Exactly what it says on the tin. Feels like a Captain Toad level but you play as Link. Which is ironic since that's how Captain Toad originally started as conceptually.

I don't know if it's just cause I haven't played OoT in a second (like, literally a month or two lol), but I kept messing up simple things. Walking slightly diagonal instead of straight which caused me to fall off a ton, repeatedly falling off vines I hooked to making me climb all the way to the top again, getting hit by Keese multiple times. Maybe I'm just tired, but all these stupid mistakes made this playthrough take way longer than it needed.

Anyway, this was fun. Big fan of putting Mario in Link's world and vice versa, it's always great fun. Hope this mod developer takes this concept further; I know a full game of this was going to be done by someone but that was cancelled, I'd love for it to come to fruition.

eu ainda prefiro as vibes de Perfect Cherry Blossom e Imperishable Night mas não dá pra negar que esse é um dos pontos mais icônicos da série, quase ao nível de Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. eu conhecia uma boa parte das personagens e de suas músicas por pura osmose vinda do meus contatos com a fanbase. mas eu senti um pouco de falta da energia mais... rústica que os Touhous anteriores tinham, até mesmo em algo tão complexo como o 8º jogo da série. Esse é o primeiro Touhou que eu não sinto completa vontade de chegar ao final antes de partir para o próximo (cheguei na chefe final pelo menos), o que tudo bem inclusive.

Mountain of Faith ainda é um triunfo audiovisual interativo: a trilha sonora e os padrões de balas continuam espetaculares como sempre, as garotas novas que vão ser mais relevantes nos jogos futuros são ótimas adições ao elenco e a engine nova esbanja efeitos visuais muito bonitos durante as batalhas. mas eu realmente não gosto das mudanças do sistema de bombas e continues desse aqui. eu prefiro ser arremessada pro menu principal depois de morrer do que repetir a fase final só com duas miseráveis vidinhas, e fazer com que o uso de bombas diminua o poder do seu ataque normal é tryhard demais, até para os padrões dessa série. alias, antes você podia escolher a quantidade de vidas que você começa (com uma diminuição no seu score em números acima de 2) mas removeram isso também, talvez para não entrar em conflito com a nova maneira que os continues funcionam (para evitar por exemplo que você recomece a última fase com 6 vidas mesmo chegando nela com apenas 1).

mas a questão da energia presente nessa nova era da série ainda é a coisa que mais mexe comigo. eu fiquei matutando um pouco sobre isso e a minha namorada comparou esse sentimento meu como uma fã de punk ouvindo uma música pop punk, onde parte da estética mais bruta é substituída por algo mais sofisticado, mas que talvez tenha perdido parte da identidade presente no gênero. acho que faz sentido. apesar de que isso tecnicamente me torna uma Touhou boomer. tudo bem. eu também sou uma Morrowind boomer. eu ainda vou tentar os seguintes, tenho tempo para me acostumar

pra concluir esse jogo me fez perceber que eu não sou normal a respeito da Aya Shameimaru.

É raro um jogo de Dragon Ball contar a história do DB clássico, o que esse jogo faz com primor, até o arco do Rei Piccolo. Um Beat 'em up robusto misturado com um jogo de luta, essa escolha fez o jogo sair da mesmice e ir para um novo patamar, tirando o aspecto de repetição do jogo. A evolução do Goku com o passar da história é notável, o que afeta a forma que você vai jogar, encaixando perfeitamente o enredo e a gameplay. Os gráficos são lindos, bonitos de se ver até nos dias de hoje, os controles são fáceis de aprender e responsivos, a gameplay é fluída e muito divertida. Em minha opinião ele acaba pecando na baixa variação de inimigos nas fases, que altera praticamente só no arco do Piccolo.
Veredito: Se for fã de DB ou ainda quer conhecer mais sobre o clássico, jogue, não vai se arrepender, um jogo com sprites lindos, combates divertidos e uma ótima evolução de personagens, tudo que um Beat 'em up precisa.

