Not sure how to feel about Buried Stars. It’s a murder mystery visual novel with an interesting premise, but not a whole lot actually happens. Most of the game's events are inconsequential, and the free conversation gameplay got really old really fast. Suggesting keywords to each person over and over was so boring that I ended up just speeding through text until I could get to actual story progression, which was decent.

This might just be a me thing, but I felt the mystery was pretty simple and I figured it out almost right away. This is probably a side effect of the game's cast being super small, so there's not a lot of room to hide.

The game forces you into a bad ending regardless of your choices on your first playthrough, which I thought was a really weird choice. The game is already repetitive, and having to replay a significant portion of it was super tedious.

The game's characters are decent, and I was still compelled enough by the story to finish, but it's not an amazing game. It's just okay.

6/10

Super Mario RPG remake is great. I liked all the new mechanics, especially switching party members in battle. That said, the core gameplay is a little too simple for me. Playing it mostly reminded me why I always liked Paper Mario more. While it was still fun, I probably wouldn't play it again. I do have some nostalgia for it, but it was never my favorite game as a kid. It's always just been a game I liked, but nothing more than that. Amazing new OST though.

8.5/10

However, specifically as a remake, it's probably a 10/10 when it comes to quality of life improvements while still being faithful to the original. If you loved the original game, I'm sure you'd love the remake.

Tunic has a really cool concept: everything is in a foreign language, so you need to figure out what to do via context clues in pages of an instruction manual you collect throughout the game. Unfortunately, its quality falls off a cliff in the last third of the game.

I'm honestly not sure why this game has Soulslike elements. General enemy and boss design is just terrible and not fun to fight. I think the game would've been much better if all the focus on combat got shifted into crafting more unique puzzles utilizing the game's selling point.

That said, I liked the game up until that last third, and some puzzles like obtaining the Holy Cross are really well designed, but I wish there were more variety rather than the Holy Cross being the game's only big puzzle.

6/10

Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe has helped me finally realize what I dislike about the standard Kirby formula: the copy ability gameplay loop.

For context, I was a big Kirby fan as a kid, but outgrew the series as I got older. The one exception to this was Kirby and the Forgotten Land, which I genuinely really enjoyed and I still hold that opinion. I never revisted Return to Dream Land after playing the original when I was younger, so I was prepared to have generally fond memories disturbed by my different taste in games in my older age. My intuition was correct, and I didn't really enjoy the main story mode of the game. However, everything BESIDES the main story, especially the new Magolor Epilogue, I really liked. Let's start with the main story, though.

Return to Dream Land started the whole "go through 4-5 levels in each world, collect 3-5 hidden gizmos in those levels, fight a boss, and then move on to the next world" formula that lasted 4 games and grew very stale by the end of it. Since it was the first, I can't fault it for that, but I can't change my opinion that I'm over it by now. The whole story mode just felt like going through the motions to get it over with as quickly as possible. Some levels were cool, but there's no real challenge, and if anything, the levels can feel stressful because of the pressure of avoiding missing an Energy Sphere. I get that they're optional, but I felt compelled to collect them because the levels feel like nothing without doing so. Finding and completing their minichallenges is the only thing engaging about the levels. I do understand there's Extra mode that ramps up the difficulty, but I wasn't interested in playing the entire game again. While it only happened a handful of times, the most frustrating experience was realizing I missed an Energy Sphere and would have to replay the entire level to get it. It's less about not finding the Energy Sphere, and more so missing the opportunity to get it. Sometimes, this was because I didn't have the needed copy ability and there was no way to get it in the same room as the Energy Sphere.

I want to give a brief acknowledgment to Merry Magoland. It's a great distraction in-between levels, and I like how there's a short achievement list for all the minigames. The minigames here remind me of Mario Party minigames, and I mean that in a good way. The cosmetic masks you collect from here are also really cute and I thought it was a nice touch. I visited it often.

I also wanted to shoutout the game's graphics and music. I think "charming" is the best way to describe both, and I quite like the art style they went for. I'm still mixed on using Dedede's Forgotten Land design here, though.

A selling point for the Deluxe version of this game was the Magolor Epilogue, which is a short 2-3 hour campaign where you play as Magolor after the events of the main story. Unlike Kirby, Magolor has no copy abilities, which means he has a static base moveset for the entire campaign. You collect magic points to upgrade his abilities, and you permanently unlock new ones as you progress. There are also no collectibles in each stage like the Energy Spheres. Instead, you aim for achieving a high score by collecting as many magic points as possible. You accomplish this by keeping your Combo meter high, which you do by hitting enemies consecutively and not taking damage. I really like this system. It encourages quick and aggressive play because if you wait too long after hitting an enemy, your combo will end. At the same time, there's risk involved since getting hit also ends your combo. Getting the combo meter high is satisfying because it rewards good play, and there's even extrinsic motivation since higher combos award more magic points to upgrade your abilities.

