I will say, right off the bat, even as a trans woman, I do appreciate this game way more for its gameplay than its story and characters. Though, the characters are cute and charming, and the story is a more-than-serviceable tale of avoiding inward problems by giving yourself arbitrary outward tasks, I would say it is more a very functional context for what is truly some of the most satisfying, tight, punchy, addicting gameplay I’ve ever experienced in any indie game, let alone an indie platformer. It is pretty special, though, that the story runs parallel with the level design. A lot of the challenges here require dedication, perserverance, and commitment to hit the right beats to get from end to end. The game is insanely frustrating, but never in a way where it feels cheap, or anti-player. Like this is one of very few of these challenge-based games that actually feels like it respects its audience and is looking at you at eye-level. Even without the character arc of the player character basically being the game looking at you straight in the face yelling “don’t give up,” this game’s level design is just on another plane of existence, it feels.

This was the first game I ever streamed online and that was back during the summer of 2020, which might as well be a decade ago considering how much life happened to all of us and me in between now and then. I’d always toyed with replaying this game but never was able to really commit to it, but everyone talking about the sixth anniversary game got me really fantasizing about my return to the mountain. Or maybe it was FOMO. Never the less, after picking it up at the beginning of the month I found it very hard to put down, and found myself prioritizing this game over others that I’ve been playing for months whenever a block of free time presented itself. When I first played way back when, I didn’t exactly skirt all of the extra levels and challenges, but I was far from really putting a lid on this game. This time, at first, I merely wanted to make sure I was beating my old self; collecting more strawberries and dying much less. The latter being a bit of an easy task as some B-sides saw me racking up a little more than a thousand deaths on my first try.

As I toiled through this game, I not only found myself performing better at levels, but also learning better how to spot secrets. The game does a great job hiding secret passages in nooks and crannies that wink to a player who may just notice a little something is off about that corner over there. It does this, too, with subtley guiding the player to figuring out how to complete a certain challenge. It is an invisible guidance that exists only in the level design, but it’s the kind of stuff you realize is there when you nail a section on the first try because the game wired your instincts correctly. Near the beginning, the game tells the player to be proud of every death, that you may learn from each one. It seems like a cutesy little message that might remind one of how their mom cheers them up after a lost U-12 soccer match, but it is true. These platformers are all secretly puzzle games and with each death you kinda start to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Something I did differently in this second playthrough than my first, was that if something I was doing wasn’t working, I wouldn’t just die the same way 15 more times before realizing I might need to try something new.

So, yeah, I absolutely adored it on round two. Still feel far from a real desire to beat every level and even farther from wanting to 100% it, but it’s definitely up there with my favorite stuff of all time. Maybe I should try Super Meat Boy again…

Mega Man was always one of those series that I reveered as a child but didn’t exactly play a lot. I mean, this series is one of the NES franchises, and as a teen raised by AVGN and those inspired by him, I just always heard about this motherfucker. So much so, that I got Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10 on the Wii when the released way back when. A new game with NES graphics, I mean, I ate them up at the time. I got the second volume of the Legacy Collection because it not only had those two that I played a lot of as a kid, but also the 8th installment, which I had seen recently is very coveted among true fans of this series.

However, before moving on to the latter three games in this collection I felt obligated to play this one, and it may have soured me on Mega Man before I even got going! I feel like a lot of people are lukewarm on this installment, anyways, but I think I’m just lukewarm on the whole thing. See, because Mega Man is a series defined by its legacy as a classic NES game, it feels like every new game was designed not to be updated because half of the appeal, according to the designers, are those clunky and old school things that make a game less fun. Mega Man doesn’t crouch because, well, Mega Man doesn’t crouch. It doesn’t matter how nice it would be to have different heights for your attack, Mega Man DOESN’T CROUCH! Also, spikes are an instant death. It doesn’t matter that levels seemed designed without that fact in mind, and there are sections of some levels that seem like they want to launch you in the spikes once just to teach you about a level’s gimmick, but then you get sent back to the beginning. But, I mean, what can ya do? In Mega Man, spikes are an instant death. Because they always were.

