This game is pretty decent, but I think you have to get the correct mindset first to enjoy this game.

If played as a normal action game, this game might be decent, kinda repetitive, but still fun. Combo can get repetitive but it has a nice feeling to it. It also has a bit of simple puzzle to solve. Bosses are good, but not great, most of them are easy and in fact I actually only died once to a boss and that's to a super boss.

If played as a metroidvania (which this game is kinda), then it's pretty bad. The backtracking for item is abysmal, there's no teleport in between area so you have to walk/run back and forth. There's a teleport item which will either takes you to the starting area (of the entire game) or to the last save point, but they cost money.
Not to mention that walking speed feels a bit too slow for how big the map can be.
The cherry on top is that the optional item isn't even that useful or fun most of the time, there's ONE item that I like which is wolf's foot that can make you run and jump faster, and as far as I know, is the only ability that is essential in getting some optional items (apart from straight up key).

To sour the game even more, to use the wolf's foot (and any other RELIC), you need mana, but mana doesn't recover automatically when you go to a save room. You have to either use item or perfectly block an enemy attack (which is almost useless when dodging is a lot easier).
So... I barely use the wolf's foot anyway, or any other relic for that matter.

Real Kusoge

The entire game is a QTE on top of a supposedly scare ghost photo

It gets increasingly difficult and to the point where I have to abuse the start button to even stand a chance

I beat this game out of sheer spite and also wanting to be thorough with my SRW marathon.

I hate this game, it is so different from the rest of the series (even the 2nd game has already change a bunch of stuff).

First, there's not much to the story, you get a text description in between chapter but that doesn't amount to much. Second, there's no character, it's only mecha. Third, and the worst one, this game is ungodly hard.

Correction, chapter 1-9 of this game is a cakewalk, then chapter 10 hits you with the brick wall which is Digdoron that has huge defense, hits like a battleship, and stupidly high regeneration. The first time I played this game I rage quited here. The rest of the bosses is like that too... except the final boss which doesn't have regeneration.

One unique thing about this game is the fact that you can recruit most of enemy unit, this is important because this game has permadeath. The recruit chance defends on how high your Charisma (max 99) and how low the enemy Loyalty is. This mechanic seems interesting at first until you realize that most enemy in later chapter has 95+ Loyalty, which means recruiting them by normal means is almost impossible.

Which brings us to Spirit Command, unlike the rest of the series, only your Main Mecha can use it. But instead of picking the Spirit like normal, you are given 3 randomized Spirit to use from a pool of 8 Spirit. So it's basically a gamble if you're going to get the Spirit you need for your situation or not. Not to mention your SP (the thing you need to use Spirit) is so low.

One of this Spirit is Heart, which can be used to recruit any recruitable enemy with 100% chance (I think). However, good luck getting the command.

This game is pretty, great art, sprite, and character design. Which is what drew me in when I first saw the gameplay in a magazine years ago. But I never got to finish the game back then, now I know why.

It’s slow.

The combat, while having the standard turn-based game, is extremely slow even compared to some of the games in that era. Normal enemy is a damage sponge and animation takes an unnecessarily long time to finish. Making a lot of encounters last for more than a minute. By the end, I actively tried to avoid any encounter that I could.

There’s also the MP issue in the early game, where you will be starved for MP because you need to use skill to end battle fast, but the good skill costs an ungodly amount of MP. This is kinda fixed mid to late game because of how much money you have to buy tents (to heal your party to full).

Speaking of skill, there’s a skill tree, and their decision with the skill tree baffles me. So you gain SP to unlock stuff in the skill tree, however, you can’t see ahead of the skill tree because everything is covered until you spend SP to KNOW what the covered skill is. You will still need to spend SP to unlock the skill itself. This makes skill tree planning almost impossible (thank you, internet).

However, there are only a handful of useful skills for each character, so once you unlock that you don’t even need to try anything else.

