Wuhu Island + Miis is just way too sterile of a vibe for a game like this. SNES Pilotwings, mainly through its incredible soundtrack, managed to create a great atmosphere despite having other issues holding it back. 3D is a great feature for a game primarily centered around landing your aircraft just right, but the music consists mostly of uninspired, tepid remixes of prior Pilotwings tracks, and the mission design is far too basic and uninteresting. I think a great Pilotwings game could absolutely exist, but it doesn't seem like the sort of thing Nintendo would ever put the time and effort into getting right.

You can see after beating this why Synergy Interactive had so much cred in the western film scene. Definitely a capital A "Art game," forgoing most gameplay mechanics in favor of surreal atmosphere and storytelling around two decades before it was cool to do so.

The game was never quite as engaging as I wanted it to be story wise and a lot of its threads never quite came together in a way I found satisfying, but I think this game's true strength is faring surprisingly well in the moment to moment. Being in these locations just soaking up the eerie, ambient noise mixed in with brutal industrial music and architecture. Beautiful use of the limitations of computer graphics at the time as well, every human character is just about as uncanny as can be and they knew just how to lean into it.

At only around 2 hours, this is definitely something I'd recommend to anyone willing to give it a try! While I don't think the story ultimately will stick with me much, the tone it sets definitely will.

The prose and production value are such huge steps up from the first game, but the boost in quality sacrifices none of the outsider art sensibility and charm that its predecessor has. While much like the first game it seems a bit scattershot, this works to the game's strength in a way, giving it the feel of a journal of disconnected thoughts from an author who is hesitant to dig into any one thing too long lest it excavate feelings and memories they'd rather keep buried. At only around an hour, please check this out.

1st match online: Beat my opponent using some cool synchro summons in a duel that at least somewhat resembled the anime I used to watch

2nd match online: Was utterly obliterated in 3 turns, each of which took about 10 full minutes, as every card my opponent played had about 2 paragraphs of text explaining its incredibly specific function that allowed it to combo with another specific card to allow them to draw more cards which allowed them to special summon a monster whose effect allowed them to special summon another monster whose effect allowed them to draw more cards whose effects allowed them to- AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Possibly the most absurd card game ever created

Real solid, streamlined experience that complements the main game really well and adds all the lore/fanservice that fans were bitching about not being included in 3 even though that's really not the issue I had with that game's story. That fanservice really did work on me though - seeing this cast come together and send off this saga ended up being really rewarding, and I think it was smart of them to choose not to answer some questions.

A few knocks though - Glimmer and Nikol feel underdeveloped which is a real shame because the potential was there for some great moments with them. The game also feels extremely weirdly balanced, presumably because they had to account for the fact that they locked even the most basic functionality of the battle system behind optional items found while exploring, which is great for encouraging said exploration but also means they probably had to account for you rolling up to the final boss with a team of characters that had basically nothing in terms of gems or skills. Also is it just me or is the cutscene direction a pretty big step down from the base game? Slight disappointment there.

One final note: Good god, Monolith, hire some audio staff. Ever since Xenoblade 1 the audio mix, sound effects, default sound levels etc. have been majorly fucked in every single release and even tinkering with the settings on the user's end won't improve things much. Honestly my biggest wish for this company as they head onto the next generation of Nintendo hardware.

NEO TWEWY is, like it's predecessor, a game that is supremely confident in its own vision. For that alone I give it massive props. I don't have a whole lot to say about it in a formal review sense but this ended up being one of my favorites of the year. I do think its pacing is substantially worse than the original TWEWY, and this does hurt it quite a bit, but improvements in other areas such as the better presentation and in my opinion an even stronger cast of characters (I also think the combat, while still flawed, manages to carry over a lot of the original's strengths while bringing new ones of its own) make up for that. I will say that the soundtrack is absolutely killer as well but I do think the game being so much longer than the original stretches the songs that are there pretty thin and it does grate on you after a while. A situation where I think some more quantity would have really helped things in that regard.

Ultimately though this is just some real good shonen anime shit with actual stakes, themes that the story actually manages to maintain a strong focus on, and characters that I ended up being really attached to. Great game!

By god, NDCube might finally get it.

...now by "finally get it" I mean "not get it so badly and for so long that you realize the only way to get back on track is by just practically 1 to 1 remaking and remixing things that people actually liked wholesale and even then managing to screw up some of the finer details" but hey it's a real strong start to maybe getting some good original content in the next game at least.

I'm kidding around but really, this is pretty good! The minigames that have been brought back here have all made the jump pretty seamlessly and I think they chose a great list of games to return, with a good balance of free for all, team, and 1 v 3. One or two minigames seem to have been balanced incredibly weirdly even though they were fine in the originals, such as Hammer Drop, which gives out way, waaaay too many coins now, but they are exceptions. The boards themselves are also mostly great. They definitely could have used one more board though (one more from Mario Party 3 would make for 2 returning boards from each of the original 3, which would make sense) and I also question that of the returning boards the only one they took from 3 is Woody Woods, which on top of having a horribly uninspired name is also one of the worst boards from 3??? Regardless, the other returning boards are all great. The only downside is that I think the item shop items are a bit too cheap. This is something they've adjusted from the original games where items were significantly more expensive to encourage more item use, and while I like that idea on paper I think they overcorrected a bit too much to where now it feels like a no brainer to buy an item every single time you go past the shop.

But these are all pretty minor nitpicks when it comes to how badly they've bungled this series in the past, and by far the biggest two things they get right here are the only two things that actually are new: Online and quality of life features. You mileage may vary but I've played the main board game mode exclusively online and it ran pretty much flawlessly. It's one of very few times I think Nintendo has actually ever nailed online play, and it's just something the series so obviously needed that it's great to have it here. They've also managed to improve the pacing of the overall experience significantly, cutting down on slow explanations or animations and just letting you get straight to the game which for a party game is essential, and is one of the reasons why despite being a step in the right direction Super Mario Party was still a much weaker entry for the series.

Now that they've finally managed to make a good one of these the next step for NDCube will be to see if they can actually design some original boards that are even remotely good for whatever the next game ends up being. It's been about 10 years since they've taken over this series and they haven't managed it yet, but here's hoping!

Yeah I did the first two chapters of the main story and I'm not coming back to this probably. Gotta love that music as always but once I booted it up and was greeted with the typical 100 currency gatcha nonsense my eyes glazed over. The actual game part is mind numbing too, it absolutely plays itself moreso than any other gatcha I've seen, and that's saying something. Gatcha really doesn't even work for the Nier series whatsoever, after doing some pulls with the starting gems and getting a bunch of literally who random nobodies with no personalities I was just left wondering who on earth would care enough to spend money trying to pull anyone who isn't one of the 7 or so main characters from Replicant/Automata.

Gotta say though the fact that the narrative of this seems to be about walking forever through an endless grind in an area literally called "The Cage" is pretty funny though. I choose to believe for my own sake Taro knew what he was doing there and didn't give much of a shit about this

Neat game! The meta stuff isn't super deep or interesting, and I think the review here that highlights the surface level/vague approach to mental illness is correct. That being said, it's genuinely both creepy and funny which is a pretty big win for this type of game. Additionally, this got me thinking about how much better this is because of, not in spite of, the poor english translation. Heightens the bizarre vibe of the game even more and its broken stiltedness leads to one or two lines that struck me as shockingly poetic as well.