This was mindlessly addicting for about a week. It's fun to watch your character go from a weakling to a God-destroying monster over the course of thirty minutes. The amount of numbers and effects on-screen at any given moment clicks all the right pieces of my brain to make it happy. However, once I stopped being completely invested, the game essentially lost all of it's value. I went from playing it daily for at least 3 hours for an entire week to never turning it on again. I doubt I do ever turn it on again, to be honest. It's just not a game that inspires long-term play, at least in my brain. It's honestly more of a puzzle game than anything. Since the only thing you actually have control over is movement, you just kinda have to figure out which evolutions will work best when pieced together. It's always axe, garlic, book, and some combination of other stuff. Once I realized this, the game got incredibly stale. It's just solving the same puzzle over and over again. It definitely got it's $5 value, and I think, regardless of my conclusive thoughts, it's still a great video game, but I can safely say I have no intent on returning to this, or any other game like this. Especially since AAA publishers are likely seeing this success and planning ways to monetize this structure of game, if they haven't already, because I am cynical. 4/6

There's so much I need to say about this game in order to give it an accurate assessment, but the gist is that a number of gameplay changes kinda suck and Blizzard's approach to balancing what they have is fucking baffling. Fortunately, the game's core mechanics are still great and the movement is even better than it was in the first game, especially now that tanks have more survivability on their own. I'm sure the write-up I eventually do for my list will be far more intensive, but I'll leave it here for now. Quite disappointing, but can't say it's all too shocking given how much I've soured on the game and Blizzard's inability to balance over the years. Despite all that, it's still fun most of the time somehow. 4/6

Eh. Biggest issue is probably the combat. Most battles are won by mashing X, and most bosses are won by spamming your specials. Specials themselves are severely limited, as you can only have two equipped at a time (Imagine Tales games only allowing two artes instead of eight). The battle is on a 3D plane, but uses 2D character sprites, so depth perception is confusing and you sometimes don't land hits where it looks like it should. You have no control over what target you're attacking and the position in which you attack from, so your player character will constantly be switching between targets mid-attack, and in situations where you need to target a specific enemy, it can be difficult to do so, as you will just jerk back to a different enemy and your defenseless healer is so fucking stupid that they just stand there and let the enemies kill them without taking any defensive measures. AI has no idea how to dodge or block or use even the most basic strategy when it comes to fighting, constantly veering from the rest of the party to take on large groups alone, and accordingly get demolished in a few seconds. Even when you're on top of item usage, there's a delay to when the healing will actually take effect, so you may end up wasting an item if it comes too late. A way to circumvent this is to set characters to not hold back on special attacks, but when you do this, they legit only use their special attacks in every situation. This drains their MP, which means it's another thing you're forced to micromanage that shouldn't be an issue because the AI is actually just dumb. There's no easy way to set the tactics in order to find balance. Suddenly, an action RPG has become all about menu hopping. There is no comfortable flow within the battles because everything moves in real time, but you need to pause the action to heal up at an alarming rate. Couple that with how mindless the actual action is, it creates for an awful experience all around.

And then there's the other side of RPGs: The writing. One of the bigger problems with TtEoT was how heavily it leaned towards fantasy over sci-fi. Sure, the beginning and end were very heavy on sci-fi, but the 85% in between was a generic, medieval RPG world. It was cool to see it from the point of view of a character that lived in an advanced society, but it didn't really explore that very well. FD shows the opposite side, where you're playing as a guy from an underdeveloped planet, who must become accustomed to these advanced aliens.... but nothing really happens. There's a brief moment of confusion, but it soon turns away as Roddick accepts that a more advanced society wants him to join their fleet. There's no drama created. No intrigue. It boils down to, "Oh, so you guys can save my village? Okay, I'll join you." I mean, I get that their promise to cure everyone is lucrative as hell, but you'd think Roddick or his two friends, whose names I don't remember, would have even an inkling of suspicion or basic curiosity. And, of course, you spend like, 20 minutes in this futuristic setting before it dumps you back into a medieval one for the time I spent playing. Maybe the sci-fi elements have more focus later in the game, but, as is, what's the point? They made a story about an advanced society meeting with an underdeveloped one, then proceeded to have a jaunty adventure in a fantasy land without so much as a reference to the clashing cultures beyond the stupid primitives not knowing what some of the words mean.

