BobOnTheKebab
This review contains spoilers
Its been a while since I finished the God of War trilogy, so I figured I'd visit these PSP games now that some time has passed since my marathon so they don't just blur together in my memory. This is Kratos's first portable journey, and...well, you can kinda tell. The game is quite short, especially when compared to its PS2 contemporaries, but I do feel that it uses its length well. Took me 6 hours and 14 minutes to beat. Fun fact: this playthrough marks the first game I've ever beaten on my Vita. I never owned a PSP so I'm mostly using my Vita as a way to play PSP games.
I think the gameplay is plenty fun, as all God of War games are, but this one feels like too much of a retread of familiar ground in my opinion. The game starts off with you fighting through a Persian city in Africa, sort of like the Greek city you fight through in the second game's opening, and the Basilisk boss at the beginning feels like a watered-down version of the Hydra boss from the first game. You also spend a good portion of the game in the Underworld and it looks a lot like in the PS2 games, although they still give it unique level design of course. Helios's temple is a unique location, but it doesn't look especially different from the temples you'll find in the PS2 games. As for the combat, that also has quite a few similarities; the Ifreet spell is like a combination of Poseidon's Rage from the first game and Atlas Quake from the second, for example. The Light of Dawn spell is probably the most blatant one, it literally is just Zeus's Fury (lightning bolt from the first game) again. To talk about the combat on its own merits, though, it is decently fun. I was a little disappointed with how you spend the vast majority of the game with only the Blades of Chaos; every God of War game starts off with Kratos using these weapons (or some variation of it that's technically different in lore but has the exact same moveset), but they usually give you at least one other weapon to experiment with in the middle of the game or earlier. I will say that I can see why they left the weapon for so late in the game, though, since the Gauntlet of Zeus is hilariously strong. It makes for a really fun endgame power fantasy, allowing you to easily kill enemies that gave the Blades of Chaos a hard time; this thing takes down cyclopes (cyclopses? cyclopi?) in six hits. Bosses are still balanced around it, thankfully, so don't expect to be taking them out in six hits. Something unfortunate that I noticed a lot of in this game is how samey the level design feels, it almost feels like a corridor simulator at times. Its hard to actually miss secrets as a result; I've never gotten all the Phoenix Feathers (magic upgrades) and Gorgon Eyes (health upgrades) in a God of War game before, but here I did it and there were still some chests that would've had them in it if I didn't grab 'em all. Finding secrets pretty much just consists of picking the other optional corridor that opened up when you beat an enemy gauntlet room or just...looking around a little more, like the few that are put to the side just out of view. Also, I suck at puzzles, but I still think its a shame just how few are in this game, and the few that are in are extremely easy. I don't mean to make this review so nitpicky and whiny, I knew going in that this game isn't exactly the most memorable or innovative of the series. I also had a lot of fun with the combat, and, really, that's the most important thing I ask for from a game like this.
I actually really liked the story of the game. It's not anything super deep, and I do feel there was some missed potential, but overall I think it was good and shows a lot of Kratos's character. This game shows Kratos when he's still under the servitude of the gods, filling in a nice timeline gap taking place after the events of GoW but before GoW2. After Kratos invades an African city controlled by Persian forces and kills their leader (as well as the Basilisk that was summoned before Kratos's arrival), he questions when the Olympians will fulfill their side of his deal: ending his nightmares. He doesn't have long to ponder, though, since the sun suddenly goes out and darkness envelops the land. Morpheus, god of dreams, seeks to take over the earth and turn it into a land of dreams. This happened because Helios, god of the sun, has gone missing, and Kratos is tasked with finding him. From there the story sort of takes a backseat while Kratos slashes his way through the palace to free the three wind horses of Helios, who were entombed in stone. The main important thing that the game shows you at this point in the story is Kratos hallucinating a song in the background, which the game constantly reminds you is some kind of echo of his past. He later identifies it as the song his daughter, Calliope, played on her flute, though this only really becomes relevant at the end of the game. After freeing the horses, they take Kratos down to the underworld, and Kratos does his usual schtick and kills everything there. You do have a mandatory loss against Charon, though, which sends Kratos plummeting through Tartarus where he proceeds to destroy more enemies. Eventually Kratos finds Charon again and makes sure to kill the ferryman this time, taking his fancy boat too...when Kratos sees Calliope and chases after her. As it turns out, Morpheus is not the main threat in this story, as cool as a boss battle with him would've been. Its actually Persephone, who Kratos stumbles upon when following Calliope. In his desire to see her again, he sacrifices all his power to rid him of his sins and be with her in Elysium. In theory this is a really interesting idea; should Kratos choose eternal happiness while the world around him burns, or continue to suffer as he always has? Unfortunately the answer is basically made for him, since, as the game puts it, "the Fates are never that kind". Makes sense thematically with God of War's story, though, and that line in particular ties in well with how he goes to kill the Fates in the second game. I also don't really think Kratos would have ever not chosen to stay with Calliope in Elysium if it wasn't for Persephone's evil plan forcing him to leave his daughter or else everything - including Elysium - dies, so it was sort of necessary for the series to continue. Nonetheless, Kratos kills Persephone, and he has a nice conversation with Atlas after forcing him to hold up the world. Kratos says he will be loyal to Olympus, but only because it is the only purpose left for him...of course, in God of War 2, he gets the idea to rebel and free the titans to destroy Olympus, so Atlas's question feels like some nice foreshadowing. The story is definitely the best part of this game in my opinion, and the other games take what it introduces and uses them to good effect. Like, Kratos killed Persephone, so of course Hades wants him dead in God of War 3.
I'm not entirely sure what to rank this game since I was just complaining a considerable amount about various aspects of it, but, despite that, I do think this was a fun game and worthwhile addition to the God of War series. I'll probably play through Ghost of Sparta soon, I hear a lot of good things about that one. For now, I'll give Chains of Olympus a decent 3.5 stars.
I think the gameplay is plenty fun, as all God of War games are, but this one feels like too much of a retread of familiar ground in my opinion. The game starts off with you fighting through a Persian city in Africa, sort of like the Greek city you fight through in the second game's opening, and the Basilisk boss at the beginning feels like a watered-down version of the Hydra boss from the first game. You also spend a good portion of the game in the Underworld and it looks a lot like in the PS2 games, although they still give it unique level design of course. Helios's temple is a unique location, but it doesn't look especially different from the temples you'll find in the PS2 games. As for the combat, that also has quite a few similarities; the Ifreet spell is like a combination of Poseidon's Rage from the first game and Atlas Quake from the second, for example. The Light of Dawn spell is probably the most blatant one, it literally is just Zeus's Fury (lightning bolt from the first game) again. To talk about the combat on its own merits, though, it is decently fun. I was a little disappointed with how you spend the vast majority of the game with only the Blades of Chaos; every God of War game starts off with Kratos using these weapons (or some variation of it that's technically different in lore but has the exact same moveset), but they usually give you at least one other weapon to experiment with in the middle of the game or earlier. I will say that I can see why they left the weapon for so late in the game, though, since the Gauntlet of Zeus is hilariously strong. It makes for a really fun endgame power fantasy, allowing you to easily kill enemies that gave the Blades of Chaos a hard time; this thing takes down cyclopes (cyclopses? cyclopi?) in six hits. Bosses are still balanced around it, thankfully, so don't expect to be taking them out in six hits. Something unfortunate that I noticed a lot of in this game is how samey the level design feels, it almost feels like a corridor simulator at times. Its hard to actually miss secrets as a result; I've never gotten all the Phoenix Feathers (magic upgrades) and Gorgon Eyes (health upgrades) in a God of War game before, but here I did it and there were still some chests that would've had them in it if I didn't grab 'em all. Finding secrets pretty much just consists of picking the other optional corridor that opened up when you beat an enemy gauntlet room or just...looking around a little more, like the few that are put to the side just out of view. Also, I suck at puzzles, but I still think its a shame just how few are in this game, and the few that are in are extremely easy. I don't mean to make this review so nitpicky and whiny, I knew going in that this game isn't exactly the most memorable or innovative of the series. I also had a lot of fun with the combat, and, really, that's the most important thing I ask for from a game like this.
I actually really liked the story of the game. It's not anything super deep, and I do feel there was some missed potential, but overall I think it was good and shows a lot of Kratos's character. This game shows Kratos when he's still under the servitude of the gods, filling in a nice timeline gap taking place after the events of GoW but before GoW2. After Kratos invades an African city controlled by Persian forces and kills their leader (as well as the Basilisk that was summoned before Kratos's arrival), he questions when the Olympians will fulfill their side of his deal: ending his nightmares. He doesn't have long to ponder, though, since the sun suddenly goes out and darkness envelops the land. Morpheus, god of dreams, seeks to take over the earth and turn it into a land of dreams. This happened because Helios, god of the sun, has gone missing, and Kratos is tasked with finding him. From there the story sort of takes a backseat while Kratos slashes his way through the palace to free the three wind horses of Helios, who were entombed in stone. The main important thing that the game shows you at this point in the story is Kratos hallucinating a song in the background, which the game constantly reminds you is some kind of echo of his past. He later identifies it as the song his daughter, Calliope, played on her flute, though this only really becomes relevant at the end of the game. After freeing the horses, they take Kratos down to the underworld, and Kratos does his usual schtick and kills everything there. You do have a mandatory loss against Charon, though, which sends Kratos plummeting through Tartarus where he proceeds to destroy more enemies. Eventually Kratos finds Charon again and makes sure to kill the ferryman this time, taking his fancy boat too...when Kratos sees Calliope and chases after her. As it turns out, Morpheus is not the main threat in this story, as cool as a boss battle with him would've been. Its actually Persephone, who Kratos stumbles upon when following Calliope. In his desire to see her again, he sacrifices all his power to rid him of his sins and be with her in Elysium. In theory this is a really interesting idea; should Kratos choose eternal happiness while the world around him burns, or continue to suffer as he always has? Unfortunately the answer is basically made for him, since, as the game puts it, "the Fates are never that kind". Makes sense thematically with God of War's story, though, and that line in particular ties in well with how he goes to kill the Fates in the second game. I also don't really think Kratos would have ever not chosen to stay with Calliope in Elysium if it wasn't for Persephone's evil plan forcing him to leave his daughter or else everything - including Elysium - dies, so it was sort of necessary for the series to continue. Nonetheless, Kratos kills Persephone, and he has a nice conversation with Atlas after forcing him to hold up the world. Kratos says he will be loyal to Olympus, but only because it is the only purpose left for him...of course, in God of War 2, he gets the idea to rebel and free the titans to destroy Olympus, so Atlas's question feels like some nice foreshadowing. The story is definitely the best part of this game in my opinion, and the other games take what it introduces and uses them to good effect. Like, Kratos killed Persephone, so of course Hades wants him dead in God of War 3.
I'm not entirely sure what to rank this game since I was just complaining a considerable amount about various aspects of it, but, despite that, I do think this was a fun game and worthwhile addition to the God of War series. I'll probably play through Ghost of Sparta soon, I hear a lot of good things about that one. For now, I'll give Chains of Olympus a decent 3.5 stars.
1989
I've never played this game before, surprisingly. I figured, since it recently got added to the Switch Online emulator, I might as well fix that. Super Mario Land, as it turns out, is very much an early Game Boy game. Its a launch title, so I'll cut it some slack, but it is a very short game (only 4 worlds and 3 levels per world, meaning the game has 12 levels in total) and the level design doesn't have much substance to it. Its still a decently fun little 2D platformer, though, and I think the short length is ultimately a good thing since it means the game didn't overextend itself too much. I tend to prefer Game Boy games to be shorter anyway since it can encourage replaying the game and its a design decision that meshes well with the portability of the console. I will say that its pretty staggering just how much better Super Mario Land 2 is in every way, but I know that's an unfair comparison. Super Mario Land took me only an hour or so to beat, and it probably would've taken even less if I didn't die or get game overs (I had a few idiot moments of dying to the same obstacle a few times over).
In gameplay, Super Mario Land sort of feels like a watered-down Super Mario Bros on NES, except the physics are more awkward and, weirdly enough, Mario actually moves very fast. This is one of the very few 2D platformers that saw me hardly ever using the run button; Mario's walk speed is deceptively quick and the screen is just too small, so its a major risk to be holding the run button. The game does have pretty unique enemies, though, like spiders that descend down from the ceiling and Jiangshi that jump around the level and can't be killed. Even Koopa Troopas are different this time around since, for some reason, jumping on them makes their shell explode instead of just leaving the shell around for you to kick. Goombas are still the same, though. Aside from one or two unique level gimmicks the game will throw at you, such as the bouncing rocks you can stand on to traverse over spikes, and the previously mentioned enemy variety, there really isn't anything in this game that you won't also find in Super Mario Bros. Probably the most unique thing about Super Mario Land are the sidescrolling shoot-em-up levels, in which Mario rides a submarine/airplane and shoots enemies. They're pretty fun, albeit a little annoying because of how small the screen is. These levels have enemies feel like they came out of nowhere as a result. Also, the game has no underwater levels, and, frankly, that's purely a positive for me.
The game has little to no story, but the presentation is pretty neat in its own way, so I will discuss that just a bit. The game itself doesn't exactly look appealing, but the enemy design and background designs are really fun. I love how one of them just has tons of Moai and its cool that one of the underground levels has a strong Egyptian theme with hieroglyphs and sphynx enemies to fight. My favorite world thematically is probably World 4 for the Chinese bamboo forest aesthetic, in which they cleverly replicate the look and feel of bamboo through warp pipes. Also, the soundtrack in this game is genuinely the best part about it, I'd almost say Super Mario Land is worth playing for the music alone. Every song is so catchy and fun and I really do love listening to them.
Overall, Super Mario Land is an alright game. I don't think its very worth revisiting in the modern day since it just feels dated and barebones, even compared to other Game Boy games, but it does have some aspects that make it stand out a bit despite its simplicity. I give it a decent 3 stars.
In gameplay, Super Mario Land sort of feels like a watered-down Super Mario Bros on NES, except the physics are more awkward and, weirdly enough, Mario actually moves very fast. This is one of the very few 2D platformers that saw me hardly ever using the run button; Mario's walk speed is deceptively quick and the screen is just too small, so its a major risk to be holding the run button. The game does have pretty unique enemies, though, like spiders that descend down from the ceiling and Jiangshi that jump around the level and can't be killed. Even Koopa Troopas are different this time around since, for some reason, jumping on them makes their shell explode instead of just leaving the shell around for you to kick. Goombas are still the same, though. Aside from one or two unique level gimmicks the game will throw at you, such as the bouncing rocks you can stand on to traverse over spikes, and the previously mentioned enemy variety, there really isn't anything in this game that you won't also find in Super Mario Bros. Probably the most unique thing about Super Mario Land are the sidescrolling shoot-em-up levels, in which Mario rides a submarine/airplane and shoots enemies. They're pretty fun, albeit a little annoying because of how small the screen is. These levels have enemies feel like they came out of nowhere as a result. Also, the game has no underwater levels, and, frankly, that's purely a positive for me.
The game has little to no story, but the presentation is pretty neat in its own way, so I will discuss that just a bit. The game itself doesn't exactly look appealing, but the enemy design and background designs are really fun. I love how one of them just has tons of Moai and its cool that one of the underground levels has a strong Egyptian theme with hieroglyphs and sphynx enemies to fight. My favorite world thematically is probably World 4 for the Chinese bamboo forest aesthetic, in which they cleverly replicate the look and feel of bamboo through warp pipes. Also, the soundtrack in this game is genuinely the best part about it, I'd almost say Super Mario Land is worth playing for the music alone. Every song is so catchy and fun and I really do love listening to them.
Overall, Super Mario Land is an alright game. I don't think its very worth revisiting in the modern day since it just feels dated and barebones, even compared to other Game Boy games, but it does have some aspects that make it stand out a bit despite its simplicity. I give it a decent 3 stars.
So, this is a sequel to Champions of Norrath, but I decided to play through this instead of the first. Out of the two, this is definitely the one I have the fondest memories of playing as a kid, so I guess that's why I chose it. I still don't really know anything about the EverQuest world and characters, but this game is so light on plot that I really don't feel that's important. I just see hundreds of fantasy creatures my Barbarian will hack and slash to death.
