This game is only as high as 2 stars because the fighting game gameplay is mostly unchanged from the previous X games.
Not much is different, but there is 2 new modes, GG Boost and Versus (4-player). I could not get past stage 1 of GG Boost, it was awful. I played a bit of the 4-player versus, which seemed mostly fine, but I had no interest in continuing.
This game features no story, but it introduces A.B.A (as well as Robo-Ky Mk II, but, whatever), which is a shame that she was introduced of this slop.
I don't have much to say, I played like 15 minutes of this game before saying no and deleting it. I didn't want to play through the side scrolling adventure any longer.

A nice follow-up to X, and probably, most definitely surpasses it.
The story of this game is very simple, I-no wreaks havoc, and hijinks ensue. Because of this the general plot is a lot more expanding, and there are much more subplots behind the main one, as well as the assassin's guild plot. There were many interesting reveals, and I enjoyed the additions of the new characters. Slayer is a great addition, Zappa is interesting, Bridget is cute, and I-no is mysterious. I also loved the addition of all the Robo-Ky's, it added great tension to some of the character's endings, for which there are 3 for each individual character. It's also all voiced, a great improvement toward X Plus!
I may be wrong here, but the gameplay to me feels very similar to X. It features the same sprites, attacks are the same, the only thing I could only tell was different was the voicelines. The new characters feel great, but there isn't much to say compared to what I had to say when comparing X to the original.
The character's themes also sound the same from what I could tell, maybe I'm wrong, but that doesn't mean they were bad. Like all Guilty Gears, the music is great! I especially like the ending themes, of course.
Overall, there really isn't much to say. It's X with some new characters, and a neat new story. This is only part 1 of 2 though, so I have to wonder how little I'll be able to say about the next (main) installment as well.

This game is a huge step-up from the first, and while not perfect, it's a game I can see myself returning to. It's more than I can say for the original.
My biggest complaint is with the story, or I guess you could say the lack of one. Like the original game, it features no story mode, and the arcade mode is what you use to experience what story there is. Unfortunately, however, the way this game goes about this is somehow worse than the first game. The winning quotes feel much less specific, and when you finish the thing, nothing is shown but one piece of artwork and credits, leaving you to simply assume what just went on. I thought this was super lame, and was baffled how there wasn't even dialogue exchanges near the end like the first game did. Luckily, the japanese-only updated version "Guilty Gear X Plus", DOES feature a story mode, and delves deaper into each character's stories, and it's great! I especially loved Dizzy (she deserves the world). Sadly, I'm not reviewing that game, so it leaves this particular version's story rather lackluster.
The gameplay is where this game really shines compared to the original Guilty Gear's. Everything has been improved, and it all feels much more balanced. Every character felt fine enough to play as, and one didn't seem a lot better than others, which is a great step above the first. Instant wins are also removed! Or at least, ones that don't win you the entire match. The moves feels smoother as well, and I found myself using overdrives a lot more often, it just felt much more fun. There was also the addition of difficulty options, which was great my newbie self. The updated graphics during the battle was also stellar! The pixel art is so freaking nice, it's very fluid snappy and helps make the gameplay more satisfying.
Along with the gameplay, the music felt more catchy and has definitely seen an improvement too! The ending themes are wonderful, the battle themes were good, and I loved Dizzy's pre-battle theme (I'm not really sure what to call it?).
It's odd, when I first played this game, it was like a swing of both love and disappointment. I cheered for the better gameplay and wonderful art, but then got disappointed for it's lack of story, but then understood the gameplay more, and found myself enjoying it quite a bit. This game was a major improvement for Guilty Gear, and I can't wait what the next game has in store!

