While not perfect, the Booster Course Pass has added a lot of value and content for $25. 48 new tracks, 8 new characters, and 18 new mii suits is a steal for the price. While not every track is base-game quality many of the tracks are personal favorites and am happy to see added to 8 Deluxe.

The DLC makes Mario 8 Deluxe into the ultimate Mario Kart game and made the wait for the next entry a little bit easier. It's been very fun to follow the speculation/rumors as well as doing all the new cups 3-starred and time trials.

Sad the two year journey is over but overjoyed at all the content that's been added. Now the real wait begins for the next Mario Kart game.

All waves ranked:
6 > 3 > 4 > 2 > 5 > 1 (Coconut Mall still goated tho)

(Played through Phantasy Reverie Series)
Klonoa 2... has become one of my favorite 2D/2.5D platformers after this remake. Where to start, for starters it has some of the best music in a 2d platformer I've ever heard, it's a bit more challenging than DTP. The characters are all lovable and even better than the first game and add even more personality. Klonoa himself has grown, which is the kind of development I love for sequels, as well. I wanna thank Bandai Namco for resurrecting this IP, to hopefully give it even more potential for a good future. Do it! I even platinumed it.

Back in 2017, ATLUS would reveal a teaser trailer for their upcoming project: A brand spankin' new mainline entry in the Shin Megami Tensei series, in high definition, exclusive to the (as of then) recently released Nintendo Switch console. While in retrospect quite foolish on my part, this announcement served as the impetus for me to buy my own Switch console, because there was no way in hell I was going to be missing out on the latest entry in my favorite JRPG franchise of all time. So with my Switch secured, all I had to do was wait for the game to come out. So I waited. And Waited. And Waited some more. Finally, 4 years later, after ages of "Never Ever" jokes amongst friends and colleagues, my most anticipated game of the year was actually primed and ready to play inside my glorified paperweight of a console, and it was finally time to see if ATLUS could deliver on a near half-decade's worth of hype.

Shin Megami Tensei V could best be described as the next generation's take on ATLUS' magnum-opus, Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. An average Japanese teenage boy is lifted from his average life and thrown into a world of demons and ideological warfare, fuses with a demonic creature to become a powerful half-human half-demon warrior, and must pick a cause to fight for in order to bring about a new world from the hotbed of chaos. But rather than feeling like a retread of old ground, SMT V serves as a culmination of the series' many mechanics, combining them into a Greatest Hits amalgamation of gameplay to create the best feeling JRPG I have played in years. Essence Fusion is the next step in the Demon Source mechanic from Strange Journey, constantly forcing decisions between defensive options like Affinity Fusion or offensive options like new skills for Nahobino and his demons, as well as offering new build depths via Passive Skills that can now be used by the main character. Character progression and party composition that makes the player design teams around both the highly limited skill slots you'll be working with throughout the game, while also developing unique demon builds catering to their innate strengths and weaknesses, building off the Demon Affinities and Apps from IV to offer a whole new depth of strategy to both battles and character builds. The new open world navigation bringing together the verticality of IV's dungeons and exploration with brand-new incentives to explore via the Korok-esque Mimans who provide invaluable character building resources, and the new Abscesses, which incentivize exploration, the way they unveil more of the world map and offer new character skills when eliminated. The absolutely sublime soundtrack by Ryota Kozuka taking the game in a more ambient, atmospheric direction with the overworld music while kicking it into high-gear with the many, many battle themes. It all comes together with a level of experience and polish, gained by decades of experimentation and refinement, that truly makes SMT V the best playing, most balanced entry in the entire franchise thus far.

While I could ramble about the sublime gameplay and the quality of life changes, there are aspects of SMT V that miss the mark. While the brand new open-world approach is a breath of fresh air and opens up a lot of new avenues for level design and exploration, this comes at the cost of the dungeons, of which there are only two in the whole game, both of which are fairly disappointing in terms of design and difficulty. The new open-world segments are fairly meaty and will make up most of your playtime, but the general aesthetic of "ruined city" starts to wear thin when its all you really have to chew on for ~30 hours. Alongside this, the story feels somehow both bloated and anemic, with sections in-between the open-world exploration that feel like monotonous padding full of exposition, but paradoxically having a finale that rushes towards a conclusion that feels unearned and slapdash, and the new approach to alignments killing any real incentive to make choices. It's a step up from Apocalypse's writing to be sure, but it's sad that it fumbles the ball, especially when the themes and allusions apparent in the world design, lore and plot beats are all so strong.

