Hooblashooga
The story in this game feels more centered around Tatsuya's new friends at the new Dragon Heat, reborn after Tatsuya was absent from Kamurocho for a year. Whenever I get a long cutscene centered around some of the new guys, I recieve a harsh reminder of how much I don't care about them. There's five of them, and they all feel underdeveloped and shoehorned into the plot. To compare it to something like Yakuza 4, that game juggles four characters by dedicating entire chapters to them and only them, building up to the point where all their plots cross over and make a stronger whole. The first game was all about Tatsuya's struggles as he discovers his reason to fight. Now main character Tatsuya's presence somehow feels like an afterthought here. Our conflict this time is that a powerful gang called Ashura is threatening to take over Dragon Heat, and Tatsuya (plus his new friends) step up to defend it, via a new series of eight matches. It kinda feels like a waste to follow the exact same format of the previous game, but not to worry! Every single chapter is filled to the brim with unrelated shenanigans up until it's time for the fight. It all feels so disconnected from itself.
With a new adventure comes more stuff, and as Yakuza 1 is to Yakuza 2, we now have Sotenbori available to explore alongside Kamurocho. That means more substories, more minigames, and a lot more ground to cover on foot. This game managed to implement the taxi system from the console Yakuza titles, and it can still feel like a slog getting to certain points on each map. The gang war substory was cute in the first game, but more than overstays its welcome here. You've got one war in Kamurocho, another in Sotenbori, and several conflicts that arise between the two areas, which means traveling between these areas several times. The quality of most side activities has been increased across the board, at least. Existing minigames all got upgrades; karaoke is actually a rhythm game now, the massage minigame is more akin to the console games' quality, and there's even a cute "Castle of the Dead" arcade shooter.
Combat has received a few overhauls since Kurohyou 1. Grabbing is no longer such a dominant strategy, you really gotta find an opening to grab someone, otherwise they almost instantly shake you off. They introduced a lot more contextual actions you can do in the arenas. You can "shove" enemies when grabbing them, which can result in a variety of effects, depending on what you shove them towards. Random passerby now come to spectate these street fights, just like the console Yakuza titles. Unlike those games, the audience is a rowdy bunch, occasionally throwing items into the ring, and even grabbing people who get too close. This sequel has an emphasis on tag-team fights, you can call up literal "friends with benefits" on your cell phone. They provide certain effects on the overworld, and join you during most scuffles. The fights have friendly fire, which makes logical sense, but can be annoying when you just wanna hit your target. Sometimes you'll get beaten over the head by your partner, sometimes you'll unintentionally beat them down. Most fights become trivial with a friend. Strength in numbers and all that shit.
Levelling up your styles in this game brings a new benefit to the table in the form of skills. Every style has a few slots available for them. You can use them to cover a style's weaknesses, or empower its strengths. Levelling up has been reworked in general; each level gives you points that you can invest into specific stats, as opposed to literally investing money into your stats in Kurohyou 1. The one change I can't stand is how you need to buy new combos at a dojo as you level up a style. Just give me the new move as a reward for continued style usage! Don't make me trek to the center of the map every time I want to add one extra punch to my moveset!
This game has worse performance than Kurohyou 1. It's most noticeable during battles, as the framerate can be anywhere between 60 and 20 FPS. While not all of it, a large portion of this slowdown is caused by Team K4L's translation patch. Sometimes my entire screen even went black for a few seconds before coming back as if nothing ever happened. I know this probably isn't my PSP dying because this doesn't happen in any other games I play, but it sure makes me afraid of continuing to play this one! Listen, not all translation projects are perfect, and it's no easy task for a handful of fans working on a passion project. I just don't want to condone the actions of Team K4L. The least they could do is add a list of what's not translated to their professional website, instead of acting like this is a finished project. Heck, they claim they're working on translating all the hostess text, but they went ahead and did a translation for Kurohyou 1 instead? Maybe this game runs better in an emulator, but I've been on an official hardware kick lately, and I don't believe that emulation should be a requirement for a translation patch (unless absolutely necessary).
Man, I wish I liked Kurohyou 2 more than I did. It's entirely possible that I wasn't in a good mood when playing this game, or maybe it was because I just came off of Kurohyou 1. I feel like my experience wouldn't be very different if I played the game untranslated. I'd still be mashing through the uninteresting text regardless, at least it would probably run better. Wouldn't change the fact that this game tried to follow its predecessor's story formula to a fault. As a game, it's fine, but in Kurohyou 1's case, maybe less was more all along.
With a new adventure comes more stuff, and as Yakuza 1 is to Yakuza 2, we now have Sotenbori available to explore alongside Kamurocho. That means more substories, more minigames, and a lot more ground to cover on foot. This game managed to implement the taxi system from the console Yakuza titles, and it can still feel like a slog getting to certain points on each map. The gang war substory was cute in the first game, but more than overstays its welcome here. You've got one war in Kamurocho, another in Sotenbori, and several conflicts that arise between the two areas, which means traveling between these areas several times. The quality of most side activities has been increased across the board, at least. Existing minigames all got upgrades; karaoke is actually a rhythm game now, the massage minigame is more akin to the console games' quality, and there's even a cute "Castle of the Dead" arcade shooter.
Combat has received a few overhauls since Kurohyou 1. Grabbing is no longer such a dominant strategy, you really gotta find an opening to grab someone, otherwise they almost instantly shake you off. They introduced a lot more contextual actions you can do in the arenas. You can "shove" enemies when grabbing them, which can result in a variety of effects, depending on what you shove them towards. Random passerby now come to spectate these street fights, just like the console Yakuza titles. Unlike those games, the audience is a rowdy bunch, occasionally throwing items into the ring, and even grabbing people who get too close. This sequel has an emphasis on tag-team fights, you can call up literal "friends with benefits" on your cell phone. They provide certain effects on the overworld, and join you during most scuffles. The fights have friendly fire, which makes logical sense, but can be annoying when you just wanna hit your target. Sometimes you'll get beaten over the head by your partner, sometimes you'll unintentionally beat them down. Most fights become trivial with a friend. Strength in numbers and all that shit.
Levelling up your styles in this game brings a new benefit to the table in the form of skills. Every style has a few slots available for them. You can use them to cover a style's weaknesses, or empower its strengths. Levelling up has been reworked in general; each level gives you points that you can invest into specific stats, as opposed to literally investing money into your stats in Kurohyou 1. The one change I can't stand is how you need to buy new combos at a dojo as you level up a style. Just give me the new move as a reward for continued style usage! Don't make me trek to the center of the map every time I want to add one extra punch to my moveset!
This game has worse performance than Kurohyou 1. It's most noticeable during battles, as the framerate can be anywhere between 60 and 20 FPS. While not all of it, a large portion of this slowdown is caused by Team K4L's translation patch. Sometimes my entire screen even went black for a few seconds before coming back as if nothing ever happened. I know this probably isn't my PSP dying because this doesn't happen in any other games I play, but it sure makes me afraid of continuing to play this one! Listen, not all translation projects are perfect, and it's no easy task for a handful of fans working on a passion project. I just don't want to condone the actions of Team K4L. The least they could do is add a list of what's not translated to their professional website, instead of acting like this is a finished project. Heck, they claim they're working on translating all the hostess text, but they went ahead and did a translation for Kurohyou 1 instead? Maybe this game runs better in an emulator, but I've been on an official hardware kick lately, and I don't believe that emulation should be a requirement for a translation patch (unless absolutely necessary).
Man, I wish I liked Kurohyou 2 more than I did. It's entirely possible that I wasn't in a good mood when playing this game, or maybe it was because I just came off of Kurohyou 1. I feel like my experience wouldn't be very different if I played the game untranslated. I'd still be mashing through the uninteresting text regardless, at least it would probably run better. Wouldn't change the fact that this game tried to follow its predecessor's story formula to a fault. As a game, it's fine, but in Kurohyou 1's case, maybe less was more all along.
I see that Monolith Soft finally got tired of people treating optional content as what it is, because Future Redeemed is designed like a god damn collectathon. You are rewarded with "affinity points" for doing damn near anything, and the game always blares this fanfare. Every. Single. Time. You could at least make the popup more subtle if it's going to show up so frequently. It bothers me more that this kind of design is innately attuned to the part of my brain that wants to see everything completed. The menus are covered in "x/y found" or "x% complete", so I run around not necessarily because I want to see every inch of this world, but moreso because my characters' abilities depend on it.
There's a ton of blatant callbacks to XC1/XC2, but it's done in good taste. They wrap up the sci-fi aspects of the Xenoblade universe quite nicely with this story. Matthew says "I'm full of beans" quite a lot, and while I have no clue what that means, I am too after playing this game. Also, Rex is kind of a gigachad in this game. It almost makes up for XC3's ending implying that he impregnated three women.
Almost.
There's a ton of blatant callbacks to XC1/XC2, but it's done in good taste. They wrap up the sci-fi aspects of the Xenoblade universe quite nicely with this story. Matthew says "I'm full of beans" quite a lot, and while I have no clue what that means, I am too after playing this game. Also, Rex is kind of a gigachad in this game. It almost makes up for XC3's ending implying that he impregnated three women.
Almost.
THERE'S A HOLE IN A BUCKET i mean what
Known by the community as "Yakuza: Black Panther", Kurohyou is a game that I rarely see show up in discussion of the Yakuza games. It's somewhat understandable; aside from taking place in Kamurocho, this spinoff is in no way connected to the series as a whole. Team 4KL finally released an english translation for the first game (why did they do they second one first), and I've been on a PSP kick lately, so screw it! Let's hit the streets.
In this story, we follow Ukyo Tatsuya, a delinquent who's known nothing but fighting to survive as his way of life. However, after pretending to be part of the Tojo Clan, he finds himself in hot water with the REAL Tojo Clan. Trapped in Kamurocho, his only choice is to fight his way through 10 rounds in an underground fighting ring. On top of that, many of his opponents seem to share some connection to his troubled past. He's gonna have to learn what fighting truly means to him if he wants to make it out alive.
This game's overworld presentation takes a page out of Yakuza 1/2's book. Fixed camera angles across the city of Kamurocho, this time in pre-rendered form. For PSP standards, I think it looks excellent. The manga cutscenes have some cool character art in them, but it's a lot of looking at stills while listening to dialogue. It looks great in the few instances where there's genuine animation, but it's really unengaging otherwise. The music in this game is insane. It ranges from angsty electric guitar rock to EDM. I looked up the composers in my free time, and whoops, Hideki Naganuma jumpscare. The funk always shows itself where I least expect it... Also, I just want to say that I'm glad that RGG had some restraint with this spinoff. Kazuma Kiryu is nowhere to be seen in this game, not even a single mention of his name. You may have a chance encounter with a certain character from Yakuza 4, but this game is really all about its own characters, and I appreciate that.
The minigames you may know Yakuza for are pretty lackluster on the PSP. Bowling and batting are scaled down to be 2D and janky. The karaoke and massage parlor have been downgraded to a game where you literally mash a button until it's over, the latter of which is done while JPEGs of a sexy woman scroll by. I can't make this shit up. Feels like one of the Meet-n'-Fuck flash games, and that's not a compliment. It's not all bad though. Beating up thugs doesn't exactly pay the bills, and so Tatsuya has to make an honest living via part-time jobs, contextualized as the good minigames. Stack that ice cream! Serve those burgers! Beat down the overly-horny people at the strip club! Fun and profitable times for the whole family! I wish they had stuff like this in the mainline Yakuza games I've played.
Once you get into a fight, the game really begins. People frequently compare this gameplay to something like Def Jam (the developers' previous titles), but the perspective makes me more keen on drawing comparisons to 3D fighting games; Tekken, Dead or Alive, or Virtua Fighter. There's almost no HUD in battle, most information is conveyed through Tatsuya himself. If he's low on stamina, his attacks come out slower, his stance is visually weaker, and his breath becomes visible. Aside from his standard health meter, Tatsuya can get injured in four different areas: the head, chest, arms, and legs. The more damage is done to each of these, the more handicapped and vulnerable you'll be while in a fight. You can't heal injuries with standard healing items either. Sometimes you'll get gut-checked in a fight and just have to tough it out. Tatsuya's brawler fighting style is pretty basic, but he gradually becomes a jack of all trades AND a master of all, if you commit to grinding a bit. You learn new styles as you progress through the game, each with their own completely different stat boosts and movesets. There's kung-fu, pro wrestling, boxing, and more. It's energetic and fun, but it's not perfect.