The story… I don’t know. It’s the typical church bad, someone is trying to awaken a sealed evil being, and you have to collect a bunch of McGuffin to prevent said evil from awakening. Not to mention the ending is so abrupt, the credit rolls start before I even realize I just finished the game.

They also did the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in a JRPG, they took away half of your party members for the final battle, meaning, if you only train the one that’s taken away… good luck finishing the game.

But, the characters are the selling point of this game. Especially the original 3, Killian, Spinel, and Henson. They are fun and their interactions are fun to watch. There are more characters later and they are also pretty interesting, but not as good as the first 3.

Overall, it could've been a good game, but it has some baffling decision and the slowness of the combat isn’t helping it.

Sakura Taisen is a blend between Tactical RPG and Dating Sim.

The Dating Sim aspect is your typical visual novel, Ogami (the MC) got harem, he has to pick certain dialog options to win the heart of one of the girls.
Unlike your typical visual novel though, there are no elaborate routes for each girl. No matter who you romance, the ending (apart from 1 cutscene and the final battle) remains the same, each girl will get development and screen time, even one you don’t care about.
There’s one girl that I find annoying because the game shoves her to you, even going so far as making Ogami love her, even though I, as the player, don't want to.

The story is fine, it’s mostly fluff while also fighting an evil organization. There will be your usual sealed thing finally awakened again after being sealed for a certain amount of time, and you have to defeat it. The fluff is cute, if it’s with the girl you like, but meh if it’s not.

Now the worst part of this game is the combat. It is an insult to RPG to call it Tactical RPG (wiki says it). There’s almost no RPG element in the combat. No level up, no class/job, no elements. The only thing you can do to increase a character's stat (temporarily) is by picking the right option in the visual novel part before the combat.

Each character only has 2 attacks, a basic attack and a special attack. Each has different range and power, it is obvious who will be the front liner and who will be on the back.
Each special attack is also unique, Sakura attacks every enemy on a straight line, Kana attacks an enemy adjacent to her but with a very big damage, Iris heals everyone around her, etc.
Special attack consumes a special gauge which can be recharged by attacking, getting attacked, or using Rest command.

There is also Heal command (limited to 2x per character), Defend, and Cover (unique to Ogami).
The many options of the command does create a bit of a strategy, but the game is very easy and you will most likely end up with the same strategy over and over.
Not to mention that the movement and animation in combat is really slow. The attack and special animation, while fun to watch at first, gets old very quickly and you can’t skip them.

I hope that the rest of the series fixes this combat problem.

With the amount of hype and mystery I’ve heard about this game from various youtubers, there’s absolutely no way that it will live up to the hype that I’ve built myself (my fault).
However, even if It’s not the masterpiece I think it is, it’s still a great game with plenty of surprises that delighted me (justifying the reason why most youtuber will just suggest you to play the game instead of listening to them ramble and possibly spoiler you).

Another thing, I’ve grown to hate roguelikes over the years, it was one of my favorite genres back then. But with the oversaturation of indie roguelikes (both bad and good), I got bored, hated it, then just blocked the entire genre on Steam. So if you’re like me but are curious about this game, you should try it.

I didn’t find the roguelike elements as annoying as in many others(Hades, Dead Cell, Binding of Isaac, Slay the Spire, etc). It’s also relatively easy so I managed to pull through with a minimal amount of replay.

This game is okay, maybe even good, if only it’s not called Metal Max.

I like some stuff in this game, like the artstyle, the tank customization, the enemy design, and the best of all is the seemingly infinite power scaling (obviously there's a cap, but it will take hours to get there).

There’s level, at first you start with max level of 99, then you can get items to increase your max level to 999.
Then the tank customization, it feels like I always get better weapons in every playthrough, even though I’m not doing much different. Even after you get the best weapon, you will still be able to increase its power through modification.
There’s also chips (I think this is the name, I forgot) that you can equip to your tank to give it skills like firing weapons multiple times or firing every weapon you have at once.
Not only that, your characters will also have skills of their own depending on their class level.

