Marjar
2023
How I learned to stop worrying and love Pizza Tower.
Seriously though, despite being a bit disappointed in my first playthrough, I kept coming back to it eventually in some way. The Noise update gave me another reason to do a full playthrough since he is a pretty different character, and I think that was enough to convince me that this game is actually pretty great. As much as I want to hate it due to its Ohio rizz band kid zoomer fanbase, I really can't. It really is an exceptional game. There's a lot of charm and genuine soul put into this that's very rare these days. I even went for a few P ranks and was surprised by how addicting it was. Definitely don't have the patience to P rank the whole game, but I finally get what people love about this game.
It's still not as good as Wario Land 4 though.
Seriously though, despite being a bit disappointed in my first playthrough, I kept coming back to it eventually in some way. The Noise update gave me another reason to do a full playthrough since he is a pretty different character, and I think that was enough to convince me that this game is actually pretty great. As much as I want to hate it due to its Ohio rizz band kid zoomer fanbase, I really can't. It really is an exceptional game. There's a lot of charm and genuine soul put into this that's very rare these days. I even went for a few P ranks and was surprised by how addicting it was. Definitely don't have the patience to P rank the whole game, but I finally get what people love about this game.
It's still not as good as Wario Land 4 though.
2017
An actual honest to god spiritual successor to System Shock that doesn't feel dumbed down to appeal to a wider audience.
Prey does have a bit of a rough start, but once you explore more and find more weapons and abilities, it really starts to shine. When I found out how certain abilities worked and how many different options I had to solve certain problems, it made me want to try out all kinds of builds. What if I invested purely into Typhon abilities? What if I wanted to try turning the game into a pure shootbang and invested entirely into the security skill tree? What if I went full unga bunga and tried a wrench build? There's a lot a potential here to make individual playthroughs feel like entirely different games if you want to. It's been a while since I played a game like this that made me want to dive right back in just to see what I can do.
The story is decent overall, if a bit rushed towards the end. Wasn't a big fan of the Half-Life-esque "military goes in to kill everyone" part. Felt a bit out of left field compared to the rest of the game. I did enjoy reading all the emails people sent to each other. Felt a lot more realistic and immersive compared to Bioshock's audio logs that often made me think "why the hell did this person record this?" This game does have audio logs too, but I felt like they had much more of a purpose other than just world building.
Overall just a fantastic game. Arkane, please make more stuff like this and less like Deathpoop.
Prey does have a bit of a rough start, but once you explore more and find more weapons and abilities, it really starts to shine. When I found out how certain abilities worked and how many different options I had to solve certain problems, it made me want to try out all kinds of builds. What if I invested purely into Typhon abilities? What if I wanted to try turning the game into a pure shootbang and invested entirely into the security skill tree? What if I went full unga bunga and tried a wrench build? There's a lot a potential here to make individual playthroughs feel like entirely different games if you want to. It's been a while since I played a game like this that made me want to dive right back in just to see what I can do.
The story is decent overall, if a bit rushed towards the end. Wasn't a big fan of the Half-Life-esque "military goes in to kill everyone" part. Felt a bit out of left field compared to the rest of the game. I did enjoy reading all the emails people sent to each other. Felt a lot more realistic and immersive compared to Bioshock's audio logs that often made me think "why the hell did this person record this?" This game does have audio logs too, but I felt like they had much more of a purpose other than just world building.
Overall just a fantastic game. Arkane, please make more stuff like this and less like Deathpoop.
2023
Yes it's short. Yes it's easy. Yes the platforming at times is a little janky. Yes there's not really a point in using Mallow or Bowser once you get Geno and Peach.
Doesn't matter. It's still Super Mario RPG, and thus kino of the highest caliber.
As a remake, it's basically a better version of the original minus some minor changes like special enemies, post-game content, and an ever so slightly different localization. I guess you could argue the UI is more modernized and less charming, but it didn't really bother me.
I will never have the patience for those 100 jumps.
Doesn't matter. It's still Super Mario RPG, and thus kino of the highest caliber.
As a remake, it's basically a better version of the original minus some minor changes like special enemies, post-game content, and an ever so slightly different localization. I guess you could argue the UI is more modernized and less charming, but it didn't really bother me.
I will never have the patience for those 100 jumps.
Westerners once again dabbing on Sonic Team and making a better game than them, on April Fools' Day no less.
More importantly, Jesus Christ why are the Sonic girls so goddamn sexual? Amy, Rouge, and Blaze are literally BUILT for human men. The greatest travesty of all time is knowing that I will never be able to plow each of them for hours on end until I am shooting blanks. That autistic guy who made the top 10 hottest female Sonic characters video and described the Sonic universe as hot chick heaven? Literally did nothing wrong. I fucking kneel.
Anyway, yeah pretty good VN. 2 hours well spent.
More importantly, Jesus Christ why are the Sonic girls so goddamn sexual? Amy, Rouge, and Blaze are literally BUILT for human men. The greatest travesty of all time is knowing that I will never be able to plow each of them for hours on end until I am shooting blanks. That autistic guy who made the top 10 hottest female Sonic characters video and described the Sonic universe as hot chick heaven? Literally did nothing wrong. I fucking kneel.
Anyway, yeah pretty good VN. 2 hours well spent.
2008
Fallout 3 is an easy game to make fun of and definitely is abundant with issues. Even at release, people had a grievance with the questionable writing particularly with the main quest's end game content.
Regardless, I can't help but have a soft spot for this game. It was one of the first PC games I played after getting my first real gaming PC and downloading Steam. It has a fair amount of fun quests, like the Wasteland Survival Guide, finding the Declaration of Independence along with other historical artifacts in the DC ruins, and the whole Tranquility Lane sequence. It also incorporated the turn-based aspect of the original 2 Fallout games in a creative way with the whole VATS system, which I think serves to really improve the game's combat considering its wonky shooting mechanics.
Something about this game is just super addictive to me. It's easy for me to spend hours and hours in this world exploring and solving quests for its inhabitants. Clearly Bethesda did something right here, because they did save this franchise. It's just a shame they had to go and ruin it themselves later.
Also here's a quick rundown on the DLCs:
Operation Anchorage: Okay I guess. Short enough that it doesn't overstay its welcome even though it's basically just a Call of Duty mission. Plus you get good loot out of it.
The Pitt: Surprisingly great, with some genuinely interesting moral choices to make.
Broken Steel: Objectively the best one since it fixes most of the issues with the original ending, increases your level cap, and adds a fair amount of new content.
Point Lookout: Second best one, even though I think it's stupid that they artificially increased the difficulty with how damage works with the enemies here. Has a fun main questline along with some cool side quests.
Mothership Zeta: Absolute trash. A boring, excessively long corridor shooter with damage sponge enemies and has no RPG elements to it at all.
Regardless, I can't help but have a soft spot for this game. It was one of the first PC games I played after getting my first real gaming PC and downloading Steam. It has a fair amount of fun quests, like the Wasteland Survival Guide, finding the Declaration of Independence along with other historical artifacts in the DC ruins, and the whole Tranquility Lane sequence. It also incorporated the turn-based aspect of the original 2 Fallout games in a creative way with the whole VATS system, which I think serves to really improve the game's combat considering its wonky shooting mechanics.
Something about this game is just super addictive to me. It's easy for me to spend hours and hours in this world exploring and solving quests for its inhabitants. Clearly Bethesda did something right here, because they did save this franchise. It's just a shame they had to go and ruin it themselves later.
