Related Games
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Ori and the Blind Forest
The Legend of Zelda
Final Fantasy V
Final Fantasy V, originally for the Super Famicon in Japan, was not localized at launch due to how long localization was taking at the time, also why we didn't get Final Fantasy 2 and 3 on the NES, and instead got IV and VI as II and III here. If you never had the chance to play it, and you a fan of IV and VI, you absolutely should give this one a shot.

Our first true job system where you could mix and match abilities from one job and apply them to a different job. Want to be a dual-wielding Ninja who also knows Time Magic? We can do that. A beastmaster wearing heavy armor? I don't know why you want to, but you can.

There's an elegance to the simplicity here. Excluding 2 special jobs, you will always have your Fight and Item ability, an active ability unique to your current job like Black Magic or Throw (Shuriken, etc.) or Sing (Spoony Bards), and possibly an extra skill if you equipped an active command from a different job (but you could also equip a passive from another one). Every battle you win will earn you XP and Gil like any other Final Fantasy, but also ABP (Ability Points) to master your jobs. Leveling up your jobs unlocks their abilities to be equipped on other jobs, and if you fully master the job, the passive abilities (with weird exceptions) are available for the special Mime and Freelancer jobs later, leading to absolutely broken combos.

That's really the heart of this game; finding broken combos and just goofing around with the job system. Blue Magic makes its debut in this game, and it's absurdly powerful if you take the time to learn your enemies' abilities. Many bosses can be trivialized by the right blue magic abilities; others can be defeated because they are weak to Petrify or only use magical attacks and can be silenced or have their own spells reflected. It's about planning for the boss (or abusing quick save and reloading when you fail), without the twitch reflexes of perfect blocks and timed dodges required by modern RPGs.

The story is good, but like all Final Fantasy stories, it's a little cliche. Save the world by finding the crystals, which you will fail to do in time and then have to make a plan B. What's really great about this game though, is that all of your characters have names, stories, personalities, and the animation team went above and beyond, creating so many unique poses and animations for every character in every job. Bartz as a black mage looks different than Galuf in the same job, and they can even have different poses for spellcasting. As usual for Final Fantasy, the music is top-tier too.

While the story may be cliche in its major beats, the moment to moment interactions and dialog are outstanding. Gilgamesh is a riot by himself every time he shows up, and he shows up a LOT.

Completionist notes:
All versions: There are over 600 collectibles from hidden items to treasure chests to blue magic spells to bard songs... a LOT of these are missable if you advance the plot too far. There are 8 pianos to play, but the first one becomes missable after a couple hours, while the 8th piano is only available in the final chapter shortly before the last dungeon, so you could easily not realize you missed one. If you want to go for all trophies (Pixel Remaster version), use a walkthrough.

Difficulty:
A good walkthrough helps a lot to prepare you for upcoming bosses. If you go in blind to the bosses, expect to die and need to retool. As long as you're rotating your party through different jobs, someone probably has an answer you can use. Challenge runs that restrict you to only using certain jobs can add a ton of replayability. The optional superbosses in the final dungeon are also worthy of the title, for sure. The PR version adds optional boosts for XP, Gil, and ABP -- I played with ABP on 2x until I got to the final save point, then I turned it up to 4x and spend another hour or two grinding out the last few jobs. XP I left on 1x to keep it from being a walk in the park, and Gil mostly stayed on 1x with an occassional bump to 2x, again, if you can just buy OP equipment without effort, it's not challenging anymore. Masochists can even set them down to 0x or 0.5x for extra "fun."

Played: ~32 hours on PS5 Pixel Remaster version to Platinum Trophy.
0
Marvel's Midnight Suns
Like Fire Emblem? XCOM? What if they had a baby, and you add a dash of Bioware-style team building (or FE3H if you prefer)? That's basically Midnight Suns.

In this turn-based tactical RPG, you take on the role of the Hunter, a son or daughter of Lilith (you can customize your appearance, but not your backstory) resurrected after several hundred years, by a group of mystic-oriented Marvel characters called the Midnight Suns, who have been watching and standing guard against Lilith's return. Join Blade, Magik (Colossus' sister Illyana), Ghost Rider, Doctor Strange, and Nico Minoru (Runaways) at the start, and eventually join up with Captains America and Marvel, Iron Man, Wolverine, Spider-man, and more.

Most missions allow you to field three heroes (story missions require the Hunter, which by the way is all your friends will ever call you, think "Shephard" from Mass Effect, but non-story missions have more freedom) and will require a variety of objectives from the simple "defeat all enemies" to "protect the servers while you hack the terminals" to "rescue civilians in danger." On your turn, you start with 3 card plays, sometimes you can get a play back if you use certain abilities. Cards may be simple attacks that deal damage and increase heroism; skills that buff allies / draw cards / etc. and usually greatly increase heroism, or heroic abilities that have increased damage and/or special effects but consume your heroism. Battles take place in a 2d circular arena where there may be crates to throw at your opponents, generators you can knock them into to stun them, pits you can try to knock them into, and more. Unlike most games in this genre, you don't have a move and action per hero; you collectively have 1 move and 3 card plays, though card plays will often reposition you (they will automatically move to attack, for example). Positioning can matter for heroic attacks like "damage all enemies in a line," so it can be a puzzle to figure out how best to spend your limited resources, and that's exactly what you want in a TRPG.

Between missions, you can explore the Abbey grounds which acts as your home base. You can talk to your teammates and sometimes hang out with them watching movies or meditating or going fishing, having what you might think of as support conversations from Fire Emblem, but with the ability to choose from 3 responses at different points in the talk, gaining or even losing friendship points and light or dark alignment points (a la Paragon/Renegade from Mass Effect -- look, I'd stop comparing it to these games but it's wearing its influence on its sleeve, it's impossible NOT to).

The abbey grounds are themselves a moderate size area to explore filled with mysteries and mostly simple puzzles, with more areas opening up over time if you complete optional side activities and progress the story. While exploring you may even come across chests in the now-universal color coding of white-blue-purple-orange for increasing rarity of goods, finding resources or items that can buff your combat.

