SMTIII: Nocturne is a game I’ve been meaning to play for the longest time, but kept putting off for how hard I’ve heard it is and how poor the remastered port was. Well, good thing I personally believe both of those facts are incorrect now that I’ve completed my first play-through.

It really irks me how all I heard about the game was the difficulty. I didn’t hear anyone talk about the world, how desperate it is, and what costs are needed in order to shape the world into what the player believes is the correct choice.
The difficulty debate stems from, what I can gather, one main boss: The Matador. Now, to be fair, I’ve played my fair share of SMT titles before this: Persona 3-5, SMT:IV, SMT:V, and a few of the many PS2 spin-offs. I’m only stating this because the battle system in these games are VERY similar (which is a growing complaint of mine). What I am trying to say is that it’s possible I am very familiar with the battle system and that’s why I had no issue with the Matador. To sum it up, the Matador has high resistances to your attacks and you need to utilize support spells to get your party though the encounter. This boss fight is basically a check to see if the player has this knowledge. Evidently, a loud minority seemed to not.

Now that my difficulty complaint has been addressed, let me talk about the game. Gameplay wise, it’s a familiar experience. There are random battles, you can convince demons to join your party by multiple types of payment, and you level up your stats. The biggest difference in the battle system is the addition of the Magatamas. These little things you can inject and they alter the main characters stats and what moves they will learn while leveling up. There’s a few other elements to the Magatama, but that’s the gist. You can switch these out anytime you’re outside of battle. I did like this system, as it gives the player more options to tune their character based on the encounters at hand.

The story of Nocturne is the real winner. The world is facing an apocalypse and you’re a huge component of it. You’ve changed into a demi-fiend: half human, half demon. This gives you powers and survivability over regular humans. This also gives you enough power to alter the plans of bigger parties looking to change the newly shaped world for their benefit. I won’t go into too much details here, but there are multiple endings and some are insane.

Nocturne is definitely darker that other entries in the SMT franchise (especially the Persona spinoffs) but it’s still worth being played today. Oh! The remaster is also a totally fine way of playing it as well. It’s cheap enough now that the main complaints (30FPS lock and no new content added) don’t really matter too much. I picked up a brand new copy for $20 at the beginning of 2022.

Overall, with ~50 hours put into this bad boy, I recommend it to those familiar with PS2 RPGs (since this originally released on that console) and are willing to sometimes slog through some shitty dungeons for the gripping story and world that is crumbling before your eyes.

An atmospheric horror game that came out of nowhere. There's been a serial killer going crazy recently, but you NEED to get your laundry done at the local laundromat. During this time, you'll meet the store owners and shoppers at the local strip mall while your laundry is washing. You'll be reading newspapers and learning from conversations that something dark happened here, but it's up to you to find out what really happened.

For being a relatively short game (I clocked just under 2 hours), I've found myself thinking back in it quite a bit. Definitely recommend if you're into quick horror experiences that are still quite unsettling.

In my opinion, this isn't the best step forward for the new generation of Silent Hill. I think if this game didn't have the Silent Hill title on it, it would be a fine indie horror game. Granted, I also wouldn't of thought highly of it still, but I don't think I'm the target audience for it.

The Short Message deals with a teenage girl who suffers from some pretty serious mental health issues, so as a 31 year old dude, I find it difficult to talk about since I've not been in the same situation as the one portrayed in this game.

I think they laid it on quite thick with really hammering it home this girl has some issues. To a point where the elements of the story becomes a little hokey because they're not giving the player any credit. I don't need thousands of sticky notes with words like LOSER, DUMB, SLUT, LONER, etc to get the point that she doesn't think too highly of herself. I can gather that by the way she holds herself, how she thinks, etc. and that's really my main complain here. The themes are so in your face 24/7 that the value of learning about the darkness of this girl's mind and her hardships are lessened, to an extent.

The beauty of Silent Hill for me is how well story elements are portrayed in the environment, enemies, situations, etc. You can always pick up something new you didn't see or notice with additional playthroughs. I will never play this game again and if I did, I don't think I'd get anything out of it.

Lastly, the combat is just running away from a dude in narrow hallways with slight rng or poor patterns (I can't tell tbh). These parts suck and they've nothing of note.

Overall, for a free game, it could be worse. For the first new game in a beloved franchise since 2012, it's abysmal.

