The original game is one of my all-time favourites, and this remaster was wonderful and did a lot of things very well. First of all, playing this on the ps4 feels really good. It was always a bit inconvenient to play it on the PSP in my opinion, as it ran out of batteries quickly, and had a very small screen. But I played this game for bloody hours on the trashy PSP that we had with duct tape holding the battery in place as the battery hatch had been lost. But on the PS4, this game simply looks incredible. The artstyle really gets a boost from being that upscaled. Wonderful stuff! I played it like crazy for many days in a row, and was seriously addicted for a while. So I decided to 100% it, because I had never done that in Patapon 2 before. It was quite a journey, although it made me very aware of one of this version's biggest flaws: the fact that it is on the ps4 means that there is a bit of input lag from the controls, which makes playing this game a lot harder timing-wise. It isn't a big problem though, and some of the challenge was welcome, but you felt a bit cheated by the fact that you couldn't really do the inputs that you wanted to at all times. I would often intentionally get out of Hero Mode back in the day to protect my hero from harm sometimes, but Hero Mode became way too unpredictable to reliably be able to do that this time. Overall though, this is a great way to experience one of my favourite games of all time!

An incredible game, an incredible journey through a gigantic undergrond world. A world that feels living, but corrupted by all the different diseases going on throughout the different parts of it. Needless to say, the art is incredible, and really sells all of the different locations to you. Another thing I really liked a lot was the stag network. It just makes sense that there would be a subway of some sort underground, and not only is the stag damn useful to travel around quickly, he is also cute as hell, as is actually most creatures in the game. With games, I usually play them quite slowly, one hour here and there on and off for like a month or something. But I felt myself coming back to this game for multiple hours, sometimes up to five in a row, which to me is really a sign of an incredible game. One drawback of a game being this addictive is that you can get tired of travelling around, which definitely happened to me a bit. But whenever it did, I tried to just slow down a bit, and take in the environment, which immersed me more in the feeling of travelling through this broken world.

The combat in this game is also an incredible part of it. I love how you can use different charms to give yourself a certain edge in battle. I liked range and speed over everything else, so I picked charms that would increase those stats, so that I would become a fast-attacking monster that slaughtered basically everything in a matter of seconds by the end of the game. It felt awesome, and very appropriate to its metroidvania status, as one key aspect of those games to me should be how incredibly overpowered you feel when you have collected everything, and is just powering through all enemies that previously gave you trouble.

It was a true joy to explore this world. The map system is great, because it doesn't give you too much information at first on where you are heading, but reveals everything you have explored when you get to a safe zone (which in this game are benches). This makes the map exploration of this game feel rewarding, as the map gets expanded all the time simply through your exploration, and most importantly, it shows you the paths that you may have missed sometimes, which encourages further exploration. By the end of the game, I had found almost everything there was to find, that's how much fun it was exploring.

So, what we have is an incredibly fun game here. I enjoyed myself so much every second, and it all gets tied together into a nice big package by the fact that everything feels so coherent in the game. There are no creatures in this massive world that feel like they do not belong there, they are consistent with the art style of the whole game, and most importantly, they make this world seem so incredibly alive.

I haven't really delved into real time strategy games that much (Spore is probably the only game that is even close to this among my played games), so I figured that Pikmin would be a great start. Also, I love playing Olimar in Brawl, so I figured I should find out how his game is to play. And I honestly had a blast. It was super easy to get in to, and pretty addictive while I was playing it. It was very fun to control all the pikmins and to make them do different things. It was cool how every area was almost like an open world where you could collect things in whichever order you wanted, and it felt natural after a while to just bring a whole lot of pikmins into the field and structuring their duties difficulties. I made some of them collect other pikmins so that my pikmin count would increase, and others would just follow me along to battle all of the different enemies that this planet offered. It was pretty hard to find all the ship parts, but I managed to get every one of them, even though some seemed to not even be required. The music and the atmosphere were other huge pluses, especially the music. The sliding guitar chords played in the third area was such a cool song, and I immensely enjoyed my time there. But probably my favourite aspect of the game was that it made you learn through trial and error in a way that didn't feel unfair or unfun. You simply had to test what would work. I remember seeing the enemies that breathed fire in the third area, and thinking "I wonder if the red pikmins are immune to fire", and they absolutely were.A related story is that the first time I got near water, I actually lost half of my pikmins through drowning, but it didn't take that long to get them back fortunately. Olimar's narration made the game feel more immersive, and made me love the day system, because I could always look forward to Olimar's funny comments at the end of the day. There were of course some things that I enjoyed less, like how it could take a long time for pikmins to react to my commands sometimes, but I feel like it would have made the game worse if that was absent, because it would make the pikmins feel less like living creatures and more like mindslaves. I wish it could have been done a bit differently, but as it is, it is not the worst thing in the world, and it was not really something I thought a lot about when playing through this game. I recommend this game to everyone, because it is very accessible, cute, sort of sad, and fun!

