Initially, my thoughts on this game were not very positive. While I enjoyed the aesthetics quite a lot, and found the boss battles quite fun, I thought the whole run-n-gun part of the game ruined the game. I also thought that some of the bosses in Inkwell Isle II were incredibly annoying and frustrating, and I couldn't really see this game as anything incredible.

But then I got to the good part. As soon as you reach Inkwell Isle III, this game gets really good. The boss battles are a huge step up in my opinion, mainly because they all have such cool concepts I think, and the run-n-gun levels are a lot batter, which is due to the fact that they feel a lot easier. Maybe I just got used to the formula, but I was having a lot more fun with this game when I reached that point, and up until and including the end, I was having a very good time. The aesthetics is probably the strongest part of this game. I don't think anyone would dispute that, so I won't dwell on it for too long. I also loved the sound design, because it felt suitably cartooney at all times. What I didn't like as much was the music unfortunately. When it comes to jazz, I am a big fan of the outliar genres. Spiritual Jazz, Free Jazz and Avant-Garde Jazz. This game seems to play it way too safe in my eyes, and the result is a soundtrack that is appropriate, but uninteresting. Nevertheless, I did come to appreciate this game with time, and I will definitely play it again!

Continuing my long journey to complete all Zelda games, Link's Awakening was next on the list. And I must say that I had a lot more fun with this game than with A Link to the Past, especially towards the end when everything was going the most smoothly. The final two dungeons are easily some of my favourite dungeons of any 2D Zelda game. However, the other dungeons didn't leave that big of an impression on me, which is probably because the game felt very puzzle focused as a whole. There wasn't really ever a break from the puzzles. You figure out where to go through exploring and/or talking to people (a puzzle), which leads to a dungeon where you figure out where to go through exploring and/or talking to things. Except for the bosses and mini-bosses, it felt pretty samey. Which is unfortunate, because the story and especially the story implications are probably some of the most interesting in the series. Because, when it comes down to it, are you really the good guy, and the bosses the bad guys? Worth thinking about if you've played the game. I also enjoyed most of the music with the exception of that damn tune that plays every time you pick up a powerup. I think this game might be a lot better on repeat playthroughs.

This game was honestly a lot of fun. I liked the mechanics, and how accessible it felt. The music was also very moody and added very well to the whole experience. Many interesting ideas that worked out for the most part, like there being nothing that indicates that the starting party is the main cast, because you can actually lose your entire starting party by them dying and being replaced with other people that you find. Dogs were really powerful allies in this game that can easily take out most aliens while not being able to operate mechanical things. Made for interesting considerations. I was quite bummed that they didn't let you take two cars to have a party of MANY members. However, I guess that would have been a lot harder to balance from a level perspective. The problem that lead to me not finishing this game, however, was the second-to-final world. Because the first level there was such a huge difficulty spike that I actually felt turned off from the game immediately. It truly felt like bullshit, which is a shame, because I really liked this game. But even though I may never finish it, I still had a lot of fun and consider this to be a good game!

What a phenomenal game! The platforming here feels a lot better than any Mario game I've played for sure, and the level design is incredible too. However, what really sets this game apart are the beautiful prerendered backgrounds and sprites, and the wonderful atmosphere and music. This game seems to focus a lot more on atmosphere than almost any other platformer I've played. Actually, Rain World is probably the closest one when it comes to atmosphere. Playing this game felt great, and every level was awesome! A masterpiece that surely blew my expectations out of the water.

Maybe not the best way to play this game, but at least I finally played it. And man, what a game it was! The first thing that stuck out to me from the beginning is how absolutely gorgeous the backgrounds are! I was playing a bit of Donkey Kong Country while playing through this game, and these two games really made me fall in love with the prerendered backgrounds as a concept. They look super detailed, and they always seem to paint a picture of what is happening. In Midgar, it seems like every single background tells a story of the people who live there. And that is absolutely amazing. Something that isn't technically as impressive are the 3D models, but I found them to be very cute and made the game feel like a toy theatre or something, which is something that was successful in disarming me for some of the heavier moments in the game's incredible story. And it really was incredible. I felt like I got to know the main cast very well, especially Aerith, Tifa and Cloud, which are now some of my favourite RPG characters. But a story and aesthetics can seldom carry a game alone, so luckily this game has very nice gameplay and one of the best soundtracks. I like that the battle system is timer-based, because it makes it very exciting and stressful. This was especially true during some of the final bosses of the game. I wouldn't say that it's a particularly hard game, but I don't think it really needs to. Playing the game without grinding and facing every enemy was something I found worked very well to increase the difficulty, and if it ever gets too hard I also find it super satisfying to grind, as you progress so quickly between levels, you level up quickly, and the battle theme is a major jam that I love. I loved almost every song from the game with the "Hurry!" theme and the two final battles being my favourite songs from the OST. Fortunately, the OST is on Spotify, so it's very easy to access. But one of the biggest reasons as to why I love this game is because it does something that even some of the darkest games I've played haven't done. If you've played the game, you probably know what I am talking about, and I won't say what it is. But trust me when I say that it is incredibly well executed and gives you the exact feeling that it wants to give. This game was basically as good as it was hyped up to be, and probably exceeded my expectations. Everyone should experience this!

