Review of Arcueid's route:

Pretty neat except that time I had to read about 3 different states of being a vampire for the 10th time

Realizing I did not turn on the porn censor thingy made part of this game like a RE4 QTE lol

Beating this game around 2015 as a kid who dabbled with games like Castlevania III and Mega Man 2 on the Wii felt like I was finally able to get the challenge those games presented. Although nowadays I’d say this is possibly the second worst game out of all the Shovel Knight games that come with it for free now (second worst out of a collection of games I find very enjoyable), it’s a very good starting point to appreciate the games as going from “this is a unique spin on things I’ve seen in different NES games” to it’s own thing that feels fun and so refreshing that this game feels stiff which says a lot yet I can still go back to it and have fun

I might’ve said this in my review of the PSP remake but the sad truth with this game is it was made to be an ambitious and bold experiment in an era of looking forward for the future of Megami Tensei. This has become evident to me (a “megaten maniac”) with the fact that no video game company nowadays would throw away a system they built upon to make a spinoff that boldly would try and do something so risky like being cinematic (based on interviews this seemed to be the main goal). Sadly this creates a tedious gameplay experience that hides a genuinely good story and one I feel like is the most “wow I need to go outside and live my life now” Persona game I’ve played honestly. Whether it’s having the best use of a hidden video game character for legitimate thematic relevance, the crawling darkness of peering deeper into the mind, the absorbing darkness and coolness of the music, or the inner reflection on loneliness in a genre that’s kind of all about playing a long as game by yourself. I think Megami Ibunroku Persona was a great and interesting experiment.

https://youtu.be/2DYqwhSTeGQ?feature=shared

This is sadly a review of 25% of this game as I noticed way later on that a scratch was on my disc to where if I talked to a certain character the game would crash so I’m going to probably end up finishing this way later but here are my thoughts so far on this game:

Easily my favorite opening gameplay pacing in a Dragon Quest game like genuinely it pushes you to really save your resources more than I even felt with the newer DQ3 release tbh. The characters are fun, DQ certainly is more accessible (and on a basic human level more lively) with voice acting, and I had so much fun with this game I genuinely got depressed when I found out how badly the disc was scratched when I bought it 5 years ago and was dumb enough not to check.

Today I remembered having this game on my giant iPhone notepad of backlog games and I just decided to buy it and yeah good purchase lmao like legitimately this wouldn’t been really damn cool if it got sequels/spinoffs for the Wii/DS. A very nice combination of utilizing tangible 3D movement with a great puzzle framework to make something along the lines of Puzzle Swap, Tetris, etc.

Highly recommended if you want a fun puzzle game to occasionally open up and play some rounds in (if I ever play local multiplayer of this it’d be too sick fr)

Compared to my last review I’ve spent a decent amount of hours at one of the arcades in my area playing this game, I genuinely wanted to in a sense defeat how blunt I was in that but even just meeting the game on its terms and practicing I just get frustration more than anything.

While I can squint and see the outline of games like Tekken existing because of this if you think about this existing a year after Street Fighter II dropped and this was developed by the second biggest video game company at the time you add up something that feels gimmicky rather than what it is, innovative.

For starters, there is no cohesion between 2d fighting and the 3D space fundamentally. When you’re off the axis your opponent is on you are essentially caught in the stream of wherever you can move until the game eventually corrects itself. This one fundamental piece crumbles the house of cards this game is built off of, if I can die because my opponent can be in a space I cannot reasonably counter (or because the resources this game provide me do not teach me these mechanics), what good is the 3D space if I can’t utilize it besides being a way to sidestep the entire genre I’m playing?

It’s one thing to develop technology that changes everything (I imagine it was incredibly hard for them to even make the hit boxes as decent as they are here which rival even most 2D fighting games at the time), but it’s another thing if the game you’ve made just doesn’t feel good and the art of game design is making the compromise between fun and technical.

Summary: I wanna see how the other games improve upon this

At the time of me writing this Silent Hill 1 is the only pure horror game I’ve beaten (I really don’t think RE4 would fit with this lol), so I sat down a bit and read/played this intending to finish it until I realized just how quickly the first hour of the original game passed and I’m here now.

I’m a big defender of compromises in design being used to work around a platform’s limitation but this novel’s existence completely strips Silent Hill of the one thing it had that WAS good in my opinion, legitimate atmosphere. The images in this game are stitches of extremely compressed cutscene images from the PS1 game or custom sprites added, if this wasn’t a commercial product and idk a fan project I’d think this was pretty neat but I keep imagining that someone had to buy this in a package and already you lose so much of the game it’s adapting within the first 20 minutes.

If they made all the assets for this game as a new adaptation I think I really wouldn’t be shelving this but it just is a factually lazy product, it isn’t hard to make a basic menu and text in front of images you dragged over to use it’s interesting if you actively work around the limitations.