Needless to say this game made me angry. Thank god for the Legacy Collection’s “LOAD LAST CHECKPOINT” option. I was clicking that button, plenty. The password system was honestly really funny, because I haven’t played a game that used that in ages, and I figured by the SNES we weren’t really using that for these bigger games. However! Then I remembered, after figuring I would just give up on the Wily’s Castle levels, that I can input a password to get me to the end! So I did, and then the boss kicked my ass, then when the second phases started, I said “actually, forget it.”

I admittedly bought this on sale on Steam thinking I would laugh through a classically-dated ‘90s video game on stream, stunted voice acting and all. However, the more I sunk into this game, the more I started to realize this had a following for a reason. While it definitely requires the player to be on its wavelength, what’s waiting for open-minded players is maybe the most lived-in game that I’ve ever experienced, personally. After playing it through, I genuinely think this is one of the most important video games of all time.

I think it’s a crazy accomplishment to create an atmosphere like this, that places you in such a mundane world that promises big things, but it’s just so regular and run-down. A great dissection of the mundanity of capitalism and urbanism, even in the face of destined greatness. A father-avenging, martial-arts-action video game stuck in the gears of the laborer’s routine. All the while, it’s still telling an amazing story, one of feeling stuck on rage and grief, and even when you’re stuck and can’t move on from mountains of unprocessed feelings, the world keeps turning, and days go by, and lives go on being lived.

Maybe the most important thing about this game, though, is that it is not embaressed to be a video game. A lot of narrative-focused video games try so hard to be elevated because they’re insecure to be a part of this medium, but Shenmue isn’t. There are fun, colorful collectibles, there are so many mini-games that you could waste a whole day on, and so many references to Sega! When I found the Sega Saturn in Ryo’s house, my jaw dropped.

So many wonderful moments, a wonderful supporting cast, I just got so sucked into this world, and after thinking I’d just play this one and move on, I’m so on board to play through II & III. I’ll never forget about Nozomi for the rest of my life!

An amazing Harvest Moon title not in the sense that it is everything one of these titles could be, but it is absolutely everything that it should be. Coming off a playthrough of what is basically the newest version of this particular incarnation, it is hard to deny these older games have a certain air about them that makes these quirky, stylized simulation games so special. For instance, in newer installments, a visible meter helps you keep track of your stamina, and of how fatigued your character is of daily chores. In this game the only UI on the main screen is the date and time, which, you can even remove if you’d like to really go for it, raw. Hell, in this game, the amount of item slots you start with would seem like a war crime if implemented in a game released this decade. It is especially sociopathic in a game where you’re meant to start out by rummaging through the woods behind your farm for plants to sell, and need all of your tools to clean up and get your farm started. But, then I thought about it more, and the tenfold more amount of item slots you get in this series most modern entries started to seem less like a quality-of-life upgrade, but rather an “ease-of-life” upgrade. Harvest Moon: Back to Nature is hard because of its limitations, but not less playable. It’s trickier when you can’t see your stamina meter at all, let alone have a numerical value to measure it with. It’s harder to raise a horse when you have to guide it back into your barn before it rains or else it won’t grow well. It’s hard to raise livestock when they can be killed and- wait, killed and eaten by wild dogs if you leave them out overnight, holy shit?!

For me, it’s that slight little decrease in quality-of-life that makes for not only an interesting challenge for series-goers, but also creates a little more mystique, I think. I don’t quite know how to fully articulate it, but it is just the same as to why I prefer older Animal Crossing games to newer ones; there is something to these kinds of games being very shy to give you information, maybe even straight up being unfriendly to the player. It adds to what is usually the pretense to these games’ loose storylines: that you are a young adult on your own, trying to figure out this new life you have. Be it the secret, special events that a player could stumble into on complete accident, less obvious feedback given to the player, as well. It both creates an extra sense of wonder as well as an extra sense of accomplishment, at least for me.

