I've played through the entirety of this game multiple times. Some of that is definitely nostalgia, but I do think this is just an excellent title that blends deck builder and RPG epic seamlessly. The way the deckbuilding system and party systems interact, as well as the combos you can do is just excellent.

I can't talk about this game without mentioning the story though. This game has a hell of a story that I won't get into much detail about since it is very spoilable. That said, it starts looking like a typical JRPG story that is full of crazy twists and turns I never saw coming. The voice acting is decent too, and quite funny at times, especially with some of the names people and places have.

This is admittedly not a perfect game though. There are a few places where it can be hard to tell where you're supposed to be going, which led to me accidentally grinding in the wrong area to try and get through then being overleveled for the area I was actually supposed to be in.

There is also one dungeon in particular, the Spirit Tower, which is just miserable. While level design is mostly a hit through this game, that one dungeon occupies the same space in my mind as the Ocarina of Time Water Temple, Mt Moon in pokemon R/B and Tower of the Gods in Wind Waker.

Overall though, outside of that one dungeon, this game is a criminally under-rated gem from the Gamecube era, and I look forward to the remake.

This is in my opinion the perfect Fire Emblem game.

Its mechanics are fine tuned, the maps are more interesting, returning favorites make a return, cinematics appear in a series first and are excellent... but none of that is why I value this game so much.

The story in this game is absolutely top notch. This game has so much to say and says it so, so well. It takes its source material and expands the world around it, explores that games' events on everyone in this world, and even goes beyond and explores a variety of real world social issues. All this is done through the lens of a very interesting plot with some truly crazy story and gameplay twists. Add to that the returning favorites and interesting new characters (Even if some are a bit weak), and you have a winner.

Simply put, this game is a banger.

To properly explain the impact this game had on me, I need to take you back to the olden days of 1999. The N64 is running the market. Batman, Batman Beyond and Superman all have popular television series.
Suddenly, a game appears, taking the popularity of DC and of Nintendo, blending them into one unstoppable superstar of a game. Magazines talk about using all of Superman's powers in 3D for the first time to foil Lex Luthor's nefarious plots. The game commercials show Superman fighting a variety of Supervillains with his incredible powers to save the kidnapped Jimmy and Lois. The box art talks about fighting Metallo, Lex Luthor, The Parasite and even Darkseid in a variety of fully interactible levels. This game sounds incredible.

In those days, I was but a wee child, so I begged my mom to take us to Blockbuster. In our family, renting a game at Blockbuster was a treat we got once per month. There are a lot of good games this year, but my brother and I decided to rent what sounded like it could be game of the year in a year full of classics like the original Smash Brothers, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and Age of Empires 2. On top of that it boasted multiplayer, which was ideal since the decision of what to rent was one we had to make together.

I remember reading the back of the box and the manual as we drove home, impatient to try the game. I want it made ABUNDANTLY clear that nothing from the commercials to the manual have mentioned flying through rings even once. They all mention combat with exciting enemies using an array of powers.

Now dear reader of 2023 or beyond, you already know what child me did not: Everything marketed about this abomination of a game was a lie.

My brother and I got home and saw what we assumed was the tutorial level to fly through rings. Unfortunately, this was much, MUCH easier said than done thanks to the horrendous controls. We were stuck here for a long time. To entertain ourselves we started looking for how to use Superman's powers, but other than awkward punches none of his advertised powers seemed to be in the game. In fact, the only power he seemed to have other than controlling like a lubed bathtub was the power to phase into walls and get stuck there. Needless to say, we were not having fun.
A very long time later, we finally beat it and got to the second level. There we had a 3 second countdown. To this day I still don't know what we were supposed to do, but apparently we didn't do it. Game Over.
Back to the starting rings stage. That's right, this game didn't seem to have any sort of progression mechanic, and a single failure on a 3 second check of something made us start all over.
This was when we stopped playing. I can't remember if there was no multiplayer or if it was so bad that I scrubbed it from my mind, but in any case we both decided this game wasn't it.

My brother and I were children at this time and so it did occasionally happen that if we were having a lot of fun with a game and hadn't finished it, we'd "forget" to remind our mom to take it back. She would obviously be mad and there would be consequences, but we usually got to finish the game.
For Superman 64 we showed up same night asking if we could return it right away to make sure we wouldn't somehow forget and have our mom mad at us over such a bad game.

Long story short, this game is horrendous. It caused me inconvenience and disappointment I shall hold against it for the rest of my days. To my knowledge, no one got sued for false advertising on this game and that is unbelievable to me because this game isn't even in the same cosmos as the product they advertised.