After many years, I finally played the last part of the Metroid Prime Trilogy. I don't know why I waited so long considering that I loved the first two games. But I do regret it, because I did love this game too! Metroid has always been about enviromental storytelling and atmosphere a lot, and I love how Metroid Prime took that idea and immersed you more than most first person shooters had done at this point in history. In the third game in this series, the game feels a lot bigger because of all the different planets you go to. I find the planets to be a really good thing, because it makes it easier to find your way around the world. In the earlier games, you had to usually traverse huge distances to get to some areas. In most cases this was not a big problem, but it is nice to see a different approach. I was also a big fan of the lore from the races who used to live on the planets, and I did go out of my way to find all of the lore entries. The game felt a lot more streamlined than the other two games, but that wasn't something that I considered bad, just different. It made the pacing really smooth, and I don't think I ever got stuck, which definitely happened in the earlier games. Because this was released on Wii, motion controls were a big factor, and I think it was a resounding success. The controls feel amazing, and I also really liked the way it used the nunchuk. It felt a bit awkward to shake it in the beginning, but that was something I got used to, and it was definitely super satisfying to rip off armor from bosses with the flick of my wrist. The music was also good, although not really as memorable as the first two games. Even though this was a really good game, I do have to favor the two earlier games, mainly because of the atmosphere, music and setting. Still a damn good finale to this trilogy though!

Dropped this game because Spirit Caller was just so much better, and I started playing that around the same time. This game is unfortunately way too slow, and your opponents are ridiculously strong in the beginning in my opinion. While that was initially fun, I found that the system of reserving battles was pretty boring unfortunately, and I don't think Yugioh got that good as a game until archetypes really became a thing, and that was not here. I did enjoy building a deck and finding the optimal strategy for winning, but in the long run it is simply outclassed by later games it seems.

I decided to dive into this series after a friend recommended it to me. And I decided to start from the beginning. Initially, I felt very lukewarm towards this game. I was not underwhelmed, because I didn't really have any high expectations to begin with, but it was not really that impressive up until the second to last dungeon, which was where I was beginning to have a LOT of fun with this game. The main reason for this is probably the combat. It works really well, and even though it does at most times feel like a glorified "spam x" simulator, it felt satisfying to get incredible combos on enemies, which really started happening once you got to that point in the game. But the thing that kept me going so that I could reach that point in the first place was definitely the music. The soundtrack has to be in my top 10 list, because every single song is just so solid. I loved all the world themes, all the battle themes and so on, my favourites probably being "Night of Fate", "Hollow Bastion" and "Forze del male". Yoko Shimomura has gotten a huge upswing in my personal rankings list after having played this game. The best part gameplay wise was the final two areas, with the exception of a particularily bullshit fight thrown in literally the room before the final boss. I think I died more in that room than to any actual boss in the whole game. I didn't bother to do a lot of the extra content, so I never got to fight Sephiroth or any of the other optional bosses. I don't think I would want to 100% this game, as it seems to require a lot of grinding, and grinding is very frustrating in this game. I definitely noticed that I was a bit underleveled for the final dungeon, but it was pretty fine with the exception of that one fight. The story felt coherent and satisfying to follow, and I really liked Maleficent as an evil force throughout most of the game. She had such a perfect voice in my opinion. The game does have its fair share of goofy moments (no pun intended) though, usually through the stupid stuff Sora does in certain cutscenes, but I thought those moments were funny, and certainly didn't made me dislike the game. I had a good time with Kingdom Hearts, and I am thankful that I played the Final Mix version, as I heard that the original didn't have the option to skip cutscenes, which would have been incredibly annoying against some of the harder bosses. Definitely give this game a shot if you like hack n slash games with RPG elements!