That doesn't even touch upon how dull and one-dimensional literally every character is, but I'm done shitting on this. What a failure. 2/6

even though this is clearly not the best they could do and the game shouts cheapness at your face, for some reason i really enjoyed it. klonoa 1 is one of my favourites of all time and even though it doesnt even come close to the ps1 level of quality, i still enjoyed it. a big problem i had when playing klonoa 2 is i thought it was prety ugly for a ps2 game, but with time got used to the plain textures and weird colour and ended up loving the aesthetic (also i think not upscaling the game to 1080p in PCSX2 helped me aprecciate the visuals even more). klonoa 2 is a lot more polished than 1 in this remasters, but in some cases it was really weird for me, some textures seemed like a texture pack some dude made in 2011 and it just looks wrong. other times it just looks beatiful, i'd say mira-mira mountain and maze of memories is where the visuals of this remaster shine the brightest. also most of the textures in klonoa 1 are just upscaled versions of the wii or just the same low resolution texture without upsacling, which look awful.

i think the problem here was the budget namco gave to the devs, cause there's a lot of changes that they could have just not do like changing every cutscene in klonoa 1 to match the ps1 script or add those extra details to the klonoa 2 ending. these devs really cared about making a good product, but it seems rushed in a lot of ways. another thing i think almost nobody said is the castilian spanish translation is incredibly bad, it seems extremely rushed or some kind of misscomunication between teams because i cannot comprehend how someone could translate lines with its literal sense without testing if it even makes sense in 2022. klonoa 1 psx had this problem too but in 1997 this was extremely common, and the klonoa 2 spanish translation was perfectly fine, it didn't need another translation but they did it anyways. i'm not sure if this is a problem in other european languages or not but this is inacceptable. comment down here if somoene got problems with the frech or italian or german or whatever translation i'm curious now.

even though this collection has all this problems, i've enjoyed it a ton and i couldn't be happier klonoa gets another chance to get revived (even though it doesn't seem very likely having whatched the 0 advertisement this game got) and i'm sure this remasters could have been extremely good with some more time and budget.

quick thing i forgot to mention, the font used in texts is fucking awful and is the same font in every damn thing i hate it.

Every now and then I'll play an older game that makes me go "whoa". I didn't expect a Contra game to achieve that. Yet another split-second decision to play during a long car ride, I ended up beating it five times over two days to reach all the endings. Don't get me wrong, the Contra games are all fine. They're fun, twitchy types of games that ask you to be extremely precise with your movement to the detriment of the overall experience, since you die in a single hit. That's the first big change in Hard Corps, as there isn't a whole lot of those moments. Hard Corps is far more interested in providing spectacle using better hardware than they've worked on prior. The absurdity of the physical requirements is lessened due to the absurdity of the setpieces you find yourself fighting on. I'm sure there's a lot of divisiveness in the core fanbase over whether this change was actually good, as Hard Corps is far more about pattern recogntition and understanding how all your tools can work together to take on boss fights. Most of the game is spent up against wholly unique boss monsters who usually have fairly deliberate tells for each of their attacks. I will choose this type of challenge one-hundred times over the type of difficulty offered in earlier Contra games. There's still some grievances I have with one-hit deaths and loss of power that comes with it, but you get to keep any of the upgrades you didn't have equipped when you die, which is nice, and Switch has save states, which makes the lives system optional. Regardless, the pattern-recognition style of gameplay isn't as fun when you absolutely have to die in order to better understand them. You can make adjustments in other games, but that's not really a possibility until you see how an attack works, which will usually result in getting hit and losing core abilities and precious lives. But this is all minor when put up against everything Hard Corps excels with. Not a single dull moment passes in it's 45-minute campaign. You can even unlock different stages and battles through choices which makes the prospect of learning the systems through replay more engaging. All the characters have unique weapons which can impact how you fight in a variety of ways. The game has basically no slowdown or flicker despite constantly banging out what should be too many effects. This is among one of the best action games ever made. 6/6