I quite enjoyed the gameplay here. This game is made in the same engine as the Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance games and...well, it feels practically exactly the same aside from no jumping, so let's just say you can really tell. That's not a knock against it, though; something about this genre of button mashing hack-and-slash with only a few things you need to actually think about (remember to block or dodge big attacks, use range if against a slow melee enemy, hunt down the shamans that revive their buddies so you don't waste your time killing the others, etc.) is always so appealing to me, whether it be a dungeon crawler like this or a Musou game. I did notice, however, that this game is quite a bit more difficult than the others I've played. For one, whereas I really didn't block much in the Dark Alliance games, you will have to actually guard to survive here, and some enemies can hit you through your guard or break your guard to stun you. The blocking is usually pretty reliable, but some attacks will hit you through it, like those lava golems in the Plane of Fire that throw molten rock at you or magic arrows from some very annoying archers. There's a lot of enemies that hit shockingly hard, and, if you're not careful, you will die in three hits sometimes, especially if you go with two handers instead of sword-and-board. I was kinda surprised by this since I was playing a Barbarian, which is usually a tanky class in RPGs, and wearing the best armor I could find or buy, yet I was still dying so absurdly quick. Keeping your elemental and magic resistance at a decent 15% or so (and holding onto gear that boosts your resistances just in case) as well as holding a shield helps a lot with that, so near the end of the game I focused my build more on that and it was a big help. Speaking of builds, power progression in this game is mainly found through either new gear or the skill tree, where you can put points into improving passive or active skills. I can't speak much on how other classes should build in the game, but for my Barbarian the build was really simple, they get a lot of obvious stuff you'd want to grab like a flat damage increase to slashing (or blunt if you want) weapons, a passive chance to stun with every hit, a flat % increase to all your resistances (though that's at the very end of the tree), an absurdly powerful skill called Slam that's basically the only thing I spent my mana on...that sort of thing. They also get an aura that increases your chance to score critical hits, which I combined with Slam to get a very cheesy kill on the final boss (though it took me a considerable number of deaths because luck was not in my favor). Speaking of bosses, they're actually pretty good in this game, which surprised me since I complained quite a bit about Dark Alliance 2's bosses either being way too easy or almost feeling like you need to cheese it to beat it. Return to Arms bosses all feel challenging but fair, they typically have some kind of strategy to beat them that doesn't feel like cheese but instead like something I had to actually think about a bit. There was no running around in circles to confuse the boss this time. The boss in the Plane of Innovation, for instance, was an early boss that I died to a lot because it has a rapidfire crossbow and a mean sawblade up close...until I found out its attack pattern in melee was predictable and all of its melee damage can be completely blocked except for one rather telegraphed attack. They just felt a lot better designed in this game to me. Also, fun fact: this game had online. I can only wonder what that kind of experience must have been like, I think it was more so an arena versus thing rather than a co-op campaign playthrough.
The game really doesn't have much story. I never beat the first Champions of Norrath, but, as far as I can tell, the only thing really tying this game to the original is that you go to the Feydark Forest, which you also do in the first game, and that Kelethin, the elf village made of wood up in the trees, returns from the first game. Return to Arms does have a good and evil path, though, which seems to come with a few entirely different levels and some of the same levels but with different goals in them. I did the good guy route, which has you working with Firiona Vee - who I think is some kind of elf goddess - that you meet when you first start up the game. Your goal is to go around different planes, like the Plane of Water or the Plane of Torment, and a bit of Norrath itself to collect the ten Shards of Innoruuk to prevent the bad guys from being summoned. No idea who Innoruuk is, probably some kind of evil god. I never finished the evil path but I do remember that it has you buddy up with Natasla, an evil witch you meet in the Plane of War (first plane you visit after the Plane of Tranquility, basically the game's hub world where Firiona Vee is) that gives you the option to join her. If I recall correctly, you're still looking for the shards, but this time you're trying to summon Innoruuk. I've always thought it was cool when a game lets you choose whether you want to be good or evil, even when its something relatively simple like this, so I think this is a cool little feature and its nice that it comes with some actual changes. That aside, though, yea I mean it when I say there's little to no story. There's only a couple NPCs you talk to all throughout the game and most of it is just for practical reasons like the elf that helps you get through the orc-infested swamp area or the weird mage in the Plane of Torment that exposits about how evil the Shards of Innoruuk are. The Plane of Valor has this paladin looking guy who puts you through many hoops and hurdles to prove you're worthy to get the Shard of Valor, so you got to backtrack there a few times and its rather annoying, but it is -pretty cool once you finally actually get to explore the Plane of Valor.
Overall, I thought this game was pretty good for what it is. Its definitely quite repetitive and its a Diablo-like game through and through, but I liked it. To tell the truth I'm surprised this game has so few reviews on this site. I give "Champions: Return to Arms" (one can only wonder why they removed the "of Norrath" in the title) a good 4 stars.
I quite enjoyed the gameplay here. This game is made in the same engine as the Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance games and...well, it feels practically exactly the same aside from no jumping, so let's just say you can really tell. That's not a knock against it, though; something about this genre of button mashing hack-and-slash with only a few things you need to actually think about (remember to block or dodge big attacks, use range if against a slow melee enemy, hunt down the shamans that revive their buddies so you don't waste your time killing the others, etc.) is always so appealing to me, whether it be a dungeon crawler like this or a Musou game. I did notice, however, that this game is quite a bit more difficult than the others I've played. For one, whereas I really didn't block much in the Dark Alliance games, you will have to actually guard to survive here, and some enemies can hit you through your guard or break your guard to stun you. The blocking is usually pretty reliable, but some attacks will hit you through it, like those lava golems in the Plane of Fire that throw molten rock at you or magic arrows from some very annoying archers. There's a lot of enemies that hit shockingly hard, and, if you're not careful, you will die in three hits sometimes, especially if you go with two handers instead of sword-and-board. I was kinda surprised by this since I was playing a Barbarian, which is usually a tanky class in RPGs, and wearing the best armor I could find or buy, yet I was still dying so absurdly quick. Keeping your elemental and magic resistance at a decent 15% or so (and holding onto gear that boosts your resistances just in case) as well as holding a shield helps a lot with that, so near the end of the game I focused my build more on that and it was a big help. Speaking of builds, power progression in this game is mainly found through either new gear or the skill tree, where you can put points into improving passive or active skills. I can't speak much on how other classes should build in the game, but for my Barbarian the build was really simple, they get a lot of obvious stuff you'd want to grab like a flat damage increase to slashing (or blunt if you want) weapons, a passive chance to stun with every hit, a flat % increase to all your resistances (though that's at the very end of the tree), an absurdly powerful skill called Slam that's basically the only thing I spent my mana on...that sort of thing. They also get an aura that increases your chance to score critical hits, which I combined with Slam to get a very cheesy kill on the final boss (though it took me a considerable number of deaths because luck was not in my favor). Speaking of bosses, they're actually pretty good in this game, which surprised me since I complained quite a bit about Dark Alliance 2's bosses either being way too easy or almost feeling like you need to cheese it to beat it. Return to Arms bosses all feel challenging but fair, they typically have some kind of strategy to beat them that doesn't feel like cheese but instead like something I had to actually think about a bit. There was no running around in circles to confuse the boss this time. The boss in the Plane of Innovation, for instance, was an early boss that I died to a lot because it has a rapidfire crossbow and a mean sawblade up close...until I found out its attack pattern in melee was predictable and all of its melee damage can be completely blocked except for one rather telegraphed attack. They just felt a lot better designed in this game to me. Also, fun fact: this game had online. I can only wonder what that kind of experience must have been like, I think it was more so an arena versus thing rather than a co-op campaign playthrough.
The game really doesn't have much story. I never beat the first Champions of Norrath, but, as far as I can tell, the only thing really tying this game to the original is that you go to the Feydark Forest, which you also do in the first game, and that Kelethin, the elf village made of wood up in the trees, returns from the first game. Return to Arms does have a good and evil path, though, which seems to come with a few entirely different levels and some of the same levels but with different goals in them. I did the good guy route, which has you working with Firiona Vee - who I think is some kind of elf goddess - that you meet when you first start up the game. Your goal is to go around different planes, like the Plane of Water or the Plane of Torment, and a bit of Norrath itself to collect the ten Shards of Innoruuk to prevent the bad guys from being summoned. No idea who Innoruuk is, probably some kind of evil god. I never finished the evil path but I do remember that it has you buddy up with Natasla, an evil witch you meet in the Plane of War (first plane you visit after the Plane of Tranquility, basically the game's hub world where Firiona Vee is) that gives you the option to join her. If I recall correctly, you're still looking for the shards, but this time you're trying to summon Innoruuk. I've always thought it was cool when a game lets you choose whether you want to be good or evil, even when its something relatively simple like this, so I think this is a cool little feature and its nice that it comes with some actual changes. That aside, though, yea I mean it when I say there's little to no story. There's only a couple NPCs you talk to all throughout the game and most of it is just for practical reasons like the elf that helps you get through the orc-infested swamp area or the weird mage in the Plane of Torment that exposits about how evil the Shards of Innoruuk are. The Plane of Valor has this paladin looking guy who puts you through many hoops and hurdles to prove you're worthy to get the Shard of Valor, so you got to backtrack there a few times and its rather annoying, but it is -pretty cool once you finally actually get to explore the Plane of Valor.
Overall, I thought this game was pretty good for what it is. Its definitely quite repetitive and its a Diablo-like game through and through, but I liked it. To tell the truth I'm surprised this game has so few reviews on this site. I give "Champions: Return to Arms" (one can only wonder why they removed the "of Norrath" in the title) a good 4 stars.
2024
This review contains spoilers
So, just as a disclosure, I've tried playing through Persona 3 before, specifically Persona 3 Portable (on my Vita, not the recent remaster). In that playthrough, I only got up to after Fuuka joins the crew before dropping the game entirely. I think there's too much of a tradeoff in visual presentation in that version and I didn't feel like getting a copy of FES. This unfortunately means that I am reviewing this remake as someone who isn't super familiar with the original, as I didn't get far in Portable and I've never played the version that fans tend to say is the best (P3 FES). Luckily for me, this remake exists, and damn I really enjoyed my time with it.
When looking at Persona 3 Reload as its own thing and not a remake (which I will try to do for the rest of this review since I'm not exactly reliable on what the original game was like anyway), this game has a lot of strengths and only a few weaknesses in my opinion. I think my complaints will echo a lot of the more common ones, but nonetheless I think they are fair ones to throw out there. The game formula, overall, is unfortunately not that engaging to me. I did enjoy the core gameplay of switching out party members, exploiting enemy weaknesses, giving buffs and debuffs, taking out every shadow I see, and fusing strong personas in the Velvet Room, plus the new Theurgy feature which is basically a strong finishing move you charge up the gauge for through different means for different characters (like how Yukari heals and the protagonist switches personas). This game's main source of combat, though, is not very fun. To elaborate a little, unlike Persona 5 and Persona 4 - which have specialized separate dungeons to fit story thematics and certain characters - Persona 3 has all of its combat (aside from the full moon boss fights) take place in one big dungeon called Tartarus. I don't find Tartarus fun to explore for a variety of reasons, but my main issue with it is that it just doesn't feel like it has much to offer. Each room is procedurally generated with treasures to find and shadows to take down, but I find that the rooms of each block of Tartarus (its split into five different blocks) just kinda blend together; they follow a similar general structure. To clarify, the blocks do have many visual differences and some structural differences, like how the floors on the Harabah block have a psychedelic LED lights aesthetic, while the Tziah block has a golden royal look to it. Similarly, Harabah has a fittingly zig-zag twists-and-turns style structure to its floors. However, each floor on a particular block kinda just feels like more of the same: fight shadows, look around for chests, find the stairs, rinse and repeat. I think its rather disappointing considering how Persona 5 was able to have stuff that felt like genuine progression in its dungeons, like all the events that take place in them, the puzzles, needing to take a day to unlock the heart of a palace, and just much more purposeful level design overall, although I do know that's an unfair comparison since Persona 5's dungeons aren't procedurally generated. The more fair comparison is Mementos in P5, and, admittedly, I did still feel Tartarus was more interesting than Mementos. Also, the social sim aspects of this game feel less polished than Persona 4 or Persona 5 in my opinion. Some of the Social Links feel stretched out far too long or rely too much on you agreeing with everything that everyone says, even if its actually a bad thing for them. Kenji is probably the most infamous example; his link is very easy to do and the Magician arcana has a lot of useful Personas tied to it, so he was the first link I maxed out for practical reasons, but the actual link is boring. Most of it is just him talking about dating his teacher and you have to be his hype man to get the most points. Having the option to tell him not to date this teacher would break the entire link, so its just not even there. I did actually quite like Kenji's appearances in the main story, though; they get some good comedy out of how much of a slacker he can be or how much of a plain guy he is. Another example is Miyamoto, whose social link I admittedly didn't finish but I didn't like how the game encourages you to tell him to keep competing in track even when he tells you his knee is seriously injured. "Just walk it off" instead of "You should go get that taken care of".
However, I think it is absolutely worth powering through Tartarus and overlooking the more boring social links to experience the story. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Although it does take a while to really get going, I felt that was worth it since, honestly, the way this game gets me to care about and love the characters had me so enamored. Part of how it achieves this is actually through the slow pacing; friendships are made mostly out of necessity at first, since you're all students living in the same dorm and it doesn't take long until you find out you're Persona users united by the common goal of learning the mysteries of Tartarus and the Dark Hour (that ominous extra hour of the day where everything turns green and ordinary people transform into coffins so they never get to see it). The friendships end up blossoming into genuine relationships not too long in, although some characters already have relationships before the game begins like how Akihiko and Mitsuru were Persona users working together before you ever showed up. I do find it funny how Fuuka is the only party member you get to see unlock her persona for the first time, while the rest get it offscreen. Persona 4 and Persona 5 make a big deal out of every character awakening to their persona, so it just goes to show how different Persona 3 is in comparison. Of course, since these games have very long stories, I'm not gonna bother summarizing the whole thing, but I will talk about the parts I really liked...which will take me a while, lol. I think the mystery of Tartarus and the Dark Hour itself is pretty compelling, especially learning that the family business Mitsuru was born into - the Kirijo Group - had done some truly terrible things there and kept it under wraps. One of the first things the characters notice when they first see Tartarus is that the school transforms into Tartarus during the Dark Hour. This is because, 10 years before the game's events, the Kirijo Group used the school as a location to conduct an experiment on the Death shadow. At first, you're led to believe that defeating the shadows in Tartarus as well as the big arcana shadows that show up every full moon is the best course of action because of a doctored tape shown by the chairman Ikutsuki, but the unaltered tape explains that you should not be hunting down the arcana shadows because the experiment split Death into those arcana shadows. Killing them causes them to reunite with Death, and when Death is reborn, he is used to power Nyx, which causes the whole apocalyptic end portion of the game where Nyx's arrival is inevitable, and her arrival will mean the end of everything. The party members vow to challenge certain death...and, of course, because its Persona, they defeat the god and succeed, but the way they handle receiving the news that death is inevitable is really interesting since each party member has their own way of handling the thought that they're going to die. They all come to the same realization: the only way to make life worth living is to stare death in the face and do what you can to help others. A rather literal "power of friendship" type thing here, but it works well since I think a more hopeful message regarding death is good. As you likely gathered by now, a huge theme of this game is death, and, while the game kinda beats you over the head with that in so many ways (some Social Links involve helping people cope with death, two supporting characters die in the main story and the main characters have to deal with the grief they feel from that, the main character sacrifices his life to seal Nyx, etc.), it adds a lot of meaning to the game's story overall. I especially love how the main villain group, Strega, is essentially a group of nihilistic teens that serve as philosophical opposites to the party members. One of the Strega members, Chidori, is vital to a main party member's growth as a person, as they grow to care for each other and even have a little romance despite the circumstances. The members of Strega deliberately try to detach themselves from the joys and feelings that come with being human and its interesting to watch them struggle with that; even Jin, probably the least developed member of the team, reveals that he has a strong loyalty and personal attachment to the leader, Takaya, due to their past together, and that is why Jin follows him so fervently. Meanwhile, Takaya believes he is the savior of mankind (to the point that his design is pretty much a parody of Renaissance-era depictions of Jesus Christ), delivering "salvation" in the form of killing others. He revels in the oblivion that Nyx would bring, while the heroes challenge it.
I already mentioned how I really like the characters, so I'll use this paragraph to elaborate on that more. Something about the way Persona 3 Reload handles social aspects and overall characterization makes everyone feel so real and fleshed out. This is helped by the Social Links and the really great main story, as expected for a Persona game, but near the latter portion of this game, you get a lot of opportunities to interact with the characters outside of the usual things. Before then, you did still have this feature called Linked Episodes that have you hang out with male party members to advance their personal stories (to my understanding this was done because they had no social links in the original game), and that is a really great feature in my opinion, but Persona 3 Reload later adds something that allows you to casually hang out with them as well. Since each member of the party - SEES - lives in the same dorm, you can join them in leisurely activities like watching DVDs, reading books, cooking, brewing coffee, tending to garden plants (this comes with the nice benefit of improving the plants by giving you more upon harvest or improving the effects), brushing the dog, walking the dog together...there are so many opportunities to interact with your party members in this game and it made me feel much more attached to them. I love that Shinjiro takes pride in teaching you how to cook and nearly breaks down after watching a sad animal movie with you (relatable). In fact, I think Shinjiro in particular gets a lot of much needed time for his "sweet and sour" - for lack of a better description - personality to shine and for his touching relationship with the MC to develop, since you learn more about his backstory and grow to care about him before the death that he knows is coming. But the other characters still benefit a LOT from this too, in my opinion: I love that Ken pretends to like black coffee to make himself look more adult (only to try it enough that he actually ends up liking it naturally), I love how Junpei enjoys gardening to the point that he uses the plants as a metaphor for his growth as a person, I love how Akihiko's obsession with training ruins corny action flicks for him, I especially love the robot girl Aigis taking moronic advice from Junpei completely seriously which causes her to say corny phrases. The dorm activities are meant to give stat boosts and other bonuses like an extra Theurgy or easier ways to charge up the Theurgy gauge, but, even when I had maxed out stats and would gain nothing else from them, there were several times that I did it anyway just because I liked these characters. There's also the escapades the team gets up to in the optional Command Room camera tapes; they're very goofy but man are they entertaining, stuff like Shinjiro trying to hide that he likes watching cooking shows or Fuuka trying out a phony exercise brace she bought that instead tickles her a lot. All this made me feel so much more of a connection to Persona 3's main cast than anyone in Persona 5 and Persona 4, though that's not to talk bad about those games characters since I still like them a lot. I guess this is a long drawn out way to say that SEES feels like a true team where everyone really cares about each other, despite their flaws, and it's wonderfully shown in both main story and side activities.
