Kirby Super Star Ultra is pretty good. A unique approach with it's anthology-based structure and this allowed it to come up with some pretty creative modes in the form of Great Cave Offensive and Milky Way Wishes and both modes kinda make me wonder how a Kirby Metroidvania would work. There's some foundations here for that.

Then there's Meta Knight's Revenge, which was an enjoyable high-speed mode. I actually came quite close to running out of time in some parts. Speaking of high-speed, Gourmet Race is a classic. I did play that one in the original and i feel it controls better here?

Spring Breeze and Dyna Blade are fairly standard Kirby adventures. The former is just a remake of Kirby's Dream Land. So fun but nothing to write home about.

Ultra did add some new modes, mainly Revenge of the King and Meta Knight Ultra. While Revenge of the King is a good "hard mode" version of Spring Breeze (and even introduced Masked Dedede, this whole time i was being gaslit to think that was a Triple Deluxe thing), Meta Knight Ultra is fun at first but it's just redoing the original modes (minus Gourmet Race and Great Cave) as Meta Knight. The only difference is you fight Galacta Knight at the end but honestly i would've preferred it if it was more original.

As a whole, Super Star Ultra is very fun and i wouldn't mind if they did something like this again. Maybe now that the series has fully gone 3D, they could do a "3D Super Star" or something.

Vanillaware i thank you for the meal. They once again did not miss. An excellently crafted SRPG with fun characters, good music, and of course, fantastic visuals. All of this formed to create a game that asked a very bold question: what if Genealogy of the Holy War was good?

Honestly despite the format obviously being different, that's not a joke. This game very much feels like FE4 in some ways and given the devs' obvious love for Fire Emblem (Alain is literally Marth), it makes sense for there to be some interesting similarities. The battles all take place on the overworld itself. The terrain that you see, the areas, that's what you're fighting on. The goal each time is to capture the enemy's main command post while defending your own and capturing outposts in between. It manages to convey that epic warfare feeling and actually gives weight to the whole "liberating" thing. I found myself looking to each battle and i legit started getting a bit disappointed when i knew i was running out of fights. Because it's just so good. The sheer flexibility that's on display here really allows this game to be replayed an endless amount of ways i think.

What i really like about the combat is that the battle forecast tells you exactly what will happen in that instance. It makes sense, given the sheer variety of factors that go into determining an outcome. Because the stages are real time, there's more that goes into the strategy than simply just parking your gigachad unit in a good spot and having enemies suicide on them. While there's normally no permadeath, the game still discourages suicide tactics since stamina limits how many times a squad can attack. Squads with zero stamina can't move, which isn't something you want happen to you in a real-time game. The enemy also plays by these rules though. Honestly, that goes for pretty much the entire game. Save for specific bosses, i don't think there's anything the enemy has that you don't.

Continuing on the gameplay, the classes all rock. Well almost all of them. But even the worst ones still fill their niches quite well and certainly have more versatility than Fire Emblem classes. For example, Armor Knights can actually do things. And the thing that helps all this versatility is that each class has both skills for in and out of combat (that is, map effects). For example, Armor Knights can negate damage taken from out of battle effects. Archers can make arrows rain down for AoE, bypassing enemy defenses because it's on the map. Witches can teleport the whole squad. There's quite a lot.

This write-up honestly doesn't cover all of it. Play the demo to get an idea.

When it comes to writing, there is a bit of a divide here. Is the writing as good as 13 Sentinels? lol no. 13 Sentinels' is still Vanillaware's magnum opus when it comes to storytelling. That said, there's a lot of elements to like here. The cast of characters is great and memorable and i like the game's take on Fire Emblem's Support system more than how Fire Emblem does it. I think Fire Emblem could learn something here, as Unicorn Overlord doesn't force it's Supports to completely stretch each conversation into the full CBA chain. I haven't gone through all the convos yet but i don't think there's a single character i dislike here. I also think the director is incredibly based for allowing every recruitable character to be recruited in one run. The game is inspired by Ogre Battle but not it's cryptic as hell character recruitment methods.

The game also has pretty good worldbuilding. You can get that through the convos, the Side Quests or just reading up the logs. Basically every location, however big or small, gets an entry and it does a good job at making the world feel alive. On the visual aspect, each country is very distinct from each other. I believe that visuals itself can serve as a form of worldbuilding, just look at Xenoblade. All of these elements, in my opinion, help support the main plot. The main plot itself is pretty basic but this is one of those games where you really don't get the full experience if you only stick to the main plot.

