Bio
weise

gaming systems currently owned: Wii, Wii U, NES/SNES mini, Pokemon Mini, Nintendo Switch, 3ds, new 3ds, ds, Gameboy Advance, Gamecube, Xbox 360, Xbox one, PS3, PS Vita, Sega Dreamcast, Xbox Series X, Playdate, PS2,
Personal Ratings
1★
5★

Badges


Gone Gold

Received 5+ likes on a review while featured on the front page

Adored

Gained 300+ total review likes

GOTY '23

Participated in the 2023 Game of the Year Event

Trend Setter

Gained 50+ followers

Pinged

Mentioned by another user

Early Access

Submitted feedback for a beta feature

GOTY '22

Participated in the 2022 Game of the Year Event

Clearin your Calendar

Journaled games at least 15 days a month over a year

Elite Gamer

Played 500+ games

2 Years of Service

Being part of the Backloggd community for 2 years

Full-Time

Journaled games once a day for a month straight

Shreked

Found the secret ogre page

Loved

Gained 100+ total review likes

Popular

Gained 15+ followers

Roadtrip

Voted for at least 3 features on the roadmap

Best Friends

Become mutual friends with at least 3 others

Donor

Liked 50+ reviews / lists

Busy Day

Journaled 5+ games in a single day

Well Written

Gained 10+ likes on a single review

GOTY '21

Participated in the 2021 Game of the Year Event

Liked

Gained 10+ total review likes

Gamer

Played 250+ games

Noticed

Gained 3+ followers

On Schedule

Journaled games once a day for a week straight

N00b

Played 100+ games

Favorite Games

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Skylanders: Giants
Skylanders: Giants
Pokémon Omega Ruby
Pokémon Omega Ruby
Return of the Obra Dinn
Return of the Obra Dinn
Pentiment
Pentiment

695

Total Games Played

024

Played in 2024

201

Games Backloggd


Recently Played See More

Helsing's Fire
Helsing's Fire

Mar 29

Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth
Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth

Mar 29

Reel-istic Fishing
Reel-istic Fishing

Mar 24

Super Mario Maker
Super Mario Maker

Mar 23

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD

Mar 23

Recently Reviewed See More

Everyone has that one game. The one which they have started to play but shelved at some point. But it doesn’t end there, as you will continue to think about it. The only thing stopping you from continuing your journey is you making up excuses from picking it up again.
For me that game was Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, a game whose existence has fascinated me way before I ever got the chance to play it, just as it does now after finally completing it; my playthrough spanning around two years.

My fascination of Soul Reaver sprung of, from another fascination of mine. I was born in 2004 and thus barely missed the time Sega was a competitor in the console business. They might just have the most interesting history in videogames and that is what made me suddenly really want to own a Dreamcast in 2021. Browsing through some of the more well received games for the console, I came across a relatively little-known game with maybe 500 logged players on this very website and a respectable rating, you probably know where this is going.
Looking up “Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver” on YouTube, I found a ton of people singing its praises, especially when it comes to its story; it was then that I realized I needed to play this, and I eventually did.

Back in January I released a Blood Omen review (which I don’t recommend reading), in which I stated multiple reasons, of why I might’ve stopped playing Soul Reaver and while they may have been a contributor as to why, they weren’t the main reason. Truth is, I didn’t enjoy the game very much.
While I could derive enjoyment out of the technical prowess and it’s devotion to telling it’s grandiose story without having to read a single word of text, it was the gameplay that kept the game from actually clicking with me and reading some of the reviews at the time, this wasn’t just an issue I had with it.
The game just isn’t nice to people who are conditioned to all the modern QoL improvements the industry has been blessed with, combat being the biggest offender to me back then.