I'll talk about the social aspects just a little more here. Despite the game's more boring social links, I found this also had some of my favorite links in the series. I love how Tanaka's, for example, is basically him trying to teach you how to be a sleazy businessman, and the game really exaggerates just how much of a conniving slimeball this guy is. The link with Maya was almost nostalgic for me because it takes place entirely on the computer inside a fictional MMO, and much of it is based in 2000s MMO culture which I thought was fun. Unfortunately the game does have some problems with balancing the social aspects in my opinion. This is a common complaint from what I've seen, but, at night, there isn't much to do, especially when nearing the last few months in the game. Your social stats (Charm, Courage, and Academics) are likely already max at that point and there are very few social links that take place at night. The game also gives out so many school breaks that it can be pretty tough to finish all the social links that can only be done at school; if I have any advice to give other players, its to prioritize those links over any others. I missed out on finishing so many school Social Links both because of this and because I kept going for unlocking new ones rather than finishing the ones I started.
This review was very long, but I suppose that's par for the course with a game as long as this. Can you believe there's still other details I really wanted to talk about? I really enjoyed this game and, honestly, I think its my favorite out of the Persona games I've played. It has a very interesting and lovable cast of characters, a great (albeit rather slow) story, and the gameplay was still fun even if Tartarus was kind of a slog to get through. 264 floors of Tartarus was just nuts. Regardless, I give Persona 3 Reload a solid 4.5 stars; very close to a 5, but the nitpicks add up unfortunately.
When looking at Persona 3 Reload as its own thing and not a remake (which I will try to do for the rest of this review since I'm not exactly reliable on what the original game was like anyway), this game has a lot of strengths and only a few weaknesses in my opinion. I think my complaints will echo a lot of the more common ones, but nonetheless I think they are fair ones to throw out there. The game formula, overall, is unfortunately not that engaging to me. I did enjoy the core gameplay of switching out party members, exploiting enemy weaknesses, giving buffs and debuffs, taking out every shadow I see, and fusing strong personas in the Velvet Room, plus the new Theurgy feature which is basically a strong finishing move you charge up the gauge for through different means for different characters (like how Yukari heals and the protagonist switches personas). This game's main source of combat, though, is not very fun. To elaborate a little, unlike Persona 5 and Persona 4 - which have specialized separate dungeons to fit story thematics and certain characters - Persona 3 has all of its combat (aside from the full moon boss fights) take place in one big dungeon called Tartarus. I don't find Tartarus fun to explore for a variety of reasons, but my main issue with it is that it just doesn't feel like it has much to offer. Each room is procedurally generated with treasures to find and shadows to take down, but I find that the rooms of each block of Tartarus (its split into five different blocks) just kinda blend together; they follow a similar general structure. To clarify, the blocks do have many visual differences and some structural differences, like how the floors on the Harabah block have a psychedelic LED lights aesthetic, while the Tziah block has a golden royal look to it. Similarly, Harabah has a fittingly zig-zag twists-and-turns style structure to its floors. However, each floor on a particular block kinda just feels like more of the same: fight shadows, look around for chests, find the stairs, rinse and repeat. I think its rather disappointing considering how Persona 5 was able to have stuff that felt like genuine progression in its dungeons, like all the events that take place in them, the puzzles, needing to take a day to unlock the heart of a palace, and just much more purposeful level design overall, although I do know that's an unfair comparison since Persona 5's dungeons aren't procedurally generated. The more fair comparison is Mementos in P5, and, admittedly, I did still feel Tartarus was more interesting than Mementos. Also, the social sim aspects of this game feel less polished than Persona 4 or Persona 5 in my opinion. Some of the Social Links feel stretched out far too long or rely too much on you agreeing with everything that everyone says, even if its actually a bad thing for them. Kenji is probably the most infamous example; his link is very easy to do and the Magician arcana has a lot of useful Personas tied to it, so he was the first link I maxed out for practical reasons, but the actual link is boring. Most of it is just him talking about dating his teacher and you have to be his hype man to get the most points. Having the option to tell him not to date this teacher would break the entire link, so its just not even there. I did actually quite like Kenji's appearances in the main story, though; they get some good comedy out of how much of a slacker he can be or how much of a plain guy he is. Another example is Miyamoto, whose social link I admittedly didn't finish but I didn't like how the game encourages you to tell him to keep competing in track even when he tells you his knee is seriously injured. "Just walk it off" instead of "You should go get that taken care of".
However, I think it is absolutely worth powering through Tartarus and overlooking the more boring social links to experience the story. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Although it does take a while to really get going, I felt that was worth it since, honestly, the way this game gets me to care about and love the characters had me so enamored. Part of how it achieves this is actually through the slow pacing; friendships are made mostly out of necessity at first, since you're all students living in the same dorm and it doesn't take long until you find out you're Persona users united by the common goal of learning the mysteries of Tartarus and the Dark Hour (that ominous extra hour of the day where everything turns green and ordinary people transform into coffins so they never get to see it). The friendships end up blossoming into genuine relationships not too long in, although some characters already have relationships before the game begins like how Akihiko and Mitsuru were Persona users working together before you ever showed up. I do find it funny how Fuuka is the only party member you get to see unlock her persona for the first time, while the rest get it offscreen. Persona 4 and Persona 5 make a big deal out of every character awakening to their persona, so it just goes to show how different Persona 3 is in comparison. Of course, since these games have very long stories, I'm not gonna bother summarizing the whole thing, but I will talk about the parts I really liked...which will take me a while, lol. I think the mystery of Tartarus and the Dark Hour itself is pretty compelling, especially learning that the family business Mitsuru was born into - the Kirijo Group - had done some truly terrible things there and kept it under wraps. One of the first things the characters notice when they first see Tartarus is that the school transforms into Tartarus during the Dark Hour. This is because, 10 years before the game's events, the Kirijo Group used the school as a location to conduct an experiment on the Death shadow. At first, you're led to believe that defeating the shadows in Tartarus as well as the big arcana shadows that show up every full moon is the best course of action because of a doctored tape shown by the chairman Ikutsuki, but the unaltered tape explains that you should not be hunting down the arcana shadows because the experiment split Death into those arcana shadows. Killing them causes them to reunite with Death, and when Death is reborn, he is used to power Nyx, which causes the whole apocalyptic end portion of the game where Nyx's arrival is inevitable, and her arrival will mean the end of everything. The party members vow to challenge certain death...and, of course, because its Persona, they defeat the god and succeed, but the way they handle receiving the news that death is inevitable is really interesting since each party member has their own way of handling the thought that they're going to die. They all come to the same realization: the only way to make life worth living is to stare death in the face and do what you can to help others. A rather literal "power of friendship" type thing here, but it works well since I think a more hopeful message regarding death is good. As you likely gathered by now, a huge theme of this game is death, and, while the game kinda beats you over the head with that in so many ways (some Social Links involve helping people cope with death, two supporting characters die in the main story and the main characters have to deal with the grief they feel from that, the main character sacrifices his life to seal Nyx, etc.), it adds a lot of meaning to the game's story overall. I especially love how the main villain group, Strega, is essentially a group of nihilistic teens that serve as philosophical opposites to the party members. One of the Strega members, Chidori, is vital to a main party member's growth as a person, as they grow to care for each other and even have a little romance despite the circumstances. The members of Strega deliberately try to detach themselves from the joys and feelings that come with being human and its interesting to watch them struggle with that; even Jin, probably the least developed member of the team, reveals that he has a strong loyalty and personal attachment to the leader, Takaya, due to their past together, and that is why Jin follows him so fervently. Meanwhile, Takaya believes he is the savior of mankind (to the point that his design is pretty much a parody of Renaissance-era depictions of Jesus Christ), delivering "salvation" in the form of killing others. He revels in the oblivion that Nyx would bring, while the heroes challenge it.
I already mentioned how I really like the characters, so I'll use this paragraph to elaborate on that more. Something about the way Persona 3 Reload handles social aspects and overall characterization makes everyone feel so real and fleshed out. This is helped by the Social Links and the really great main story, as expected for a Persona game, but near the latter portion of this game, you get a lot of opportunities to interact with the characters outside of the usual things. Before then, you did still have this feature called Linked Episodes that have you hang out with male party members to advance their personal stories (to my understanding this was done because they had no social links in the original game), and that is a really great feature in my opinion, but Persona 3 Reload later adds something that allows you to casually hang out with them as well. Since each member of the party - SEES - lives in the same dorm, you can join them in leisurely activities like watching DVDs, reading books, cooking, brewing coffee, tending to garden plants (this comes with the nice benefit of improving the plants by giving you more upon harvest or improving the effects), brushing the dog, walking the dog together...there are so many opportunities to interact with your party members in this game and it made me feel much more attached to them. I love that Shinjiro takes pride in teaching you how to cook and nearly breaks down after watching a sad animal movie with you (relatable). In fact, I think Shinjiro in particular gets a lot of much needed time for his "sweet and sour" - for lack of a better description - personality to shine and for his touching relationship with the MC to develop, since you learn more about his backstory and grow to care about him before the death that he knows is coming. But the other characters still benefit a LOT from this too, in my opinion: I love that Ken pretends to like black coffee to make himself look more adult (only to try it enough that he actually ends up liking it naturally), I love how Junpei enjoys gardening to the point that he uses the plants as a metaphor for his growth as a person, I love how Akihiko's obsession with training ruins corny action flicks for him, I especially love the robot girl Aigis taking moronic advice from Junpei completely seriously which causes her to say corny phrases. The dorm activities are meant to give stat boosts and other bonuses like an extra Theurgy or easier ways to charge up the Theurgy gauge, but, even when I had maxed out stats and would gain nothing else from them, there were several times that I did it anyway just because I liked these characters. There's also the escapades the team gets up to in the optional Command Room camera tapes; they're very goofy but man are they entertaining, stuff like Shinjiro trying to hide that he likes watching cooking shows or Fuuka trying out a phony exercise brace she bought that instead tickles her a lot. All this made me feel so much more of a connection to Persona 3's main cast than anyone in Persona 5 and Persona 4, though that's not to talk bad about those games characters since I still like them a lot. I guess this is a long drawn out way to say that SEES feels like a true team where everyone really cares about each other, despite their flaws, and it's wonderfully shown in both main story and side activities.
I'll talk about the social aspects just a little more here. Despite the game's more boring social links, I found this also had some of my favorite links in the series. I love how Tanaka's, for example, is basically him trying to teach you how to be a sleazy businessman, and the game really exaggerates just how much of a conniving slimeball this guy is. The link with Maya was almost nostalgic for me because it takes place entirely on the computer inside a fictional MMO, and much of it is based in 2000s MMO culture which I thought was fun. Unfortunately the game does have some problems with balancing the social aspects in my opinion. This is a common complaint from what I've seen, but, at night, there isn't much to do, especially when nearing the last few months in the game. Your social stats (Charm, Courage, and Academics) are likely already max at that point and there are very few social links that take place at night. The game also gives out so many school breaks that it can be pretty tough to finish all the social links that can only be done at school; if I have any advice to give other players, its to prioritize those links over any others. I missed out on finishing so many school Social Links both because of this and because I kept going for unlocking new ones rather than finishing the ones I started.
This review was very long, but I suppose that's par for the course with a game as long as this. Can you believe there's still other details I really wanted to talk about? I really enjoyed this game and, honestly, I think its my favorite out of the Persona games I've played. It has a very interesting and lovable cast of characters, a great (albeit rather slow) story, and the gameplay was still fun even if Tartarus was kind of a slog to get through. 264 floors of Tartarus was just nuts. Regardless, I give Persona 3 Reload a solid 4.5 stars; very close to a 5, but the nitpicks add up unfortunately.
There's many great 3D platformers I have unfortunately never beat or even experienced before, and the Spyro series is one of 'em. I've never so much as touched a Spyro game before this playthrough of Spyro 2. A sequel's typically not the best starting point, I know, but I do know this isn't exactly a story heavy series (aside from when they tried that later to...uh, varying degrees of success), so I don't think I missed out on much. I quite liked my time with this game, its simple but effective. It can be a decent challenge, especially with some of the tasks you have to do for collectibles, but if you're just looking to beat the game, most of the game's not gonna give you problems. Took me a good three days or so to beat, split over a long period of time since I took significant breaks between play sessions.
Spyro 2 is a fun little collectathon, somewhat similar to your Banjo-Kazooie and Mario 64 type games with a bunch of decently sized 3D levels to explore for collectibles. If you're looking to just complete the levels normally (as in not 100%), you just need to grab the Talisman, which is usually very easy to get since, most of the time, you just need to reach a certain end point. Sometimes you will have to do something special to get the Talisman, like freeing the shaman in Crystal Glacier, but its always something very simple and quick to do. If you do decide to go for 100%, the Guidebook in the pause menu has pages for each level that tell you what you're missing to get 100% completion in each: beat all the enemies, collect all the gems (basically the game's currency which you can find either lying around or in vases, crates, or big gems you need a special weapon to break), and find all the orbs...and get the talismans, but I mentioned that already. Orbs are probably the most important collectible; each level has around 400 gems, so it won't be long until you rack up WAY more than you need to spend for upgrades. As for orbs, there's a certain amount of orbs different between each level - per level minimum of 2, maximum of 4 - which you'll almost always get as a reward for fulfilling some sort of side mission for an NPC. The only thing that I don't really like about this system is the way the game gates content behind orbs. That in itself isn't much of a problem, but the orb requirements aren't really communicated to the player well, since the amount is pretty small throughout most of the game until you reach the final world, where you go from needing a measly 15 orbs to needing 25 orbs for the final level and a whopping 40 orbs for the final boss. The game has 64 orbs, so having to grab 40 orbs does let you skip a good chunk of 'em (and thank god because some of those are a PAIN to get, I heard the horror stories of the Alchemist escort quest even as someone who's unfamiliar with Spyro), but it feels like such a drastic leap when the game makes you think it'll be smooth sailing before that. The core gameplay loop is fun and enjoyable, but I will say that I can't shake how Spyro's controls feel rather clumsy, especially when you're trying to quickly turn around or walk in a straight line instead of from an angle. Granted, you can definitely get used to how Spyro controls and the movement can even feel pretty good at times, but sometimes it feels quite rough, especially when you're trying to do those orb missions to chase down bandits. Flight controls also kinda suck, but at least they don't feel anywhere near as terrible as Super Mario 64's (to me that game's flying feels horrible) and the flying challenges aren't TOO challenging. I do really like how simple yet fun Spyro's toolkit is, though: all he does is dash, jump, and glide, and, though he gets some extra tools, most of it just feels like slight enhancements to your base kit like how swimming in this game is pretty much just dashing underwater.
There isn't a ton of story here, so I'll instead talk about the visuals. The environments are VERY pretty, possibly one of the most pleasant looking PS1 games I've played so far. Colors are so vibrant and, despite the technical limitations of the time, you can tell this game is going for a unique art style. There's a sort of dreamy nostalgic feel to so many of the levels, especially if you're playing on a CRT. The game's character models do look very goofy and outright bizarre; I admittedly can't tell if that's part of the art style or just a product of the PS1's limitations, but I feel it overall enhances the game's charm once you get used to it. I mostly played this game on low volume so unfortunately I missed the majority of the music, but, from what I got to hear of it, that's also pretty good.
Overall I quite liked Spyro 2. There are definitely some more frustrating bits and I would have liked if the game better communicated just how many orbs I need to beat it normally, but, as a whole package, the game's a good time. Sounds like another 4 star to add to my collection.