I'm going to preface this review by saying that I am NOT a fighting game veteran, in fact, I believe I've only actually played like 3 traditional fighting games before this, and only one of them I am actually somewhat competent at. So, please keep that in mind as i talk about this game and the upcoming games.
I woke up about a week ago at the time of writing with an INTENSE urge to get into Guilty Gear, which was already a franchise I was a bit acquainted with and wanted to get into, with only one problem: it was a fighting game series. I'm no good at fighting games, plain and simple, but I've been meaning to get into this series and ALSO play every game in the series in order (well, mostly), so, here we are!
I was immediately engaged with this game's story from the start. None of the backstory is explained in the actual game itself, but it's all explained in the manual. Information about the world, the plot, and the characters, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was actually very surprised at how interested I was with every character, their stories, and their motivations to enter the tournament with the prize of one wish being granted. While it's very clear that this is only part of a grander story, I think as it stood it was pretty neat! I can't wait to see how it advances in the future.
The gameplay is...alright. I like how snappy the attacks feel, and combined with the beautiful pixel art it's all so pretty and feels nice. The actual combat took some getting used to, but I feel that by the end I got a grasp on how to play and enjoyed most of the characters in the game. However, it did feel as though some characters were DEFINITELY better than others, and the instakill move that won the ENTIRE game pissed me off so much while playing. As agonizing as fighting felt in this game at times, I could actually see myself playing the game again in the future.
The music is also alright! Guilty Gear is known for it's great OST, and this game definitely had some catchy tunes, even if I'm sure the future games will trounce this game's soundtrack in comparison.
Overall, this game is a-okay! Everything about the game is nice, except for the actual gameplay which is a little hit or miss. But, this first entry has already grabbed me, and I'm itching to see how the series continues!

A very neat fangame, even while very obviously one, still had be enjoying it throughout each of my playthroughs.
The story of this game is an interesting case, as it's a fanmade prequel meant to fit into the story of the original game. It adds plot points of past events never mentioned in the game made by Toby Fox, and it gives us a glimpse of the past of the Underground. It focuses on the yellow (who would've guessed?) soul's original owner, a child who willingly fell into the underground in order to search for the missing children (that being the other souls). That being how it starts, the way you go through the game determines how the child, Clover, ends up reacting to the monster world around them. There's the neutral route, pacifist route (neutral not being mandatory to pacifist, and pacifist having 2 different endings depending on a decision at the end), and the genocide route. Although, the only one of the routes that can be considered "canon" to the original game being the pacifist route. I found the pacifist route to be fairly interesting with it's story, delving into ideas about monster and human souls not explored in the original game. The neutral route is a little similar, though getting very empty near the end (the game basically expects you to go pacifist first), but the final act I might've enjoyed even more than pacifist. Finally, there's the genocide route, which I viewed as about as interesting as a genocide route can be, which means being similar to the original game, with the final fight having neat ideas.
The gameplay is basically the same as the original Undertale, with fighting against monsters by either attacking them directly, or confronting them on more peaceful terms and resolving the fight like that. I love Undertale's gameplay. so I enjoyed it quite a bit, and each enemies unique moves I feel were on par to the original (most of the time) and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The bosses were also fun, except for maybe the latter half, where the fights got a little unfair and was a bit trial-and-error-y to be able to beat them. I didn't mind too much though, as the game is pretty generous with checkpoints. The boss fights were of course pretty brutal during the genocide route, but the final boss in the neutral route I found super fun and awesome. My only big complaint with the actual gameplay would be the shooting mechanics near the end, not really enjoying them and not thinking it was really up to par with actual shmups.
Want to know another reason I didn't mind fighting bosses again too much? The music is great! The overworld music is good, the boss music is great, I think it lived up to the original Undertale's "score", if not a smidge less forgettable.
You may have noticed that I didn't really criticize much of the game throughout the review, and that's because I'm doing something a little bit different with this one, as the main problem I have with it having to do with the game as a whole. The problem is simply just that you could very well tell it's a fangame. I'm not sure how to explain it, but the characters being off from now Toby Fox would right them, to the music, while great, feeling a bit off, to the sprite art and animations being TOO good, it's obviously a fangame. I know this isn't really an issue, it was bound to feel a bit off only unless they got Toby Fox to work on it with them, but it's still something I felt throughout playing.
Besides that, the game is great! I enjoyed it with each route playthrough, and could definitely see myself playing it again something. This game truly shows how quality fangames can be, with as much love and soul and what it's inspired from.

