Legit one of the most creative ideas for a videogame: who would have thought that combining a dungeon-crawling roguelike with a rhythm game would have lead to such a slam dunk.

Not only a great idea, but an impeccable realization: the game is hard, sometimes frustrating, but the high replayability and bloodpumping rhythm makes you want more and more, as you explore dungeons over and over again as a divine soundtrack flies into your ears.

The amount of playable characters lead to different ways to enjoy the dungeon explorations, which lead to a surprisingly lenght.
My only nitpick is that I am not the biggest fan of the original and in-game artstyle, which I found a little jarring. but eh, that may be my bad taste, I dunno.

One of my favorite indie games. Definitely a must-play and a must-listen.

Crypt of the NecroDancer could be described as one of the most, if not the most difficult (well known) roguelike to get into. That’s not really a subjective statement either; the steam achievements suggest that less than 5% of players have completed what could be considered a “full” (All Zones Mode) run with any character. Whether this is due to the rhythm element, the initial difficulty wall that players inevitably face when they start, or some other reason, what awaits the players who eventually click with the game is undoubtedly an almost unlimited world of mechanical fun and challenge.

Believe me this struggle is not something I’m unfamiliar with myself. I first played this game in 2017, only to struggle with Zone 2 for a while before calling it quits. Despite how much I admired the game, it wasn’t clicking yet, and I wouldn’t give it another shot until early 2023 when a friend of mine was achieving big things in it.

As mentioned earlier, NecroDancer (ND) is hard. Initially, at the least. It will take even a great game player a non trivial amount of time to complete Zone 1 due to the nature of its gameplay. Movement is restricted to the laws of the world, the tune of the tomb… the rave of the grave… the…mix of the….styx… the… script of the crypt? YOU MOVE WITH THE MUSIC RIGHT?! And so do the enemies! If you don’t know what they’re gonna do then I gotta be honest with you buddy, you won’t stand a chance getting past the… the beat of the fleet… of monsters. Pattern recognition is the name of the game here. If the item pool isn’t favouring you, then you’ll need to lock in and make up the difference yourself… or just try again until you get a build that’s really broken. Except not really? OP runs in ND are VERY losable compared to other roguelikes ESPECIALLY depending on which character you are playing. One wrong move at any time can be your unexpected downfall, and trust me you’ll feel the true depth of shame when you lose a run like this.

But it’s made fair and well. ND would not be nearly as successful as it is if there wasn’t plenty of thought and testing put into how smooth it plays. Yes you have to make your inputs on time, but sufficient leeway is given to not make it a complete nightmare. If something catches you off guard you’re given just enough time to think it through and feel like a wiz of a magician after pulling it off. The heartbeat in your peripheral vision helps you notice when you might be losing the rhythm a bit and the red outlines of the beats that i often fail to see due to colourblindness will let you know when the song is almost over. These are just some examples of well thought out features that I feel are a little underappreciated, but go a long way in making sure all of the challenge that the game feeds you is fun and interesting challenge.

How have I come this far without talking about such a fundamental piece of the puzzle? In ND, the soundtrack represents something much more than just the music you listen to; it governs your playstyle and the pace at which you think and analyse. Whether it’s to your taste or not, you gotta admit Danny Baranowsky did a cracking job composing some super catchy tunes that you can’t get too tired of and fit all the individual zones and bosses so very well. I’m no musician but composing these while also being restricted to certain BPMs (and be of sufficient length) to match the intended difficulty must not have been easy. As I like to say however, limitations breed creativity, and that’s undoubtedly what happened here. Personally I love the whole thing, cheers Danny. And if you don’t, then luckily there’s like what, 6 alternate soundtracks to choose from?? Some of those soundtracks done by well known musicians like FamilyJules and Jake Kaufman, even a Danganronpa themed soundtrack (idfk why), if you don’t like any of those either then I’m going to assume you’re just out to cause problems. EVEN THEN, there is an option to insert your own music! It’s a piece of cake just throw your mp3 file in and it’ll calculate the tempo for you and change the gameplay accordingly!
What else? Oh yes, the names of all the tracks are musical puns based on where the track plays, I don’t know how they did that but it’s awesome, my favourite has to be the name for the lobby music, “Rhythmortis”, hehehhehe get it???

Hand in hand with the soundtrack comes everything that completes the style of ND. Unique and creative enemy designs, especially bosses (a freakin chess board dude), good variety in zone theming, a retro feeling art style with some charming cutscenes, iconic sound effects and voice lines, clever items. It’s all just fun and cool, and that’s all that needs to be said.

