The people who call this "hard but fair" must be playing an entirely different game than me, I certainly like this game but the number of BS deaths on my quest to conquer Hell I had is kind of hilarious.

I think the thing that makes me the most angry in this game is how badly RNG can fuck you though. Black market with no bomb boxes? Didn't see enough Kali altars to get the Kapala? You're gonna be up a fucking creek in the temple and hell let me tell you that much. And some items actively IMPEDE you such as the climbing gloves, and others are downright useless such as the spectacles.

Despite all of that, this game is a fun but downright masochistic roguelike, and I'm glad it isn't another roguelike where I go "this is isaac but worse" like I did with Gungeon and Hades to a degree. Good shit Splunky.

I tried so hard with this game but in the end it just pisses me off more than anything. Huniepop 1 was a cute game and was over before I had a chance to get bored of the gameplay, so I was looking forward to this game!

Man oh man...The gameplay in this feels so RNG based at times that it feels like I'm just hitting a slot machine! Huniepop 1 was like this at times but never so offensively, it feels like you're always getting fucked over in some way by this game. It's not horrible or anything but it's super mediocre. Baggage, while cute in concept, can be really fucking annoying more often than not, and hinders my experience rather than helps it. This is Huniepop man I'm not here to tryhard I'm here to chill out, match 3, and see some boobs.

The characters though...I hate like 90% of the cast, most of them are really fucking annoying or weird and are just insufferable to talk to. One thing I do like is the double date system allows for some interactions between characters, which Huniepop 1 had very few of, so that was kinda cute I guess. But when the characters are THIS annoying I don't really care to see them interact at all! Shoutout to Lailani for being the only new character I actually liked, she's super cute.

Not even the porn is good. The artstyle is way worse than the first game.

So I'm sitting here 70% of the way done with the game and it hits me, I hate the gameplay, I hate the characters, I even hate the porn, why am I playing this?

And so, I'm not.

God damn this game absolutely rocks, HUGE step up from Ace Combat 1 and 2. Make absolutely sure you play with the Japanese version patched into English.

I do feel like it falls to it's ambition sometimes, like having the mission design kind of crumble towards the end of the game, and I do also feel like the game handles worse than Ace Combat 2. I don't know if it was just a me problem, but enemies would LOVE to either speed past me forcing me to make an hour long turn, or go so slow that I can't slow down in time and I pass them, which really lengthened the time it took to defeat most enemy aircraft. On a gameplay level, I would say it isn't as good as Ace Combat 2.

But man, the story here absolutely rocks, I can't believe a series of 2 simple plane games lead up to a branching narrative full of twists and amazing themes, the ending especially will probably live in my mind rent free for the coming weeks with how absolutely insane it is but also how much sense it makes in the context of the game.

Overall, it's an absolutely fantastic game that falls to its ambition and scope in some areas, but I truly believe it's amazing.

This game means an insane amount to me that's hard to quantify into words, it has so many flaws but yet I still look at this game and I would feel awful giving it anything less than a perfect score. It has some pacing problems in the second half, and a lot of stupid fanservice, and some characters arcs are handled poorly in my opinion (mainly Atuy), but man...I seriously don't think I've cried so hard before at several scenes, I truly believe it's a masterpiece with my favourite protagonist of all time.