Very neat saturn game. Bulk Slash has soul coming out the ears with its low poly aesthetic, solid soundtrack and seamless integration of the co-pilot's animated portrait popping up on the screen all the time. The combat is decent but the controls take a bit to get used to. The levels are all fairly distinct in terms of design and objectives and the boss fights are pretty fun too. Difficulty is pretty low throughout but that was fine for the style of the game. Couldn't understand the story since it was all in japanese but it didn't seem to matter until the ending anyways and it doesn't seem very complex.

A big improvement over the original in every way. Zwei's gameplay is smoother with faster shots, smoother movement and a better camera. The areas are more visually interesting and the music is great. The story is still pretty simple but it's much better than the first one and easier to follow and care about as well. It's also cool how they incorporate some ground sections for variety. The difficulty feels more fair in this one though the last couple levels can be a pain to get through in one go. Also the final boss fight is awesome. Sega just can't stop pumping out the soul.

Sakura Wars 2019 feels like a modern iteration on the original in every aspect and in most cases it's a notable improvement. The artstyle looks great and the character models are really high quality. I was quite happy seeing the imperial theater in its remade PS4 glory and the other locations look nice too. Even the loading screen looks beautiful. The story retains the soul of the original where it takes a bunch of cliches and bundles them together into a surprisingly charming package with a likable cast of well-designed characters. Out of the protagonists I have experience with, Kamiyama is the most likable of the 3 though I've only been able to experience Ogami's story in 1. I was weary going into the game because of a lot of remarks about the game feeling like it was just made to set up for a sequel but it didn't feel that way to me at all and I quite enjoyed it from start to finish. I think the original revue is used in an interesting way with their mysterious and potentially tragic circumstances, especially with Sumire being the new manager of the theater. I also like new sakura much more than old sakura, especially since she's voiced by sakura ayane MMMMM. I would say the only parts where the reboot falls short of the original are novelty and soulful saturn anime cutscenes. The new combat is a pretty simplistic musou style but the attacks feel good and the presentation is solid. The combat environments could use some more variety though. The music is good and the theme song in particular is wonderful but they do play it a tad too much. Another issue I encountered was that some dialogue choices have really unpredictable results which can be pretty annoying since they put so much emphasis on the relationship-building. Overall I'm very pleased with the direction this new Sakura Wars is taking and I think they've set a really solid foundation for a modern series. I only hope it did well enough to actually get that continuation.

Never 7 is not a great game. The writing isn't particularly good and the characters often act needlessly difficult despite being older than the average VN cast. The Cure Syndrome stuff is fairly interesting but makes up a small portion of the overall story while lacking a lot of the build-up present in Uchikoshi's other works. Despite all that, between the early 2000s atmosphere, great soundtrack and small-scale setting, there's a certain charm to the game and the surprisingly short length keeps it from really being a waste of time. It's not really a VN I would recommend to anyone unless they were also a big Uchikoshi fan interested in seeing his roots but I don't regret reading it.

A total blast and nearly unparalleled friend simulator reminiscent of Little Busters but without the whole "ripping my heart out of my chest and stomping on it" part. Majikoi is consistently enjoyable the whole way through with a lovable cast of goofy characters and a very entertaining script. The translation could be a bit meme-y at times but the game's tone was already really silly so it never really took me out of the experience...except when they had the gall to do a "come to the dark side we have cookies" joke. The heroines were all great and had pretty compelling routes that were surprisingly fast-paced compared to other VNs. I also really appreciate the little side routes you can do with the male characters and a few side characters. Moro's in particular was the most hard-hitting route in the whole game. I would say most of the routes, while enjoyable, don't really end on a particularly impactful note. It's not like I'm playing Majikoi to bawl my eyes out but the potential was there after getting me so attached to the characters so it kind of feels like missed potential. One notable complaint I have is that, while it does lead to several entertaining interactions, the story has a tendency to lean too heavily on fight scenes despite a lack of effort to actually narrate the action in an interesting way.

