Compared to the first episode, it is much darker in tone. It is far less silly and over the top, but I wouldn't say it's an unwelcome change, nor an unexpected one. There were hints throughout the first episode that the series would shift that direction, so I wasn't caught off-guard.
It provides some deeper insight on the characters' personalities and helps me appreciate them more than I had in the last episode, not that I didn't already appreciate them. 01 specifically I enjoy a great deal. She became a lot more nuanced and human in this episode, with a couple moments that really showed just how much she cared for her family—and also just how fucking gay she is for Lucy.
One thing I noticed about this game that I didn't in the first one is just how good the music is. The polite boy's theme specifically really stands out with this creepy—but somehow still friendly demeanor that stands out to me.
The new characters that were added, or we got more light on, were enjoyable too. Karina specifically I enjoyed a lot, probably because everyone else hates her and I got mad at them >:( She didn't do anything to you! She's just silly!!!!!

My first Castlevania game.

The movements were really responsive. Alucard isn't slippery, he doesn't gain a weird momentum as soon as he starts moving forward, or any other shenanigan. It just felt very smooth. The same can be said about the bat form.
It was such a sick ability btw, being able to fly wherever you want, dodging every enemy while backtracking. And I like the detail of the bat changing color depending on Alucard's outfit.

The soundtrack is extremely catchy. There are elements from multiple musical genres, including classical, techno, rock and metal. It fitted perfectly with the gothic aesthetics of the game. The atmosphere is just very charming.

The game has a good amount of teleporters that are well spaced between each other. I could reach any part of the map pretty quickly. It's too rare in those retro games.

While some of the Bosses were too easy, I still enjoyed them a lot overall. Many of them have a really cool chara design, like Granfaloon, Medusa, Scylla and Shaft. And honestly, I usually prefer too easy rather than too hard.
By the way, having to fight Doppelganger 30 minutes into my playthrough was a big surprise. It was probably the most difficult Boss in the entire game. Still a great Boss tho 👌

I liked the RPG aspect of the game, with the items you can drop on defeated enemies, or by finding them during your exploration. Whether it's weapons, cloaks or talismans to make Alucard stronger, or consumables to heal yourself and boost your statistics momentarily in battle. I wish we could use items without having to unequip our weapon or shield tho...

The sub-weapons I used the most were the knives for their ease of use & high damage, and also the stopwatch. I didn't use the other ones very often.

I like how there is a possibility of getting a bad ending if you rush to the top of the castle before doing the necessary to save Richter. I ruthlessly killed him even though he is a human, and immediatly realized my mistake.
Hopefully I was able to reload my save right away to get the true ending.

I remember being stuck at some point, and I found a clue while looking at the tactic for Dracula, in the Librarian's Shop. When you watch this tutorial where Richter is fighting him, you can see that he opens a secret path at the very beginning, right before the fight. So I was able to go there myself, and I found an item that helped me to progress. I just think that was a cool way to proceed.

At first, when I reached the Reverse Castle, I was excited about the idea to go through the same map but upside down.
But when I realized that many of the rooms were now filled to the brim with enemies, I decided to keep using the bat & mist to breeze through the map and reach the Final Boss a lot quicker.
This last segment in the Reverse Castle felt like padding to be honest. It wasn't as great as the rest of the game.

Still, I had a very good time with the game overall. I enjoyed it more than Super Metroid which I played right before SOTN. (I mention it because I saw that there is a heated debate between the fans of both games to decide which one is the best 😂)
Anyway, if I play another Castlevania game in the future, it's gonna be Aria of Sorrow! 👍

----------Playtime & Completion----------

[Started on May 8th & finished on May 10th 2024]
Playtime: 13 hours
I was at 88% after getting the first ending.
And at 150% after getting the true ending.