SMT V had the (somewhat unreasonable) goal of justifying a $299 console for me, and yet despite that high mark, it managed to pass with flying colors. Even with my criticisms, this is my game of the year: I could not put this game down for the life of me. SMT V is a shining gem of both the Megami Tensei franchise and JRPGs as a whole. I loved this game, and it was honestly worth the 4 year wait I endured for it. I don't know how ATLUS will top SMT V, or if they even will (on a gameplay level at least), but SMT V has skyrocketed to being both one of my favorite MegaTen entries and one of my favorite JRPGs of all time. God damn this game fucking rules!

I really believe DDLC is overhated by VN fans. It's not peak fiction, but it's a good story all the same and replaying it with this version reminded me of that.

I'd shill it for how much I liked the side stories, but you have to grind and get 100% completion of all the girls' routes to get all of them which is a massive pain. But side stories with the girls just having more sol content of bonding together instead of just crazy plot shit is what DDLC needed, and it even hit close to home emotionally because of how heartfelt it was. Monika is cool now when my first opinion of her years ago was despising her.

It's obvious that Dan is still teasing "Libitina" so I wonder what he's gonna do with that.

I'm not really sure where to begin with this game. If anything I'm more just amazed it exists in the first place. I remember learning about Dread back in 2008 when I was first getting into the series due to the the masterpieces demo of Super Metroid back in Smash Bros Brawl and then subsequently trying to find out everything I could about the series online. I thought this game was never going to exist and would just be a rumored game that would never come out; which was then strengthened by the fact that the series as a whole was more or less dead from 2010 to 2017 when Samus Returns came out. Seeing this announced at E3 was probably one of the biggest, most hype announcements for a game to me personally and I was so excited to finally see my favorite series return after all these years. I was a bit apprehensive however. This would be the first completely new 2d Metroid since 2002, and the first new Metroid game in general since Other M and after Samus Returns (which is a game I liked but have a few flaws with) I was unsure on if Metroid Dread could live up to the hype and expectations I had for the grand return of Metroid. Luckily, this game is everything I wanted and more.

I won't be talking about story spoilers outside what is shown in trailers because I do think that this is best experienced as the endcap to the main Metroid Saga and not explained over a text review like this, but know that if you've been a fan of the series for a long time the story does not disappoint and works great as the end to the story of the original run of 2d games while also being a great starting point for adventures yet to come. The story didn't go the way I expected after Fusion but I do think it works really well and achieves what it sets out to do. Not to mention it has some of the best characterization we've seen for Samus in a long time, basically acting as a counter to everything wrong with how she was written in Other M. However, while I do like the game's story a lot that's not the main focus of this game or where it really shines, that would be in its absolutely incredible gameplay.

This game is by far the best Metroid has ever felt to play, no contest. From the moment you gain control of Samus everything just feels right. You move at the perfect pace, not too fast to miss things or to make it hard to deal with enemies but not too slow either as to where you feel like you're moving through molasses. This is enhanced as you go on by the sheer amount of abilities that help with movement that you manage to get throughout the game. It gets to a point with controlling the game and the abilities you unlock that movement feels effortless and incredibly smooth. I think the best word I have for how it feels to move around in this game is natural. Everything you do in this game movement wise just feels right in a way I can't really describe more than it feeling like you're remembering how to ride a bike once you do it again. This may just be my years of latent Metroid playing coming back doing part of this, but I fully stand by this game just feeling absolutely amazing to control; it just makes it so fun to traverse and explore the massive world that this game provides.