This review contains spoilers

I played this game all the way through together with a friend, and I was immediately interested because of how extremely bleak the scenario depicted here is. I am a huge fan of so-called "Feel Bad" media. Things that only focus on one thing, and one thing only, which is to make you feel as bad as possible. Good examples are LISA: The Painful (in my opinion), movies like Lilja 4-ever and Requiem for a Dream, and music like Swans' "Public Castration is a Good Idea". So for that reason I wanted to continue, because I wanted to feel this classic feel-bad sort of catharsis that I usually experience from the best of these films or games. And when I had played through the entire thing, I thought it was good, but not as good as I had expected. So I ended up giving it a 7.

That was before I experienced the two other endings. These two completely change everything to be completely honest. I never thought a piece of media would be able to make me feel such horror and joy combined at the same time. If I were to describe the story in one expression, it would be "horrifying beauty". This is probably the first review I have done that warrants a spoiler warning, so from now there be spoilers. I loved the final ending especially, the one where Fuminori and Saya win, because what that ending symbolized to me was the fact that despite the lovecraftian concept of a creature (Saya) whose entire purpose is to hijack the main species of a planet to essentially rule it, what the ending actually shows is that love trumps everything. Now, the planet did end up hijacked anyways, because this is Saya no Uta, and a completely happy ending would be sort of out of place, but Saya did that out of love for Fuminori, not because of her biological urges. She did it as a final gift to him, a way to slowly make the world feel beautiful and normal again. But at the same time, it is absolutely horrifying, because what this ending means is that the entire rest of the world's population will feel a similar agony to what Yoh experienced when she was converted by Saya. But it was this duality that made the ending feel so complete to me, probably leaning more to the beautiful side. Because Saya no Uta tells us that the world is a highly subjective place, where your world view can change everything. To someone who wants to eat something quickly, McDonald's may seem like a nice place to go, but to someone else, supporting McDonald's is to exploit people who are being worked to the bone there. That discussion is an insanely complex one that can be boiled down to a difference of opinion in my opinion. Saya no Uta takes a very extreme approach to this, but shows through this that no matter what world view you have, you can find joy and happiness, even if it happens on top of the suffering of someone else. Not really a message that one should take to heart in that extreme of a way in my opinion, but it's an interesting and beautiful thought that this game presents.

Like I have mentioned some times before, I usually get quite turned off by games that lean too heavily on the 8-bit or 16-bit styled graphics, especially if they also use chiptune extensively in their soundtracks, because I think it negatively influences the image of video games, as people you know who do not play games themselves often think about 8 or 16-bit when they think video games. However, I try my best to put this bias aside when playing new games, and I am glad I did for this game, because I found Celeste to be incredibly enjoyable, and there are many reasons as to why. Let's start with the most obvious one: the gameplay! This game, like many other platformers, is based on different levels, but one big strength it has is that it never feels like you are playing individual levels. In Mario games, levels feel pretty arcadey, in that you go in, beat the entire level, and then you continue to the next level from a selected overworld. This system has many benefits, like for instance the fact that an overworld or hub world can give more clear breaks between different hard segments, and as long as a game is structured around this, it's absolutely fine to use. But I'm glad that some games work differently, like Celeste for instance. In this game, the entire world is one long segment, where you restart from the beginning of a room if you die. This is better for world building in my opinion, because it makes the world feel coherent, instead of every level being a sort of microcosm. The worlds are also very well designed in my opinion, especially some of the final worlds. They usually take the classic approach of giving you a certain gimmick, and then using that gimmick in as many ways as possible in an increasingly difficult row. It's great! My favourite worlds are probably the two final ones. These ones are great because they are also great from a story perspective, and feature some difficult, but fair platforming. This game always manages to be completely fair in its challenge, because there are no lives and you can just retry as many times as you want until you succeed with a challenge.
The story in this game is very interesting. You play as Madeleine, who has decided to climb this mountain called Celeste Mountain. But she is unaware that the mountain has the magical ability of making your inner demons into a physical entity, which is something that you fight throughout the game. This is a game about depression, unsurprisingly, and it goes about the theme in a good way in my opinion. It also manages to be very cute at the same time. I loved how all of the voices were synths that just sounded like voices. That was incredibly satisfying to listen to in my opinion, and it made me want to engage in all dialogues that you can engage in within the game. But the main thing I loved was the gameplay, not to mention how satisfying the musical progression felt. I especially liked the music of the final world and the hotel, with the hotel being the one that I still listen to a lot. Lovely, cute little game!