I went in to this expecting a crazy game and got a game that was even crazier than I expected. There are so many things here that I absolutely loved! The gameplay is incredibly satisfying. It just feels right to roll up everything in sight. Another thing that helps with the satisfaction is the fact that the soundtrack is pretty damn great. Lots of short, but catchy tunes here that contain some pretty sick production. I loved how the game felt so relatively relaxed. It feels like a game that doesn't punish you, but in this case this is absolutely not a negative at all, because it helps making the experience amazing! I also loved that it showed everything you collected in a collection, something that most players probably won't find interesting enough to look at, but for me it was just a very nice touch. The thing I struggled with the most was the controls, although I did get used to them after a while, and when I figured out that I could turn a lot quicker by using a specific command, the game began feeling a lot more nice! But at the end of the day, any game where you can roll up everything from small fruits and animals to hilariously oversized walruses, octupi and even huge buildings, is going to interest me at least a little bit. Luckily this game turned out to be everything I hoped for and even more on top of that. I am probably gonna play this a lot more and have an absolute blast with it!

Dropped this game mainly because of everything here feeling so extremely risky and unreliable. Usually, my strategy while playing stealth games is the "can't be found if there are no enemies" approach, which involves killing or neutralizing all enemies I find. Problem is, in this game I found that to be extremely unreliable. Multiple times, I surveyed the scene, shot an enemy with what I assumed was a silenced weapon, only to miss even though I was aiming right at his head and triggering an alert instantly. I also felt like it was very unclear what the enemy could actually see. Even though you have a sound and shadow meter at the bottom, which in theory should work excellently to show how noticeable you are, in practice I found it to be pretty damn unreliable. I was found by enemies multiple times even though my light meter showed that I was in pitch-darkness. And it is also often unclear which way an enemy is facing, making you get detected easily even when you think the enemy is looking away. I only got three levels in, and gave up there because of how frustrating it was to sneak past everything just to trigger an alarm that you couldn't even see. I may return to this game in the future, because I really do not consider this to be a bad game, but at the moment, I feel like I don't have the energy to continue. The soundtrack is absolutely one of my favourite soundtracks of all time though. Amon Tobin is a bloody genius!

My feelings on this one shifted a lot throughout the game. I was really enjoying myself in the beginning. It felt really nice controlling Samus in this game, which was one of my main issues with Super Metroid, that the controls felt a bit clunky. Here they worked really well, although I wish that you would keep your ground speed when jumping, which was something Super Metroid had. I felt like the level design was pretty suited to the game. In Super Metroid, you had a map, which meant that you could make the game very big without having to worry about the player getting lost. Metroid II has no map, and therefore it is much more fitting to have the game being more linear, which it also is. This game is incredibly linear compared to basically all other Metroid games. But it works because of its limitations. I also really enjoy the main premise of this game. In Metroid II, you are basically committing genocide on a planet's population of Metroids. Your goal is simply to kill them all. And you have a counter at the bottom, which helps you keeping track on how many Metroids are left to kill. The game starts off pretty easily, but has a pretty smooth difficulty curve, which towards the end turns into a difficulty spike. The final four metroids and the final boss are without a doubt the hardest parts of the game, which is as it should be, I guess. And this was the point where I was getting a bit frustrated in the game. It all worked out in the end, though, because after countless tries, I finally defeated the final boss, which was incredibly satisfying and kept that mood until the end of the game. And that is a really important thing. It's ok for a video game to frustrate you as long as you feel that reward after the struggle. There were some things I disliked about the game, like some rooms being way too long, but ultimately I felt like this was a really good game. Possibly even better than Super Metroid, but I'll have to replay that game on the original console to see how I feel about that. For now, this stands as a great Metroid game!

Continuing my period of retro games, I decided to try to get into the Kirby games. And so, I started from the beginning, at Kirby's Dream Land. Now, I've played some small bits from Kirby games before, mainly from Kirby's Epic Yarn for the Wii. But this is the first Kirby game I've completed. And god damn, was it short! Only 5 levels with the last level basically being a boss rush. It was a lot of fun though. The bosses were pretty varied, and although everything was a bit on the easy side, I still had a lot of fun. It felt like something I needed after the huge challenge that was Ninja Gaiden. Something more chill, you know? The music was pretty good, especially King Dedede's theme and the second stage's theme. A really fun time that I could probably return to a lot in the future!

Without a doubt one of the strangest games I have ever played. On first playthrough, there seems to be little that could be described as a story, and the environments felt very amateurish at times, and at other times just weird and strange. The gameplay is nothing worth talking about, as you literally just walk from point to point most of the time. But I still did enjoy this game, mainly because of the music. This game does something very cool when it comes to the music, and that is to integrate it completely into the game. Most of the music is played in the background, but there are elements that are controlled by how you move, where you move, etc. The result is an incredibly weird, but cool, soundtrack, unlike anything I've ever heard in a video game. Alongside this game, you can download a libretto that apparently explains things a bit more. Because of this, I absolutely do not consider myself completely done with this game, and I will definitely pick it up again at a later date to try and fully understand it. So, for now it stands as one of the most unique games I've ever played.