Also here's a quick rundown on the DLCs:
Operation Anchorage: Okay I guess. Short enough that it doesn't overstay its welcome even though it's basically just a Call of Duty mission. Plus you get good loot out of it.
The Pitt: Surprisingly great, with some genuinely interesting moral choices to make.
Broken Steel: Objectively the best one since it fixes most of the issues with the original ending, increases your level cap, and adds a fair amount of new content.
Point Lookout: Second best one, even though I think it's stupid that they artificially increased the difficulty with how damage works with the enemies here. Has a fun main questline along with some cool side quests.
Mothership Zeta: Absolute trash. A boring, excessively long corridor shooter with damage sponge enemies and has no RPG elements to it at all.
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne is honestly not that difficult of a game, at least not in the way you’d think it should be. It’s a game that tests your patience more than anything, and it feels like it does everything in its power to make you hate it. I wouldn’t say I hated it myself, but it definitely overstayed its welcome and became a massive slog around halfway through.
Dungeon design ranges from tolerable to downright infuriating. Most of the game in terms of exploration is running down bland hallways, reaching a dead end, and then backtracking to find the right path. This tediousness is compounded when you get to the dungeons with super fun gimmicks such as hidden teleporters, pitfalls, and getting warped to a dimension where all paths are blocked until you go back and walk through a beam of light. Literally every single mechanic of the dungeons involves impeding your progress and forcing you to backtrack. On top of this, you’re constantly getting into unavoidable random battles with enemies that could very easily sneak a Hama or Mudo attack on you and instantly kill you, forcing you back to the main menu to load from your last save, which is often quite far. To some, this may give the game a sense of tension and difficulty. For me, it was more annoyance and boredom.
I am aware that there’s a skill and an item that supposedly lowers the encounter rate and makes it so that only high level enemies can be encountered. Towards the end though, these don’t even matter. You’re still going to run into every enemy encounter you would have run into without activating those. I got so annoyed by the enemy encounters in the last dungeon, I just started running from everything. The time it takes to fight enemies compared to the experience you get, along with the fact that your level generally doesn’t matter that much, makes fighting enemies not really all that worth it.
Speaking of fighting, Nocturne is the game that introduces the press turn system to the franchise, which would be great if the game really took advantage of it. The press turn system works around exploiting the enemies’ weaknesses in order to get extra turns and deal more damage, while also avoiding moves that the enemies nullify to ensure you don’t lose your turns. The problem is that the vast majority of boss fights don’t even have a weakness, and normal fights are generally easy enough that you can get by simply by punching everything. What this ends up doing is making the game revolve more around buffs and debuffs more than anything else, effectively allowing you to get through the game with basically the same exact strategy for every single major fight.
Here’s the general pattern for pretty much every boss fight: use a skill that buffs evasion/accuracy or debuffs the enemy’s evasion/accuracy, increase your attack, increase your defense, now wallop the enemy with the most powerful moves you have that aren’t resisted, absorbed, or reflected. Some bosses may take a while, but you’re going to win no matter what because the boss will almost never hit you. Even if they do, the only thing that could potentially be a threat is an unlucky crit or an instant kill move. As long as you have a healer, you’ll most likely be fine. Long story short, buffs and debuffs in this game are way too powerful, making the battle system mostly boring.
What also disappointed me was the story, which is really not all that much better than SMTV’s. In fact, it’s almost identical to SMTV’s. The demon apocalypse happens, a group of kids get warped to the demon world, they develop their own vision of what they want the world to be (some getting mindfucked in the process), and you all end up fighting for the chance to make that world. I’d actually argue that SMTV has more interesting things going on with its story, which is why the lack of development and obvious rushing of its plot was so unfortunate. In Nocturne, all the characters are just there to be walking philosophical ideologies, none of which are particularly very good or agreeable, some of which are downright insane. Their ideas are so extreme that the only reasonable endings are the Freedom ending or the True Demon ending, because at least one feels like a good ending and the other gives you more content. Almost every ending option sucks. It’s like Fallout 4 before Fallout 4.
With all that being said, a good chunk of the game was still enjoyable, arguably up to the halfway point. The battle system up to that point is still novel and you have to rely on certain elements of the battle system more that aren’t just buffs, buffs, and more buffs. The game is oozing with atmosphere unlike any other JRPG. It’s more designed like a survival horror game than anything else. Demon fusion is still fun, and the HD version allowing you to select skills instead of randomized ones is a godsend. Lord knows how much that would have annoyed me and made me dislike the game even more if I played the PS2 version instead. Character design is fantastic, and the music is catchy and memorable. There is a lot to admire in SMT Nocturne to the point where I hesitate to call it a bad game or even say that I dislike it. A lot of passion certainly went into developing it, even with as little of a budget as it so clearly had. I just wish the dungeons weren’t such a chore to get through and the game had a better way to avoid random late-game battles outside of turning on easy mode.
Again, Nocturne isn’t a bad game, just a frustrating one. One that requires a level of patience and a mindset that I apparently lack. At least it led to SMTV happening, which I loved, so I guess that’s something.
Dungeon design ranges from tolerable to downright infuriating. Most of the game in terms of exploration is running down bland hallways, reaching a dead end, and then backtracking to find the right path. This tediousness is compounded when you get to the dungeons with super fun gimmicks such as hidden teleporters, pitfalls, and getting warped to a dimension where all paths are blocked until you go back and walk through a beam of light. Literally every single mechanic of the dungeons involves impeding your progress and forcing you to backtrack. On top of this, you’re constantly getting into unavoidable random battles with enemies that could very easily sneak a Hama or Mudo attack on you and instantly kill you, forcing you back to the main menu to load from your last save, which is often quite far. To some, this may give the game a sense of tension and difficulty. For me, it was more annoyance and boredom.
I am aware that there’s a skill and an item that supposedly lowers the encounter rate and makes it so that only high level enemies can be encountered. Towards the end though, these don’t even matter. You’re still going to run into every enemy encounter you would have run into without activating those. I got so annoyed by the enemy encounters in the last dungeon, I just started running from everything. The time it takes to fight enemies compared to the experience you get, along with the fact that your level generally doesn’t matter that much, makes fighting enemies not really all that worth it.
Speaking of fighting, Nocturne is the game that introduces the press turn system to the franchise, which would be great if the game really took advantage of it. The press turn system works around exploiting the enemies’ weaknesses in order to get extra turns and deal more damage, while also avoiding moves that the enemies nullify to ensure you don’t lose your turns. The problem is that the vast majority of boss fights don’t even have a weakness, and normal fights are generally easy enough that you can get by simply by punching everything. What this ends up doing is making the game revolve more around buffs and debuffs more than anything else, effectively allowing you to get through the game with basically the same exact strategy for every single major fight.
Here’s the general pattern for pretty much every boss fight: use a skill that buffs evasion/accuracy or debuffs the enemy’s evasion/accuracy, increase your attack, increase your defense, now wallop the enemy with the most powerful moves you have that aren’t resisted, absorbed, or reflected. Some bosses may take a while, but you’re going to win no matter what because the boss will almost never hit you. Even if they do, the only thing that could potentially be a threat is an unlucky crit or an instant kill move. As long as you have a healer, you’ll most likely be fine. Long story short, buffs and debuffs in this game are way too powerful, making the battle system mostly boring.
