It is the closest any game since Hollow Knight has gotten to recapturing that feeling, so you KNOW this game is going to be peak. Considering this was made entirely by one dude including the engine over 7 years, they managed to craft something absolutely extraordinary here. The lack of any direction makes exploring this beautifully dark and atmospheric well so surprising. It's equal parts terrifying and joyful to see how the animals react to everything you do.

This game has maybe the best use of metroidvania upgrades in history??? With each new item having dozens upon dozens of different uses based on the animals it interacts with, how you interact with it, and more. This huge swab of options leads to some of the most cleverly designed puzzles and "boss" sequences I've seen in such a long time.

If there is one issue I have with the game is that I was kind of hoping for more on the music end, but it fits a good amount of areas in the game and the sound design is so amazing that it sticks with me just as hard. It's truly astounding how a game like this can come out from such an unassuming place, a 33MB game developed by one dude and published by a fucking YouTuber ended up quickly becoming my favorite game of the year, and unless my trip to Pharloom is booked this year as I hope for so dearly, I doubt anything will beat it.

I can't think of the last time I played a game where I mulled over its themes like this one. I do this all the time for great movies (I did this for The Zone of Interest a couple of months ago), but I don't think I've seen a story come out of a game that fully utilized its medium and was so artistically unique, quite like this one. It throws a LOT at the wall, and while not all of it sticks gameplay-wise, I still recommend people try this out. It's short (almost too short), cheap, and it'll gnaw at your brain hours after beating it.

Don't mistake me. This is a HIGH 7, and don't be surprised if it's bumped up by the end of the year, as I can only see myself appreciating this game more from here.

Alright, strap in. I have a lot to say.

Let's get the elephant out of the room before I actually talk about this game. I am going to bring up issues I have with the game's art direction later on but none of that has to do with how sexualized the character designs are. I am fine with all of those other characters you want to use as a counterargument. That is not the core of my issue with this game, but before I get into that, I'll talk about what I DO like because I do still like this game.

I think on a graphical level, the game looks amazing. It runs consistently well and has been thoroughly play-tested which I shouldn't have to appreciate, but most great games usually have at least some small level of bugginess that this game does not have. Additionally, on this aesthetic front, I love the game's soundtrack, probably one of the year's standouts alongside Rebirth and Prince of Persia. I also think the linear and open-world missions in the game are, for the most part, quite fun! There are some survival horror-type missions that I found particularly memorable, even if they clash really hard with the rest of the game, but we're not there yet!

But the place where I have the hugest amount of praise for this game is its combat and enemy encounters. I'm gonna talk more about the game's "identity" later but this is where Stellar Blade's identity is strongest as it can't really be put in any camp for these 3D hack-and-slash games. It's not slow-paced and deliberate like a souls-like, but it's not super quick and combo-heavy like a DMC or a Bayonetta. The combat feels like a good mix of light comboing, really nice feeling parries, strong finishers, and a good amount of diversity in the way that you can approach combat. The enemies and bosses are also very well-designed and super difficult. The game shines brightest when focused on its great combat and there is a sequence near the end that works well for this game. It's great!

The game for the most part is really fun, super polished, and not particularly painful to go through. If someone might not have some of the same issues I do later on in this review, then I can see someone loving this game to pieces. But.. I have some SERIOUS issues with this game.

Starting off is the one that everyone, even the people who like the game is bringing up. On a narrative front, Stellar Blade is an absolute mess. The game's script is written so awkwardly, almost like it was machine-translated rather than actually localized. The dialogue is super awkwardly written and some moments in the side missions just feel kind of... embarrassing? The story setup is mildly interesting (until you notice something I'll bring up later), but the story's themes are barely explored apart from naming conventions and a couple of moments at the beginning and end.

The narrative didn't even need to be particularly deep or anything. Bayonetta and DMC games don't have deep stories, but A, they're not really trying to, and B, they do have a memorable cast with personalities at least. When I heard from reviews that Stellar Blade's cast isn't the strongest out there, what I DIDN'T expect to find was the most emotionless and barebones main character this side of The Callisto Protocol.

Eve is such a remarkably bland character, lacking a single actual personality trait. They try to develop Eve in a couple of ways regarding her ambiguous relationship with Tachy, who is also boring and has no character and then dies. They do a scene with this relationship in particular near the end of the game and it just felt so stilted and not super earned. But surely the other characters are better, right? I mean... I guess so? Lily at least has.. a personality and Adam, as boring as he is, at least has some interesting things happen with them later on, but the character writing is so incredibly weak in this game and the voice acting, both in Korean and English only makes it worse.

