Kero Blaster is an amazing run n' gun game, which is to be expected from the creator of Cave Story. Even though Kero Blaster has a simplified artstyle, story, and world from that in Cave Story, I still prefer this game. There is no backtracking or convoluted series of steps to get the true ending, its just simple fun gameplay. I also really like the story in this game and find it more endearing and cute than the story of Cave Story, but that is 100% a matter of taste. There are also some really fun surprises in this game! If you like Cave Story, play this game!

I absolutely adored Cave Story as a kid, and after this replay I'm happy to say that I can still see why. CS is deservedly one of the most well known indie games of all time. The story and characters are simple and cute, the music is surprisingly great, the world is so much fun to explore, and the pixelart is beautiful (especially the updated art in CS+). The game is overall so well made that it's hard to believe the original game was entirely made by just one guy in 2004!

Cave Story isn't perfect, getting the true ending is basically impossible without a guide, backtracking is a little annoying in the Bushlands/Sand Zone, and some of the dialogue feels strange or poorly written, but that doesn't stop it from being a great experience that is fun to play. If you enjoy Cave Story I would strongly recommend playing Amaya's other game Kero Blaster as well, which plays a lot like CS.

I'm never finishing this game because of how obtuse and poorly balanced it is. The concept of the game is good, it's very similar to Inscryption but with Pokemon characters and type effectiveness, but it isn't executed well. Unique card powers are very rare which causes most pokemon to feel functionally identical to one another, mechanics are poorly explained or flat-out unexplained to the player, and opponent decks are so overwhelmingly powerful that many of them are impossible to beat, even with favorable draws.

Pocket Crystal League demands that you grind, which eventually caused me to drop it. When you lose a match to a regular trainer you still advance towards the next gym leader but miss out on the prize money you would have gotten for winning, and if you lose to the gym leader of a zone you get the option to either try again or go back to the start of the zone to build up more resources. There is no game over state as far as I can tell, which makes the steep enemy difficulty feel like extreme padding. It isn't a matter of if you can beat the gym leader, its a matter of how long you'll have to grind to beef up your cards enough for beating them to even be a possibility.

If the game were changed to include unique abilities on the player's cards significantly more frequently, opponents were rebalanced to be realistically beatable on the first pass through an area, and the gameplay loop were more rogueish, I would have enjoyed it much more. As it is, this game is very disappointing, largely because it could be so much better with just a few tweaks.

Kero Blaster is an amazing run n' gun game, which is to be expected from the creator of Cave Story. Even though Kero Blaster has a simplified artstyle, story, and world from that in Cave Story, I still prefer this game. There is no backtracking or convoluted series of steps to get the true ending, its just simple fun gameplay. I also really like the story in this game and find it more endearing and cute than the story of Cave Story, but that is 100% a matter of taste. There are also some really fun surprises in this game! If you like Cave Story, play this game!

I absolutely adored Cave Story as a kid, and after this replay I'm happy to say that I can still see why. CS is deservedly one of the most well known indie games of all time. The story and characters are simple and cute, the music is surprisingly great, the world is so much fun to explore, and the pixelart is beautiful (especially the updated art in CS+). The game is overall so well made that it's hard to believe the original game was entirely made by just one guy in 2004!

Cave Story isn't perfect, getting the true ending is basically impossible without a guide, backtracking is a little annoying in the Bushlands/Sand Zone, and some of the dialogue feels strange or poorly written, but that doesn't stop it from being a great experience that is fun to play. If you enjoy Cave Story I would strongly recommend playing Amaya's other game Kero Blaster as well, which plays a lot like CS.

To be entirely honest, I don’t see why this is the game that Nintendo fans have been clamoring about for the last decade plus. I went into Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door expecting to have a good time, but in actuality, I often found myself frustrated or bored while playing this.