What also disappointed me was the story, which is really not all that much better than SMTV’s. In fact, it’s almost identical to SMTV’s. The demon apocalypse happens, a group of kids get warped to the demon world, they develop their own vision of what they want the world to be (some getting mindfucked in the process), and you all end up fighting for the chance to make that world. I’d actually argue that SMTV has more interesting things going on with its story, which is why the lack of development and obvious rushing of its plot was so unfortunate. In Nocturne, all the characters are just there to be walking philosophical ideologies, none of which are particularly very good or agreeable, some of which are downright insane. Their ideas are so extreme that the only reasonable endings are the Freedom ending or the True Demon ending, because at least one feels like a good ending and the other gives you more content. Almost every ending option sucks. It’s like Fallout 4 before Fallout 4.
With all that being said, a good chunk of the game was still enjoyable, arguably up to the halfway point. The battle system up to that point is still novel and you have to rely on certain elements of the battle system more that aren’t just buffs, buffs, and more buffs. The game is oozing with atmosphere unlike any other JRPG. It’s more designed like a survival horror game than anything else. Demon fusion is still fun, and the HD version allowing you to select skills instead of randomized ones is a godsend. Lord knows how much that would have annoyed me and made me dislike the game even more if I played the PS2 version instead. Character design is fantastic, and the music is catchy and memorable. There is a lot to admire in SMT Nocturne to the point where I hesitate to call it a bad game or even say that I dislike it. A lot of passion certainly went into developing it, even with as little of a budget as it so clearly had. I just wish the dungeons weren’t such a chore to get through and the game had a better way to avoid random late-game battles outside of turning on easy mode.
Again, Nocturne isn’t a bad game, just a frustrating one. One that requires a level of patience and a mindset that I apparently lack. At least it led to SMTV happening, which I loved, so I guess that’s something.
Honestly, much better than I remember it being. I will fully admit, my admiration for this game is somewhat based around nostalgia for the Game Boy. I've always loved the Game Boy aesthetic. I'm also pretty convinced at this point that 2D Zelda just gels with me more than 3D.
With that being said, I do think this is great. The dungeon design is excellent, with some genuinely tough puzzles. Bosses are mostly pretty cool. There's a ton of side content too, not just due to the ring system, but also the really neat game link thing you can do if you have Oracle of Seasons as well.
If there's any main complaints, it's that the overworld of this really does feel like a bit of a pain to navigate at times. Going back and forth from the past to the present is cool, and honestly there are some aspects of this that I think Ages does better than OoT. However, it can be a bit of a pain going from point A to point B when it involves using different songs on the harp multiple times.
Oh yeah, also the Goron dance minigame. The mandatory ones you have to do aren't that bad, but godspeed to anyone who tries to do the higher difficulty ones legitimately. I can't imagine how many zoomers will end up filtered by this part when they try to play it on the NSO thing.
With that being said, I do think this is great. The dungeon design is excellent, with some genuinely tough puzzles. Bosses are mostly pretty cool. There's a ton of side content too, not just due to the ring system, but also the really neat game link thing you can do if you have Oracle of Seasons as well.
If there's any main complaints, it's that the overworld of this really does feel like a bit of a pain to navigate at times. Going back and forth from the past to the present is cool, and honestly there are some aspects of this that I think Ages does better than OoT. However, it can be a bit of a pain going from point A to point B when it involves using different songs on the harp multiple times.
Oh yeah, also the Goron dance minigame. The mandatory ones you have to do aren't that bad, but godspeed to anyone who tries to do the higher difficulty ones legitimately. I can't imagine how many zoomers will end up filtered by this part when they try to play it on the NSO thing.
2022
This review contains spoilers
Bayonetta 3 feels like a game made by an ideas guy plagued with a terrible cause of ADHD who contracted a team of programmers who are just competent enough to execute his ideas so that they don’t turn out complete shit, but forgot to make them actually fun. Spectacle has always been a big part of the Bayonetta games, and Platinum’s games in general, but never to the point where it interfered too much with the game’s central mechanics. With Bayonetta 3, it unfortunately seems like Platinum has forgotten why people like Bayonetta in the first place.
I’ll fully admit I’m a shitter at these games, and I’m never going to be good enough, bored enough, or insane enough to try to do stuff like Pure Platinuming all the chapters on even the easiest difficulty, let alone on Infinite Climax mode. If that means I lack the qualifications to properly criticize this game’s combat in your eyes, so be it. I’d like to believe however that I have at least a basic understanding of what made the first two games fun. Their combat was pretty basic action game stuff where you have punches, kicks, and a dodge, with dodge offset and witch time being the two main things setting Bayonetta apart from other games in the genre. The appeal at least for me was always the extremely satisfying and polished combat, the spectacle of crazy fights and scenarios, and of course Bayonetta herself.
Where Bayo 3 goes wrong is that it leans so far into spectacle, it doesn’t pay enough attention to pretty much everything else. This game’s main gimmick, demon slave, is an ability that allows you to summon and control a giant demon at will, draining your magic meter as you use it. You can’t move Bayonetta during this, and dodging will automatically unsummon the demon and give control back to you. Attacking with the demon has a buffer system where you can input a chain of attacks, let go of the summon button, and move around or attack as Bayonetta as long as there’s still attacks for the demon to do. You can then continue holding the button to keep the demon on the battlefield.
It’s definitely an interesting mechanic, and I can see the potential for some wild stuff, but the fact that it completely takes over almost every battle ruins a bit of the fun. I don’t play Bayonetta to play as some giant, slow, awkwardly controlling monster. It doesn’t help that the camera stays behind Bayonetta so you feel like you’re controlling something in the background and not even part of the action most of the time. To accommodate for the size of the demons and some of the enemies, every arena is massive, meaning that whenever you aren’t using demons, you’re spending far too much time running back and forth to each enemy. Thank god for the homing skill in this game, because you’re going to be using it a lot.
Once you unlock more demons, this aspect of the game does improve, but it never feels as polished or fun as it should be. Whenever you get the few fights where you’re just playing as Bayonetta, it’s a major breath of fresh air. Then the realization struck me that I really wish I was playing either of the first two Bayonetta games rather than this one. Pulling off wicked weaves is so much more satisfying in those games, and here they might as well not even exist. You do get something called wink slave, which allows you to quickly summon demons at the end of an attack string, but that’s literally just a slightly more complicated wicked weave. Also, I swear I got hit by offscreen attacks way more than any Platinum Games game. Either that, or this game’s visuals are such a clusterfuck of neon greens, blues, and ugly grays that it all blends together in a visual sludge that makes combat readability virtually nonexistent at times. The camera somehow managing to be the worst camera in a Bayonetta game yet doesn’t help with that either.
With all that being said, Bayonetta’s combat definitely isn’t bad, it’s just not as good as previous games. If the game gave you more time to get used to the general combat, maybe I would have felt more positively about it, but the problem is that Platinum felt the incessant need to fill every chapter with some gimmick section that plays way more differently than any other part of the game. One of these involves a kaiju battle, one’s a rhythm game, Jeanne has her own set of 2D levels inspired by the Elevator Action games, and more. The best way to describe all of these is that they’re all conceptually neat and fun on paper, but once you play more than 30 seconds of them, you realize that it’s either really boring or really obnoxious. I can only imagine the suffering people will go through trying to Pure Platinum these parts. One of my biggest issues with Platinum is their obsession with gimmick sections like this, especially when they’re the most difficult part of their games (I’m looking at you, Wonderful 101 shmup sections). Bayonetta 3 manages to double down on this, to the point where I’m convinced that half of your playtime isn’t even really playing as Bayonetta. We’re legitimately bordering on a minigame collection with this one.