If you couldn't already tell, I was a big fan of Magolor's Epilogue, and I found it way more fun than the main story. The combo system is great, but the main reason why I liked it so much was the lack of copy abilities. Not all copy abilities are created equal. Some are a lot more fun or are stronger than others, but every copy ability is required to be used at a certain point, forcing you to constantly switch up his moveset. When I got a copy ability like Hammer or Tornado, I was excited and tried to keep it for as long as possible, but they're always hard to fully enjoy because I know I'll need to give it up to collect an Energy Sphere at some point. Magolor's Epilogue completely solves this issue in the simplest way possible: just get rid of the copy ability system. Now you have a static moveset that you can always rely on and get used to as you play, and the upgrade system even allows you to focus on the aspects of the moveset you find the most fun. Magolor's Epilogue was a short but very sweet taste of what a modern copy ability-less Kirby game could look like.

I know Kirby will never get rid of copy abilities at this point. It's a part of his brand and iconic to his character. Here's my proposal: what if Kirby didn't ever have to give up his copy abilities? Some games have toyed with storing copy abilities before like Squeak Squad, but I want a true storage system. Let Kirby have a storage of copy abilities that he can pull out at any time, and you fill the storage by swallowing enemies of that copy ability. That way, the player will be free to use their favorite copy ability, switch to a different one when required by a puzzle, and then switch back to their favorite. Make sure the copy ability upgrade system from Forgotten Land is kept and implemented too!

Okay, that was a long tangent about general Kirby game design, but this game did help me form this opinion. On its own, Kirby's Returm to Dream Land Deluxe is a solid game. The main story is rather weak, but the side content, and Magolor's Epilogue, are fantastic. The presentation is great, and it's also a pretty fun couch co-op game. There's a lot of content, especially for if you're already a big Kirby fan, but it's also not for everyone. I'd probably give the main story a 5/10 and Magolor's Epilogue a 9/10, and even though they're not equal in length, Merry Magoland is cool too, so I'll split the difference and call it a 7/10.

I described this game to my friend as "It's like Dark Souls, but Pinocchio" and he burst out laughing. I can't say I blame him. The concept is absurd, but for some reason, it resonated with me and I think it works incredibly well.

Lies of P is a Soulslike every step of the way, and it's so high quality it may as well be made by FromSoftware. The team behind the game outdid themselves and truly captured the Souls essence while still doing its own thing.

Lies of P's strongest feature is something I can't really describe. I guess "game-feel" is appropriate? Basically, the game feels so COOL. The grim Belle Époque era world infested by puppets is a unique setting, and the designs for characters, enemies, and the world itself makes the game super immersive. Pinocchio's design is a standout, and I especially love the way he uses his mechanical left arm to break/open heavy doors.

The gameplay feels the same. Each attack is really satisfying to land, the weapon designs are sick and a lot of them are fun to use, and most of all, the dopamine rush you get from parrying an attack is unmatched. The sound effect of a parry combined with the reward and difficulty of doing so is incredibly addicting.

Somehow, Lies of P's defensive options might be its best gameplay feature. Parrying, dodging, running, and regular guarding are all viable without being overpowered, and each have different use cases. In other difficult action games, your defensive options tend to be centralized around one option, but I never felt that in Lies of P. Additionally, Lies of P is surprisingly generous. It understands that players will make mistakes, and offers the player a lifeline when players make too many of them. When you run out of Pulse Cells (your healing item), you can recharge 1 of them by landing hits on the enemy. Recharged Pulse Cells never exceed 1, and when you use it you have to recharge one again. This may not seem like much, but in practice it helped push me to play every fight attempt to the end. Making too many mistakes never felt completely demoralizing. Instead, that lifeline Lies of P dangles over your head that requires you to play perfectly stays a constant glimmer of hope.

Lies of P has a very high base level of difficulty if you're unfamiliar with Souls games, but for experienced players the game isn't actually THAT hard. Aside from a couple brutal exceptions, most bosses I was able to beat in a few tries, and that was without using Star Fragments (summons). Unfortunately, Star Fragments kind of trivialize a lot of bosses, so I recommend not using them if you want a good level of challenge throughout.

