a completely different level of play, with no warning and no adjustment available to me, and each time that happened a bit more of my goodwill went. I know Grimm is optional. I know there's a whole community that finds this part the best bit. That's genuinely great for them. A C because I don't think I'm ever going back, and a review that pretends otherwise is a review of a game I didn't finish.

Dropped · PlayStation

I have started this game four times and dropped it four times, always around chapter two, and every time for the same reason: I cannot make Arthur do what I want him to do. I accidentally greeted a man. Then I accidentally aimed at him. Then I accidentally shot him, in front of his family, because the same button does three things depending on how long you hold it and how close you are standing. I then had to flee the county. This took forty minutes and I have never recovered. Everything else is astonishing. It is the most beautiful game I have ever seen and I'd happily watch someone else play it forever. But there is a layer of mud between my hands and the character that I have never got past, and at some point that stops being an adjustment period and starts being a review score. B. Genuinely great. Not for me, four separate times.

Completed · PlayStation

I finished this about four months ago and I could not tell you the name of a single character other than Basim, and I only know that one because he was in the last game. It's not bad. That's the thing. Nothing in it is bad. I played it on a subscription over about two weeks, I had a pleasant time on the rooftops, and it has evaporated from my head completely. I remember the city. I remember that there were birds. That's it. There's a category of game that exists to fill the space between games you actually care about, and this is a very well-made example of one. Whether that deserves a C or something higher probably depends on how generous you're feeling about the concept. I'm feeling like a C. It cost me nothing and it gave me nothing, and I think that's a fair trade to describe honestly.

Completed · PlayStation

I bounced off this game twice before it stuck. Both times it was Margit. Both times I told everyone the game was badly designed and both times I was wrong. The thing nobody tells you is that you're allowed to leave. I genuinely did not understand that. I thought the big gate with the boss behind it was the way forward, because in every other game I've played for thirty years, the big gate with the boss behind it is the way forward. It took a friend watching me over voice chat going "why are you still here" for it to land. Once that clicked I put 90 hours in over about five weeks. Still not sure I like being this bad at something in my leisure time, but here we are. An A rather than an S because I think a game can be this good and still be needlessly unclear about its own rules.

Dropped · PC

I played about thirty hours of this and in that time I do not believe I made a single decision that mattered. I would walk out of spawn. I would die. I would watch someone with a twenty-thousand hour account explain to me, in a language I do not speak, what I had done wrong. Then I would do it again. At no point was there a version of this where I was having fun, and at no point did the game do anything to suggest a path from where I was to where those people were. I'm aware this is a skill issue. That's genuinely my point. A game can be a masterpiece of competitive design and also completely uninterested in whether a new player survives contact with it, and in 2026 that is a choice rather than a limitation. A D as a new player experience. If you already play it, none of this applies to you and you'll think this review is stupid.