First problem I have with the game are the frequent QTEs that demand you hammer the X button. I'm not even sure that mashing it does anything to help you recover faster. At some point, I just gave up when enemies grabbed me and saved my thumb from any potential cramps. Speaking of grabs, that's the second issue I have. Grabbing enemies is a surefire way to deal some safe damage with no risk of counterattack. I almost wish this game adopted Dead or Alive's "triangle system", where each type of attack can be countered by a different type. It's fun to play to each fighting style's strengths, but nothing is safer than the good ol' grabby hands. Thirdly, I wish there was a combo list you could view for each fighting style. As it is, you'll probably be mashing random buttons until you find what order makes your "NEW PUNCH ATTACK" actually come out.
I'm kinda blown away by what Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio pulled off here. It truly is the experience of a console Yakuza game, just condensed down into a PSP title while still maintaining its own identity. It kinda shocks me that these titles never got any sort of remakes or ports. I'd say "oh it's a shame Tatsuya never came back", but that's only half true. This game did well enough to get a sequel, so I'm off to treat Kamurocho as my own personal stomping grounds yet again.
Known by the community as "Yakuza: Black Panther", Kurohyou is a game that I rarely see show up in discussion of the Yakuza games. It's somewhat understandable; aside from taking place in Kamurocho, this spinoff is in no way connected to the series as a whole. Team 4KL finally released an english translation for the first game (why did they do they second one first), and I've been on a PSP kick lately, so screw it! Let's hit the streets.
In this story, we follow Ukyo Tatsuya, a delinquent who's known nothing but fighting to survive as his way of life. However, after pretending to be part of the Tojo Clan, he finds himself in hot water with the REAL Tojo Clan. Trapped in Kamurocho, his only choice is to fight his way through 10 rounds in an underground fighting ring. On top of that, many of his opponents seem to share some connection to his troubled past. He's gonna have to learn what fighting truly means to him if he wants to make it out alive.
This game's overworld presentation takes a page out of Yakuza 1/2's book. Fixed camera angles across the city of Kamurocho, this time in pre-rendered form. For PSP standards, I think it looks excellent. The manga cutscenes have some cool character art in them, but it's a lot of looking at stills while listening to dialogue. It looks great in the few instances where there's genuine animation, but it's really unengaging otherwise. The music in this game is insane. It ranges from angsty electric guitar rock to EDM. I looked up the composers in my free time, and whoops, Hideki Naganuma jumpscare. The funk always shows itself where I least expect it... Also, I just want to say that I'm glad that RGG had some restraint with this spinoff. Kazuma Kiryu is nowhere to be seen in this game, not even a single mention of his name. You may have a chance encounter with a certain character from Yakuza 4, but this game is really all about its own characters, and I appreciate that.
The minigames you may know Yakuza for are pretty lackluster on the PSP. Bowling and batting are scaled down to be 2D and janky. The karaoke and massage parlor have been downgraded to a game where you literally mash a button until it's over, the latter of which is done while JPEGs of a sexy woman scroll by. I can't make this shit up. Feels like one of the Meet-n'-Fuck flash games, and that's not a compliment. It's not all bad though. Beating up thugs doesn't exactly pay the bills, and so Tatsuya has to make an honest living via part-time jobs, contextualized as the good minigames. Stack that ice cream! Serve those burgers! Beat down the overly-horny people at the strip club! Fun and profitable times for the whole family! I wish they had stuff like this in the mainline Yakuza games I've played.
Once you get into a fight, the game really begins. People frequently compare this gameplay to something like Def Jam (the developers' previous titles), but the perspective makes me more keen on drawing comparisons to 3D fighting games; Tekken, Dead or Alive, or Virtua Fighter. There's almost no HUD in battle, most information is conveyed through Tatsuya himself. If he's low on stamina, his attacks come out slower, his stance is visually weaker, and his breath becomes visible. Aside from his standard health meter, Tatsuya can get injured in four different areas: the head, chest, arms, and legs. The more damage is done to each of these, the more handicapped and vulnerable you'll be while in a fight. You can't heal injuries with standard healing items either. Sometimes you'll get gut-checked in a fight and just have to tough it out. Tatsuya's brawler fighting style is pretty basic, but he gradually becomes a jack of all trades AND a master of all, if you commit to grinding a bit. You learn new styles as you progress through the game, each with their own completely different stat boosts and movesets. There's kung-fu, pro wrestling, boxing, and more. It's energetic and fun, but it's not perfect.
First problem I have with the game are the frequent QTEs that demand you hammer the X button. I'm not even sure that mashing it does anything to help you recover faster. At some point, I just gave up when enemies grabbed me and saved my thumb from any potential cramps. Speaking of grabs, that's the second issue I have. Grabbing enemies is a surefire way to deal some safe damage with no risk of counterattack. I almost wish this game adopted Dead or Alive's "triangle system", where each type of attack can be countered by a different type. It's fun to play to each fighting style's strengths, but nothing is safer than the good ol' grabby hands. Thirdly, I wish there was a combo list you could view for each fighting style. As it is, you'll probably be mashing random buttons until you find what order makes your "NEW PUNCH ATTACK" actually come out.
I'm kinda blown away by what Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio pulled off here. It truly is the experience of a console Yakuza game, just condensed down into a PSP title while still maintaining its own identity. It kinda shocks me that these titles never got any sort of remakes or ports. I'd say "oh it's a shame Tatsuya never came back", but that's only half true. This game did well enough to get a sequel, so I'm off to treat Kamurocho as my own personal stomping grounds yet again.
2023
I don't know who needs to hear this, but before you engage with my Wall of Nitpicks, I just want you to know that I had a lot of fun playing this game. It is very good. Here, I'll even give you a paragraph of the things I love about it.
This game is drop-dead gorgeous. The camera angle not being top-down anymore is a bit disorienting at first, but I do recognize that keeping it low to the ground helps emphasize just how small you are in comparison to these massive areas. You get to explore a lot of man-made structures, including a portion of a house, probably my favorite area of the game. Dandori Challenges are like the mission modes from Pikmin 2/3, but have been integrated into the main game, and they fit in very nicely. Caves are no longer randomly generated, therefore intentionally designed, and they're better off that way. The night expeditions are a fun distraction, even if they're pretty simple in execution. Pikmin tower-defense is a neat concept that I wish they did more with.
Alright, time to nitpick.
I really do not like Dandori Battle, if I'm being honest. The versus modes across the Pikmin series have always felt like afterthoughts to me. They're fun with friends, but not much else. In a 1P vs. COM setting, I just don't see the point. That, and I am absurdly bad at them. Feel free to slam me with the "dandori issue" insults, but the amount of unpredictable chaos just feels out of place to me. They also chose the worst possible style of split screen: a vertical slice. I can't see anything around me, how do you expect me to react to my opponent's actions, even though they're taking up the right half of my screen?
Why is the lock-on so bad in this game? Why can I not turn it off? Why is it exclusively automatic? Why is this such a downgrade from Pikmin 3's lock-on, which worked perfectly? Didn't this company effectively invent lock-on in Ocarina of Time, back in 1998? I feel like there's plenty that it shouldn't lock onto as well, like stray material shards. The lock-on also prevents you from throwing more Pikmin than necessary at items, which is a bit too hand-holdy for my tastes. Adding more Pikmin makes items get carried faster, but it's like the game wants you to not do that, and focus your attention elsewhere. It considers that task "done", and I'm here to say that you don't make those decisions for me, game.
Speaking as someone who finished ultra-spicy difficulty in Pikmin 3 Deluxe, I'm not sure how this game benefits from limiting the amount of Pikmin you can have in the field, and restricting you to using three Pikmin types. I know there's an overwhelming amount of choice when you have eight Pikmin types in a single game, but that's completely undermined by the game letting you push a single button to give you the exact types of Pikmin you'll probably need. Why would I ever use tools like the Survey Drone when the auto-select gives me an idea of what to expect anyways?
Oatchi is a very good boy. Too good for his own good, in many cases. It's not particularly hard to take down most enemies by gathering your team on Oatchi, charging a rush, and slamming your face into your foe. New additions like Ice Pikmin only amplify this kind of power imbalance as well. Spray 'em, Rush 'em, freeze 'em, shatter 'em, and turn them into more spicy spray droplets than I know what to do with, Oatchi alone is just that useful. On the other hand, I feel like the Pikmin AI has regressed a tiny bit. Pikmin seem to do whatever they damn well please once they've finished a task and should go idle. Instead, they gravitate towards anything they possibly can, whether it be something to carry, or something to attack. Listen, I love these little guys. I do my best to protect them, and feel remorse when I fail to do so. HOWEVER, when Steve casually decides to 1v1 a sleeping Bulborb of his own volition? That's his own damn fault, he was asking for it.
The pacing can be a real drag at times. I'm not talking about the moment-to-moment gameplay, I'm talking about the dialogue and cutscenes. Lots of repeat dialogue to sit through, and repeat cutscenes that you'll find yourself (graciously) skipping. The characters didn't really charm me as much as I think Nintendo hoped they would. They sure talk a lot for crew members that are sitting back and watching the Oatchi Rush Livestream all day, every day. Collin told me to rewind time because I lost a bunch of Pikmin during the final boss fight. Not cool, Collin. Not to mention there's like, a 30-second load time between the end of day animation and actually seeing your results. Many of the castaways you save have side missions for you to do, but they're all just busywork and things you'll already be doing anyways. Everyone begging Nintendo to add achievements to their games needs to realize that Nintendo can't make an interesting set of side objectives to save their life. The best rewards are saved for the absolute end of the game, when you won't have a damn reason to use them at all, because everything you can do has been done.
Listen, I'm sorry to those who think this game is a masterpiece. I'll reiterate, I still had a ton of fun with this game, my rating is just a stupid number! All the Pikmin games are good (except maybe the 3DS one) and you should play them! Miyamoto and his team cooked this one for a full decade, and you can feel that with how much content is condensed into this game. It may have ended up being too much for me though.
This game is drop-dead gorgeous. The camera angle not being top-down anymore is a bit disorienting at first, but I do recognize that keeping it low to the ground helps emphasize just how small you are in comparison to these massive areas. You get to explore a lot of man-made structures, including a portion of a house, probably my favorite area of the game. Dandori Challenges are like the mission modes from Pikmin 2/3, but have been integrated into the main game, and they fit in very nicely. Caves are no longer randomly generated, therefore intentionally designed, and they're better off that way. The night expeditions are a fun distraction, even if they're pretty simple in execution. Pikmin tower-defense is a neat concept that I wish they did more with.
Alright, time to nitpick.
I really do not like Dandori Battle, if I'm being honest. The versus modes across the Pikmin series have always felt like afterthoughts to me. They're fun with friends, but not much else. In a 1P vs. COM setting, I just don't see the point. That, and I am absurdly bad at them. Feel free to slam me with the "dandori issue" insults, but the amount of unpredictable chaos just feels out of place to me. They also chose the worst possible style of split screen: a vertical slice. I can't see anything around me, how do you expect me to react to my opponent's actions, even though they're taking up the right half of my screen?
Why is the lock-on so bad in this game? Why can I not turn it off? Why is it exclusively automatic? Why is this such a downgrade from Pikmin 3's lock-on, which worked perfectly? Didn't this company effectively invent lock-on in Ocarina of Time, back in 1998? I feel like there's plenty that it shouldn't lock onto as well, like stray material shards. The lock-on also prevents you from throwing more Pikmin than necessary at items, which is a bit too hand-holdy for my tastes. Adding more Pikmin makes items get carried faster, but it's like the game wants you to not do that, and focus your attention elsewhere. It considers that task "done", and I'm here to say that you don't make those decisions for me, game.
Speaking as someone who finished ultra-spicy difficulty in Pikmin 3 Deluxe, I'm not sure how this game benefits from limiting the amount of Pikmin you can have in the field, and restricting you to using three Pikmin types. I know there's an overwhelming amount of choice when you have eight Pikmin types in a single game, but that's completely undermined by the game letting you push a single button to give you the exact types of Pikmin you'll probably need. Why would I ever use tools like the Survey Drone when the auto-select gives me an idea of what to expect anyways?
Oatchi is a very good boy. Too good for his own good, in many cases. It's not particularly hard to take down most enemies by gathering your team on Oatchi, charging a rush, and slamming your face into your foe. New additions like Ice Pikmin only amplify this kind of power imbalance as well. Spray 'em, Rush 'em, freeze 'em, shatter 'em, and turn them into more spicy spray droplets than I know what to do with, Oatchi alone is just that useful. On the other hand, I feel like the Pikmin AI has regressed a tiny bit. Pikmin seem to do whatever they damn well please once they've finished a task and should go idle. Instead, they gravitate towards anything they possibly can, whether it be something to carry, or something to attack. Listen, I love these little guys. I do my best to protect them, and feel remorse when I fail to do so. HOWEVER, when Steve casually decides to 1v1 a sleeping Bulborb of his own volition? That's his own damn fault, he was asking for it.
