There’s something here. A glimmer of something truly excellent, held back by a couple of key issues.
First, the card game. The idea is sound, creating a sex scene across different positions and actions in a three act structure, all done using a deck of cards, a randomised element that means you may not have the act needed to achieve the given objective of any shag. But all failure means is a lack of progress in the main story, and any starlets you’ve levelled up will still have their stories continue regardless, at least if you have a backlog to get through. It’s unexciting, and a limited pool of cards (including the starlets themselves and special event cards that adjust stats or redraw hands) and an even more limited pool of objectives means that repetition sets in QUICK. But given expansion, more risk and reward (a management sim aspect perhaps? Something to make success more crucial), and some smarter missions (how about a no-penetration challenge? A ‘keep it internal’ challenge?), this could work out great.

Secondly, the starlets themselves. They’re all decent horror designs, but hold too much back. You have an opportunity with a game like this to indulge deeply in fetish, and sadly it is ALWAYS restrained to the point that there’s not much difference between the cast beyond the occasional bit of translucence or an extra limb.

You need to go all out. Lucy is a muscle-bound oni, but her body type is lacking in mass. Make her swole as hell and lean into it. Like full bodybuilder. Redd is a slobbish werewolf, lean into that body hair, baybee! Blibby is the curvy slime character, hungry for food and sex, give her more than the tiniest of tummy bumps, maybe even get that vore gig going. Someone’ll be into it! Susie Stitches is an undead girl built for sex, made of various people’s body parts, play with the customisation. Heck, go dark, that means she can take it rough! Hips ground to dust by a mega-shag would be easily replaced, so go heavy!

Instead they’re all just… fine. Sexy, cute characters. They’ll do the job for the average gamer, but they could have been so much more. They could have been perfectly perverse.

Also it just doesn’t have an ending. It just… keeps going after you’ve seen all the scenes. Gimme closure. Gimme a climax!

A final frustration: why are all the sex acts so straight(see note) when every male character is not a part of your deck? If you’re gonna only have the female starlets accessible, have at least SOME of the cards reflect this, rather than the penis-sprouting approach the game currently takes. The boys are well-designed enough, and in the visual novel sections we get to see the, in action, as well as the girls dealing with each other as needs be. But the game itself is so penis-to-vagina oriented that it kind of blows.

I’m talking myself out of the good time I’ve had, but it really is cute. Which’ll do. But I want more, and I want it bigger and better.

*(note: for purposes of this review I’m being a bit basic about gender here, but it’s clear from the designs that this is reflective of the game itself as much as me being so simple on genitals.)

Just finished a fresh playthrough, and... I dunno. Amazing linear game, if you just get what you need and plow through the story. But the me of today compared to when this came out can definitely see how it's a bit naff as a Metroid experience. The most limited title of them all (save maybe Metroid 2, which this calls back to a lot, funnily enough), with what is normally a joyous full-powered clean-up turned into a pain in the arse slog.
But... just don't play it like that. Treat it as Not A Metroid and it's great. Thumbs up.

Wait, have I never rated this?
It has baseball! And pretty good baseball at that.
It has tennis! Kinda mediocre but still fun tennis, anyway.
It has boxing! Which is uh. I dunno. Maybe I'm bad at it.
But more than anything it has bowling, in a most excellent form that never stops being fun.
Wii Sports good.

I love a good picross game. This is almost that.

A touch too easy, and with an obnoxious timer on the boss puzzles that meant I had finished every single other puzzle with a HUGE amount of those left over. A completely needless feature, as the post-game catalogue (including some bonus puzzles) removes the timer entirely. A very Konami move, and I’m shocked you can’t pay your way past it. Not that I’d want to, it’s just… Konami, y’know?

An excellent argument for turning off your wifi once in a while, too, as the many adverts for other Konami games only actually attempt to appear of you’re connected, and their very presence isn’t just obnoxious, but actually impacts performance.

A tiny little mystery for smart frogs and/or detectives, now accompanied by their trusty and/or decorative notebooks. It feels like the most limited entry in the series, but I checked with a few people and it turns out that doesn’t matter on bit! Phew.

The perfect “children at play” writing is here again, and many a chuckle was had. Like… genuinely, I have so few gripes, especially for price. It was kind of a pain to find one of the pies, I guess? But it’s a tiny little bunch of houses so who cares, it can only delay THIS detective so long.

Like all good trilogies, this ends with the third one.

Everything is nicely connected, characters return, TWISTS HAPPEN, jobs change, bad rooms are entered, hats are stolen and/or worn, poems are written, and a scooter is rode. My God, is a scooter ever rode.

I don’t know how you could ever make a longer experience out of these games, and I don’t care to imagine, but it does seem a crime that our time with Frog Detective ends here.

crime is, of course, not real, and I should not have made up this crime. I am sorry.

I’m beginning to feel two things when it comes to Lego games. One, that the story mode can get in the bin, a pain in the arse hand-holding exercise that blocks you from maximum enjoyment of free play/open world stuff. That this game also uses a small amount of characters for mmmmmmmost of the game’s story only irritates me further in this regard. Two, I think we should institute a global law restricting each human being to only playing any one Lego [franchise here] game to actual completion. It feels damaging to my general state of being to have done so across Lego Batman, Lego Indiana Jones, and now this. That’s too much Lego. Traveller’s Tales must pay for their crimes*.

On positives, the available characters captures both a neat moment in time (Ultimate versions, F.F. versions, Heroic Age Iron Man, Astonishing Cyclops) and a nice variety of deeper cuts. Moon Knight may feel an obvious choice now, but in 2013 Moon Knight was still a year out from his successful comic reinvention by a suicidegirl botherer and some artist pals of mine seem to dislike on a personal level, but I’, buggered if I can remember why.

I just wish I knew how to slow Hawkeye’s skycycle. And how to incrementally alter my flight trajectory as a flying character without accidentally double tapping A and boosting a mile away from a race. Or how to laugh at Deadpool’s schtick.

Played on a Steam Deck, and that feels like a perfect way to play, honestly.