A core part of this movement and general exploration gameplay working as well as it did is it's absolutely incredible level design. The different areas of this game are designed in such ways that they feel so incredible to explore. There's so much hidden behind every corner, whether it's secret passages or another upgrade for your energy or missiles the game manages to constantly reward you in some way for being curious and trying something off the beaten path, and ultimately I think that's at the core of how a Metroidvania game should design its world. In that same vein, I actually did get lost repeatedly both in the main game and going for 100% which is an awesome feeling for a Metroidvania to achieve I think. The map is so sprawling and so incredibly large that it can feel daunting and can easily lead to you getting lost and turned around as you try to find your way forward, but when you finally do oh man does it make you feel like a genius for finding the way forward or finding that power up you've been searching for to open that one door back in the starting area.


Another aspect of the map that I found really cool in this game is how the world changes and shifts with what you do throughout the game. For example very early on in the first area you will come across a wall you need to blow up in order to advance and move on to the next room, but doing so blocks off the way you came and makes you try to find a new way to get back to where you were before. This sort of thing mixed with general map changes as you go through the story and cause different things to happen in the world are really cool also, like when certain areas of the map freeze over so the main villain can try to impede your progress. These sort of things help to make the world feel alive and changing as you go through it and impact it in your way and I think that that's a great thing for a game that is all about exploring a map to its fullest.

While I normally don't care about graphics too much for games I just need to talk about how insanely good the world looks in this game. So much detail and care was put into designing each area and a lot of rooms have insanely detailed backgrounds that I feel like was so much effort for something that most people wouldn't pay much attention too, but man do they look great and show just how much love and care was put into this game.

I've brought up abilities a few times so far but I want to specifically talk about a handful of them because the game both adds a number of great new items while also improving on older ones in interesting ways that help benefit with the exploration and backtracking that the game is built around. First things first there's a few changes to existing abilities that I think really benefit the game design and allow them to have a more staggered expanding of the world in a sense. For example, the series staple Varia suit returns in Dread but instead of being an all temperature suit like in past games this time around it only allows you to traverse through extremely hot areas instead of both extremely hot and extremely cold areas. Instead you unlock the ability to survive cold once you get the Gravity suit, another returning suit that has now been given this temperature resistance. I like this change since it effectively gives you stages in which the world opens up to you and keeps exploration feeling fresh and varied as you're given new areas later into the game that you can now explore using the Gravity suit instead of unlocking effectively all of the restricted area of the map due to taking damage from them at once with one upgrade.

On top of that several other returning staples got changes that I feel were good changes all around, such as the grapple beam being made useable. This is the only Metroid game where I'd say it feels good to actually use the grapple beam, which is astonishing to me because I thought this ability was just destined to not be fun to use. However due to the fact that unlike every other 2d Metroid before this Dread has the advantage of being on a full modern controller with enough buttons to accommodate everything, which makes using and selecting the grapple beam flow a lot better and not feel annoying to use like it has in previous games. Another neat change is the introduction of the cross bombs, which are effectively an easier to pull of version of the 5 bomb drops from Super Metroid. It's incredible nice that they made this more of an active item since its easier to pull off for new players, and is a lot more convenient than having to charge up a charge shot and then doing a bomb instead of just being able to hold the missile button and activate a better version of the bomb. I also really love how they changed the pulse scanner from Samus Returns, which is an item I really didn't like because it effectively just showed you where all the hidden rooms were and didn't make you look for them. Meanwhile the new version of it shows you where hidden blocks are and makes you figure out whats behind them and where to go from there, which I vastly prefer personally. Essentially what I'm trying to say with this section is that the changes to old items feel like overall improvements across the board from older games and really added to how great the game felt to play for me.