Spyro 2 is a fun little collectathon, somewhat similar to your Banjo-Kazooie and Mario 64 type games with a bunch of decently sized 3D levels to explore for collectibles. If you're looking to just complete the levels normally (as in not 100%), you just need to grab the Talisman, which is usually very easy to get since, most of the time, you just need to reach a certain end point. Sometimes you will have to do something special to get the Talisman, like freeing the shaman in Crystal Glacier, but its always something very simple and quick to do. If you do decide to go for 100%, the Guidebook in the pause menu has pages for each level that tell you what you're missing to get 100% completion in each: beat all the enemies, collect all the gems (basically the game's currency which you can find either lying around or in vases, crates, or big gems you need a special weapon to break), and find all the orbs...and get the talismans, but I mentioned that already. Orbs are probably the most important collectible; each level has around 400 gems, so it won't be long until you rack up WAY more than you need to spend for upgrades. As for orbs, there's a certain amount of orbs different between each level - per level minimum of 2, maximum of 4 - which you'll almost always get as a reward for fulfilling some sort of side mission for an NPC. The only thing that I don't really like about this system is the way the game gates content behind orbs. That in itself isn't much of a problem, but the orb requirements aren't really communicated to the player well, since the amount is pretty small throughout most of the game until you reach the final world, where you go from needing a measly 15 orbs to needing 25 orbs for the final level and a whopping 40 orbs for the final boss. The game has 64 orbs, so having to grab 40 orbs does let you skip a good chunk of 'em (and thank god because some of those are a PAIN to get, I heard the horror stories of the Alchemist escort quest even as someone who's unfamiliar with Spyro), but it feels like such a drastic leap when the game makes you think it'll be smooth sailing before that. The core gameplay loop is fun and enjoyable, but I will say that I can't shake how Spyro's controls feel rather clumsy, especially when you're trying to quickly turn around or walk in a straight line instead of from an angle. Granted, you can definitely get used to how Spyro controls and the movement can even feel pretty good at times, but sometimes it feels quite rough, especially when you're trying to do those orb missions to chase down bandits. Flight controls also kinda suck, but at least they don't feel anywhere near as terrible as Super Mario 64's (to me that game's flying feels horrible) and the flying challenges aren't TOO challenging. I do really like how simple yet fun Spyro's toolkit is, though: all he does is dash, jump, and glide, and, though he gets some extra tools, most of it just feels like slight enhancements to your base kit like how swimming in this game is pretty much just dashing underwater.
There isn't a ton of story here, so I'll instead talk about the visuals. The environments are VERY pretty, possibly one of the most pleasant looking PS1 games I've played so far. Colors are so vibrant and, despite the technical limitations of the time, you can tell this game is going for a unique art style. There's a sort of dreamy nostalgic feel to so many of the levels, especially if you're playing on a CRT. The game's character models do look very goofy and outright bizarre; I admittedly can't tell if that's part of the art style or just a product of the PS1's limitations, but I feel it overall enhances the game's charm once you get used to it. I mostly played this game on low volume so unfortunately I missed the majority of the music, but, from what I got to hear of it, that's also pretty good.
Overall I quite liked Spyro 2. There are definitely some more frustrating bits and I would have liked if the game better communicated just how many orbs I need to beat it normally, but, as a whole package, the game's a good time. Sounds like another 4 star to add to my collection.
I was really curious about this game since I've only played the other SNES Power Rangers game (the one based on MMPR the Movie). Never beat that one, but I actually did manage to beat this game. As it turns out, there are some significant differences between this Power Rangers game and the movie game, but I'd say there's more similarities than differences overall. Not sure if that's really worth covering, though, so I'll just be reviewing this game based on its own merits. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is a beat-em-up with light platformer elements, and its quite a simple one. That's not to say the game won't give you any trouble, but it certainly isn't a super hard game by any means. The game is also very short; only took me nearly two hours to beat, and I could've took less time if I didn't get any game overs.
Gameplay's just alright overall. You can select between five different rangers: Jason, Kimberly, Billy, Trini, and Zach, who are the Red Ranger, Pink Ranger, Blue Ranger, Yellow Ranger, and Black Ranger, respectively. I played all five characters, although I was a little disappointed to find that they don't really play differently from each other. The beat-em-up action in this game is unfortunately rather underwhelming to me, though that's not to say it isn't decently fun. You start every level in human form and, at a certain point in the level, you get a glimpse of the boss and a little transformation sequence turning you into your ranger form. You do have some options for attacking, including crouch attacks, aerial attacks, and grabs, but nothing beats the basic punch "combo" of spamming Y, and many enemies will take forever to die from anything that isn't that. Ranger form doesn't really change the gameplay much, but it does at least give an extra move different between each ranger that you can do by holding up after pressing Y (as well as an admittedly really cool screen-nuke from pressing X). This move is also never stronger than your Y-spam combo but it does tend to have some utility in fringe cases. Pink Ranger, for example, gets a bow move; it does pitiful damage and it doesn't hit ducking enemies, but you could still use it to get some distance from your foes. The game does have some cool little platforming elements like jumping over pits, wall-jumping, or hanging onto poles to either cross gaps or throw yourself up onto platforms. One level was particularly annoying for having water that rises and falls, since when you're in the water you can't attack anything, leaving you a sitting duck until the water goes down. The platforming elements are quite light overall, but they do spice the game up just a tad. There's also a small gameplay switch-up in the last two levels, where it pivots to an almost fighting game style (though very simplified) and has you play as the Megazord. You can build up meter to use a special move, move backwards to block, and you have to fight opponents that can actually block too. It took me a bit to understand these levels, but basically its like a diet fighting game with no real combos and no specific inputs to do special moves. You'll want to mix up your attacks to throw off the enemy's defenses, remember to block, and press X whenever that special gauge is full.
I'm skipping both the story section and the presentation here since, honestly, both are pretty much exactly what you'd expect out of a video game based on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Overall, this game is a bit on the short and easy side, and the gameplay just wasn't all that engaging to me. Middle of the road beat-em-up, I give it 3 stars.
Gameplay's just alright overall. You can select between five different rangers: Jason, Kimberly, Billy, Trini, and Zach, who are the Red Ranger, Pink Ranger, Blue Ranger, Yellow Ranger, and Black Ranger, respectively. I played all five characters, although I was a little disappointed to find that they don't really play differently from each other. The beat-em-up action in this game is unfortunately rather underwhelming to me, though that's not to say it isn't decently fun. You start every level in human form and, at a certain point in the level, you get a glimpse of the boss and a little transformation sequence turning you into your ranger form. You do have some options for attacking, including crouch attacks, aerial attacks, and grabs, but nothing beats the basic punch "combo" of spamming Y, and many enemies will take forever to die from anything that isn't that. Ranger form doesn't really change the gameplay much, but it does at least give an extra move different between each ranger that you can do by holding up after pressing Y (as well as an admittedly really cool screen-nuke from pressing X). This move is also never stronger than your Y-spam combo but it does tend to have some utility in fringe cases. Pink Ranger, for example, gets a bow move; it does pitiful damage and it doesn't hit ducking enemies, but you could still use it to get some distance from your foes. The game does have some cool little platforming elements like jumping over pits, wall-jumping, or hanging onto poles to either cross gaps or throw yourself up onto platforms. One level was particularly annoying for having water that rises and falls, since when you're in the water you can't attack anything, leaving you a sitting duck until the water goes down. The platforming elements are quite light overall, but they do spice the game up just a tad. There's also a small gameplay switch-up in the last two levels, where it pivots to an almost fighting game style (though very simplified) and has you play as the Megazord. You can build up meter to use a special move, move backwards to block, and you have to fight opponents that can actually block too. It took me a bit to understand these levels, but basically its like a diet fighting game with no real combos and no specific inputs to do special moves. You'll want to mix up your attacks to throw off the enemy's defenses, remember to block, and press X whenever that special gauge is full.
I'm skipping both the story section and the presentation here since, honestly, both are pretty much exactly what you'd expect out of a video game based on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Overall, this game is a bit on the short and easy side, and the gameplay just wasn't all that engaging to me. Middle of the road beat-em-up, I give it 3 stars.
I was reluctant to get this game because of all the complaints I heard. When a friend of mine gave a glowing recommendation, that caught my interest. Its 60 bucks, sure, but Good Feel hasn't disappointed me, so this should at least be a good time, shouldn't it? Well, I'm glad to say that, for me, it was a good time indeed. I will say that I think this game absolutely should have been cheaper, though; it does not feel like a premium experience, even if I did enjoy my time with it. I think its best to go into Princess Peach Showtime with the right attitude: a willingness to engage with a very simple, cutesy, easy game. It almost feels like embracing your inner child in a way, decorating cakes and figure-skating away while taking out some baddies trying to muck up your theater plays. Good Feel is great at that sort of thing, though this unfortunately did not get close to the magic and charm of Kirby's Epic Yarn (the only other Good Feel game I've played admittedly). Every once and a while, I think its good to kick back and play a cute, relaxing, easy game. The game does get much more frustrating when you try to 100% it, though, judging from what I heard. It doesn't seem hard to do but the game very often prevents you from turning back to get stuff you missed and there's a major lack of quality of life for replaying levels. Thankfully, I didn't worry one bit about that, so I had the whimsical simple experience that was likely intended.
As mentioned earlier, the gameplay is extremely simple. There are only two buttons you need to press, one being the jump button and the other being an action button that changes depending on what costume you have. Regular Peach just spins her ribbon to interact with stuff, like cheering up sad Theets or making plants grow, and the other costumes switch (heh) it up in decently varied ways that introduce different play styles. There's a total of 10 costumes, plus two more unlocked in the final boss. There's five floors that each have four levels plus a boss, so the game has 20 regular levels. The basement has 10 extra levels that you unlock after completing two regular levels themed after a certain Peach costume; I thought these were optional content at first but the game has you do all of them first before you can fight the final boss. So, all things considered, the game isn't content-dry, but it is quite short. I suppose it could take you a while to grab all the Sparkle Gems - the main collectible - since some of them are hidden cleverly enough and some are tied to performance, so if you don't do good enough at a certain part of the level you won't get it. I felt that, overall, the gimmicks behind each costume and the different play styles they introduced were quite fun, none of them were a bore to play through for me. They aren't exactly deep, which I could see some complaining about, but they are genuinely fun and change up the game enough to keep it feeling somewhat fresh. Cowgirl, Pâtissière, Kung Fu, and Detective (surprisingly enough) were my favorites. Ninja, Dashing Thief, and Figure-Skater also get some really fun levels designed after their gimmicks. I heard people dislike the Mermaid because its gimmick is just holding B to lead fish around to lift stuff (as well as a short and sweet rhythm game section at the end of its levels), but I thought that one was fine. Unfortunately the game does have a rough start in my opinion; the first floor and the second floor are all basically tutorial floors and man do they feel like it. The game could really benefit from letting you skip the dialogue, honestly. For a game with little to no story, it is very chatty (it makes sense because these are meant to be theater plays but it could get grating at times with the constant interruptions just to see more dialogue). Also, the boss fights were surprisingly pretty fun in my opinion, if a bit too simple and short for their own good. The final boss almost reminded me of something out of a Kirby game, like the Robobot final boss fight (particularly the Star Dream parts) or the Star Allies final boss.
I think the presentation of this game is pretty great, you can tell some major focus went into it. Music is great, cutscenes are pretty good looking (not on the same level as something like Luigi's Mansion 3's gorgeous cutscenes but still pleasant), and the design choice of making each level be made of a bunch of props makes the game stand out. I personally REALLY love Peach's costumes and the way her voice changes to fit the role, its such a unique idea for this character that makes a lot of sense and is delightful to see in action. I have never been a big Peach guy myself but I couldn't get enough of Cowgirl Peach's southern drawl and the silly southern slang she uses in that outfit ("yippie-ki-yay", "yeehaw", "shucks", etc.), give me more of that please! Also, I hadn't mentioned her before, but Madame Grape is a really cool villain design and I think she could work great as a recurring villain for Peach if she were to get a full-on side series like Yoshi and Wario got. Princess Peach Showtime definitely has some real charm to it, I don't think I could ever agree with the people that call this game soulless. However, the game does have some very noticeable performance issues that have really drawn home just how badly we need a "Switch 2" to come soon. It will rarely lag while you're already playing the game, but the loading times can be downright painful and you'd have to not be looking at the screen to not see all that lag that happens during the loading screen. I have no idea why that keeps happening but it is distracting.
Even though I fully understand why others dislike this game, I had a great time with it. I was thinking this would be another Mario VS Donkey Kong remake situation where I spend most of the review nitpicking and whining about minor things, but for whatever reason I just didn't feel the same way about Princess Peach Showtime. Don't get me wrong, I do share some common complaints here (gameplay is too simple, game is too short, game is way too expensive, etc.), but my experience with this game was surprisingly really positive for me. I do think you need to be in the right state of mind with your expectations set on the lower side to fully enjoy this game, so keep that in mind if you want to give this game a whirl. I think I liked this game enough to give it a genuine 4 stars, so that's what I'll rank it.
As mentioned earlier, the gameplay is extremely simple. There are only two buttons you need to press, one being the jump button and the other being an action button that changes depending on what costume you have. Regular Peach just spins her ribbon to interact with stuff, like cheering up sad Theets or making plants grow, and the other costumes switch (heh) it up in decently varied ways that introduce different play styles. There's a total of 10 costumes, plus two more unlocked in the final boss. There's five floors that each have four levels plus a boss, so the game has 20 regular levels. The basement has 10 extra levels that you unlock after completing two regular levels themed after a certain Peach costume; I thought these were optional content at first but the game has you do all of them first before you can fight the final boss. So, all things considered, the game isn't content-dry, but it is quite short. I suppose it could take you a while to grab all the Sparkle Gems - the main collectible - since some of them are hidden cleverly enough and some are tied to performance, so if you don't do good enough at a certain part of the level you won't get it. I felt that, overall, the gimmicks behind each costume and the different play styles they introduced were quite fun, none of them were a bore to play through for me. They aren't exactly deep, which I could see some complaining about, but they are genuinely fun and change up the game enough to keep it feeling somewhat fresh. Cowgirl, Pâtissière, Kung Fu, and Detective (surprisingly enough) were my favorites. Ninja, Dashing Thief, and Figure-Skater also get some really fun levels designed after their gimmicks. I heard people dislike the Mermaid because its gimmick is just holding B to lead fish around to lift stuff (as well as a short and sweet rhythm game section at the end of its levels), but I thought that one was fine. Unfortunately the game does have a rough start in my opinion; the first floor and the second floor are all basically tutorial floors and man do they feel like it. The game could really benefit from letting you skip the dialogue, honestly. For a game with little to no story, it is very chatty (it makes sense because these are meant to be theater plays but it could get grating at times with the constant interruptions just to see more dialogue). Also, the boss fights were surprisingly pretty fun in my opinion, if a bit too simple and short for their own good. The final boss almost reminded me of something out of a Kirby game, like the Robobot final boss fight (particularly the Star Dream parts) or the Star Allies final boss.
I think the presentation of this game is pretty great, you can tell some major focus went into it. Music is great, cutscenes are pretty good looking (not on the same level as something like Luigi's Mansion 3's gorgeous cutscenes but still pleasant), and the design choice of making each level be made of a bunch of props makes the game stand out. I personally REALLY love Peach's costumes and the way her voice changes to fit the role, its such a unique idea for this character that makes a lot of sense and is delightful to see in action. I have never been a big Peach guy myself but I couldn't get enough of Cowgirl Peach's southern drawl and the silly southern slang she uses in that outfit ("yippie-ki-yay", "yeehaw", "shucks", etc.), give me more of that please! Also, I hadn't mentioned her before, but Madame Grape is a really cool villain design and I think she could work great as a recurring villain for Peach if she were to get a full-on side series like Yoshi and Wario got. Princess Peach Showtime definitely has some real charm to it, I don't think I could ever agree with the people that call this game soulless. However, the game does have some very noticeable performance issues that have really drawn home just how badly we need a "Switch 2" to come soon. It will rarely lag while you're already playing the game, but the loading times can be downright painful and you'd have to not be looking at the screen to not see all that lag that happens during the loading screen. I have no idea why that keeps happening but it is distracting.
Even though I fully understand why others dislike this game, I had a great time with it. I was thinking this would be another Mario VS Donkey Kong remake situation where I spend most of the review nitpicking and whining about minor things, but for whatever reason I just didn't feel the same way about Princess Peach Showtime. Don't get me wrong, I do share some common complaints here (gameplay is too simple, game is too short, game is way too expensive, etc.), but my experience with this game was surprisingly really positive for me. I do think you need to be in the right state of mind with your expectations set on the lower side to fully enjoy this game, so keep that in mind if you want to give this game a whirl. I think I liked this game enough to give it a genuine 4 stars, so that's what I'll rank it.
(Note: I played this on the Nintendo Switch Online service, but I did not use any of the extra emulation features like save states or rewinds. Figured I'd clarify that.)
Its kinda crazy to think about how this little game started a series that gets new releases on every console since. That's not to imply anything about this game's quality, I just think its interesting and was probably quite unexpected, especially since its the only Wario related property that's still going after the 2000s. Wario's Woods, Mario & Wario, and Wario Land all died, but thankfully WarioWare survived. I think people playing this first game in the series nowadays will find it pretty barebones in comparison to any other WarioWare game; there's no special gimmick to this one, just the microgames. Its also very short, you can probably beat it in less than an hour. It took me just a few more minutes longer than an hour to get through. That's fine, though, since I don't really think stretching out the length of a game like this would be all that beneficial. Its surprisingly pretty tough near the end, the microgames can get very fast which really tests your reaction speed and ability to quickly understand what you need to do. The concept of the WarioWare series is pretty genius in my opinion and, of course, this game started it all. It makes for such a great party game, which is probably why the GameCube game is basically this one but focused entirely on multiplayer shenanigans. In comparison, this game focuses much more on single-player content, though it does have some multiplayer modes that I unfortunately won't be able to play. My familiarity with the GameCube game also meant that I knew every microgame in this one, but that didn't really sour anything for me.
