Finally, we have the last one in the GBA trilogy, Aria of Sorrow, and you have no idea how excited I was to play this one. People often say it's the second-best, if not the single-best, of the Metroidvania titles in the franchise, and I don't agree with that statement in the slightest.
It's just as if Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance merged into one, having both the best and the worst of each one:

The story is even more bland than the two previous ones. Remember when people made fun of Jason in Friday the 13th because he went to space? In this one, Dracula goes to Japan. TO MT MF FUJI OF ALL PLACES.

There are also a lot of characters involved this time, but only two of them are really crucial to the plot, the others are really just there for decoration.

You have a nice variety of weapons this time, like axes, swords, whips, and whatnot, but none of them impact the game in any meaningful way.

Traveling through the Castle is...tiresome at this point, it feels like there's nothing new to see anymore—no cool secret passageways, no places where you are not supposed to go, no new ideas; it's just Circle of the Moon all over again.

The card system is back, this time better implemented and with more room for experimentation, but that just means more mindless grinding. You even need to get every single card (this time called souls) to reach the true ending, and it's just not worth it. The last boss battle is cool and all, but it's not mind-blowing or anything.

Music is the best of the three and worth a listen; the GBA soundchip was capable of more than people think, and this soundtrack is proof of that.

Bosses drag on forever; they are just bullet... Uh, whip sponges. I think years from now I'll only remember the giant boss in the wall for the initial shock factor and the last true boss because of its crazy visual design.

Other than that, I really don't have much to say about this one. I'm just very underwhelmed; I expected something timeless, something that could rival Symphony of the Night, Hollow Knight, and Metroid Dread, and it's just not.
I feel like people make a big deal out of this one, and it just does not deliver.

Good game, but not on the list of the best Metroidvania titles of all time.

After Zero Mission, my expectations were off the roof. Not only did that game capture everything that makes the Metroid franchise so unique and stand out among others, with that atmospheric, completely embracing music that keeps you on your toes while you explore dark, creepy corridors, not knowing what's going to be waiting for you, but it featured amazing map design as well, with compact yet surprisingly open areas that allowed for just the right room for exploration to be able to take small detours without traveling too far from where you were supposed to go.

If all that wasn't already enough, that game also featured one of the most memorable moments in the whole franchise, changing the play style completely from what we had experienced up until that point:
That one section when Samus is off her suit and you've got to sneak past enemies. That, and that section alone, is one of the most tense ones I've ever played in a videogame, to the point where that's the part I remember about Zero Mission the most. It was just that impactful for me.

In short, Metroid Zero Mission is an all-around great videogame.
Metroid Fusion is not.

Right off the bat, the "You are trapped inside a ship" premise felt cliché and lacking in identity.
The game tries to make up for it by dividing the ship into numerous different sections, each with a different theme; there's the obligatory water section, the fire one, and the jungle one, for example, and yet this does nothing but make the game even more shallow, like it's trying to complete an obligatory "To visit" list instead of creating a cohesive map.
And while that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if the gameplay was fun and did something interesting with each area, the issue is that, well, the game does nothing like that.

The difficulty spike in the last quarter of the game ruined my experience with it almost completely.
It's not only that your enemies are way stronger and would kamikaze straight into you on sight, nor that the last pack of bosses drain your life (sometimes literally) faster than the time you'll need to travel in order to fight them again, nor even the fact that they have a lot of BS attacks that leave you with little to no time to react, but it's also that you get no recharge stations to replenish both your ammo and health, which just forces you to grind for them, making the game really tedious.

I liked the narrative, being able to get inside Samus mind even if it was just for a little while was cool, and the idea of having a much stronger nemesis that can completely overpower you at any given time was a great decision.
It reminded me of Resident Evil: Nemesis, and that's always a good thing in my book.

The ending was fantastic. I liked it quite a bit!

Still, none of Metroid Fusion's positive characteristics can make up for its numerous negative aspects. I'd rather watch a gameplay instead of going through the whole thing again.

At least in my opinion, of course.

Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you" and that's exactly how I felt playing Final Fight.

At first, it was fun; punching people in the face was satisfying enough, and the music was good. But then, slowly but surely, something within me started to awaken. Something evil, foul, and far beyond my comprehension

Maybe it was that it seemed as if I was punching the same people over and over again wearing different clothing to an endless infinity, the fact that you have very limited moves, or maybe it was simply watching the enemies repeat animations before standing up again. And I stood there countless times, patiently waiting for them to come out of the bounderies of the TV screen until they were ready to return to the world inside the video game...

Suddenly, big enemies appeared, grabbing me and giving me no chance to fight back, draining my life with just one move and my soul with it. And I swear for everything that's good and almighty that I've seen the same dog barking at me on this bridge at least four times by now.

I decided to play Final Fight, but I never thought it would be the game that would end up playing me.

I really wanted to like this game better than the first one, but I did not.

Ok, first let's talk about the new:

You can play as a girl now.
That's it. 

Everything else is just the same; in fact, I think this one might be even more repetitive than the first. The story makes you travel all around the world, yet you are fighting the same four guys over and over again. They did not take advantage of the unique setting of each country, and it feels like such a missed opportunity. If you get rid of the backgrounds, you are basically just playing the first level for over an hour and twenty minutes.

Gameplay is also the same, so there are no improvements whatsoever. 

P.S. Maki is cute, though.

Final Fight 3 is a big improvement over the previous games in the franchise.

First of all, we've got four characters to choose from, each with their own unique moveset and multiple special moves. I can't believe I'm saying it, but this game actually has more than just one special move; not only that, but you can also run if you double tap the forward button and do a backflip if you double tap the forward one to avoid enemy attacks. You can also do a super special move that can completely destroy enemies once your gauge bar is full with a combination of buttons. It's kind of hard to pull off, but it's really satisfying when you do.