I really don't have anything really negative to say about this game. I do have a few minor nitpicks however. The Tactics system, as robust as it is, could've had a bit more specificity to it. And for how much control over things you have, a Path of Radiance-style "commands" system that you can give to AI controlled units would've helped. I also think it's kinda noticeable that the game ran out of money towards the end. In an interview they explained how they kept adding more and more recruitable characters which i feel kinda explains why a lot of the recruits are frontloaded into Cornia and Drakenhold. The Albion arc in particular is very short. Ironically, it's maps are probably the longest.

Vanillaware cooked, just like how they cooked all that delicious food in their games, good God, it's all gorgeous. I'd ask for a sequel to like, iron some stuff out but Vanillaware doesn't even do spiritual sequels so honestly, i'm ok with how this turned out. They spent 10 years on this game, ran out of money in the process, but it's ok because they put out an absolute banger. Want an FE4 remake? Just play this instead.

I have a thing with Atelier games. I don't like finishing them. I can't fully explain why, I think it has to do with the vibes. I always find myself trying to prolong these games for some reason. With Atelier Ryza 3, that was multiplied to 100. Ok, between finishing my Zeldathon, Tears of the Kingdom, the trip to Spain i took, and finishing up the semester, along with work, it definitely took time out of me finishing this game. But it worked, because I didn't want to finish it. I'm still counting this game as a game i played in 2023 and it's going on the list but man, never before have i prolonged a game like this.

To kick things off, if i had a nickel for every 2023 game that is a sequel that reused the world map from it's predecessor while adding to it, i'd have three nickels, which isn't a lot, it's just weird it's happened thrice. Granted, unlike TotK and Spider-Man 2, the reused map isn't the "main" map if that makes sense, in fact it hardly matters this time.

I'm actually gonna start by listing some negatives first: while it's clear that Gust wanted the Secret trilogy to end with a bang, they banged too much, because the size of this game's areas isn't really justified. It's a technological achievement for the team for sure but by a certain point i was preferring the smaller maps. It didn't help that it's actually surprisingly easy to get lost in this game, in the sense that the navigation is pretty poor. I never had this problem with Atelier games before which is surprising to me that i'd encounter it here. I didn't have this problem with Xenoblade areas, which are still bigger than what's found here, so it leads me to believe that there's just something wrong with how Ryza 3 handled navigation.

Another negative i have with the game is the combat, specifically how enemies are handled. For some strange reason, enemies scale with your level so even in the starting area, you'll be coming across Lv.80 enemies eventually. Of course by that point in the game you'd have long snapped the game's balance in two but it's still just an odd decision. The Key system that is supposed to be central to the game (look at the title) is lame and undercooked and i barely used it except when I had to.

With these points, it seems like the game is a step back compared to it's predecessor and it some ways it still kinda is. In others, it's a great improvement. While navigation sucks, movement is actually pretty good, well as good as it can get for this sort of game. No longer do you have to stop in your tracks to gather items, you can just zoom around picking up everything and anything. How Ryza does this in heels i have no idea. You have different animal buddies you can ride. You can create wind surfing shoes that let you schmove down slopes. It's all pretty fun. The combat itself is mostly the same from Ryza 2 i think but it actually fixed my biggest problem i had in that game, the stun mechanics. In Ryza 2, whenever a boss would prep a big attack, you are given the opportunity to stun it by fulfilling certain conditions.....except it didn't matter anyways. Ryza 3 fixed this, i found myself stunning the bosses much more consistently by following the instructions.

The characters and story beats are also good. This game follows Lydie & Suelle in being a "trilogy ender" game that actually feels like it's ending the trilogy, as opposed to simply being a third game. Character arcs are wrapped up nicely and everyone is given a chance to shine despite the fact that there's 11 total party members, which isn't actually the highest number for an Atelier game but is a rather high number for all being part of the story. It was just really nice and pleasant to see. I'm truly gonna miss the Secret crew though i'm sure they'll be back in 2029 for the 10th anniversary of Ryza. My only complaint with the characters has less to do with them and moreso how character events are handled. This ties into my issues with the map but the character events feel "less accessible" than in previous games since they're no longer relegated to just the hub area.