The obvious problem with that game that is frequently cited by its dissenters is backtracking. It’s true, this game has an ungodly amount of backtracking in it, even more than I was led to believe by the game’s detractors. There is of course Chapter 7, which infamously forces you to backtrack to every location that you have previously visited, but the majority of the other chapters in the game require backtracking as well. Chapters 2, 4, 5, and 6 all have significant backtracking segments, like a seriously inexcusable amount of backtracking. Ironically, I found the backtracking in Chapter 7 to be less offensive than that in any of the other chapters. While Chapter 7’s fetch quest is the most blatant disregard for the player’s time in TTYD, that quest is at least over and done with before long. In the other chapters that I mentioned however, the entire chapter is completely riddled with quests, locks, and keys that force you to retread the same ground, that you literally just explored, multiple times. And the nail in the coffin for this topic is Mario’s overworld movement, which leaves a lot to be desired. Mario is very slow and the game has a lot of friction and just feels a little jank in the overworld. Even the option to run has baggage attached to it, as you need to switch Yoshi in as your active party member to run, and while dashing on Yoshi, you can’t talk to NPCs, jump vertically, or open doors, which will slow you down as you repeatedly mount and dismount Yoshi to perform these essential tasks. TTYD is downright miserable at times because of how unconcerned the game is with keeping things moving along at a reasonable pace.

It is a really big bummer to me that TTYD is held back so much by its overworld traversal, because the battle system is really fun. Turn based battles punctuated by action commands is a good formula, and the breadth of combat options that Mario and his partners have in this game is wide and very creative. But even when looking at just the combat, I still think this game fails to be very compelling. The encounters in this game are incredibly easy. Even though I challenged myself in this playthrough by exclusively choosing BP as my level up reward and banning the use of Power Bounce, most enemy encounters and even some bosses failed to hold my attention. TTYD fails to truly capitalize on its great battle system until Chapter 8 and the Pit of 100 Trials, leaving much of the game’s remaining combat feeling underwhelming.

I think Paper Mario 64 should have been the game that fans dreamed up a revival for instead of TTYD. The two games are mechanically similar, but I found PM64 to just be miles more enjoyable to play. It doesn’t have the problem with backtracking that TTYD has, its combat system (while simpler) feels more balanced, and to be honest TTYD’s subversive tone isn't anywhere close to as appealing to me as PM64’s cozy storybook aesthetic. TTYD is clearly designed to contrast PM64's comfy tone, placing Mario in a gritty and grimy setting including things like the mafia, a gallows, a bomb threat, catcalling, and locations that you would never see in another Mario game. I understand that TTYD’s willingness to break the Mario mold is exactly why many of its biggest fans like it so much, but I find it to be contrarian for the sake of it and just generally less appealing than PM64’s genuineness.

TTYD also attempts to repeat some ideas in the original Paper Mario, but ends up doing a worse job at them. The penguin murder mystery in PM64 is cute, short, and such a subversion to expectations that it is humorous. In TTYD, the bomb threat mystery isn't funny because it doesn't subvert the game’s tonal expectations and it massively overstays its welcome by taking up half the chapter. I have a similar problem with the Sewer of both games. The sewer is a place you may explore between chapters in PM64 to discover optional goodies, but in TTYD you are forced to visit the bottom of the Sewer each chapter to progress and it has a deliberately antagonistic layout, featuring one way paths and pointless roadblocks, that makes it very annoying to explore. TTYD also feels very obtuse at times, when that was never a problem I had with PM64.

The one thing that I think TTYD does much better than PM64 is its action commands. Even though both games have very similar action command systems, TTYD has a much more diverse pool of them. Multiple partners and attacks in PM64 will share the same or similar inputs, whereas TTYD will have either altered or entirely new inputs for each attack. Unlike the action commands in PM64 the action commands in TTYD do not end up feeling overused by the end of the game, and stylish moves and super guards really help with engagement, so I do have to give it credit for that.

I wouldn’t quite say I had a bad time playing TTYD, but I certainly wouldn't call the experience overall a good time either. It is a very mixed experience, featuring many lows and some highs. While TTYD does feature improvements over PM64 in its battle system, it fails to capitalize on that strength during the majority of the games length and I greatly prefer PM64 thanks to its simpler and more streamlined design and cozy vibe. To me, TTYD honestly seems like one of the most overrated games in the Nintendo sphere.

Undertale Yellow is a very impressive fan-game! The sound, artwork, battles, and animation are all of similar quality to the original game. I also think that it struck a perfect balance of original content to reused content and characters from Undertale. That being said, I did feel like the story was a little aimless, and that the characters and humor are just not to the same degree of quality that Undertale set. The game does also take a while to get going, especially relative to its total length. It was still fun though, and I enjoyed the more difficult battle balancing.

To be entirely honest, I don’t see why this is the game that Nintendo fans have been clamoring about for the last decade plus. I went into Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door expecting to have a good time, but in actuality, I often found myself frustrated or bored while playing this.