Obviously, the biggest missing piece of these old games is homosexuality. While I might be able to easily pretend that the male protagonist is actually a butch lesbian, what with their backwards cap and love for denim, that’s not gonna cut it for everyone. Though, the thing is, at least with ‘Back to Nature’, it almost feels like the heteronormativity is the point. In our very westernized society, the ideal life of a rural day laborer is heavily entwined with the idea of nuclear family. The idea that your ordinary game of Harvest Moon is not complete without getting married and having a child feels integral to the (accidental) subtext of this simulation. You leave the city to work on a farm, you meet a wife and, well, if you get married, you’re gonna have a child because that’s what you do. Though, regardless of how you read into it, there is something about how actually fun it is to woo your woman in this game. Even though, like many other games, you are just clicking the right buttons, I think this game has the kinda of charm and well-written dialog to really make it feel like your character and another are actually getting to know each other deeper.

I fell for Karen in this run and she’s easily my favorite Mineral Town mama. Gets pregnant and her first thought is, “ah, shit, I guess I gotta quit drinking.” What a woman. The non-romanceable townsfolk in this game might leave something to be desired, and near the last couple seasons of year three, I found myself with seemingly unlimited funds and not really any goals left to achieve. The three-year test run the mayor is giving you to see if you’re fit to not only run the farm, but vibe with the neighborhood, is the perfect length to really do what mostly players need to and want to, and I really can’t imagine being the type to charge on much farther (unless you’d like to see your child grow up).

This particular port, by the way, released just last year for newer generations of Playstation, is a bit barebones. For one thing, any game that used to be made for 4:3 CRT televisions that don’t include the option for border illustrations should just not bother, but they at least had the right mind to include a scanlines filter and plenty of resolution choices. Also, maybe the most vital thing that might make it worth playing this instead of just emulation: there is a rewind option. Pretty great for a game where you might misclick and slice up a crop, or accidentally throw an egg on the floor, or maybe miss an event by an hour. For the USD$4.99 it is asking for, it is still a steal for one of the most essential experiences for those interested in this genre and series. I am still yet to play ‘Friends of Mineral Town’ for the Game Boy Advance, which is not only an improved version of this game, but also considered the best of the series by many. As much as I want to just jump into another huge farm life commitment, I do want to avoid series fatigue and maybe space out these games with some other experiences.

That breeze of this time of year; the one where you know spring is turning into summer, something about it turns back the clock. For me, it always brings me back to Pokémon on the Game Boy Advance. I’ve been wanting to go through this game again, and feeling that breeze, really made me want to go home. Sometimes I feel silly about this being my favorite game, ‘cuz it’s just a Pokémon game, nothing cool or out-there, and it’s just FireRed Version, to boot: the first remake of the first game. But, this game is so special to me and I think is so well designed and feels like the team at Game Freak were trying to show that they can do this.

Before I get into it all, I just wanted to touch on something that I never realized. Something I did was set LR to “Help” for the first time. Pokémon comes really naturally to Pokémon players. There are fundamentals that define this series that we all know so well, just like there are fundamentals to all video games. Though, Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen have a mission statement, that they want everyone to enjoy this adventure to the fullest. They state that is “our” goal in a note of text that appears before the player even before Professor Oak introduces the world of Pokémon. This little thing at the beginning is not something that stuck with me every other playthrough, but this time I realized that they not only want new gamers to try Pokémon, but they want new people to try video games. When you press the L or the R button, you are allowed to ask the game nearly any question you can think of, from “What do I do now?” to “What is the Dark-type good against?” It was interesting, up until the first badge, reading through all the copies that were written to explain adventure RPG games.

It’s this nice little companion that FireRed and LeafGreen have because, no matter how much a player needs their hand held, whether it’s because they’re young or because they don’t play a lot of video games, the designers want so badly for as many people as possible to enjoy the entire adventure of Pokémon. to explore every town, every cave, every forest, and meet as many Pokémon as they can.

And that’s what I’ve been trying to do lately. The past few years, I’ve been trying to take my time in Pokémon games by getting into the role of a kid out on their own adventure for the first time. What this has allowed me to do is really appreciate how each Pokémon games’ scenarios are laid out. I think it’s Game Freak’s biggest strength in these early games to design a game scenario that really gets a player to each corner of the map in a non-linear way. In a recent playthrough of Crystal Version, I found myself rebuking the common pacing critique of that generation, finding that it is perfectly paced if you properly explore the world as the Hidden Moves you unlock open it up more. every single Pokémon game, even the new ones, are built around “HMs.” Once you get a new overworld move, the world opens up more and there are new people to meet, places to explore, and of course, Pokémon to catch. Talking to NPCs, walking into every building, it allows the world to sink in so much more than if you just play Pokémon so passively, just going from
necessary objective to necessary objective. It’s what the game is designed around, and it makes these games fit in with other JRPGs of this era.

