almost 25 years after its release, and with no nostalgia toward it whatsoever, my first playthrough of this game hit me like a truck. some of the best pacing in the entire interactive medium, wonderfully confusing and mysterious plot, and a thorough intensity that never lets up. for me, half life beats doom 1 by a considerable margin as my favorite old school fps. most people try to hype up how innovative or ahead of its time this title is, but on its own, without the greater context of how it shaped the industry, half life is a fucking adrenaline rush that few games can replicate.

fascinating as a game that's fundamentally structurally different to almost all modern RPGs of its ilk, fallout 1 hardly even has a traditional gaming narrative as much as it has a world

i have no idea if that's the norm for CRPGs of this era but i found it really cool and refreshing! the 'main quest' quite literally is just your three different objectives, which unravel themselves really seamlessly as you discover more about the wasteland

the only thing that i think really lets fo1 down is how buggy it can be, as well as some of its more questionable balancing decisions. i know generally when an RPG presents you with some kind of horrible disaster you're supposed to just carry on but it still stings having your companions hit for more hp than their entire (fixed!!!) health pool while fighting entirely level-appropriate enemies, it feels less like a mistake you're just going to have to live with and more like an obvious quick load point

still very close to being a masterpiece though. other reviews on this page have put it much better than i ever could but the atmosphere presented here and the ending will stick with me for a while, the master is a mindblowingly written and voiced character for a 1997 game, genuinely unbelievable stuff

What's apparent now, playing the series in order, is a kind of dual progression through Metroid 1-4. Super Metroid was a return to the original Metroid design-wise, super open-ended and structurally similar, with a return to the planet Zebes for its setting. Metroid Fusion is something of a controversial title as a sequel to Super, but it's really better thought of as a Metroid II follow-up. It's similarly segmented, perhaps owing to each game's status as a handheld title. The progression is linear, and the storytelling more direct than it's open-ended counterparts. We return to the setting of Metroid II albeit in an orbiting station, and similarly focus on the morally dubious actions of the Federation. Both also lean into horror and claustrophobia, something aided by the small device they were originally exclusive to.

With the framework by which I judge Fusion established, how well does it achieve its goals? Pretty damn well, actually. Sprite-work, animation, control, level-design, all are of an excellent quality. Music is suitably atmospheric, and set-piece moments with the SA-X absolutely deliver. I have more reserved praise for the storytelling, which I feel could have got its point across more succinctly, but I still appreciated the angle it was coming from.

Metroid Fusion is a superb and tightly paced little slice of action-horror platforming. The worst thing you can really say about it is that it's not much more than that. Definitely play this one if you get the chance.

I've had passing encounters with megaten before; this is the first one I've played for myself.
I've grown rather fond of this game over my playthrough, but I'm not gonna pretend like it doesn't have massive fucking problems, because it does, particularly in the difficulty. The RPG part of the game isn't that difficult, almost every enemy can be cheesed into oblivion with status effects. The actual difficulty of the game is trying to navigate the clunky menus and labyrinthine overworld without plunging your fist through the screen. You are fighting for your fucking life through hordes of encounters that yield no EXP every tile of the map except for the save point. I'm sort of glad that you don't need to keep track of your party members' weaknesses or use a lot of complex strategy in this game because otherwise it would just feel completely unfair to blindly stumble through a dungeon maze for an hour and then get obliterated by a boss because your party is unknowingly weak to its attacks.
For all of my complaints, I enjoyed the story, characters, music, and general atmosphere of the game a lot. The demon negotiation mechanic is a cool part of the battle system. What strategy elements are particularly present in the game are also fun, especially involving managing demons.
Probably going to spend the rest of my life imagining an intricate, well done remake being released and getting sad that it doesn't exist.

a lot of people (including me) dismiss the older SMT games at first due to their age and this weird stigma of them being unplayable or unfair. Shut tha fuck up. SMT 2, while slightly scathed by cryptic SNES bullshit and backtracking, is a very fun and engaging experience, retaining a lot of the features of the newer SMT games while also having one of the most impressive video game plots of its time which is still impressive to this day. The gameplay may be simple but I'm ashamed to say I enjoyed it more than nocturne, though its a bit on the easy side. Music is as good as always and the visuals are a large improvement over the first game. I urge anyone who's a fan of the series to give this a shot, as it may surprise you.

I think over time I've come to see this game as more of a companion to the original SMT rather than a clear improvement. Sure it's less broken than the original game, but the game design can be more frustrating, especially in some of its more mean-spirited attempts at difficulty. In particular, I think of the magnetite resources that deplete at a frankly insane rate and the Magic and Intelligence stat checks (useless stats on your main character that you're supposed to just throw away points to so you can get past arbitrary walls).

Despite those shortcomings, the game's world and story are top notch. Truly. The kind of stuff that I was left thinking about for weeks on end after I beat the game, in particular the way that the game focuses on the Law side of things which brings forth a lot of interesting statements on religion and the way that societies built solely on religious values fail their people. It's good stuff! At least as good or better than most of the stuff on the SNES.

I know old-school dungeon crawler type stuff might be hard for lots of people to get into, but I've found these old SMT games to be rewarding to a point where I'd heartily recommend them to any JRPG fan looking to expand their horizons a bit. (especially if you're mostly versed in modern games.)