After Star Allies, I was forced to legitimately consider if Kirby was ever going to move forward. The 3DS entries were probably the best in the series at this point, but when you compare the franchise to contemporary 2D platformers releasing since the mid-2010s, it was evident the franchise was being surpassed quickly. Kirby games have always been more of a spectacle than meant to provide you any form of skill-based challenges. The amount of powerups you can utilize and how the interact with the levels and enemies is always fun, but it hasn't really been expanded on in ages. Kirby and the Forgotten Lands feels like the shot in the arm the franchise needed. While it still retains the aforementioned spectacle, the level design has been revamped to work in 3D, which brings us to the most involved and inspired levels the Kirby franchise has seen in years. Boys, it's not even close. Kirby and the Forgotten Lands just wrecks the rest of the franchise. There are so many cool features present in every level. The platforming challenges, while not all too hard, are quite memorable, especially if you're aiming to get par times on the bonus stages. Stages have become far more exploratory than ever before, with various secrets unlocking Waddle Dees to send back to your base or blueprints to upgrade your powers. While the game isn't attempting to break any new ground within the genre, it does do enough to make a unique experience. It harkens back to many old platformers from the PS1/N64 era in all the best ways. I think they could make this formula work well as the series ages, so ideally we'll continue to see the series grow. 5/6

I really appreciate the efforts to design a Pokemon game in a traditional, yet fresh way. I had initially predicted we wouldn't see a shake-up in the formula given how utterly successful the brand has been. However, Arceus feels like the natural evolution the series probably should've made after X/Y. The past two generations have basically slid off the creative cliff, and even though Arceus isn't exactly breaking any new grounds with it's story, exploration, or, well, basically any of it's individual components, it does successfully take the series out of a pretty unfortunate slide. Pokemon games have always been about the collecting and experimentation for me. I never did get too much into the deeper battle or growth mechanics, but I really like to catch and experiment with all types of Pokemon. Fortunately, Arceus decides to put it's focus precisely on those aspects I love, unfortunately at the expense of what others love. The way Arceus is designed essentially forces you into swapping team members often, which all but necessitates capturing a wide variety of Pokemon. The gameplay loop of exploring, capturing, and battling is constantly paying off due to a pretty solid pacing and a large amount of available Pokemon to catch. The game also puts a decent focus on difficulty, with fights that can sometimes be pretty tricky without the right team, especially towards the nd of the campaign. Of course, the hidden EV/IV stats are completely absent from the experience, as are held items, abilities, and breeding. While I am sad they decided to do away with these mechanics, as a lot of people really enjoy them, it is hard for me to feel too upset as I rarely put much stock into curating the most powerful possible team. Plus, with Showdown, I'm not really even sure there would be much of a need for these to continue playing a role, but I also don't have the brain to enjoy competitive battling, so I'm not necessarily someone who's opinion holds even a modicum of weight. Then there are the aspects of the game which do just suck, and are forced on you regardless. The writing in this game fucking blows. It is some of the most tedious, uninspired bullshit to ever hit the franchise, and the rest of these games had set a tremendously low bar. Arceus takes what could be an intriguing concept if handled with any sort of legitimate care, taking the role of a Pokemon researcher during an era in the lore where very little is known about Pokemon, and turns it into something shallow and lazy. I'm not one of those weirdos who anticipates anything in the Pokemon media franchise to have a story of higher quality than, like, Boss Baby, but that doesn't change the fact that the setting is ripe for clever storytelling. Nintendo needs to hire some fucking writers, as it is getting tiring to see them refuse to expand on these beautiful and creative worlds. Every time the plot got in the way of Arceus' powerful gameplay loop, it was detrimental to the whole experience. Arceus also has similar problems to Breath of the Wild, where Nintendo designs a world with pretty landscapes, yet fills it with so little beyond crafting material for it's simplistic crafting system. At the very least, Arceus at least learned to give you a bunch of different modalities for traversal, while also removing a stamina meter which could only serve to hinder one's ability to openly explore the world, but then they do dumb shit like keep the limited inventory, which is completely pointless given you can craft with items you have in your storage? Why can't I send things I find in the fields back to storage? This is literally early 2000s game design. Nintendo, please stop making your open world games have so much dumb shit. Also why are there no items to trigger distortions? This would be a really cool rare item to have, but instead I have to wait 20+ minutes for one to show up, which may not even have the Pokemon I'm looking for. I know I shouldn't complain about this of all things, as I'm the guy who spent 20 hours in wormholes to get a Guzzlord, but that shit was stupid as well. The continued efforts to make the game "harder" simply by making the player wait longer is getting old, and it only worsens when I myself grow older. Then again, these games aren't meant for old men, they are meant for tiny children, so what am I even doing? I know this kinda went off the rails but I at least got to shit on Breath of the Wild again, so that's pretty cool I guess. 4/6