To compare to another of my favorites, the game operates on a calendar of sorts, like Persona. Every day you wake up, can explore the abbey and work on research with Stark & Strange (who have teamed up in one of the best buddy pairings you've ever seen in video games), spar with a teammate, upgrade cards in your deck, and more. You'll then go on a mission -- either a story one or a procedurally-generated one of which there are an endless supply, and unlike XCOM or Fire Emblem, the story will wait forever if you want to do side missions (do not be like me and make the mistake of thinking you can do all the side missions and then do the story afterwards--they won't run out of side missions). At night you can explore the abbey grounds or sometimes (seemingly at random; across 85 hours I never figured out what the trigger was) hang out with your friends.

The game is fully voice acted -- every single line of every single character, plus battle barks and a couple short phrases from each hero if the hunter walks up to them or just stands by them, and features a ton of great actors -- Matt Mercer, Erica Lindbeck, Yuri Lowenthal, Laura Bailey, Lyrica Okano (who played Nico in Hulu's Runaways), and more.

You know what would be really cool? Images in reviews. Super post reviews. I'll post a few pictures later -- the animation is gorgeous. I played 85 hours on PS5 and am starting on my second play to get the last trophies like the sucker that I am.

All this sounds like it should be setting up a 5-star review, right? Here's the problem. There's too much. Too much what? YES. Everything. It's not that the game is too long per se, it's that there's just too much to do. Every hero has 5 friendship levels that will take a lot of work to raise. You'll constantly need to find new artifacts to unlock higher levels of research to unlock new base upgrades, which in turn will add to the ever growing list of ST
1
Geometry Dash
It's tricky sometimes to differentiate between "a bad game," "a game I am bad at," and "a game that I just didn't enjoy." I think this is mostly a combination of the latter two.

The controls (at least as far as I played, which was nearly an hour trying to beat the first stage) are simple: tap (I assume press a key/button on non-touch platforms) to jump; hold to continuously jump. Your character automatically runs and must jump at the right time to avoid obstacles. Later, you hop on a rocketship and must tap to fly up, but of course, not too high or you'll crash into spikes on the ceiling or ram into a wall.

I wanted to like this, but found it incredibly frustrating that the timing was tight -- not frame-perfect by any means, but very unforgiving, and any wrong input meant doing the whole level over; you have no midway checkpoints (it seems there might be on some versions?) and no health to tank even a single hit.

I can see the appeal of this game if you're much better at it; I imagine it's fun to just blast through a level in under 45 minutes and 100+ attempts, there was a decent soundtrack though it got a little old after a while. I think the game could use an assist mode or something to make it less impossible for people who don't have god-like twitch reflexes, so I don't think this would be higher than 3, certainly no more than 4 stars, even if I wasn't terrible at it. But I do recognize that there could be a decent game in here, and so hold back from the 1-star review.
0
Gartic on Stream
The only thing saving this from a 1-star review is that it was fun to laugh with the cr3w at how bad this was. Don't play this game. You know what, I am changing that back to 1 star. It really is that bad. Lag is awful (could have been a restream issue?) and they _sometimes_ want hyper-specific answers like "sand crab" but sometimes they just want "mouse" and you'll never know. There are much better games for guessing random drawings. Go play one of those.
0
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
I need to write a full review sometime, but just look at posts about this game, they'll largely be mine anyway.

Major strikes against this game:
* Some of the most annoying and bullsh*t minigames you'll ever see, required for the Platinum trophy in their hardest modes -- I beat at least one level of every minigame, but there are approximately 20 different mini games that all require different skills and just no.
* Combat is a mess. At any given time, you're trying to track your characters' positions, your enemies' positions, the ATB gauge for up to 3 characters which is how you can use special abilities, the Synergy Gauge for those same 3 characters, their HP and MP, their Limit levels, and whether the particular enemy that you're facing is about to use a move you can block or can evade or it turns out to be unavoidable but the game uses the same icon for evade as it does for unavoidable. Press square to attack. Hold square to start a combo. Press circle to dodge. Press square after dodging to shoot a blade beam. Hold square after dodging to lunge immediately to your enemy even if they're in midair. Press R1 to block (watch your timing). Hold L1 and press one of the face buttons to use a pre-programmed shortcut (but RIP if you get into a fight and wish you could change which commands you have on shortcut). Hold R1 and press one of the face buttons to use a Synergy Action if you have one unlocked with your current teammates. Press X to bring up the command menu where time slows to about 5% speed and you can then pick an action, spell, item, or Synergy Ability, but you need ATB for the first 3 and two of your characters need Synergy points (earned by spending ATB) for the latter. It's all just so much. Too much.
* The extremely obnoxious and will not shut UP Chadley. Seriously, if they patch in a "disable Chadley" I might give it an extra star, he's THAT annoying.
* The plot is confusing having finished the game. I thought I understood what was going on, but now I don't.
* Minor things not taking off a ton but still affecting enjoyment: audio balance is way out of whack. Seriously had to drop music volume to 4 out of 10 to be able to hear the dialog, and I can still hear the music just fine. Performance mode runs smoothly but looks like crap (they just patched this today, I didn't change it yet to see). Graphics mode looks nice but there's still some weird brightness quirks going on. The in-game calibration is bad and doesn't help you figure out the right brightness.

OK maybe that is more of a full review than I thought. Look, I didn't hate the game, but I'm really disappointed because Remake was amazing and I really enjoyed getting the platinum there. I'm going to play the 3rd one when it eventually comes out, but I probably won't pay full price and I'm going to go in expecting to just finish the game, instead of complete it.
1
Final Fantasy II
Played ~15 hours February 2024 on PS5 (Owned digitally; PS4 Pixel Remaster edition).

First, if you're going to play this, do yourself a favor and get the Pixel remaster version. It will be significantly less grindy using the boosts (2x is fair and won't feel overpowered).