The thing about this game's story and probably a big reason of why i held off on finishing it is because it hits pretty relevant right now. A subtle element to the narrative here is how growing up means that you'll be seeing your pals less often. It doesn't mean that you'll never see them again (though that might happen eventually) but the road of life often means going separate but connected paths. This probably would've hit even harder if i was a high schooler graduating but even as a 24 year old in college, i still strongly resonated with this. I hated school back in the day but i do find myself reminiscing on at least the simpler days back when the responsibilities were low and you could do relatively anything. Of course, despite it all, you still have to keep moving forward.

Music. Music in this game is still the good Gust stuff i know and love. Admittedly the battle themes are kinda lacking in this unfortunately but that's where good ol' "change BGM" came in. Final boss plays the game's main theme tho and that's based. Environmental themes are good, no issues there.

Once again, i am giving a game a higher score than i would've because the ending is very good. Love the ending. Even if i hate endings. I wish things didn't have to end. You know why Doctor Who is the greatest show ever? Cause it doesn't end, it just keeps on going and going and going, it is designed to not end. Endings suck.

.....nah but jokes aside, this game was the perfect sendoff for the Secret trilogy. And now we wait for the next Atelier game. Not the gacha shit, i mean the actual next Atelier game.

Yeah this is the best 2D Mario. After years of stagnation with the NSMB series (and i love Wii), Nintendo comes in with this banger of a game. I won't really be stating the obvious here, everyone knows how much of a breath of fresh air this game is, thanks to the new Wonder gimmick and just generally the really appealing artstyle. But in addition to the Wonder effects and the cool new powerups, the level design benefits from simply just removing the time-limit that the previous games had. It's enough of a difference that allows levels to be a little bit more complex than they were before.

If there's one problem with the game, it's the boss fights. For a game as creative as this one, the boss fights are lacking even by Mario standards. The exception is the final Bowser fight but that's it. Actually, there's a second problem: badges. Outside of the specific Badge Challenge levels, badges in this game are wildly unbalanced. The tierlist is Grapple Vine > Glide Cap > literally everything else. Great idea but the normal level design doesn't make enough use of them.

All of that said though, at the end of the day....it's still 2D Mario. Levels are fun and creative but even with the Wonder effects, they still don't reach the heights of Donkey Kong Country. The Wonder helps set them apart and there's enough variety, even when certain gimmicks are reused, but some levels do inevitably.....blend in. Difficulty is fairly easy (Special World good challenge though).

I do love it when a DLC expansion is unique enough that i can make it's own log out of it. Whereas The Last Spark Hunter is more of the same goodness (Tower of Doom sucks, we don't speak of that one), the Rayman DLC is actually unique. Much like Donkey Kong Adventure from the previous game, Rayman changes how you approach the game. Rayman himself is uber-busted, allowing for a variety of unique strategies you couldn't do in the main game, such as near-infinite air time (with certain conditions), area control, massive utility. Having Rabbid Mario and Rabbid Peach as the only companions meant you really had to adapt to this specific team setup.

This expansion, like the first game, also has turn-limits for bonus points. However, on the higher difficulty and intended level, i'm not sure if some of them are physically possible. Coming back to them later sure but there are maps that'd be like "how do you do this in three turns or less". Speaking of, the maps in this game are very good, very well designed to take advantage of Rayman's unique abilities in particular.

The big downside to this DLC is, i wish it was bigger. The Last Spark Hunter was longer despite being more of the same, i feel like it should've been the inverse. Still, this was fun. The music actually goes pretty hard too.

It's not every year that we get two new Atelier game in a row except i see this becoming more likely but shhh but in addition to Atelier Ryza 3, Gust has gifted us with a remake of the very first Atelier game, Atelier Marie. Now i went and played the original a few years ago, the PS2 port specifically. I immediately realized how dated it was and decided to cut my loses early. So when the remake was announced, i was pretty excited. A game that has never left Japan being localized is a good time and a modernized remake on Atelier Marie would only be good. Was i right on that? Well, yes.

To get things out of the way, the game is a very faithful remake. The main difference it has compared to the original is a brand new artstyle, actually explorable areas (the original game was very menu-based), and an actual sense of direction. Aside from that however, the game is basically the same as the original but these differences go a long way in enhancing the experience. And, to be honest, with how different it is from modern Atelier, it might as well feel like a new game. Crafting is still the central mechanic but it doesn't at all have the depth of the modern entries. Equipment functions like normal game equipment, without any modifiers you could add to them. Items in theory have a lot of use but the combat is so piss easy, it's literally just spam Marie's skill until the enemy dies. It really goes to show that this was the first game in the series, given new life. And hey, to be fair, this game (and at least this early in the series) was much more of a sim game than an RPG game, so it's understandable why the combat in particular wouldn't be as fleshed out as the later entries.