This game is incredible. IMO the best Metroid-vania ever made with no exceptions, and also my favorite game to include souls-like elements, and yes that is counting Elden Ring.

Everything about this game from the atmosphere, to the fluid controls, to the gameplay to the bosses is just perfect.

The ONLY complaint I have is that some of the post-game content, like Godworld, is very tedious and frustrating. Yet even then, Nightmare King Grimm, one of the other post-game bosses, may be my favorite video game boss ever.

This game is a masterpiece and I do think everyone should enjoy it if they enjoy video games.

This is the best party game I've come across.

It's essentially easy to understand Mario maker against your friends where each player gets to add one item to the stage, then all players try to make it to the end of the resulting level. If no one or everyone makes it, no points are awarded, but if only some people make it, then points are awarded in accordance to who completed the stage, who did it first, who's traps got kills, and if you grabbed special items. The game then goes on a set number of rounds OR until one player passes the points "finish line".

This leads to an incredibly fun and wacky time where each player is trying to build levels that they can complete but no one else can. It's been a very consistent hit with every group I've tried it with. Strongly recommend as a party game amongst friends.

This game is very special to me.

I'd played Starcraft before, but this was the first strategy game I really put a significant amount of time into, and the first game I ever took competitively. I didn't enter tournaments, but with the addition of its ranked ladders, something unheard of at the time, I threw myself into this game and grinded it for literal years.
The game's balance was solid, and the strategies were varied and interesting, especially in 2v2 formats.

That said, it wasn't just a game to be enjoyed competitively. Warcraft III truly was a complete package. The story and campaigns were solid, with top notch cinematics and voice acting for the time.

However all of this pales in comparison to the custom maps. Yes, I know I'm saying basically all of the game didn't stack up to its own custom maps, but honestly that's the truth. As amazing as this game was, the map editing tools the game offered dwarfed it a hundredfold. Blizzard basically gave every player dev tools to create their own games then made a battlenet that facilitated sharing and playing those maps. Any player could create a map, boot up a lobby, and the game would automatically make any player entering that lobby download the map, allowing for quick and easy access to any and all maps that interested you.

These were not basic maps though. The access to game tools allowed players to significantly alter the game, leading to all sorts of custom games, like Vampyre (A more in depth game of mafia), Tower Defenses, RPG campaigns, Angel Arenas, and of course the birth of the entire MOBA genre: Aeons of Strife. You thought I would say DOTA, but it went through several iterations, like Aeons of Strife and Tides of Blood, before finally becoming the DOTA we know and love today and spawning an entire e-sports genre.

And these were just a few of the many, many maps created constantly. There were entire clans dedicated to developing new maps. In fact, I helped develop a Warhammer based MOBA in these custom maps.

To this day, there is nothing to my knowledge that comes even close to what Warcraft 3 Battlenet was. The closest comparison would be if you could boot up Steam and just join any game for free after a 2 minute install. It was a hub for competition for the most battle hardened RTS and MOBA players, as well as the most casual place to try all sorts of crazy game modes and maps. It truly had something for everyone, and was somehow the best possible version of all of it.

On the surface this looks like a typical Zelda-like, and in some ways it is very reminiscent of older Zelda titles like A Link to the Past. What makes this game stand out however isn't in it's similarities to Zelda games, but rather in it's differences.

Much like Outer Wilds, this is one of those games where I can't give you too much information without spoiling major aspects of the game. In fact, that is the very premise the game is built around. Despite the Zelda-like layout and Souls-like combat, the core of this game revolves around information. Everything in this game is written in an undecipherable wingding language, leaving the player guessing as to what signs mean throughout the world. More importantly though, as you go through the game, you'll find pages of the game's "instruction manual", being very reminiscent of the manuals in older NES/SNES titles. This manual is also mostly in this wingding language, forcing the player to decipher meanings from the pictures, other pages, and context clues. While you may think this sounds annoying upon reading this review, let me assure you that this is excellently pulled off, making you want to find these manual pages and keeping you thinking about what some enigmatic riddle could mean long after you've put the game down. When you do figure something new out, the "Ah-Ha!" moment is unparalleled and you feel like a genius.
The only time these manual puzzles become really over the top to solve is in the post-game for the "good" ending. I did not actually manage to solve all of these, but despite it, I never found it too frustrating to go on, and if anything makes me even more determined to eventually go back and solve that mystery.

Beyond that, I can tell you that while there aren't that many boss fights, they are quite enjoyable and visually pleasing. The exploration in this game is top notch. The items are very fun to use, and combat in general is fun. The skills you get as you go through the game, as well as how you get them, are also a blast. I will say, while the story is pretty decent, it's probably the weakest part of the game overall.