I don't think there's anything left to cover for the gameplay section, since I just summarized my thoughts on it in the intro paragraph. I'll discuss the presentation, which I thought was really good and probably a big part of the draw here. The game is split up into different survival gauntlets (plus some side modes I couldn't play) that have a different amount of microgames you need to play and each one is followed by a series of cutscenes that are quite fun to watch. There's a sort of mini story given for each, whether that be Mona running away from cops for speeding or Orbulon trying to get to a rescue ship after his own ship got hit by a rock, and the visuals associated with each is tied into the story in a cool way. 9-Volt, for instance, has a retro Nintendo theme to his gauntlet, so before each microgame you see a parody of a traditional JRPG on an original Game Boy screen with 9-Volt as the protagonist and textboxes telling you that you defeated a microgame. The characters all feel really unique and charming in their own ways, ESPECIALLY for a Mario related title; aside from the aforementioned retro Nintendo levels, there's no sign of any traditional Mario stuff anywhere, so WarioWare's world really sticks out (which I personally think is a good thing). You can really feel all the soul, for lack of a better term, put into this game's presentation.
Usually, my reviews are longer than three paragraphs, but this game really doesn't give me a whole lot to talk about. Its a good game imo, if a bit barebones and very short. It doesn't take long for the microgames to start repeating. I think it's intended to be very replayable, which I would say is something that it pulls off well. The game does include a few little sidemodes that aren't the multiplayer stuff, but they're either endless versions of one of the microgames or a much longer version of the survival gauntlets you were already playing. Still, though, its nice content to have. Overall, I'd give the first WarioWare 3.5 stars; after so many other WarioWare games, I can't help but feel like there isn't much special about this one, and it can feel a bit too simple. But, at the same time, I think it is a good game overall.
Its kinda crazy to think about how this little game started a series that gets new releases on every console since. That's not to imply anything about this game's quality, I just think its interesting and was probably quite unexpected, especially since its the only Wario related property that's still going after the 2000s. Wario's Woods, Mario & Wario, and Wario Land all died, but thankfully WarioWare survived. I think people playing this first game in the series nowadays will find it pretty barebones in comparison to any other WarioWare game; there's no special gimmick to this one, just the microgames. Its also very short, you can probably beat it in less than an hour. It took me just a few more minutes longer than an hour to get through. That's fine, though, since I don't really think stretching out the length of a game like this would be all that beneficial. Its surprisingly pretty tough near the end, the microgames can get very fast which really tests your reaction speed and ability to quickly understand what you need to do. The concept of the WarioWare series is pretty genius in my opinion and, of course, this game started it all. It makes for such a great party game, which is probably why the GameCube game is basically this one but focused entirely on multiplayer shenanigans. In comparison, this game focuses much more on single-player content, though it does have some multiplayer modes that I unfortunately won't be able to play. My familiarity with the GameCube game also meant that I knew every microgame in this one, but that didn't really sour anything for me.
I don't think there's anything left to cover for the gameplay section, since I just summarized my thoughts on it in the intro paragraph. I'll discuss the presentation, which I thought was really good and probably a big part of the draw here. The game is split up into different survival gauntlets (plus some side modes I couldn't play) that have a different amount of microgames you need to play and each one is followed by a series of cutscenes that are quite fun to watch. There's a sort of mini story given for each, whether that be Mona running away from cops for speeding or Orbulon trying to get to a rescue ship after his own ship got hit by a rock, and the visuals associated with each is tied into the story in a cool way. 9-Volt, for instance, has a retro Nintendo theme to his gauntlet, so before each microgame you see a parody of a traditional JRPG on an original Game Boy screen with 9-Volt as the protagonist and textboxes telling you that you defeated a microgame. The characters all feel really unique and charming in their own ways, ESPECIALLY for a Mario related title; aside from the aforementioned retro Nintendo levels, there's no sign of any traditional Mario stuff anywhere, so WarioWare's world really sticks out (which I personally think is a good thing). You can really feel all the soul, for lack of a better term, put into this game's presentation.
Usually, my reviews are longer than three paragraphs, but this game really doesn't give me a whole lot to talk about. Its a good game imo, if a bit barebones and very short. It doesn't take long for the microgames to start repeating. I think it's intended to be very replayable, which I would say is something that it pulls off well. The game does include a few little sidemodes that aren't the multiplayer stuff, but they're either endless versions of one of the microgames or a much longer version of the survival gauntlets you were already playing. Still, though, its nice content to have. Overall, I'd give the first WarioWare 3.5 stars; after so many other WarioWare games, I can't help but feel like there isn't much special about this one, and it can feel a bit too simple. But, at the same time, I think it is a good game overall.
I'm gonna be honest, most of this game got a resounding "ehhhhh it's alright" reaction from me. Don't take this as a negative, though; not every game needs to blow my mind (man I say that in a lot of reviews don't I) and I did have a decently fun time with this game. This remake just doesn't feel like it has much content and what is here felt pretty middling overall. I'll try not to say anything too definitive, though, since I've heard good things about this game's extra levels that I'll be playing after I've typed up this review.
I haven't played past the first world of the original Mario vs. Donkey Kong, so I am basing this remake off its own merits. Its a bite-sized puzzle platformer where the goal is to find the key and figure out how to get to the door, then in the second room you just gotta find the mini Mario capsule. Each level has three presents (except for the Mini Mario levels which have you lead Mini Marios to find letters that spell "toy"), kinda like Pauline/Lady's three accessories in the arcade Donkey Kong, and you get a gold star from finding them all in a level. I have no idea what these gold stars do, but I did manage to get all of them in the main campaign, so...maybe its just a marker for 100% completion? The big gimmick for most levels are the different color switches that activate blocks of the corresponding color. They do find some unique ways to mix it up, but admittedly a good amount of the levels sorta blended in with each other to me because they mostly rely on this gimmick. Unfortunately the level design did not feel especially clever or interesting to me, but I will say that later levels were a bit challenging. Also, when I say this game is bite-sized, I mean more so in how the levels are structured rather than the content. Mario vs. Donkey Kong does have eight worlds and six levels (eight counting the DK boss level and Mini Mario levels) per world, which isn't bad at all, but the fact that each level only takes like five minutes at most to complete - consisting of no more than two, sometimes three, rooms - makes the game feel so short. I'm guessing this was done in the original to make it feel more like a game suitable for the handheld experience, playing in short bursts. I said the game is a puzzle platformer, but, if I'm being honest, for like half the game I hardly had to think to finish these puzzles. It did get a bit more challenging in the later half and a handful or so levels were quite tough for me (I won't act like I didn't get a Game Over at least once), so I won't try to paint it as some mindlessly easy game, but nonetheless I couldn't help but feel a tad disappointed. I remember Donkey Kong '94 on the Game Boy was so cool and creative to me and I don't even have nostalgia for that game because my first time playing it was around two or three years ago, but even though this game is a remake of the successor to Donkey Kong '94, it felt weaker overall. Maybe that's just me giving DK '94 more of a pass though since its a Game Boy game and this is a shiny new 2024 Switch title.
Brief shoutout to the small stuff that makes up this game. The visuals are nice, I'm not sure why people think they're soulless since I think they're fun in their own way and look pretty good overall. Something I see get talked about a lot with this game is the voice acting and I can see why, its a little jarring since it has a lot of obviously reused sound clips (one of them even still sounds a bit compressed, that being the Donkey Kong Country Returns voice clip they reuse in the final DK fight), but it is nice to hear Charles Martinet again. I imagine there's probably people confused that Nintendo didn't have Kevin Afghani record some more brand new Mario audio for this game but I imagine they kept the Martinet voice clips just to keep that energy from the original, with Mario saying "Hey, come back!" and other similar lines ripped from the original. I'm an absolute sucker for good video game music and I must say that this game's soundtrack really surprised me with how great it sounds. I don't remember the original Mario vs. Donkey Kong having very memorable music but I've been repeatedly listening to this remake's OST for a few days, it tends to either go for atmosphere or a smooth jazzy sound and it absolutely nails both. Highly recommend everyone reading this review goes and listens to it...well, assuming Nintendo hasn't already taken down all uploads of the game's soundtrack.
Overall, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed with this game, but I don't mean to constantly complain and nitpick in this review since I did genuinely enjoy my time with the new Mario vs. Donkey Kong. I thought the levels, though mostly really easy, were fun to play through since Mario's movement felt nice and it was cool figuring out the puzzles. I'm hoping that I end up really loving the postgame content (expert levels since I don't plan on doing the Time Trials).
I haven't played past the first world of the original Mario vs. Donkey Kong, so I am basing this remake off its own merits. Its a bite-sized puzzle platformer where the goal is to find the key and figure out how to get to the door, then in the second room you just gotta find the mini Mario capsule. Each level has three presents (except for the Mini Mario levels which have you lead Mini Marios to find letters that spell "toy"), kinda like Pauline/Lady's three accessories in the arcade Donkey Kong, and you get a gold star from finding them all in a level. I have no idea what these gold stars do, but I did manage to get all of them in the main campaign, so...maybe its just a marker for 100% completion? The big gimmick for most levels are the different color switches that activate blocks of the corresponding color. They do find some unique ways to mix it up, but admittedly a good amount of the levels sorta blended in with each other to me because they mostly rely on this gimmick. Unfortunately the level design did not feel especially clever or interesting to me, but I will say that later levels were a bit challenging. Also, when I say this game is bite-sized, I mean more so in how the levels are structured rather than the content. Mario vs. Donkey Kong does have eight worlds and six levels (eight counting the DK boss level and Mini Mario levels) per world, which isn't bad at all, but the fact that each level only takes like five minutes at most to complete - consisting of no more than two, sometimes three, rooms - makes the game feel so short. I'm guessing this was done in the original to make it feel more like a game suitable for the handheld experience, playing in short bursts. I said the game is a puzzle platformer, but, if I'm being honest, for like half the game I hardly had to think to finish these puzzles. It did get a bit more challenging in the later half and a handful or so levels were quite tough for me (I won't act like I didn't get a Game Over at least once), so I won't try to paint it as some mindlessly easy game, but nonetheless I couldn't help but feel a tad disappointed. I remember Donkey Kong '94 on the Game Boy was so cool and creative to me and I don't even have nostalgia for that game because my first time playing it was around two or three years ago, but even though this game is a remake of the successor to Donkey Kong '94, it felt weaker overall. Maybe that's just me giving DK '94 more of a pass though since its a Game Boy game and this is a shiny new 2024 Switch title.
Brief shoutout to the small stuff that makes up this game. The visuals are nice, I'm not sure why people think they're soulless since I think they're fun in their own way and look pretty good overall. Something I see get talked about a lot with this game is the voice acting and I can see why, its a little jarring since it has a lot of obviously reused sound clips (one of them even still sounds a bit compressed, that being the Donkey Kong Country Returns voice clip they reuse in the final DK fight), but it is nice to hear Charles Martinet again. I imagine there's probably people confused that Nintendo didn't have Kevin Afghani record some more brand new Mario audio for this game but I imagine they kept the Martinet voice clips just to keep that energy from the original, with Mario saying "Hey, come back!" and other similar lines ripped from the original. I'm an absolute sucker for good video game music and I must say that this game's soundtrack really surprised me with how great it sounds. I don't remember the original Mario vs. Donkey Kong having very memorable music but I've been repeatedly listening to this remake's OST for a few days, it tends to either go for atmosphere or a smooth jazzy sound and it absolutely nails both. Highly recommend everyone reading this review goes and listens to it...well, assuming Nintendo hasn't already taken down all uploads of the game's soundtrack.
Overall, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed with this game, but I don't mean to constantly complain and nitpick in this review since I did genuinely enjoy my time with the new Mario vs. Donkey Kong. I thought the levels, though mostly really easy, were fun to play through since Mario's movement felt nice and it was cool figuring out the puzzles. I'm hoping that I end up really loving the postgame content (expert levels since I don't plan on doing the Time Trials).
This review contains spoilers
I've never played Explorers of Time or Darkness, just Sky, so I'm treating it as its own game here. And...I mince no words when I say this game is such a beautiful, gorgeous, emotional experience, at least when it comes to the story and characters. Everyone knows how impactful the ending of this game is, and its actually a big reason why I never replayed this for the longest time. It was just as much of a gut punch as it was when I was around 11 years old beating this game for the first time, way more emotional than Rescue Team DX was even though I have more nostalgic connections to it than I do this game. Man this game hit me hard and, despite its reputation, I was not expecting that at all. The game's a bit short and I never did the extra episodes, but I do remember those being pretty solid and expanding the story well, so maybe I'll play those sometime.
I'll start with gameplay. Its pretty good. Not much has changed from Red/Blue Rescue Team but sometimes you don't need a big change to a solid foundation. Still randomly generated dungeons that end at a certain amount of floors, still got basic attacks and the IQ system, still got the iconic Monster Houses, team recruitment, asking for online help (sadly unusable because DS Wi-Fi stopped working a long while ago)...the fundamentals are all here. Unfortunately it is lacking some nice quality of life features that the newer games have, like letting you choose the Pokemon you control (that isn't available until post game in Explorers of Sky), but they're ultimately pretty minor and didn't affect me much at all. The AI gets a lot of flack for being dumb and...well yea, it isn't very smart, but it is serviceable. At the very least, you won't get your team killed because of a mistake the AI made, but it will be a little annoying having to deal with the AI not attacking enemies when it should, occasionally being useless in combat because it likes to spam status increasing moves, or getting lost and separating from the team in tight corners (this one is mostly a problem when you have a full team with four party members). If you like dungeon crawlers with some RPG elements, you'll like this game, and I fit that criteria so I like it. One Mystery Dungeon tradition this game has that I appreciate, though, is that type matchups aren't everything. Of course, Super Effective moves are always preferred and can deal a ton of damage, but you can definitely get by with not very effective moves since they don't do as little damage as you'd think they would. This is super important because you can't choose your starter unless you want to retake the quiz over and over, and, regardless of which starter you get, you'll inevitably come across bosses or enemies that are Super Effective to you. Not all hope is lost with these bosses, so if you have a good number of healing items and some kind of move that deals decent damage, you can beat them. It also helps that all status effect items work on bosses and you can get some pretty damn cheesy boss kills if you're lucky with them. The X-Eye Seed is the go-to boss killer since it makes them unable to do anything and causes them to randomly wander the room, plus the game seems to give you them somewhat often. Don't feel bad for abusing the shit out of these, especially for Dialga since he is one tough cookie.
So, the gameplay's good, but I feel like fans are really in it for the story when it comes to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. Certainly not often that I can say that about a Pokemon game; this has by far the best out of any Pokemon game imo and not in a lackadaisical "well its a little better than the rest" way. I also think it is much better than Rescue Team's story since I feel it remedied most of my problems with that: the stakes are high but they don't come out of nowhere, everything is connected in a way that feels more natural, and you just feel a lot more attachment to the characters along the way. Even the most minor members of the Wigglytuff Guild are very likeable in their own ways and there's just a sense that they all really care for you and your partner that makes the moments when things get tough all the more impactful. The partner character was pretty good in Rescue Team but I think they're more likeable in this game because of how you see them grow and change over time, from a nervous little guy with big dreams to a determined and kind adventurer who still gets tripped up with fear, but is ultimately able to get through anything thanks to his friendship with you. I really appreciate the pacing of this story, too; it does take a bit to get to the real meat of the plot, so I could imagine some people dropping the game for that, but I felt like there was much less meandering around on pointless side stuff than in Rescue Team. The most you do is like three repeats of previous dungeons with requests from the request board and then you're right back into the actual plot. The big thing about the plot of this game is the twist that comes into play a little over halfway through, when its revealed that Grovyle - the guy that's been stealing Time Gears (they keep the fabric of time in balance) - was actually doing the right thing and that he is tied to your past as a human. This is kinda sorta like the relationship between the player character and Gengar in Rescue Team, but flipped on its head since Grovyle was always a Pokemon (Gengar was a human) and you're made to think he's the bad guy even though he isn't. The supposed "great Dusknoir" that the people idolize for doing good deeds was actually a minion of the corrupted Dialga of the future, which he reveals soon enough by dragging the player character and the partner into the future with him. Speaking of the future, yea you see quite a bit of that here. The desolate future, where nothing moves and life is at a standstill, carries some real good imagery. Everything is grey and it really sells the future looking super bleak. Nonetheless, this whole twist was done pretty well imo, even if I would have preferred it was alluded to more; I feel like, if I didn't already know about this twist, it would have felt like it came out of nowhere. I was especially relieved to see that they don't pull the whole trope of being hated by the world for telling the truth. Instead, the Guild is naturally suspicious at first, but they very quickly come around because they trust and support you...and because, the more they thought of it, the more they realized how suspicious Dusknoir was. Before all this meaty plot thickening, though, you get some small little subplots that are entertaining in their own right. Admittedly it doesn't really feel like the story is going anywhere solid until Dusknoir shows up and starts dropping hints to the player character's past, but it isn't too big of a deal since it feels like you're building yourself up as the new rescue team on the block. The only one of these subplots I didn't like was the one with Team Skull (the bullies that have been relentlessly trying to mess with the partner character since the start of the game) weaseling their way into the guild in search of treasure, but that's not the fault of the story and its just because of how well they conveyed that sheer frustration of knowing someone is a bad person yet you can't tell anyone without them thinking you're crazy. Thankfully they get themselves expelled by getting too big for their britches and thinking they can take on the Guildmaster.
