What makes a game "bad"? What makes a game's reputation reach the point where it boils down to "it's bad and you should feel bad for liking it"? I'm not fully sure why this happens, but it is VERY possible that it's at least partially due to people using the opinions of others to call something "bad" without actually playing it themselves. Of course, I'm not saying you have to play a game you don't think you'd like, just don't speak on the quality of something you've never played.

You shouldn't have to justify your enjoyment of something with "It's objectively bad but I like it". Just enjoy it, nobody's stopping you, no matter how "BAD!!!!!!!!!!" it may be seen as.

People say it gets better with replays, using Zero and abusing the glitches. Well, i finally replayed it, using Zero and abusing the glitches and i still think this game is horrible and i'm never playing this again.

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Lmao this is even worse than X7.

X7 fucked up trying to go 3D, this game fucked up trying to use the same formula they've been using since MMX, it's unforgivable.

It's just shit, don't play it, listen to the ost on youtube instead and pretend X6 was a music album.

At what point do you think a game becomes "too grindy"? It's hard to really say, of course. There's no clear threshold set in stone, and it also seems to depend somewhat on the genre you're dealing with.

Not only that, but the pure subjectivity of it all. I had a friend some years ago who was like really into shit like NES Ghosts 'n Goblins and Battletoads, and he seemed to thoroughly hate it when I complained about "clunkiness" or "grinding" or any similar form of bullshit in any capacity. I silently ditched him over time because he was also a total loser contrarian about everything you could possibly think of, but I'd bet if I talked to him now he probably wouldn't have any issues with this game's grinding.

As for everyone else, I've hypothesized that a decent enough catch-all threshold for Too Much Grinding is when it doubles the entire game's runtime, such as with Phantasy Star II or Spike McFang, today's central focus. I want to like Spike McFang more. It's a very cute action RPG in the style of Link to the Past or Crusader of Centy, it has great character designs and lots of charm and personality, but the amount of content doesn't justify the runtime. It features only about 5 areas or so in a 5-6 hour game, and with grinding removed you could cut it down to 2-3 hours, maybe the same length as Alcahest at most. Sure, it's still single digit hours in the end, not even that long, but it feels like it drags on for an eternity because it obviously should be shorter.

The issue with the grinding in question seems to be the rapidly increasing EXP requirements for a level up combined with a somewhat subpar set of attacks and enemies that typically give around 2 to 35 EXP until the end of the game. For one example, you're expected to be level 5 at the first boss and level 8 or so at the second, but there's only like 15-20 minutes worth of screens between the two, and with one quick rush from point A to point B you might not even be level 6. I don't find it very reasonable to stretch that small section to over an hour of going back and forth.

If you already guessed that the North American rental market plays some part in this, then give yourself a pat on the back. We can't have young kids beating this in one weekend, can we? Let's pad out this game that was already finished and released! It's fake difficulty on an otherwise easy and relaxing experience. Perhaps I just don't get it because I was born after this kind of practice phased out, but it all seems really stupid to me. Every instance of this. So stupid.

It would probably be best to grab a fan translated patch of the JP ROM for this one, lord knows I'll be doing the same if I replay it. Underneath the NA version's changes is a very charming little game. I would have liked to have said more about the game itself, but this first playthrough of mine was clearly more lethargic than I was expecting.

AHHHH. UHHH IT HURTS.
Hyenard?
IT'S YOU WHO'S CAUSING MY SUFFERING. THEN IF I TEAR YOU TO PIECES. MY PAIN WILL STOP.

WOOOH WOOH!! BURN!!! BURN!! BURN TO THE GROUND!! AH! OOH!! TRANSFORM-- BURN B-BURN T OTHE GROUND BURN!!! OH O H wOOOH! BURN TO TH--WOOH!! BUR-BURN!!! BURN TO THE--AH! WOOH WOOH!! TRANSFOMATION-- BURN!! BURN!! BURN!! BURN TO THE GROUND.

This game fucks so hard. Notorious for some, I went in really expecting to hate it especially on my first playthrough with Mega Man but this really blew me out of the water with how good it is. It is challenging as hell, and definitely feels like a step up on difficulty from 7 and 8 before it, but it really hits that Mega Man sweet spot of feeling frustrating but still beatable. For most of the runtime anyway. The SNES Mega Man games really have a habit of being incredibly great right up until the final bossfights. This gauntlet isn't really as bad as Wily Machine 7 if I think about them, but I think I hated them a little more in the moment due to the sheer quantity of challenging bosses this endgame has. Two playable characters who both can get through the story with different strengths and weaknesses really gets a lot of points for me though. I haven't given 10 a fair shake as each character, but in my humble opinion right now this is the best multi-character setup in the classic series. One of the best, despite what people will tell you!

**Played via the Un-Working Designs Patch (Which if you consider playing this game, I definitely recommend that version). Slick has left a bit of an impression on me.