And there are maybe more stuff that I forgot to mention, the main point is that this game has a lot of grinding and customization.

But that’s the only resemblance with the previous Metal Max game. Xeno might seem like an open world game, but it is actually very linear unlike the previous game. The world is also empty of people, so no side quest or quirky NPC to entertain you, the only NPCs are the people in your base and they’re mostly boring.
There are dungeons, they are the worst part of this game because they are so long winded and boring to explore (+high encounter rate, but this has always been the case with Metal Max), there’s almost nothing interesting to discover in the dungeon except for the occasional tank.

Then there’s the story, it exists. It’s very basic but the character's motivation and conflict are so artificial it’s annoying. Okay so the basic gist is that humanity is going extinct, there are less than 10 people in the world (presumably).
The MC is Talis, his only motivation is that he wants to get revenge against the monster because they killed his parents, that’s his only motivation and he will tunnel vision with only that in sight for the rest of the game. Then on the journey he met a lot of other party members, the most notable is Toni, because she's the first girl the base has ever seen, and what does that mean? Reproduction.

Okay but Toni doesn’t wanna do it with anyone else except Talis, but Talis doesn’t wanna do it with her because he doesn’t care about anything other than hunting monsters, it becomes a longass drama, even though it can be solved in 5 minutes. Then there’s the fact that Yokky (another party member) likes Toni, but Toni doesn’t want him.
God it’s so annoying because none of them are even willing to make a compromise even knowing full well that extinction is on the table.

Then you found Maria and Ittica, both girls, but Ittica is still too young (and also the fact that she comes from an experiment tank). Maria is the perfect age for reproduction though, but I don’t think anybody ever mentions anything about reproduction anymore after the Toni debacle, it’s bizarre.

Overall, I enjoyed the multiple playthroughs just mindlessly grinding for the platinum, but it’s a far cry from the previous Metal Max game.

One of the most boring JRPG I’ve ever played. Not the worst, but it certainly is boring.

First off, I never really cared about Mega Man story in general, always skipped all of them when I played the classic or X series. I do pay attention to Legends and Battle Network stories, even then I find it not appealing to me.
So it’s not surprising when I find Command Mission’s story to be not interesting. Not to mention some of the villain’s voice acting is so laughable I can’t take them seriously.

But, I usually really like Mega Man’s gameplay. I like every single Mega Man game I’ve played (even the gameboy one). Command Mission is an exception.
It uses the standard turn-based combat with random encounter system, and on paper, the battle mechanic is sound. While every character has the same basic attack and sub weapon (some sub weapons are character exclusive), everyone has a unique special attack and hyper mode. Hyper mode is basically a temporary boost form, hyper mode will just power up the character stats, but some characters have unique effects alongside them such as Axl and Spider giving them immunity to everything, or Marino giving her insane speed boost, or X having a new special attack.
Each special attack is different and they are fun to look at… at first. X can charge to attack every enemy (or one powerful attack on 1 enemy on Hyper mode), Zero will ask you to input combo as fast as possible, Axl will ask you to input certain button to copy previously defeated bosses skill, Spider is poker, Marino is slot machine, Massimo is button mashing, and Cinnamon is AoE healing (with the potential of breaking your right analog stick).

But it’s all undermined by how much of a slog each combat is, every single encounter takes more than a minute because of the slow animation is. Combine that with a high encounter rate, and the game becomes a sleeping aid.

Boss fights are also repetitive, you will mostly do the same thing over and over again until the boss’s HP drops to 0, except for Mad Nautilus which is more annoying because you can only attack when he allows you too, otherwise he will counter with a strong attack.

There are some optional bosses, but I gave up on doing it because I have to grind a lot to have a fighting chance and with the combat being so dull, I don’t have the patience for it.

Yet another game I played as a kid, I remember really enjoying this back then, like collecting solution for the puzzles made me feel really smart as a kid.