Which brings us right into the biggest issue with this game: taking a "practice makes perfect" approach, there are no traditional levels where you get XP after each fight and so much XP gives you a level and therefore stat boosts. Instead, gain skill levels with weapons and magic (you get more hit rolls with higher levels) by using them. Gain max HP / MP by getting to critical levels of either. Gain defense by getting attacked. And so on. Any character can be anything you want, use any weapon and any spell. There's literally no restriction.

Unlike the first game, your party have names and stories all their own, and you have a revolving door for the 4th party member (which often makes them a little harder to use as they may not have skills that fit in with your gaps). In a wild twist for Final Fantasy, you're on a quest for crystals. Cliches aside, the story is pretty good here.

Getting 100% / platinum trophy here is mostly a matter of watching out for missable items/enemies, but also not really essential to enjoy the game.

As final fantasy games go, there are better ones, but if you're a fan, it's worth checking it out. If you're looking to get into classic JRPGs, definitely don't start with this one.
0
Adventures of Lolo
Fun puzzle game. If this were a mobile game today, it would have ads between every level and you would need 15 minutes to earn another life and you'd all still play it. It's free with even the basic Switch Online subscription and worth a shot if you like puzzle games, especially with save states and rewind making it far less punishing than it was on original hardware. No guns, no jumps, no special powers, just a cute blob and maybe a few bubbles. One hit will kill you, just have to figure out how not to get hit while collecting all the hearts to unlock the chest, get the chest to open the door. Do this 50 times and you'll beat the game.

It loses a star for some levels being a little un-fun with requiring very tight timing and/or RNG on enemy patterns and for the highly repetitive music. Mute your switch and put on a podcast.
0
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury
This review is exclusively for Bowser's Fury. I may have written a separate review under the base game listing by the time you're reading this, or it may be coming soon.

Bowser's Fury is a standalone large DLC effectively, that can only be played by purchasing the combo pack Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury. Unlike the base game, this is a purely single-player adventure (there's a 2nd player assist mode not unlike the Galaxy titles), and you will play as Mario. Bowser has been transformed into Giga Bowser and there's a nasty black ooze everywhere. Bowser Jr misses dad and enlists Mario's help to turn him back.

To accomplish this, Mario must collect Cat Shines, which are the macguffin of the week in the same vein as Shines, Stars, Moons, take your pick of what Mario is collecting. This is an open-world adventure where Mario can roam to various islands, each island has 5 shines, though there's a pretty severe lack of variety in how these work. Each island has a lighthouse you'll have to platform you way to and then get the shine there, each one has 5 "cat shards" scattered that if you collect them all will give you a cat shine, each has one "Blast the Fury Blocks" -- more on that in a second. Generally the other challenges were things like a Blue Coin collection where you hit a switch and must quickly grab all the coins, often in multiple waves, or a "hurry" challenge where you had 20-30 seconds to platform somewhere and collect the shine.

Returning from the base game is the ridiculously OP Cat Suit, and the slightly less ridiculous but still very good Tanooki Leaf (grants a flutter descent). And boomerang and fire flower power ups that will do in a pinch. Many of the platforming challenges are trivialized by one or both of these, and the game allows you to stockpile up to 5 of every power up and call for them on-demand. Plessie, the awkward water dragon that controls like a wet noodle, will serve as your transportation between islands, and also "help" you collect many bonus shines not part of the main islands.

It's worth mentioning that all the regular enemies from the base game and some of the bosses (Boom-Boom and Pom-Pom) are back and everyone has been cat-ified. Younger players and those who love cats may be extra excited by this but the novelty wears off.

There's a somewhat hybrid style between say, Galaxy where you are intentionally collecting a single star at a time and Odyssey where all the moons are out there. Each island's 3 main shines (except the 5 shards and the fury blocks) must be deliberately triggered and collected separately, in order. But collecting a shine doesn't end the level (there are no levels) or teleport you anywhere.

Complicating Mario's peaceful exploration and hazardous platforming is that Giga Bowser will randomly appear at times, and you have to deal with him. At first, you can force him to retreat by collecting any shine. After so many shines, one of the giga bells located in hubs between sets of islands may awaken during a Giga Bowser visit, and collecting the giga bells will transform Mario into Giga Cat Mario (the cat lovers will be delighted). Now Giga Bowser can pick on someone his own size, and you have a little boss battle. This mechanic mostly works, but it can be VERY irritating if you're in the middle of a complicated platforming sequence, and Giga Bowser shows up and starts breathing massive fire sweeping across the entire screen. There were several times during my play that I had to abandon the shine I was working on because there was not going to be enough cover to hide from the fireballs/breath. But those attacks can work for you; there are "Fury Blocks" on each island that can only be broken by such attacks, and each hides a shine, so this may be your way to deal with the problem.

At one point, the game will tell you that regular cat shines can no longer repel bowser; he's become too strong. You'll need to collect a couple more to awaken the giga bell again and enter the final boss fight vs Giga Bowser, where he steals the giga bells and you have to chase him all around the ocean on Plessie. Who controls like a wet noodle. You'll need to crash into the ball of bells he's wearing like a cat bell 4 times (I played the fight 3 times to be sure -- 4 just goes against every Mario pattern!). It's a cute but annoying gimmick to mix up the final boss fight.

After you finish this fight, which is triggered by a specific number less than 100% of all shines, you can go back into your save and try to find the rest. There are 100 in all, and none of them are infuriatingly difficult like Mystery House Marathon or Champion's Road.

I really wish Nintendo would have released this separately as a standalone $20 game, but if you can find the game on sale, it's probably worth $40 if you're going to (re)play 3D world base as well. If you're not interested in that, I'd say try to find a friend with it or rent it from somewhere like GameFly; you can f
0
Exploding Kittens
This isn't actually a game. If it were a game, you would have meaningful choices. It is an activity where the outcome is decided by the way the cards are dealt and then you might as well just reveal who has the most defuse cards. 99% of the time that player is going to win and there's nothing you can really do about it.

A board game has to be truly awful and better off in the trash before it earns a 1 star rating, but absolutely, exploding kittens does.

