There's really just something special about this game. It's hard to put my finger on it exactly, but I just love this game, and its arguably my favorite 3ds game. The way the different "lifes" interact with each other is so fun and entertaining, and the dlc dungeon gives the added difficulty the game was lacking in the main story. Mastering each of the lifes in the game came to be somewhat tedious towards the end, but being able to always do something productive towards progressing life quests just feels so rewarding. The combat is also surprisingly fun, even if it is a bit simplistic overall. The music and graphics are also a nice touch, as are some of the customizable aspects throughout the game (your character, main combat style, gear setup, the allies you bring along, buying and furnishing houses in different towns). There's just a lot you can do, and it was really fun trying to do all of it.

This was just one of those games I couldn't get enough of. I've probably played through this game (or at least large portions of new files) around 6 or 7 times, maybe more. While this game definitely has fewer options for builds or weapons than the other games in the Souls series, it makes up for this in the attack varieties on each weapon. This makes most weapons a blast to use and master, and can easily make almost any weapon someone's favorite. The atmosphere for the game is perfect, and the dlc is on a whole new level of great. Easily one of the most defining exclusives to exist on PS4, and also in contention for best FromSoft game overall.

This game essentially takes what made Mother 1 and Mother 2 great and expanded upon it, while simultaneously fixing the major issues plaguing each game. The story is excellent, a huge upgrade from the previous titles. The gameplay is similar to Mother 2, but is expanded with more fun options and fixes encounters by making them easier to avoid at times. Grinding never felt like an issue at all, and the chapter structure was great early on to introduce the cast from different perspectives. Also, this is easily one of the best soundtracks I've heard. This game is packed full of amazing songs throughout, and I can't say that I really dislike any of them. Hopefully someday more people can enjoy this game, at least in an official capacity.

This game is a perfect balance of cool, fun callbacks to older games from the NES and SNES era and modern classic that we keep seeing from amazing indie developers. The game uses 8 bit and 16 bit artstyles and similar gameplay to a standard platformer, all the while having great dialogue and wacky story decisions that just make this game really stand out. The game eventually becomes a Metroidvania, where you have to retread a lot of areas to seek out new areas and items. This is super fun, and the way a 16 bit artstyle is used to convey a futuristic setting compared to the starting style of 8 bit is very cool and creative. Bosses are all great throughout the game as well, and the dlc has some great callback to classics just like a lot of the main game does. The entire experience is amazing. One of the best indie games I've played.

The story was definitely one of the best ones in the series, and is also the best first game for a new main character in the series. I honestly have very few problems with the game overall. The biggest issue really is that while there are two fighting styles (tiger and crane), crane style is pretty bad compared to tiger. It was intended to be used for crowd control, while tiger was meant for 1-on-1 fights, but honestly I just used tiger for pretty much the whole game. Crane style has the problem of getting blocked too easily, and often the wide sweeping attacks it has fail to land on enemies as a result of being blocked by just one enemy. Tiger can break through enemy guards, so this isn't a problem for that style, and it also is the only style of the two to have exclusive skills for it, meaning you just don't get some skills during crane style. Outside of that issue, chase battles have been brought back, and are kinda boring compared to how they were in Yakuza 4 and 5, since you just need to follow them until they reach a certain point, which is ridiculously easy and almost impossible to fail unless you're trying to. This game also chooses to not reuse any of the previous characters from the Yakuza series, bringing in an all-new cast. Pretty much every new character is well-developed, and almost every event in the story has some plot relevance, which is really cool to see and makes each scene have more weight behind it. Takayuki Yagami is a very interesting protagonist, and while it sucks not getting to see any fan-favorite characters in this game, Tak is able to be a great fit for the new hero of these spin-offs, and the other side protagonists are all cool as well. There's quite a lot to do in this game, like most games in the Yakuza series. I was a bit disappointed to see they didn't have Karaoke like most of the previous games did, but there's still more than enough things to do besides it. The detective theme fits quite well in the Yakuza series, giving a different take on the Japanese underworld that isn't really something we can see through the eyes of a character like Kiryu or Ichiban. Overall, I think this is one of the best entries in the series.

It's hard to say how I felt about that game honestly. Most of the game was really fun, although a lot of early relics felt boring to get since they didn't really do much. Also most of the game was a bit too easy, although some sections felt way too difficult in the inverted castle if you didn't just use mist to bypass them. While I liked the forms, wolf was kinda useless most of the time, and mist just seemed like a better bat most of the time too, since you can't get hit out of it. I liked the rpg elements a lot, and finding new gear was always cool, although a lot of the time I would already have better stuff already. Music was enjoyable throughout, although I wish the inverted castle used more themes than it did.

Game was pretty fun, although some of the game could be cryptic in terms of what you were expected to do (like when they give you a bracelet you have to wear to open a certain door). This game could've used a better map too. While it wasn't really bad (pretty much the same as SotN), it wasn't really any better than before, and there were many times I had to look up where to go because I had to go to a room that looked finished on my map just because I missed something. Combat was pretty fun, and I did like the spells, although I do think that they are a bit too strong (especially since they don't even use hearts). Music was good, but not as memorable as other games from prior entries.