I'm gonna dedicate a section to the characters here since I really love them and I've already prattled on long enough on the story paragraph. Chatot is somehow both so hateable and so lovable at the same time, the guy is like the definition of an egotistical manager who's also desperately trying to earn brownie points with his boss. He keeps a cheery singsong disposition for the sake of his image but he's pretty two-faced. The Guildmaster, Wigglytuff, is funny for how bizarrely he acts and how almost childish his personality is. Definition of "power of friendship", naive and yet very powerful. Later on in the game he gets more focused and serious, so it seems to be implied that that's either an act or he just doesn't take anything seriously before things really get serious. His dynamic with Chatot always got a chuckle out of me, this uptight hoity bird hardly understands the Guildmaster at times and yet is always the one speaking for him. The two do have a close friendship, though, and I hear it is elaborated on in the Igglybuff episode I haven't played. Grovyle was a surprisingly pretty interesting character in my opinion; he was the partner of the player character back when he was a human and the two were both born into the desolate future that they are now fighting so hard to change. Of course the player character doesn't remember because amnesia, but it really recontextualizes the scenes in which Grovyle knows the player character's identity but has to withhold that information because he knows the player doesn't remember. It's not super deep or anything but it is a pretty cool dynamic, especially when Grovyle reveals just how close they were and how nice it was to be back together (I can only imagine how much ship art these scenes inspired). Already praised the partner character a lot but I like how he stubbornly denies the truth about Grovyle even though he knows in his heart that its true, the kid idolized Dusknoir and desperately wanted to believe he wasn't lied to all this time. I like some of the minor guild members, too; they don't really do a ton in the story but they are cute little one-note characters with some fun personalities.
Last thing I want to shout out is the music and visuals. I genuinely think this game has some of the nicest looking sprite art on the DS, especially the art for the environments that the game loves to show off on the top screen. There's a scene with artwork depicting Chatot in a cave about to be ambushed by Kabutops and some Omastar and that one especially looks just like something I'd expect to see in an official Pokémon artbook. Usually I don't care for games that only use the top screen to show off stuff but this game earns it in my opinion. The only downside I can think of for the visuals is that a lot of the actual Pokémon sprites are reused from Blue Rescue Team, but they work great here so I won't complain about that. The music is also just absolutely fantastic, whether its a catchy bop of a dungeon theme or the sheer emotion present in the songs that play during emotional moments. I love the themes for Treasure Town and the Wigglytuff Guild, they have such a positive energy and are pretty catchy tunes.
Overall, I really do think Explorers of Sky is something special, especially for being a Pokémon game. The story puts every other Pokémon game to shame. The ending was heart-wrenching to me and a big part of that is because the characters were ones you could feel an attachment to. The gameplay is pretty fun, too, but there's a reason I keep emphasizing other stuff here. I can't not give this game 5 stars.
I'll start with gameplay. Its pretty good. Not much has changed from Red/Blue Rescue Team but sometimes you don't need a big change to a solid foundation. Still randomly generated dungeons that end at a certain amount of floors, still got basic attacks and the IQ system, still got the iconic Monster Houses, team recruitment, asking for online help (sadly unusable because DS Wi-Fi stopped working a long while ago)...the fundamentals are all here. Unfortunately it is lacking some nice quality of life features that the newer games have, like letting you choose the Pokemon you control (that isn't available until post game in Explorers of Sky), but they're ultimately pretty minor and didn't affect me much at all. The AI gets a lot of flack for being dumb and...well yea, it isn't very smart, but it is serviceable. At the very least, you won't get your team killed because of a mistake the AI made, but it will be a little annoying having to deal with the AI not attacking enemies when it should, occasionally being useless in combat because it likes to spam status increasing moves, or getting lost and separating from the team in tight corners (this one is mostly a problem when you have a full team with four party members). If you like dungeon crawlers with some RPG elements, you'll like this game, and I fit that criteria so I like it. One Mystery Dungeon tradition this game has that I appreciate, though, is that type matchups aren't everything. Of course, Super Effective moves are always preferred and can deal a ton of damage, but you can definitely get by with not very effective moves since they don't do as little damage as you'd think they would. This is super important because you can't choose your starter unless you want to retake the quiz over and over, and, regardless of which starter you get, you'll inevitably come across bosses or enemies that are Super Effective to you. Not all hope is lost with these bosses, so if you have a good number of healing items and some kind of move that deals decent damage, you can beat them. It also helps that all status effect items work on bosses and you can get some pretty damn cheesy boss kills if you're lucky with them. The X-Eye Seed is the go-to boss killer since it makes them unable to do anything and causes them to randomly wander the room, plus the game seems to give you them somewhat often. Don't feel bad for abusing the shit out of these, especially for Dialga since he is one tough cookie.
So, the gameplay's good, but I feel like fans are really in it for the story when it comes to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. Certainly not often that I can say that about a Pokemon game; this has by far the best out of any Pokemon game imo and not in a lackadaisical "well its a little better than the rest" way. I also think it is much better than Rescue Team's story since I feel it remedied most of my problems with that: the stakes are high but they don't come out of nowhere, everything is connected in a way that feels more natural, and you just feel a lot more attachment to the characters along the way. Even the most minor members of the Wigglytuff Guild are very likeable in their own ways and there's just a sense that they all really care for you and your partner that makes the moments when things get tough all the more impactful. The partner character was pretty good in Rescue Team but I think they're more likeable in this game because of how you see them grow and change over time, from a nervous little guy with big dreams to a determined and kind adventurer who still gets tripped up with fear, but is ultimately able to get through anything thanks to his friendship with you. I really appreciate the pacing of this story, too; it does take a bit to get to the real meat of the plot, so I could imagine some people dropping the game for that, but I felt like there was much less meandering around on pointless side stuff than in Rescue Team. The most you do is like three repeats of previous dungeons with requests from the request board and then you're right back into the actual plot. The big thing about the plot of this game is the twist that comes into play a little over halfway through, when its revealed that Grovyle - the guy that's been stealing Time Gears (they keep the fabric of time in balance) - was actually doing the right thing and that he is tied to your past as a human. This is kinda sorta like the relationship between the player character and Gengar in Rescue Team, but flipped on its head since Grovyle was always a Pokemon (Gengar was a human) and you're made to think he's the bad guy even though he isn't. The supposed "great Dusknoir" that the people idolize for doing good deeds was actually a minion of the corrupted Dialga of the future, which he reveals soon enough by dragging the player character and the partner into the future with him. Speaking of the future, yea you see quite a bit of that here. The desolate future, where nothing moves and life is at a standstill, carries some real good imagery. Everything is grey and it really sells the future looking super bleak. Nonetheless, this whole twist was done pretty well imo, even if I would have preferred it was alluded to more; I feel like, if I didn't already know about this twist, it would have felt like it came out of nowhere. I was especially relieved to see that they don't pull the whole trope of being hated by the world for telling the truth. Instead, the Guild is naturally suspicious at first, but they very quickly come around because they trust and support you...and because, the more they thought of it, the more they realized how suspicious Dusknoir was. Before all this meaty plot thickening, though, you get some small little subplots that are entertaining in their own right. Admittedly it doesn't really feel like the story is going anywhere solid until Dusknoir shows up and starts dropping hints to the player character's past, but it isn't too big of a deal since it feels like you're building yourself up as the new rescue team on the block. The only one of these subplots I didn't like was the one with Team Skull (the bullies that have been relentlessly trying to mess with the partner character since the start of the game) weaseling their way into the guild in search of treasure, but that's not the fault of the story and its just because of how well they conveyed that sheer frustration of knowing someone is a bad person yet you can't tell anyone without them thinking you're crazy. Thankfully they get themselves expelled by getting too big for their britches and thinking they can take on the Guildmaster.
I'm gonna dedicate a section to the characters here since I really love them and I've already prattled on long enough on the story paragraph. Chatot is somehow both so hateable and so lovable at the same time, the guy is like the definition of an egotistical manager who's also desperately trying to earn brownie points with his boss. He keeps a cheery singsong disposition for the sake of his image but he's pretty two-faced. The Guildmaster, Wigglytuff, is funny for how bizarrely he acts and how almost childish his personality is. Definition of "power of friendship", naive and yet very powerful. Later on in the game he gets more focused and serious, so it seems to be implied that that's either an act or he just doesn't take anything seriously before things really get serious. His dynamic with Chatot always got a chuckle out of me, this uptight hoity bird hardly understands the Guildmaster at times and yet is always the one speaking for him. The two do have a close friendship, though, and I hear it is elaborated on in the Igglybuff episode I haven't played. Grovyle was a surprisingly pretty interesting character in my opinion; he was the partner of the player character back when he was a human and the two were both born into the desolate future that they are now fighting so hard to change. Of course the player character doesn't remember because amnesia, but it really recontextualizes the scenes in which Grovyle knows the player character's identity but has to withhold that information because he knows the player doesn't remember. It's not super deep or anything but it is a pretty cool dynamic, especially when Grovyle reveals just how close they were and how nice it was to be back together (I can only imagine how much ship art these scenes inspired). Already praised the partner character a lot but I like how he stubbornly denies the truth about Grovyle even though he knows in his heart that its true, the kid idolized Dusknoir and desperately wanted to believe he wasn't lied to all this time. I like some of the minor guild members, too; they don't really do a ton in the story but they are cute little one-note characters with some fun personalities.
Last thing I want to shout out is the music and visuals. I genuinely think this game has some of the nicest looking sprite art on the DS, especially the art for the environments that the game loves to show off on the top screen. There's a scene with artwork depicting Chatot in a cave about to be ambushed by Kabutops and some Omastar and that one especially looks just like something I'd expect to see in an official Pokémon artbook. Usually I don't care for games that only use the top screen to show off stuff but this game earns it in my opinion. The only downside I can think of for the visuals is that a lot of the actual Pokémon sprites are reused from Blue Rescue Team, but they work great here so I won't complain about that. The music is also just absolutely fantastic, whether its a catchy bop of a dungeon theme or the sheer emotion present in the songs that play during emotional moments. I love the themes for Treasure Town and the Wigglytuff Guild, they have such a positive energy and are pretty catchy tunes.
Overall, I really do think Explorers of Sky is something special, especially for being a Pokémon game. The story puts every other Pokémon game to shame. The ending was heart-wrenching to me and a big part of that is because the characters were ones you could feel an attachment to. The gameplay is pretty fun, too, but there's a reason I keep emphasizing other stuff here. I can't not give this game 5 stars.
I'm kinda surprised with just how much I enjoyed this game. Granted, I don't think it'll blow anyone away, but the game overall just has a lot of charm to it in my opinion that elevated it over its flaws. It feels practically tailormade to lend itself to a truly great cartoon or comic series, to the point where I was shocked to find out it had neither. I really love the animated cutscenes and the fun cast of characters; I am excited to get to Sly 2 once I grab the game.
The gameplay's pretty good. I will say, you'd think that stealth would be more of a central mechanic here than it actually is, but it really isn't that all-encompassing and the game is pretty forgiving if you mess up stealth bits. This is kind of a blessing in disguise for me since I am pretty bad at being stealthy in games. There are definitely levels where you need to sneak around, but this is definitely a platformer through and through so the platforming is the focus. The platforming here is good, took a bit to get the feel of and sometimes it can be janky (mainly with those special parts of the environment you need to interact with through pressing circle) but it still feels good overall. Those segments where you need to swing from hook to hook with your cane were probably the hardest platforming segments for me since I had a tough time getting the timing down between jumps to reach the hooks. I never really felt like I was super "in the flow" like some of my other favorite platformers, but nonetheless it was fun to make my way through these levels. I think the only real downside with the gameplay is that they shove a lot of different play styles in here, which sounds good on paper to break up the monotony but they all feel either half-baked or just plain mediocre. Twin-stick shooters were never quite my thing and this game throws a good number of 'em at you, same with racing minigames where you need to get first place. There's also a few escort missions that are still shoot-em-ups but done through first person and you gotta have pretty quick reflexes for some of those. One boss has a rhythm game section that felt like it went on forever and was pretty challenging for me, I hear the PS3 collection of this game messes up the timing in that minigame and I can't imagine how much worse it would be if I was playing it that way lol. I also died a lot in this game but I'm not sure how much of that I can chalk to the game being actually hard or just me being a complete doofus at 3D platformers. Nonetheless, aside from the rather disappointing forcing of different play styles, I did think the gameplay was solid overall; I just think the game should have stuck to more pure platforming. My favorite levels were in the China world and the Haitian jungle world.
The game doesn't have much story, so I will use this paragraph to talk about the minor stuff making up this game that I enjoyed. I know I already mentioned this but I did quite enjoy the characters, Sly's crew feels very much like a typical cartoon series team dynamic with Bentley being the verbose and nerdy brains of the operation, Sly being the cool charismatic leader, and Murray mostly being the comedic relief sidekick. I think Bentley talks a little TOO much and for some reason his voice feels much louder than the others, but I suppose that suits his character well. Carmelita Fox has a fun dynamic with Sly Cooper, with the master thief often teasing the detective and just barely avoiding capture every time. It was nice to see them come to an understanding and work together briefly at the end, even if they went right back to business as usual after. Also, shoutout to the animated cutscenes in this game, they look really great and it makes me wish we had an animated show that looks just like it. There's a surprising amount of them, too, and you even get a little surprise one at the end which is a reanimated version of the opening trailer stylized to look more like an anime (complete with Japanese narration). From what I hear you can unlock a few more of those in the game but I didn't bother with it.
Overall, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus is a fun time. The game's got some noteworthy flaws that I complained about, but the positives outweigh the negatives in my opinion. I am looking forward to playing the whole series (although I hear Thieves in Time is rather divisive).
The gameplay's pretty good. I will say, you'd think that stealth would be more of a central mechanic here than it actually is, but it really isn't that all-encompassing and the game is pretty forgiving if you mess up stealth bits. This is kind of a blessing in disguise for me since I am pretty bad at being stealthy in games. There are definitely levels where you need to sneak around, but this is definitely a platformer through and through so the platforming is the focus. The platforming here is good, took a bit to get the feel of and sometimes it can be janky (mainly with those special parts of the environment you need to interact with through pressing circle) but it still feels good overall. Those segments where you need to swing from hook to hook with your cane were probably the hardest platforming segments for me since I had a tough time getting the timing down between jumps to reach the hooks. I never really felt like I was super "in the flow" like some of my other favorite platformers, but nonetheless it was fun to make my way through these levels. I think the only real downside with the gameplay is that they shove a lot of different play styles in here, which sounds good on paper to break up the monotony but they all feel either half-baked or just plain mediocre. Twin-stick shooters were never quite my thing and this game throws a good number of 'em at you, same with racing minigames where you need to get first place. There's also a few escort missions that are still shoot-em-ups but done through first person and you gotta have pretty quick reflexes for some of those. One boss has a rhythm game section that felt like it went on forever and was pretty challenging for me, I hear the PS3 collection of this game messes up the timing in that minigame and I can't imagine how much worse it would be if I was playing it that way lol. I also died a lot in this game but I'm not sure how much of that I can chalk to the game being actually hard or just me being a complete doofus at 3D platformers. Nonetheless, aside from the rather disappointing forcing of different play styles, I did think the gameplay was solid overall; I just think the game should have stuck to more pure platforming. My favorite levels were in the China world and the Haitian jungle world.
The game doesn't have much story, so I will use this paragraph to talk about the minor stuff making up this game that I enjoyed. I know I already mentioned this but I did quite enjoy the characters, Sly's crew feels very much like a typical cartoon series team dynamic with Bentley being the verbose and nerdy brains of the operation, Sly being the cool charismatic leader, and Murray mostly being the comedic relief sidekick. I think Bentley talks a little TOO much and for some reason his voice feels much louder than the others, but I suppose that suits his character well. Carmelita Fox has a fun dynamic with Sly Cooper, with the master thief often teasing the detective and just barely avoiding capture every time. It was nice to see them come to an understanding and work together briefly at the end, even if they went right back to business as usual after. Also, shoutout to the animated cutscenes in this game, they look really great and it makes me wish we had an animated show that looks just like it. There's a surprising amount of them, too, and you even get a little surprise one at the end which is a reanimated version of the opening trailer stylized to look more like an anime (complete with Japanese narration). From what I hear you can unlock a few more of those in the game but I didn't bother with it.
Overall, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus is a fun time. The game's got some noteworthy flaws that I complained about, but the positives outweigh the negatives in my opinion. I am looking forward to playing the whole series (although I hear Thieves in Time is rather divisive).