The pacing can be a real drag at times. I'm not talking about the moment-to-moment gameplay, I'm talking about the dialogue and cutscenes. Lots of repeat dialogue to sit through, and repeat cutscenes that you'll find yourself (graciously) skipping. The characters didn't really charm me as much as I think Nintendo hoped they would. They sure talk a lot for crew members that are sitting back and watching the Oatchi Rush Livestream all day, every day. Collin told me to rewind time because I lost a bunch of Pikmin during the final boss fight. Not cool, Collin. Not to mention there's like, a 30-second load time between the end of day animation and actually seeing your results. Many of the castaways you save have side missions for you to do, but they're all just busywork and things you'll already be doing anyways. Everyone begging Nintendo to add achievements to their games needs to realize that Nintendo can't make an interesting set of side objectives to save their life. The best rewards are saved for the absolute end of the game, when you won't have a damn reason to use them at all, because everything you can do has been done.
Listen, I'm sorry to those who think this game is a masterpiece. I'll reiterate, I still had a ton of fun with this game, my rating is just a stupid number! All the Pikmin games are good (
2011
A great evil is unsealed, and darkness falls across the land. This is not a journey of conquest, but of salvation. In their darkest moments, you, the Almighty One, embody the soul of an Uberhero, and lead the Patapons to victory once more.
Man, talk about tonal whiplash. I spent the past two games leading these goofy eyeball people to Earthend, and now I'm playing as a character who looks like they could pop a balloon on contact. And y'know what? It works for me! I think it really nails that cool factor they're going for. The art style's a little more well-defined to reflect these changes, as well as the music. The Patapons know how to get down, but the Uberheroes know how to rock out.
This is honestly the most grind-heavy of all the Patapon games, but I don't actually despise that fact. For one thing, in my review of Patapon 2, I suggested a few ways they could help alleviate the grind. I had no idea that both of my suggestions were implemented in this game. You keep non-treasure loot when you fail a stage, and you still keep the EXP earned for enemies you defeated. Even when I'm going into a battle that I don't expect to win, defeat never feels like a major setback. I just sit back, relax, and indulge myself in the enjoyable, one-of-a-kind gameplay of Patapon 3. If you pick up this game, just know you're in it for the long haul.
The game is now focused on just four party members, like the Patagate from Patapon 2. I guess you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone, because I do miss having a whole army of these little guys. These party members each serve a specific role though. Ton, Chin, and Kan can choose from spear, shield, and archer classes, respectively. As you level up each class, you gain evolved classes that serve entirely different purposes. Every class has "set skills" and "class skills". The former, set skills, are great because you earn them at specific levels for each class, and they can be applied to any other class at that point. The latter, class skills, are a reward for sticking to one class and grinding it out for an eternity. Sometimes they carry over to other classes, most of the time they don't, and so I didn't bother. Beyond that, the random equipment drops you collect are what affects your stats the most in the long run. This is one of those games where choosing "optimize" can be a trap in several instances, because you should think harder about your loadout in certain situations.
The uberhero gets his own paragraph due to being a uniquely overpowered case. The UH can choose any of the three main classes from the start, but then you gotta stick with your choice until you reach level 15. Beyond that though, the potential for the UH is through the roof. Set skills play a big part in this, since the UH will eventually have access to all classes with enough grinding. Mixing and matching skills from all classes to make something OP is what set skills are all about. Aside from that, every single class has a unique "uberhero chant", an overpowered skill that occurs every time you hit four perfect beats on its corresponding command. Some create an impenetrable defense, others rain down hell from above. The possibilities are truly endless.
Patapon 3 has its quirks, of course. Every Uberhero has their own unique chant that blends in wonderfully to the music, much better than Patapon 2's loud singing. Summons in this game are far less tedious than in Patapon 1/2, so they're inarguably better, but they're also weirdly abstract in Patapon 3. You ad-lib your way to victory as the game revives/heals all team members and does massive damage to whatever's in front of you. You also lose control of your team in most cases, which can lead to unfair deaths. Speaking of unfair deaths, Hatapon feels like your team's weakest link. As long as your "defense unit" is still alive, Hatapon is invincible, but the moment that defense perishes... He's got no health whatsoever, and when completely defenseless, usually dies in 1-2 hits. Eventually, all my issues compounded upon themselves. I couldn't take it anymore. I wanted to beat this game within the next year or so, and so I sought out help. I dove headfirst into Patapon 3's multiplayer community.
CALLING ALL UBERHEROES
The remaining playerbase for Patapon 3 plays on a modded version of the game known as "Dark Covenant X Depths of Infinity", or "DxD" for short. It's decked out with a bunch of new features, bug fixes, more accurate retranslations of skill descriptions, extra quests, and so on. They even added in music from the previous Patapon games, music from outside the Patapon games, and the ability to randomize background music (useful for not going insane via hearing the same exact song repeatedly while grinding).
Playing with four uberheroes is like an entirely different game. A better, more enjoyable game, if I'm being honest. It's a power trip when everyone fires off their uberhero powers at once, but each individual hero is still fairly vulnerable. This is where all the different classes and set skills can synergize with each other, everyone gets to act independently, and you can create your own unstoppable force of nature. I got to play rounds where two people played DPS, and me and the last person simply served to stand back and multiply their firepower. Got carried through some of the harder content that way. All the mechanics just fell into place.
It's not every day that I play a multiplayer game disguised as a single player game. I admire the ambition of Patapon 3, but please do yourself a favor and do not play this game alone, if possible. Google is your friend, and there's a Discord server or two out there that are willing to get you set up to play the game online. I don't really track dates on Backloggd, but I assure you that this game took me about a month to finish, and that probably could've been chopped in half if I played multiplayer from the start. If you're looking for a more genuine Patapon experience, the first two games are definitely a better choice. If you want a Patapon game that you could potentially play forever, you can either play this game, or you could PATA PATA PATA PON your way to your nearest therapist. Pata pata pata pon, pata pata pata pon, pata pon don chaka, pon pon chaka chaka...
Man, talk about tonal whiplash. I spent the past two games leading these goofy eyeball people to Earthend, and now I'm playing as a character who looks like they could pop a balloon on contact. And y'know what? It works for me! I think it really nails that cool factor they're going for. The art style's a little more well-defined to reflect these changes, as well as the music. The Patapons know how to get down, but the Uberheroes know how to rock out.
This is honestly the most grind-heavy of all the Patapon games, but I don't actually despise that fact. For one thing, in my review of Patapon 2, I suggested a few ways they could help alleviate the grind. I had no idea that both of my suggestions were implemented in this game. You keep non-treasure loot when you fail a stage, and you still keep the EXP earned for enemies you defeated. Even when I'm going into a battle that I don't expect to win, defeat never feels like a major setback. I just sit back, relax, and indulge myself in the enjoyable, one-of-a-kind gameplay of Patapon 3. If you pick up this game, just know you're in it for the long haul.
The game is now focused on just four party members, like the Patagate from Patapon 2. I guess you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone, because I do miss having a whole army of these little guys. These party members each serve a specific role though. Ton, Chin, and Kan can choose from spear, shield, and archer classes, respectively. As you level up each class, you gain evolved classes that serve entirely different purposes. Every class has "set skills" and "class skills". The former, set skills, are great because you earn them at specific levels for each class, and they can be applied to any other class at that point. The latter, class skills, are a reward for sticking to one class and grinding it out for an eternity. Sometimes they carry over to other classes, most of the time they don't, and so I didn't bother. Beyond that, the random equipment drops you collect are what affects your stats the most in the long run. This is one of those games where choosing "optimize" can be a trap in several instances, because you should think harder about your loadout in certain situations.
The uberhero gets his own paragraph due to being a uniquely overpowered case. The UH can choose any of the three main classes from the start, but then you gotta stick with your choice until you reach level 15. Beyond that though, the potential for the UH is through the roof. Set skills play a big part in this, since the UH will eventually have access to all classes with enough grinding. Mixing and matching skills from all classes to make something OP is what set skills are all about. Aside from that, every single class has a unique "uberhero chant", an overpowered skill that occurs every time you hit four perfect beats on its corresponding command. Some create an impenetrable defense, others rain down hell from above. The possibilities are truly endless.
Patapon 3 has its quirks, of course. Every Uberhero has their own unique chant that blends in wonderfully to the music, much better than Patapon 2's loud singing. Summons in this game are far less tedious than in Patapon 1/2, so they're inarguably better, but they're also weirdly abstract in Patapon 3. You ad-lib your way to victory as the game revives/heals all team members and does massive damage to whatever's in front of you. You also lose control of your team in most cases, which can lead to unfair deaths. Speaking of unfair deaths, Hatapon feels like your team's weakest link. As long as your "defense unit" is still alive, Hatapon is invincible, but the moment that defense perishes... He's got no health whatsoever, and when completely defenseless, usually dies in 1-2 hits. Eventually, all my issues compounded upon themselves. I couldn't take it anymore. I wanted to beat this game within the next year or so, and so I sought out help. I dove headfirst into Patapon 3's multiplayer community.
CALLING ALL UBERHEROES
The remaining playerbase for Patapon 3 plays on a modded version of the game known as "Dark Covenant X Depths of Infinity", or "DxD" for short. It's decked out with a bunch of new features, bug fixes, more accurate retranslations of skill descriptions, extra quests, and so on. They even added in music from the previous Patapon games, music from outside the Patapon games, and the ability to randomize background music (useful for not going insane via hearing the same exact song repeatedly while grinding).
Playing with four uberheroes is like an entirely different game. A better, more enjoyable game, if I'm being honest. It's a power trip when everyone fires off their uberhero powers at once, but each individual hero is still fairly vulnerable. This is where all the different classes and set skills can synergize with each other, everyone gets to act independently, and you can create your own unstoppable force of nature. I got to play rounds where two people played DPS, and me and the last person simply served to stand back and multiply their firepower. Got carried through some of the harder content that way. All the mechanics just fell into place.
It's not every day that I play a multiplayer game disguised as a single player game. I admire the ambition of Patapon 3, but please do yourself a favor and do not play this game alone, if possible. Google is your friend, and there's a Discord server or two out there that are willing to get you set up to play the game online. I don't really track dates on Backloggd, but I assure you that this game took me about a month to finish, and that probably could've been chopped in half if I played multiplayer from the start. If you're looking for a more genuine Patapon experience, the first two games are definitely a better choice. If you want a Patapon game that you could potentially play forever, you can either play this game, or you could PATA PATA PATA PON your way to your nearest therapist. Pata pata pata pon, pata pata pata pon, pata pon don chaka, pon pon chaka chaka...
2008
Patapon 1 was simple, but effective. Going into this, I think I would've been happy with just "more Patapon", as long as they addressed some of my problems with the first game. And so, I begin another journey to Earthend...this time, against the forces of Hell. Not even kidding.
One thing I neglected to mention in my review of the previous title were Rarepons. There were only three types, and the differences weren't obvious (unless you got the loading screen that told you what they did). In Patapon 2, Rarepons have been overhauled into a full evolution tree, allowing you to unlock and upgrade each type of Patapon up to level 10. This requires a dumptruck's worth of materials, but Patapon 2 is far less stingy with item drops than its predecessor. Consequentially, this increases the grind to a similarly exhausting degree. At least the grind has a theoretical end this time.
Reaching FEVER mode in Patapon 1/2 has a few shortcuts to it. If some of your drumbeats sound particularly potent, that means you're right on the beat. Hitting four perfect beats in a command is indicated by a climactic cymbal crash, and instant FEVER mode if your current chain is at 2 or higher. Fever still gives you whole team various boosts, just like the previous game. The key to keeping bosses in check in Patapon 2, as well as the way to grind for rare materials, is to stagger them. This is similar to real life; I, too, drop my items when staggered.
One of Patapon 2's bigger additions is your very own hero! I named mine Riki, because there's no better heropon. In essence, he's a customizable one-pon army. You can choose any unlocked class for him, and the highest unlocked level of any evolution on top of that. Heroes don't show their hand until you achieve fever mode though. Hitting four perfect beats while in fever mode initiates a special attack from your hero, a unique one for each class. They range from moderately useful to ludicrously overpowered. The real purpose of your hero is to give you access to the Patagate, where you can play wireless co-op missions with three other heroes (or offline with CPUs). Your goal is to beat the boss and escort the egg so you can DON CHAKA. By "DON CHAKA", I mean that the heroes party hard in order to make the egg hatch. Inside each egg are different types of masks, equippable by your hero for massive boosts.