SteamWorld Dig 2 is a good expansion on the first game. It takes the somewhat repetitive gameplay of the original and expands it with some new environments, more puzzle-based and interesting level design, and a more interesting narrative.

Like every Image & Form Games production, this game looks great and plays well. They know what their style is and nail it really well.

Gameplay in SteamWorld 2 can get a bit repetitive, but is pretty fun throughout. I ended up not pursuing many of the extra puzzles in the game and it goes on just a bit longer than I would have wanted, but I still enjoyed it all the way through.
There are a lot of satisfying upgrades and mining rare materials to fund your advancement feels good and rewarding.

The story in SteamWorld 2 takes off from the first one and is really just an excuse to talk to some wacky characters and explore a complex of underground tunnels. It has some twists that are fun and though it isn't extremely original, it also isn't boring.

SteamWorld Dig 2 is a fun exploration platformer with some good upgrade and traversal mechanics. I had a good time with this game.

You know those flowcharts for “What movie should I watch”, or “What game should I play”? Imagine one for search-action games, where the first box would ask if you've played Super Metroid. With that obligation out of the way, the question would be why you enjoyed it. If it was for finding fun new abilities and items, then go to Symphony of the Night. If it was for the action or atmosphere, go to Hollow Knight. If it was just for the joy of going on a journey, Ori and the Blind Forest would be the place to go. No matter what aspect you enjoyed the most, the recent explosion of the genre means there’s at least one game that fully focuses on it, which puts me in a tough spot for recommending Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom. It’s a game that can’t be placed anywhere near the top of the chart, a game that focuses more on being generally pleasant rather than focused. There certainly is a lighthearted mood to enjoy, but the zones are the unimaginative roster of grasslands/temple/ocean/jungle/ice/fire/etc that wouldn’t appeal to those wanting a thick atmosphere. There are a couple fun abilities to use, but the majority could be viewed as Samus’ powers simply broken into pieces. Your lion form has a dash that lets you charge through certain blocks, the pig form has bombs to break other ones, it’s the same stuff you’ve seen before presented in a superficially different way. The challenges are a little more difficult than the average game, but it’s never due to mechanical skill comparable to Hollow Knight, but rather little “gotcha” moments like an enemy swinging in from off-screen to knock you into a pit at the end of a lengthy platforming section. It’s not that any of this kills the appeal though; if someone told me they were interested in the game I certainly wouldn’t dissuade them, it’s just that I just find it difficult to imagine who that sort of person might be. The best I can guess is someone who just loves the genre, but has already played all the classics. So, I give it my recommendation… but only after you’ve played all my other recommendations. See you in a few years!