Crispy, fun action game with some gorgeous pixel art and what I'm sure is a ton of replayability (between expert mode and the arcade mode, which I'm assuming is limited continues).

I'm incredibly surprised that this is the dev studio's first game together. It plays buttery smooth on the Switch, too, so pick it up on whatever platform means more to you. Be advised, however, that the game's main campaign is staggeringly short - I think I finished it in just under an hour, even retrying multiple times from checkpoints. Even so, I think it's not something you'd want to miss.

I'm a crier. I cry at games a lot, and this was no exception. It's awash with all of the right kind of sentimentality, rife with mystery (ESPECIALLY considering the lingering questions at the end of GAA1), and full of exciting, fun little moments that the Ace Attorney series delivers with consistency.

The only reason I could possibly give this less than 5 stars is because of how heavily its plot devices and structure depend on having completed the first game - unlike the original AA trilogy, for example, this absolutely isn't one you should jump into without prior knowledge.

I really wanted to like this game more than I did. A large amount of it was right - movement feels really clean and most of the encounters (especially bosses) were entertaining, but I don't think those things were really enough for me.

I'm going to try to keep from bashing the game outright, but the game's visual and audio style were pretty grating on me, and didn't save me from the constant backtracking I was forced to do.

Any complaints I had about Circle of the Moon's map design seem like they were reversed to the opposite extreme in HoD; it seems like every relic I gained opened up 3 or 4 paths and only 1 was progress toward another boss or required item, turning a massive chunk of the mid-game into a blindfolded scavenger hunt. Add to that a limited number of accessible warp points (a LARGE amount of them weren't reasonably accessed until most of the castle is uncovered) and I had a solid recipe for frustration.

Despite all of the aspects of COTM I considered flaws, I still think I liked it more than this one. It took me playing them both back to back to really get a feel for why, though.

20 years later, I've finished COTM for the first time thanks to the Castlevania Advance Collection. It was fine, though I took issue with some (IMO) questionable design choices. Some examples:

-Running is inexplicably tied to a relic, and is incredibly important for large swaths of the game's platforming, but there's no way to run without double-tapping your movement buttons, and the walk speed is painfully slow
-A lack of shortcuts/warp points around the castle means a ton of backtracking through long uneventful hallways
-Lots of combat options from the interesting and intricate DSS system, but not many of them have very practical applications

All in all, these things didn't really end up deterring me from enjoying myself with the game, and the compilation version brings some nice improvements to visual clarity. The music is fine, lots of rearranged classic tracks and a couple originals that really nail that Castlevania sound. I very strongly recommend playing this before the other two GBAvanias just to properly experience how the series really learned to flourish on the handheld.

Holy moly, I can only imagine playing this game back when it first released and not knowing that a sequel was imminent, but...

For anyone who felt perhaps underwhelmed by the final stretch of the main Ace Attorney series (6 is a personal favorite of mine but I know the opinion is rare) The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures is a wonderful return to form.

Stellar writing and localization, punctuated by endearing characters and some very ominous mysteries that don't seem content occupying one game. This almost certainly leaves The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve on the table to see the entire story, well, resolve.

Judgment is a great way to experience the flavor and style of the Yakuza series without the commitment to the entirety of Kiryu's tale.

Set roughly in the same time frame as Y6 and Y7, Judgment eschews a lot of the familiar faces of Kamurocho's seedy underbelly in favor of a civilian cast, starring 90s heartthrob and Howl's Moving Castle leading man Takuya Kimura.

If that means nothing to you, that's probably fine -- Kimura as detective Takayuki Yagami is a match made in heaven, so much so I can't imagine anyone else in the role anymore. He apparently liked it too, 'cause he came back for another round.

I watched @PlanetHiko play through this, but I was there for every moment, so my hands might as well have been on the controller.

Absolutely stellar period drama prequel, and "origin story" of sorts for series mainstays Kiryu and Majima. 0 has a unique perspective on the series, having originally released after Y5, and so it shares a lot more references and mechanics with 5 than the games it precedes chronologically.

Regardless of what order you decide to play the series in, Y0 fits in beautifully. If I had to choose any one game in the series to play, in retrospect, it would probably be this one because of how self-contained it is, even if it isn't my personal favorite.

I put this game off for literal years because I just didn't enjoy it at launch -- not much in general had changed in the time since, but people always spoke highly of the game in a way that I wasn't seeing. The first time I gave up, I stopped right around the middle of chapter 5, which I learned was right around when the game REALLY kicks into some spectacular moments.

It was all downhill from there. While ultimately I still think XCDE tells the better story and trims a lot of the tonally jarring fanservice moments, there was plenty in 2 that had me reeling. After some extensive time learning more of the ins and outs of another convoluted Monolithsoft battle system, I think it edges its predecessor out (though XCX's battle system is still the pick of the litter for me).

All in all, glad I played this game and I'm looking forward to playing through Torna: The Golden Country...someday.