With all that said, not all is well in the world of the Patapon, and there is a lot of stuff in this game that got under my skin. I hate that the Hero abilities are accompanied by this loud, screaming chant that drowns out the music and other Patapons. It just keeps going eternally (as long as you keep hitting perfect beats), really obnoxious. This game actually introduced three tiers of difficulty, although they only really affect how strictly your rhythm is judged. Hard mode is for human metronomes, and easy mode may as well be playing itself. The Tatepon (sword/shield) hero ability makes every Patapon invincible as long as it's active. Put two and two together, and that's right! You can cheese the entire game this way, if you're patient enough! This was especially useful during the final stretch of the game, where they insisted on reusing the worst gimmicks of Patapon 1's stages: ones where you have to escort something without letting it break, or ones where you have to destroy an objective that's constantly moving away from you.
This was also the point where I realized that Patapon 2's grind was absolutely necessary. It was a flaw in Patapon 1, but the sheer amount of options and the resources they require add up fast. I'm frustrated that they did nothing to improve this, because I have two potential solutions:
A: Let the player keep their spoils even if they fail a mission. Even a fraction of their spoils would work too, just something that ensures they're always getting stronger, even when faced with overwhelming odds. Or...
B: Just implement a typical EXP system. Unlocking rarepon evolutions for each individual patapon is already a resource sink, but grinding those individual evolutions up to level 10 is overkill. Slowly gaining strength over time is a tried-and-true solution.
This game was enjoyable, but it's also really weird to me. It improves in a few areas, and stays the same in many others, usually the ones that needed improvement the most. Frankly, it's a tossup between whether I prefer the first game or the second game. But who knows? Maybe the third one is about to knock my socks off.
One thing I neglected to mention in my review of the previous title were Rarepons. There were only three types, and the differences weren't obvious (unless you got the loading screen that told you what they did). In Patapon 2, Rarepons have been overhauled into a full evolution tree, allowing you to unlock and upgrade each type of Patapon up to level 10. This requires a dumptruck's worth of materials, but Patapon 2 is far less stingy with item drops than its predecessor. Consequentially, this increases the grind to a similarly exhausting degree. At least the grind has a theoretical end this time.
Reaching FEVER mode in Patapon 1/2 has a few shortcuts to it. If some of your drumbeats sound particularly potent, that means you're right on the beat. Hitting four perfect beats in a command is indicated by a climactic cymbal crash, and instant FEVER mode if your current chain is at 2 or higher. Fever still gives you whole team various boosts, just like the previous game. The key to keeping bosses in check in Patapon 2, as well as the way to grind for rare materials, is to stagger them. This is similar to real life; I, too, drop my items when staggered.
One of Patapon 2's bigger additions is your very own hero! I named mine Riki, because there's no better heropon. In essence, he's a customizable one-pon army. You can choose any unlocked class for him, and the highest unlocked level of any evolution on top of that. Heroes don't show their hand until you achieve fever mode though. Hitting four perfect beats while in fever mode initiates a special attack from your hero, a unique one for each class. They range from moderately useful to ludicrously overpowered. The real purpose of your hero is to give you access to the Patagate, where you can play wireless co-op missions with three other heroes (or offline with CPUs). Your goal is to beat the boss and escort the egg so you can DON CHAKA. By "DON CHAKA", I mean that the heroes party hard in order to make the egg hatch. Inside each egg are different types of masks, equippable by your hero for massive boosts.
With all that said, not all is well in the world of the Patapon, and there is a lot of stuff in this game that got under my skin. I hate that the Hero abilities are accompanied by this loud, screaming chant that drowns out the music and other Patapons. It just keeps going eternally (as long as you keep hitting perfect beats), really obnoxious. This game actually introduced three tiers of difficulty, although they only really affect how strictly your rhythm is judged. Hard mode is for human metronomes, and easy mode may as well be playing itself. The Tatepon (sword/shield) hero ability makes every Patapon invincible as long as it's active. Put two and two together, and that's right! You can cheese the entire game this way, if you're patient enough! This was especially useful during the final stretch of the game, where they insisted on reusing the worst gimmicks of Patapon 1's stages: ones where you have to escort something without letting it break, or ones where you have to destroy an objective that's constantly moving away from you.
This was also the point where I realized that Patapon 2's grind was absolutely necessary. It was a flaw in Patapon 1, but the sheer amount of options and the resources they require add up fast. I'm frustrated that they did nothing to improve this, because I have two potential solutions:
A: Let the player keep their spoils even if they fail a mission. Even a fraction of their spoils would work too, just something that ensures they're always getting stronger, even when faced with overwhelming odds. Or...
B: Just implement a typical EXP system. Unlocking rarepon evolutions for each individual patapon is already a resource sink, but grinding those individual evolutions up to level 10 is overkill. Slowly gaining strength over time is a tried-and-true solution.
This game was enjoyable, but it's also really weird to me. It improves in a few areas, and stays the same in many others, usually the ones that needed improvement the most. Frankly, it's a tossup between whether I prefer the first game or the second game. But who knows? Maybe the third one is about to knock my socks off.
2007
With the advent of Ratatan's Kickstarter campaign (which you should definitely check out here), I figured there was no better time to finally play Patapon. I'll admit that I bounced off this game at least twice during my high school years, but this time I'm really gonna do it. I am contractually obligated as their god, the Mighty Patapon, to lead the Patapon tribe to Earthend, where we will bear witness to IT. What is "IT"? Neither I nor they know, but I suppose we're going to find out together.
The art style here is super-simplistic, yet so effective. The Patapon manage to show a wide range of emotions, despite being literal eyeballs with wacky little limbs. Enemies and bosses get more elaborate designs, which makes them inherently more threatening, in a way. The music in Patapon is more of a backing track, with your drums and the patapons' chants being the primary instruments. You may go in expecting mostly tribal beats, or possibly grand marches, but rest assured, the Patapon know how to get their groove on too. The different chants they respond with are so endearing and memorable to listen to, they get stuck in your head. I was mumbling them to myself even while I wasn't playing.
Despite any complaints you may read below, just know that the core gameplay is so horribly addicting that it kept me playing, even at my lowest points. Patapon is a rhythm game of call-and-response. Each face button corresponds to one of four chants, PATA, PON, CHAKA, and DON. Those first three are used for giving out commands to your army, and I'll address the fourth one later. (what are the commands) For example, "PON-PON-PATA-PON" gives the order to attack, and your Patapon army spends the next four beats carrying out that action, after which you give another four-beat command. You do this back-and-forth for the entirety of each mission, using different orders of beats to give different orders on the fly. Do enough of this consecutively, and you enter FEVER mode. FEVER mode is what you constantly want to be in. The music really kicks in, and all attacks are exponentially more effective. If you're not in fever mode, you are not operating at optimal capacity. Anyways, remember the DON chant? That's used exclusively for activating special chants, but these also cost your fever. These have extremely limited utility outside of their required use cases, and are almost never worth expending your fever over.
There are a handful of optional minigames you can unlock for your home base. The gardening minigame has surprisingly difficult timing, but its ingredients are required for the absurdly helpful cooking minigame. The smithy is the very last one you unlock, which really feels like something you should've unlocked first, considering how necessary something like a smithy sounds. The only ones I'd consider outright necessary are the aforementioned gardening and cooking minigames, but they're fairly negligible distractions otherwise.
It's inevitable that you'll fail a mission at some point in Patapon, but you don't have many options at your disposal to correct that. It leads to points where you hunt and hunt, use some scarce materials, gain a new member of your army or two, and try the stage you're stuck on again, only to fail again. I frequently reached points where the solution was clearly "more grinding", but without an actual game plan, I had no idea if that grinding would even amount to anything, which is my least favorite type of grinding. The game will suggest via a loading screen that you re-fight the bosses as well to get rare materials, but those rematches have a despicable catch to them: they get stronger each time you beat them. This wouldn't be the worst thing ever if the drops were guaranteed, and if the boss' strength capped out at some point, but neither of those things are true. Part of this feels like I'm pushing the game beyond its scope. It's made with a portable form factor in mind, for sure. Play a mission or two on your commute or lunch break, and it probably wouldn't overstay its welcome. Alas, I subjected it to longer play sessions.
I say this about every game developed by Sony's Japan Studio, but it's a testament to their creative drive that they can confidently imagine and concieve ideas this cool. I can't think of many games that center around gameplay similar to Patapon's, it sits comfortably in its own niche to this very day. It has flaws, but it's nothing that couldn't be ironed out by a sequel or two, which is exactly what Patapon got. To earthend or bust, PATA-PATA-PATA-PON.
The art style here is super-simplistic, yet so effective. The Patapon manage to show a wide range of emotions, despite being literal eyeballs with wacky little limbs. Enemies and bosses get more elaborate designs, which makes them inherently more threatening, in a way. The music in Patapon is more of a backing track, with your drums and the patapons' chants being the primary instruments. You may go in expecting mostly tribal beats, or possibly grand marches, but rest assured, the Patapon know how to get their groove on too. The different chants they respond with are so endearing and memorable to listen to, they get stuck in your head. I was mumbling them to myself even while I wasn't playing.
Despite any complaints you may read below, just know that the core gameplay is so horribly addicting that it kept me playing, even at my lowest points. Patapon is a rhythm game of call-and-response. Each face button corresponds to one of four chants, PATA, PON, CHAKA, and DON. Those first three are used for giving out commands to your army, and I'll address the fourth one later. (what are the commands) For example, "PON-PON-PATA-PON" gives the order to attack, and your Patapon army spends the next four beats carrying out that action, after which you give another four-beat command. You do this back-and-forth for the entirety of each mission, using different orders of beats to give different orders on the fly. Do enough of this consecutively, and you enter FEVER mode. FEVER mode is what you constantly want to be in. The music really kicks in, and all attacks are exponentially more effective. If you're not in fever mode, you are not operating at optimal capacity. Anyways, remember the DON chant? That's used exclusively for activating special chants, but these also cost your fever. These have extremely limited utility outside of their required use cases, and are almost never worth expending your fever over.
There are a handful of optional minigames you can unlock for your home base. The gardening minigame has surprisingly difficult timing, but its ingredients are required for the absurdly helpful cooking minigame. The smithy is the very last one you unlock, which really feels like something you should've unlocked first, considering how necessary something like a smithy sounds. The only ones I'd consider outright necessary are the aforementioned gardening and cooking minigames, but they're fairly negligible distractions otherwise.
It's inevitable that you'll fail a mission at some point in Patapon, but you don't have many options at your disposal to correct that. It leads to points where you hunt and hunt, use some scarce materials, gain a new member of your army or two, and try the stage you're stuck on again, only to fail again. I frequently reached points where the solution was clearly "more grinding", but without an actual game plan, I had no idea if that grinding would even amount to anything, which is my least favorite type of grinding. The game will suggest via a loading screen that you re-fight the bosses as well to get rare materials, but those rematches have a despicable catch to them: they get stronger each time you beat them. This wouldn't be the worst thing ever if the drops were guaranteed, and if the boss' strength capped out at some point, but neither of those things are true. Part of this feels like I'm pushing the game beyond its scope. It's made with a portable form factor in mind, for sure. Play a mission or two on your commute or lunch break, and it probably wouldn't overstay its welcome. Alas, I subjected it to longer play sessions.
I say this about every game developed by Sony's Japan Studio, but it's a testament to their creative drive that they can confidently imagine and concieve ideas this cool. I can't think of many games that center around gameplay similar to Patapon's, it sits comfortably in its own niche to this very day. It has flaws, but it's nothing that couldn't be ironed out by a sequel or two, which is exactly what Patapon got. To earthend or bust, PATA-PATA-PATA-PON.
2004
Following an unintentionally extended vacation on an unknown planet, Olimar returns home to his workplace. Without even getting a chance to say hi to his family, the company president exclaims that he's 10,000 pokos deep in debt. Imagine if you took a vacation and returned to find your workplace in disarray. Actually, that happens more often in my life than I'd like to elaborate on.