Stellar Blade is a game that has already caused a lot of conversation way before it's release. Mostly because the main character Eve is smoking hot. I won't look into this whole so called "controversy" any further because it was just stupid. A main character looking good is no valid reason against a game because it's nothing abnormal. Anyway what happened after that is quite interesting. The game started selling really well during it's pre-order phase even without people knowing what the gameplay would consist of. It was the best-selling game in the PSN store and other platforms like Amazon in many countries, even before Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Of course now you could say sex sells and everyone is just horny, I do agree but Stellar Blade sold even better when Shift Up released a playable demo that showed that the gameplay is also really fantastic. This leads me to the next question, who even is Shift Up. They are a rather small studio which has only released a few mobile games. So this makes Stellar Blade their first big game and that makes the game even more impressive.
The gameplay is a mix between Nier Automata and Devil May Cry with a few soulslike elements sprinkled in. Like the camps which are similar to the bonfire mechanic and that enemies are respawning when you rested at these camps. Let me calm you down before some people now might not want to play it because they think that the games is too hard or because they don't like soulslike games. Stellar Blade is not a soulslike game, yes it has a few elements but it's not overly difficult. You can also always change the difficulty without any consequences. So rest assured you can still buy the game even if you don't like soulslike games.

One of the biggest strength is the combat, it's just fantastic, feels really good and it makes so much fun fighting Naytibas. The design from all of the enemies which you encounter are very unique. There is a vast variety of Naytibas, 67 different variations to be precise and all of them have different abilities and a unique design. This resulted in me always being excited when I encountered a new type of Naytiba. There is also the same variety for outfits 30 outfits and other cosmetics that you can collect. I'm glad that this game was published by Sony and not EA or Ubisoft which means that the outfits aren't tied to grind or money. Besides fighting enemies there are also a few mini games like fishing and sometimes the game shifts to a jump and run or a shooter like in the levoire segments where you can only use your gun, I really liked that gameplay is so varied. The problem is that the controls for the jump and run segments are too sensitive or Eve simply glitches through ladders or ropes when you try to jump on them. Fighting groups of enemies can also be quite a hassle because the combat is more 1v1 focused. The story is good, nothing special but I enjoyed the lore surrounding the Naytibas and Andro-Eidos. Sadly the bulletin board quests are mostly fetch quest and not that interesting. The best side quests are the ones from Enya and Kaya which were both really emotional.
The story really picks up in the finale segments and the game asks some interesting philosophical questions like what does it mean to be a human. My favorite character by far is Lily as you can see by my profile picture. She's so cute and must be protected at all costs. Eve is also great, of course I appreciate the eye candy but I like her dynamic with Lily and I enjoyed their scenes together. The fish out of water part from both characters was also kinda cute. Eve also gets most of the character development in the last third of the game. Small details like character dialogues that changes depending on what you are doing. Like for example when Adam said "don't look down", of course I looked down and Adam reacted to that and said something like "oh come on", which was a cool detail. I also recommend you to use the Korean dubbing because from what I've experienced it's the best version.
Stellar Blade has a incredible set pieces and a beautiful soundtrack which underlines the impeccable combat and thanks to a vast variety of different enemies the game never gets boring. Lily and Eve are fantastic characters, Adam is alright but he serves more as a plot device and the resolution of some of the textures in the desert is a bit low but that doesn't hurt the game much.

As a first game it's really impressive what Shift Up managed to create and what happens it the last segment of the game makes me really excited for the future. This is already one of the best games this year and deserves every praise it gets. I suffer under post game depression so I will start a NG+ run now while I patiently wait for a photomode( Yes I have way too many screenshots don't judge me) and DLC in which I can play as Lily.

Games I finished in 2024 Ranked

Feels weird to have such a sour aftertaste after loving most of Penacony, but man, 2.2 is the first time since Belobog I've felt like the game just makes no effort to set itself apart from its inspirations in certain regards.

There's only so much they can do with the game's structure and the allotted screentime characters can have, but with how much Robin and Sunday feel like they were just meant to fit moulds necessary for the story, I'd rather they just keep it at that and give its genuinely unique characters more time to shine, because I truly could not care less for the time spent on them here.