And I'm allergic to cats, so I love the theme, but no. I'd rather sit in uncomfortable silence than ever play this again.
0
Grift
This is a very weird game that has a very particular sense of humor. I didn't play a ton, but initial impressions were extremely negative and left me with absolutely no desire to return to it.

You are a goat who is seemingly creating chatbots to try to dupe marks into giving you money. You can then use that money to upgrade the chatbots to dupe richer targets, I guess. Supposedly there's a story but I didn't see it.

I'm holding back from a 1-star "Actively Bad" because I don't think it is *bad,* just dull and maybe in poor taste (though maybe the story explains how all these marks are actually terrible people, and we are just a vigilante). It will however, earn a coveted spot as the very first game I put on my Hated list. GG, Grift. You deserve it.
0
Bejeweled Blitz
Slightly better than a poke in the eye. There exist games I would less rather play, but not many. Full of the usual free to play annoyances of popups to earn or spend in game currency.
0
GRIS
This is difficult to rate. This game is more about art and story than it is about gameplay, but it is trying to be a game at the same time, and while I applaud the effort, it falls short. I almost gave this 4 stars, but I don't think it's quite there. I consider 3 stars "Good" (4 = Great, 5 = Excellent / all-time-best), so don't get angry ... just accept it. (OK I promise no more grief puns.)

The game is a side-scrolling adventure platforming game that briefly makes you think maybe it's a metroidvania, but it's not. You start with only the ability to move and jump, and your abilities will only grow slightly, but that's ok, it doesn't feel like it needs more. There's no spoken or written dialog in the entire game, and if you're going "didn't you say this was a game about story," then I'm glad you're paying attention because yes it is. I'm not really going to talk about the story because it is something you experience, and it is either going to connect with you, or it's not. And while I think it was well-done, it didn't really connect with me, which is fine, I can still appreciate it as art.

So what didn't work for me was two main things, and really, it's the core of the gameplay so salvaging 3 stars from that is kind of impressive.

First: the game wants you to explore and find all these hidden mementos... but if you go the wrong way you're going to permanently lock yourself out of them because you happened to randomly pick the direction of the plot. Permanently misable collectibles, especially when a huge part of the story is locked behind them (one of only a few cutscenes in the game requires all of them) is a major detractor.

The other thing is just the obtuseness of the puzzles. I've played every non-CDI Zelda including all shrines in both Switch titles, and yeah, some small % of those were stumpers, but I felt a lot more frustrated by the puzzles in Gris. For example, you may need to smash a vase to reveal something that will let you jump very high, but the vase is next to impossible to see, especially because the game likes to zoom way out at times for cinematic effect, rendering your character at maybe 1/32nd of the screen height.

So, again, is this a good game? Yes. It is worth playing? Maybe. It's short, and to a degree I can forgive permanent misables when a 100% speedrun is probably ... (actually let me google that for you... a little over 90 minutes (doesn't seem like an active category). It's free with Game Pass of this review (January, 2024), so it could be worth a try.
0
Army of Ruin
Clearly wearing its vampire survivors inspiration on its sleeve, it's a little tricky to fairly review Army of Ruin, a new auto shooter which will end in slightly less absurd levels of bullet hell and screen confetti than its predecessor.

It's even more impossible to review without comparison, partly because VS did it so well. So, compared to VS, there are far, far more weapons and trinkets (what vs calls passive weapons), and the meta progression is a little slower. You'll need to use your coins to unlock extra weapon and trinket slots, along with the usual damage, fire rate, size, etc.

One upgrade I desperately missed from VS is armor, which generally falls off quickly but can make the beginning of difficult stages a lot smoother. Many, many runs on high difficulty died in the first 3 minutes as I simply could not get the progression I needed to survive.

The difficulty here will remain high compared to VS (unless you were buying curse levels there), especially as you unlock ruin levels. Ruin is like a small extra modifier, maybe there's an extra wave of cannon fodder periodically and you earn 10% less XP, or the bosses have a poison aura or something.

Unlocking after the early game will mostly require you to do specific things like "beat stage x at ruin y with character z".. the most extreme versions I've seen also require 2 specific items to be acquired. Each challenge will lead to another weapon, character, trinket, and then more challenges based on that unlock. As of this review, I have somewhere between 150 and 199 things unlocked, because there's a trophy for 200, and it's the last one I need.

It misses that delight of "I am become death, destroyer of worlds" that I could often reach in VS, but it's very good overall, and definitely worth the $6 I paid on sale.
0
Super Mario RPG (2023)
It's good, but it's definitely not as amazing as your nostalgia might think.

An excellent first entry into RPGs for Mario, but battles quickly become repetitive, and while there are no true random encounters a la early final fantasy or dragon quest, the high amount of enemies to run into means you'll be stopping every few seconds to either battle or run away.

The ability to time attacks and blocks to deal extra damage and build up a combo gauge is nice, and I do especially like that they have a sort of hidden "ok" timing and a perfect timing. We have triple techs now, which are cute, but there's a grand total of 6 in the game and at least one is extremely situational.

The other biggest flaw with this game is the mini game to real game ratio being way off. On the one hand, it's a break from the monotony of combat. On the other hand, the mini games are all truly awful. I have platinum trophies from RPGs that take hundreds of hours and none of them have mini games that are as truly awful as the Yoshi race, the paratrooper climb, the river, and let's not even talk about the horror that is the 6-door challenge and everything after that.

Still the writing is very good, and filled with charm like you'd expect. Total time to beat is probably around 15 hours, my timer has 17.5 but as usual I know I left it idling here and there.