So during the last hours of last year, only a day after completing this games predecessor, I sat myself down with my phone on a “tripod”, which I had constructed using a selfie-stick, when I was 12 years old and wanted to become a YouTuber, recording my whole journey through this game (which I unfortunately can’t share as I also used it as a form of a video diary) and most importantly started from a new profile, as I thought I might’ve missed something with the combat-system back then and therefore wanted to experience that opening hour, which made me shelve the game, a little more than a year ago, again.
And I was right, the moment I started playing Soul Reaver again, I couldn’t stop doing so and do now really enjoy what they tried to do with its combat and its way of incentivizing the player to scour your surroundings.
Every encounter you have with an enemy at the beginning of the game will play out like its own little puzzle, as for any non-human enemy-type you will not only have to beat them up, as they cannot die, but when they are stunned, find an object to finish them off and devour their soul. Said object of interest may be a spear, that skewers them, but it can also be a light source, a spiky part of the walls surrounding you, a campfire, an accumulation of water and many more.
Your creativity is only aided the longer you play as you might find enemies immune to one of these methods together with others that aren’t and now plan your fight accordingly.
The moment I got the titular Soul Reaver, which is basically able to defeat any enemy, I was worried that this would be detrimental to the combat-system, but rather than relying on it further on it would only proof as a new option in Raziel’s kit, as it will only be available to use at full-health (in the Material-Realm) which isn’t always sustainable.

Talking of which, the game incorporates a system of switching between realms. Not only are both loaded at any given time, but the game will remember every location of everything you have/haven’t ever interacted with. I cannot start to think what kind of sorcery this would’ve needed to be pulled of in the 90s, or even today for that matter. And when I see every object, I really mean that. During backtracking, which is mostly optional, but you are really missing out on some amazing side-content if you chose not to engage with it, I found myself thinking “oh I remember putting that there.” or “oh yeah that enemy followed me here back then, didn’t it?”, more times than I can count.

Outside of combat your gameplay will be spend exploring the landscapes of Nosgoth, which have changed a lot since your last adventure. If I had to compare the changes to anything, it would be how Gotham City changes during the Dark Knight trilogy, with it basically functioning as its own character in Begins, and existing as a background to the narrative of The Dark Knight, the only difference being, that I didn’t see this as detrimental in this case.
Nosgoth is definitely more videogamey here in the sense that the game starts you of with a platforming tutorial at a place that only exists, because you need to learn how to platform at some point, but these extreme cases are few and far between, as the game also has its high points of its world-design at pretty much all the major locations.
For example, the entrance to the Human Citadel is flooded to keep out vampires and only houses one of Rahab’s’ tribe, which evolved to swim over time. But if you change to the Spectral Realm, it will be the home of many more Sluagh than regular, which feast on all the lost souls.
The Human Citadel is a masterclass in level-design for a 3D-Zelda like game in general. I got there shortly after defeating Melchiah, at the beginning of the game and spend almost an hour just exploring and thinking I had seen most if not everything it has to offer. I then went on going back there after each new acquired ability and not only realized that my previous assessment was totally wrong, but that I had yet to explore the majority of its content. I have rarely seen a, dare I mention totally optional, location that opens up so much after each new chapter of a game.

This serves as a microcosm of Lok’s design, which is built around the fact that you may save at any time. But as I already mentioned, saving will not bring you back to your previous location, no it will bring you back to the beginning of the game, where you can select between fast-travel points; but rather save the location of every object, which serve as shortcuts.

This is demonstrated best with this game’s dungeons, which are in my opinion far better designed than any 3D Zelda dungeon, I have experienced.
Now they also aren’t close to being perfect. The Silenced Cathedral has an intentional softlock, if you enter the Spectral Realm in the wrong room, but said softlock, funnily enough, also signifies the biggest strengths of Soul Reaver’s non-linear dungeons, as even if you get trapped in a room, you can always save your progress and therefore barely lose any progress.
Was it still demoralizing? Yes, of course, you can observe a big gap in my playtime after it happened, after it happened to me, but the second I started to play again, I realized that what had taken me half an hour to get to last time, only takes around five now, as you can see (epilepsy warning) here, because every puzzle was already solved and serving as a short-cut, I never really lost my progress.

I won’t argue that softlocks are good game design of course, just saying that they would be more detrimental when they occur in any other game, because of how good this one is designed to accommodate that issue.