Pacing Land

I caught Sand Land at the 2023 Summer Games Fest, an event I always try to catch in the postmortem of the once monumental E3. Despite being largely indifferent and avoidant of Bandai-Namco's arsenal of seemingly endless anime video games, something about Sand Land caught my eye. In the end it was reminiscing to my youth and those late nights spent watching Toonami when I was supposed to be asleep. Night after night I'd stay up and catch what I could understand about Japanese anime, something I was largely unfamiliar with and unsure about how to follow, but was enthralled nonetheless. There was one anime at the time that seemed to interject itself the most into the zeitgeist of my childhood, and that was Akira Toriyama's magnum opus: Dragonball Z. Despite this game clearly not being Dragonball, I gave that little preamble as a sort of introduction and reasoning as to why I became interested in the game Sand Land. I'd never read the manga, only ever having read maybe three manga in my entire life, but because it felt familiar. Watching gameplay of obviously Akira Toriyama created characters running around and engaging in general buffoonery felt familiar, and thus I was interested.

Now if you've read my reviews and looked at the score, you'll notice that the beginning monologue is almost always followed with a "but" in detraction to how "fun" the game was... and yeah here that is. Though it was nice to experience simple Saturday morning cartoon vibes in a fully voice acted anime game, I actually had to play it. I liked the cast, thought the game had some charming dialogue, loved the character art (re: familiarity with Dragonball,) and liked the general lightheartedness of the story, however the gameplay loop got tired eventually and the game itself was ultimately far too long.

The story revolves around the Prince of Darkness and Company running around on (initially) a quest for water what leads them to astounding secrets, betrayal, and a war against systematic power they could not have predicted. The first arc, taking place over maybe fifteen or so hours of the game's ~twenty-four hour runtime, was pretty fun and well paced. Your crew goes from one area to the next with a decent speed and the scale of enemies and power makes sense... mostly. It's once this first arc is finished and Forest Land becomes involved that things slow down to a shuttering halt and the pacing becomes pretty poor. You engage in many repetitive quests, dungeons, fights (re-used bossfights... yay!) and the ending quest itself lasts about three hours too long.

Gameplay in Sand Land is about 70% tank/vehicle based, which was a pretty nice 180 from the last few games I've played which largely ignore vehicle combat/interaction (minus Rebirth I guess.) The Prince utilizes a growing roster of Bots, Tanks, and Hoverboards that each carry their own use. The Tank is a great all-around damage dealer, the Jump Bot allows you to gain verticality in traversal in fights, the bike gets you from Point A to Point B in a reasonable amount of time, and so on. Sand Land does a pretty good job of allowing you to pick what you want for combat while making traversal a little bit of a gimmick, which is okay. Upkeep of the bots isn't too hard, and I found that levelling and upgrading was a natural progression of materials I was already finding in the world. Outside of the vehicles you engage in a hefty deal of hand-to-hand combat, which leaves a LOT to be desired mechanically, and also sneaking missions... because who doesn't love one button combat sneaking missions??? Playing the game outside of what is advertised and plastered in the marketing was a real snoozefest and adds just about nothing to playing the game.

While it was fun to get a mostly humorous fun adventure out of Sand Land, it was largely a nothing burger and definitely not worth full price. I don't recommend Sand Land.

All the sounds and art and music are amazing. If TMNT is your favorite thing ever, you're eating good with this game because with all the references and side characters packed in it meant the game was filled with stuff I recognized and stuff that seemed very obscure. It wasn't as creative with the mechanics as some of the new beat em ups I've played nor was it really challenging at all, but this is easily one of the best out there. 10/10 presentation.

I could have used a bit more characters. Casey Jones unlocking after you beat the game is like, what? I'm done now. And this game doesn't seem to have the replayability to get another playthrough out of me. I see there's some DLC for more characters, but more levels as well would have done wonders for adding replayability into the game.

Sequel, please!

promessa é dívida então realmente me entupi de brisadeiro pra jogar isso aqui e foram alguns dos momentos mais inexplicáveis que já tive jogando alguma coisa, me senti dentro de um desenho antigo da nickelodeon o tempo todo.

os personagens são muito divertidos, os lugares são bem interessantes e a vibe do jogo faz tudo se encaixar perfeitamente, realmente dá vontade de só ficar de boa conversando com eles e fazendo grafite aqui e ali.

fiz os 3 finais, mas ainda faltam alguns outros objetivos que eu também fiquei muito interessado em concluir pra ver como é (provavelmente sob efeito de mais nada).