An incredible addition to the Pikmin franchise. This game is lacking in the simplistic charm of the previous Pikmin games, but more than makes up for that in the depth of its mechanics. The game is very polished and looks beautiful, especially considering the limits of the console. The only thing this game loses points for is the plot, which is fun but opens a lot of threads that are left loose. Despite that, this is an incredible game that I would absolutely recc9mend both to past fans and newcomers to the franchise.

its very upsetting that this game came out the way it did because if you look past the awful optimization issues, bugs, glitches, bad graphics, and frame rate issues (which is a LOT to look past i know) the game is genuinely pretty fuckin good

it has its issues still like i dont care about the team star story like at ALL, some of the gym challenges fucking blow, and some of the story beats couldve had more build up without going out of your way to find it. But outside of that you have a good mainline pokemon game with probably the best story since gen 5's black and white.

i wish i could say its a home run for the series but sadly it is extremely held back from being fully complete.

Really neat mystery/horror VN that condenses a good story into something that never gets boring - yet never rushes things at all-, so the pacing is very solid for its medium (although it already has quite some elements and mechanics outside of the traditional VN format).

In terms of ambience and setting, it's strikingly good. The soundtrack is quite nice and did its job well, and even if I didn't grow too attached to any particular melody or tune, the jazz style the investigation music had going on for the detectives' section got me really enjoying every second of it.

The visuals and aesthetics are very nicely done as well, and are the cherry on top of the whole thing, helping cement the whole "urban legends and the darkness surrounding the streets and people of 80's Japan" setting's vibe.
The artstyle is really good, both cute and horrifing at times. The characters' sprites are very expressive and really got to me, and the game's more unconventional use of angles, camerawork and character positioning managed to make dialogues very dynamic and fresh, effortlessly making not many sprites to be used in a wide arrange of situations without it being too repetitive.

And while the characters may not stand out much at first sight, they end up making their way into your heart in one way or another. Richter may be the best example: even if at first he may look real shady or a pathetic joke character at best, he became my favorite in no time.
This is all thanks to the quality of the writing and the dialogues between characters, which felt very compelling.

The story itself is very nicely put together, and surprisingly for its genre and medium it actually ties everything up in a very solid way. The ties between every little aspect and character of the story had me constantly glued to the screen needing to unravel more.
The only complaint I have is that some times the narrative kind of relied on the reader not having picked up on some twist for quite a while which I had already seen coming, but then kind of throwing you the answer to another which I didn't even have time to dwell on and resolve. But nothing major to undermine the experience.

I feel the horror was very nicely done, adding a modern understanding of gameplay to deliver the scares, which felt clever and not just cheap, loud jumpscares. If anything, its more 'quiet' jumpscares were the most bone-chilling part for me.

Overall it's a very solid game with a lot of neat and clever tidbits and a really good atmosphere that completely sets you in its mood, and is very much worth its time.

Such a hot mess in so many ways that it's almost inconceivable. The story is terrible, the music is mediocre, the pacing is awful, the performances are horrible, the writing is disastrous and the structure of the game is mind-bogglingly bad. The one and a half stars are for the wonderful combat system and what little I enjoyed of the camp this game has in droves.

I've been doing a series replay and have been platinuming all the games as I go and will continue to do so, but I'm not platinuming this one. Not because the platinum is hard (FFIX and FFX were much tougher), but because I don't feel like playing more of this game. This is by far the worst mainline Final Fantasy game and it's not even particularly close, and it's definitely the poster child of games I tolerated as a child but can't stand now.