Okay, so that's the narrative stuff out of the way, what's that other major problem I have with the game that I've been edging you out of? This game does not have a fucking identity. I've been trying my best to hold back on comparing this game to NieR Automata up to this point, because I wanted to judge this game on its own, but it's so blatantly apparent just HOW MUCH of this game was derived from it. You play as a sexy android lady from a space base and are sent down to get rid of all of the bad guys that took over the Earth. You run around a semi-open world with a little drone that follows you around everywhere and talks to you. The game goes into detail on who the guys you are fighting and who you're working for REALLY ARE and there are themes of Identity and Religion and Life. The main character is very stoic and emotionless, but unlike 2B, here it's because they aren't written to have one. Hell, there are characters named Adam and Eve IN NIER AUTOMATA.

I know this all seems super surface level, but these comparisons wouldn't be such a huge problem if they had a super strong identity on their own and it really REALLY doesn't. The most distinctive thing about this game is that you're fighting Semi-religious gross penis monsters called Naytiba instead of robots. But that feels more like it clashes with the game's sci-fi aesthetic more than anything. Speaking of clashing, the character designs don't even really feel like they belong in the same game, most notably when you compare Eve, Lily, and Adam's designs. And they are the main 3 characters of the whole game. And most of the side characters don't even have faces, which is super weird? Why does the hairdresser have no hair? What are we doing here?

This also extends to the locations, Xion just feels like a pretty generic post-apocalyptic world. Half the time, in these linear missions, you fight in ruined cities and sewers and the two semi-open world areas you get are both bare empty deserts. I know asking for visual variety in a post-apocalyptic game is asking the wrong questions, but maybe have at least one of the open-world areas not be a desert??

All of these things combined, the art style clash between the different characters, friend, and foe, in this game, the super generic areas, the basic and derivative story, the lack of any characters with more than one personality trait, and the themes it doesn't touch on very much at all, leads to a game that doesn't really have an identity of its own. Hell, even though I love the music, it sounds very much like NieR music. The game's identity shines brightest in its combat, in its missions, in its boss encounters, and in one section near the end of the game that I thought was actually excellent.

This is clearly a talented team and the fact they were able to make a big console game this good on their first try is astounding. I can only hope their next game has more of a unique identity.

TLDR; The game is well-polished, has some great music, some decently fun linear and open world missions, and some exceptional combat and boss fights, but the character designs clash super hard with each other, the environments don't feel distinct, the story and character writing are incredibly bad, and the game just doesn't have a strong identity outside of copying NieR Automata's homework.

Here is a list of every single joke review I considered making:
Shellden Ring
Floodborne
Dark Shoals
Lies of Sea
Black Myth Dugong
Shellkiro: Shallows Rise Twice
Coral Shell

I couldn't pick one.

Anyway, weird how the funny-ass crab game is the best soulslike ever made that wasn't made by fromsoft. A fun art direction, a surprisingly good story, a really cool shell mechanic, and some very strong boss encounters. It's certainly lacking polish in a few areas and the music is occasionally quite bad, but I had a really REALLY good time with this game!

It feels so odd to play a video game and have an actual reaction to the game's story like wtf?? game stories can be good???

Anyway, some parts were a liiiittle unpolished, it's missing some of the bigger advancements of metroidvanias over the past few years, and some of the combat encounters were a bit stupid in their balancing, but for a first-time team, it feels so crazy to me that this game looks and sounds this good on top of having some really fun combat and platforming sequences and a genuinely touching story. I am incredibly impressed by this game and I can't wait to see where they go from here.

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS THE EARLY ACCESS

So, as you can tell Ori and the Will of the Wisps is one of my favorite games of all time, so I was ECSTATIC when this game was revealed. I was so excited to play it and I finally got around to the Early Access. Unfortunately, the launch was a bit.. rougher than expected, Which I'll get into later, but beneath the Early Access crustiness lies yet another Moon Studios HIT.

In typical Moon studios fashion, this is one of the most beautiful games I've ever played, but in a very different way compared to Ori. Ori balances areas of darkness with equally high if not higher areas of serene wilderness, kind of like a Ghibli movie. Here though? This game is dark fantasy to the max, with some great gothic locations and some excellent character and boss designs. The Music also sounds great and the voice acting in the surprisingly well-animated cutscenes sound great as well.

Weirdly enough the sound editing isn't that great, with some attacks not having the weight that the animations make them out to have, and some things like the lock-on sound being a bit hard to discern but most of the rest of it turned out well. I can't comment on the story as we only have the first bit of it, but I am intrigued to see where it goes.