My final was…
Campfire the Charizard, met in Pallet Town
Lemontart the Jolteon, met in Celadon City
Rageroom the Primeape, met on Route 22
Yachtclub the Lapras, met in Saffron City
Drumstick the Marowak, met in Pokémon Tower
Flowershop the Vileplume, met on Route 24

I picked Charmander, just like I did for the first time. Good ol’ Kyle. I always like planning out my teams, and this time i felt like planning out a character. I chose ‘GIRL’, like I have been for, like, nearly a decade, now, but also named myself ‘RED’. Just a little trans girl leaving home like all kids do, nervous to go out on an entire journey dressed as herself. Pokémon, at its core, is about the first time you feel like you’re growing up. This feeling that the first step to becoming an adult is doing things yourself for the first time. This rite of passage is told through the story of a kid going on an errand, that turns into an adventure, and stumbling into a situation that adults usually handle, and takes it on alone. But, of course, they’re not really alone. They have their Pokémon, and that’s what Pokémon is about: growing up, and leaving the house, can be really scary, but you’re never as alone as you feel.

I love getting to the end, facing down your rival. That Champion battle is pretty tough in set mode, but for the first time, with a team of six, I didn’t have to do any grinding before my league challenge. Whenever I use Jolteon, they always are a shining star on my team. Didn’t even need Thunderbolt, Shock Wave + Toxic helped get rid of Pidgeot, Blastoise, and Alakazam. It came down to my Charizard versus his Arcanine, and my boy clutched it out (with the help of my fourth Max Potion used, the last I’d be comfortable using while keeping my dignity).

There’s just something about the Kanto region’s vibe that I love. Half of me wishes Pokémon kept going the route of “this is basically the real world but with little freaks in capsules.” there’s an NPC in Pewter’s museum that tells you about how he remembers the moon landing from 1969. Compre that to when you play Omega Ruby and you go to space on the back of Mega Rayquaza and fight Deoxys. I don’t know, it just gives Kanto this specific feel to the region that can be easily overlooked, but after playing this and Yellow Version back-to-back, I’m very interested in the world of Pokémon where the “great Pokémon war” that Lt. Surge and other lore refers to is just, I don’t know, the fucking Vietnam War.

I bought this because I don’t really have anything to play on Switch right now. I’m playing a lot of stuff on PC and 3DS, and I haven’t really bought a lot of new releases on Switch because I’m not exactly too liquid right now! I’ve heard a lot about these ‘Grandmaster’ titles and decided to try one out. The result was me sinking hours and hours almost everyday this week trying to get that top spot on the rankings. I usually try and watch something while playing whatever “““casual””” game I’m playing, however, and what I never seemed to realize was that Tetris requires 100% of my attention when I’m intensely trying to be the very best. A “grand master,” if you will. So intense, however, that I was beginning to get really frustrated as I couldn’t get over a wall I’d found myself at around level 399 with an S2 grade that I could get to around 5 minutes and change. So, I found myself irritable, distracted, and not really doing much else with the free time afforded to me by my being unemployed (and not liquid enough to purchase new vices and addictions). I think I’m gonna hang up the Tetris towel for the next couple of weeks, and when I do pick it up, I think I’ll get into something a little more light-hearted. Like, Tetris DS or something. Hopefully my Switch doesn’t miss me too much.

Really wanted to tough it out and beat it but, god, it’s such a tough one. So aesthetically pleasing, both musically and visually, but just feels like torture to play, and level design is very anti-player. Made worse because after a couple of levels I realized that a Scott Pilgrim game should’ve been an Earthbound-style RPG and probably would be if they decided on making a game post-Undertale, lol. Will always love this as a novelty which is why I don’t regret getting the Limited Run of it, and maybe I’d give it another go doing online co-op, but, well. Scott Pilgrim, if your life was a game I would punch it.