A good and serviceable DLC expansion to Splatoon 3, even if it felt a bit underwhelming in the process.
I was really interested in the plot of this DLC when it was introduced, and it was...fine, but felt underwhelming. I liked how it called back and expanded on Octo Expansion, but I feel as though there should've and it felt more like there WAS going to be more. I'll talk more about that later, but the plot as it stands was alright, but was underwhelming. (I might say that a lot during this review).
The gameplay is pretty fun! It's a roguelike, so you expect to replay the game tons and tons of times and the game encourages you to do so, with learning more about the plot and unlocking more weapons, upgrades, and equipment for doing so. Like all good roguelikes do, I had a good time doing each run and getting stronger and stronger each time, though it felt like all sense of challenges was gone after I beat the spire for the first time. I almost NEVER lost a single run after then, in fact, I only lost 3 (2 of them being the final weapon unlock), so a little more challenge would've been better. It isn't too much of an issue in my opinion, as I still have fun getting a total power trip and destroying a level in 30 seconds or less. The bosses were also fun, but 3 feels like way too little for a roguelike, and I got the ball boss on, no joke, every single run of the game. I feel as though this DLC was kind of a test for a more expanded Splatoon roguelike, as I feel like it does the bare minimum, with the bosses, vending machines, color chips (I forgot to mention them somehow, they're good), while still managing to be engaging and fun to go through. But, it also makes me wonder how good a proper Splatoon roguelike would be.
The music is good, which is kind of disappointing for Splatoon standards. The floor music was alright, the boss music was good, but I feel like the tunes overall are forgettable. I especially don't think any of the music is even close to on par with Fly Octo Fly, which is really unfortunate, even if Short Order and #47 onward is pretty nice.
Writing about this expansion made me realize even more that, even if serviceable and fun, I really wish this was more. A 3.5/5 isn't bad, it's good! Above average even! What we got is good and fun, but I can't just stop thinking about what could've been. I think most of this comes from the reveal teaser, which was basically just a bunch of concept art. The full game also just seems like it wanted to be more, but couldn't maybe because of lack of time, or other reasons. It's a bit underwhelming, but it's still good.

A neat prequel to Final Fantasy 7 that unfortunately carries the burden of having mind-numbing gameplay.
The story is probably the best part about this game, it's not bad. I enjoyed the concept of the trio of SOLDIER 1st classes (including Sephiroth) and I found the added worldbuilding of the game interesting. I liked the new characters, with some ranging from great to okay. I have to say, the biggest confusion of this game's story to me are the time skips, at least, I THINK there's some. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to take place around seven years, but it never tells you any time skips until the LAST CHAPTER. This boggled my mind as it didn't look like the characters grew at all, yet I was supposed to believe 4 years had past.
The gameplay is the worst thing about this game. I need to mention how this game originally released on the PSP, and boy does it feel like it. Most of the game are these side missions, and they're so boring that if you're like me and try to do everything you can as soon as you can, you're going to be spending a LOT of time doing these missions. They're also your main source of levelling up, so if you do as many of the missions as you can, you're going to end up drastically overlevelled with OP materia that you can fuse to form even STRONGER materia. The game basically becomes void of challenge as you can basically one shot anything that comes your way, unless you choose the hardest of hardest missions. The game was boring for most of the time I played.
Most of the music I was remember were just remixes of original FF7 tracks, so the ost was good. I especially enjoyed the new version of One Winged Angel.
Overall, this game would overwhelmingly a waste of time if it weren't for the story and ESPECIALLY the very final section. I'm not lying when I say the final part of the game raised the whole thing from a 2/2.5 to a 3, it was done beautifully. Besides that, I don't recommend playing the game and would just say to look up the cutscenes online instead.