One thing i noticed was how the tone of this game was a bit different from the modern entries. Not by much but noticeable for this series. While it still maintains it's slice-of-life elements, i was surprised to see the game touch on topics of war, causes of banditry, racism and even hints of trafficking and enslavement. All of this is told, not shown, it merely informs the backstories of certain characters, but the fact that Atelier characters can have these backstories at all is just wild. This isn't to say modern Atelier didn't get heavy with it's topics, it's just not in a way like this. Even the Dusk trilogy, which took place in a declining world, did have a, uh, lighter tone, to put it that way. The original premise of Atelier was "what if in a world of legends, you played as just a normal person", a premise that modern Atelier has pretty much abandoned. It was interesting to see the series' roots.

What surprised me the most with the gameplay was the time-limit. This game has a five-year time-limit, similar to Atelier Totori, Meruru and Ayesha. And yet, i was surprised by just how lenient it is in this game compared to those. My experiences with the latter three had soured me on this form of the series' time management (i'm fine with the more segmented approach of Atelier Rorona and Escha & Logy) so i opted for the remake's Unlimited Mode, which removes the time-limit. I uh........didn't expect fulfilling the main objective to be so easy. It's such a general requirement that you'll meet it without trying, and that's not counting the other requirements for the endings. I'm definitely gonna replay this game another time but the way it was intended, especially since there's specific events that for fundamental reasons cannot occur on Unlimited Mode.

I do think this game was a bit too faithful in regards to it's RNG. Certain events have a chance of occuring, sometimes as low as 10%. For a game about time-management, that's pretty awful but i was still fortunately able to get most of them way before the five years were up. I imagine an Atelier Elie remake is not off the table. If and when it comes, i do hope Gust does away with the RNG trigger for events. Remove them and it only changes for the better.

Atelier Marie Remake was a fun way of finally experiencing the series' roots, filled with charming characters, a good gameplay loop that allows for easy replays and of course, Gust's signature great music. It's obviously simple by the modern entries' standards but i think it does accomplish what it set out to do well.

This is the third Ys game i've played and while it is the best one, it's still just decent for me. I mean, i'll cut the series some slack, Atelier wasn't wowing me either for the first few entries i've played and now it's my second favorite JRPG series.

Anyways, this game plays similarly to Ys 7 but it's better because the bosses don't take three trillion years to get down to half-health, so the game is infinitely more enjoyable. However, the game has a worst economy than current day America. Like damn, Adol should go on strike for this, the quests pay jack shit compared to how much everything costs in this game.

Speaking of, Adol is a Link-tier silent protagonist so i'm cool with it. I didn't feel his silentness was a detriment to the plot like Byleth in Three Houses or Joker in Persona 5. The other characters are nice too and they all go through their own little arcs, except the last one, who's just here cause i guess.

What i'm not cool with is the villains. Just a whole trio of nothing-people. Now, as a rule of thumb, what makes a good Saturday morning cartoon villain is one who is either entertaining to watch (however this manifests) or fits with the game's themes. This game's villains do neither. The main villain Gruda is a discount Vaati, a lad from a hidden village who becomes obsessed with darkness but is not given any motivation until the end. His motivation is revealed at the end to be "humans suck so i will become a menace so that humanity can prove that it's worthy" which to me, sounds like Malos. Gruda is a discount Vaati and also a poor man's poor man's Malos (yes i intentionally repeated it twice to get the point across). I don't even have anything to say about the game's other villains, they hardly mattered.

The soundtrack is good, if samey. Me thinks this is a series-wide problem. Ys: Memories of Celceta as a whole is probably the most 7/10 game i've played, solidified by the game's ending of all time.

This game introduced me to the concept of "floating fighters" which is like this weird middle ground between traditional fighters and platform fighters. There are no platforms but despite playing like a traditional one, there is now the element of "down". You can move around in any direction in a 2D space which is honestly really interesting for a fighter, even if it's kinda awkward to get used to.

Got my ass kicked but it was fun. Didn't do story mode, this wasn't my copy. Surprised there isn't a Dragon Ball Z version of one of these. It'd be the first game to sell 100 Zillion copies.