Kirbyster
I am already Pokemon Platinum's strongest warrior, but this hack brought Sinnoh to the next level. It has a wonderfully wide selection of pokemon to catch, much more challenging and deliberately designed bosses, and the additional content as well as the optional patches to buff weaker pokemon and increase the game speed really helped this hack create its own identity separate from vanilla Sinnoh.
My only complaints are that the start and end of the game have some unnecessary level jumps (which I found especially annoying in the early-game since you don't unlock the Blissey training room until the mid-game) and sometimes fourth wall breaks from NPCs really took me out of the game and made me groan a bit.
I strongly recommend this excellent game to any Pokemon fans who aren't afraid of a little challenge.
My only complaints are that the start and end of the game have some unnecessary level jumps (which I found especially annoying in the early-game since you don't unlock the Blissey training room until the mid-game) and sometimes fourth wall breaks from NPCs really took me out of the game and made me groan a bit.
I strongly recommend this excellent game to any Pokemon fans who aren't afraid of a little challenge.
This is game is definitely one of the best Pokemon games, but that being said, I still think it is a bit overrated. It doesn't have any major flaws, but the occasional backtracking, difficulty spikes, and the general plainness of the region hold this game back for me. It does also have some really great new inclusions though, such as reusable TMs, repel prompts, and animated 2D sprites for all pokemon.
I am a big fan of Pokemon XD and its battle CDs, which are like tiny pokemon battle escape rooms where you use rental pokemon. I was very excited to play the Pokestar Studios missions after learning that they are essentially the same thing. However, I was in for a rude awakening when I found out that Pokestar Studios' battle puzzles are tainted with heaps of RNG. Even when performing the "solution", turns are prone to going wrong because the enemy actions are not predetermined like they are in XD's battle CDs. This made the mode extremely frustrating and is my personal biggest disappointment in this game, and I stopped playing them after the first 5 missions. I can see most people not having any opinion on Pokestar Studios inclusion at all, but I do think the failure of this game mode is a negative to the game's overall experience because it completely fails to deliver what, at first glance, appears to be a really fun side mode and you are also forced to sit through a pretty long interactive cutscene early on in your adventure.
I am a big fan of Pokemon XD and its battle CDs, which are like tiny pokemon battle escape rooms where you use rental pokemon. I was very excited to play the Pokestar Studios missions after learning that they are essentially the same thing. However, I was in for a rude awakening when I found out that Pokestar Studios' battle puzzles are tainted with heaps of RNG. Even when performing the "solution", turns are prone to going wrong because the enemy actions are not predetermined like they are in XD's battle CDs. This made the mode extremely frustrating and is my personal biggest disappointment in this game, and I stopped playing them after the first 5 missions. I can see most people not having any opinion on Pokestar Studios inclusion at all, but I do think the failure of this game mode is a negative to the game's overall experience because it completely fails to deliver what, at first glance, appears to be a really fun side mode and you are also forced to sit through a pretty long interactive cutscene early on in your adventure.
This game is an absolute blast to play with friends. It's kind of hard to give it a rating, but it is very easy for me to say that I cannot recommend this game enough to anyone who enjoys the drafting, puzzle solving, and theory crafting parts of The Binding of Isaac video game!
I play this any chance I get with my friends. A round can slow down a lot sometimes just due to bad draws, and some characters are wildly more powerful than others; which is why I would recommend using some house rules to keep the game going at a pace you like and to prevent situations where the strongest and weakest characters are in the same game.
I play this any chance I get with my friends. A round can slow down a lot sometimes just due to bad draws, and some characters are wildly more powerful than others; which is why I would recommend using some house rules to keep the game going at a pace you like and to prevent situations where the strongest and weakest characters are in the same game.
2015
Nuclear Throne is one of the most sleeper hit video games of all time; an absolute must-play for roguelike fans. It executes the roguelike formula a bit differently than most other games of the genre, which I think plays to its strengths.