The dungeon design in general is more akin to a Metroid-Vania, as you will go through it without any new abilities, and see many points of interest, which you will then later check out after acquiring said ability after defeating the boss, which also uses it against you.
I won’t spoil any of the secrets, but the way your view of the Drowned Abbey changes, just by you being able to traverse the waters in the Material Realm could be a whole paragraph on its own.

Now the game (still) isn’t perfect, and I still have my own gripes with it, withholding me from replaying it anytime soon.
For one, this isn’t a game I can just sit down and enjoy, as you really must lock-in and search any nook and cranny for maximum enjoyment, something helped by the fact I recorded my playthrough and could easily rewatch any points of interest. If I didn’t have that, I would’ve probably had to look up a guide at some points, due to the lack of an in-game map.
Combat also can still be a bit tedious and it’s often just better to right-out ignore any enemies. The glyphs were more fun to hunt down, than use. The boss fights, while cleverly designed to be puzzle boxes where you must find your enemies weakness, and use your surroundings, to defeat them rather than hand-to-hand combat, still mostly don’t put up much of a fight.
The drawing-distance and camera are hurt by the hardware and unfortunately the fact that the world is constantly loaded twice, which probably is no issue when playing the fan-made HD-remaster, which was good enough to get the people responsible for it noticed by Crystal Dynamics and got them to work on the recent Tomb Raider remasters.

And that is not even touching on this games story, which is expectingly great coming off such a great basis, being Blood Omen.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is not just a cornerstone of the medium as a whole and one of the most technically impressive games ever made, it is also one of the best games I have ever played and made me even more happy with my recent acquisition of a PlayStation 2, including every sequel of this game.

Soul Reaver will now, and the foreseeable future, be that game; that one game I always continue to think about and will always remember.

Mars After Midnight is a game I have been anticipating to play for around two years now, more specifically after completing another Lucas Pope- and now one of my favorite games ever made Return of the Obra Dinn. While not the only reason, the announcement of Mars After Midnight as a Playdate exclusive of all things, was a big contributor to me buying the console and I don’t think I’m alone with that, as their tweets about the game are noticeably more popular and comments about it riddle the sections of tweets that don’t even mention it.
After the announcement of the release date, around two weeks ago, even after playing through this game, it still doesn’t feel real to finally own it after this long time, so I probably don’t have to describe how high my expectations for this game were.

Did it meet said expectations?
Yes!
Did it exceed them?
No, but that should never be a standard to hold anything on now, should it?

Mars After Midnight is another entry in Lucas Pope’s paperwork series and is (to my knowledge) the first one based around a job that has yet to exist.
You will see yourself as the owner of a Martian-help-center and work at the reception while finding out which Martian, Robot or even Human needs help. The ways of going about this are relatively simple. Some you can deduce, for some you need to use a device and for others both, just know that there are always 6 Martians that need any given kind of help.
After letting someone in, they may eat some refreshments and may leave a mess, which you may have to clean up for the next customer to dabble in said refreshments. After the session is done you get two Mars-Dollars for every right customer. These Mars-Dollars can then be used to advertise, buy food etc. for the next Martians. They can also be spend on items or new treatments, sold by a merchant that shows up every day.

Planning out your next day is always fun, with you looking at the map of your colony, with the living quarters of the six Martians you want to attend being highlighted and picking out where to advertise and which food is most popular at any given place, every day. The only issue I had with this is that it disincentivizes experimenting with new foods, as the cleaning-up process, the only one with a timer, will be different with every item of food. Furthermore the first item of food doesn’t only cover a lot of area, but becomes the easiest to clean up with your dependency on it in the early game.

I’m conflicted on the amount of Martians you have to get right, as 6 is pretty much the perfect amount, if you fail, as you will have more than enough time to deduce what you did wrong, but it does get a bit repetitive if you instantly know what to do and now have to go through a random amount of visitors to pick out the six obvious candidates. This small issue gets heightened by the fact that this game is really easy, and I only had to redo two jobs, because I forgot what reading was; so the fact that six is the perfect amount in those cases didn’t really come up. Even if you fail the punishments are relatively insignificant as you get paid more than enough, for those 2 Mars-Dollars not to matter, if you only miss a few.