And then there’s Viola. I have nothing wrong with multiple playable characters in games like this, but holy shit Viola sucks. Literally everything about her sucks. Her combat sucks, her personality sucks, her story sucks, like Jesus Christ there’s so little to like about her. She is genuinely the worst controlling Platinum Games character ever that I can think of. It’s so jarring going from how smoothly Bayonetta controls to how clunky Viola does. The worst part of her kit by far is her parry. It doesn’t work like in Metal Gear Rising, as you may expect it to work. Platinum decided that her parry should have this weird start up lag, meaning that you have to hit the parry button way earlier than you think you do in order to activate witch time. You can also just hold the block button to prevent most attacks from damaging you, but it turns the game into being way too defensive and passive, which is the exact opposite of what I want from a Bayonetta game. She has a summon too, Cheshire, and it genuinely tends to feel more effective to just summon him and have him do most of the work while you spam her dart attack. People are finding out tech with her that makes her seem more interesting, but I doubt she would be more fun. Even Platinum didn’t seem to have confidence in her gameplay style considering she only gets 3 levels devoted to her. I can’t help but wonder if the demon slave and Viola mechanics were leftovers from their cancelled game, Scalebound, that Kamiya decided to sneak into this game because he was still buttmad over Microsoft dabbing on his idea and throwing it in the gutter.
While we’re talking about Viola, might as well dive into the story. Bayonetta has never had a particularly great story, sometimes bordering on downright incomprehensible, but it was generally serviceable and the characters always stood out and carried the poor writing. Bayonetta 3 though has a terrible problem with tone. It appears that Platinum had no idea what they wanted to do with this game, so they just put everything in the pot and made the story equivalent of a cacophony. It’s really bizarre going from the intro scene of New York City being utterly destroyed, millions of innocent people dying, and then seeing Bayonetta do her quirky little winks and dances as jazzy music plays. Bayo 1 and 2 had moments of destruction that probably lead to a couple people getting offed, but it never lingered on that stuff at all unlike in 3. In a game that seems to be trying to take itself more seriously, the more wacky moments really stand out as awkward. It gets even worse when you get into the multiverse stuff and see one Bayonetta after another getting killed in the most boring, unceremonious way right after silly scenes like an army of zombie-like creatures doing a Thriller dance. It’s like if The Last of Us had Joel doing Fortnite dances when he defeats a group of enemies before a scene where he’s told that Ellie has to sacrifice herself for the greater good.
What’s especially bad is that Bayonetta barely feels like a character anymore. Jennifer Hale actually does a surprisingly good Hellena Taylor impression, so it’s a shame that she never really gets to shine here. Her dialog is the most generic, uninteresting dialog you could think for a game like this. You know why these kinds of action games are often called character action games? Because they’re all about the personality and charisma of the character. The only time Bayonetta really feels like herself is at the very end of the game, and it’s not even the one you’ve been playing as.
Even worse is that Viola seems to have way more dialog and it’s the cringiest shit ever. I can’t tell if Viola is supposed to be a parody of DmC Dante type characters or not, but the fact that they appear to be really trying to get you to like her makes me think they’re being genuine with this. Platinum tried to pull a Nero with her and failed miserably. Oh yeah, going back to tone, Viola literally has scenes where she becomes a Looney Tunes character. There’s actually a moment where she steps out of a portal and does the whole “standing on nothing and gravity doesn’t affect her until she looks down” gag. They’re trying to do a “passing the torch” story with Wile E. fucking Coyote. All the dumb slapstick with her is poorly done and goes completely against the more serious tone of the overarching storyline. It probably would have been better to just have her be a complete edgelord to contrast with Bayonetta’s more calm and collected demeanor. I really don’t want to harp on Viola too much because she really doesn’t take up that much of the game, but man for how little you play as her she really drags the game down hard. It’s impressive how bad she is. Hell, even her music is forgettable. They give her this punk rock look, and her music is basically just Paramore. Oh yeah, the first thing I think of when I imagine punk is fucking Paramore. I hate Viola so much it’s unreal.
Anyway, the story for the most part is bad and forgettable. Nothing happens for the majority of it other than every Bayonetta dying 5 minutes after being introduced, and you getting each of the ChaosEmeralds Gears. Luka, formerly a joke character, now has super powers and can turn into a werewolf creature. Then some guy in a pod turns out to be the big bad and kills Jeanne in a way that really should not have killed her. Also Bayonetta and Luka are really into each other now, despite there being little to no indication in previous games of them having those kinds of feelings for each other other than on a purely sexual level. I guess Bayonetta is just really into werewolf dick.
I’m not one of those crazy Twitter cultists who thought that Bayonetta munched on carpet on a daily basis, but the romantic aspect of this game truly does not make any sense. It comes completely out of nowhere. Again, I have no idea what the fuck Platinum was thinking with this story. It’s the same level of quality as a Kingdom Hearts fanfiction.
What’s most frustrating about all this is that there is a truly great game in here somewhere. It’s certainly not bad, just not as good as it should be. Combat is still mostly satisfying and fun once you get used to the new mechanics. Many of the boss fights are pretty cool too, including the final boss which was actually a step up from Bayonetta 2’s lackluster finale. Considering things like Hellena Taylor’s temper tantrum forcing Platinum to find a new VA and the original director leaving the studio in the middle of this game’s development, I can only imagine the production issues this game underwent. I’m convinced that there were a bunch of other behind-the-scenes mishaps that led to this game being the mixed bag that it is. Ultimately, the game ended up a disappointing hodge podge of cool ideas that are half baked and take too much time away from the series’ strengths.
Sadly, I can’t see myself really wanting a Bayonetta 4 to “fix” things since Platinum has been on a downward spiral in my opinion for a while now. Their licensed games were forgettable to bad (I’m sorry, I won’t be gaslit into believing that Transformers Devastation is anything better than adequate), Nier Automata barely even counts as a Platinum Games game, and Astral Chain was also a disappointment to me, albeit it is an outlier since most people seemed to enjoy it. Then there’s Babylon’s Fall, which might go down as the biggest bruh moment in video game history. This was Platinum’s last straw for me and I do believe they’ve lost their touch.
I’ll fully admit I’m a shitter at these games, and I’m never going to be good enough, bored enough, or insane enough to try to do stuff like Pure Platinuming all the chapters on even the easiest difficulty, let alone on Infinite Climax mode. If that means I lack the qualifications to properly criticize this game’s combat in your eyes, so be it. I’d like to believe however that I have at least a basic understanding of what made the first two games fun. Their combat was pretty basic action game stuff where you have punches, kicks, and a dodge, with dodge offset and witch time being the two main things setting Bayonetta apart from other games in the genre. The appeal at least for me was always the extremely satisfying and polished combat, the spectacle of crazy fights and scenarios, and of course Bayonetta herself.
Where Bayo 3 goes wrong is that it leans so far into spectacle, it doesn’t pay enough attention to pretty much everything else. This game’s main gimmick, demon slave, is an ability that allows you to summon and control a giant demon at will, draining your magic meter as you use it. You can’t move Bayonetta during this, and dodging will automatically unsummon the demon and give control back to you. Attacking with the demon has a buffer system where you can input a chain of attacks, let go of the summon button, and move around or attack as Bayonetta as long as there’s still attacks for the demon to do. You can then continue holding the button to keep the demon on the battlefield.
