I can honestly not recommend to avoid this game enough. I've dropped this game at around 9 hours or so which is really saying something about the frustration this game puts you through. A retro inspired game that emulates the worst game design choices of the 90s into one game stacked with a unnecessary convoluted story that overstays it's welcome. I gave up at the Temple of Ydor after discovering the solution to the dungeon through an online guide. This game does nothing to introduce you to new mechanics organically and basically you solve dungeon puzzles by accident.

I've always wanted to visit this game being the only Kingdom Hearts game I haven't played but always been putting it off due to the community opinions I see about it. After finishing it I can safely say this isn't as bad as I think a lot of people say it is. It has glaring flaws but it's still a very serviceable Kingdom Hearts game, especially on a small mobile console like the Nintendo DS.

The game follows a digital version of Sora exploring the digitized contents of Jiminy Cricket's journal, directly following the events of Kingdom Hearts 2. It uses combat very similar to the ones from Birth By Sleep where there's an action command bar on the left that can either be melee, magic, or items. You can also evolve and level up those actions via a command menu. I think the one thing I actually really liked about this game is the stat matrix system where you have to place your abilities and level ups on a grid system to access abilities and modifications to the gameplay difficulty.

Again I think it's somehow impressive how well this game runs on the DS, but one thing I think that really helps this game in a modern sense is it feels a bit more cooperative on a 3DS circle pad despite it still being locked to a 8 direction movement. I highly recommend playing it on a 3DS/2DS if at all possible.

The story is honestly a bit of a blah, I wouldn't recommend this over playing through the console entries but again if you're able to grab this game for a good price it's worth playing through.

A good short jaunt of a game but I feel like the game loop kind of wears itself out after a bit. I think especially at the last 4 where some of the recipes requires multiple back and forth visits and it starts to really wear on you. The game is basically a loop of gathering items and crafting to assist villagers in this fairy tale world. That's the entire game. It's not terrible and I thought the storylines were fun abridged versions of mother goose stories. Generally I could recommend it but I wouldn't recommend it in a sitting or two. One thing to also mention is on PS5 the game is inexcusably unoptimized. The game slow downs constantly with minor particles effects and I had to do a work around to make achievements work.

About a decade of 2D Mario being stuck in a slog when it came to style and creativity and Mario Wonder took the formula, flipped it on its head, and incorporated ideas from the 3D line into the 2D and paying respects to it. You get what this game is like the moment you hit level 2, there are so many times where rarely in other games where Mario Wonder put a smile on my face, a guy with a ton of experience in 2D platformers and Mario for that matter. This game is worth picking up, putting down, and picking back up to do the 100%. They say they had a lot of the new blood at Nintendo working on this game and I say good work, god bless them, and god bless the new VA for providing the soul of Mario and Luigi in this new entry after the retirement of Charles Martinet.

One of the many horror themed games I hit up for October and definitely one of my favorites. A casual fishing sim with survival horror mechanics mashed up into an amazing clearly cosmic themed horror game based on the likes of Lovecraft. I will also give a +1 to the great ambient music, definitely a high selling point when most of the game is exploring and fishing.
The main cycle of the game is pulling up fish and selling it for money, as well as (the name implies) dredging up remains of wrecked boats to further upgrade your own to enhance your abilities. Without spoiling anything you'll need those upgrades to traverse the world and fish in new areas and spots (as well as be able to get away from things that might see you.) It's a brief <10 hour ride and I think it respects your time very well. Definitely give it a shot.

I won't be spoiling anything in this review but I will say I'd recommend playing the Long Night Collection first, and you'll understand that the vibe is kept consistent to this game as well. One thing to understand about Yomawari is its roots in Japanese folklore and ghost stories, one thing I'm only mildly familiar with. As a person who is mostly unfamiliar to these things it feels like being thrown into an unfamiliar world. It features very depressing themes and generally stories will feel unfulfilling or unanswered. I will also give a warning there are mild themes of suicide in this game (which the game warns you about in the opening, but before you buy might be helpful.)

The game is a competent avoidance and puzzle game, but unlike previous Yomawari titles they got rid of the hiding mechanic, opting instead for sneaking. This is done by holding both triggers and sneaking past ghosts that haven't seen you (btw this doesn't apply to ALL ghosts but most.) They kept the optional distraction items like rocks but as usually I never found a use for them.

Visuals are great as always from this studio, but one thing I've always found lacking for these games is how bosses sometimes feel like a memory game where you're simply repeating the boss based on a set pattern, not to mention you're managing a stamina bar which depletes faster when you're closer to a ghost. Lastly if it's something you like the game does have a lot of collectibles and mini optional ghost puzzles, each with little flavor text from the main character of Yomawari.

In the end the only thing keeping me from rating this higher is how legitimately frustrating one or two bosses felt, and I don't mean it in a "my skill is not high enough" but a "we're gonna throw random bs at you that you may or may not be ready for." This however is not something unfamiliar to the games either though so I expected it. Overall most of the times I died felt very fair so I'm not going to be too harsh on those moments.

In the end if you're looking for Japanese Horror based on scary stories told to children then you're definitely in for a treat. The overarching story in these games are always good and you might or might not expect where the ending leads you.

Master class in survival horror. I will be doing another playthrough of this on survival for the platinum trophy and to see if maybe I understand the story a bit better. Signalis is a dark and morose story about Elster, on a quest to track down a woman she knew.

The game is a slightly angled top down survival game where you solve environmental puzzles to proceed, armed with a limited amount of resources. On the normal difficulty the game charges you to be resourceful with your items, to the point I found it simpler at times to conserve everything and try to dodge the obstacles in my way instead of facing them head on. The multiple save files are not for multiple playthroughs, they're there to prevent you from putting yourself into a rough spot and have backup saves. This game has a suffocating atmosphere I haven't encountered since I played Darkwood last year. Can't recommend this game enough.

I had a lot of fun but there were a couple of hangups I had about it. Your first impressions with some of the locked areas is "it's a metroidvania" but on that end it was sort of weak. I got very far and skipped several items that were meant to continue progression that I found long after they would've been useful. It's more of a roguelike platformer with some metroidvania aspects.
As far as it being a roguelike it was heavily imbalanced in favor for the player. I hardly felt like I died to anything except when I was rushing to get from a point to another and making platforming mistakes.
Still, I would recommend this game if you're looking for a retro platformer fix, the controls are very responsive, and outside a few performance issues I experienced on Switch it was fun experienced, just possibly needed more time to balace the difficulty.