All things considered, this is a pretty good game even if I decided to shelve it eventually. I just don't really have the energy to complete it even if I did enjoy my time with the game. I love how you can just blast away at all enemies, and how busted your second ship gets once you upgrade him fully. I dropped it mainly due to how trial and error everything felt, which isn't really a bad thing, it's just that I do not have the energy for that now. And the music is pretty great too.

This game took forever to beat. More exactly 90 hours and 13 minutes. But I loved it from the very start! I began playing it in the summer of 2020 with the goal of beating it before summer's end, as my PS2 is in my vacation spot, and not where I live. Needless to say, I did not manage to beat the game, but had to complete it during my winter break instead. I spent many hours playing it during the break, and I actually managed to beat it just hours before I was leaving. That felt incredible. But enough backstory, let's talk about my opinions, of which I have plenty!

I came into this expecting a pretty standard JRPG, and that is also basically what I got. The unexpected thing was how basically perfect it handles this "standard" JRPG idea. It has a story that is reasonably intriguing, but pretty simple compared to some other games, but where the game succeeds is how amazing the sense of adventure in this game is. It's not just that there is an overarching quest, but every town you visit (and trust me, there are many) has its own sub-quest so to speak, so it feels like the game is telling an overarching story and lots of small stories too. This adds to the feeling of adventure, and another thing that really accomplishes this is the amazing soundtrack. Really one of the best I've heard probably. It sounds absolutely wonderful due to it being played with live instruments, and I love the neoclassicistic style that most of these tunes have, especially when it strays more towards the "neo" part (looking at the final dungeon theme as one of my favourites). I also grew to absolutely adore the battle system. I like games where you don't really have to grind, and this game balances that out with the tension system. By charging up your tension, your damage will increase in exchange for your turn, and once you get to high tension, you will deal ridiculous amounts of damage (but tension returns to normal after doing something with it, so it's not completely busted). You can actually potentially one-shot certain bosses with this, and it's definitely an incredibly satisfying mechanic to play around with. I managed to beat the game while being under the recommended level according to a strategy guide, and that speaks volumes as to how useful the tension system is. This game also features a great roster of characters, which all have great voice actors. The voice acting and the dialogue is definitely the funniest part of the game, and just made me appreciate it a lot more. The game also has a massive world which feels great to explore, and it feels like every new place has a different and unique culture, and I can definitely remember basically every town I went to. So everything feels unique in that way. Overall, probably one of my favourite RPGs ever played. Highly recommended if you have like 90 hours to spare!

It isn't really that different from Pokémon Sapphire, which I have played many times, so this playthrough is mostly just because. I guess I will judge it based on the differences, and I think the roster in this game is pretty great. Maybe even better than in Sapphire; I certainly prefer Zangoose over Seviper, and Shiftry over Ludicolo for instance. So, if you wanna know my opinion, go to my Sapphire review, it basically still holds true.

I think this game basically does everything it does perfectly. It achieves exactly what it set out to do, which is to feel like a holiday. I fell in love with it from the first moment I picked it up, and very quickly I found myself considering this game to be a perfect 10. I don't think I have played it enough to justify such a rating though, and I would like to try it with a controller, which is something that I do not have where I am as of writing this review. It worked fine with mouse and keyboard, but I can imagine it will work even better with a controller. But I nevertheless loved this game. The world was incredible. Very small, but still big enough to find new things all the time, and because it was so small, I made it a goal to try and find my way around it: learn it by heart so to speak. While I didn't succeed on that, I am not planning on giving up. I loved the music, the atmosphere, and the movement mechanics. Skydiving to gain speed was super satisfying to do, and the golden feathers function like both a collectible and a difficulty select screen. It's one of the cutest games I've played too, and for those reasons it deserves this strong 9 that I've given it!