It’s definitely an interesting mechanic, and I can see the potential for some wild stuff, but the fact that it completely takes over almost every battle ruins a bit of the fun. I don’t play Bayonetta to play as some giant, slow, awkwardly controlling monster. It doesn’t help that the camera stays behind Bayonetta so you feel like you’re controlling something in the background and not even part of the action most of the time. To accommodate for the size of the demons and some of the enemies, every arena is massive, meaning that whenever you aren’t using demons, you’re spending far too much time running back and forth to each enemy. Thank god for the homing skill in this game, because you’re going to be using it a lot.
Once you unlock more demons, this aspect of the game does improve, but it never feels as polished or fun as it should be. Whenever you get the few fights where you’re just playing as Bayonetta, it’s a major breath of fresh air. Then the realization struck me that I really wish I was playing either of the first two Bayonetta games rather than this one. Pulling off wicked weaves is so much more satisfying in those games, and here they might as well not even exist. You do get something called wink slave, which allows you to quickly summon demons at the end of an attack string, but that’s literally just a slightly more complicated wicked weave. Also, I swear I got hit by offscreen attacks way more than any Platinum Games game. Either that, or this game’s visuals are such a clusterfuck of neon greens, blues, and ugly grays that it all blends together in a visual sludge that makes combat readability virtually nonexistent at times. The camera somehow managing to be the worst camera in a Bayonetta game yet doesn’t help with that either.
With all that being said, Bayonetta’s combat definitely isn’t bad, it’s just not as good as previous games. If the game gave you more time to get used to the general combat, maybe I would have felt more positively about it, but the problem is that Platinum felt the incessant need to fill every chapter with some gimmick section that plays way more differently than any other part of the game. One of these involves a kaiju battle, one’s a rhythm game, Jeanne has her own set of 2D levels inspired by the Elevator Action games, and more. The best way to describe all of these is that they’re all conceptually neat and fun on paper, but once you play more than 30 seconds of them, you realize that it’s either really boring or really obnoxious. I can only imagine the suffering people will go through trying to Pure Platinum these parts. One of my biggest issues with Platinum is their obsession with gimmick sections like this, especially when they’re the most difficult part of their games (I’m looking at you, Wonderful 101 shmup sections). Bayonetta 3 manages to double down on this, to the point where I’m convinced that half of your playtime isn’t even really playing as Bayonetta. We’re legitimately bordering on a minigame collection with this one.
And then there’s Viola. I have nothing wrong with multiple playable characters in games like this, but holy shit Viola sucks. Literally everything about her sucks. Her combat sucks, her personality sucks, her story sucks, like Jesus Christ there’s so little to like about her. She is genuinely the worst controlling Platinum Games character ever that I can think of. It’s so jarring going from how smoothly Bayonetta controls to how clunky Viola does. The worst part of her kit by far is her parry. It doesn’t work like in Metal Gear Rising, as you may expect it to work. Platinum decided that her parry should have this weird start up lag, meaning that you have to hit the parry button way earlier than you think you do in order to activate witch time. You can also just hold the block button to prevent most attacks from damaging you, but it turns the game into being way too defensive and passive, which is the exact opposite of what I want from a Bayonetta game. She has a summon too, Cheshire, and it genuinely tends to feel more effective to just summon him and have him do most of the work while you spam her dart attack. People are finding out tech with her that makes her seem more interesting, but I doubt she would be more fun. Even Platinum didn’t seem to have confidence in her gameplay style considering she only gets 3 levels devoted to her. I can’t help but wonder if the demon slave and Viola mechanics were leftovers from their cancelled game, Scalebound, that Kamiya decided to sneak into this game because he was still buttmad over Microsoft dabbing on his idea and throwing it in the gutter.
While we’re talking about Viola, might as well dive into the story. Bayonetta has never had a particularly great story, sometimes bordering on downright incomprehensible, but it was generally serviceable and the characters always stood out and carried the poor writing. Bayonetta 3 though has a terrible problem with tone. It appears that Platinum had no idea what they wanted to do with this game, so they just put everything in the pot and made the story equivalent of a cacophony. It’s really bizarre going from the intro scene of New York City being utterly destroyed, millions of innocent people dying, and then seeing Bayonetta do her quirky little winks and dances as jazzy music plays. Bayo 1 and 2 had moments of destruction that probably lead to a couple people getting offed, but it never lingered on that stuff at all unlike in 3. In a game that seems to be trying to take itself more seriously, the more wacky moments really stand out as awkward. It gets even worse when you get into the multiverse stuff and see one Bayonetta after another getting killed in the most boring, unceremonious way right after silly scenes like an army of zombie-like creatures doing a Thriller dance. It’s like if The Last of Us had Joel doing Fortnite dances when he defeats a group of enemies before a scene where he’s told that Ellie has to sacrifice herself for the greater good.
What’s especially bad is that Bayonetta barely feels like a character anymore. Jennifer Hale actually does a surprisingly good Hellena Taylor impression, so it’s a shame that she never really gets to shine here. Her dialog is the most generic, uninteresting dialog you could think for a game like this. You know why these kinds of action games are often called character action games? Because they’re all about the personality and charisma of the character. The only time Bayonetta really feels like herself is at the very end of the game, and it’s not even the one you’ve been playing as.
Even worse is that Viola seems to have way more dialog and it’s the cringiest shit ever. I can’t tell if Viola is supposed to be a parody of DmC Dante type characters or not, but the fact that they appear to be really trying to get you to like her makes me think they’re being genuine with this. Platinum tried to pull a Nero with her and failed miserably. Oh yeah, going back to tone, Viola literally has scenes where she becomes a Looney Tunes character. There’s actually a moment where she steps out of a portal and does the whole “standing on nothing and gravity doesn’t affect her until she looks down” gag. They’re trying to do a “passing the torch” story with Wile E. fucking Coyote. All the dumb slapstick with her is poorly done and goes completely against the more serious tone of the overarching storyline. It probably would have been better to just have her be a complete edgelord to contrast with Bayonetta’s more calm and collected demeanor. I really don’t want to harp on Viola too much because she really doesn’t take up that much of the game, but man for how little you play as her she really drags the game down hard. It’s impressive how bad she is. Hell, even her music is forgettable. They give her this punk rock look, and her music is basically just Paramore. Oh yeah, the first thing I think of when I imagine punk is fucking Paramore. I hate Viola so much it’s unreal.
Anyway, the story for the most part is bad and forgettable. Nothing happens for the majority of it other than every Bayonetta dying 5 minutes after being introduced, and you getting each of the Chaos
I’m not one of those crazy Twitter cultists who thought that Bayonetta munched on carpet on a daily basis, but the romantic aspect of this game truly does not make any sense. It comes completely out of nowhere. Again, I have no idea what the fuck Platinum was thinking with this story. It’s the same level of quality as a Kingdom Hearts fanfiction.
What’s most frustrating about all this is that there is a truly great game in here somewhere. It’s certainly not bad, just not as good as it should be. Combat is still mostly satisfying and fun once you get used to the new mechanics. Many of the boss fights are pretty cool too, including the final boss which was actually a step up from Bayonetta 2’s lackluster finale. Considering things like Hellena Taylor’s temper tantrum forcing Platinum to find a new VA and the original director leaving the studio in the middle of this game’s development, I can only imagine the production issues this game underwent. I’m convinced that there were a bunch of other behind-the-scenes mishaps that led to this game being the mixed bag that it is. Ultimately, the game ended up a disappointing hodge podge of cool ideas that are half baked and take too much time away from the series’ strengths.