A fantastic remake of one of my favorite games of all time, becoming what might just be my favorite game of all time.
The main story is virtually unchanged. but the game adds optional hangouts for the male cast and new scenes with previously lacking characters (i.e Strega). These were all great, especially the new Strega scenes which really makes me appreciate them more. The social links also now have full voice-acting, which is honestly just amazing. It gives all the characters added depth, and made me love certain social links a whole lot more. Besides all of that, there's the main story, which is fantastic in my eyes. While none of it was new to me, the major plot moments still hit me, and the last scene in particular was done spectacularly. It's amazing how I've experienced this game about 5 times at this point, yet it's still able to hit me.
The gameplay was hit with the "modernization" beam, which is for the best as this game is definitely more fun than the original in my eyes. The Persona 5-like gameplay is like drugs to me, and putting that in the Tartarus setting makes this game excel at every other aspect of gaming that trounces everything else in my opinion. The added things like Theurgies were neat, even if they felt way too powerful. The added things in Tartarus were also fun additions, and I like how they chose to incorporate Monad into the game and giving tougher enemies. I will say, however, that I feel like they totally fumbled on trying to let you use every party members easily. They could've just done shared EXP across the entire team like in 5, instead opting into a CHANCE to level up your party members a certain level. I just stuck to my team of 4 instead of bothering, but it isn't a huge deal in my eyes. You don't need to use EVERY party member.
The music is very conflicting for me. All the non-vocal songs and the new vocal songs are great, but some of the original vocal songs were definitely botched in my opinion. Mass Destruction, A Deep Mentality. and Burn My Dread -Last Battle- were the ones off the top of my head that suffered the most, as I feel they completely butchered them. The rest of the new mixes range from serviceable to actually pretty good, with the few new vocal tracks being absolutely legendary.
My biggest problem with this game is simply the fact that it just isn't new for me. I know that's completely my problem, but I've played this game too many times so not many things felt special, it just felt like I was watching the past while the plot beats were occurring. That past, though, was magnificent. I already found the original game fantastic, so playing that game but BETTER didn't feel real, and I don't know if it ever will. I remember when the game footage was first leaked, and the game was announced, and I wasn't very pleased. It didn't have everything I wanted, and wasn't even sure if I was gonna buy it. However, as time went on, I found myself being fine with this fact, and remembered how much I loved the original game, and how much I wanted to play the remake. So, I did. Even though it still doesn't have everything I'd like (miss you, FeMC <3), I'm not gonna call this not perfect because of it. It's a fantastic remake, and even if I feel like it could be better for me, I can still safely say that this is one of, if not, my favorite game of all time.

A god damn masterpiece that I'm so glad got a remake so more people. including myself, was able to experience this masterful mystery game.
The story of this game is so fucking good, the characters are fucking fantastic, the designs are sublime, the art style is amazing, it's just so peak. I don't have much to say but that everything plot-wise about this game is absolutely stellar.
The gameplay, while maybe a bit simple, is so fun and so so interesting. You play as the titular Phantom Detective and do the titular Ghost Tricks, moving about place to place possessing objects with your soul and performing ghost tricks to progress around the world, using telephone lines to fast travel to certain locations, and preventing deaths by going 4 minutes into the past as doing tricks to save the victim! It's just all so fun and interesting and creative, it ties into the story and the story ties into the gameplay perfectly, it's amazing.
The music is pretty good! Some great tracks in this game, my favorite being Lynne's theme (she's also just my favorite character).
I literally can't think of something bad to say about this game. The way this game ties into itself, from the story to the gameplay, and the way all the characters are connected, it's genuinely a masterpiece. There's not much I can say except that everybody should play this game. Please.

A great "remake" of Final Fantasy 7 that fully uses the power it now has from a modern console, even if it does feel a bit bloated sometimes because it tries to make a 40 hour game out of a 7 hour section in the original.
The story is definitely improved over the original. It has full voice acting, it looks way better, the characters are improved, things are given more depth, even the character DESIGNS improved. My one big problem with it is just how bloated it feels at times, the biggest example would be a whole section/chapter taking place in the train graveyard which just felt entirely unnecessary. Many things felt longer when I really don't think they needed to be, and were just extended to get more playtime out of you. But for every slog, there were at least 2 wonderful additions to the story and great added depth. I also really liked the ending of the game intentionally going in a different direction to the original, I'm excited to see how the next games keep things different!
The gameplay feels very snappy and nice. I'm not the best at action games, so the addition of being able to pause (or slo-mo) the action to go through some menus and choose attacks was great for my jrpg-pilled brain. I like how they tried their best to keep features or re-invent them from the original game and bring them into this remake, I especially liked seeing all the summons in HD. I also enjoyed how each character played, and the new weapon skill trees as well.
The music, while most just being remade versions of original songs, are fantastic. Just from the first section of the game I felt so nostalgic for a game I only finished earlier that day.
Overall, a really good and expanded remake, even if it only covered a small portion of the original game. I'm very excited (and a little worried) for Rebirth, I hope it meets the hype!

