Dungeon Munchies is a cute indie platformer/hack and slash carried by its fun and quirky cast of characters and surprisingly solid writing and dialogue. The plot shifts (sometimes at breakneck speed) between lighthearted/melancholy/existential dread but manages to hit all these points fairly well, particularly the lighthearted segments. It's one of those games that made me sad it was finished because I knew I would miss the characters. What didn't make me sad I was finished was the combat and platforming, which became a bit of a slog towards the end, though I expect this is partially driven by the fact that I beat the game over ~15 hours in just two days while bored on a work trip. Combat in the earlier levels was more traditional metroidvania where you had to be careful to dodge, watch your opponents attacks, etc. Later in the game, while the weapons and combat styles you had access to became more fun and well designed overall, normal enemies became largely trivialized due to the excessive damage you could easily output. Bosses, on the other hand, were not trivialized because they all had crazy bullet hell segments backed up by fairly long invincibility (?) periods, which made them a bit frustrating. I put a question mark there because I never fully figured out that mechanic - bosses would essentially receive a large shield which would go down on its own, and sometimes, but not always, your attacks would also lower it, and sometimes, but not always, attacking the boss was required to end the phase (challenging to do in some of them). Combined with movement being a touch janky, boss battles could get frustrating fast. Earlier, I referred to the game as a metroidvania earlier, but it isn't really. The game itself is very linear, you can essentially only move forward through levels with the occasional hidden side area to collect a new weapon/food recipe, there is no true sense of exploration or backtracking as you might have expected. As well, the platforming itself is generally very forgiving. There really weren't any challenging jumps or anything, and damaging traps and the like can pretty much be brute forced. Regarding the food/weapon crafting, don't go in expecting to be cleverly making recipes or finding secret ingredients. You can pretty much make anything as long as you don't purposely avoid killing things while running through the levels. I understand it might sound like I'm listing more bad than good points here, but I have to stress I did enjoy the experience overall, I wouldn't have played the game to completion otherwise. Even if I was a bit annoyed during a bossfight or occasionally while mowing down enemies (which still was mostly satisfying), I was motivated to keep going to see what crazy story beat would happen next, or what funny dialogue I could expect around the corner. Or just Grill in general. I liked Grill. And Clifford.

I'll preface this review by saying that I played Banjo-Kazooie on the original N64 when I was a kid and on the Xbox, Switch, and emulator more recently. In short, an amazing early 3D platformer and one that deserves your time to this day. If Super Mario 64 was the birth of the genre, Banjo-Kazooie was the first evolution. The game breathed new life by satisfyingly combining platforming with exploration, puzzle solving, story/character interactions and an ABSOLUTELY BANGER SOUNDTRACK. SM64, the hallmark of the time, I would say is the better game in terms of strict platforming, but it doesn't hold a candle to Banjo-Kazooie when it comes to any of these other factors. This is a game which you can really tell was made with charm and style forefront in mind, from its quirky cast of characters (with their iconic, and frankly genius, dialogue audio) to its inspired and thematic level designs. In what other game can you get a game over screen where a green witch who only speaks in rhymes steals your kidnapped sister's beauty and transforms into a stereotypical hot woman? These sort of touches are what makes Banjo-Kazooie a gem among its peers which stands out even in the modern era. I could wax poetical on this game all day so I'll end it with this: Banjo got into Smash get fucked everyone who told me he wouldnt.