Sadly, I can’t see myself really wanting a Bayonetta 4 to “fix” things since Platinum has been on a downward spiral in my opinion for a while now. Their licensed games were forgettable to bad (I’m sorry, I won’t be gaslit into believing that Transformers Devastation is anything better than adequate), Nier Automata barely even counts as a Platinum Games game, and Astral Chain was also a disappointment to me, albeit it is an outlier since most people seemed to enjoy it. Then there’s Babylon’s Fall, which might go down as the biggest bruh moment in video game history. This was Platinum’s last straw for me and I do believe they’ve lost their touch.
The best 2D platformer ever made. Genuinely think this game is pretty much perfect. Some levels kind of suck (looking at you 6-5 and 6-7), and checkpoint placement could be better, but ultimately this is Nintendo level design at its peak.
Still irritates me that the Yoshi series got shafted so hard and has wallowed in mediocrity, barring Woolly World which I actually think is pretty damn great and the closest any Yoshi game got to this.
Still irritates me that the Yoshi series got shafted so hard and has wallowed in mediocrity, barring Woolly World which I actually think is pretty damn great and the closest any Yoshi game got to this.
Don't really have much to say. It's Metroid Prime only it looks better and it plays better thanks to the various control options. Just a straight up better version of an already great game.
If anything, it's a sign that Prime 4 is in good hands. I just hope that Retro adopts the checkpoint system that Samus Returns and Dread introduced, because Phazon Mines is still obnoxious as hell to go through with the save points being so far away from each other. Also fuck the Omega Pirate and fuck Fission Metroids, that is all.
If anything, it's a sign that Prime 4 is in good hands. I just hope that Retro adopts the checkpoint system that Samus Returns and Dread introduced, because Phazon Mines is still obnoxious as hell to go through with the save points being so far away from each other. Also fuck the Omega Pirate and fuck Fission Metroids, that is all.
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe seems like exactly the kind of thing most people would want out of a re-release of an old game. It’s, for the most part, the original game with some extra content. The problem, more so than anything else, is that for some reason it’s $10 more than the original. Some may find this fair considering they ported the game from the Source engine to Unity, which is most likely where most of the effort was put into, but it’s hard for me to really justify that pricing considering what most of the new content is.
A large portion of the new content of Ultra Deluxe is devoted to making fun of the modern trend of remakes/remasters being disappointing due to the new content not justifying said remake/remaster’s existence by doing exactly that with The Stanley Parable itself. After going through a few endings, you unlock a “New Content” door, in which you find a new feature that adds basically nothing to the game. From here, you get a very large sequence that involves a lot of poking fun of various targets, including the game itself, and eventually leads you to the main thing this game adds. Without spoiling too much, this object basically acts as a modifier that, when brought into the other old routes, slightly changes things a bit.
While going through the routes again to see the changes is fun, it’s mostly very minimal, and gets old fast. The big problem here is that the game falls into the very same trap that a lot of meta-games like this do when they’re trying to satirize something: it just does the very thing it’s supposed to be lampooning. In other words, ironic shitposting is still shitposting.
With that being said, I did very much enjoy the new content. It is very funny and outside the narration, there are plenty of good visual gags too. Some of the new endings might actually be my favorite ones overall. As negative as I may seem, this game is good. Very good in fact. It’s just that I really can’t justify how much this is considering that most of the “new” content is just the old content, but now with a new hat. You could argue that’s the point, but as already mentioned, being aware of the problem doesn’t eliminate it. If anything, it kind of just makes you look like a prick.
I realize that my main point of criticism here is the price point, but when you’re talking about a game that is very much a “once and done” kind of game where there really isn’t any replayability, price is going to be a much bigger concern to me than something like say Metroid Dread. Metroid Dread is short, but I still got over 70 hours from just replaying it because of how fun it is. I was done with Ultra Deluxe after 6, of which around half was the stuff I had already played before in the original.
If you haven’t played the original Stanley Parable, then by all means this is the definitive version of the game. It’s the original game (mostly), but with more content. If you’ve already played the original, wait for a sale.
A large portion of the new content of Ultra Deluxe is devoted to making fun of the modern trend of remakes/remasters being disappointing due to the new content not justifying said remake/remaster’s existence by doing exactly that with The Stanley Parable itself. After going through a few endings, you unlock a “New Content” door, in which you find a new feature that adds basically nothing to the game. From here, you get a very large sequence that involves a lot of poking fun of various targets, including the game itself, and eventually leads you to the main thing this game adds. Without spoiling too much, this object basically acts as a modifier that, when brought into the other old routes, slightly changes things a bit.
While going through the routes again to see the changes is fun, it’s mostly very minimal, and gets old fast. The big problem here is that the game falls into the very same trap that a lot of meta-games like this do when they’re trying to satirize something: it just does the very thing it’s supposed to be lampooning. In other words, ironic shitposting is still shitposting.
With that being said, I did very much enjoy the new content. It is very funny and outside the narration, there are plenty of good visual gags too. Some of the new endings might actually be my favorite ones overall. As negative as I may seem, this game is good. Very good in fact. It’s just that I really can’t justify how much this is considering that most of the “new” content is just the old content, but now with a new hat. You could argue that’s the point, but as already mentioned, being aware of the problem doesn’t eliminate it. If anything, it kind of just makes you look like a prick.
I realize that my main point of criticism here is the price point, but when you’re talking about a game that is very much a “once and done” kind of game where there really isn’t any replayability, price is going to be a much bigger concern to me than something like say Metroid Dread. Metroid Dread is short, but I still got over 70 hours from just replaying it because of how fun it is. I was done with Ultra Deluxe after 6, of which around half was the stuff I had already played before in the original.
If you haven’t played the original Stanley Parable, then by all means this is the definitive version of the game. It’s the original game (mostly), but with more content. If you’ve already played the original, wait for a sale.
2023
As a big fan of Wario Land 4, I was extremely excited for this game as there really aren’t any games out there like that game specifically. There’s nothing quite like that game’s mix of exploration, usage of powerups, and extremely bizarre and creepy atmosphere. I kind of got that with Pizza Tower, but unfortunately I finished the game feeling a bit disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, the game is good. In fact, I’d highly recommend it. It’s just not exactly what I wanted and expected it to be. Due to its focus on speeding through every obstacle and enemy, requiring near perfect memorization of the level design for the highest ranks, it ends up feeling more like a very linear Sonic game rather than a Wario Land game.
There are definitely things that Pizza Tower absolutely nails. Controls are mostly perfect, with my main complaint being that your moveset is so large that I would often accidentally trigger moves I didn’t mean to, this mainly being a problem during boss fights. The weird and creepy vibe of the Wario Land games is here too, only having a more 90s/early 2000s cartoon flair to it. Music is very good too, although nothing stands out that much other than the Pizza Time and the pause menu song.
Where the game loses me is in its level design. The kind of 2D platformers that I tend to like and am more impressed by are the ones that involve more nonlinear exploration and secret finding rather than pure twitch reflexes and memorization. Stuff like Yoshi’s Island, Super Mario World, and, well, Wario Land 4 are more my style. This game straight up advertises itself as Wario Land inspired, and yet every level plays more like the escape sequences from Wario Land 4 only on crack. It’s very clear that you’re supposed to memorize the layout of every level and go through them as efficiently and quickly as possible, which just didn’t gel with me as much as I’d like. You can kind of play it at a slower pace, but that ends up making a lot of parts feel sluggish and annoying to get through. Your dash turns any enemy in your path into fodder, so why wouldn’t you constantly try to go as fast as possible?