As I already mentioned, there aren’t that many ways of finding out which Martian needs a given treatment, but don’t worry, there is enough variation in these ways of deduction for this to never get repetitive, over it’s relatively short runtime of ~3 hours. The gadgets especially, even with them being simple in concept, were fun to mess around with, just to see the reactions of the Martians you try them on, which is even incentivized by the reactions acting as a collectible, with new phrases being registered in the blab-o-dex, a sort of encyclopedia of the Martian language.

Now I’ve tried to stay spoiler-free up until now, but there is one small gripe I had with the game which I cannot talk about without spoiling something that happens at around 2/3rds through the game, so I will write my conclusion here while everything after may be a spoiler.
Mars After Midnight is probably not worth you buying a Playdate, solely to play it, for, even with it being a quality, although simple game. If you are on the fence of buying one anyways, with this game just being a big contributor to why, then there probably is no better time than now, as they have now ended the preorder structure, with me waiting for around a year for mine to arrive in September and there currently being a sale on their online storefront going on; some of my recommendations of other games on Playdate to keep an eye on are Resonant Tale and Sparrow Solitaire

The spoiler(-y) section will begin here.

As I already mentioned something happens in Mars After Midnight at around the 2-hour mark, being that you will leave your colony and go to the people’s colony, which primarily serves as a way for there to be more visual variety. My problem with this comes from the brevity of time you spend there, as the previous colony had 78 Martians to provide help for, while this one has only 24, which also means it is way smaller, which then means even less variety in the food items to use and such. I also found the ways to deduce way easier in this section than some of the more difficult ones of the first colony.

I’m still very conflicted on how I feel about Yo-Kai Watch 2. It’s the only one in the series that I would call derivative of one of its predecessors.
And while I can see it being an overall improvement over the first Yo-Kai Watch game, I did still not enjoy it as much; as I believe most of its improvements can be summarized by saying that there is a lot of stuff in this game; you will basically not be able to do everything there is in this game.

The version I played “Psychic Specters” is the definitive Version of Yo-Kai Watch 2, combining the contents of both Bony Spirits and Fleshy Souls, but unlike the Pokémon equivalents, which may mix and match aspects or even add some, this game gives you the choice of which versions content you want to engage with at certain points in the story, which is as interesting as it is flawed, because if you want to truly experience everything there is in this game you now have to either write down every choice you take, to do the opposite on your second playthrough, or basically just play through the base versions one after another on this fancier cartridge.

When it comes to your gameplay loop, this is basically a rehash of the first one. You might expect QoL changes, but I believe it to actually the other way around, as Mirapo, these games fast-travelling system, and the bike will be locked away from you for way longer, the latter you for some reason only unlock at around 85% through the main game. So most of your (early) game will be spend learning the ins and outs of the Yo-Kai Watch train-network, which takes you station by station (makes sense), it will ask you whether or not you want to exit every station, during the rides you will either be encountering people/Yo-Kai that basically tell you nothing, give you an item or battle you.
Another Mirapo related issue is when you travel to the past, you won’t be able to use them at all, with one exception (which doesn’t count), meaning you will have to walk everywhere, in these maze-like past versions of the city, which at least has some of the greatest music of the already great OST.

Speaking of which, the soundtrack while brief is as good as in any other Yo-Kai game. The only problem with it being that most of it is taken straight from its prequel, with most new tracks being restricted to the past areas. The most egregious example of old music being used is during one moment where the villains of the chapter show up and the Final Boss theme of the first game just starts playing for some reason.