Pikmin 2's biggest flaw is a lack of having a concrete goal. Yeah, there's the 10,000 poko debt, but with no day limit, you can proceed at basically any speed you want to. This means that Pikmin 2 is effectively a collectathon. I'd argue the 10k debt is just the devs luring you into the gameplay loop, like a tutorial phase of sorts. The 30-day limit has effectively been replaced by a different kind of tension: managing your Pikmin within caves. When you lose Pikmin in a cave and move on to the next floor, they're gone for good. You wanna keep as many Pikmin on hand for as long as you can, especially with having no idea how many floors deep a cave is. It's also probably helpful to note that the Pikmin 2 devs are out to get you at every turn. Some levels are randomized, others have traps that are just there to fuck with you. Sometimes it can feel like someone's "super hard" romhack. Somehow, I actually find this endearing. I swear I'm not a masochist in denial, I just find games that have no qualms with torturing the player to be extremely funny, even when I'm on the receiving end. I don't think this shit would be nearly as tolerable if you couldn't reset your console to retry a floor though.
Another major factor that helps edge this game out over Pikmin 1 for me is the Pikmin AI. I'm not even kidding when I say that seeing my Pikmin narrow their formation as they cross a bridge is a game-changer. Everything feels more responsive overall. You can split up duties with the second captain of your group, but we unfontunately haven't reached Pikmin 3 levels of multitasking yet. Louie was simply my relay point for when Pikmin returned to base. New to Pikmin 2 are purple and white Pikmin. I didn't get very much use out of purples (useful for combat and nothing else), but whites got plenty of use by being very delicious to my enemies! Watching Emperor Bulblax die from food poisoning was the best thing ever after suffering against him in Pikmin 1.
Charm factor and variety carry this game hard. Caves may be too similar visually, but the smorgasbord of creatures found within are a force to be reckoned with. The value of the treasures mean nothing to me, I just want to know what they're called, and more importantly, what Olimar thinks of them. Yeah, the Piklopedia fuckin' rules. Getting to read detailed research blurbs on each creature is great, as well as hearing Olimar's internal monologue on each treasure. The man still thinks of his wife and kids, even on company time.
Pikmin 2 made me laugh, cry, and fear for my life. It kept me going from beginning to end, no matter how many times it struck me down. The final boss annoyed me to no end, and I want to put Louie through a meat grinder, but I somehow still came out of the experience feeling positive. The modding scene for this game is also surprisingly active, so I may very well find myself playing more Pikmin 2 in the near future. It can be bullshit, but it's admittedly my kinda bullshit.
Pikmin 2's biggest flaw is a lack of having a concrete goal. Yeah, there's the 10,000 poko debt, but with no day limit, you can proceed at basically any speed you want to. This means that Pikmin 2 is effectively a collectathon. I'd argue the 10k debt is just the devs luring you into the gameplay loop, like a tutorial phase of sorts. The 30-day limit has effectively been replaced by a different kind of tension: managing your Pikmin within caves. When you lose Pikmin in a cave and move on to the next floor, they're gone for good. You wanna keep as many Pikmin on hand for as long as you can, especially with having no idea how many floors deep a cave is. It's also probably helpful to note that the Pikmin 2 devs are out to get you at every turn. Some levels are randomized, others have traps that are just there to fuck with you. Sometimes it can feel like someone's "super hard" romhack. Somehow, I actually find this endearing. I swear I'm not a masochist in denial, I just find games that have no qualms with torturing the player to be extremely funny, even when I'm on the receiving end. I don't think this shit would be nearly as tolerable if you couldn't reset your console to retry a floor though.
Another major factor that helps edge this game out over Pikmin 1 for me is the Pikmin AI. I'm not even kidding when I say that seeing my Pikmin narrow their formation as they cross a bridge is a game-changer. Everything feels more responsive overall. You can split up duties with the second captain of your group, but we unfontunately haven't reached Pikmin 3 levels of multitasking yet. Louie was simply my relay point for when Pikmin returned to base. New to Pikmin 2 are purple and white Pikmin. I didn't get very much use out of purples (useful for combat and nothing else), but whites got plenty of use by being very delicious to my enemies! Watching Emperor Bulblax die from food poisoning was the best thing ever after suffering against him in Pikmin 1.
Charm factor and variety carry this game hard. Caves may be too similar visually, but the smorgasbord of creatures found within are a force to be reckoned with. The value of the treasures mean nothing to me, I just want to know what they're called, and more importantly, what Olimar thinks of them. Yeah, the Piklopedia fuckin' rules. Getting to read detailed research blurbs on each creature is great, as well as hearing Olimar's internal monologue on each treasure. The man still thinks of his wife and kids, even on company time.
Pikmin 2 made me laugh, cry, and fear for my life. It kept me going from beginning to end, no matter how many times it struck me down. The final boss annoyed me to no end, and I want to put Louie through a meat grinder, but I somehow still came out of the experience feeling positive. The modding scene for this game is also surprisingly active, so I may very well find myself playing more Pikmin 2 in the near future. It can be bullshit, but it's admittedly my kinda bullshit.
2001
In this title, Olimar's got 30 days to locate and retrieve all 30* (you can miss 5 but they're unspecified and you need all of them to reach the final boss) of his ship parts before he's forced to breathe the same shitty oxygen that we breathe too. In order to do so, he enlists the help of the Pikmin, zerg rushing his enemies with an army 100 strong.
The world of Pikmin incites curiosity. You don't know what creatures are out there, but most of them probably want you gone. The music is laid-back and atmospheric, but it has melodies intertwined at the core of each track, ones that stick with you long after a day is done. I love all of Olimar's end-of-day logs. He chronicles his experiences with the Pikmin, documents the local flora and fauna, and even misses his wife and kids. I don't mean that last one as a joke, by the way. Olimar may be a big-nosed spaceman ordering tiny plant people around, but mentioning things like his family give him a human element that the player can sympathize with. The dude named the Pikmin and their home after foods, for crying out loud.
Something important to keep in mind about Pikmin is that you cannot do everything in a single day. The 30-day limit and daily timer are the linchpins of Pikmin 1. It necessitates scouting out the area and planning in advance. Taking heavy losses in battle may necessitate taking a day solely to farm more Pikmin. Nabbing more than one ship part in a single day gives you a little bit of leeway, and so on. It's such a weird, charming game with so much to discover, even when condensed into 3 or so areas. I even saw several enemies that I never encountered in the post-credits roll call, each one receiving a louder "What the hell is that?!?" from me. Crass attitude aside, It just looks like there's more discoveries to be made, even after collecting all of the ship parts. I'll be back to play this game again for sure.
I've been spoiled by Pikmin 3, but the controls in this game take getting used to, and I still have my gripes beyond that. Not being able to switch what type of Pikmin you want to throw without disbanding your whole team is very unhelpful, especially when merely touching an idle Pikmin adds it back to your team. The part that keeps me from letting the Pikmin into my heart is their AI. Their pathfinding in The Forest Navel astounded me, as they seemed to approach every un-bombed rock wall just to check their integrity on the way back to base. Red and yellow Pikmin make no effort to stay away from water. The Pikmin also frequently gain free will, which is a big no-no. They gravitate towards whatever Olimar walks past, be it a Bulborb carcass, some grass, a pile of rubble, and even pellet flower stems that haven't fully bloomed yet. You guys realize that you need those pellets to reproduce, right? Stop nipping it in the bud! You wanna touch grass so bad? I'll make like a Swooping Snitchbug and put you back in the ground, ensuring you can touch grass forever.
Overall though? Yeah, this game's considered a classic for a reason. I wonder how many people discovered this title through the "Pikmin movie" included with Luigi's Mansion. Maybe GameCube players just didn't have much choice on what to play during this experimental time for Nintendo. Whatever caused it to take off, I'm glad that Shigeru Miyamoto got to share his vision with everyone. Now Shiggy, where's Super Mario 128?
The world of Pikmin incites curiosity. You don't know what creatures are out there, but most of them probably want you gone. The music is laid-back and atmospheric, but it has melodies intertwined at the core of each track, ones that stick with you long after a day is done. I love all of Olimar's end-of-day logs. He chronicles his experiences with the Pikmin, documents the local flora and fauna, and even misses his wife and kids. I don't mean that last one as a joke, by the way. Olimar may be a big-nosed spaceman ordering tiny plant people around, but mentioning things like his family give him a human element that the player can sympathize with. The dude named the Pikmin and their home after foods, for crying out loud.
Something important to keep in mind about Pikmin is that you cannot do everything in a single day. The 30-day limit and daily timer are the linchpins of Pikmin 1. It necessitates scouting out the area and planning in advance. Taking heavy losses in battle may necessitate taking a day solely to farm more Pikmin. Nabbing more than one ship part in a single day gives you a little bit of leeway, and so on. It's such a weird, charming game with so much to discover, even when condensed into 3 or so areas. I even saw several enemies that I never encountered in the post-credits roll call, each one receiving a louder "What the hell is that?!?" from me. Crass attitude aside, It just looks like there's more discoveries to be made, even after collecting all of the ship parts. I'll be back to play this game again for sure.
I've been spoiled by Pikmin 3, but the controls in this game take getting used to, and I still have my gripes beyond that. Not being able to switch what type of Pikmin you want to throw without disbanding your whole team is very unhelpful, especially when merely touching an idle Pikmin adds it back to your team. The part that keeps me from letting the Pikmin into my heart is their AI. Their pathfinding in The Forest Navel astounded me, as they seemed to approach every un-bombed rock wall just to check their integrity on the way back to base. Red and yellow Pikmin make no effort to stay away from water. The Pikmin also frequently gain free will, which is a big no-no. They gravitate towards whatever Olimar walks past, be it a Bulborb carcass, some grass, a pile of rubble, and even pellet flower stems that haven't fully bloomed yet. You guys realize that you need those pellets to reproduce, right? Stop nipping it in the bud! You wanna touch grass so bad? I'll make like a Swooping Snitchbug and put you back in the ground, ensuring you can touch grass forever.
Overall though? Yeah, this game's considered a classic for a reason. I wonder how many people discovered this title through the "Pikmin movie" included with Luigi's Mansion. Maybe GameCube players just didn't have much choice on what to play during this experimental time for Nintendo. Whatever caused it to take off, I'm glad that Shigeru Miyamoto got to share his vision with everyone. Now Shiggy, where's Super Mario 128?
The aftermath of Danganronpa V3 definitely left fans divided on whether or not Kodaka was a hack fraud. It definitely caught everyone's attention when he revealed his new game...where you solve murder mysteries...featuring the same art style as Danganronpa...and even the same composer. Now, I hate to rip off the bandaid, but I don't think it's going to stop this game from bleeding out either way.
The worst part of this game arguably isn't even a part of the game's content; It's how it runs. Loading screens are extremely frequent and decently long. The game is constantly running just below 30 FPS, giving it a very sluggish feel. Almost every time the camera cuts to a different position, some background element breaks for a frame or two. If it only happened a few times, I'd shrug it off, but these glitches in the matrix happen very often. This game's technical issues don't stop with performance and graphics either. I think the person doing sound mixing at Spike Chunsoft may be asleep at the wheel. There are a handful of occasions where voice clips are way louder/softer than they should be. One in particular is a very loud instance of Yuma saying "oh", which jumpscared me nearly every time it happened. Another is the scene where Shinigami boom-kills the culprit at the end of a mystery labyrinth. She's certainly saying words, but if you're not using subtitles, then good luck hearing them as her words get washed away. If audio problems weren't enough, the lip sync for in-engine cutscenes is also distractingly desynced. Listen, I know. I know that saying "the Switch isn't powerful enough for this game" is beating a 6-year old dead horse, but this game just isn't properly optimized for the hardware that they signed off on timed exclusivity to.
Credit where credit is due, this game's world design is top-notch. A dark, gloomy, futuristic city that's constantly plagued by rainfall, punctuated with bright neon lights everywhere. While I wouldn't call it my favorite work of his, Hifumi Takada manages to provide an appropriately chill and mysterious backdrop to this world through his music. I enjoyed the downtime between cases where you could take on optional requests from the residents of Kanai Ward, if only because I got to vibe with this setting for longer.
On the flipside, the Mystery Labyrinth is the other big highlight of this game. It's a nonstop rollercoaster of absurd spectacle as you answer rapid-fire questions, re-create murder scenes, and more. It frames the process of pursuing the truth as if you're exploring some elaborate RPG dungeon. The major component of this is the Reasoning Death Match. People that try to prevent you from reaching the truth in the real world show up as phantoms in the labyrinth, except now they're buffed up and equipped with all the RGB they could find in the dumpster behind Best Buy. In the deathmatches, you literally dodge the phantoms' statements until you find the one where you can literally cut through it using facts and logic. The Mystery Labyrinth has a critical flaw though: it's the most linear "labyrinth" I've ever experienced. I'm not even just talking about the hallways where you hold forward while people talk (I'm pretty sure those segments aren't even masking a loading screen or anything). It's often structured like a straight shot through with questions along the way, and I never ran out of health once. It's a fairly easy affair.