I don't expect to 100% this, I feel like it wouldn't be a ton of fun, just grinding the last 10 levels in order to face off against the super bosses. Honestly this might be a 3 star game, if I'm being honest. But I'll keep it at 4 for now, I think it just falls short of possibly unfair expectations.
0
Dead Cells
I'm going to stop short of saying I hated this. There were parts i liked. I'm a fan of roguelikes but I think my issues with this, versus say Hades or vampire survivors, come down to

* brutal difficulty. Can be tweaked to a degree with assist mode. It's expected, but...
* insane boss fights. Yeah hades boss fights are hard too but you're not stuck with left and right and a very pathetic jump as your only option. Some real hollow Knight vibes here and I am not here for it
* meta progress is slow. You can get all the way to the end of a level and die in the last few feet before the exit and lose all the currency. You can invest between each level but only between and...
* no reset for the dead cells that unlock meta progression
* low res graphics are fine as a choice but you can't make it impossible to tell what I need to know about. In VS, you are the source of all the bullets etc and can orient based on that. Here you are a human shaped blob of pixels fighting other vaguely humanoid shapes. Accessibility can add an outline and I tried it and I still had no idea what was going on between the enemy attacks and my own traps
* in both vs and Hades you can unlock abilities that grant you a revive exactly at the spot you died and you keep playing. With assist mode here you can go back to your nearest checkpoint (by default the start of the level but you can awkwardly use the Xbox guide button in a seemingly undocumented fashion to create a checkpoint)
* game gives you a healing potion then requires about 2 seconds to drink it, and if you get hit during that time, good luck, start the clock over if you're not dead

So with my new year's resolution in mind, I'm done with this after abusing assist mode to complete one run after way too many failed attempts.
0
Alan Wake II
Played: 30 hours in December 2023. As of the review, had 930/1000 gamerscore. As of the review date, the game was only available digitally.

This is an excellent game, don't let the missing star fool you. It has an amazing story, looks good (I'll stop short of great, keep reading), is fabulous acted, and does things I haven't seen any other game even attempt. If you're OK with horror including jump scares and a lot of blood, this could be worth a look. I would strongly recommend playing the first game before this, but it's not strictly necessary. You'll mostly know what's going on but you will definitely spoil the plot of the first game, which I think is also worth playing (despite giving it a somewhat unfair 3 stars).

Where I think this game falls short is the combat system, which I have to think was a critique of the first game. To briefly summarize the first game mechanisms for those who skipped it: you had your flashlight and batteries, and a maximum of 2 firearms for most of the game (until you get the flare gun, I think that allowed a 3rd? maybe.) -- generally this was your pistol and either a rifle or a shotgun. You had no inventory to manage, no healing to worry about -- finding a light source was your only way to heal, and they were never in combat zones. You had flares or flashbangs equipped and could use R1/RB to pull one out in the middle of combat. When your flashlight ran out of battery, you had to explicitly choose to pop a new battery. Otherwise, combat mostly proceeded the same -- break the darkness shields and then apply bullet-force trauma. There were several points where you had to make a stand while you waited for an NPC you were escorting to unlock a door, or whatever. These made for intense sequences where you had to conserve limited supplies while facing waves of enemies, and were often challenging, but I completed the game on hard on my 2nd play. You were never fumbling around in your inventory or having to remember which hotkey you put flares on, etc.

This game tries to make combat more interesting? I guess? by giving you freedom to carry as much as you want within your straight-out-of-the-original-resident-evil-4 grid inventory [though requiring far less tetris skill because everything is 1 unit high by N units long]. Then you can hotkey 8 items to the d-pad (2 per direction). Now you can heal in the middle of battle with painkillers (very fast, low immediate healing but applies Regen), trauma pads (middle of the road time to use and immediate healing), and first aid kids (don't even bother in combat, and honestly for the size they take up in inventory, these got tossed in the shoebox for the 2nd half of the game). Oh and you can upgrade your weapons if you find collectibles. And you have a charm bracelet where you can swap out different passive effects... if you find the charms, more collectibles.

There was nothing *wrong* with combat the first time around, and the inventory management is awkward and pointless.

Your run speed is slow, which is a narrative choice I think is fair, but it makes backtracking to get collectibles (and you HAVE to backtrack, you will find locks you cannot open) a giant pain. Still, compared to Alan Wake 1 where you could NOT backtrack (you could replay chapters from the start or 1-2 mid-chapter checkpoints if you missed something), it MIGHT be an improvement.

Graphically, there were times when you just couldn't see clearly because everything is dull, dreary, gray, and yes, it's thematically appropriate, but it's functionally awful.

Finally, I need all game developers to give me an option to at LEAST have a compass on screen, can be a minimal one like Horizon or something, but I am TERRIBLE at figuring out where I am and what direction I'm going without a minimap or a compass, and as an accessibility tool, make it an OPTION to have one. I found myself checking the map CONSTANTLY (like literally as often as 10 seconds when I'm trying very much not to make a wrong turn because I have barely any ammo left and fighting enemies that aren't between me and my goal is a terrible idea), and it just sucked. Even worse, there are a few segments where they take away your map. Fine, again, I get that it's thematic, the character is lost, but throw me a bone here.

Gripes aside, this is still an excellent game, and I will be going back to clean up the missing achievements here shortly.
0
Vampire Survivors
(Author's note: This is specifically a review of DLC. The base game is amazing and needs no review.)

Finished all the DLC that came out since I put this down in summer (post-Moonspell). I got it all at the same time (some was free) so I'm hoping I've sort it out correctly.

Whiteout (1 new map and character? and weapon); the weapon is pretty good, it's another "stronger with movement" but also strong against frozen enemies setting up interesting combos. The map was meh. Hilariously, I didn't even know there was a new weapon because I started with the Among Us DLC and on one of the runs, I got a Candybox (and just grabbed an old standby I think), and then later in the same run got a Super Candybox II Turbo and actually looked at the choices and was like "why don't I recognize this?" So of course i took it. At the end of the run, I unlocked achievements for getting the base weapon to 7 and evolving it. It's not cheating if the game says it's not!