1994
This review contains spoilers
A long while back, I claimed I was going to do a playthrough of this game only after beating Gargoyle's Quest 2. Well, I found that game kind of boring, so now, a few years after saying that, I've beat Demon's Crest. I think I'd say this game was a fun experience overall, its definitely better than Gargoyle's Quest but still has some sore spots and signs of missed potential. Its a bit of a shame how this game removes a good amount of the RPG elements from Gargoyle's Quest, for example, although I think that's ultimately for the better since they were usually more annoying than interesting in the previous games (stuff like random encounters, a more involved overworld, minor side quests, etc.).
Demon's Crest is a pretty standard platformer. Firebrand can float in the air and shoot fireballs, just like Gargoyle's Quest except you no longer have a gauge for it so you can just fly infinitely. One could argue that this change removes some challenge from the game, but trust me, Demon's Crest is still tough even with unlimited flying. Most of the difficulty is with the bosses, though; its not often that I died to the actual levels. I see folks criticize the game's length since it only consists of 7 levels, but I feel like Demon's Crest still makes good use of these levels, especially if you're trying to grab everything (which this game is pretty much built around encouraging you to do). You can do the levels in whatever order you want except for Level 1, but it does seem like the game has a certain order of progression you're intended to do. If you really want to, you could go straight to the final level and beat the game right there, but you get the bad ending for doing that and the final boss is incredibly difficult to beat without any upgrades. It's already tedious enough to beat him when you're supposed to fight him in my experience. Something cool that Demon's Crest does is that each level (except for Level 1) has at least two different paths, some may be hidden and others are available in plain sight. Level 5, for example, has an area you get to with a green tornado you can fall through to reach the hidden area; if you instead just keep going forward, you get the normal path. Demon's Crest sometimes does an almost sort of Metroidvania thing by gating those extra paths in levels behind the transformations you get. A good example of this is how, when you get the Earth Gargoyle form after beating the first level, you can then use the Earth Gargoyle's shoulder bash move to open up a few secret paths in other levels. The Tidal Gargoyle form is also used to hide a few underwater paths with their own bosses to fight. The only problem with this more free-form structure, in my opinion, is that it isn't clear which order is best to beat the game with. Sure, you can skip areas or do them in whichever order you want, but some bosses will be WAY harder without the moves they're more susceptible to. It's not quite a Mega Man style weakness chart, but the bosses do take more damage from certain powers; Gwemon, the white wolf boss in Level 6, takes a ton of damage from the basic fireball you start the game with despite being a boss I thought the game wanted me to beat later on, which actually probably makes him a decent boss to start with aside from his annoying invincibility gimmick. Flame Lord in the forest level takes a ton of damage from the Earth Gargoyle's earthy fireball that travels across the ground and I fought the final Arma battle (he's a recurring boss you fight a few times) with the Demon Flame and destroyed him like it was child's play. I watched videos where people do the final Arma fight without it and it takes forever in comparison. Because of these hidden weaknesses the game never tells you about, it can feel like you're wasting your time fighting these bosses without them. Nonetheless, I mostly enjoyed the open-ended system this game abides by, and its a big reason why I think its short length is actually a good thing. I used a guide and the game still took me around 9 hours to beat since I wanted to get everything...well, I ALMOST got everything, but the game locks the final health upgrade to a stupid headbutting mini game that is ridiculously hard and I hate it with the fury of a thousand suns. No secret final boss for me, I guess.
The game really doesn't have much of a story, so I'll move on to other parts of the game. One thing I will complement the hell out of Demon's Crest for is the visual and sound elements. They really nail that spooky gothic vibe, everything from the character designs to the level aesthetics. The music is also great, I love listening to many songs in the OST and even the ones that I'm not as big a fan of are still quite atmospheric and interesting. If you guys ever want to check it out for yourself, I recommend the songs Beyond the Colosseum, Metropolis of Ruin, Caverns of Ice, and The Hell of Civil War (bad ending theme).
Overall, I had a great time with Demon's Crest. The core gameplay is fun, exploring the levels fully bit by bit as you get more upgrades is fun, the visuals and music are immaculate...only thing is, if you don't want the bad ending, you might need a guide on you, and the game doesn't tell you things that would be nice to know. Admittedly part of this might be me being stupid, but I had no idea that the Earth Gargoyle can shoulder bash or that the Aerial Gargoyle can flap its wings straight up, so I wasn't getting full use out of those forms until quite a bit later in my playthrough.
Demon's Crest is a pretty standard platformer. Firebrand can float in the air and shoot fireballs, just like Gargoyle's Quest except you no longer have a gauge for it so you can just fly infinitely. One could argue that this change removes some challenge from the game, but trust me, Demon's Crest is still tough even with unlimited flying. Most of the difficulty is with the bosses, though; its not often that I died to the actual levels. I see folks criticize the game's length since it only consists of 7 levels, but I feel like Demon's Crest still makes good use of these levels, especially if you're trying to grab everything (which this game is pretty much built around encouraging you to do). You can do the levels in whatever order you want except for Level 1, but it does seem like the game has a certain order of progression you're intended to do. If you really want to, you could go straight to the final level and beat the game right there, but you get the bad ending for doing that and the final boss is incredibly difficult to beat without any upgrades. It's already tedious enough to beat him when you're supposed to fight him in my experience. Something cool that Demon's Crest does is that each level (except for Level 1) has at least two different paths, some may be hidden and others are available in plain sight. Level 5, for example, has an area you get to with a green tornado you can fall through to reach the hidden area; if you instead just keep going forward, you get the normal path. Demon's Crest sometimes does an almost sort of Metroidvania thing by gating those extra paths in levels behind the transformations you get. A good example of this is how, when you get the Earth Gargoyle form after beating the first level, you can then use the Earth Gargoyle's shoulder bash move to open up a few secret paths in other levels. The Tidal Gargoyle form is also used to hide a few underwater paths with their own bosses to fight. The only problem with this more free-form structure, in my opinion, is that it isn't clear which order is best to beat the game with. Sure, you can skip areas or do them in whichever order you want, but some bosses will be WAY harder without the moves they're more susceptible to. It's not quite a Mega Man style weakness chart, but the bosses do take more damage from certain powers; Gwemon, the white wolf boss in Level 6, takes a ton of damage from the basic fireball you start the game with despite being a boss I thought the game wanted me to beat later on, which actually probably makes him a decent boss to start with aside from his annoying invincibility gimmick. Flame Lord in the forest level takes a ton of damage from the Earth Gargoyle's earthy fireball that travels across the ground and I fought the final Arma battle (he's a recurring boss you fight a few times) with the Demon Flame and destroyed him like it was child's play. I watched videos where people do the final Arma fight without it and it takes forever in comparison. Because of these hidden weaknesses the game never tells you about, it can feel like you're wasting your time fighting these bosses without them. Nonetheless, I mostly enjoyed the open-ended system this game abides by, and its a big reason why I think its short length is actually a good thing. I used a guide and the game still took me around 9 hours to beat since I wanted to get everything...well, I ALMOST got everything, but the game locks the final health upgrade to a stupid headbutting mini game that is ridiculously hard and I hate it with the fury of a thousand suns. No secret final boss for me, I guess.
The game really doesn't have much of a story, so I'll move on to other parts of the game. One thing I will complement the hell out of Demon's Crest for is the visual and sound elements. They really nail that spooky gothic vibe, everything from the character designs to the level aesthetics. The music is also great, I love listening to many songs in the OST and even the ones that I'm not as big a fan of are still quite atmospheric and interesting. If you guys ever want to check it out for yourself, I recommend the songs Beyond the Colosseum, Metropolis of Ruin, Caverns of Ice, and The Hell of Civil War (bad ending theme).
Overall, I had a great time with Demon's Crest. The core gameplay is fun, exploring the levels fully bit by bit as you get more upgrades is fun, the visuals and music are immaculate...only thing is, if you don't want the bad ending, you might need a guide on you, and the game doesn't tell you things that would be nice to know. Admittedly part of this might be me being stupid, but I had no idea that the Earth Gargoyle can shoulder bash or that the Aerial Gargoyle can flap its wings straight up, so I wasn't getting full use out of those forms until quite a bit later in my playthrough.
This review contains spoilers
So I technically started this in December (Dec 17, 2023), but I didn't really feel like playing through it then. To be honest, its mostly because Teal Mask was disappointingly mid to me. Took me until today (Jan 5, 2024) to really go and complete it; to my knowledge, there's a bit of post-game content, too, but frankly I think I've had enough Pokémon Violet for a long time. It didn't really seem worth doing for me judging on what the game was hinting at it being (refighting the gym leaders - which we already did in the base game - and elite four again), so I'm fine leaving my save right after beating the game and earning some goodies from it like being able to Terastalize whenever you want or fly with Miraidon. In my opinion, Indigo Disk is better than Teal Mask, but I think I have significantly less to say about this DLC than I did about Teal Mask since there just...wasn't much here that gripped me. I felt Teal Mask had a lot of potential to be really interesting, even though it wasn't. Meanwhile, Indigo Disk is a DLC I felt mostly fulfilled its promises, but was still a bit boring to me. It seems evident this was the one that saw the most care put into it, but its still not that much better than Teal Mask. Unfortunately its building upon a pretty flawed base game, so I suppose that was only inevitable.
The story goes in pretty much the same direction you'd likely be expecting it to. After helping out the folks in Kitakami, now you're going to the Blueberry Academy since Director Clavell and Ms. Briar are interested in having you transfer there. Blueberry Academy is supposed to be in Unova, but, since you don't get any glimpses of any locations outside of the academy, you don't really get a sense of where exactly this place fits on the Unova map (perhaps saved for whenever they inevitably remake Black and White). The design doesn't feel especially Unovan to me, either, though that's a very unimportant gripe. The goal here is to explore the Terrarium, which is like a big high-tech dome with simulations of different natural environments, to find new Pokemon and fight the elite four. This time, you're fighting the Blueberry Academy's elite four, consisting of Crispin, Lacey, Drayton, Amarys, and then the champion Kieran. Kieran basically gets a full-on villain arc here, becoming the "mean rival" of the game while Carmine takes a backseat into the minor supporting character role after you helped her in Teal Mask. I was on record as a big defender of Kieran in Teal Mask, but unfortunately he is super hard to like in Indigo Disk because he's nothing but a complete ass to everyone around him here and he never gets called out for it. Worse yet, STILL no one has any idea how to help him with his obvious low self-esteem and insecurities, and the main character can't do anything about it either since you're basically a cardboard cutout of a character. You're kinda just left to watch this kid fester in jealousy and rage, bullying anyone he feels he can get away with bullying, until you inevitably win against him. It at least doesn't make you feel bad anymore, though, since now he's a jerk and you gotta knock some sense into him, whereas before it was like you were fighting some poor shy kid who's constantly teased (at best) by his sister and thought he had any chance against you. Annoyingly, Carmine is still brushing off Kieran's problems as just teenage angst, though at least now she isn't being mean to him anymore. I will say that I found it really funny just how hard the game almost seems to play into the whole trope of the main character having plot armor; everyone is almost self aware of how you're just better than everyone else, you've been to the Area Zero and discovered one of its greatest secrets before the authorities of this world did, and you win against everyone who could possibly challenge you. You are a transfer student who beat the Blueberry Academy elite four and champion Kieran in the span of...like, one day. Kieran is forced to accept that he will never be as good as you, which lets him finally let go of his grudge and his very harmful coping mechanism of pushing himself (and everyone around him) to the limit. I guess its a pretty great arc as far as Pokemon goes, but I can't help but feel it could've been pulled off better, and the whole time I was just annoyed that I couldn't help Kieran (though, again, not nearly as bad here as it was in Teal Mask because Kieran is in villain arc mode and not some shy kid being pushed around all the time). Also, right at the end, you go back to Area Zero and use the titular Indigo Disk to go further down. They play this as some big epic thing but really it just felt like going through some small corridors, stopping to talk to the characters, do a battle, talk to the characters again after the barrier opens, rinse and repeat until you reach Terapagos and fight it. Terapagos is the new legendary, of course, and its kinda neat I guess? It really doesn't have much of a role in the DLC, though; it just kinda pops up at the very end of the story after you trudge through Area Zero again. There is buildup to it since this was what Ms. Briar was dying to get to Area Zero for throughout the whole story of Teal Mask and Indigo Disk, but I dunno it just didn't leave much of an impression on me. Certainly not the same kind of impact the AI Turo fight from the base game did, anyway.
I know I'm being a negative Nancy throughout a lot of this review, but I think I was hyperaware of Pokémon Violet's repetitiveness here and this DLC does next to nothing to spice it up. I'll talk about some things I liked in this paragraph to balance it out. Despite my gripes with how they handled Kieran, I do still like him as a character. I think the fact that he was so consumed by self-loathing and jealousy was interesting to see, though still rather frustrating since, again, we can't help him through it. The resolution to his arc is rather bittersweet: he realizes he will never be able to be as good as you, but he's also humbled by that experience and it seems like it was the only real way to get him to let go of the grudge. As for non-story related stuff, a few other people already mentioned this, but I do enjoy the shift towards a double battle focus here. The fights against the elite four were surprisingly really competent, I actually lost to each of them (except for Crispin) once or twice. My team is far from the most optimal team in the world, but even with the huge level advantage I had (since these DLCs don't seem balanced towards someone who kept the same team for the whole game) I still got clobbered by most of the Blueberry Elite Four at least once. It'd be interesting to see how I would fare against these guys if I was on the same level as them. Ironically, champ Kieran was one of the few that didn't beat me once. I also liked that we're back in Unova again; there's nothing about the design or environment of Blueberry Academy that really hints towards it being a Unovan location, but we do get some nice remixes of Gen 5 music and there are a good amount of returning Unova Pokemon here. Was really disappointed to see some of my favorite Pokemon - Vanillite and its evolutions - not return, though; I know they get a bad rep, but come on, throw me a bone here man! Nonetheless, I still found there was stuff to enjoy in this DLC.
I can't help but feel like this review has devolved into unfocused ramblings now, so I'll wrap it up here. I think that, overall, Indigo Disk is just okay. Its better than Teal Mask, but not by much. I give it an "alright" rating of 2.5 stars. At first, I gave it a 3, but in retrospect I think I have too many complaints about this DLC to justify it being a 3. I'm going to demote my rating of Teal Mask to a 2.5, as well.
The story goes in pretty much the same direction you'd likely be expecting it to. After helping out the folks in Kitakami, now you're going to the Blueberry Academy since Director Clavell and Ms. Briar are interested in having you transfer there. Blueberry Academy is supposed to be in Unova, but, since you don't get any glimpses of any locations outside of the academy, you don't really get a sense of where exactly this place fits on the Unova map (perhaps saved for whenever they inevitably remake Black and White). The design doesn't feel especially Unovan to me, either, though that's a very unimportant gripe. The goal here is to explore the Terrarium, which is like a big high-tech dome with simulations of different natural environments, to find new Pokemon and fight the elite four. This time, you're fighting the Blueberry Academy's elite four, consisting of Crispin, Lacey, Drayton, Amarys, and then the champion Kieran. Kieran basically gets a full-on villain arc here, becoming the "mean rival" of the game while Carmine takes a backseat into the minor supporting character role after you helped her in Teal Mask. I was on record as a big defender of Kieran in Teal Mask, but unfortunately he is super hard to like in Indigo Disk because he's nothing but a complete ass to everyone around him here and he never gets called out for it. Worse yet, STILL no one has any idea how to help him with his obvious low self-esteem and insecurities, and the main character can't do anything about it either since you're basically a cardboard cutout of a character. You're kinda just left to watch this kid fester in jealousy and rage, bullying anyone he feels he can get away with bullying, until you inevitably win against him. It at least doesn't make you feel bad anymore, though, since now he's a jerk and you gotta knock some sense into him, whereas before it was like you were fighting some poor shy kid who's constantly teased (at best) by his sister and thought he had any chance against you. Annoyingly, Carmine is still brushing off Kieran's problems as just teenage angst, though at least now she isn't being mean to him anymore. I will say that I found it really funny just how hard the game almost seems to play into the whole trope of the main character having plot armor; everyone is almost self aware of how you're just better than everyone else, you've been to the Area Zero and discovered one of its greatest secrets before the authorities of this world did, and you win against everyone who could possibly challenge you. You are a transfer student who beat the Blueberry Academy elite four and champion Kieran in the span of...like, one day. Kieran is forced to accept that he will never be as good as you, which lets him finally let go of his grudge and his very harmful coping mechanism of pushing himself (and everyone around him) to the limit. I guess its a pretty great arc as far as Pokemon goes, but I can't help but feel it could've been pulled off better, and the whole time I was just annoyed that I couldn't help Kieran (though, again, not nearly as bad here as it was in Teal Mask because Kieran is in villain arc mode and not some shy kid being pushed around all the time). Also, right at the end, you go back to Area Zero and use the titular Indigo Disk to go further down. They play this as some big epic thing but really it just felt like going through some small corridors, stopping to talk to the characters, do a battle, talk to the characters again after the barrier opens, rinse and repeat until you reach Terapagos and fight it. Terapagos is the new legendary, of course, and its kinda neat I guess? It really doesn't have much of a role in the DLC, though; it just kinda pops up at the very end of the story after you trudge through Area Zero again. There is buildup to it since this was what Ms. Briar was dying to get to Area Zero for throughout the whole story of Teal Mask and Indigo Disk, but I dunno it just didn't leave much of an impression on me. Certainly not the same kind of impact the AI Turo fight from the base game did, anyway.