It's not fantastic, but it makes the game genuinely enjoyable. Enemy variety has also been improved, and there's an actual sense of strategy on how to approach every wave of enemies since they all behave differently.

It still gets repetitive after a while, the bosses are nothing to write home about, and the level design is as bland as it gets, but the additions do make for a better, truly enjoyable game.

So, yeah, I liked this one quite a bit. If I ever feel the need to play one game in the series again, it's definitely going to be this one.

Middle of the road beat 'em up featuring amazing sprite work and animations as well as incredible sound design in the sound effects department.

You can kick, punch, jump, do a flashy special, and beat the living hell out of every enemy. Repetitive yet short and sweet, some of the boss battles are really unfair, and you can tell they were designed to steal quarters.

It's a nice treat, and The Tuxedo Man appearances are way too funny. It may not be the game we fans of Sailor Moon deserve, but it's not as bad as some people say.

There are many things that make Streets of Rage more than just another standard beat 'em up.

First, being able to recover from a throw by pressing both the jump and up buttons is a game-changing feature. One of my biggest complaints with these types of games is that when an enemy grabs you, there's simply nothing you can do about it, and it's pretty much a guaranteed death, but this is not the case here; in fact, if someone grabs you from behind, you can still fight the enemy in front of you, a very efficient way to prevent enemies from ganging up on you.

The graphics are okay; the background looks beautiful, but the characters themselves don't look very polished, and I do think this is a very valid complaint if we take into consideration that this game was released in the same year as Sonic 1 and one year after Thunder Force II. The controls are very stiff, and that's my major complaint with the game; it just feels like an NES or early Master System title.

Bosses can be very intimidating at first, but once you get their pattern down, you can beat the living hell out of them, so there's an actual reward for being patient and waiting for the right moment to attack.
I also love the detail that when you're trying to grab the fat boss and attempt to throw him, his weight will prevent it, crushing you and causing you a ton of damage in consequence. I just can't get mad at the game. Why did I think that would work?

There's also a whole level that takes place in an elevator, and you can actually throw enemies off it, making them fall straight into the ground. It never gets old; I could do it for hours.

Music is absolutely insane; I think nobody was ready for it when it came out, and it's still better than most video game music today. Hell is better than most techno-house music nowadays.

Great beat 'em 'up; if you overlook its negative points, what we have is a pretty fun game. Now I know what the hype was all about. That's more than I can say about some very well-known, better-rated games in this genre.

I might be getting old because every game that's short, sweet, has good music, and makes me laugh is a good one in my book.

What sets Trouble Shooter, or Battle Mania, apart from others is its comedic tone, which reminds me of old animes such as Dirty Pair or Excel Saga. Bosses are very silly but actually well designed, and every level feels unique in its own right.

The sprites are a bit too big for my liking; the music is fine, but the percussion instruments are a tad loud and won't let you hear the melody clearly. Stage 3 I also think could have been better handled since there's no way to know where you're supposed to go and I had a couple of cheap deaths: very trial and error. But other than that, I enjoyed it quite a bit, and I can't wait to play its sequel.

Girls participating in illegal races, running away from the police, and fighting each other all around the world. Honestly, neat stuff. though, difficulty gets artificially high on the last level, and circuits start to feel a bit repetitive the more you play. You do have a nice selection of characters and cars, but they all play more or less the same.

Still, I think this franchise had potential, and it's criminal that Atlus didn't release more entries. Get it? Criminal, because it's about girls...running away from the police? doing illegal racing? hahaha

I miss my ex.

This is one of the most expensive, if not the single most expensive, videogame in the vast Super Famicom catalog, and me, being the huge nerd that I am, couldn't resist the urge to play it just out of curiosity.

I just wanted to know what the big deal was, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this was not one of those frequent cases in which a game gets extremely overpriced for reasons that don't involve the game's quality. (Caltron 6-In-1, Trip World, or the golden Nintendo World Championship cartridge come to mind.)

This is an actual competent game—a really good one, in fact.

Right off the bat, I can say that the cutesy graphics are stellar, and the main character is also so full of life and personality; she has tons of animations if you stand still, get close to an edge, you get the idea. Enemies have a cute design too and are packed with their own unique animations; I love when games do that.


Your main weapon is a sword, and something that surprised me is that enemies can fight back and clash with yours. That's really cool! I did not expect that!

Each level is non-linear, in the sense that you are required to do a bit of backtracking in order to get extra lives or find the level's heart (which increases your health bar for the rest of the game); some people call it Metroidvania, but it reminded me more of something you'd see in a Monster World game, like Dragon's Liar or IV. There are some really fun platforming sections too.

You also get a new power-up on each level, and the level design will make you constantly swap between them; they are all very unique and distinct from each other, so there's also some room for experimentation in how you approach certain challenges.

The music was sweet and catchy; it's just SNES music at its best, and I liked it a lot.

My only complaint with this game is, and I know I'm going to sound like a hater, but why did this have to be a Super Famicom-only title, man? The console can barely keep up with it, especially on the last levels, where there are tons of enemies and environmental hazards. There are constant loading screens all throughout the game too; nothing crazy, but sometimes they can take up to 7 seconds, and with rooms being very small most of the time, it really starts to get to you. I'll say you do get used to it, but that shouldn't be an issue on a cartridge game, c'mon now.

Some people would say it's because the game is badly optimized or that the developers themselves added punctual slowdowns for a more dramatic effect in certain scenes; I call it the Super Famicom having an awful processor. Really, a Mega CD, Saturn, PlayStation ( ma-maybe a 3DO port?), or even a PC-Engine CD release would have solved this issue, but oh well, it is what it is.

So TL;DR, I had a lot of fun with this one! I will definitely come back to it in the future.