The combat is really heavy and slow, but very satisfying. There's a bit of weapon durability annoyance in there and the balancing of that vs the enemy density and strength is a bit lopsided, but it isn't too bad. It's a little weird how I can spec super hard into defense and yet some enemies can still kill me in one hit so that's a little silly.
Even more silly is the game's inventory management, which, as of now, just straight-up sucks. The UI is extremely crowded, with so much dicking around in these menus, compounded by the fact that there's no auto pickup making it a chore to collect resources which is how you offset the brutal durability system. And if you die too many times, you eventually reach that bloodborne loop where you have no healing items but you need stuff from enemies to get those healing items, which sends you into that familiar downward spiral. It can be a bit too punishing at times.

And that is on top of the multitude of Early Access weirdness in this game. There are a lot of basic QOL options not in the game, like key bind mapping and pausing, the frame rate was pretty bad at launch (though it has been fixed for me) and there are a bunch of minor bugs and features that just aren't here. In my mind, this is definitely an Early Access ass Early Access game.

And that's how I'd describe this game. It is a game that, in all of the areas that count, is spectacular. Great visuals, music, combat, exploration, and an interesting narrative. But the balancing on the game's systems, the QOL, and the polish in terms of bugs and performance could be better. This game is getting patched pretty frequently, so maybe by the next update or two, it can reach that level that the Ori games set out for it. But right now, I'd say to temper your expectations, since it IS early access.

"Nintendo's Balan Wonderworld"

For a game so small and so simple, it feels odd having so much to say on it, but here we are. Nintendo has struggled to make Peach their own character for decades. There were a handful of games that came pretty close like the first 3 Paper Mario Games, Mario Odyssey, and, most related, Super Princess Peach. I have yet to play it, but the general consensus on that game is that it's "fine", but they were hoping Peach would get a game that would actually make use of her as her own character instead of making what can be somehow described as "2D Mario for Babies."

Well, here we are! This is that game! This is Peach's first solo game in 19 years and the first one that dares to make a unique gameplay style for her alone, similar to what they did with Luigi, Captain Toad, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Wario. This has all of the makings of an incredibly successful game that would spawn its own dedicated spin-off series that would get a new game every once in a while. And yet... after playing this game, It's become apparent how little this game offers. But I'm getting ahead of myself as there is actually a fair amount of stuff to appreciate.

The game as a whole looks quite good. The cutscenes are incredibly well-polished, I love the new character and costume designs, I love the animations of Peach's moves in her costumes, and I love the stageplay theming and the little details done to make it pop like how the camera moves and how the stage props show up, it sells us on the bit here. There are a couple of technical issues with this game I'll get into later, but on a purely artistic level, this game is quite strong and manages to make a unique impression. I also really admire the ambition to, like I said at the top, give Peach their own type of game that fits her as a character. There truly is no game quite like this one in the Mario series.

But that seems to be where the good things kind of end for me, so let's start with some of the more minor issues and slowly build from there. To keep on topic, yes, the game from an art direction standpoint is incredibly strong... however, it's clear that this game is struggling on this ancient ass system because not only is the resolution, even in docked mode, weirdly low but there are a couple of moments where the game chugs down to comical levels. It's most noticeable in cutscenes, costume transformations, and some of the bosses near the end of the game. So that's not great, but to round out the aesthetic gripes I have with this game, I don't think I like the game's music all that much. None of it sounds as bad as say, Yoshi's Crafted World (keep this name in mind. It will be important later), but none of it really jumps out as all that good apart from a couple of songs in the Cowboy and Mighty Peach segments.

If you're wondering how the game is narratively for some reason, don't bother. The extent of the story is that you get trapped in a theater with some purple guys who make everyone depressed and you have to make everyone not depressed (See? Just like Balan! Like I said earlier!). There is one minor story beat that happens later that had me sit up for a second, but it's quickly reversed so that's great. Looove that. Now, don't get me wrong, I was not expecting this game to have a super deep story. But some people pre-launch were hoping at least for something small and comedic similar to the modern-day Paper Mario games, but it seems to be a bit closer to Mario Wonder in this regard. Nothing special, but it doesn't need to be. However, this flaw seems to compound when I talk about the other issues this game has.

Princess Peach Showtime, weirdly enough, doesn't feel all that fun to play. Which is weird coming from.. a Nintendo-published platformer? It's like.. usually the one thing they get right. Peach's controls are sluggish, janky, and imprecise at points. The controls somewhat improve with a couple of the costumes like swordfighter, but it never feels all that fun to use. The only costumes that I actually had a genuinely fun time playing with were the Dashing Thief and Mighty Peach. All of these different costumes control very simply and just feel like the watered-down abilities of characters from other games, it doesn't make me feel like I'm "powered up" it makes me feel like I'm caught up to where I should be. (See? Just like- wait.)

Also, if you were hoping for a single costume that would have its own dedicated section in the game that wasn't already shown in the game's numerous trailers, then I'm sorry to disappoint you, but apart from one you get at the very end, every single costume you get has been shown in the trailers. I guess this is the fault of the marketing, and I'd definitely take quality over quantity, and these are all distinct enough to where I couldn't think of too many more to add, but at least hide them!