Summary: Konami

https://youtube.com/watch?v=J5RjssMC-_I&feature=shared

(level 1 route review)

I’m not gonna lie this game has always been in that small subsection of games that I’ve booted up briefly when they dropped on something I can access them and then I don’t touch them forever. I tend to have a “follow my heart” approach when it comes to picking a game to just hang out with (this is a good and pretty annoying thing), well I did not expect to sit down and beat this game in one sitting lmao and my opinion of it drastically changed but I highly respect its design and appreciate it a lot more now honestly.

While having 3D graphics that made me initially question if I truly was a human being with the ability to perceive depth, over time the game’s on rails design and pattern signaling really helped pull it through even with the rather basic vector graphics. I think it says a lot also that this was an early 3D game where Nintendo was not only trying to welcome new players (it’s probably why it’s this easy lol) but also added detail with your allies being in the fight and wildly different boss patterns. A lot of these things were improved on in the sequel Star Fox 64 but here it feels like the glue that kept the vectorized cardboard together, I went from completely wanting to drop this game to being a fan that says enough.

I am taking a damn break from it cause I also have motion sickness now lmao

Hmmmmmm

Yeah so let me put a big sticker here on the front this was the first ever Square (Square in general) game I ever played and I vividly remembered being very hyped by it as an 8 year old. Kingdom hearts actually used to kind of be up there for Zelda with me like I’d literally be that one kid who’d be idk saying weird pretend stuff about keys and try and do the Organization XIII hoodie look lmao. So yeah I may be a bit nice with this one idk you be the judge.

I think it’s a bit important to put this right at the front because I’d say this game has been something I’ve found to be very cool for a large portion of my life (even if I did not finish this until today) and finally I sat down and finished this thing a year after I finished KH1 for the first time wow.

Now that I’ve finished CoM, I think I half find it to be something that very easily could’ve been so crazy if it was done differently but also it is a mess in its own ways (some unavoidable really).

For starters: I’ve at least sunk like 5-8 hours into every pre-KH3 KH game and man these handheld games just do the Disney worlds better lmao like the crossover charm does not overstay its welcome when the movie dump consists of 2 minutes of “here’s the deal, here’s how it ties with the main story now go do your thing” like dang the Disney worlds can actually be neat (I do not like Disney). Second and this may change when I finally finish KH2 next (and me getting very deep into 368/2 made me develop this opinion) wow I just like KH in these spinoff games where it’s like “this is a thing that’s happening to this character and they’re trying to exist in the situation” vs mainline games feeling like they gotta push the story every time there’s non-Disney dialogue because big franchise entry. The combination of memories being represented by the cards, some things being reconfigured because memory, our main cast going deeper into literally losing their dang memories (and these are supposed to be a goofy af kid, a duck, and an individual by the name of Goofy), the introduction of Nobodies just align well to the point I’d say this just worked more than KH1 from a writing perspective and as a standalone game even. I’m also gonna roast KH1 here (in a similar fashion to my review of it really) but wow all the worlds looking like rooms makes sense here for once lmao.

Okay so here’s the bad, this game’s existence is ambitious and brings KH’s action rpg combat to the GBA by having this card system instead of awkwardly trying to cram it into the system but you can tell it presses against the limits a lot. For starters deck building is a bit clunky, acquiring new cards is kind of a pain a little bit (this isn’t entirely an issue that made things hard but still just something I felt was awkward), and I think this concept also would’ve been a lot more interesting if like the character you played as didn’t have an already established weapon (that feels like the game really pushes you into anyways). If this sounds like I’m saying this shouldn’t have been a KH game, lol.

I wouldn’t dare say this game is better than KH1 (none of these bosses and the in-game mechanics come close to that game’s second to last final boss tbh) but it does some things way better and I feel like this was more of a good showcase for how the franchise’s concepts can work well when they’re not crammed into the awkward framework of plot->Disney movie recap->plot

Summary: I’ve indeed loved Yu-Gi-Oh for about 75% of my time on this planet

As an individual born in the 21st century who for some reason started coding in C in middle school because for some reason I bought those kind of video game programming tutorial books, you could literally say I took modern hardware for granted back when I was tinkering with trying to make my game ideas in that (at the time seemingly) limited space.

It’s with this that I say wow yeah this game owns especially for the constraints that made it exist, you can not only see the outline of games like Galaga, 1942, etc. but the game is actually somewhat fun and strategic and is only just 7K bytes like, think about that lol

Better than any 3D Mario game before or after it?

No, not even close.

Wii U-to-literally-right-now-era baby game design?

Yes

A genuine fun game that you can sit and chill with that’s unique enough to exist as a pre-Switch handheld game with secrets that at least appease what I would expect to find in a Mario game?

Yes

Summary: New Super Mario Bros. but what if Nintendo made a sequel that did not make me want to sell it within the first week of me acquiring it