Truly this is a game I would recommend to nearly everyone. One of the best games in every genre it falls into.

It's hard to write a review for this game because of how biased I am.

I love this game, and it is easily one of my games of the year for 2023. No contest.

So why do I love this game so much? Simply put, Your Only Move Is Hustle encapsulates everything that makes fighting games fun to play, and delivers it in a package with no execution barrier or reaction time necessary. This game is essentially fighting game chess, and it is wonderful.
Now that it's on steam, it even has more options for everyone.

Want to beat up random people? Hop into a steam lobby!
Don't want to play other people but you do like crafting awesome looking fight scenes? Single player is right up your alley.
Tired of only 4 characters? There's an unlimited number of cool modded characters in the workshop. I'm partial to Neon White myself.
Want more backgrounds/stages? Workshop has a bunch of those too.
Want even more competition, check out the ranked mods which add ranked lobbies to the main menu.

If you have even a passing interest in fighting games, I suggest you check this gem out.

I love this series, and this is clearly the culmination of everything that came before it.

From the wealth of music, to the incredibly large cast of characters and stages, this game is a complete package and a true love letter to all of gaming history. If somehow you can't find someone you like in the over 80 character cast, the game even lets you create your own characters to use.
Most players though will use the iconic characters on display, and they feel like they popped straight out of their games and great to control. In fact, game mechanics as a whole feel great (except the buffering out of hitstun and ability to get off platforms sometimes). The game is fast enough to be fun competitively without being too fast to overwhelm new players. It does an excellent job of maintaining the "easy to play, hard to master" philosophy that made this series great.

That said, It's not a perfect game. The single player content doesn't stack up to the Subspace Emissary from Brawl, and honestly probably not even Smash Run from its predecessor. It's also lacking the target trials which does matter to some, especially since the target trial music is in the game.

The other main issue is balance, but this is a tricky one because it's only an issue to a small subset of people. If you're a competitive player, you already know where the problems lie without me even needing to tell you. For casual players though, I honestly doubt the balance affects the game at all, and the hype of having characters like Kazuya and Minecraft Steve far outweighs their effect on the competitive environment to those players.

My final issue would be the online, but this too is a weird one. On one hand, Smash Ultimate's online is nowhere near the standard emerging for modern fighting games. On the other hand, Ultimate's online is leaps and bounds above the standard set by previous Smash Brothers Online services.


All in all, this is a great game held back by just a few issues, and a great celebration of gaming as a whole.

I had played some fighting games in random arcades, Smash 64 and Soul Edge on my friend's Dreamcast before this. When Soul Calibur 2 released though, it hit differently than all of those. This was the first fighting game my friends and I truly grinded to get good, to the point where now decades later I'm still able to pick up this game and keep pace with players who competed in tournaments for it once upon a time. This game was the start of my competitive fighting game drive.

Personal backstory aside, let me start by saying this game was a masterpiece and beloved for a reason. Not only did this game have strong core system mechanics and cool characters, including some crazy guest characters, this was one of the most accessible fighting games of that whole era. It did all of the things most fighting games do with versus, practice, arcade, etc. The mode that really made the game for me though and helped my friends and I transition from casual to competitive was the weapon master mode.

Weapon Master Mode is a RPG style mode where you take your character through these dungeons fighting battles with special modifications to gain exp and unlock new weapons. The battles get increasingly harder and help reinforce basic game mechanics and strategies, slowly forcing you to learn to play the game. This mode also unlocked weapons we could use in a special kind of versus match too, which made us want to progress farther to unlock more weapons to play with, which in turn meant we had to get better as players to progress in the weapon master mode. This mode did such a good job of subtly reinforcing the fighting game gameplay loop and making us want to improve. In a lot of ways, this was the precursor to SF6's World Tour mode. This was genius and helped turn my friends and I from button mashers to competitive players who then turned to each other to try out our new skills.

Of course this led us to want to become better to beat each other's growing skills, which led us to labbing more optimal combos, and pretty soon we were really good at this game. It's a shame we never knew about tournaments but honestly we got so much enjoyment out of this game's basic gameplay loop that I have no regrets. Pretty soon we were having incredibly intense battles on varied stages with a pretty decently balanced cast. We also had all 3 consoles in our friend group, so we got to use all of the guest characters as well who were all a blast.

Honestly the only downside I can give this game is that since guest characters were console exclusive, I never got to test my Link against my friends' Spawn or Heihachi. Otherwise 10/10 game. It's crazy that Soul Calibur never reached this height again.