Lies of P has more than just gameplay too. Like other Souls games, Lies of P has a lore-based approach to storytelling and it's very "show, don't tell." You can find abandoned documents and newspapers and other collectibles that reveal details about the city of Krat, the Puppet Frenzy, characters' back stories, and more, but all without explicitly telling you anything. It's usually up to you to fill in the gaps/connect the dots. I always stopped to read every document I found, and I found the story to be very engaging and interesting, as they also often tend to give events you've seen before additional context that can completely change their interpretations.

And finally, since Lies of P is based on the story of Pinocchio, truths and lies are a major thematic element of the story. I kind of wish they did more with the concept, but what's already in the game contributes to the whole experience feeling very COOL to play. Decisions matter, and your actions do have consequences. Every important decision puts you on a timer to make a choice, which I imagine is meant to prevent players from looking up the "correct" answer. Lies of P also autosaves constantly, so you can't easily save scum your way out of a bad decision. The game has multiple endings based on your decisions, and one of them is definitely the definitive one. You can look up how to get this ending to be extra safe, but my spoiler-free piece of advice to do so is just this: act how a human would until the end.

All in all, I adored Lies of P. Not only is it one of the best games of 2023, but it might just be one of my favorite games I've ever played.

10/10

If you like 2D Mario, you'll love Mario Wonder. If you don't, this game won't change your mind.

I think my expectations for the game were a bit too high going in, but it's a fun game even still. 2D platformers generally aren't my favorite genre, but I still like them, so I gave Wonder a shot thinking it looked distinct from the other Mario games before this. There's a lot of great new ideas in Wonder, but it also falls flat in some areas.

To start with the good stuff, the main gimmick of the game is great. Each level has a Wonder Flower to be found, and when you touch it, anything could happen. It makes each level feel distinct from each other and keeps the game fresh, so these Wonder sections are the best parts of the game by far. I wish these Wonder Flowers weren't missable, though. They're not hard to find at all, but in each level I was slightly stressed about missing the Wonder Flower, and since these sections are the most fun parts, missing it would've really impacted my enjoyment.

The world map is amazing. It's fun to walk around and explore for secrets, and I like how open it is as well. There are some linear sections, but most of the time you can do levels in any order you please, or at least pick the order you want from a set of levels presented to you before you can move on.

The badge system is cool and gives a purpose to coins. I like how distinct they are, but at the same time the system is very limited. You can only equip 1 badge at a time, and there are a lot of badges, so I felt like I didn't get to experience most of them in my playthrough. I wish you could unlock more badge slots or at least be able to equip 1 badge of each category.

An underrated great addition in Wonder is "Break Time" levels. They're short levels, no more than a minute each, and they're all very easy. There's no real challenge to them, so they're focused on being short bursts of fun. I liked them a lot, and I felt they did a good job at helping the game's pacing.

The playable character roster is great, although I really wish the Yoshis and Nabbit had a toggle to disable their invincibility to damage. I would've loved to play as one of them, and I tried it out, but I found the game more boring that way due to a lack of challenge.

There's a pattern of Wonder having really great ideas, but they're just not taken all the way, or there's one key detail holding them back. There are things I'm just completely negative on, though.

The powerups suck. There are only 4 of them, and the Fire/Bubble Flowers feel like sidegrades to each other rather than being distinct. The Elephant and Drill powerups are cool because they really change your moveset, and I would've liked to see at least 2 more powerups like them.

The bosses are also really bad outside of the final boss. I say "bosses" but it's only Bowser Jr. over and over again with little variation between each fight.

Finally, I felt like the game started to lose its steam toward the end. Maybe the Wonder gimmick lost its novelty, or maybe I was burnt out by the really bad powerups, but the game did lose me a little bit by the end. I still had an enjoyable time, but I think if the game were any longer than it already is, I would like it less.

At the end of the day, Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a 2D Mario game, and that already communicates a certain standard of quality. It's polished and fun at a base level. It's Mario. Everyone knows Mario. This is him, it's Mario. I didn't find Wonder to be anything revolutionary, but it's a good game.

8/10

Metroid: Zero Mission is great. It's a short but fun experience with mostly satisfying progression and traversal. Its atmosphere isn't as heavy as Metroid Fusion or Dread, but it still stands out in places like the Chozo Ruins. It does have some bad design though, like fake lava pools that are indistinguishable from regular ones and you must find a couple of these to progress. The boss design isn't the greatest either. It's all worth it for the final section of the game though, which was easily my favorite part.

8.5/10

I found Oracle of Seasons to be noticeably worse than its counterpart Oracle of Ages, but it's still decent.