While some of the earlier levels were both fun and challenging, the second to last level felt pretty bad and wasn't that fun at all. Most of the bosses are alright, nothing special. The bat was easy if you had axes and super annoying if you had anything else. Medusa was really easy, and Mummies was a kinda annoying, yet not too hard fight. I have mixed feelings about the Frankenstein and Flea man fight as well as the Death fight, because while they are both cool conceptually, they feel just a bit too hard in execution. I also did not like the Dracula fight at all. The window to hit in the first phase felt too short, and the second phase was extremely rng dependent of whether he would jump high enough for you to safely go under him and not take damage. Sometimes he just wouldn't do it and I had to take a hit just to not be trapped against a wall. I also don't really get why his whole body wasn't a hit box in second form, since he just transforms into a monster. I also disliked the damage scaling in the late game. Taking a single hit and losing a quarter of your health is just dumb, especially to the Medusa heads or the Death scythes. Overall I'd probably give it a 5 or 6 out of 10, since the game does still have some fun levels and good music, and while the Death fight and Frankenstein fights felt a bit difficult, they were still kinda cool fights.

The actual gameplay is pretty fun, and it's cool that you can level up and collect different whip upgrades and sub-weapons to use. I also like the feeling of traveling between different towns and mansions to collect the parts of Dracula, since it makes for a cool story. I think that with a proper remake, this could be a really good game honestly. However, the game does have its fair share of issues. First and foremost it needs a map. I followed a walkthrough for pretty much my whole playthrough because of how confusing it could be on exactly where you needed to go. After playing for a bit, I do think I maybe could figure some of the stuff I looked up out on my own, but I still believe certain parts need to be explained better. The day and night system was a cool mechanic, but I wish you could still heal at churches at night. There's also only 3 bosses, and they're only in the last three dungeons instead of being spread out through the whole game (although they probably just should've had more). The leveling system only rewards you with exp if you kill something and pick up a heart that it drops, which means not every kill will level you up. There's also very little music in the game. I feel like I heard about 5 or 6 tracks overall, which for a slightly longer game (compared to the first game) really isn't that much. Finally, the bosses were too easy. I killed Dracula in under a minute, and I wasn't even cheesing him. I expected the fight to at least be kinda difficult. Overall, the game has some cool ideas, but ultimately it fails to put them into practice well.

There were a lot of fun aspects in the game, and it does a good job at always giving you something to go after, whether it's exploring a new area, collecting monster souls, or just looking for new items. I do think healing is a bit of an issue this time around. There's hardly any healing items to be found, as far as I could find there wasn't a healing armor like in Harmony of Dissonance, and enemies just don't drop healing items like in that game either (or if they do, it's extremely rare). That's also an issue, enemy drops. It took like 15 minutes for me to farm an enemy just to get their soul ability, which was required to progress to get the good ending. I'm not sure why they couldn't simply have you find that particular ability, or why they made the drop rate so low to begin with. Also I do wish there was a forward dash like in Harmony (there is technically but it's super late). Otherwise, pretty much everything was good throughout. The music was cool, and the bosses were actually kinda challenging sometimes.

The game is honestly not that bad. It is definitely plagued by feeling very slow and having some pretty challenging jumps that are kinda hard to tell if you will make it, but it is otherwise a pretty short and straightforward game. The bosses were kinda cool since all of them were new as far as I can tell, and the last two levels were pretty well-designed. Stage 3 in particular was really cool, since you are constantly running away from spikes that are coming from the walls or the floors, making it pretty intense. That being said, it's not a bad portable Castlevania game, just not one I'd say is that good either.

Overall, the game improved a lot over the first one. Movement in general feels less stiff and more fluid overall, which is great. The game again had a bunch of cool new bosses, with Soleil and Dracula both being pretty cool fights. This game has pretty solid music throughout, and while I was initially disappointed that some of the unique mechanics in the first four castles weren't fully explored in those levels, they were used well in conjunction with each other later on in the final two levels, which was a cool way to bring everything together. I honestly don't think I disliked a single level this time, and they were all pretty fun and never overstayed their welcome. I like that you don't lose whip upgrades upon getting hit anymore (at least not by most enemies), and I loved the edition of the Holy Water and Throwing Axe sub-weapons. While it would've been cool to see more, both weapons offered something fairly unique and useful, so I don't mind it just being the two. Out of all the Castlevania games I've already played from the collection (1, 2, Adventure), this is the game I'd be most likely to play again at some point.

Overall, the game has a lot of cool ideas, but not all of them work out quite as well as they should. The card system is a really cool and fun addition, and it adds a very unique aspect to this game that none of the other games have in quite the same way. The ability to make unique combinations to achieve up to 100 abilities is really cool. However, the biggest downside is that you have to farm for pretty much all the cards, which can be a slog with their very low drop rates. The top set of cards, named after planets, are only dropped by 1 specific monster each, and I actually never got the last 3 cards because of how difficult it is to fight or reach those enemies, let alone grind them until I get the card I need. The bottom set is a bit more forgiving, being dropped by a few monsters each for most cards, although again the last two are difficult because of the enemies that drop them. While I love the idea of having all 100 abilities, losing out on roughly 40 abilities because of the enemies that drop the cards is kinda lame. Enemies also seem to just do a lot of damage for some reason, especially later into the game, and unless you're grinding for levels it honestly feels like you have to stack attack items to do decent damage, making that problem worse. I think the game's enemy difficulty could be turned down a bit and it would feel a lot better. Most of the bosses were actually pretty cool, and they were rewarding to fight because every boss gave you either an upgrade or access to new areas. Base movement speed should be a bit higher so dashing is required to move at a normal pace, although I do appreciate the fast speed of dashing. Music was good, had a few pretty memorable tracks, but not quite up there with some of the best in the series. Overall a pretty decent and often enjoyable experience, with a noticeable amount of annoying aspects that drag it down a bit.