But now, the puzzles are extremely simple and even easy to brute force. Movement is clunky, capturing ghost is kinda like Luigi's Mansion, but worse, I imagine (I never played Luigi's Mansion).
Boss fights are really just capturing the smaller ghost until you can capture the big guy, with exception of the 2nd chapter boss which is the most memorable to me.

This game tries to be Metroidvania (with the map, ability gating progression, and weapon upgrade) but fail pretty hard. So if you're looking for a good Metroidvania, this ain't it.

While the map feels open, it's mostly a linear game with objection marker telling you where to go. Even if you try to explore you're most likely going to be punished anyway because 90% of the off beaten path only contains healing/ammo item (which you don't really need), the 10% does contains weapon upgrade.
The ability gate is fine, but nothing that change your gameplay, it's mostly keycard, tools to open door, tool to light up room, and tool to turn off deadly turret.
There is one annoying "upgrade", which is a flamethrower, you need it to open some doors. But it counts as a weapon, which can only be exchanged in a save room. So I do have to backtrack a few time just to open door, because I was not carrying a flamethrower. This could've been easily solved if you just bring every weapon with you.

Still a really good 2D side-scroller game though, fun characters, decent story, combat is a bit janky, but serviceable.

I enjoyed my time with this game, until the bug get the better of me. God the bugs.

I don't know if my game is cursed or it's just that bad, but trying to complete this game is almost impossible without console command and guide.

There are bugs that made the item/enemy I needed for quest not spawn, bugs that doesn't mark the quest as complete even though I did, bugs in the dungeon regarding doors and levers where it prevented me from going further into the dungeon, bugs that make quest not start at all, etc.

And if all that happens on the optional quest, I would be fine. But no, it's on the main quest, I have to force restart a story quest because it refuses to be completed, I have to force start a story quest because it doesn't trigger (even when I did all the thing it needs to trigger), the final dungeon lever/password sometimes doesn't work the first time so I have to turn it off and then on again to open a few doors.

BUT.... I did enjoy this game, I don't know why honestly. Maybe the simplicity of it just appeal to me, I listened to music/audiobook as I hack away and got lost in the dungeon (I will tele2qmarker after I got bored).

And it made me want to check the rest of the series, even though I didn't like Skyrim back when I tried that.

I went to this game with decent expectation, I expected it to be at least mid, I didn’t think it would be one of the worst game I’ve ever played. And it’s not the fun bad kind, it’s the dull and boring bad kind, which is the bottom of the barrel for me.

The game starts out okay. I was actually quite enjoying some of the aspects, but after I put a few hours into it, it became repetitive and a slog to play.

I will try my best to avoid spoilers, I don’t think I wrote any spoilers here, but if I do I’m sorry.

COMBAT
Combat is pretty great at first, it’s turn-based but you get a certain amount of Action Points (AP) you can use each turn, and AP can be used to cast skills. Skills have a few important properties, the main thing to consider is if skills can only hit an enemy on the ground or in the air and if it can knock down or launch enemies into the air. Certain skills will also be able to recover AP, Starting Skills will recover AP if used at the beginning of the turn, then there’s skills that will recover AP depending if the enemy is knocked down or airborne.

All these properties create a very fun combat, you can try mixing combos and get the feel of which combo you like the most. The problem is that, once you get a good combo, you’re gonna stick with it for a LONG time.
Why? Because there’s only 2 enemy types, one that can be launched in the air, and one that can’t. So all you need is just one combo that can launch enemies and comboing them in the air and one that doesn’t.

Another problem is that you gain EXP so slowly (Astrite they call it here), therefore, you gain new skills at literal snail pace. Normal encounters will only net you a measly amount of EXP, so much so that towards the end, I actively avoid enemies when I can.
(Pro tip: Go to the menu if an enemy is on to you, wait a few seconds, then continue, it will reset their aggro. Doesn’t always work, but it helps.)