The thing that hurts this game severely is that almost none of the characters stick out to me. Most of them are introduced, barely fleshed out, and discarded like trash by the end of their chapter, never to be mentioned again. Even the ones who are with you for the whole game, like the master detectives, don't really have something to keep you hooked. You can find collectibles in the overworld that give you side-conversations with the other master detectives to help flesh them out a bit more, but you access them through the pause menu, which means, well, y'know. Even Yuma, the protagonist of this game, feels eerily similar to a character from Danganronpa V3. Yuma's just boneless Shuichi! His character development feels like it's traveling in a straight, horizontal line! He spends most of the game doubting himself and being overly cautious, which is a very boring way to portray an amnesiac. The line starts to ascend a little bit by the end, but that's too late. That's always too late, kind of like how most of the cases in this game end in pure deus-ex-machina. Our heroes usually have no good reason to escape their predicaments, but it kinda just happens anyways, and I hate that! The villains are also complete cartoon characters, something that i enjoy to a point. I wish that their behavior was more subdued outside of the mystery labyrinth. It'd make for a nice contrast, instead of them being on full blast the whole time.
There is one character who'll stick with me though, but for all the wrong reasons. I'm not into Shinigami. Kinda feels like Kodaka just inserted his ideal fetishized woman into the game, and while I'm not against that in theory, she leans a bit too far into "what the fuck is even happening" territory far too often for my tastes. This woman is quite literally horny for murder mysteries, and the way she treats the mild-mannered Yuma can feel downright rude at points. She's very mean-spirited, and genuinely annoying on top of that, never hesitating to barf up pop culture references. Only Yuma can hear her, so I found the funniest moments with Shinigami were the ones where Yuma gave no reaction and went about his business, as he should.
Also, I hate to bring this up, but for how Danganronpa V3 ended (don't spoil yourself, if you know, you know), Kodaka sure came back with a game that feels eerily like Danganronpa V4. Instead of Super-High-School-Level students with Ultimate abilities, you have Master Detectives with Forensic Fortes. "Kanai Ward's Ultimate Secret" sounds like it could be "The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History". This isn't a Nonstop Debate, it's a Reasoning Death Match! Shinigami Puzzle? More like "I genuinely would've preferred Hangman's Gambit 2.0"! It borrows so many concepts from DangitGrandpa, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the problems start to surface when I think about how DR used most of these ideas to better effect.
I don't think this is Kodaka's "AI: The Somnium Files". Not even close. At best, it's Danganronpa-adjacent. He's gonna have to smooth out all the rough edges and branch out a bit more if he plans to make this an ongoing series. There is potential here, but it's frequently drowned out by a downpour of tedium and unmemorable writing. This rating could definitely go up at least half a star once it releases on platforms that can actually handle the game. Or you could just, y'know, play Danganronpa.
The worst part of this game arguably isn't even a part of the game's content; It's how it runs. Loading screens are extremely frequent and decently long. The game is constantly running just below 30 FPS, giving it a very sluggish feel. Almost every time the camera cuts to a different position, some background element breaks for a frame or two. If it only happened a few times, I'd shrug it off, but these glitches in the matrix happen very often. This game's technical issues don't stop with performance and graphics either. I think the person doing sound mixing at Spike Chunsoft may be asleep at the wheel. There are a handful of occasions where voice clips are way louder/softer than they should be. One in particular is a very loud instance of Yuma saying "oh", which jumpscared me nearly every time it happened. Another is the scene where Shinigami boom-kills the culprit at the end of a mystery labyrinth. She's certainly saying words, but if you're not using subtitles, then good luck hearing them as her words get washed away. If audio problems weren't enough, the lip sync for in-engine cutscenes is also distractingly desynced. Listen, I know. I know that saying "the Switch isn't powerful enough for this game" is beating a 6-year old dead horse, but this game just isn't properly optimized for the hardware that they signed off on timed exclusivity to.
Credit where credit is due, this game's world design is top-notch. A dark, gloomy, futuristic city that's constantly plagued by rainfall, punctuated with bright neon lights everywhere. While I wouldn't call it my favorite work of his, Hifumi Takada manages to provide an appropriately chill and mysterious backdrop to this world through his music. I enjoyed the downtime between cases where you could take on optional requests from the residents of Kanai Ward, if only because I got to vibe with this setting for longer.
On the flipside, the Mystery Labyrinth is the other big highlight of this game. It's a nonstop rollercoaster of absurd spectacle as you answer rapid-fire questions, re-create murder scenes, and more. It frames the process of pursuing the truth as if you're exploring some elaborate RPG dungeon. The major component of this is the Reasoning Death Match. People that try to prevent you from reaching the truth in the real world show up as phantoms in the labyrinth, except now they're buffed up and equipped with all the RGB they could find in the dumpster behind Best Buy. In the deathmatches, you literally dodge the phantoms' statements until you find the one where you can literally cut through it using facts and logic. The Mystery Labyrinth has a critical flaw though: it's the most linear "labyrinth" I've ever experienced. I'm not even just talking about the hallways where you hold forward while people talk (I'm pretty sure those segments aren't even masking a loading screen or anything). It's often structured like a straight shot through with questions along the way, and I never ran out of health once. It's a fairly easy affair.
The thing that hurts this game severely is that almost none of the characters stick out to me. Most of them are introduced, barely fleshed out, and discarded like trash by the end of their chapter, never to be mentioned again. Even the ones who are with you for the whole game, like the master detectives, don't really have something to keep you hooked. You can find collectibles in the overworld that give you side-conversations with the other master detectives to help flesh them out a bit more, but you access them through the pause menu, which means, well, y'know. Even Yuma, the protagonist of this game, feels eerily similar to a character from Danganronpa V3. Yuma's just boneless Shuichi! His character development feels like it's traveling in a straight, horizontal line! He spends most of the game doubting himself and being overly cautious, which is a very boring way to portray an amnesiac. The line starts to ascend a little bit by the end, but that's too late. That's always too late, kind of like how most of the cases in this game end in pure deus-ex-machina. Our heroes usually have no good reason to escape their predicaments, but it kinda just happens anyways, and I hate that! The villains are also complete cartoon characters, something that i enjoy to a point. I wish that their behavior was more subdued outside of the mystery labyrinth. It'd make for a nice contrast, instead of them being on full blast the whole time.
There is one character who'll stick with me though, but for all the wrong reasons. I'm not into Shinigami. Kinda feels like Kodaka just inserted his ideal fetishized woman into the game, and while I'm not against that in theory, she leans a bit too far into "what the fuck is even happening" territory far too often for my tastes. This woman is quite literally horny for murder mysteries, and the way she treats the mild-mannered Yuma can feel downright rude at points. She's very mean-spirited, and genuinely annoying on top of that, never hesitating to barf up pop culture references. Only Yuma can hear her, so I found the funniest moments with Shinigami were the ones where Yuma gave no reaction and went about his business, as he should.
Also, I hate to bring this up, but for how Danganronpa V3 ended (don't spoil yourself, if you know, you know), Kodaka sure came back with a game that feels eerily like Danganronpa V4. Instead of Super-High-School-Level students with Ultimate abilities, you have Master Detectives with Forensic Fortes. "Kanai Ward's Ultimate Secret" sounds like it could be "The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History". This isn't a Nonstop Debate, it's a Reasoning Death Match! Shinigami Puzzle? More like "I genuinely would've preferred Hangman's Gambit 2.0"! It borrows so many concepts from DangitGrandpa, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the problems start to surface when I think about how DR used most of these ideas to better effect.
I don't think this is Kodaka's "AI: The Somnium Files". Not even close. At best, it's Danganronpa-adjacent. He's gonna have to smooth out all the rough edges and branch out a bit more if he plans to make this an ongoing series. There is potential here, but it's frequently drowned out by a downpour of tedium and unmemorable writing. This rating could definitely go up at least half a star once it releases on platforms that can actually handle the game. Or you could just, y'know, play Danganronpa.
2020
On today's story of "how did I get here": Pikmin 4's demo was fine. I thought it was interesting, but I wasn't crazy about it. So I played Pikmin 3 Deluxe's demo as well because it was right there, and I had no choice but to continue in the full version. Never really been a big Pikmin fan, but this demo gave me enough of a push to follow through for once.
Our story begins with a crisis to end all crises: world hunger! Our trio sets sail to the farthest reaches of the universe in search of more foodstuffs, only to end up crash-landing on the surface, a fate that Pikmin protagonists cannot seem to avoid. Now stranded, they must rely on the assistance of Pikmin in order to escape PNF-404, foodstuffs in tow.
Your goals are simple. Collect fruit to survive, and track down strange wireless signals to discover new areas. Pikmin 3 aims for a happy medium between having a hard day limit and no day limit. As you collect hyperrealistic fruit, it's converted into juice rations with liquid physics that I want to chug. These bottles of juice represent your remaining days when totaled. As long as you keep collecting fruit, you increase the amount of days you have left to finish the game. Therein lies the problem, however. Fruit is everywhere, and it is pathetically easy to create a massive juice stockpile, rendering the day limit pretty moot. There's only one point in the game where it lights a fire under your ass by removing your supply, but that's only a temporary measure.
I don't really mind the time limit not being there, if only because the world of Pikmin 3 is one I want to stay in forever, territorial creatures and all. Being a tiny character in a comparitavely gigantic world is a concept I don't find explored in enough games. This game can also effectively be replayed forever, thanks to its extensive mission mode and ranking system. Pikmin 3's fantastic world design and atmosphere bring a flavor all their own. All the music dynamically changes depending on what you're doing (idling, fighting, ferrying items, etc). I wonder what flavor the Pikmin's onion tastes like. It looks like the world's most cracked fruit smoothie once you have all five types of Pikmin. I wanna ride down a river on a lilypad. Show me a Bulborb irl, I wanna throw hands.
It's hard to describe exactly why, but even in the most perilous situations, Pikmin 3 brings a smile to my face. Not many real-time strategy games are as approachable as Pikmin, nor as charming. This game has successfully Pikmin-pilled me. It's planted the seeds in my mind. Someday I'm truly going to lose it and try bossing the plants in my front yard around.
Our story begins with a crisis to end all crises: world hunger! Our trio sets sail to the farthest reaches of the universe in search of more foodstuffs, only to end up crash-landing on the surface, a fate that Pikmin protagonists cannot seem to avoid. Now stranded, they must rely on the assistance of Pikmin in order to escape PNF-404, foodstuffs in tow.
Your goals are simple. Collect fruit to survive, and track down strange wireless signals to discover new areas. Pikmin 3 aims for a happy medium between having a hard day limit and no day limit. As you collect hyperrealistic fruit, it's converted into juice rations with liquid physics that I want to chug. These bottles of juice represent your remaining days when totaled. As long as you keep collecting fruit, you increase the amount of days you have left to finish the game. Therein lies the problem, however. Fruit is everywhere, and it is pathetically easy to create a massive juice stockpile, rendering the day limit pretty moot. There's only one point in the game where it lights a fire under your ass by removing your supply, but that's only a temporary measure.
I don't really mind the time limit not being there, if only because the world of Pikmin 3 is one I want to stay in forever, territorial creatures and all. Being a tiny character in a comparitavely gigantic world is a concept I don't find explored in enough games. This game can also effectively be replayed forever, thanks to its extensive mission mode and ranking system. Pikmin 3's fantastic world design and atmosphere bring a flavor all their own. All the music dynamically changes depending on what you're doing (idling, fighting, ferrying items, etc). I wonder what flavor the Pikmin's onion tastes like. It looks like the world's most cracked fruit smoothie once you have all five types of Pikmin. I wanna ride down a river on a lilypad. Show me a Bulborb irl, I wanna throw hands.
It's hard to describe exactly why, but even in the most perilous situations, Pikmin 3 brings a smile to my face. Not many real-time strategy games are as approachable as Pikmin, nor as charming. This game has successfully Pikmin-pilled me. It's planted the seeds in my mind. Someday I'm truly going to lose it and try bossing the plants in my front yard around.
I'm not completely keen on how beatmaps are presented in this game. There's three inputs on each half of the screen, and it kinda makes me feel cross-eyed at points. My rhythm is already being tested enough, please don't test my perihperal vision on top of that. This is also just a personal issue, but years of playing Project Diva has conditioned me to treat the face buttons and the dpad as one and the same, which is just not how P3D operates.