So you made it, you beat all of the zones with Cadence, probably learned most of the enemies patterns and witnessed her journey. Congrats! It wasn’t easy. As a reward you take a look at steam and realise you've got maybe 5% of the achievements... Right. So, I've barely done anything? Pretty much… Beyond this there are plenty of characters with their own individual gimmicks that will make you rethink how you play the game completely. Some easier than Cadence, but a lot of them harder…horribly harder. This is where the real game begins, rise to the challenge, you got this.

If all of this wasn't enough of a glazing session for how much enjoyment ND has brought me, let me praise the dev team more. ND released in 2015 and still receives updates to this day. It really is Brace Yourself Games’ baby... Bug fixes, balance changes and quality of life updates are always coming in. Two MAJOR content DLCs were released in 2017 and 2022 respectively. And just a couple weeks ago Hatsune Miku jumped into the game with a cool moveset and unique soundtrack. What the fuck?? This community is spoiled!

My friend and I would say there's phases to ND brainrot. At one end you have NecroBabies: players who have yet to beat all of the zones with Cadence, going up to NecroDead: players who have beat all zones mode with most of the characters, and NecroUndead: players who unlock and play Coda (the hardest character (you're a lunatic)). My 200 hours of playtime makes me very NecroDead and NecroUndead feels right around the corner.

Thank you NecroDancer, you really are one of a kind.

While I didn’t enjoy this as much as I would’ve hoped for, it’s damn nice to play another Persona game.

I’m a relatively new fan to persona, Persona 5 was the first game I played in the franchise. As a high schooler at the time my mind was blown by that game and P5R went beyond my expectations and blew me away again. I never played the original P3 so have nothing to say about this game being a Remake and for the sake of this review I will do my VERY best not to compare this to P5R since I want to look at P3R as it’s own game. With that being said, Persona 3 Reload is an interesting game that does take inspiration from P5R. As always I LOVE the art direction for Persona. You go through the daily life of a high school student to hang with friends and study for school. You can join clubs which I thought was really cool. You also get to open up new social links to build bonds in these clubs. You can do all sorts of activities that can gain you new items or accessories or increase your social stats that can benefit you on the combat side of the game during the Dark Hour. There’s many mechanics for you to use to better yourself, your gear or your team. You can also explore and find Twilight Fragments around town which are very useful to open locked chests within Tartarus. Which brings us to combat side of things. Combat is so slick and fun. You’ll pretty much go dungeon crawling in Tartarus for a big chunk of the game where you fight shadows and get loot. Sometimes after a battle you’ll get Shuffle Time which is a system that allows you to choose a reward. These rewards can be anything from money or bonuses to collect or personas and buffs for your run through Tartarus. I really like the visuals and layout for Tartarus which the art direction does great on. I also do appreciate that different sections of Tartarus which would eventually change up the layout and halls for the floors you go through so that you don’t go through same hallways. It’s also good that more things open up in Tartarus so that you don’t always just do the same thing. Eventually you’ll have to rescue people that have wondered into Tartarus and you will eventually start to encounter Monad Doors which lead into a Red Area where you can fight formidable shadows for great rewards. You can also take on requests for Elizabeth where you have to do quests for her in daytime and during the Dark Hour. And with Elizabeth there’s indeed a Velvet Room to fuse your personas. While I did like Tartarus, I did get pretty bored sometimes since it got repetitive unless I had a challenging fight. And that’s an issue I had with Personal 5, Mementos felt like a slog and Tartarus did begin to feel like slog later on in the story. Also the soundtrack is AMAZING. Like in P5R, I loved to just randomly hang out just to listen to the music because it was so good. Atlus doesn’t miss with their OSTs.

Story wise, it was pretty good but I wasn’t all that impressed. The story was okay for the first 40 hours as we have a goal we’re set on but doesn’t do much with that goal other than having to go up Tartarus to find out more and recruit new members to help in our fight during the Dark Hour. After that, the story started to pick up for me, specifically when we started to learn more about the Dark Hour and started encountering the antagonists of the story. The social links in the game were hit or miss. Some will be “meh”, some will at least be interesting, and a few I loved. I didn’t really like Nozomi’s or Hidetoshi’s social links since they were either uninteresting or just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy them. And then we have SEES, our team that fights to find out the secrets of the Dark Hour. The characters are well written and well voiced acted. Junpei is the only character I had a love hate relationship with. He can be funny but cringe most of the time for trying too hard to be funny. I also loved characters like Yukari because of her deeper connection to the story. I also love Akihiko for his cool and upstanding attitude. Or even Aigis for looking for her way of life which is interesting to see. And of course I can’t forget Mitsuru because, one I think she’s totally gorgeous, and two I really liked her social link. Besides all that, it’s really nice how you can just hang out with any of your crew members at the dorm, sadly this doesn’t increase your bond with them but you can still increase your social stats or get items like food or drinks from it. The remaining hours of the story were great and my goodness the ending hit me hard on the heart.