So here it is. I completed what by many people is referred to as one of the hardest games ever made. And sure, a big reason for that is that you are intended to play it on the NES, which has no saves. That, and the fact that if you die to the final bosses even once, you are sent back three levels. I played it on the 3DS, so I used save states. Initially I only used it so I wouldn't have to start over from the very beginning every time I started up the game. But in the end, I realized that the final boss gauntlet would actually be way too difficult (in that you have to play through three levels to get one single try at them, those levels being some of the hardest in the entire already damn hard game), so I saved before the final boss and retried until I beat them. Now that I have figured out the strategy, I could probably beat the game without using those final save states if I tried to, and I may do that in the future. Why? Because this game was so much FUN! I cannot underemphasize the importance of everything dying in one hit in this game. Because this game is hard, the enemies are relentless and infinitely spawning, and they knock you back into bottomless pits if they hit you, killing you instantly. You can also die by running out of health, which happened to me many times because of how relentless the barrage of enemies is. This would have been majorly annoying and have made the game borderline unplayable if the enemies did not die in one hit. But they do, and this makes the game SO enjoyable! Sure, it's trial and error most of the time, and you have to memorize many of the later stages and make up strategies for them, but I actually think that is part of the fun. The infinite continues this game gives you encourages this play style in my opinion, and it's very quick to restart, so it feels seamless. Probably one of the best games for the NES!

I wasn't sure whether I was going to play this game or not, but then I read a review that argued very much in favour of this game. This is usually all it takes to convince me to try out a game, so I did just that. And boy, I do not regret doing that. This game was refreshingly different from any other Zelda I have played, and while it had some frustrating things, I did enjoy my time with it quite a lot, especially towards the end when I had mastered it. Let's first talk about the combat, because I consider that to be by far the strongest aspect of this game. In the beginning, it feels good, but not incredible. This, however, changes once you acquire the ability to do down thrusts and up thrusts. This makes the combat feel amazing, and at the most frustrating portions of the game, this was what kept me playing honestly. And the sense of achievement of having beaten a game that is this hard, but I digress. The level design is functioning, but not anything special. I was surprised over how easy it was to navigate most of the dungeons, even though they didn't have a map, and the rooms looked pretty similar. I say most because the Great Temple was actually so confusing that I decided to look up a map just to not have to waste too much time just searching it in vain. But I still really liked the ending portion of the game, and the boss of the Great Temple was definitely my favourite. Speaking of which, I find it interesting how in many NES games the bosses are easier than the dungeon or even some of the enemies. This was not the case for the bosses of the two last temples, but it was definitely true for the rest of them. But they were all pretty fun. Another thing I liked about the game was that the items you got in the dungeons were not to be used in the dungeons, but instead in the overworld. This is very fitting for the game in my opinion, because it is a 2D platformer instead of a "traditional" Zelda game. In that way, it feels almost like a Pokémon game, where you unlock certain abilities and are able to use them on things you have seen earlier in the game. But my favourite aspect about the game has to be the difficulty. This game is hard for a beginner, and you will struggle at first. But as you get better, you will see yourself plough through most of the sections that you used to have huge trouble with. The Iron Knuckles and the jumping bird enemies are my favourite example. In the beginning, Iron Knuckles are this huge threat that will probably kill you over and over again until you learn how to fight them, but once you do you simply destroy them. And while you do not exactly destroy the bird enemies as they are incredibly difficult, probably the most difficult in the game (I honestly died more to them than to any of the bosses combined), you learn to fight them more easily. After having finished this game, I just felt this huge feeling of accomplishment, as if I had just completed a humongous task, which I possibly also had. It was a great game all the way through, and while there are some flaws, such as some frustrating dungeon designs late in the game, and some incredibly annoying enemies, I had a blast honestly!

Dropped this game because of a couple of reasons. I don't like this game. I think Mario is annoyingly hard to control, which is not exactly complemented by the level design that has a huge preference for platforming, which becomes incredibly awkward. People often praise SM64 for its level design, but I think it's frankly horrible. The levels are ugly and unrealistic in their structures, and while there are some cool tricks, it's far too often incredibly annoying to move around. I will say that I do not hate everything about the movement. I like how fast Mario can get. Unfortunately, this is done a lot better in Super Mario Sunshine, which is probably my favourite 3D Mario game, so 64 can't really compete. Another thing that is absolutely atrocious and unacceptable is the camera, which barely functions in my opinion. This makes traversing some of the landscape a nightmare, and after a while I couldn't stand it anymore. Sorry, SM64. I gave you an honest chance, and I probably played you a lot more than I actually enjoyed. But this is not a good game unfortunately.