Absolutely enraptured me when I had it on Nintendo DSi. A great little arcade with perfect pixel aesthetics and some of the best game feel I've ever gotten off of something like this. Is just as much about twitchy movements as it is about long strides and it just is so satisfying to reach out for a Bean and get 1000 points off of it.

I actually wouldn't get that this is kind of a WarioWare thing, despite being a huge fan of the franchise even back when I first played this, until last year when our little friend Pyoro would make an appearance in WarioWare: Get It Together! It would be the first new title in the series that I would buy in years and when Pyoro made an appearance in that game I went "Wait, what the fuck, that's the Bird & Beans guy!" Then, this past year in trying to 100% WarioWare Twisted!, I would unlock a mini-game called "Pyoro R," the 'R' standing for "Rotate," I imagine. I've had 'Twisted' for ages, and I can't imagine how cool it would've been to, somewhere along the line, unlock that game closer to when I started playing this.

Bird & Beans is the fucking bomb, and a modern release on iOS/Android with online leaderboards would steal time from me like crazy. Or, dare I say...

...Pyoro 99, when???

Perfection. This series has always had a spot in my heart. When I discovered the HD versions on iOS I got back into this series really hard, a series that really had a big part in my youth. Unwound Future will always have a soft spot, as it’s not only my first Layton game, but also the first game that made me cry, but The Last Specter was a glorious surprise.

Playing through the first trilogy of this series, you encounter a lot of the same stuff. You can even see puzzles having the same general idea; there’s a version of every puzzle from the first game in each of its successors. The first installment of the series’ prequel trilogy does something to improve the gameplay that gives it an inch on Unwound Future. It keeps the player engaged in a way that the others had trouble with. Pacing can be really tough in these games since the core gameplay revolves around taking a moment to decipher a brain-teaser. Puzzles can vary greatly in how much interaction they require from the player.

Here, there are some moments where the game asks you to remember things and deduce things, and answer a round of questioning from Layton as he walks you through an epiphany of his. This may seem simple, but it really engages the player into being involved in the progression of dialog outside of tapping the text-box whenever prompted with the end of a sentence.

Between these little tweaks, boundless content, and a finale that really made my brain AND my heart soar, this is my new favorite Layton. I wasn’t planning on attempting to play the two 3DS installments, but the closer I got to the end of this one the more I wanted to go for it. I’m so excited for the new Layton on Switch.

I guess I’m just the early-DS library’s biggest defender. Look, I’m not a Super Monkey Ball expert, but I’ve earned my stripes. I was there in the McDonalds’ PlayPlace with a GameCube controller in-hand, running the gauntlet while breathing in the stale air of a public indoor playground. I grew up mostly, though, with this title, and I’ve come back to it in anticipation of the series’ newest entry, only to find the reviews filled with anti-fun losers!

The people who complain about this game’s controls just sound like the same drones who complain about every Nintendo DS game actually integrating one of the console’s defining features into their game’s design. I personally never had a problem with the touch controls, but, also, they are completely optional? You can just use the control pad if you’re skill isn’t up to par to use the stylus, which, obviously requires a little more precision and patience and steadiness that isn’t required of button inputs. Touch controls, though, also allow for a different and more fliud kind of movement because you’re not tied to 8 different directionals. The world is your oyster. I found I was using the control pad for maps that needed speed and the touch controls for maps that needed precision.

Some of the levels here were real gems, too. Had me really under pressure, stressed, frustrated, but that coaster of emotion is, like, the core of this series. While the later levels drove me crazy, the satisfaction of beating them was there at the end every time. Those last two zones are a real doozy, just the last couple of levels took me about half of today. Super Monkey Ball is so fucking exhilirating, man.

Then there’s the party games, all perfect for the DS and its multiplayer functionality. Earlier last year, actually, my partner and I had a bit of a game night with this game and it was plenty of fun with one cartridge and DS Download Play. Remember that? By the time the DSi was rolling around, it basically ceased to be used in any meaningful way in most games, but this era of ‘04-‘07, the DS was really stressing its wireless capability, in a grand celebration of the death of the link cable.