One change I was really waiting to see is how they fixed how you befriend Yo-Kai, as it is my biggest gripe with the first game and it was (somewhat) fixed in the third one and color me shocked when I found out it’s the worst it has ever been. Now don’t get me wrong here, it’s roughly the same as the first in theory, but this game forces you to befriend Yo-Kai way more than that game. There is one point where you enter a cave, where you must use your Yo-Kai to change the water levels to progress. When I got there my playtime was at around 8 hours, the water can be at three different levels, and you need one specific Yo-Kai per level. Luckily you can encounter them in that cave, but remember if you beat them, it will take a seemingly random amount of time for them to respawn, and they might just not do so at all. So, you better pray that the RNG for them befriending you is in your favor, as the item that guarantees befriending does not exist yet, and guess what happened to me.
One of them, this guy right here, just hates me for some reason, and I spend a bit more than two hours in that cave just hoping that they would befriend me. Well at least you can get the Yo-Kai at the same place where you need them.
A bit later in the game you will hunt down some documents the protagonists dad lost on his way to work, which first forces you to ride the train multiple times, after doing that Whisper tells you to get a Yo-Kai called Flushback which will be able to go through the memories of you father and find out where he left the documents. Now guess three times where you might find such a Yo-Kai. The cave of course and if you didn’t get them last time, have fun walking from one side of the map to the other, if you didn’t activate the Mirapo and do all that encountering in the cave once again, just for that to not give you a clear answer as to where he left the documents.

Now to the thing I was the most disappointed with. The combat system is the same from the first game with two small changes. 1: When charging your soultimate attack, there is one new method of doing so and 2: if you click the center of the Yo-Kai Watch you have two new options, being a stronger soultimate (I think) and the option to spam-click the opponent and either deal damage, steal their soul-charge, or giving you a higher chance to befriend them, which does not solve my previous complaint as you have to first inspirit the enemy, it being random as to which effect it will have on them and it still not guaranteeing it.
Back in 2022 I wrote a review for Yo-Kai Watch 3, in which I called this combat system of Yo-Kai Watch 1 more of an annoyance than fun to mess around with, which is a sentiment I still mostly agree with, and guess what, these two minor changes don’t change much. This is magnified by the fact that I didn’t even like the boss fights in this one as much as I did in the others. There are some winners, but most of them are just bland and don’t require much strategy.
Let’s go back to the tidal cave (with the most minor spoiler warning I can give out), which I’ve spend so much time complaining about. At the end of your first excursion through it you will encounter some pirate-Yo-Kai-boss-guy (I think he is from the early-game of 1), whose name I can’t remember. The only thing I did was using all of my front three Yo-Kai’s soultimate-attack and he was basically already defeated, and this happens here more often than I hoped it would.
I will now talk a bit about the final boss, without spoiling who or what their attacks are, but if you feel unsafe you may skip to the next paragraph. I was really looking forward to seeing if they fixed the difficulty curve of the first one, where it is easy for all of the game, only for the final boss to suddenly become impossible to beat at your current level, which you thought to be over leveled, but in a funny twist of events that didn’t happen at all. This game is so derivative of its predecessor that it even copied the two-hour grind for the final boss.

My last point is on the writing of this game. Now don’t get me wrong these games are not known for their groundbreaking storytelling, with the story basically only existing to give you a reason for why you are now suddenly in an all-out Yo-Kai war, with some funny quips thrown in to lighten the mood, but I found this one in particular to be lacking in the latter. The main villains of these games usually don’t have a presence before the game is already basically over and while they are handled better here than in the first one, this is still mostly the case. My problem however isn’t that they did that again, that was expected, but much rather how they handled the new tribe of Yo-Kai, the Wicked-Tribe), which you can see on the box-art. They also only show up during the end of the game and do nothing, outside of being mini bosses that you can dispatch with two attacks, showcasing maybe the biggest wasted potential in this series. At least they give out around 700 experience points.

Now I spend most of this review being critical of the game but remember that is still an overall improvement over the first game, which is also flawed, but a good game in its own right. I’m just disappointed that it didn’t change more. This is also the end of my journey across the Yo-Kai Watch series, at least until this materializes into something, which started all the way back in 2021, or maybe even 2015 if you count my time with the demo-version of the first one and I don’t want to end it on such a downer, as this is such a great series and definitely worth experiencing, especially the third one, which I was so lucky to buy before the 3DS eshop closed down and has since become one of my favorite games of all time. My final ranking is 3 > 4 > 1 > 2.