It wouldn't be a modern Atlus game if it wasn't overpriced and didn't have oodles of day-one DLC. One of these paid DLCs gives you access to Shinjiro. Without spoiling a major plot point of P3 (for all of the people reading this who haven't played P3, even though I don't know why you'd play this game before P3 proper), having to pay money for Shinji is just insulting. This game is also just Persona 5 Dancing, it and P3D are one and the same. They even share DLC, which scummy in its own way. Kindly keep your acid jazz separate from my hip-hop and funk, please. It kinda feels like a P3 dancing game was made out of obligation, because it would look kinda scummy if they made one for P4 and P5, but not P3. I guess I can appreciate the sentiment, even if this game's bright neon aesthetics clash hard with the moody image of P3 I have solidified in my mind.
This game kinda lacks Persona 3's "soul". The writing is more lighthearted overall, which makes sense for the situation they're in, but it also sometimes misses the character dynamics of P3 as a result. The way my man Junpei gets treated in this game is heartbreaking. It almost reminds me of a certain someone... Regardless, it's more time spent with my favorite Persona cast, now with fancy HD character models. It's also now a bit of a last hurrah for the original English VAs. I can't be too mad about that.
I'm still not completely convinced that this game isn't just an anomaly. Atlus gave so much attention and spinoffs to Persona 4/5 over the years, it was kinda surreal seeing them finally acknowledge Persona 3 with its own standalone spinoff. It's hard to recommend this to anyone due to how it doesn't excel at anything specific. The P3 fanservice is pretty weak, and the rhythm gameplay isn't the best. It's not the most original project, but hey, maybe it greenlit P3 Reload in the long run.
It wouldn't be a modern Atlus game if it wasn't overpriced and didn't have oodles of day-one DLC. One of these paid DLCs gives you access to Shinjiro. Without spoiling a major plot point of P3 (for all of the people reading this who haven't played P3, even though I don't know why you'd play this game before P3 proper), having to pay money for Shinji is just insulting. This game is also just Persona 5 Dancing, it and P3D are one and the same. They even share DLC, which scummy in its own way. Kindly keep your acid jazz separate from my hip-hop and funk, please. It kinda feels like a P3 dancing game was made out of obligation, because it would look kinda scummy if they made one for P4 and P5, but not P3. I guess I can appreciate the sentiment, even if this game's bright neon aesthetics clash hard with the moody image of P3 I have solidified in my mind.
This game kinda lacks Persona 3's "soul". The writing is more lighthearted overall, which makes sense for the situation they're in, but it also sometimes misses the character dynamics of P3 as a result. The way my man Junpei gets treated in this game is heartbreaking. It almost reminds me of a certain someone... Regardless, it's more time spent with my favorite Persona cast, now with fancy HD character models. It's also now a bit of a last hurrah for the original English VAs. I can't be too mad about that.
I'm still not completely convinced that this game isn't just an anomaly. Atlus gave so much attention and spinoffs to Persona 4/5 over the years, it was kinda surreal seeing them finally acknowledge Persona 3 with its own standalone spinoff. It's hard to recommend this to anyone due to how it doesn't excel at anything specific. The P3 fanservice is pretty weak, and the rhythm gameplay isn't the best. It's not the most original project, but hey, maybe it greenlit P3 Reload in the long run.
In an interview with Color Splash's producer, Risa Tabata, she detailed that since the "Mario and Luigi RPG" titles shared the same space as Paper Mario, their team wanted to take their game series in a different direction, and focus on the puzzle solving. That was most people's takeaway from the interview anyways, myself included back in 2016. Even the Japanese audience was pretty disappointed to see them continue in this direction after Sticker Star caused riots in the streets. So, we've got a pretty strong foundation, don't we? (That's sarcasm. Text sarcasm stinks.)
I wanna open with the very best things this game has to offer: the presentation and the music. The attention to detail in making every part of this world feel like a papercraft diorama is only rivaled by Tearaway on the Vita, in my eyes. It feels less like they're falling back on paper as a joke and moreso embracing it as an art style, and it pays off in spades. The returning "Things" from Sticker Star are taking full advantage of Nintendo's first HD console by being way too extra (in a good way). The music's excellent, due in no small part to Nintendo's growing interest in big-band orchestras at the time. Sticker Star had a lot of sequenced instruments, but most of Color Splash's music uses the real deal. A large quantity of the music is pretty chill, but other times it goes pretty hard, more than it has any right to. This song from Sticker Star and its Color Splash counterpart are worlds apart in terms of quality. Even the game's digital manual keeps this attention to detail going, it's kind of nuts.
The humor of Color Splash is...unique, to say the least. This game is probably a great peek into the twisted minds working at Nintendo of America's "Treehouse" localization division. The game makes me laugh, I'll give them that. Though it's not because the game is actually funny, that's a rarity. It's because I'm constantly thinking "Why did they say that?" This game goes from referencing the Mario universe to referencing the Watergate scandal within the span of a few textboxes. Who is that kind of joke for? Little Timmy probably has no idea who Richard Nixon even is. I have to wonder if portions of this were written with contempt for the source material, or if the original Japanese script resembles the English one in any way. It doesn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things, because all the dialogue is delivered by nameless, featureless Toads. The game likes to pretend that it has unique Toad characters, but they have no discernible features, or even unique names (and no, making jokes about that fact does not excuse it). The Koopalings are the bosses for each chapter, and they are so tiresome as villains, even if they're given some level of characterization through their dialogue in this game. The Koopalings returning in 2009's "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" was a wild event, but by 2016, they had been used and reused for damn near every Mario game in Nintendo's lineup. The only original character is Huey, your partner for this adventure. He's fine. Anything is better than the snarky bitching that Kersti brought to the table, but I think Huey gets the job done well as your sole companion.
Color Splash has a lot of really creative scenarios, but it's all downplayed by a paper-thin main objective: collect the paint stars, restore color to Prisma Island, defeat Bowser, rescue Peach. Thankfully, while there's a bit of a slow and generic start, the scenarios you'll get wrapped up in are anything but conventional Mario fare. You'll engage in a coliseum battle, repair a train, explore a set of islands with their own parallel dimension, and more. It's constantly trying to 1-UP itself in terms of humor and always keeps you guessing. This game retains the exact same gameplay format as Sticker Star, straight down to having a world map that you select "stages" from, as opposed to an interconnected world. That format makes sense for the 3DS, but its inclusion here feels completely out of touch. You'll still solve several puzzles by applying Things to the environment in the appropriate spots. Unlike Sticker Star, the solutions are telegraphed a lot better, and if you're truly stumped, there are failsafes like The Wringer at the harbor who hints at the Things you need.
The battle system is constructed around needless tedium. First you pick your cards, then you paint your cards, then you swipe them up to play them. Remember the days where you picked "hammer" or "jump", picked an enemy, and attacked it? Color Splash doesn't remember, they don't even let you select the enemy you want to attack. They don't even show you their remaining health; It's signified by the color draining from their outlines, which leads to tons of guesswork. How much health does this enemy have left? How much damage will this card do? Why does autosorting your cards put you all the way on the right with your healing cards? Better yet, why battle at all when a few rounds of rock-paper scissors will max out your wallet? Battles reward you with hammer scraps, which will increase your maximum amount of paint when you collect enough, which basically means nothing as an EXP system because paint is everywhere in this game. Here's a lukewarm take for you: This game should've completely ditched the turn-based battles in favor of being a straight-up adventure/puzzle game. The whole battle system feels like a complete afterthought, merely a holdover for those who long for the good ol' days of PM64 and TTYD. If you're not going to make your combat system as mechanically interesting or fun as those two, then I honestly think you shouldn't even bother.
A lot of stuff in this game just feels tailor-made to waste your time. For example:
-Sometimes on the world map The Shy Bandit will appear and threaten to suck all the color out of a level you've filled back in.
-Sometimes you'll start a battle and Kamek will fuck with your cards in some way, likely forcing you to waste a ton of your resources (or in the case of an unpatched oversight, there's an extremely low chance you may just lose everything).
-There are 8 copy-pasted "Roshambo Temples" where you can play three rounds of rock-paper-scissors to earn junk that's required for 100% completion (but not main story completion). Were they jealous of Alex Kidd?
-There are several moments in this game that will instantly kill you if you don't act quick enough, booting you back to the title screen.
And the most damning thing of all in my eyes: Several levels in this game have more than one exit visible on the exact same screen, meaning you'll have to replay entire areas twice, puzzles and all, in order to complete this game. That's just obnoxious levels of padding.
For Nintendo's last Wii U offering before the Switch took over, I think Color Splash is alright. There are too many areas where I think the game is very wrong, but it still has a soul hidden behind the messier paint blotches. 7 years later, and the Wii U is dead, AlphaDream (the M&L:RPG devs) went bankrupt, and modern Paper Mario stands alone. I don't blame you if you still feel bitter about how things turned out (I always will be to a certain degree), but I don't think that this game deserves as much hate as it gets. Like several Wii U titles, we'll probably never see it again. A true product of its time.
I wanna open with the very best things this game has to offer: the presentation and the music. The attention to detail in making every part of this world feel like a papercraft diorama is only rivaled by Tearaway on the Vita, in my eyes. It feels less like they're falling back on paper as a joke and moreso embracing it as an art style, and it pays off in spades. The returning "Things" from Sticker Star are taking full advantage of Nintendo's first HD console by being way too extra (in a good way). The music's excellent, due in no small part to Nintendo's growing interest in big-band orchestras at the time. Sticker Star had a lot of sequenced instruments, but most of Color Splash's music uses the real deal. A large quantity of the music is pretty chill, but other times it goes pretty hard, more than it has any right to. This song from Sticker Star and its Color Splash counterpart are worlds apart in terms of quality. Even the game's digital manual keeps this attention to detail going, it's kind of nuts.
The humor of Color Splash is...unique, to say the least. This game is probably a great peek into the twisted minds working at Nintendo of America's "Treehouse" localization division. The game makes me laugh, I'll give them that. Though it's not because the game is actually funny, that's a rarity. It's because I'm constantly thinking "Why did they say that?" This game goes from referencing the Mario universe to referencing the Watergate scandal within the span of a few textboxes. Who is that kind of joke for? Little Timmy probably has no idea who Richard Nixon even is. I have to wonder if portions of this were written with contempt for the source material, or if the original Japanese script resembles the English one in any way. It doesn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things, because all the dialogue is delivered by nameless, featureless Toads. The game likes to pretend that it has unique Toad characters, but they have no discernible features, or even unique names (and no, making jokes about that fact does not excuse it). The Koopalings are the bosses for each chapter, and they are so tiresome as villains, even if they're given some level of characterization through their dialogue in this game. The Koopalings returning in 2009's "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" was a wild event, but by 2016, they had been used and reused for damn near every Mario game in Nintendo's lineup. The only original character is Huey, your partner for this adventure. He's fine. Anything is better than the snarky bitching that Kersti brought to the table, but I think Huey gets the job done well as your sole companion.
Color Splash has a lot of really creative scenarios, but it's all downplayed by a paper-thin main objective: collect the paint stars, restore color to Prisma Island, defeat Bowser, rescue Peach. Thankfully, while there's a bit of a slow and generic start, the scenarios you'll get wrapped up in are anything but conventional Mario fare. You'll engage in a coliseum battle, repair a train, explore a set of islands with their own parallel dimension, and more. It's constantly trying to 1-UP itself in terms of humor and always keeps you guessing. This game retains the exact same gameplay format as Sticker Star, straight down to having a world map that you select "stages" from, as opposed to an interconnected world. That format makes sense for the 3DS, but its inclusion here feels completely out of touch. You'll still solve several puzzles by applying Things to the environment in the appropriate spots. Unlike Sticker Star, the solutions are telegraphed a lot better, and if you're truly stumped, there are failsafes like The Wringer at the harbor who hints at the Things you need.
The battle system is constructed around needless tedium. First you pick your cards, then you paint your cards, then you swipe them up to play them. Remember the days where you picked "hammer" or "jump", picked an enemy, and attacked it? Color Splash doesn't remember, they don't even let you select the enemy you want to attack. They don't even show you their remaining health; It's signified by the color draining from their outlines, which leads to tons of guesswork. How much health does this enemy have left? How much damage will this card do? Why does autosorting your cards put you all the way on the right with your healing cards? Better yet, why battle at all when a few rounds of rock-paper scissors will max out your wallet? Battles reward you with hammer scraps, which will increase your maximum amount of paint when you collect enough, which basically means nothing as an EXP system because paint is everywhere in this game. Here's a lukewarm take for you: This game should've completely ditched the turn-based battles in favor of being a straight-up adventure/puzzle game. The whole battle system feels like a complete afterthought, merely a holdover for those who long for the good ol' days of PM64 and TTYD. If you're not going to make your combat system as mechanically interesting or fun as those two, then I honestly think you shouldn't even bother.