As for new items, this game adds a few really unique items that I think mesh incredibly well with the rest of Samus's established moveset. Abilities such as the flash shift, which is basically just a nice dash you can use to quickly zoom around or to dodge during bosses, feels right at home in Samus's kit and helps make boss fights feel incredibly fun since it adds a new option to avoid attacks that feels great in my opinion. One of the other new abilities, the phantom cloak, also made dealing with the game's cover enemies, The EMMI (who we'll talk about in a bit), a lot more manageable as well as allowing for another neat way of allowing the world to open up after getting it in the form of stealth doors. The last of the new abilities I want to talk about is the storm missiles, which while they come from the only kinda bad boss in the game in my opinion are a really fun upgrade on the missiles that make dealing with multiple enemies in an area a lot easier on top of also allowing for new types of puzzles involving these kinds of missiles. There is probably only one new item that felt kind of useless in the game and that was the spin boost, since it was effectively just one extra jump it didn't feel like much of an improvement. Especially when you get the space jump, which is just a better version of it all around, a few minutes later. Ultimately the way this game handles upgrades is really well done and almost all of them feel great to use in normal gameplay.

Speaking of normal gameplay there is a mechanic from Samus Returns that was brought back for this game that I wanted to talk about, since this game does it so much better than how Samus Returns used it. That move would be the melee counter/parry. In Samus Returns this parry kind of just stopped gameplay and made it a waiting game of "wait for enemy to flash so I can actually do some actual damage" but that thankfully isn't the case in Dread. You can do considerable amounts of damage without needing to parry and its basically just there as an option instead of the only way to deal with enemies. There are still some enemies that need to be countered to be dealt with, but they're few and far between and act more as ways to make you stop and think your encounter through instead of being that way with every single enemy in the game. The parry especially nice with how it now factors into boss fights and EMMI encounters.

The EMMI's are an absolutely incredible gameplay mechanic in my opinion. I love having these effectively puzzle bosses that have the one single goal of hunting you down and making your life hell. It adds so much tension to the game in a similar way to how the SA-X in fusion operated and how Mr. X functions in the Resident Evil 2 Remake and I love how it feels to have them chase after you; and especially how great it feels to actually finally be able to turn the tables and destroy them after you get the omega cannon, your only way of dealing with them, up and running. The way they upgraded the EMMI's you faced as you went on by giving them variations of abilities you can get from them makes them work really well as a real tangible threat to you even by the end of the game where you have most of the upgrades by that point. I don't know if these enemies would work well outside of the context of Dread, but goddamn do they work incredibly well in this game and function as fun recurring boss fights.

On the topic of boss fights, I think this has hands down the best boss fights of the series and my all time favorite final boss of any game. I think it says a lot that even the worst boss in the game is just kind of frustrating. Otherwise though, every boss was an absolute delight to fight. All of them were designed in such ways that made their patterns easy to see but something you still had to adapt too. They were really challenging but in a way where right off the bat you knew you could learn how to conquer them if you took the time to learn. Every boss fight was just a constant adrenaline rush that was made even better by how well the devs worked really cool cinematic counters into the fights without making them the only way to do damage to these bosses. As I mentioned before, the final boss of this game is absolutely incredible. It's a tough fight and I died more times against him than I think every other boss fight in the game, but it felt like a real test of everything you've learned over the course of the game and finally defeating it and everything ensuing from that was the most hype moment of the game for me. I really hope we get an update or a dlc that allows for a boss rush mode later on because I would play that as much as possible if it existed.

One thing I want to touch on before wrapping this up is 100%ing the game, which is normally not something I do in games but I made an exception in this case. 100%ing this game is hard as hell. This is specifically because the devs went out of their way to design a ton of shinespark puzzles that make the one in Metroid Zero mission look like it was designed for babies, and personally I loved this but also can totally see why this is frustrating. It felt incredible to finally be able to figure out the insane shinespark tricks I needed to pull off to get this next item towards completion and it really made you learn the game's movement and mechanics in order to get everything. That being said, I totally get this being frustrating and fault no one for not being a fan of it.

Overall, I think Metroid Dread is not only my favorite Metroid game, but my favorite game of all time. I've already spent this entire review listing why that is, but I want to restate how incredible this game is. Everything in it works in a way that clicks with me in just the right way and I cannot believe how good this game is after it being cancelled and rebooted tons of times since Metroid Fusion came out according to the series director. This game is quite literally a dream come true for me and I think everyone needs to play this game, because it's something special that I can already tell is going to be considered a modern classic. I'm glad Samus is back, and I'm hoping she's here to stay. See you next mission everyone.

10/10