Popful Mail is a quaint little game. It's an Action RPG/Platformer released in 1994, by Nihon Falcom and Sega and reworked for the west by Working Designs. I had heard about this game while randomly doing research on Sonic the Hedgehog, and found out that the game was planned to be localized in the West as "Sister Sonic". Having played the game now I'm so glad that plan never went through. The charm and personality of it's characters and world should never be replaced.

That being said, the actual game, itself, kinda sucks to play. The physics they use in the game make everyone kind of feel like butter on the ground and jumping is very odd. You keep your momentum in the air, but when you want to go in a different direction, you keep that same momentum and just go darting from one side of the screen to another. It's very weird and, for lack of better words, clunky feeling. Makes the actual platforming you have to do in-game very difficult at times. It does not help that there's an ice world in the game that accentuates this issue tenfold.

Besides that the gameplay is rather standard. You get from Point A to B on the screen cutting through everything in your path for cash. You'll occasionally visit shops where you can grab food that can restore your health, trinkets that give you some extra buffs, and weapons and armor that'll make killing foes easier. It's extremely simple but I can appreciate that simpleness. What I don't however appreciate are the absolute lack of invincibility frames after you get hit by something. It lasts for roughly half a second, and then you'll just get hit again. This also made some sections and bosses in the game very frustrating, and this is the patched version. The original version absolutely jacks up the difficulty by making the damage multipliers do 3x the damage and makes you, the player, much weaker. They probably did this because, without it, you can finish the game in around 6 hours or less and it would feel like a waste of money on the consumer.

I didn't like the gameplay too much, but everything else is chef's kiss for the Sega CD. The game is vibrant and beautiful, and the soundtrack is full of earworms. The FMV cutscenes are also a treat and the comedic and cheesy tone they took with the dialogue, really makes the game feel like a saturday morning cartoon. I used to watch a lot of anime like this as a kid, so it hit home for me. Also the characters! The titular character, Mail, is a funny, tomboyish elf that'll take on any job as long as she's compensated well. I'm absolutely obsessed with her character design. She was my favorite character to play in the game because of her interactions with the other characters. Although she was weirdly ableist in one scene, but I assume that's just a weird translation quirk.

There's also characters Tatto, a somewhat soft spoken, and friendly magician, and Gaw, a little dragon-like gremlin who has a bit of an attitude. Thank God he's not the comic relief. That goes to another elf named Slick, who constantly finds himself in the party's way. I should also mention that almost all the interactions are fully voice acted and surprisingly very well voice acted as well. It surprised me to hear such lively performances from a medium where we usually don't get things like that for it's time. The actors and actresses breath so much life into the characters.

Overall, even though I did not much enjoy the "game" itself, I enjoyed every other aspect surrounding the game. If the controls and little quirks of the game were tweaked just a bit more, this game would be a certified cult classic. However as it is, the Un-Working Designs patch is the best we've got. I'd love to see Falcom come back to this series sometime, but that does not seem likely for the foreseeable future. With that being said, I'm claiming Mail as my OC. None of you can do anything about it.

Even though this is by far my favorite of the classic series, it's very clear that this game still have that air of mediocrity that permeates MM5 and MM6 at parts.

Half of this game is fantastic, the best the NES has to offer in action platformers, the other half is stuff like ToadMan, you can barely qualify it as a boss.

I'll still defend MM4 for all its flaws though, because albeit not consistent in its quality, its lows are less low than 5 and 6's lows, and a lot of the level design set pieces of the game show genuine effort put into them.

MM4 more than any other classic Mega Man exemplifies the heights that the development team could reach if not for the strict deadlines imposed by Capcom at the time.

I was totally addicted to this game for about a month. Wanted to squeeze in a few puzzlez every day. It is really innovative and fun especially for the first time. After playing through all 350 base game puzzles i realised however that the game really does nothing to differentiate or vary the gameplay. The visuals and strategy really stay the same through every puzzle from beginning to end and while the fun animations of the solutions are fun and charming the game could have done a lot more to really giv it more personality and feel less sterile.

This game is an alright entry, but it very much feels like it's more of the same but even less innovative and interesting than its two predecessors. The OST takes a surprising hit here compared to previous games, and even K. Rool's final boss theme, while decent, pales in comparison to either of his two from the last game.

Some level designs were interesting, like the new sled levels over the minecart levels from the previous games, and some of the bosses were cool too, like the Snowman Snowball fight, but overall the game feels pretty uninspired and boring, like the developers were running out of ideas.

The choice to have dialogue for the characters was also an interesting one, and K. Rool is still as funny as ever, though I'm not sure if I quite like it or not.

Overall, I definitely see why people consider 2 the peak of the original DKC trilogy and while I don't think this game is bad, it's definitely pretty forgettable overall sadly. Here's to hoping I enjoy Returns and Tropical Freeze much more.