This game is also PISS easy. Not like normal Nintendo Easy where the games are still engaging, like so easy it becomes boring easy, without any way of making the game any more difficult for yourself. Now, again, I didn't expect Peach to be a "hard" game, but I at least expected it to be on the level of something like Mario Wonder or Luigi's Mansion 3, which were also easy, but they were also fun and engaging. This game takes the easy scale so far in the other direction that it just isn't that rewarding. You get 5 hit points (or up to 8, if you want), combat arenas and puzzles are incredibly simple, and bosses never pose as a threat and can sometimes be defeated after a single round. The ones that drag are the ones that are less fun and the ones that start to be kind of fun and interesting end so incredibly quickly that I feel like I'm getting edged out of fun gameplay.

The result of all of this; the lack of any challenge throughout the game, the sluggishness of the controls, the mega-basic bosses, the fact that none of the costume mechanics have any depth, and the nature of this game having only a few levels per costume but them being weirdly long, makes this possibly the single most boring Nintendo Published switch game. There are a bunch of switch games I personally think are worse, and this game does have a couple of redeeming qualities, but when you are making a video game for entertainment, then it not being entertaining means it has failed its job. I was initially going to give it a middling 5/10, but the longer I thought about it, the more the game's sleep-inducing gameplay and lack of direction kinda made me sad.

Though, it's not all that surprising. Through data mines of the game's demo, we have found that the game was developed by Good-Feel, the creators of Kirby's Epic Yarn, Wario-Land Shake It, and the two most recent Yoshi games. I didn't really like Crafted World all that much either, but at least my expectations going into it were already on the floor and it was part of a series I lost any and all interest in. This is a brand-new game. And one, based on those data mines, we can tell has been in the works for a while. Its code name "PJ037" hints it started development in between Yoshi's Crafted World "PJ033" and Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn "PJ040". Seeing as how the latter was revealed in September of 2018 and the Switch dev kits released in 2016, I think I can safely assume that this game has been in development since 2017, which would have been a whole 7 years of development. When you play the game with this assumption in mind, you can easily see the cracks of a long and tumultuous game development cycle in nearly every corner of this game. It feels like a game that was born from the idea of "Hey! let's make a peach game!" and they didn't know exactly what they wanted that game to be so they just tried to sample a bunch of small and basic minigames to see what stuck. It lacks any kind of direction or any interesting elements aside from its stageplay theme and some creative designs. It feels like it was supposed to be so much more, or at least something different. Let's hope that whatever they plan to do with this series next, whether a sequel to this or a brand new thing, they come up with a more solid direction for the game to take.

Because, frankly, Peach deserves better than this.

"The localization is fine. Please just reconnect with soap and water for god's sake."

As someone who hopped on the VanillaWare train incredibly late, I am very happy to say that Unicorn Overlord is another really great RPG from them! It's, from what I've gathered, a lot closer to their older work than 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim. And just for starters, if you're expecting this game narratively to blow your dick off the way 13 Sentinels did, you will probably be disappointed. While the game's story isn't bad, it is fairly rote and predictable. Which isn't a bad thing and it remains entertaining due to its memorable cast of characters.

But like I said, this is maybe the one time where I can safely say that the story not being incredible isn't a deal breaker for an RPG, as the rest of the game is pretty damn great. To get the obvious out of the way, the art style and visual landscapes all look incredible. I sincerely wish to see more hand-drawn 2D RPGs in the future because this looks amazing. Additionally, the game sounds amazing too, not just with its great music but its strong sound design as well.

And of course, the strategy gameplay in this game is incredibly entertaining and borderline addicting. It seems simple and basic at first, but it opens itself up to a nice flow, while not being mindless like a bunch of the more recent FE games (insert Fates joke here). Some of the later missions especially actually required quite a bit of strategy and left me thinking for quite a bit on what path to take.

While some of its smaller gameplay systems like the Romance system could use some work (insert Fates joke he-), and I wish the UI was a lot more snappy and user-friendly with its layout, the overall flow of the gameplay is incredibly strong despite its narrative not being the most unique thing out there. Unicorn Overlord is an incredibly strong SRPG that I'd recommend to fans of the genre, even if in multiple ways, I do prefer 13 Sentinels to this game.

A near mathematically precise 50/50 split between "We're so back" and "It's so over" is lifted up for me because it's clear that there was charm, passion, and effort that went into this game. Despite the jank and the bevy of technical problems and the fact that it never seems to take full advantage of any of its great ideas, when this game was going it was GOING and for LARGE chunks of the game, too.

So even if I can't in good conscience rate it any higher, I do not regret playing this. I just wish this could have had another 6-ish months of dev time to iron everything out.