Beating the “final boss” isn’t the end of a Nuclear Throne run. Once you kill the boss of the 7th zone, you are sent back to zone 1 for a much more difficult “loop” through all the levels you already cleared, but now with remixed enemy pools and significantly more enemies. You go on for as long as you can survive, killing as many enemies as you can, before dying to the relentless difficulty of the game. The game is very fast paced, so if you die it won’t take long to get decently far into a new run. The first loop through the levels isn’t a joke either. The game asks for your full attention, which I like a lot. It keeps the game from feeling like its wasting your time with easy levels.
Unlike most other roguelikes, Nuclear Throne does not have a huge emphasis on the number of unique powerups (called mutations in this game) available to the player. Your first 8 level ups will allow you to choose 1 of 4 random mutations out of the 29 available in the game, and your final level up will let you choose 1 of your character's 2 ultimate mutations. There are a very large number of weapons available in the game, but a very skilled player should eventually be able to get the 2 best weapons by the end of any run simply by surviving long enough.
Rather than focusing on the number of mutations the player can collect, Nuclear Throne deliberately limits the selection of powerups available to the player so that it can tailor the difficulty and experience of the average run. As a very experienced player of this game, I actually think that the game would have benefitted significantly from trimming the 29 mutations down to be closer to 20 so that the gameplay experience could be even more consistent.
Because Nuclear Throne is a score-chasing roguelike, your goal each run will be to kill as many enemies as possible by looping through the randomly generated levels multiple times before dying. 4 or so of the mutations are must-haves, and your run will be severely hampered if you aren't given the option of getting all of them. Because you are given mutations randomly, you may not be given the opportunity to get these critical mutations, meaning you just won’t be able to beat any respectable high scores you’ve previously set without them. I think this is the biggest flaw of the game. The roguelike and score-chasing elements are clashing on a fundamental level, which leaves runs that haven't been blessed with a near optimal loadout of mutations feeling unsatisfying.
I would love if there were a way to reroll bad mutations after looping so that, like weapons, a skilled enough player would be able to get an optimal loadout eventually by simply surviving long enough. My only other significant complaint with the game is that rad-starving (an exploit for experienced players that allows you to get 1 extra mutation for free) is really annoying to perform and disrupts the quick pace of the game. The game also could use some alternate floors and bosses (like how Isaac has multiple different floor types and bosses that can appear in a specific chapter), but this isn't a big problem and would just be nice to have. If these issues were all addressed I think that Nuclear Throne would be a perfect game. Regardless, this is an excellent game and I highly recommend it to anyone who wouldn't be turned off by its high difficulty.
Beating the “final boss” isn’t the end of a Nuclear Throne run. Once you kill the boss of the 7th zone, you are sent back to zone 1 for a much more difficult “loop” through all the levels you already cleared, but now with remixed enemy pools and significantly more enemies. You go on for as long as you can survive, killing as many enemies as you can, before dying to the relentless difficulty of the game. The game is very fast paced, so if you die it won’t take long to get decently far into a new run. The first loop through the levels isn’t a joke either. The game asks for your full attention, which I like a lot. It keeps the game from feeling like its wasting your time with easy levels.
Unlike most other roguelikes, Nuclear Throne does not have a huge emphasis on the number of unique powerups (called mutations in this game) available to the player. Your first 8 level ups will allow you to choose 1 of 4 random mutations out of the 29 available in the game, and your final level up will let you choose 1 of your character's 2 ultimate mutations. There are a very large number of weapons available in the game, but a very skilled player should eventually be able to get the 2 best weapons by the end of any run simply by surviving long enough.
Rather than focusing on the number of mutations the player can collect, Nuclear Throne deliberately limits the selection of powerups available to the player so that it can tailor the difficulty and experience of the average run. As a very experienced player of this game, I actually think that the game would have benefitted significantly from trimming the 29 mutations down to be closer to 20 so that the gameplay experience could be even more consistent.