The speed of the game in combination with its artstyle can be a bit problematic too because it’s sometimes way too hard to distinguish between things like background and foreground elements or even hazards/enemies. A good example of this are the electrical outlets that appear on the ground for one of the levels. When you’re going fast, these blend in way too much and it’s extremely hard to tell they’re even there. Hell, even the first level of the game has enemies that will literally spawn in front of you and slap your shit and stop you in your tracks before you realize what happened. These enemies are purple by the way, on a level with a background that’s a slightly different shade of purple.
These kind of issues made me understand why people dislike the 2D Sonic games. A complaint I’ve heard a lot about those games is that too often you’ll try to go fast and get constantly hit by enemies or hazards. The difference there is that Sonic games are usually designed well enough that even when you’re going really fast, it almost never feels like you’re going so fast that you can’t tell what you’re looking at on screen. Plus, the 2D Sonic games, despite also being momentum focused, have very wide open and big levels with multiple paths that makes replaying them over and over again extremely satisfying. You don’t really get that with Pizza Tower. There is one linear path to take. Playing the game at optimal efficiency basically turns the game into an autorunner. The developer apparently got a lot of feedback from people in a discord who pushed him into this specific speedrun niche, and it really shows.
The levels also end up feeling very samey because of this design philosophy. Sure there are different themes, like one is in the sewers, one in a castle, one in a literal warzone, etc. Ultimately this doesn’t really matter, because few of the levels have anything truly unique going on with them. A few towards the end throw in some gimmicks, like the FNAF level, but it’s too little too late and the gimmicks they have are more on the annoying side. It has remnants of the kind of powerups seen in Wario Land, but they feel tacked on, as if the game was going to incorporate them more but the dev just forgot about them as the game swerved into a different direction. In my mind, every level blends together a bit too much.
Boss fights felt jarring to me. This is a game where you literally cannot die in stages, with the only true failure state being running out of time during the rush back to the start of the level. Having the boss fights be as difficult as they were seemed like an odd decision, especially when they start filling the screen with random hazards that sometimes feel impossible to avoid. I’m not asking for the boss fights to be literally unloseable or something, it just didn’t feel like a natural difficulty progression. Oddly enough, I found the final boss a lot more interesting, fun, and less difficult than the others, probably because I was used to the difficulty at that point, but it simply felt better designed.
I’m being really hard on the game, but that’s mainly because I was looking forward to this for a while. It’s still well made and very good. Again, the controls are great, the art and animations are fantastic, and overall you can tell they put a lot of heart and soul into this. The level design isn’t quite what I wanted, but it’s definitely not bad by any means. There have been small patches for the game almost every day since release to fix issues, which shows that they genuinely care about feedback. I just don’t really feel much of an incentive to go back and replay levels due to the overall design rubbing me the wrong way. Going for S and P ranks also seems absurdly annoying, fuck that.
By the way, I unintentionally beat the game with 69% completion, so I’m never touching that save file again.
There are definitely things that Pizza Tower absolutely nails. Controls are mostly perfect, with my main complaint being that your moveset is so large that I would often accidentally trigger moves I didn’t mean to, this mainly being a problem during boss fights. The weird and creepy vibe of the Wario Land games is here too, only having a more 90s/early 2000s cartoon flair to it. Music is very good too, although nothing stands out that much other than the Pizza Time and the pause menu song.
Where the game loses me is in its level design. The kind of 2D platformers that I tend to like and am more impressed by are the ones that involve more nonlinear exploration and secret finding rather than pure twitch reflexes and memorization. Stuff like Yoshi’s Island, Super Mario World, and, well, Wario Land 4 are more my style. This game straight up advertises itself as Wario Land inspired, and yet every level plays more like the escape sequences from Wario Land 4 only on crack. It’s very clear that you’re supposed to memorize the layout of every level and go through them as efficiently and quickly as possible, which just didn’t gel with me as much as I’d like. You can kind of play it at a slower pace, but that ends up making a lot of parts feel sluggish and annoying to get through. Your dash turns any enemy in your path into fodder, so why wouldn’t you constantly try to go as fast as possible?
The speed of the game in combination with its artstyle can be a bit problematic too because it’s sometimes way too hard to distinguish between things like background and foreground elements or even hazards/enemies. A good example of this are the electrical outlets that appear on the ground for one of the levels. When you’re going fast, these blend in way too much and it’s extremely hard to tell they’re even there. Hell, even the first level of the game has enemies that will literally spawn in front of you and slap your shit and stop you in your tracks before you realize what happened. These enemies are purple by the way, on a level with a background that’s a slightly different shade of purple.
These kind of issues made me understand why people dislike the 2D Sonic games. A complaint I’ve heard a lot about those games is that too often you’ll try to go fast and get constantly hit by enemies or hazards. The difference there is that Sonic games are usually designed well enough that even when you’re going really fast, it almost never feels like you’re going so fast that you can’t tell what you’re looking at on screen. Plus, the 2D Sonic games, despite also being momentum focused, have very wide open and big levels with multiple paths that makes replaying them over and over again extremely satisfying. You don’t really get that with Pizza Tower. There is one linear path to take. Playing the game at optimal efficiency basically turns the game into an autorunner. The developer apparently got a lot of feedback from people in a discord who pushed him into this specific speedrun niche, and it really shows.
The levels also end up feeling very samey because of this design philosophy. Sure there are different themes, like one is in the sewers, one in a castle, one in a literal warzone, etc. Ultimately this doesn’t really matter, because few of the levels have anything truly unique going on with them. A few towards the end throw in some gimmicks, like the FNAF level, but it’s too little too late and the gimmicks they have are more on the annoying side. It has remnants of the kind of powerups seen in Wario Land, but they feel tacked on, as if the game was going to incorporate them more but the dev just forgot about them as the game swerved into a different direction. In my mind, every level blends together a bit too much.
Boss fights felt jarring to me. This is a game where you literally cannot die in stages, with the only true failure state being running out of time during the rush back to the start of the level. Having the boss fights be as difficult as they were seemed like an odd decision, especially when they start filling the screen with random hazards that sometimes feel impossible to avoid. I’m not asking for the boss fights to be literally unloseable or something, it just didn’t feel like a natural difficulty progression. Oddly enough, I found the final boss a lot more interesting, fun, and less difficult than the others, probably because I was used to the difficulty at that point, but it simply felt better designed.
I’m being really hard on the game, but that’s mainly because I was looking forward to this for a while. It’s still well made and very good. Again, the controls are great, the art and animations are fantastic, and overall you can tell they put a lot of heart and soul into this. The level design isn’t quite what I wanted, but it’s definitely not bad by any means. There have been small patches for the game almost every day since release to fix issues, which shows that they genuinely care about feedback. I just don’t really feel much of an incentive to go back and replay levels due to the overall design rubbing me the wrong way. Going for S and P ranks also seems absurdly annoying, fuck that.
By the way, I unintentionally beat the game with 69% completion, so I’m never touching that save file again.
2017
When I first tried playing this game, I was enjoying it for a good while, but then got frustrated at both the difficulty and the lack of guidance for where to go. In hindsight, I think I was playing the game with the wrong mindset, because I actually really enjoyed it this time. However, it is far from the masterpiece people prop it up as.