Moro in a skirt > Mayucchi > PREMIUM TIME > Chika > Kokoro > Wanko > Mayo > Miyako > Momoyo > Chris
don't @ me

More like Nioh 1.5, Nioh 2 is generally an improvement over the first game but the flaws mostly remain the same. I like that I can make my own character this time around since William being a set main character didn't do the first game any favors. The story is a little better but still an uninteresting mix of japanese history and characters you have very little reason to care about. The level design is better but Nioh 2 retains the problem of lacking enemy variety and you generally fight the same things 20 hours in that you fought in the first 2 or 3 hours. The loot system is still completely unnecessary and decreases the value in exploring the levels. The co-op is practically nonexistant but that's more likely the fault of there being so few people helping others out. The AI companions are some of the most incompetent I've ever seen in a video game and serve absolutely no purpose in anything besides a 1v1 human boss fight. The combat system is still fun at its core, but the enemies are radically unbalanced and do far too much damage. What caused me to drop the game was the process of spending 10 minutes fighting a boss or going through a level without any incident, then dying immediately after making one or two mistakes because every enemy can 2-shot you. A ton of enemies and bosses also happen to have extremely powerful grab attacks which is very annoying considering how poor the telegraphing is on most of the attacks in the game. The difficulty just left me feeling tired even when I pulled through in a desperate situation and I just wasn't having a lot of fun. The weapons, while fun to use, have very large skill trees with very few actual useful skills. The fact that they're still each tied to a different stat is also annoying because it basically means you have to build for about 2 weapon types at most, while in something like dark souls you can switch between many different types of strength or dexterity weapons any time throughout the game. The yokai abilities are cool enough but the snake ability is so powerful there's very little reason to use anything else, especially when a good amount of them have lengthy animations that don't make you invulnerable.

While the game is absolutely filled to the brim with soul from its atmospheric cutscenes and artstyle to its cheesy-yet-cool dialogue, I just don't find myself enjoying actually playing it. The bizarre genre mix of racing and JRPG is really interesting but in my experience the JRPG aspect doesn't really do much but drag down the game for me. It's crazy that there's an overworld map with random encounters in a racing game..but I much prefer full-length races and it's annoying to find what you're looking for on the map. It's cool how much you can customize your car with parts won from races and level it up with exp...but it's annoying not knowing if my car is underleveled or if I'm just not racing well enough and you can't directly compare enemy parts to your own before buying them. On top of it all, it's hard not to compare the actual handling to other racing games like ridge racer type 4 and find it pretty stiff. Cool game, wish I liked it more than I do.

A good portion of the game consists of serviceable slice of life scenes with a likable cast of characters. The scenes with the girls could have been trimmed a bit considering how many of them are focused on food and romance and it begins to feel repetitive. Haku is a fun main character when he's not stuck in harem-esque antics and the scenes centered around his past are some of the most compelling in the game. The ending is absolutely kino and really brings up the whole experience. I would have liked more scenes with the male characters interacting for some variety, especially considering how fun characters like Ukon, Sakon and Maroro can be. The gameplay is decent, mostly made fun by the QTE attacks though the strength of the enemies can feel inconsistent at times. The CG art is great but the presentation of the silly little chibi models can take the oomph out of some scenes, especially in the first war. The story is unfortunately prone to relying on cliches at times but makes up for it with a strong cast and intriguing underlying plot.

Fun enough action game that delivers on being the self-insert fanfiction game you wanted as a kid, but doesn't really deliver on its own premise. While xenoverse 2 makes a big deal out of wild changes in history that you need to correct, these changes end up being pretty minor and uninteresting. The majority end up being either "it's the same event..but the villain is stronger so you need to help out" or "it's the same event..but broly/lord slug show up 50 feet away so you have to go fight them while the plot is happening". When you get to an event that could offer a potentially interesting scenario like ginyu swapping with vegeta instead of goku or cooler joining frieza on namek, the game just focuses on the fight and only the fight so you don't really get to see the ramifications of those changes anyways. That aside, making my own cute saiyan girl OC and learning new moves from all the different characters was pretty fun and the combat was solid, if simple.