Because Nuclear Throne is a score-chasing roguelike, your goal each run will be to kill as many enemies as possible by looping through the randomly generated levels multiple times before dying. 4 or so of the mutations are must-haves, and your run will be severely hampered if you aren't given the option of getting all of them. Because you are given mutations randomly, you may not be given the opportunity to get these critical mutations, meaning you just won’t be able to beat any respectable high scores you’ve previously set without them. I think this is the biggest flaw of the game. The roguelike and score-chasing elements are clashing on a fundamental level, which leaves runs that haven't been blessed with a near optimal loadout of mutations feeling unsatisfying.
I would love if there were a way to reroll bad mutations after looping so that, like weapons, a skilled enough player would be able to get an optimal loadout eventually by simply surviving long enough. My only other significant complaint with the game is that rad-starving (an exploit for experienced players that allows you to get 1 extra mutation for free) is really annoying to perform and disrupts the quick pace of the game. The game also could use some alternate floors and bosses (like how Isaac has multiple different floor types and bosses that can appear in a specific chapter), but this isn't a big problem and would just be nice to have. If these issues were all addressed I think that Nuclear Throne would be a perfect game. Regardless, this is an excellent game and I highly recommend it to anyone who wouldn't be turned off by its high difficulty.
Despite not being a big JRPG fan I wanted to try this game out since I have heard such good things about it. The game's concept seems neat, although the unique simultaneous button + stylus control scheme gets rather uncomfortable after a short play session.
Honestly, the biggest problem I had with the game was the lack of autosaving before battles. Multiple times I accidentally walked into a surprise enemy encounter, died, and would lose several minutes worth of progress (much of which would usually be spamming through dialogue I've already read). If the game at least just let you save right before bosses I wouldn't have found this to be much of a damper. I found this frustrating enough for it to turn me away from the game.
I didn't get too far in, just 3 or so hours, so maybe it gets super good later. But while the games concept is novel it wasn't especially compelling from what I was able to experience.
Honestly, the biggest problem I had with the game was the lack of autosaving before battles. Multiple times I accidentally walked into a surprise enemy encounter, died, and would lose several minutes worth of progress (much of which would usually be spamming through dialogue I've already read). If the game at least just let you save right before bosses I wouldn't have found this to be much of a damper. I found this frustrating enough for it to turn me away from the game.
I didn't get too far in, just 3 or so hours, so maybe it gets super good later. But while the games concept is novel it wasn't especially compelling from what I was able to experience.
2017
What more is there to say about Minecraft? It is an absolutely incredible game. Survival servers with friends are my favorite part of the game, but single-player worlds and minigame servers can be lots of fun too. I'm really glad that I grew up playing Minecraft because it just adds another layer of magic to the experience.
2009
Controversial opinion, but the original Plants vs. Zombies is very overrated. It is very close to greatness, boasting great music, mechanics, and style, but it all falls flat with the difficulty.
I remember loving this game as a kid and recently I was very excited to revisit the game, but I was extremely disappointed to find out that it is braindead easy. If you are at all familiar with videogames, this game won't pose any challenge to you, making for an unengaging or even boring experience on most levels.
That being said, I do think that this game would be really good for very casual audiences and younger children. But I just wish that the campaign was more difficult so that I could enjoy playing it and engaging with its mechanics.
If you also wish that the game were more challenging, I recommend playing the PvZ2 difficulty mod "PvZ ECLISE". I had an amazing time playing that game, which I honestly feel is what Plants vs Zombies would have been if it realized its full potential.
I remember loving this game as a kid and recently I was very excited to revisit the game, but I was extremely disappointed to find out that it is braindead easy. If you are at all familiar with videogames, this game won't pose any challenge to you, making for an unengaging or even boring experience on most levels.
That being said, I do think that this game would be really good for very casual audiences and younger children. But I just wish that the campaign was more difficult so that I could enjoy playing it and engaging with its mechanics.
