Twenty-second GOTW finished for 2024. I have no idea how this one is done without a map. Lots of winding corridors that all pretty much look the same. Played the colorization hack, which actually looks really good for a GB game. The enemies and metroids were kinda boring, while the music was quite good. The movement felt sluggish, and having to constantly check a map just to even be sure where I was or where I needed to go didn't feel very fun. Pretty good for a GB game, but not particularly my cup of tea.

I had way more fun with this game than I thought I would going in. The weapon leveling/combining system absolutely scratched an itch for me, and helped make the awfully long dungeons more bearable with something to grind towards. The difficulty spikes each new area could get really annoying, as did the enemies that required breaking barriers or jumping to inflict damage, but once you started grinding high enough level weapons and unlocking more powerful screen-wiping abilities it became negligible. The aforementioned terrible dungeon design and enemy difficulty spikes were really my only gripes with this game. Played with HD textures, so it looked absolutely stunning. The voice acting was good to great, the weapon and item systems were fun, and there were honestly so many different mechanics to sink your teeth into that I avoided two of them entirely and still beat the game no problem. Story was a little cliched, but also still really fun and I enjoyed running around the galaxy with these characters. Looks like there's some postgame content, so I'm sure I'll jump back into this one again at some point. Highly recommend giving it a try!

Twentieth GOTW finished for 2024. Excellent arena brawler with great music, varied characters, interesting "powered" forms, and beautiful graphics. Constantly running around to grab the power stones, while using the environment for attack variations and grabbing items and furniture to use/chuck at your opponent, felt chaotic and fun. Didn't really feel all that great to actually get up in an opponents face for pure fighting, but that's a small knock and not the recommended way to play. Honestly just had a blast with this one!