It's interesting to say the least to play all of the classic games that many people have nostalgic memories of, but I have no memories of. One single word could describe this entire game, and that word would be "epic". This game is truly epic, in the traditional sense. The stakes are always super high, and become even higher as the game progresses, and I love that the game becomes even bigger once you think it's about to end. If I was to compare the story to something, I think it would be Fullmetal Alchemist actually, mainly due to its structure and even though the two villains have completely different motives, I think the things they do are actually pretty similar, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if Hiromu Arakawa was in some way inspired by this game. Though it can also be the case that she was inspired by traditional manga, and that this is the case with this game too. But I digress. One of the best aspects of this game is definitely the characters, and also the way they are integrated into the battle system. Every character is played in an unique way, which is very different from the game I played before: Final Fantasy VII, where any character can be basically anything. Celes and Terra are probably my favourites since they have such interesting story arcs throughout the entire game, and they worked very well in my team, Celes being the main firepower and Terra healing a lot. The combat system in this game is similar to that in FF7, but it doesn't have limit breaks. I love how characters have things that are completely unique to them in this game, like Sabin's Blitz or Mog's Dance. This makes me like all characters in battle in different ways, even though some unfortunately are clearly stronger than others. I think this game was a lot more streamlined than 7, and it was often a lot easier to figure out what to do, even though some things in the second half were pretty confusing. It had a lot of set pieces, and it felt like a ride from one epic moment to the next basically. I'm glad they kept up the tradition of keeping the dungeons short usually, because I get sick of over-long dungeons in RPGs. This game also has one of the most insane villains I've seen in a video game, and I enjoyed Kefka a lot everytime he was on the screen. And finally, the music in this game is pretty good overall, but becomes amazing once you reach the final battle. For at least a week after finishing the game, I couldn't stop listening to "Dancing Mad". It is a tune fitting of this game: epic, long and with peaks and valleys. Even though I probably prefer Final Fantasy VII over this game, I still consider this to be a masterpiece. There were some parts that were a bit annoying, but overall, this game left me with a great sense of satisfaction when I finally finished it. Damn, what an incredible game!

It seems like this game was hyped up by a lot of people, but I honestly didn't feel that hyped for it when I was to start playing it, mainly because I had played Overland which, while good, was kind of broken, and therefore I didn't expect a lot for this game. That was an expectation that wasn't exactly supported by the game, as I actually enjoyed myself quite a lot with this game. Actually, that is not completely true, the game itself is actually pretty boring a lot of the time. But I feel like my time with this game was worth it, because of the characters mainly. This game acts a lot like a visual novel in that the absolute main focus on the game is the dialogue and characters, which definitely are the strongest aspects of this game. The dialogue is pretty Undertale, but actually a lot better in my opinion. It seems to be perpetually self-aware of itself, so everytime the dialogue is a bit ridiculous, it always seems intentionally so. I also LOVE the environments of this game, it really nailed this pixar short film-feeling. And I also loved how the story got progressively crazier and crazier, culminating in an almost Lynchian fashion. I think a big reason as to why I got so relatively into this game was because at first, I played it with my girlfriend, and her enjoyment of it made me enjoy it a lot more, and we actually played it for a couple of hours together. A lot of times, this game may feel like a slog to get through, because there is just so much to do at most times. Talk to every character every day. And you should also explore completely as the secrets you find will absolutely be worth it in my opinion. But I'm not gonna lie: it was hard motivating yourself sometimes. But I ultimately felt it was worth it, because of the elements mentioned above. Something that adds to the game is how incredibly immersive it feels. My favourite element of that immersion is definitely the fact that the tune that plays when you are about to wake up from sleeping is constructed in a way that makes it feel awkward to turn it off by waking up whenever you do it. This is a good metaphor for being in a dream and suddenly waking up, and I do believe they thought about that when they made the game. Also, you can play games within games, and there is a lot of attention to detail when it comes to world building. Every major company that you would expect to see has been replaced by a similar company, but in this imaginary world. So, this game is interestingly enough a game that pulled me in through something entirely different than its gameplay. It had its moments, but it was the characters, setting and art that really made me stay. Great game, honestly!

I honestly felt quite fed up with this game after a while. Mindless exploration is not really for me, it seems. The music is great, and the different environments that you explore are very cool, but I think I have gotten a big grasp on what prevents this game from being good in my opinion, and that is the walking speed. It would be one thing if you could explore at your own pace all the time, but to me it seems like you are always at the mercy of the slow walking speed, which makes the whole game basically just waiting for things to happen. Waiting for the door to come close enough. Waiting for something to appear, which always seems like a longshot considering that the different dream worlds were way too confusing to be able to consistently find your way. Which may well be intentional, but it unfortunately didn't make for a compelling game in my opinion. I am glad that I have played it, but that's about it unfortunately.