Emergency Meeting (Paid DLC, Among Us crossover). This was fun. Some absolutely broken combos but really great job on the theming and probably even better if you've actually seriously played Among Us. You'll easily get a few hours out of this, several new characters, tons of new weapons and passives, a new complex map like the mountain from Moonspell. This is an absolutely broken map where you can pick up every new passive from the DLC and one weapon which is terrible until you evolve it, at which point it's broken. (It was always a 7th weapon I picked up later. Mad Groove Arcana OP here for just teleporting all the items to you, but for extra OP, max out your passive slots with staples like Attractorb, Candelabra, etc. before you start picking up the ones on the map.) The "Report" weapon which upgrades to "Emergency Meeting" -- the latter executes ALL of a random enemy type periodically, and this isn't even the most broken weapon in the set.

Adventures: An interesting mode where you enter a side adventure (roll credits) where you start from 0, possibly with some coins depending on the adventure. There will be special remix versions of maps and you'll have a single character to start. Your base relics come over but that's it; you don't even have the Grimoire so hope you remember those evolutions (the Internet does if you don't)! It's like a mini-story where there are 6-8(?) steps you're supposed to follow in order, like "survive 10 minutes on this map" or "open the coffin on this map" ... you don't have to go in order always, but sometimes the new map for the next objective is only unlocked by the previous one. Each adventure has a small subset of characters and weapons/passives available, though you can use adventure-gold (does not carry back over) to unlock anything from the main game (including DLC) for use in the adventure. There are 2 for sure that should be free, 1 more was themed around Moonspell so probably requires that, and 1 around Emergency Meeting (this was a fun way to experience everything the Among Us DLC had to offer). Some of the challenges were hard, even after completing everything the base game had to offer; so many times I was getting to 28-29 minutes and just not able to hold on for that magical 30.

Well worth picking the game back up and at least checking out the adventures that are free. Two thumbs up for the Emergency Meeting DLC as well. Wait, why are there 4 thumbs? Oh no, it's the impos... [THUD]
0
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
If I wanted a souls-like, I'd play dark souls. I don't, and I don't know why developers keep trying to imitate it in games that really don't need it. It was fine once I gave up and lowered the difficulty, but I don't like having my time wasted by making me replay a 5 minute stretch over and over and over because if I go kill a few enemies and backtrack to the save point, they all respawn. This would be two stars if not for the IP
0
Portal
Huge success. Much triumph. Such cake. My feelings of satisfaction cannot be stated with sufficient levels.
0
Tactics Ogre: Reborn
I'm probably 40+ hours into this... I leave it on and do other stuff so my in-game timer is crap.

Now, take this from someone with 3 tactical RPGs on his top 10 RPGs game... this just isn't that good. I hate to be the one to burst everyone's bubble, but if you ask "Should I play Tactics Ogre or Final Fantasy Tactics" it's not even close.

FFT has so much better quality of life _in the original version_ than this 2022 HD remaster. It really is basically just a remaster, there's a few changes I'm told, but not significant.

Compared to FFT you have: absolutely HORRIBLE inventory management (you can only see what you have by going to equip a character and THEN looking at what you have that goes in that slot), 3x as many classes which you might think is a pro except you can't do the cool thing like "My Ninja knows White Magic" (and you need to buy items to let you change into the class, if those items can even be bought; some are rare drops or plot-limited), and then there's the actual combat.

First, you have basically infinite rewinds (think like recent fire emblems where you can back up; there is a 20-turns-back counter that goes up as the game goes on) so on the one hand, you can MAKE it easy. But the difficulty is designed with this; so if you aren't going to min/max and rewind frequently to take a different approach, you're going to have multiple units on the ground every mission. Like FFT you have a 3-round countdown; I frequently found it easier to leave units down than pick them back up, especially because you can only revive if you're carrying in one of your 4 item slots per character, a revival item. I equip one on everyone at the start of the mission but save the other slots for heals and such. I would be OK with having to equip items to use them if the damage numbers were even remotely fair. Bosses can and will one-shot most of your party.

Unlike FFT, where AOE magic is available from pretty much the beginning and you can feel pretty smart about trying to lure the enemy into a setup for that sweet "cross" formation where you can hit 2-3 of them, you aren't getting AOE magic until halfway through this game. Oh and AOE heals? FORGET IT. The only class (through at least 75% of the game) that can equip AOE heals is the Cleric. You know what else the Cleric can do besides heal? Be the target of focus-fire. My Cleric spends 75% of his turns healing himself. Oh, and healing magic? It doesn't scale with your stats, at all. My melee characters have 800-900 HP and my only AOE heal can do 120ish in a size "2" (one square plus the 4 adjacent squares). Oh, and that's IF the cleric has MP. Because your units START WITH ZERO MP at the beginning of battle. Magic classes can learn an innate ability that has a % chance each turn of restoring a higher-than-normal amount of MP; else you're just getting like 10-12 MP naturally and you'll need 30 to cast that spell. Can't buy magic-restoring items either (you can get one that restores 10% max HP and 10% max MP, which is not NOTHING but that is your whole turn, so maybe you can cast next turn, if you're not dead).

I know, we can just grind somewhere, maybe we're underleveled? NOPE, there's a hard level cap that guarantees you won't outpace the plot missions, and all the non-plot battles are scaled to your level, so that plan is no good.

I really wanted to like this. I 100% RPGs frequently, sinking hundreds of hours into them. I might go do one more battle tonight, but tomorrow is the release for both Persona 5 Tactica and Super Mario RPG (2023) both of which look to be significantly better games.
1
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Best 2D Mario ever? Probably. It's an incredible JOY to play, you can tell the developers had immense creative freedom to just do whatever crazy ideas they could come up with, and it all works. Whether you're turning into an elephant and swatting enemies with your trunk or transforming into something even more ridiculous with the help of a Wonder Flower, this game will never get boring or repetitive.

While the main quest is very easy (probably easier than Super Mario World's main quest which is saying something), I never once cared or said "gee this should be harder" because it was FUN. And then you find special world, and you're suddenly glad you're playing with a pro controller because JoyCon would be entirely too easy to hurl in a fit of rage as you spend over 200 lives trying to Climb to the Beat, only to finally make it, and then figure out it was all a warm-up for the final final challenge. While I LOVED the Final Challenge, the Final Final Challenge needed to truly 100% the game was agonizingly brutal. It probably took fewer lives overall than Climb to the Beat, but it was just a terror of requiring even more skill than Climb took, and that one took a lot. In the end, it was only truly possible through the magic of the best online multiplayer with strangers I've had in years.