If you also wish that the game were more challenging, I recommend playing the PvZ2 difficulty mod "PvZ ECLISE". I had an amazing time playing that game, which I honestly feel is what Plants vs Zombies would have been if it realized its full potential.
This game is absolutely incredible, but only if you aren't discouraged by failure, are willing to engage with the game to learn the quirks of the plants and zombies, and enjoy high difficulty.
With that disclaimer out of the way... I have played a lot of Eclise! I beat all the levels in "Eclise Beta" several years ago, and then later replayed the entire game after it had a soft reboot and was ported to a different version of the vanilla PvZ2 APK as "Eclise Alpha" (I don't know why the beta came before the alpha lol). I have seen a lot of backlash to the alpha version for changing the optimal playstyle and tweaking other things, but I'm here to tell you that both versions are excellent! The beta is easier as sunflowers are much stronger in that version, but the alpha version also has an optional easy-mode version that you can play, where zombies have less HP, so I would honestly just recommend playing the alpha since it has more content, a more consistent difficulty curve in the campaign, and is better balanced.
Now onto what I think actually makes Eclise so great! I think that vanilla PvZ has amazing ideas and does not explore them in meaningful ways. It is incredibly easy to just absolutely steamroll every level with nothing but the most basic of plants. The levels in the original game are also extremely short, making high cost and long recharge plants less viable as well as making the game even easier. Eclise has much longer levels with waves of zombies that get much more dense as the level progresses. This makes the game much more interesting as it leaves you with much more impactful decisions to make. You will have to decide how much room you save for sunflowers, what plants you will want as early level (cheap and weak) and late level (strong and expensive) damage options, what archetype of plants would be effective in a given level (torchwood + pea, ice + AoE, shadow plants, etc), and much more.
In addition to having over 100 plants to choose from in a fully completed save file, every plant has 3 different unlockable "tiers" that you can change to customize their role a little bit. None of the tiers are inherently better than others (in theory at least). For example, T1 peashooter costs 100 sun and does 40 damage per pea, but the T2 peashooter costs about twice as much and does about twice as much damage. This significantly increases the versatility of all plants and allows for more nuanced deliberation for your seed deck. It is also incredibly satisfying to unlock new tiers for your plants, giving you more options to allow for different strategies and increased skill expression.
One of the only negative things I can say about this game is that sometimes you just aren't prepared for ambushes until its too late. The crux of a level might be that there is a huge zombie ambush halfway through the level, and the game won't communicate this with you until the ambush is actually happening. This can lead to some frustrating "well how was I supposed to know that was going to happen?!" moments that you wont know about and likely wont be prepared for until its too late. I personally rarely found this to be more than a minor annoyance, as it rarely happens and it can feel good to go through the level a second time with significantly better performance since you can select more appropriate seeds after getting the chance to scout the level. This is often a necessary evil though, as experimentation in overcoming great obstacles is what makes the most challenging levels so rewarding. Another small gripe I have is that I found some level gimmicks to not be fun, but there are so many 1 off gimmick levels that encourage different styles of play that it seems inevitable there I wouldn't vibe with all of them, and they are an overall positive addition to change up gameplay.
Eclise gets a lot of unfair criticism for having consistently bad design, excessive difficulty, and "zombie spam". I can acquiesce that the optional secret levels get incredibly difficult but virtually no levels in the game are poorly designed, and I think the extreme difficulty in the optional levels are great optional skill checkpoints for the player to display mastery of different mechanics. Eclise does an excellent job at setting up the player for success by teaching them relevant strategies and it then expects you to engage with it by utilizing what it has taught you later with greater stakes. I think most players who have complained about the game being poorly designed likely played Eclise expecting to be able to play it with little engagement, like the vanilla games, and then had a skill issue.
TLDR; Eclise takes everything that worked in the original Plants vs Zombies games, changes everything that didn't, and adds heaps of its own ideas to the mix to create the ultimate Plants vs Zombies experience. I urge anyone who likes strategy games or PvZ to try this mod!