In general, Ages is more focused on puzzles while Seasons is more focused on action, but I don't think this was a great idea. It's a 2D topdown Zelda game on the Game Boy Color, which means there really isn't a whole lot they could do with combat. Link and enemy movesets are both very limited, so I don't Seasons was that successful in being an "action focused" Zelda game. In reality, this focus just made the game feel a lot more simple than Ages since the puzzles are a lot less complex than in Ages, and the combat isn't deep either.

This isn't to say Oracle of Seasons is a bad game. It's just very simple. Many of the tools you find in Seasons are among the coolest in the series, with the Magnetic Glove being a true standout. The puzzle design is relatively worse than Ages, but it's still mostly enjoyable. The final boss fight is also very cool mechanically, although the main antagonist is much less present in Seasons than the main antagonist of Ages.

Oracle of Seasons is a decent game. I played it, had a solid time with it, but I'll probably never think of it again. If you already played Oracle of Ages, I do recommend playing an Oracle of Seasons linked game so you can get the true ending to their combined story.

On its own, I'll give Oracle of Seasons a 7/10.

Sea of Stars is almost a perfect game, and I mean that in the worst way possible. The presentation of the game is fantastic; it might have the best pixel art I've ever seen. The music is superb and many of its songs have become regulars in my playlist. The gameplay is excellent and challenges itself to solve common pitfalls of JRPGs, like players hoarding their resources. The combat itself is like a blend of Chrono Trigger x Mario & Luigi, and I mean that in a really good way. Overworld traversal is surprisingly fun too with the equipment Sea of Stars gives you combined with great level design.

If any of what I just said is what you care about most for a game, you can stop reading the review now. Sea of Stars will be an amazing experience for you and I highly recommend it. For me, though? It had one of the most disappointing stories I've ever seen and turned what could have been one of my all time favorites into just another "pretty good" game.

I don't like making reviews filled with spoilers, since I feel it defeats the purpose of a review. It's difficult for me to give my full thoughts on the game without spoiling the entire story, so I will instead give a list of what I didn't like about the story while staying as vague as possible.

-The character writing is some of the worst I've seen in a JRPG, especially for the protagonists Valere and Zale. I honestly struggled to remember their names for the first few hours of the game because their characters are such nothing pieces and they never go anywhere interesting.

-The main antagonist of the game is a brilliant idea that's, in my opinion, executed horribly. There's many ways they could have showed the villain's impact on the world, or explored relationships the villain has with other characters more, but Sea of Stars just doesn't do anything with it.

-The "normal" ending was so horribly unsatisfying that I honestly don't know why they bothered putting it in the game, let alone making seeing it a requirement to get the "true" ending. The true ending is honestly worse in some aspects, but is at least better gameplay wise.

-The writing as a whole is pretty bad. From my understanding, Sea of Stars did not have a professional writer and it unfortunately shows. Really badly. In the English translation at least, grammar issues are common and characters often don't speak in a natural way. While the meaning of what they say is still clear, it makes the game feel a lot more unpolished than it should be.

-I'm aware this game is a prequel to The Messenger, but I haven't played it so I'm unaware of how its story is supposed to connect to that game. However, there are several major characters in the story whose arcs are literally left hanging and we never hear from them again even though their plotlines aren't resolved, so as a standalone story, Sea of Stars fails miserably in terms of dealing with loose ends. At least an acknowledgement of what happened to them would have been appreciated.


The story of a game tends to be what I remember the most about the game. I loved playing Sea of Stars, but I fear its really bad story will make my opinion of the game only get lower with time. If it even had a passable story or half-decent character writing I would have been comfortable giving the game a 10/10. The other aspects of the game really are that great, but I struggle to find anything redeemable about the story. For that, I'll have to limit it to an 8/10 at the absolute highest.

3 months later edit: Yeah it was just as I feared. The story/writing soured my opinion on the game as a whole and I'm almost actively disliking it now.

Baba Is You is the hardest game of all time. Seriously.

It's an incredibly creative puzzle game where you manipulate the logic of the world, but it's often too confusing for its own good. I like to think I'm decent at puzzle games, and I still found this game to be brutally difficult.

I respect Baba Is You a lot as I still love the concept of the game, but ultimately the game was just not really my cup of tea. The first time I played it, I tried to complete every level and I got too frustrated so I ended up shelving the game. I went back to it on a whim and didn't force myself to complete every level this time, and I found it much more enjoyable. Baba Is You is relatively open, so if I got stuck, I could just go somewhere else and try a different puzzle.

7/10