While online, you can see other players' real-time actions -- cleverly no one playing the same character as you so there's never 2 Marios, but hey how did Peach get up there? Maybe I should look around and see. Or, I can drop a standee where other players can use it as a checkpoint. Or hey, this Yoshi and I seem to be moving in the same direction, maybe we can alternate really tricky jumps so if one of us falls in, they can swim their ghost back to the survivor using the "5-second" period to touch another player or their standee you previously activated [it's significantly more than 5 seconds to start, but the clock ticks faster the more times you die on one level. I could wish for an accurate timer that just told me straight up I only had 2 seconds]. Truly genius; you have nothing to lose by helping out the other players and it created a real sense of playing together, even without being able to say or do more than what I described above.

If you're a Mario fan at all, you owe it to yourself to pick up this game. A WONDERFUL masterpiece. (I told myself I wasn't going to do that. I lied.)
2
Coffee Golf
It's ok, but the controls are iffy and there's no real explanation about things you really need to know like how to zoom out or rotate your camera or even just be able to see at a glance where all the flags are.
0
Sea of Stars
Almost perfect, but...
Battle gets a little repetitive
Fast travel unlocked way too late
2.5d hides chests and other pickups, this isn't clever it's just annoying.
0
Metroid
This is a 3 star game that I love and directly led to an untold number of 5 star games, so it gets a bump.

The mid rating is mostly based on how brutally unforgiving and obtuse this game is in the original state. Absolutely do yourself a favor and play with save states, not to save scum, but simply because the game will restart you with only 30 energy after you use a password, and there literally are no save points. You can fall into lava between two columns and unless you can infinite bomb jump, you might be stuck until you slowly die.

Still this is a good game, if you take the time to really get to know it. You can also just skip this and play zero mission, which is a much better version with its own challenges for completionists (shinespark puzzles anyone?).
0
Super Mario Sunshine
Just gonna say it: worst Mario game. The game teaches you how to do all these cool moves with fludd and then takes it away from you and forces you to complete impossibly difficult platforming sections. Could go up to 4 stars if you have masochistic tendencies.
0
Persona 5
First things first: every single content warning for mature and adult themes that you can think of is present in this game. The first chapter deals with a high school coach who is seen to be physically abusing and implied to be sexually harassing (at least) the students he is coaching, to the point where a female athlete attempts suicide. I say all this not to shock anyone, but just to warn what you're signing up for and give you a chance to just nope out of the rest of this review.

In this 80+ hour turn based jrpg, you're a group of high school students, led by the protagonist code named Joker (you can name him whatever you want, the voice acting will play the pronoun game and refer to you by your code name a lot to work around this). You'll recruit "shadows" to fight with you as personas, eventually fusing two of them together to make one new (usually stronger) one, as is common to any SMT game. In battles, you'll try to exploit enemies' weaknesses to one of 10 different damage types, because if you can hit a weakness, you'll be able to get free turns and do bonus damage, making every fight very strategic... Hitting a weakness knocks the enemy down, once all enemies are down you can perform an all out attack dealing massive damage. Boss fights are long, requiring adapting to changing situations and trying to stay ahead of the damage they're dishing out... Most don't have a weakness or have different parts with different weaknesses requiring you to consider carefully what your options are.

All of this is still only really half or less of the game. Alongside that core is the idea that you're on a deadline, you need to have dealt with a major threat about once a month - and the game tracks time by generally giving you 2 actions per day ... Will you spend that time hanging out with your friends and unlocking hidden talents for your party, or meet new npc allies with abilities to prepare you for battle better, or advance on the 5 social skills tracks you have - you may find an character who won't even talk to you unless you have level 4 guts (bravery). All of these things take time, and not everyone is free every day, most characters have 2-4 days per week and either afternoons or evenings but not both, some days there are discounts or better earn rates on the social skills, so looking at the calendar and figuring out what you want to do each day is an interesting puzzle (though some might find it tedious or feel anxiety about not picking the right thing to do).

Alright that's enough about the gameplay, we haven't even touched on two things that take this from great to amazing: the visual style and the soundtrack.

This isn't a photorealistic game or use trillions of shaders or lighting or anything like that--what it is is "stylish." Every single thing in this game from dialog boxes to menus to special attacks is beautifully styled in a consistent, modern, edgy kind of feel that you really should see (I could probably link an official trailer but personally I only like to link my own content, you have Google for the rest). Every single thing you can do in this game looks and feels like a part of the game, right down to saving your game.

Then there's the soundtrack, which is absolutely full of bangers. In fact, I'm going to go put it on my OSTs list which only had 2 other games before now, it's that good.

Ok this is excessively long. If you read this far and nothing scared you off, give it a shot! As of August 2023, it's available with game pass on Xbox One or higher. Of note to any PS4/5 owners considering the game: there's two versions: the original (which is excellent but less forgiving) and royal (which is effectively a director's cut with extra content and some good QoL improvements). Ignore the original game and get royal. You'll be glad you did.
0
Final Fantasy Tactics
Let's be clear, this game isn't balanced, but that's the fun. If you want to make ridiculously overpowered characters, you can. It's going to be grindy, but when the result is power overwhelming, it's worth it.

There's a pretty good story here too, though it's a little confusing at parts and I'm pretty sure it doesn't hold up under scrutiny, but please let me know if there's any JRPG that does...

You're not going to like this if you want fast paced action. Battles are long, drawn out affairs, but that's what you're asking for when you play a tactics game. The battle system isn't as deep as some later fire emblem games, but it's good, and the job system is well done.

If you like tactical JRPGs, absolutely pick this up. If you don't, this won't change your mind. If you don't know, try a demo of some modern fire emblem game perhaps.
0
Ori and the Will of the Wisps
Play blind forest first. I'm not going to argue over which is better, but the story here is probably the best story in a 2d metroidvania and picks up from the events of the first, so go back and do that.