The obvious problem with that game that is frequently cited by its dissenters is backtracking. It’s true, this game has an ungodly amount of backtracking in it, even more than I was led to believe by the game’s detractors. There is of course Chapter 7, which infamously forces you to backtrack to every location that you have previously visited, but the majority of the other chapters in the game require backtracking as well. Chapters 2, 4, 5, and 6 all have significant backtracking segments, like a seriously inexcusable amount of backtracking. Ironically, I found the backtracking in Chapter 7 to be less offensive than that in any of the other chapters. While Chapter 7’s fetch quest is the most blatant disregard for the player’s time in TTYD, that quest is at least over and done with before long. In the other chapters that I mentioned however, the entire chapter is completely riddled with quests, locks, and keys that force you to retread the same ground, that you literally just explored, multiple times. And the nail in the coffin for this topic is Mario’s overworld movement, which leaves a lot to be desired. Mario is very slow and the game has a lot of friction and just feels a little jank in the overworld. Even the option to run has baggage attached to it, as you need to switch Yoshi in as your active party member to run, and while dashing on Yoshi, you can’t talk to NPCs, jump vertically, or open doors, which will slow you down as you repeatedly mount and dismount Yoshi to perform these essential tasks. TTYD is downright miserable at times because of how unconcerned the game is with keeping things moving along at a reasonable pace.

It is a really big bummer to me that TTYD is held back so much by its overworld traversal, because the battle system is really fun. Turn based battles punctuated by action commands is a good formula, and the breadth of combat options that Mario and his partners have in this game is wide and very creative. But even when looking at just the combat, I still think this game fails to be very compelling. The encounters in this game are incredibly easy. Even though I challenged myself in this playthrough by exclusively choosing BP as my level up reward and banning the use of Power Bounce, most enemy encounters and even some bosses failed to hold my attention. TTYD fails to truly capitalize on its great battle system until Chapter 8 and the Pit of 100 Trials, leaving much of the game’s remaining combat feeling underwhelming.

I think Paper Mario 64 should have been the game that fans dreamed up a revival for instead of TTYD. The two games are mechanically similar, but I found PM64 to just be miles more enjoyable to play. It doesn’t have the problem with backtracking that TTYD has, its combat system (while simpler) feels more balanced, and to be honest TTYD’s subversive tone isn't anywhere close to as appealing to me as PM64’s cozy storybook aesthetic. TTYD is clearly designed to contrast PM64's comfy tone, placing Mario in a gritty and grimy setting including things like the mafia, a gallows, a bomb threat, catcalling, and locations that you would never see in another Mario game. I understand that TTYD’s willingness to break the Mario mold is exactly why many of its biggest fans like it so much, but I find it to be contrarian for the sake of it and just generally less appealing than PM64’s genuineness.

TTYD also attempts to repeat some ideas in the original Paper Mario, but ends up doing a worse job at them. The penguin murder mystery in PM64 is cute, short, and such a subversion to expectations that it is humorous. In TTYD, the bomb threat mystery isn't funny because it doesn't subvert the game’s tonal expectations and it massively overstays its welcome by taking up half the chapter. I have a similar problem with the Sewer of both games. The sewer is a place you may explore between chapters in PM64 to discover optional goodies, but in TTYD you are forced to visit the bottom of the Sewer each chapter to progress and it has a deliberately antagonistic layout, featuring one way paths and pointless roadblocks, that makes it very annoying to explore. TTYD also feels very obtuse at times, when that was never a problem I had with PM64.

The one thing that I think TTYD does much better than PM64 is its action commands. Even though both games have very similar action command systems, TTYD has a much more diverse pool of them. Multiple partners and attacks in PM64 will share the same or similar inputs, whereas TTYD will have either altered or entirely new inputs for each attack. Unlike the action commands in PM64 the action commands in TTYD do not end up feeling overused by the end of the game, and stylish moves and super guards really help with engagement, so I do have to give it credit for that.

I wouldn’t quite say I had a bad time playing TTYD, but I certainly wouldn't call the experience overall a good time either. It is a very mixed experience, featuring many lows and some highs. While TTYD does feature improvements over PM64 in its battle system, it fails to capitalize on that strength during the majority of the games length and I greatly prefer PM64 thanks to its simpler and more streamlined design and cozy vibe. To me, TTYD honestly seems like one of the most overrated games in the Nintendo sphere.