With that disclaimer out of the way... I have played a lot of Eclise! I beat all the levels in "Eclise Beta" several years ago, and then later replayed the entire game after it had a soft reboot and was ported to a different version of the vanilla PvZ2 APK as "Eclise Alpha" (I don't know why the beta came before the alpha lol). I have seen a lot of backlash to the alpha version for changing the optimal playstyle and tweaking other things, but I'm here to tell you that both versions are excellent! The beta is easier as sunflowers are much stronger in that version, but the alpha version also has an optional easy-mode version that you can play, where zombies have less HP, so I would honestly just recommend playing the alpha since it has more content, a more consistent difficulty curve in the campaign, and is better balanced.
Now onto what I think actually makes Eclise so great! I think that vanilla PvZ has amazing ideas and does not explore them in meaningful ways. It is incredibly easy to just absolutely steamroll every level with nothing but the most basic of plants. The levels in the original game are also extremely short, making high cost and long recharge plants less viable as well as making the game even easier. Eclise has much longer levels with waves of zombies that get much more dense as the level progresses. This makes the game much more interesting as it leaves you with much more impactful decisions to make. You will have to decide how much room you save for sunflowers, what plants you will want as early level (cheap and weak) and late level (strong and expensive) damage options, what archetype of plants would be effective in a given level (torchwood + pea, ice + AoE, shadow plants, etc), and much more.
In addition to having over 100 plants to choose from in a fully completed save file, every plant has 3 different unlockable "tiers" that you can change to customize their role a little bit. None of the tiers are inherently better than others (in theory at least). For example, T1 peashooter costs 100 sun and does 40 damage per pea, but the T2 peashooter costs about twice as much and does about twice as much damage. This significantly increases the versatility of all plants and allows for more nuanced deliberation for your seed deck. It is also incredibly satisfying to unlock new tiers for your plants, giving you more options to allow for different strategies and increased skill expression.
One of the only negative things I can say about this game is that sometimes you just aren't prepared for ambushes until its too late. The crux of a level might be that there is a huge zombie ambush halfway through the level, and the game won't communicate this with you until the ambush is actually happening. This can lead to some frustrating "well how was I supposed to know that was going to happen?!" moments that you wont know about and likely wont be prepared for until its too late. I personally rarely found this to be more than a minor annoyance, as it rarely happens and it can feel good to go through the level a second time with significantly better performance since you can select more appropriate seeds after getting the chance to scout the level. This is often a necessary evil though, as experimentation in overcoming great obstacles is what makes the most challenging levels so rewarding. Another small gripe I have is that I found some level gimmicks to not be fun, but there are so many 1 off gimmick levels that encourage different styles of play that it seems inevitable there I wouldn't vibe with all of them, and they are an overall positive addition to change up gameplay.
Eclise gets a lot of unfair criticism for having consistently bad design, excessive difficulty, and "zombie spam". I can acquiesce that the optional secret levels get incredibly difficult but virtually no levels in the game are poorly designed, and I think the extreme difficulty in the optional levels are great optional skill checkpoints for the player to display mastery of different mechanics. Eclise does an excellent job at setting up the player for success by teaching them relevant strategies and it then expects you to engage with it by utilizing what it has taught you later with greater stakes. I think most players who have complained about the game being poorly designed likely played Eclise expecting to be able to play it with little engagement, like the vanilla games, and then had a skill issue.
TLDR; Eclise takes everything that worked in the original Plants vs Zombies games, changes everything that didn't, and adds heaps of its own ideas to the mix to create the ultimate Plants vs Zombies experience. I urge anyone who likes strategy games or PvZ to try this mod!
2019
I don't know why, but this game just didn't vibe with me. I love the internet and old-web aesthetics so I thought I would adore this game, but I didn't enjoy my time with Hypnospace Outlaw very much. I wasn't old enough to browse the web when websites actually looked like this so that may be one reason that I didn't enjoy this game when so many others did.