Honestly, I really couldn’t put my finger on why I didn’t enjoy this as much as I would’ve hoped for. Not sure if it’s because the story didn’t get to me as much due to pacing issues or if I felt like something was missing from the game. Nonetheless, I definitely recommend Persona 3 Reload as it’s a great game. There’s a lot to keep you busy and a lot to take advantage of.

More than anything this game reminds me of Dragon Quest 11. They both share the same light, hands off approach to modern JRPG design trends. In spite of its vintage clothing, the body of Ara Fell is decidedly more Xenoblade than Chrono Trigger in its density of cutscenes and gameplay systems. I was weary of the potential for bloat yet like Dragon Quest, Ara Fell is conscientious of the ideas its drawing from and the result is a lean and focused adventure.

On a kinaesthetic level, I appreciate how deeply the devs leaned into the inherently cozy feel of RPGMaker. I love the richness of these scrolling tilesets and the awkward frictions of trying to perceive where these squat sprites can manouevre into. There's an intimate sense of place these RGPmaker-isms produce, further accentuated with a lush art direction in which you can practically smell the grass scented winds and feel the drifting snow. It's a game that is staid rather than kinetic, about soaking in the world and all its lovely details rather than rushing towards the next plot point.

To that end, regular battles are de-emphasised. Battles against normal mooks are both easy to avoid and (relatively) easy to defeat, you recharge mp after every turn so there is no reason to resort to spamming basic attacks. There is not even any accompanying battle music. Growth then is mainly earned through boss fights and sidequests. The latter of which are found by naturally exploring alongside one off resources that are used for a simple linear crafting system for armor and weapon upgrades. Progression in Ara Fell is concise and silent, power is earned naturally rather than throguh constant notifications and checklists.

'Silent' is maybe the key term I've come to appreciate about Ara Fell so much. The story is wordy yet much of that weight is used to effectivley characterise the Protagonist and explore a perspective that is unique as far as JRPGs go. There are big bombastic themes yet much of the soundtrack is ambient and pleasingly blends into the overall soundscape. There are side-quests to complete and materials to collect for a crafting system but they're all diegetically interwoven into the world. In everything thus far, Ara Fell has been succinct and to the point, a joy in every way.

Random Notes:
- I appreciate how the Devs leaned into clunkiness a bit with giving every exploration activity a distinct animation and sound, it imparts a sense of weight and presence in the protagonist you don't usually see in this type of game.

- Once again I can't emphasize enough how refreshing it is to have a JRPG with no normal battle theme. I don't know if the devs were inspired by Sakimoto's work on FF12 but the lack of a hype battle theme threatening to take over imparts a similar naturalism and interconnectedness to area exploration here. Not every rpg needs a battle theme.

- I didn't really mention it much in the review but I appreciate as well how non-gated and non-railroaded the game has been up till this point. It really gives you a wide berth in terms of areas, quests and things you can find before the story even sends you there, again sort of similar to FF12. Can you tell I really love FF12 lol.

- Dungeon design is fun, nothing too complex but the little puzzles and bespoke mechanics go a decent way in contextualising them as spaces beyond hallways full of random encounters.

Origin is an interesting entry in the Ys series, as it drops many qualities that I would generally expect from one. The biggest one is that instead of an adventure, we get a straight-up dungeon crawl exploring the tower from the first game. There are various biomes, although I still ended up missing some variety. The game also has to be completed 2-3 times to get to the canon ending with most of the layouts remaining the same - something I am also not a big fan of. It is quite short as is and I feel like making the paths more unique would have added a lot to the experience. The saving grace here is that the combat is damn solid. Very similar to Felghana, but just a tiny bit tighter. It just feels really good to play. It was nice learning more about the lore of Ys as well and getting to beat different incarnations of all the bosses from the original game was very fun. Not fun enough to be in contention for my favorites in the series, but a damn good game regardless.