The air hockey and bowling segments are highlights for me, I can definitely see myself getting into heated matches in the hockey game, or trying to get 300 in bowling. The “monkey war” one is just insane, though. That was where younger-me was spending the most time when I had this way back when. Then there’s the credits mini-game which you can’t skip through and are given to play after every zone of the challenge mode. Bad idea, truly, especially since the credits are accessible from the menu. Even in the credits, though, like in some of the party games, the physics isn’t completely there and there could be some tweaks to be made as well.

‘Touch ‘n’ Roll’ is an amazing display of the Nintendo DS’ features, and my reviews of past handheld titles will reveal that a game, especially a DS game, actually utilizing the console its on really reels me in. Admittedly, I guess, more than it does for most. Though, if I wanted to introduce someone to this console I would probably pick this game, honestly. Levels are great, it’s got a great look, perfectly utilizing both sprites and 3D environments.

Has some really great monster design, first of all; would adore to see the team behind this do their own game instead of expanding on this. Honestly was just really nice, as someone who almost never meshes well with Pokémon ROMhacks, this was perfect for me. It’s a scenario I know well, the Crystal Version’s story, so I can kind of not waste time figuring out what to do because I already know, so I just get to enjoy this artificial simulation of seeing a new Pokémon for the first time over and over :)

A lot of hacks try and mix old Pokémon with “Fakémon,” and sometimes the clashing design styles of official and fanmade creatures is stark. So, why not just remix all of the Pokémon? Take an original design’s general idea and stir it up! Porygon is a computer duck, so why not mix it up by making him Normal- and Water-type. Now he’s just a funky duck!!! And it’s the best shit ever! A really great vibe from this one, some of the spritework is really amazing. I always hate composing a team on the fly, though, and I have other games I want to prioritize, so I’ll come back to this one when I can take a look at the Pokédex and plan a team and zoom through.

Look, I love this series like crazy, so it’s hard for these games to disappoint, but even I know this whole series is just loaded with exposition. The world-building is arguably, uh, terrible because it is purposefully made so convoluted as most of the mystery and drama of most of these games’ story scenarios comes from characters unfolding and connecting passages from their respective world’s Book of Genesis, until the cast of characters find themselves twisted into their world’s Book of Revelations. Tales of Berseria’s scenario does well, though, in pacing out their discoveries and exposition so it never feels like you’re being given important information so late into the game. There are plenty of moments of characters going “Ah yes, of course, it’s just like the earth synergy.” “Earth synergy? What’s that?” but it’s never to a point where it feels like it’s too overbearing, or lazy, or goofy. I played a lot of this game spaced out over the last seven months and never forgot the important details of how this world works, as it was given to me, and I think that’s a pretty good testament to how this game doesn’t overload you. Even in the last section, where other ‘Tales’ games might dump a lot of last minute stuff on you, this one feels like it’s trying to stay linear.

I also think expositional dialog works here because each of the main cast are of different backgrounds. Demons, priests, witches, pirates! Everyone has lived a different life and, thus, can bring different knowledge to a discussion about the world! This makes what could be heavy-handed expository dialog a little lighter as the cast converses like a bunch of strangers of different strokes coming together to play ancient history detective. Then, of course, we learn more about these characters that we like as we learn about the world and its mystery.

The characters are all great. The party of six are each hits, all of them just endeared themselves to me so fast and easy, and the perfectly consistent writing of their personalities and how they clash and interact just had me giddy during some scenes. Sometimes a family isn’t a nuclear family of parent and children, sometimes it’s a gay samurai and a gay pirate and a mean lesbian and a closeted youth group lesbian and a quirky trans girl and the cute little kid they all see as a little brother! And the mean lesbian herself, Velvet freakin’ Crowe, is such a great, great protagonist. She and this game’s villain are perfect opposite extremes of what this whole game is about: what is the point of hurting?

This isn’t the first text to tackle this subject matter, of course, we all know what the point of hurting is! It means we’re human! It means we’re alive! It is a quintessential part of the human experience to be met with pain, the hard part is processing it. The antagonist of this game (light spoilers) wants to rid the world of pain; it should be something that no one should experience, as it is only borne from faults that mankind are saddled with. Velvet wants revenge for her pain, it drives an all-consuming (pun intended, as the connection is made obvious in subtext) rage that she plans to use to remove anything in her path. Velvet’s costume, at first glance, seems a bit much; a very revealing mess of tattered clothing that someone might wear to a nightclub’s goth-themed event. Though, I think it serves a purpose. Velvet is also a daemon (sic), a blight on the world, seen as ugly and broken by the church that runs the entire world. Her outfit is just a reflection of how the enemy sees her, and any objectification made towards her revealing outfit just helps the metaphor that not only is the church disgusted by her, but they also see her as a tool.