Played this on a whim while waiting for a download to finish and ended up ignoring the download and finishing this instead. Assemble With Care is a visual novel/very light puzzle game. You play as a handy-woman who has just arrived in a quaint European town. You meet some locals that need their assortment of items repaired. Though these repairs, you learn of their life, interests, and struggles. It's a short and sweet experience and I enjoyed every second of it. I did finish the game craving more than what was given, but I'm very happy with my time spent with it. The writing is great and simple, the narration and voice cast are perfect, and fixing the items is a lot of fun 🥰

I really like this game. I do not recommend this game to most.

This is akin to a PS2/3 game that released in 2023. Almost every gameplay element in this game is outdated, the story is nonsensical, the voice over is so bad it's good, and there's performance issues.

With all that being said, I finished this game in two sittings. I couldn't stop playing it. It's a cluster-fuck of a game, but there's something underneath the doody and poor design choices that I really enjoy. I only recommend this to those that can look past a number of issues in a game AND only buy it on a sale. I got my copy for $20 and I couldn't be happier.

I never played this when it came out, as FFVIII was my childhood Final Fantasy, but after finishing 9, I really wish I had played this back then as well.

I think the characters are easily the strongest element of this entry of the neverending series. Zidane and the crew are very memorable and the fantastic writing brings these unique personalities to the forefront.

The battle system is the classic ATB-style, so there's not much to write home about. The ability system is pretty cut-and-dry, but works well. It's nothing as fun or broken as the Materia system from 7 or the Junction system from 8, but it does what it needs to.

The story is really well-written as well and gets REALLY good around disk 3 & 4. I don't wanna talk about the story here, but yeah, I just finished it and I cried per usual. It really hits home with its themes of belonging, friendship, purpose, and meaning. So damn good.

If you enjoy the Final Fantasy series and never played this one like me, please play this. I promise it'll be in your top entries.

A very cute & quick Halloween season game. Pumpkin Jack is a 3D Platformer and executes all of the usual requirements for that genre pretty well. I don't think this game is amazing or unique, but it knows what it is, does what it needs to well, and doesn't outstay its welcome. I also got a lot of Banjo-Kazooie/Banjo-Tooie and Earthworm Jim vibes while playing, which is pretty chill 😎

Anyways, I recommend this one on sale (Usually around $10 down from $30) if you're wanting to get in the Halloween spirit with some three-dimensional platforming

This is a pretty janky port of the Wii game. This version would drop to single-digit frames during combat and driving around the hub world. It also kinda looks like shit compared to the Wii? Performance issues aside, this game is a blast. The humor got a few solid nose exhales and was never grating, the story is 100% nonsensical, but the game knows that and pokes fun at that fact.

The real highlights are the boss fights and character designs. The designs and looks of the bosses are phenomenal IMO, they're memorable and seem like there should be more lore and story behind them, but there's not. Combat-wise is where this game could have the most improvement. There's combos and wrestling moves to pull off, but the controls are never really touched on and it boils down to a basic button-mashing fest. This port does add some new shit like boss battles from No More Heroes 2, but they fall apart in this game's combat system and are a total joke.

Overall, a great starting point to build off of and I'll be playing the rest of the series, but I dunno if I can recommend this to anyone with the performance issues on PS3 and the game just looking generally worse than its Wii counterpart.

A game I had as a kid and never finished. It's a pretty basic collectible card game that is VERY repetitive.

Game-play consists of collecting new cards by navigating the handful of dungeons in the game and battling the boss of each. There are semi-random battles that happen in the dungeon, but the issue is, these battles never really change. Same monsters, same-ish cards, same-ish environments from start to finish.

I wouldn't recommend this game unless you're a huge monster rancher fan or have some sort of nostalgia. I had fun with it after turning off all animations, set text speed to fastest, and getting speed boots as the game is uncomfortably slow in every way.

CotL is a great rogue-like/town management game, although a little light on the management side.

Aesthetically, this is on another level. The occult elements are hella fun to play with especially when you name your lil cultists.

I had two cultists named after our cats (Mr. Kitty and Katsu) and Mr. Kitty always requested me to fuck with Katsu which was hilarious. From making her eat shit to locking her up in prison, the in-game Mr. Kitty seemed like he wanted to acquire revenge for all the time IRL Mr. Kitty was bullied by Katsu 🤣

Anyways, that really added a ton to the management side to me. Besides the personal names, setting up your cult and completing tasks was fun, through it did start to wear out its welcome at the end of the game, personally, whenever everything was unlocked.

As for the rogue-like side, it's pretty solid! I played on hard and it was the perfect difficulty as someone who plays this genre a bit. My main complaint was late-game weapon unlocks were powerful, but slow. This is an issue as late-game enemies are powerful AND fast, so that felt a little misaligned.

Regardless, this game is a HARD recommend for me. Something this unique needs to be played and seen more. I hope this game receives a sequel as there's still untapped potential for the future.

