Basically the first game if it had, you know, good gameplay. NEO isn't perfect, since there are questionable writing choices at times, particularly with the under or misuse of certain characters later on, some of the nostalgia pandering is a bit much (why did Joshua need to be here, again?), and despite it being FAR more fun in terms of gameplay, it can still feel quite repetitive at points. Nevertheless, NEO is a great game in its own right and a more than worthy sequel to the DS original. The new characters are charming and (mostly) well-developed, and they don't feel upstaged by any of the old characters. I got really invested in some of their struggles, ESPECIALLY those of Shoka. [I wish the best for her and Rindo going forward... :)] More importantly, THE GAMEPLAY IS ACTUALLY GOOD NOW! Tying the pins and their respective psychs to specific buttons and party members feels so much more intuitive and fun than whatever the hell they tried with two screens back on the DS. Experimenting with different psychs, stringing combos together to lay down stronger beats upon the enemies... it's all so much fun. Plus, as expected from TWEWY, the presentation is as hip as ever, despite missing much of the late-2000s charm of the original game, and the soundtrack is an absolute bop. While I had a few issues with it, I was overall very satisfied with NEO: The World Ends With You, and it makes me feel even more guilty for not enjoying the original. I will never forgive Square Enix for throwing this game out in the open with no fanfare.

Amazing game, why didn't I play it sooner? Eight-year-old me would have been HEAD OVER HEELS for this, I can tell.

Anyway, have any of y'all ever fantasized about video games that don't, and likely never will exist? Between 2014-2015, I constantly daydreamed about a traditional sidescrolling Kirby game for the Wii U titled "Kirby's Return to Dream Land 2". Real creative title, I know. Since I had only played Return to Dream Land on Wii at the time (as well as Rainbow Curse when that came out), and saw a few gameplay videos of past games, mainly Epic Yarn, I took a rehashed, dumbed down version of this game's synopsis and slapped Return to Dream Land's gameplay style on there for this hypothetical Wii U outing, complete with the Super Abilities. Instead of Yin Yarn sending Kirby to Patch Land and turning Dream Land into fabric, Kirby, Bandana Dee, Meta Knight and Dedede get banished to a faraway solar system reminiscent of Patch Land (minus the patches and yarn and all that jazz) by... evil doppelgangers of themselves. (I was, like, 9, okay?) I think I might have just straight-up depicted it as Patch Land at one point, but changed my mind about that later. Those six planets would each have their own themes that were similar to the pieces of Patch Land. The first world was, surprise surprise, a grass world where you swing an Ultra Sword and fight Whispy Woods. The bosses in this "game" would actually have entire levels leading up to them, something Star Allies ended up doing later. The first world even had an adjacent hubworld akin to Quilty Square, where you could play minigames, test copy abilities, and make your own space. Anyway, the second planet was a desert, similar to Hot Land if Pyramid Sands were its only level, and the boss would be Hooplagoon from Rainbow Curse. The third planet was candy-themed, like Treat Land, and Kracko was its boss. (Why wasn't he in the original RTDL, anyway?) The fourth planet was an ocean, much like Water Land, where you fight Acro from the Dark Matter trilogy. The fifth is, you guessed it, an ice planet akin to Snow Land! It also featured the only original idea I had for a boss in this "game", that being an Ice Golem. Cherish it. The sixth planet, instead of being themed around future-tech and space like Space Land, would have just been a generic sky world--basically Nutty Noon again. I don't exactly remember who I pictured as the boss of that world. I think it was either Dyna Blade or Landia. Anyway, the team has now made it back to Planet Popstar, which has been turned into a fiery hellscape, much like what happened to Peach's Castle in NSMBU. The first level would be a volcanic region where you fight Magman from Kirby 64... for some reason. (I wanted a fifth playable character in the form of the companion from Super Star, so I made Magman be their doppelganger, okay?) The second would be a forest-turned factory where you fight a mech piloted by Shadow Bandana Dee. The third would be the Halberd where you fight Dark Meta Knight, the fourth Castle Dedede where you fight Shadow Dedede, and finally, in the very last level, you would hop between Another Dimension and the skies above Dream Land on your way to bring Shadow Kirby down.

Sounds lame, right? I know. This theoretical mainline Wii U title obviously never came out, which honestly might be for the best. Besides, when I finally played Kirby's Epic Yarn for the first time, it hit me; my theorized Kirby's Return to Dream Land 2 was this very game all along! It has the same scenario, same structure, mostly same level themes... but it's also infinitely more charming, creative and fun than younger me could have ever dreamed of! Man, I REALLY wish I got to play this game while I was still a child. I should also probably stop daydreaming about games that don't and won't exist.

So anyway, where's that Kairi-focused Kingdom Hearts game with Nintendo characters and worlds at?

Yukari...
Junpei...
Akihiko...
Mitsuru...
Fuuka...
Ken...
Koromaru...

Shinjiro...

Aigis...

Thank you... for everything...

A better Metroid killer than Samus herself ever was.

God, what a fucking disaster. For the past few years, I sometimes thought people were exaggerating how bad this game was, but no. After playing it for myself, I can safely say that it really is that bad. It claims to be a grand, epic breakdown of Samus Aran, when the story itself is just a basic-ass sci-fi thriller with cardboard cutouts for characters and several laughably stupid twists the game desperately wants to invest you in. Samus herself is butchered as a character. Instead of the stoic, badass bounty hunter she usually is, she's a robotic, brooding edgelord without an iota of what made her interesting in past games. She even breaks down like a toddler upon seeing Ridley again, an enemy she's defeated SEVERAL TIMES IN THE SERIES BEFORE! I'd somewhat buy it if this game was a proper prequel to the original game (like, let's be honest, it should have been), but do you really expect me to accept this after Zero Mission, the Prime games, Samus Returns and Super? This is TEXTBOOK character assassination.

Well, at least the gameplay must be fun, right? NO. All the atmosphere, exploration and satisfaction that came from previous games is reduced to atoms. This game's "areas" are just spaceship hallways, spaceship hallways and more spaceship hallways. They're boring and repetitive to look at, and especially to run through. There is not even a single memorable new piece of music within this game, if you can even call it music. Worst of all, this game controls like ASS. Combining the gameplay of the 2D Metroids with the Prime games was a good idea on paper, but it's utterly butchered by forcing the player to use just the Wii Remote. Moving around 3D spaces with the Wii Remote's flimsy D-pad feels awful, and being unable to move in first person is even worse. The combat is often mind-numbingly easy due to Samus' auto-aim in third person, but it also gets frustrating and unfun at times due to missiles being locked to first person mode. Why couldn't we use the Nunchuk? That would have solved at LEAST three quarters of the gameplay's problems.

It's easy to see why Nintendo put this series on the shelf for so many years after this game. If I produced something this bad in a series I've worked on for so many years, I don't know if I could ever make up for it. Thankfully, the series did eventually redeem itself with Metroid Dread, but that was OVER A DECADE LATER. The only good things to come from this game were Anthony, the remix of Ridley's theme, and a handful of decent boss fights. Aside from those, this is an insulting low for an otherwise great series, and the brighter its future gets, the more we should leave this waste of a game in the dust where it belongs.

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