The concept of exploring a well furnished webspace designed specifically for this game sounds really interesting, but basically nothing that I saw in the 5 hours I played this game was something that couldn't be found on actual websites right now. The fact that none of the websites were actually made by individual users took away the magic of browsing random websites for me. Browsing random sites on Neocities made by other genuine web users is much more entertaining and fulfilling to me than the artificial websites from Hypnospace (plus Neocities is free!).
I also didn't enjoy the missions in this game. The first one where you have to moderate the site and remove copyrighted material made me feel bad for limiting what the users of Hypnospace were allowed to post. And later missions also felt convoluted to the point that solving them without a guide felt implausible.
The concept of exploring a well furnished webspace designed specifically for this game sounds really interesting, but basically nothing that I saw in the 5 hours I played this game was something that couldn't be found on actual websites right now. The fact that none of the websites were actually made by individual users took away the magic of browsing random websites for me. Browsing random sites on Neocities made by other genuine web users is much more entertaining and fulfilling to me than the artificial websites from Hypnospace (plus Neocities is free!).
I also didn't enjoy the missions in this game. The first one where you have to moderate the site and remove copyrighted material made me feel bad for limiting what the users of Hypnospace were allowed to post. And later missions also felt convoluted to the point that solving them without a guide felt implausible.
2021
Not a bad game but it just wasn't for me. The music dynamically changing based on your movement was really cool, but the actual gameplay got old for me pretty fast. If you are just looking for a visually unique game with equally odd and unique dynamic music you might enjoy the game.
This is the first fishing game I have ever played, previously thinking that they would be boring and lacking depth. While this game does not have a whole lot to do, I'm impressed by what it did with so little. This feels like exploring Peach's Castle in SM64 with all the small secrets there are to find, which reward you with either new species of fish to catch or a new lure to attract fish with. The aesthetic of this game does a lot of the heavy lifting in making this game appealing, so if it doesn't appeal to you, you probably won't like the game. The progression of the game is also pretty quick and it can be beaten in about 4 hours, so there is not much grind at all.
Danganronpa's fanbase preceded the game itself and turned me off from playing it for years. When I played it myself, I was quite surprised to discover that it is actually really fun! The mysteries are written pretty well and most of the dialogue (which is most of the game) kept me eager to read more because it would be funny, progress the plot, or offer clues useful for solving a future mystery. That being said, a non-negligible chunk of the dialogue was pretty cringe, commonly featuring immature jokes about boners, boobs, "doing it", off color kinks, etc. Sometimes this stuff was so bad it got a laugh out of me, but plenty of it did nothing but make me embarrassed to be playing this game, so I can see this making the game much less appealing to some people.
If you can handle some cringe dialogue and enjoy other visual novels/text focused games I would really recommend playing this game, despite whatever impression its fanbase may have left on you!
If you can handle some cringe dialogue and enjoy other visual novels/text focused games I would really recommend playing this game, despite whatever impression its fanbase may have left on you!
I could see some people enjoying this game, but I found it to be a pretty underwhelming experience. The controls just feel kind of bad, there is a lack of sound effect and music variety, and the humor did not land with me at all. The minimal visual aesthetic was pretty nice though. I can see this being a good game for small children.
2016
I was excited to play this game, as I am a massive fan of Daniel Mullins' other game "Inscryption", but this game was unfortunately not able too pull off the same levels of intrigue or finesse as that title. Neither the 'usual' nor the subversive moments in this game were interesting to me, and the best thing I have to say about it is that it told its narrative with relative brevity.
If you were thinking of getting this game, I would strongly suggest you get Inscryption instead!
If you were thinking of getting this game, I would strongly suggest you get Inscryption instead!
2021
Inscryption is unlike anything I have ever played. Its atmosphere is so expertly designed and executed, and the story was entirely enrapturing! I cannot recommend it enough. Do yourself a favor and play it now, before you risk seeing any spoilers.