Bring your Kleenex.

If you're not playing this on a series x or PC capable of doing 4k@120 with hdr (on a TV that can do that obviously), go find a friend you can mooch off, because it's crazy how good this game looks and runs. The soundtrack is amazing. Everything about this game is amazing.

6 out of 5 stars.
0
The Legend of Zelda
I remember that it took me 7 days from the time I first sat down to play this as a child to complete the first quest, with no outside help. I spent many, many more days replaying it, restarting, doing second quest, and I still remember most of the secrets in first quest all these years later.
0
Pikmin 4
July 2023 - owned digitally, about 45 hours to nearly 100% minus some extreme challenges where I "only" got gold instead of platinum

This game hides all of its difficulty in a long post game, defined as "after the credits roll." And there is a huge portion of the game left there (I'd estimate like 40%). During that post game you can unlock abilities that... You won't really need because you're already done. Between this and what I felt was a downgrade from 3 equivalent commanders, I have to deduct points, though it is still a fabulous game and worthy entry into the series.
0
Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest)
Bonus star because of what it gave us in successor games. The original game is punishing and extremely grindy, but fun if you get past that (or play on mobile/switch/emulator with quick save).
0
Alan Wake
Remastered edition, via Ps+ July 2023

Plays: 2, plus random portions of multiple chapters for trophies, about 30 hours

This is survival horror with a strong emphasis on narrative. You play as Alan Wake, an author, encountering some very strange things and trying to find your wife, who you are separated from very early. Armed with a flashlight ("attacking the darkness" is not really a meme in this game), and sometimes a revolver, shotgun, or even a flare gun, can you recover the missing pages of your manuscript which are actually describing the story as it unfolds, and solve the mystery of what is going on?

The story is well done, and the gameplay is good, but not great. First, as promised, I am removing a star for allowing inverted camera, but then resetting that when you get in a vehicle, which is quite disorienting. Speaking of that, when you start reversing in a car, the camera immediately does a 180 degree spin, instead of just keeping the same frame of reference, which I assume they were trying to be helpful, but which actually just makes it horrible.

Second, while I appreciate that thematically you are just an author and can't really take that many hits, if you're going to allow my health to recharge slowly, and I am not in combat or any danger, please just refill it nearly instantly, I didn't enjoy standing around for an extra 2 minutes to regain all my health.

Third, the game has only a single save and exclusively uses auto save. That may have been fine in 2013 for the original version, but this remaster was 2021 and yes, it's just a remaster, but that's no excuse for no quality of life improvements. It's fine to have limited save points, but let me return to one I've passed and save again if I need to. It's a very minor nuisance, but save points often have ammo nearby, so you'd trigger the auto save and then get the ammo, and if you died (and you will, a lot) you have to pick it up again.

All that said, I enjoyed my 2+ plays. I don't recommend nightmare mode to any but the biggest fans of survival horror or the die hard completionists, though, because it's a lot of just repeating the same checkpoint until you figure out the exact ways you can stretch your limited resources to get through to the next checkpoint.

0
Hades
challenging, but you can learn how to do better, and if not, the game's accessibility will allow you to still have a blast playing it and enjoying the incredibly detailed story.
0
Mario Kart 8
I don't know that it was worth $60 on switch if you already played everything on Wii, but it was a blast then, and if you have a good group, it's still fun now.
0
Soul Hackers 2
you're either a fan of SMT games or you're not. if you don't know, don't start with this one, go play persona 5 royal instead. if you like SMT and want an interesting variant on the usual combat (not press turns nor 1 more, but hitting weaknesses increases your "stack" count, which then is bonus irresistible damage to all enemies at the end of your turn based on that count). the story is... weird, though not really that far out by SMT standards.

the biggest gripe is that there are constant battles throughout the entire game and they don't really get much different. you unlock a few more powers as the game goes on, but you won't need them for anything but boss fights. if you don't take the majority of the avoidable fights, you'll be under level for those boss fights, and continue to get further behind as the demons you find will not join your party if they're above your level.

100% will require 2 plays, I'd highly recommend the 2nd one on easy (at least until you get to the new area). and I wouldn't hesitate to do some grinding on play 1 on easy as well, if you find yourself a bit under levels. but it will remove all of the challenge.
0
Anodyne
this is a fine Zelda clone, simple in mechanics but featuring some nice puzzles. the post game is extremely difficult to figure out without a guide due to the enormous search space. combat is entirely restricted to a single melee weapon which has 2 optional mutually exclusive upgrades you can find and equip. (Played via PlayStation plus extra in June 2023. Trophies are extremely bugged, but a known workaround to save and close the game just before you'd earn one is easy enough if you know what they are.)
0
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
this game isn't perfect, but the flaws are so minor on the scope of well over a hundred hours of enjoyment, that I absolutely believe this deserves all 5 stars.
0
Persona 3
probably 3 stars for male primary character, 4 for female. there's so much quality of life improvement from here to p5r that it's a bit hard to go back.

if you're going to try to 100%, consider a blind play with male MC first, then do FeMc second as it's easier to max her social links and the padding from ng+ should give plenty of room. male MC practically requires a guide due to 3 more s links in daytime compared to FeMc.

the procgen dungeons are ok but I appreciate the in depth design of p5's palaces.

overall glad I played it, the second play was dubious value, different s links but overall same plot, and it's still a long game even with ng+ equipment. if they remake it like is rumored, might play again
0
Fire Emblem: Engage
gameplay: 4 (hard felt balanced until late game when I finally reached OP status, anything below maddening has infinite xp for farming so can be made easy). there's almost too much going on with trying to figure out which skills to give your team, because the cost to inherit good ones is very steep and non-refundable.
story: 3

three houses was a better story and the monastery was a much more interesting place than the somniel is, but there's less depth to the combat in 3H.

protip: money is very tight, don't blow it on leveling up the kingdoms.
0
Persona 4
rating refers to persona 4 golden. why anyone would play the original in 2023, I don't know.
0