A lot of stuff in this game just feels tailor-made to waste your time. For example:
-Sometimes on the world map The Shy Bandit will appear and threaten to suck all the color out of a level you've filled back in.
-Sometimes you'll start a battle and Kamek will fuck with your cards in some way, likely forcing you to waste a ton of your resources (or in the case of an unpatched oversight, there's an extremely low chance you may just lose everything).
-There are 8 copy-pasted "Roshambo Temples" where you can play three rounds of rock-paper-scissors to earn junk that's required for 100% completion (but not main story completion). Were they jealous of Alex Kidd?
-There are several moments in this game that will instantly kill you if you don't act quick enough, booting you back to the title screen.
And the most damning thing of all in my eyes: Several levels in this game have more than one exit visible on the exact same screen, meaning you'll have to replay entire areas twice, puzzles and all, in order to complete this game. That's just obnoxious levels of padding.
For Nintendo's last Wii U offering before the Switch took over, I think Color Splash is alright. There are too many areas where I think the game is very wrong, but it still has a soul hidden behind the messier paint blotches. 7 years later, and the Wii U is dead, AlphaDream (the M&L:RPG devs) went bankrupt, and modern Paper Mario stands alone. I don't blame you if you still feel bitter about how things turned out (I always will be to a certain degree), but I don't think that this game deserves as much hate as it gets. Like several Wii U titles, we'll probably never see it again. A true product of its time.
2023
Played this in a Discord call with about 15 people total. There were no screams of joy. Only those of confusion, screams that wondered how Nintendo could release something that's simultaneously this frustrating and BORING. The games we played are stuff that's just not fun to begin with. We had to play two rounds of Bingo. Fucking BINGO. I was mercifully spared from making first contact with alien life because my phone isn't an iPhone 17 with a sophisticated motion sensor or whatever. There's no real competition in these games. It feels like the devs hoped, nay, expected that your friends would provide the friendly competition. Well, for starters, you could've provided ME and EVERYONE ELSE with a good game.
The leaks were right, this is just a completely directionless mess. There's a good reason why the Jackbox Party Pack games were outselling the original 1-2-Switch on the Switch, people! I'd say Nintendo had the option to just not release this, but judging by the production values at play (there's a ton of voice acting), the sunk cost fallacy probably took hold of the executives, and by god, I hope they pay the price.
The leaks were right, this is just a completely directionless mess. There's a good reason why the Jackbox Party Pack games were outselling the original 1-2-Switch on the Switch, people! I'd say Nintendo had the option to just not release this, but judging by the production values at play (there's a ton of voice acting), the sunk cost fallacy probably took hold of the executives, and by god, I hope they pay the price.
I honestly hate myself sometimes. About a week after finishing Tears of the Kingdom, I pulled out my Steam Deck and set up Cemu. I swear I only intended to use Breath of the Wild as a kind of stress test, but it somehow managed to snowball into a full-blown casual playthrough. I can't say I fully understand why; I don't have any strong feelings for BotW.
Just to get it out of the way, let's start with the story. 100 years after Link and the four Champions failed to stop Hyrule from being ravaged by Calamity Ganon, Link wakes up in the Shrine of Resurrection with no memories of his role in the grand scheme of things. One tutorial island later, and King Rhoam's ghost informs you that Zelda has been keeping Ganon at bay in Hyrule Castle for 100 years, and it's your job to finish him off. Optionally, you can help out the various folks with their Divine Beast woes, or regain your lost memories, but aintnobodygottimeforthat, the people of Hyrule have been waiting 100 years for their lives to go back to normal.
The kingdom of Hyrule is vast, expansive, and not that deep. See that mountain in the distance? You can climb it! See those horses? You can tame them! See that dog? Well, you can't pet him. Look, but don't touch. Hyrule just doesn't have much to do between points of interest. I know the point is to let your curiosity guide you and explore at your own pace, but I don't feel like there's that much to discover out there, aside from the 120 shrines and 900 Koroks. I don't really consider the Koroks to be "meaningful content". They're not engaging, they're glorified distractions that I partake in only because I know they'll amount to more inventory space in the long run. The best parts of the overworld are the environmental puzzles and riddles that require you to pay attention to your surroundings, testing your knowledge of the world you've been traveling. I find them far more interesting than the shrines and the simplistic puzzles that are found within them. Your four runes (Remote Bomb, Magnesis, Stasis, and Cryonis) are very situational in nature, so all the shrine puzzles end up being samey after a while. And that's disregarding the many "tests of strength" shrines where you fight the same damn guardian drone with varying degrees of inflated health and damage. Several shrines also have these terminals that you control via motion controls, and every time one of them showed up, I groaned. They're unintuitive no matter what kind of controller you're using, and should've been altogether scrapped.
I wish the sidequests could help make up the difference here, but aside from a few exceptions, most of them pertain to mundane tasks such as gathering 10 items and handing them over. Even Tarrey Town, an extensive and memorable sidequest that's held in high regard by players, requires 110 bundles of wood to complete (140 wood+3000 rupees if you count the quest where Link buys a house as part of this story). The Divine Beasts, this game's main dungeons, are just five shrine puzzles taped together. They're all visually similar on the inside, and the mechanic of controlling a part of each dungeon never goes far enough to be memorable. At the end of each beast, you fight the corresponding pathetically easy Blight Ganon, most of which fight and look very similar to each other.
The weapon durability system is the crux of the combat, and you either love it, or you hate it. For some, it encourages on-the-fly decisions and dynamic combat scenarios. In my case, it's constantly bogged down by the negatives. I hoard all my strongest weapons, never finding a good time to use them. Using them doesn't feel good, it just means I won't have them later, even if superior weapons will come my way in the future. I inherently avoid conflict because watching my weapon stash get blown to smithereens by my own hand doesn't feel good. The thrill of gaining more weapons is also subdued by the fact that there's only three types of weapons: swords, clubs, and spears. Some of them come with different attributes (like how magic rods are just swords that shoot fire, ice, or lightning projectiles), but you'll be acquainted with all of them by the time you leave the tutorial island. Now when I open up a chest, I see the "Your inventory is full." message, and shrug my shoulders. All of this boils down to a point that I think most aren't willing to admit: The weapon durability system is flawed at its core, and Nintendo tried to design their gameplay in a way that justifies its flaws, but it just doesn't work.
The music in BotW is absent for most of your playthrough so you can soak in the atmosphere, but I'm glad that it knows to step in when things get interesting. There's actually a lot of dynamic layers at play in each song, depending on factors like enemy types, battle duration, and even your own actions. If I'm being honest, this game's biggest redeeming factor in my eyes is your final stop, Hyrule Castle. It embodies everything that this game stands for. The moment you're off the Great Plateau, you can book it straight to Ganon, if you so choose. You have the freedom to do that. Hyrule Castle is a deadly labyrinth with countless entrances, exits, and secret passageways. You can approach it in any way you see fit. Not only does it contain tons of the most powerful equipment in the game, but you'll also find substantial amounts of lore pertaining to the events that occurred 100 years ago.
Breath of the Wild was a pivotal moment for Nintendo. It capped off their first-party support of the Wii U, and kickstarted the launch of the Switch. After the hyper-linear Skyward Sword was met with backlash from fans, they went in a completely different direction, finding an audience of both new and returning players. Even if I disagree with a decent amount of what it does, I still respect it. I considered giving the game a 6/10 for this review, but I'm sure a 7/10 is bound to make some Zelda purists go crazy anyways, so let's just say I felt generous. Despite claiming to not enjoy this game that much, something always keeps me going like a Hylian possessed.
Just to get it out of the way, let's start with the story. 100 years after Link and the four Champions failed to stop Hyrule from being ravaged by Calamity Ganon, Link wakes up in the Shrine of Resurrection with no memories of his role in the grand scheme of things. One tutorial island later, and King Rhoam's ghost informs you that Zelda has been keeping Ganon at bay in Hyrule Castle for 100 years, and it's your job to finish him off. Optionally, you can help out the various folks with their Divine Beast woes, or regain your lost memories, but aintnobodygottimeforthat, the people of Hyrule have been waiting 100 years for their lives to go back to normal.
The kingdom of Hyrule is vast, expansive, and not that deep. See that mountain in the distance? You can climb it! See those horses? You can tame them! See that dog? Well, you can't pet him. Look, but don't touch. Hyrule just doesn't have much to do between points of interest. I know the point is to let your curiosity guide you and explore at your own pace, but I don't feel like there's that much to discover out there, aside from the 120 shrines and 900 Koroks. I don't really consider the Koroks to be "meaningful content". They're not engaging, they're glorified distractions that I partake in only because I know they'll amount to more inventory space in the long run. The best parts of the overworld are the environmental puzzles and riddles that require you to pay attention to your surroundings, testing your knowledge of the world you've been traveling. I find them far more interesting than the shrines and the simplistic puzzles that are found within them. Your four runes (Remote Bomb, Magnesis, Stasis, and Cryonis) are very situational in nature, so all the shrine puzzles end up being samey after a while. And that's disregarding the many "tests of strength" shrines where you fight the same damn guardian drone with varying degrees of inflated health and damage. Several shrines also have these terminals that you control via motion controls, and every time one of them showed up, I groaned. They're unintuitive no matter what kind of controller you're using, and should've been altogether scrapped.
I wish the sidequests could help make up the difference here, but aside from a few exceptions, most of them pertain to mundane tasks such as gathering 10 items and handing them over. Even Tarrey Town, an extensive and memorable sidequest that's held in high regard by players, requires 110 bundles of wood to complete (140 wood+3000 rupees if you count the quest where Link buys a house as part of this story). The Divine Beasts, this game's main dungeons, are just five shrine puzzles taped together. They're all visually similar on the inside, and the mechanic of controlling a part of each dungeon never goes far enough to be memorable. At the end of each beast, you fight the corresponding pathetically easy Blight Ganon, most of which fight and look very similar to each other.
The weapon durability system is the crux of the combat, and you either love it, or you hate it. For some, it encourages on-the-fly decisions and dynamic combat scenarios. In my case, it's constantly bogged down by the negatives. I hoard all my strongest weapons, never finding a good time to use them. Using them doesn't feel good, it just means I won't have them later, even if superior weapons will come my way in the future. I inherently avoid conflict because watching my weapon stash get blown to smithereens by my own hand doesn't feel good. The thrill of gaining more weapons is also subdued by the fact that there's only three types of weapons: swords, clubs, and spears. Some of them come with different attributes (like how magic rods are just swords that shoot fire, ice, or lightning projectiles), but you'll be acquainted with all of them by the time you leave the tutorial island. Now when I open up a chest, I see the "Your inventory is full." message, and shrug my shoulders. All of this boils down to a point that I think most aren't willing to admit: The weapon durability system is flawed at its core, and Nintendo tried to design their gameplay in a way that justifies its flaws, but it just doesn't work.
The music in BotW is absent for most of your playthrough so you can soak in the atmosphere, but I'm glad that it knows to step in when things get interesting. There's actually a lot of dynamic layers at play in each song, depending on factors like enemy types, battle duration, and even your own actions. If I'm being honest, this game's biggest redeeming factor in my eyes is your final stop, Hyrule Castle. It embodies everything that this game stands for. The moment you're off the Great Plateau, you can book it straight to Ganon, if you so choose. You have the freedom to do that. Hyrule Castle is a deadly labyrinth with countless entrances, exits, and secret passageways. You can approach it in any way you see fit. Not only does it contain tons of the most powerful equipment in the game, but you'll also find substantial amounts of lore pertaining to the events that occurred 100 years ago.
Breath of the Wild was a pivotal moment for Nintendo. It capped off their first-party support of the Wii U, and kickstarted the launch of the Switch. After the hyper-linear Skyward Sword was met with backlash from fans, they went in a completely different direction, finding an audience of both new and returning players. Even if I disagree with a decent amount of what it does, I still respect it. I considered giving the game a 6/10 for this review, but I'm sure a 7/10 is bound to make some Zelda purists go crazy anyways, so let's just say I felt generous. Despite claiming to not enjoy this game that much, something always keeps me going like a Hylian possessed.