Then there’s a parry and dodge mechanic, most if not all enemy attacks can either be dodged or parried. There will be a circle above the enemy head, if it’s orange then it can only be dodged, if it’s blue then parry, if no circle then just parry, dodge is useless.
Seems fine and fun? Yep, at first. Until you realize that no matter what the enemy does, all you need to do is watch the circle and the flash (you dodge/parry slightly after the flash) and you’re golden.
There also will be times where you have to have a godly reaction to be able to dodge/parry because the camera doesn’t move fast enough to show what the enemy will do. Though maybe it’s because I use Samsung FOLD and the screen is square instead of landscape.

One last thing, using items doesn’t cost a turn. You can use 999 items and it will still be your turn.

BOSSES
There are 3 major bosses in this game, a few minor ones. All 3 sucks, storywise and mechanic wise. All 3 are not so different from other normal enemies, in fact, every boss is the same as any other regular monster. The only difference is that they have a lot more health and they hit harder (if they can hit you).

Each major boss has more than one phase, two phases for the first 2, and three for the final boss. Again, there is no difference at all between each phase, you just get a cutscene in between phases, they heal their health back to full and the fight continues. There are no transformations, they are literally the same model just healed back to full, no noticeable difference in their attack.
The only exception is the final boss where she gets a slight palette swap and it’s last phase got rid of the circle above the head that signals if you should dodge or parry (which is stupid).

EXPLORATION
I will sound like a broken record here, at first, I find it interesting. I like the block puzzle, the “platforming”, and the environment. Until I realize that the only puzzle is the block puzzle, the platforming is ass, and there are only 3 types of environment (White, Orange, and Red).
The maps are confusing, there are no mini-map, there are NO MAP. If not for the constant objective marker, I will be lost in the convoluted dungeon design.

Special shout out to the 2nd city you visit because it’s a maze.

UI/UX
This one aspect isn’t so bad for me, mostly because I’m used to obtuse UX design from retro JRPG. Though the HP display in combat is stupid, because you can’t see your party HP you can only see if it’s green or red. I mean you can, but it’s stupidly placed behind the character so the only way to see it is if you squint.

STORY, or rather, WRITING
This is why I hate this game so much. The writing is so bad it’s offensive to me.

There are a lot of made up terms in this game. This by itself isn’t so bad if the game properly explains what each term means and gives you ample time to absorb them. But no, they bombard you with it, from beginning to end they will give you made up gibberish like Astrom, Astrite, Shadarrish, Allindos, Troglodyte, Storm, Nazara, Coxswain, and many more. Some of this will make sense later on by context, but most can only be understood if you read the archive section.
Again, it won’t be that bad, if the archive section’s UI/UX is great. Instead of the tried and true method of having each term have its own entry, this game opted for vertical scrolling. I don’t know how to explain it better, just know that it’s hard to find a specific entry quickly.

Then characters, all of your party members feel shallow. None of them feels like they earned their place in your party, not even Yan, the main character. Their motivation is hard to decipher, they seem to just join you on a whim (except for one character). And once in your party, they barely have a personality, even Yan.
This problem also applies to the antagonist, there are 3, all 3 are the major bosses. I got all their goals, but the writing made it really hard to understand (the 2nd one is the worst one). Not to mention that none of them feels threatening, sometimes they will just casually walk on you, initiate conversation and then walk away, poof, no tension, no fear, nothing.

Then once you actually fight them, I don’t feel anything at all.

It is one of those game where I played the pirated version as a kid and can never beat it because it's just broken (can't load some level).

Now that I finished it... I really didn't miss much. The game might look similar to Crash 3 at first, but it goes too overboard with the variation, making the platforming section a lot fewer than previous game, which is a negative because the platforming is the best part of any Crash game.

Not to mention the variations in gameplay isn't really that fun, the robot section is boring, the racing (the only one) is too floaty, the jetpack is too slow and annoying, the minecart is just meh, the plane section is alright but I never really liked those stuff even in Crash 3 anyway.

And don't get me started with Coco's stage, she is objectively worse to control than Crash because she get none of his power up (except dash).