Her arc is spectacular, and, like most JRPGs, the solution is friends. As a writer, though, I’ve grown less sensitive to the same kinda of stories, especially in games, and to me, what’s important is not whether your message is new, or even if the story beats aren’t familiar, it’s how you write characters and how you take them to where they need to be taken to. The path that Velvet goes on to see her friends clearly as they are is so great and so fulfilling, and so clear and beautiful, and in tandem, Laphicet’s arc and growth is so good. Ugh! I cried folks, I really did. This entire story had me in chains the whole time, and the ending was truly something else, and still has me thinking about it with a massive amount of emotion. I don’t think I’ll ever forget about Velvet Crowe. She’s up there with Guts and Maka Albarn as characters I will cherish forever.

“Your despair… how is it gone?”

Now, the video game part of this game was, well, less spectacular than the story, relatively. The combat in this game is maybe my favorite of the ‘Tales’ games I’ve played. It replaces mana points with a stamina meter made up of five points that get spent during your moves. It, for me, led to a much fluid style of play. High-hit combos are pretty easy, but still fun to land, the system was never too convoluted to the point where I found myself struggling to execute something, or was ignoring entire mechanics because I felt there was no need. The thing was, there were moments where I felt like I could just kind of brute-force a lot of situations. While I think this could be chalked up to the game being well-balanced to the point where, without me ever needing to grind, and I was the level I should’ve been throughout the entire game, I did feel like there wasn’t a whole lot of struggle, or strategizing. I just mapped artes to my buttons well, used the mystic artes when I could, and made it through pretty unscathed.

The struggle in this game, really, is dungeon design. When it’s not boring, it’s annoying, and the fucking two-hour-long final dungeon was plenty more enough for me! The dungeon “puzzles” basically come down to you walking from end-to-end hitting the right switches. I feel like, at least in exploration-rewarding JRPGs with encounters like this, the fun of dungeons can just be figuring out where to go. The final dungeon being this big fucking thing that was so annoying to navigate because of how the in-game map presents itself just drove me crazy, I cannot stress this enough. I detest the idea that the final boss needs this kind of carpet laid out for them, that you need to go through one final challenge leading up to the final battle. Buddy, the entire game was the lead up! Having already stayed up a couple of hours extra to finish the job, only to go to the location where I expected to fight the final boss and see a teleporter that took me to this huge complex with orbs and switches and bridges and doors and switches and warps and the most annoying monsters ever!!! It was a long night.

Though, the dungeons were my only gripe, and the very last one was the only one that was long enough to be a drag, to be fair. This is definitely my favorite tale that the ‘Tales’ series has ever told, though the video game itself didn’t exactly stand out next to other installments that I’ve completed.

Have had this hanging from my keys, now, for a little over two months. I’ve run through 10 whole generations and participated in a few arena events, and I can sternly say this is one of the best Tamagotchi devices you can get. More lightweight, and smaller, but the screen is bigger than the last couple devices, the “On” and the “Pix,” that made it to the States officially. Did not spend much time with the watchstrap because, well, I’m an adult. A giant purple rubber watch that doesn’t tell time and is actually a little game with a little baby sticks out a bit too much for me.

Maybe could do with one more group of adults (some classic Tamas are sorely missed here), and they’re about to add some more things to the online “Tama-verse” that might add just the right amount of things to do to make each visit feel worthwhile. It’s not perfect, but it has so much to do. Have spent a decent chunk of time going on a walk with it, crafting a bunch of accessories and dressing up my Tama in different outfits to see what’s cutest. The games are fun, and change with each season, so I’ll probably get back to this once springtime rolls around officially, but, for now, I did feel myself starting to get a little bored with the cycle, so I’m putting it down for now to see if I miss it.