Whether intentional or not is hard to say when there's countless examples of settings like Penacony, but especially considering the dynamic of Sunday and Robin, it reminds me a loooooot of Caligula Effect 2.
The problem here is that, Caligula Effect 2 is one of my favorite stories ever that spends approximately 25 hours on being an absolutely fantastic commentary about the pressure of society's expectations (especially through the pedestal idols are unwillingly placed on) and every character uses its premise so incredibly beautifully and uniquely to truly make that emotional core of it hit.
Now ofcourse, Star Rail couldn't and shouldn't have that amount of depth with its structure as I mentioned before - but it's a bit hard to set it apart when it's so similar and yet utterly shallow in comparison. Any character development Robin gets is essentially a switch getting flipped off-screen that makes her go "hm, maybe the Family isn't so pristine actually!" and that's about it - but you can't really expect much more when they've hardly given her an hour of screentime. Her popularity makes it clear I'm definitely in the minority in needing more substance to really appreciate a character though, and that's fine. I'm glad there's still plenty of people who can appreciate her for what she has to offer.
Sunday is.. okay. He's nothing you probably haven't seen before but he's exactly what the story needed so it works. I'm not too well-versed on HI3 but I appreciate how he's intended to parallel Kevin as a nod to Acheron, so there's that atleast.

So yeah, I'm essentially at the crossroads where I wish these characters were more than they are but also can't really see a way for that to be possible, which is a weird feeling. They couldn't ever match up to my expectations and if they did get more screentime without setting themselves apart from their current roles in any unique way it'd probably just lower my appreciation of this arc further so I guess I'm just fated to feel unsatisfied about them, unfortunately.
It's just hard to say I truly love Penacony even though I had a blast with 2.0 and 2.1 when its core at the climax makes me feel.. nothing. Pretty much everything they got in this patch was exactly as I expected it would be and I groaned through whatever screentime they got as a result.

Luckily, it's not all bad though! There's plenty of characters that use the dream world setting really well. Gallagher and.. Misha, of all characters (surprisingly!) were the highlight of the patch for me by tugging at the heartstrings unexpectedly and I love that Firefly of all characters challenges Sunday's nihilistic, haughty perspective of humanity needing Penacony to live the most considering she's just about the prime example of it. But no, despite her circumstances, she's going to use whatever limited time she has to truly live and continues to cement herself as the absolute best Penacony has to offer, and I can't wait for her to continue to carry the absolute fuck out of it when the epilogue drops.

It just sucks to have to look towards the smaller parts of this patch for me to be able to appreciate it, and I can only hope having her in the spotlight makes me feel less conflicted about it all by the time it wraps up.

Justice for All is widely agreed on to be the weakest of the Ace Attorney trilogy, for reasons I can understand. It only contains four cases out of the typical five, for one. The first case being a tutorial and the third, infamously, being brought down by the pedophile love triangle plotline. For all of that though, it still introduces incredibly important developments for the series; premiering Fransizka and finishing with the much revered Farewell, my Turnabout

As a child this was easily the least influential game for me, I absolutely could not STAND Fransizka and none of the cases stood out to me much. Now though, I definitely feel more positive about it. I still dont have much attraction for the 1st and 3rd cases but I'm pretty impressed by the overall implications the events in this game have over the rest of the series. In a way, some of it feels partly like a set up for T&T, especially the happenings with Morgan and Pearl. But heres where we start getting smarter and more thoroughly crafted cases, psyche locks also being an intresting way to interact with and progress characters outside of court. As a kid I think I preferred Maya, but honestly Pearl is very endearing and a delight to have as an assistant. Her being more "mature" than her cousin despite her age introduces a lot of funny situations and also reinforces my belief that 9 year old girls are the greatest force on the planet. Mimi Miney and Acro are two of my favorite killers in the trilogy, and I thought Mimi's situation in the 2nd case specifically was very cleverly thought out.

Unfortunately this game (all of the trilogy, really) has some bad habits which annoyed me in JFA particularly. One is just straight up showing you who the killer is- if not in the opening cutscene then just at a random point throughout the case. The other is withholding all developement until you present a random item/profile to a character- despite the fact that you may have already discussed said item with said character 2 or 3 times but you havent ACTUALLY unlocked the conversation topic for it until you show them. And it is very easy go forget what you should be showing whom as theres no way to keep track of dialouge, so that can be a tad frustrating.

