For this being my very first Shantae game it really didn't leave that good of an impression on me. Especially the very slow beginning and middle. I'd say around when you get Risky's Boots is when the game starts to pick up but by then the game is already over. The backtracking here is horrendous, you can use an item to teleport you back to the pirate ship but if you're in a dungeon you have to walk all the way back to the entrance and it just makes getting 100% tedious. This is apparently the "highly regarded" game in the series by fans and if this was the best one that doesn't excite me to check out any other games. This game's highs are the dungeons obviously, they're fun to figure out and explore despite being way too simple, and I wish you'd earn a health upgrade at the end of each boss. It feels empty without it.

Shantae throughout the game can upgrade her hair and hair-whipping speed but never her defense which I always found strange, there are upgrades for all this but her general defense is always the same. That got really annoying to deal with going through the later half and enemies did 2x damage. Don't understand why she didn't get slightly stronger after beating each boss since that would solve the issue. With how easy it is to buy temporary stat increases and this spike protection ball, bosses stood 0 chance against her. The story was nothing either, Risky got her stuff stolen, Shantae goes and gets it, and uses it to beat bosses, and the formula is set until big bad baddy at the end so you beat them, and then the game ends. This game does the character interactions and moments type of storytelling and I'll be honest I don't care a lot about Shantae's world or characters to really say I was invested in learning more. Shantae as a character is pretty standard.

The gameplay consists of you going to a new area, solving the areas puzzle, doing a minigame/gimmick section to unlock the way to the dungeon, doing the dungeon, and then fighting the boss, repeating for other islands. I thought this setup wasn't bad until we get to the minigame/gimmick section because the two that stood out the most ended up being the most frustrating. The Spiderweb Island has this funny chase sequence where you have to help protect this zombie girl and run towards her house, only problem is if you get hit once it resets you back to the beginning of the room. I didn't mind this at first cause it was a little funny but then it kept going and going, and yeah it started to drag out. Then the Sand Island has this stealth section where if you get caught once you get pushed back to the very beginning and it was there I was like "ok this is really bad" forced stealth sections in adventure games are the worst thing known to mankind, to only way to do these right is if they're brief and not long. That was not the case here. By then I had reached the halfway point and I was starting to get exhausted.

One positive I can say the music was actually super good, there are a lot of beats I can hum and remember off the top of my head. Definitely will download a couple of these tracks cause they were pretty fire all things considered. I think when it came to the sound department this game nails it.

I gave the game a chance, but it really wasn't as good as I'd hoped it'd be. Would I recommend it? No, I think other games have done this better and Shantae alone isn't really something I'd go out of the way to check out given the really poor design choices here. There are big bitties all over the game but that wasn't enough to save its pretty mediocre gameplay and experience.

I was never a soulsborne kind of guy, I knew about this game's existence and dark souls in general through youtube and other kinds of media. But for one reason or another I never really thought of trying it out for myself. Having beaten it twice I can safely say that I'm a fan, of everything about this game whether it's the gloomy atmosphere, the setting, the characters, or the absolute freakish creatures you fight here, bloodborne satisfies. I love the feeling of getting stronger the more you play and in Bloodborne, it's never been more satisfying going to a common enemy you fought at the beginning to completely decimate in one shot after returning to another area. If you're thinking that bloodborne may not be for you like I originally thought, I highly encourage you to try it, you might be surprised.

Cuphead is one of those games you will never see done again, it truly has its own unique identity. The game was a test of skill and patience, but throughout it all there would always be the constant thought of "ok just one more time" right when the game reveals to you how far you got on a boss. I don't think I've ever played a game where I just wanted to keep playing until I mastered it. The 200% completion is a huge hurdle to jump over, but once you do you'll feel like you really mastered the game.

Before Splatoon, there was de Blob, and before that, there was another game about coloring I don't know. De Blob is one of those no thoughts head empty kind of games where you let the flow of it take you along as you paint the city in all kinds of colors and bring life back to it. I enjoyed my time with it but for completionists, I think they should pass on it, it takes hours just to do everything and the game doesn't do a good job of showing you what things you missed. It's more of a hassle to get 100% than it is fun.

This one was a pleasant surprise, the whole shrinking mechanic was fun and led to some interesting and well-thought-out puzzles. There were a few moments that I feel dragged out, especially the parts where you had to collect the books which felt like padding just so we wouldn't go to the next temple so quickly. I wouldn't have had a problem with cause these temples were great all around, the last one may have dragged a bit but other than that I had no issue. A common thing I did run into was this game being very stingy on hearts, if you were low on health in any of these dungeons, like I was, you'd be starving for hearts throughout the whole thing until you get to a checkpoint. This game can get difficult but it's not to the point where it's unfair, just an overall challenge you'll have to overcome.
As I'm typing this the minish woods theme is stuck in my head so honestly the music is pretty banging

I'll admit when I first saw this game I expected it to be another isometric game where you can barely tell what's going on half of the time, but the devs over at rare understood the system's hardware and made sure that everything was viewable and nothing was unfairly hidden out of sight. This was a fun little time, I can always count on Banjo to give me a solid collectathon experience and this was no exception. Was pleasantly surprised with this one, completed it in under 4 hours, not a very long game but it doesn't need to be given the hardware.

I've played this for quite a bit now, and I have to say this is definitely the best in the series. I just wish that half of the time I wasn't getting a connection error because the core game is the most fun it's ever been. Matches (sometimes) are quick and you're just in and out, they trimmed most of the waiting time Splatoon 2 had and I'm very happy with the end result. The problem lies in the servers, of course, in true Nintendo fashion they don't know how to manage internet servers with their shitty online service. This leads to many DCs and connection unstable messages. If they somehow manage to patch this and make the internet better then we have a solid 5 stars on our hands, but I can't in good conscience give it that in its current state.