A very well put-together card based rogue-like. Set in a dark twisted King Arthur and the Round Table timeline, you're tasked with adventuring through the Wyrdwood to find answers to the corruption. You do this by selecting one of the nine classes and making your way through combat encounters akin to Slay the Spire.

However, I enjoyed the more realistic and grotesque art-style Tainted Grail has compared to Slay the Spire. I also think the narrator does an amazing job in this game and all of the story beats and encounters are very well written.

If you're familiar with and enjoy Slay the Spire, this is an easy recommendation. The systems and elements Tainted Grail makes unique are all improvements to me. The classes feel good, archetypes vary and most can power through on high difficulties. Definitely one of the better rogue-like like card games I've enjoyed.

Immediately after finishing the previous title, I start on Halo 2. This one I knew I had never played before, as I never owned it as a kid. I was pretty excited to get into this entry as I've heard nothing but positive feedback for it and now I can finally understand where the Arbiter comes from since I've played Halo 3 multiple times (more on that eventually).

Halo 2 is a vast improvement over the first Halo with minor exceptions. There's more guns, cutscenes and gameplay went another step-up in graphic fidelity, and the story is extremely more intriguing and well-written. What really took me back was how phenomenal the cutscenes looked! I had no clue that Halo 2 also received a remaster, basically. The cutscenes were remade from scratch and you can easily tell, being comparable to modern-day releases and their pre-rendered cutscenes. However, you're still able to switch between original graphics and remastered graphics for the gameplay and cutscenes and, once again, I still preferred some areas with the older graphics. This is usually due to how dark the new areas can be, but some instances, I feel the new graphics fumbled the atmosphere the original was going for.

Unsurprisingly, I also recommend anyone interested to play through this as well. It's easy to get into, nice to look at, and you can finish it relatively fast. I also played this on solo heroic and found some parts infuriating, but others extremely easy (as the Arbiter cloak for a few seconds and just straight-up skip sections). I'm ecstatic to finish Halo 3 now that I have all the previous knowledge on the story I was missing when I played through as a kid.

Koudelka is an obscure title, but one that I’ve been looking to get my hands on as it’s one of the only horror-JRPGs out there and a pretty solid one at that. Taking heavy inspiration from the first Resident Evil that released three years prior, Koudelka has you scouring an abandoned monastery in the year 1898 and you’ll come across key items needed for puzzles while battling monsters, beast, and the macabre via random encounters.

The gameplay is turn-based and not too complicated. You’ll have a max of three party members that you meet very early on (Koudelka the Psychic, Edward the Adventurer, and James the Bishop) and they are suited for either magic or melee actions. The arena is grid-based, but doesn’t require much tactical thinking as the only thing you need to worry about is monsters passing your downed characters because if they do, they’re unavailable to be revived. There are some unspoken elemental strengths and weaknesses which can only be discovered through trial and error. Overall, the combat really isn’t anything special, but it gets the job done.

Game-play outside of combat consists of wandering around the old monastery searching for clues as to why there are beasts and ghosts roaming the premises. You’ll come across lost letters, forgotten bodies, and other people with their own stories to tell. I did find the map to not provide enough information when backtracking was necessary (and it is often) so I found myself visiting GameFAQs for the classic text-based walkthrough of old. I found myself enjoying reading the community-posted walkthrough of this game, missing the times were it was necessary for kid me to print out the entire walkthrough whenever I found myself lost to progression. However, whenever I entered a room with a cutscene, I dropped everything to pay attention. I found the voice acting to be way more entertaining than I thought, as dialogue is given as if it were a radio drama which gives completely different vibes than modern-day performances. I think the voice acting style suits the game, but there are some moments where the VA is generally poor, but you can’t help but laugh in those moments.

Graphically, I was impressed. With the pre-rendered backgrounds and the fixed camera angles, it seems like the developers behind Koudelka saw what made Resident Evil special to the eyes and improved on those elements. Just about every new scene is a treat and I was finding myself wanting to take screenshots of certain areas, but unable to do so since I played this on original hardware.
I really enjoyed my time with this game and I’m glad the spiritual successor series, Shadow Hearts, exists as well. I believe this game is somewhat forgotten which is a shame since I found it to have tremendous charm to it. The characters are likeable and their bickering between each other is a joy to watch, the environments are beautiful, and the story is pretty decent. I just yearn for more horror-RPGs and this one is probably one of the grandparents of the oft-forgotten genre blend. Here’s hoping that Penny Blood, the spiritual successor to the spiritual successor to this game turns out to be a solid companion to this game and Shadow Hearts.