Farewell, my Turnabout is a huge bombshell in terms of the logic of the series and opens up a lot of questions that it is still answering. Mainly, what it means to be a defense lawyer and what the search for truth actually looks like, if the law can even uphold that standard, and how to make the right decision within that confinement. Watching Phoenix grow throughout the game from being an anxious rookie to a genuine attorney is important, but it's really only evident through the developments in this case as his and Miles' relationship is reestablished. Miles himself has grown into the character we more or less remember him as, and in a world where prosecutors hate your guts, it is very refreshing to watch a dynamic where the two work together and mesh with each other so easily. Because of the game's length, Fransizka tended to be sidelined a great deal of the time (being the only prosecutor to not even have her own theme), but she did get her moments throughout case 4 that made my heart hurt a little. Especially the post credits scene which had me tearing up a bit at the end, it is a huge shame we dont really see more of her throughout JFA and T&T because I adore her and she should be treated better.

Overall I'm kind of just happy to finally be playing T&T now, and while I wouldnt risk it all dying on the hill of defending JFA- it IS still a very good and important game to the Ace Attorney series regardless of how much you may want to hang Trilo upsidedown by his feet and force feed him milk till he pukes.

umm, like... how do I close out a review? I kind of, like, forgot. Sorry.

I had never beaten a Wario Land game before, having only played Shake It on the Wii for a little while around the time it released, so after hearing all the praise for the series in recent years, I decided to finally give it a proper try, and went for the game that's most easily accessible at the moment, being Wario Land 3, since it's included with the Game Boy app on NSO.

I was mostly familiar with the fast-paced wacky zany gameplay featured in Wario Land-inspired games like Pizza Tower or Antonblast, but it seems that style stems mostly from Wario Land 4 and Shake It, because Wario Land 3 is certainly not frantic at all like those games! In fact I was surprised to see a fairly methodical Metroidvania platformer! It's interesting to see the usual facets of a game of that genre applied to a platformer, like revisiting previous levels after getting new power-ups to explore a path that you previously couldn't reach. That satisfying sense of getting progressively stronger is also present, of course.

Though I do feel they went a little overboard with the concept, considering there's other elements in stages that impede access to certain areas that are dependant on finding specific treasures in other stages, and they're not linear at all, meaning for example that a treasure from the last world might open a new path on a stage from the second world. The game always tells you which stages are affected by the treasure you acquired, but sometimes it's multiple stages at once, so you better memorize it or grab a pen to write them down.

It's charming seeing how the treasures you collect visually affect the world map to open up new levels, like getting a bunch of chemicals that make a volcano explode and open a huge crater in the middle of the map, which can then be explored as a new level. As for the levels themselves, it's fun to explore them and solve the many puzzles scattered across them to get the treasures, some of which can be fairly tricky. You also gotta be observant and pay attention to roadblocks that you can't overcome on your first visit so that you know exactly where to return once you get some power-ups or specific treasures.

However, there is a MASSIVE caveat for my enjoyment with this game: I completely and utterly abused of the rewind feature, since I played this on the Switch. You see, this game's level design wants to screw you up every step you take, with every stage being littered with enemies or hazards that either immobilize you for a few seconds or bump you back to a previous section of the stage after you spent a while getting to that point. Even the bosses exhibit that behavior, with any minor mistake making you exit their arena and make you work your way back just to get another shot at it, so every boss basically has a one-hit kill.

I guess it makes sense for a game associated with Wario to be constantly giving you the middle finger and annoying you, and I usually do my best not to use save states or rewind, but this one is way too infuriating to deal with. Maybe if I played the game on original hardware when I was a kid I'd have the patience to deal with the bullshit, but nowadays I don't have the time nor the patience.

So yeah, I liked experiencing Wario Land 3 thanks to the rewind feature, but I'm sure I would've dropped it if it wasn't for it.