I know I'm being a negative Nancy throughout a lot of this review, but I think I was hyperaware of Pokémon Violet's repetitiveness here and this DLC does next to nothing to spice it up. I'll talk about some things I liked in this paragraph to balance it out. Despite my gripes with how they handled Kieran, I do still like him as a character. I think the fact that he was so consumed by self-loathing and jealousy was interesting to see, though still rather frustrating since, again, we can't help him through it. The resolution to his arc is rather bittersweet: he realizes he will never be able to be as good as you, but he's also humbled by that experience and it seems like it was the only real way to get him to let go of the grudge. As for non-story related stuff, a few other people already mentioned this, but I do enjoy the shift towards a double battle focus here. The fights against the elite four were surprisingly really competent, I actually lost to each of them (except for Crispin) once or twice. My team is far from the most optimal team in the world, but even with the huge level advantage I had (since these DLCs don't seem balanced towards someone who kept the same team for the whole game) I still got clobbered by most of the Blueberry Elite Four at least once. It'd be interesting to see how I would fare against these guys if I was on the same level as them. Ironically, champ Kieran was one of the few that didn't beat me once. I also liked that we're back in Unova again; there's nothing about the design or environment of Blueberry Academy that really hints towards it being a Unovan location, but we do get some nice remixes of Gen 5 music and there are a good amount of returning Unova Pokemon here. Was really disappointed to see some of my favorite Pokemon - Vanillite and its evolutions - not return, though; I know they get a bad rep, but come on, throw me a bone here man! Nonetheless, I still found there was stuff to enjoy in this DLC.
I can't help but feel like this review has devolved into unfocused ramblings now, so I'll wrap it up here. I think that, overall, Indigo Disk is just okay. Its better than Teal Mask, but not by much. I give it an "alright" rating of 2.5 stars. At first, I gave it a 3, but in retrospect I think I have too many complaints about this DLC to justify it being a 3. I'm going to demote my rating of Teal Mask to a 2.5, as well.
2010
I know there's a decent chunk of people that prefer the first Mario Galaxy, but I'm sorry Mario Galaxy 2 was so much more fun to me than the first game. To put it in perspective, I had to give Mario Galaxy a 4 star because of my frustrations, but this one is getting 4.5 stars from me. With the exception of a few frustrating sections (I hated those stupid bird gliding levels and they brought back the annoying ball rolling gimmick for a level or two), I really enjoyed my time with Galaxy 2 and I felt like it addressed a lot of my criticisms with the first game. The only thing I think was a bit disappointing was that the presentation overall is lacking, they give up a lot of that epic cinematic vibe the first game had and instead go for some kind of interactive storybook feel. Its not inherently worse, but it did feel like a downgrade to me. Still, though, I think that was worth sacrificing for an overall better experience. I think it also helped get me more invested from the beginning, whereas Galaxy 1's beginning felt slow and kinda boring to me.
I'll start with address the controls. Its only fair since I spent a whole section of my Galaxy 1 review talking about controls and gameplay feel. Most of my issues with the forced motion controls in Galaxy 1 are gone in Galaxy 2; though one frustrating gimmick returned and one annoying new one was introduced, the game's design focuses much more on regular platforming and not Wiimote motion gobbledygook. Also, is it just me or does Mario move much more smoothly in this game? Maybe I'm seeing something that isn't there and there's no real difference between the two games in this regard, but that issue I mentioned in the previous review of how Mario is always moving at an angle is pretty much gone here. I assumed it was the fault of the nunchuck stick, but I guess that's just how the first game was built to control? I don't really know. Point is, I was so glad to see that the vast majority of this game's levels drop the forced motion stuff and instead focus on the fundamentals, all the while introducing cool new powerups and stage gimmicks to play around with.
The core gameplay is fun. Like I said before, it generally feels like a return to form, taking Galaxy 1's good ideas while pivoting into a more standard direction. I really love all the new powerups they added, especially the Yoshi ones. He gets the Dash Pepper (makes him run really fast but you can't make him stop), Blimp Fruit (makes him continually float upwards), and the Bulb Berries (illuminates nearby areas to reveal invisible platforms), and all three get some really fun uses in the level design. Mario gets some neat powerups too, though mostly you'll be using the returning ones since this game seems to really like the Fire Flower. As for the new powerups, the Rock Mushroom is fun to use but gimmicky and a bit hard to control, while the Cloud Flower is used in some creative ways in levels but is mostly just creating another platform for yourself (and letting you jump slightly higher). Everything they did with Yoshi was the highlight for me, basically. As for the structure of Galaxy 2, its definitely more linear and straightforward than Galaxy 1; rather than having about five different areas that encourage finishing levels in the order you want, Galaxy 2 takes a rigid world structure kinda like Mario 3, where you need to beat the levels in order to progress. This comes at the cost of being less open-ended than Galaxy 1 since you don't have as much freedom to skip galaxies, plus the game seems to be tighter on how many stars you can avoid to beat the game; if I wasn't grabbing most of the Hidden Stars and prankster comets (some of which for the latter are really tough and I can see people wanting to skip), I'd be struggling. I will say that I think the prankster comets and hidden stars are easier to get this time around and more fun overall, so maybe that helps with the game's increased linearity for some.
Overall, this game is a grand ol' time. I know Galaxy 1 fans don't like that this one downscaled on cutscenes and the like (some may even argue that the music is less memorable even if I don't agree), lamenting the loss of stuff like Rosalina's storybook, but I don't really mind personally. I give this game 4.5 stars, very close to a 5 but my nitpicks were just enough to bump it down a notch.
I'll start with address the controls. Its only fair since I spent a whole section of my Galaxy 1 review talking about controls and gameplay feel. Most of my issues with the forced motion controls in Galaxy 1 are gone in Galaxy 2; though one frustrating gimmick returned and one annoying new one was introduced, the game's design focuses much more on regular platforming and not Wiimote motion gobbledygook. Also, is it just me or does Mario move much more smoothly in this game? Maybe I'm seeing something that isn't there and there's no real difference between the two games in this regard, but that issue I mentioned in the previous review of how Mario is always moving at an angle is pretty much gone here. I assumed it was the fault of the nunchuck stick, but I guess that's just how the first game was built to control? I don't really know. Point is, I was so glad to see that the vast majority of this game's levels drop the forced motion stuff and instead focus on the fundamentals, all the while introducing cool new powerups and stage gimmicks to play around with.
The core gameplay is fun. Like I said before, it generally feels like a return to form, taking Galaxy 1's good ideas while pivoting into a more standard direction. I really love all the new powerups they added, especially the Yoshi ones. He gets the Dash Pepper (makes him run really fast but you can't make him stop), Blimp Fruit (makes him continually float upwards), and the Bulb Berries (illuminates nearby areas to reveal invisible platforms), and all three get some really fun uses in the level design. Mario gets some neat powerups too, though mostly you'll be using the returning ones since this game seems to really like the Fire Flower. As for the new powerups, the Rock Mushroom is fun to use but gimmicky and a bit hard to control, while the Cloud Flower is used in some creative ways in levels but is mostly just creating another platform for yourself (and letting you jump slightly higher). Everything they did with Yoshi was the highlight for me, basically. As for the structure of Galaxy 2, its definitely more linear and straightforward than Galaxy 1; rather than having about five different areas that encourage finishing levels in the order you want, Galaxy 2 takes a rigid world structure kinda like Mario 3, where you need to beat the levels in order to progress. This comes at the cost of being less open-ended than Galaxy 1 since you don't have as much freedom to skip galaxies, plus the game seems to be tighter on how many stars you can avoid to beat the game; if I wasn't grabbing most of the Hidden Stars and prankster comets (some of which for the latter are really tough and I can see people wanting to skip), I'd be struggling. I will say that I think the prankster comets and hidden stars are easier to get this time around and more fun overall, so maybe that helps with the game's increased linearity for some.
Overall, this game is a grand ol' time. I know Galaxy 1 fans don't like that this one downscaled on cutscenes and the like (some may even argue that the music is less memorable even if I don't agree), lamenting the loss of stuff like Rosalina's storybook, but I don't really mind personally. I give this game 4.5 stars, very close to a 5 but my nitpicks were just enough to bump it down a notch.
2007
So, I've never really been a big 3D Mario guy. I would play them here and there but inevitably I'd hit a roadblock where I either got frustrated or bored. 64 and Sunshine I've still never beat to this day, and until now I had never beat either Mario Galaxy game. 3D platformers in general aren't really something I'm super big on, tbh. However, Super Mario Galaxy was actually pretty fun for me. I certainly had my gripes, but, for the most part, the game was solid in my opinion. The later parts (from the third galaxy onwards) were especially great.
I am dedicating an entire paragraph to controls and gameplay feel because, to be honest, I thought I was going to really dislike this going in. I do not like motion controls in my platformers and this game has them in spades since Super Mario Galaxy was kinda built to sell you on the Wii. The gravity swapping also really threw me off and was a bit annoying for me to wrap my head around, but, once I got the hang of it, it was actually pretty fun. Mario's movement feels a bit strange to me; it is mostly smooth, but it took some getting used to how far he moves, so sometimes I'd get hit by an enemy that I thought I got close enough to hit but Mario wasn't actually close enough. I really don't know how to describe that better, but it was certainly a weird feeling and it made me very worried that I'd hate the game's movement. I dunno if its just me but I also felt like the nunchuck's stick makes it to where Mario is always moving at an angle, which makes tight platforming very challenging since you can't just move straight forward. Sometimes when I turned Mario around he'd make like a full circle instead of just turning direction, though this was very rare and might've been my fault. The motion controls are mostly unobtrusive, thankfully. My hand would get pretty tired having to keep a Wiimote constantly raised to grab any Star Bits or interact with Pull Stars in the level, but the spin move was decently fun to use and most usage of motion control felt fair to me. The problem is in levels like Sling Pod Galaxy, where you need to precisely fling Mario from sling pod to sling pod, which was ridiculously difficult for me (though I did eventually do it). I later realized the issue was more so with me having a hard time understanding what exactly the trajectory was rather than the motion controls themselves. Also, the ball levels suck. I tried doing one of them and it felt so clunky to control that I just completely skipped them because I hated it so much. Overall, the controls and gameplay feel definitely have their quirks in my opinion, but by the end the game seems to ease up a lot more on the motion controls and I got more accustomed to the way the game feels. I was really enjoying the last couple of galaxies with little to no complaints, they were tough but felt fair.
Now that that's out of the way, I can talk more about the general gameplay. I think the level design here is pretty good, there's some galaxies here with levels that I found very enjoyable like Honeyclimb Galaxy, Freezeflame Galaxy, Ghostly Galaxy, Toy Time Galaxy, and Gold Leaf Galaxy, among others. Even the boss galaxies were pretty fun; rather than just taking you right to the boss, most have a sort of mini level beforehand, and some are quite challenging. Most of the galaxies I loved were nearing the end of the game, though I didn't get to experience any levels from the very last galaxy since I took the opportunity to end the game with the final Bowser fight right after unlocking the final galaxy. Despite my gripes with the motion controls, there were some levels that used it to good effect; I liked how Bubble Breeze Galaxy uses motion controls for you to blow a bubble around a dangerous pond with a bunch of spikes for you to avoid, for example. Of course I would rather there be no motion controls at all, but, since they had to be here, I'm glad that Nintendo used it in fun ways like this. I could definitely see why people liked this game so much by the end, but I will say that the early parts of the game were quite boring and annoying to get used to for me. Maybe that's just a "me" problem, I dunno.
I will give a brief shoutout to the visuals and music here. The visuals won't blow you away (maybe they did back in 2007 though), but you can really tell just how cinematic Nintendo was going here and it looks great for the Wii. That sorta cinematic vibe also transfers to the music, which...I don't think I need to tell you is truly amazing. You get some more standard sounding Mario tunes in there (that doesn't mean they sound bad of course), but a lot of this soundtrack is really flexing the fact they got a full orchestra and it just sounds amazing. You listen to the Gusty Garden Galaxy theme and try to tell me that doesn't sound majestic as hell. This also has easily the best Bowser fight theme in my opinion, its very epic (one of the rare times you'll see me use that word unironically) and conveys the grand scale of Bowser's plan this time. Really awesome stuff, genuinely.
Overall, I wanted to think of Super Mario Galaxy as this masterpiece everyone seems to tout it as, but I just don't. I still enjoyed my time with it, but it took until at least halfway through for me to start really liking it and seeing where people were coming from. Admittedly, those last few galaxies I played were truly great. I think I'd give Mario Galaxy 4 stars. My frustrations early on are just enough to bump it down to 4 stars, but if the early parts of the game were as good as the late game was, I'd definitely give it 4.5 stars. Am I just missing something? Guess I'll find out when I start Super Mario Galaxy 2 later today.
I am dedicating an entire paragraph to controls and gameplay feel because, to be honest, I thought I was going to really dislike this going in. I do not like motion controls in my platformers and this game has them in spades since Super Mario Galaxy was kinda built to sell you on the Wii. The gravity swapping also really threw me off and was a bit annoying for me to wrap my head around, but, once I got the hang of it, it was actually pretty fun. Mario's movement feels a bit strange to me; it is mostly smooth, but it took some getting used to how far he moves, so sometimes I'd get hit by an enemy that I thought I got close enough to hit but Mario wasn't actually close enough. I really don't know how to describe that better, but it was certainly a weird feeling and it made me very worried that I'd hate the game's movement. I dunno if its just me but I also felt like the nunchuck's stick makes it to where Mario is always moving at an angle, which makes tight platforming very challenging since you can't just move straight forward. Sometimes when I turned Mario around he'd make like a full circle instead of just turning direction, though this was very rare and might've been my fault. The motion controls are mostly unobtrusive, thankfully. My hand would get pretty tired having to keep a Wiimote constantly raised to grab any Star Bits or interact with Pull Stars in the level, but the spin move was decently fun to use and most usage of motion control felt fair to me. The problem is in levels like Sling Pod Galaxy, where you need to precisely fling Mario from sling pod to sling pod, which was ridiculously difficult for me (though I did eventually do it). I later realized the issue was more so with me having a hard time understanding what exactly the trajectory was rather than the motion controls themselves. Also, the ball levels suck. I tried doing one of them and it felt so clunky to control that I just completely skipped them because I hated it so much. Overall, the controls and gameplay feel definitely have their quirks in my opinion, but by the end the game seems to ease up a lot more on the motion controls and I got more accustomed to the way the game feels. I was really enjoying the last couple of galaxies with little to no complaints, they were tough but felt fair.
Now that that's out of the way, I can talk more about the general gameplay. I think the level design here is pretty good, there's some galaxies here with levels that I found very enjoyable like Honeyclimb Galaxy, Freezeflame Galaxy, Ghostly Galaxy, Toy Time Galaxy, and Gold Leaf Galaxy, among others. Even the boss galaxies were pretty fun; rather than just taking you right to the boss, most have a sort of mini level beforehand, and some are quite challenging. Most of the galaxies I loved were nearing the end of the game, though I didn't get to experience any levels from the very last galaxy since I took the opportunity to end the game with the final Bowser fight right after unlocking the final galaxy. Despite my gripes with the motion controls, there were some levels that used it to good effect; I liked how Bubble Breeze Galaxy uses motion controls for you to blow a bubble around a dangerous pond with a bunch of spikes for you to avoid, for example. Of course I would rather there be no motion controls at all, but, since they had to be here, I'm glad that Nintendo used it in fun ways like this. I could definitely see why people liked this game so much by the end, but I will say that the early parts of the game were quite boring and annoying to get used to for me. Maybe that's just a "me" problem, I dunno.
I will give a brief shoutout to the visuals and music here. The visuals won't blow you away (maybe they did back in 2007 though), but you can really tell just how cinematic Nintendo was going here and it looks great for the Wii. That sorta cinematic vibe also transfers to the music, which...I don't think I need to tell you is truly amazing. You get some more standard sounding Mario tunes in there (that doesn't mean they sound bad of course), but a lot of this soundtrack is really flexing the fact they got a full orchestra and it just sounds amazing. You listen to the Gusty Garden Galaxy theme and try to tell me that doesn't sound majestic as hell. This also has easily the best Bowser fight theme in my opinion, its very epic (one of the rare times you'll see me use that word unironically) and conveys the grand scale of Bowser's plan this time. Really awesome stuff, genuinely.
Overall, I wanted to think of Super Mario Galaxy as this masterpiece everyone seems to tout it as, but I just don't. I still enjoyed my time with it, but it took until at least halfway through for me to start really liking it and seeing where people were coming from. Admittedly, those last few galaxies I played were truly great. I think I'd give Mario Galaxy 4 stars. My frustrations early on are just enough to bump it down to 4 stars, but if the early parts of the game were as good as the late game was, I'd definitely give it 4.5 stars. Am I just missing something? Guess I'll find out when I start Super Mario Galaxy 2 later today.