Boss fights, for the most part, are really good. I do think this game does have a bit of a problem here with quantity over quality. There are a ton of bosses, but I feel like very few of them are all that memorable, and the ones that are tend to be memorable for the wrong reasons. Lost Kin and The Radiance are definite examples of this. Seriously, fuck that Radiance fight, goddamn.
Exploration is definitely this game's strongest aspect. While there is a little too much gray, I did enjoy traveling through all the different environments and seeing what kind of weird enemies I'd have to face. Big weak point of the game here is that movement just kind of sucks. After Metroid Dread, with how fluid and fast paced its movement is, it's hard to play a metroidvania like this that feels so slow. Especially considering how massive the world is. I feel like there should have been more fast travel locations to compensate for the map size, or at least stag stations placed in a more central location.
The Dark Souls elements are a mixed bag for me. While I get that they're there to make the game more difficult and instill a certain tone, I can't say I particularly enjoy them. Walk backs to bosses after dying were always one thing about the Souls games that filtered me and prevented me from enjoying those games. It's not as bad here, but it still feels like pure tedium more than anything. The shade mechanic also becomes pointless once you don't need money anymore.
I do mostly enjoy the charm system, and the different builds you can make is neat. I do think some charms should have just been straight up permanent upgrades to make up for the lack of upgrades there are in the game. Like why the fuck is Wayward Compass a charm and not just a map upgrade? Legitimately what were they thinking?
I do want to mention that White Palace level. I know it's optional, but Jesus Christ this part sucks ass. It's a monumental difficulty spike where it suddenly turns into Super Meat Boy. And all you get for doing it is the chance to fight that Radiance boss that isn't fun at all. Genuinely awful.
Overall though, yeah it's a pretty good metroidvania game that is a bit overhyped. Beautiful art and music, mostly fun combat and bosses, and a massive world to explore. Not even close to the best metroidvania, but definitely up there.
Boss fights, for the most part, are really good. I do think this game does have a bit of a problem here with quantity over quality. There are a ton of bosses, but I feel like very few of them are all that memorable, and the ones that are tend to be memorable for the wrong reasons. Lost Kin and The Radiance are definite examples of this. Seriously, fuck that Radiance fight, goddamn.
Exploration is definitely this game's strongest aspect. While there is a little too much gray, I did enjoy traveling through all the different environments and seeing what kind of weird enemies I'd have to face. Big weak point of the game here is that movement just kind of sucks. After Metroid Dread, with how fluid and fast paced its movement is, it's hard to play a metroidvania like this that feels so slow. Especially considering how massive the world is. I feel like there should have been more fast travel locations to compensate for the map size, or at least stag stations placed in a more central location.
The Dark Souls elements are a mixed bag for me. While I get that they're there to make the game more difficult and instill a certain tone, I can't say I particularly enjoy them. Walk backs to bosses after dying were always one thing about the Souls games that filtered me and prevented me from enjoying those games. It's not as bad here, but it still feels like pure tedium more than anything. The shade mechanic also becomes pointless once you don't need money anymore.
I do mostly enjoy the charm system, and the different builds you can make is neat. I do think some charms should have just been straight up permanent upgrades to make up for the lack of upgrades there are in the game. Like why the fuck is Wayward Compass a charm and not just a map upgrade? Legitimately what were they thinking?
I do want to mention that White Palace level. I know it's optional, but Jesus Christ this part sucks ass. It's a monumental difficulty spike where it suddenly turns into Super Meat Boy. And all you get for doing it is the chance to fight that Radiance boss that isn't fun at all. Genuinely awful.
Overall though, yeah it's a pretty good metroidvania game that is a bit overhyped. Beautiful art and music, mostly fun combat and bosses, and a massive world to explore. Not even close to the best metroidvania, but definitely up there.
2021
Replayed this game dozens of times, but still amazes me how much of a comeback it is for this series. Best game in the series, best boss fights of the series, best ending of the series, and best portrayal of Samus in the series with only 2 lines, the second being her just screaming in animalistic rage.
Retro has a lot to live up to with Metroid Prime 4 after this.
Retro has a lot to live up to with Metroid Prime 4 after this.
After years of sterile, commercial, uninspired entries, it's nice to finally see a 2D Mario full of life and creativity. Not that the NSMB games were necessarily bad or anything. They were, generally speaking, well made platformers that were perfectly serviceable. However, serviceable doesn't and shouldn't cut it for Mario. Playing a Mario game shouldn't feel like you're playing a corporate product developed by people being kept on a leash so they don't "go too far" or something. Luckily, Nintendo seems to have freed them from those shackles, and clearly it paid off incredibly.
This game feels like a true follow-up to Mario World in that it's actually expanding upon 2D Mario with things like badges, new enemies, and tons of new level gimmicks. There's also a bunch of secrets to find too that are pretty easy to miss, so there's plenty of replayability. The badges alone add a lot of replayability too just to experiment with and see how much you can cheese levels with them.
Level design is overall pretty great and each world has very unique theming as well. You don't just have a grass world, ice world, water world, etc. Every world has a variety of different aesthetics to keep them from getting stale. The trippy Wonder Seed parts of certain levels are a highlight as well. It's fun to see a Mario game really lean more into the weird and wacky aspects of the series that inspired so many people to make the same insufferable drug jokes over the years.
The online functionality is actually pretty cool as well. I at first didn't think it would be all that notable, but having these ghost players play along with you and help you out with finding secrets (or revive you from death if you really want to go full baby mode) adds a lot to the experience. The levels where you have to search for hidden coins especially make use of this feature in a neat way.
Only negatives I can really think of is that I do wish the different characters weren't just skins and had their unique attributes they're known for. Playing as Peach often would confuse me because I'm so use to her having a hover ability. I guess also the bosses are a little uninspired, but honestly I don't think 2D Mario games ever truly had particularly great boss fights.
Mario Wonder is genuinely wonderful. I wouldn't put the game above Mario 3 or World, but I would say it's definitely in the same tier of quality.
This game feels like a true follow-up to Mario World in that it's actually expanding upon 2D Mario with things like badges, new enemies, and tons of new level gimmicks. There's also a bunch of secrets to find too that are pretty easy to miss, so there's plenty of replayability. The badges alone add a lot of replayability too just to experiment with and see how much you can cheese levels with them.
Level design is overall pretty great and each world has very unique theming as well. You don't just have a grass world, ice world, water world, etc. Every world has a variety of different aesthetics to keep them from getting stale. The trippy Wonder Seed parts of certain levels are a highlight as well. It's fun to see a Mario game really lean more into the weird and wacky aspects of the series that inspired so many people to make the same insufferable drug jokes over the years.
The online functionality is actually pretty cool as well. I at first didn't think it would be all that notable, but having these ghost players play along with you and help you out with finding secrets (or revive you from death if you really want to go full baby mode) adds a lot to the experience. The levels where you have to search for hidden coins especially make use of this feature in a neat way.
Only negatives I can really think of is that I do wish the different characters weren't just skins and had their unique attributes they're known for. Playing as Peach often would confuse me because I'm so use to her having a hover ability. I guess also the bosses are a little uninspired, but honestly I don't think 2D Mario games ever truly had particularly great boss fights.
Mario Wonder is genuinely wonderful. I wouldn't put the game above Mario 3 or World, but I would say it's definitely in the same tier of quality.