After years of having this in my "will play eventually" list (one may call it a Backlogged), I finally got the itch, and only 2 months before the second part of the remake releases! I played this as much as I could so I could play the remake so I could play the SEQUEL to the remake, and now here I am! And, yeah, it was fun.
The story was about what I expected, alright, but I feel as though I didn't "get" some things, some things didn't make too much sense, I and I still don't understand some people's intentions. It might be just a me thing, and the story is still okay, but there aren't many people outside the main party whom I cared about, and even IN the main party, I could only name a few I care more more. There are also a lot of problems with its translation/localization, like them flip-flopping between "Shinra" and "THE Shinra" and the way Barrett spoke, which just annoyed me. I also feel like Sephiroth is a bit overrated as a villain, as he's cool, but not that cool, and I didn't really "understand him" but maybe that was the point. Despite all of this, the game still had great writing at points! My favorite scene of the game was Cloud and Tifa alone together before Disc 3, and the story was still alright, but I guess it didn't grab me as much as I wanted it to.
I had a lot of fun with the gameplay. I had no idea this game featured a "Active Time Battle" turn-based system, so imagine how shocked I was when I got in my first battle! After that though, I came to love the gameplay of the game. I had a blast with how it played, Materia was fun, and I'm glad the game let you tweak how the fights work, I made it so everything in the game would stop when I was in a menu, for example. The environments were a little confusing, but I eventually got the hang of it and pressing the button that showed exits/doors was really helpful. I didn't expect all the minigames in this game at first, which were a fun change of pace, if not a little lackluster. I also enjoyed the world map and all you ways you get to traverse it. However, because this game came out on the PS1, there is still quite a bit of archaic design which definitely made me shake my head at first. Random encounters, extra things they came either tells you little or NOTHING about, having to go out of your way to do things, and what might be worst, optional party members. It might be worst just because in material outside the game, at least from what I know, the party members are just THERE, so people who didn't manage to find them will be confused as all hell. Still though, besides the old design choices, I still had tons of fun playing the game.
The music is iconic and great. The battle theme, boss theme, the various cutscene songs, are pretty nice. But, of course, I have to say, One Winged Angel is stellar. That is all.
A good game which I can for sure see how it blew up when it came out. I can definitely see why people at the time were IN LOVE with this game, and were blown away. Even I got blown away at some things in this game almost 30 years later! This game surely is iconic for a reason, even if some aspects of it have aged poorly, it is still good to play today.

I first started this game MONTHS ago, and hoped I would be able to finish it by the new year, and my god I fucking DID IT. Now I can talk about how wonderful and underrated this spin-off of Xenoblade Chronicles is.
The Xeno games are well known for their epic and amazing stories and writing, and I personally think this game's story is good! It's very clear the main campaign was not the main focus, but I think with that they did, it's pretty nice! I like a lot of the ideas, I feel for things that happen to humanity in this game, and the finale is pretty great. I like the main characters like Elma, Lin, Lao, L, Vandham, and Nagi, and I liked the recruitable party members you could get too! Among my favorites were Hope, Yelv, Phog, Frye, Alexa, Mia, among more. Most of the questline's stories were also really engaging! Which is wonderful, as I usually find myself bored doing quests in RPGs, but the ones in this game give you choices that actually matter and changes what happens in the quests, leading to different endings. The side quests were wonderful, I could tell they put a lot of effort in them. As for the post-credit scenes, I wasn't much of a fan of the second one, but both of them both make me wonder and hope for a sequel to this game, I would love it Monolith Soft!
This is easily the Xenoblade game I've enjoyed the most gameplay-wise. A lot of it has to do with one of the game's defining features: FrontierNav. On the gamepad, not only does it show the Map, but the map has hexagons on it, with each hexagon having a task you can do on it, such as collecting a treasure, or doing a quest, or fighting a Tyrant (a super tough enemy akin to Unique Monsters in the other Xenoblades). The game doesn't tell you what type of treasure you need to collect in that area, or what Tyrant you need to kill, or what quest you need to do, but you can collect info from people around NLA to figure it out, or explore to find it! That brings me to one of another of the game's main focus: the exploration. This is absolutely the most fun I've ever had exploring a world in a video game. With FrontierNav, and planting data probes, exploring the planet of Mira was so fun and whimsical, it's the most fun I've ever had in an open world game. As for the combat, it's mostly the same as Xenoblade Chronicles 1's, but this game boasts Skells, which are Mechs that you can unlock to traverse the world and fight even BIGGER monsters. These Skells brought an even bigger joy going around the world, and you can also unlock the ability to fly! THIS GAME'S EXPLORATION IS SO FUN! I LOVE GOING IN MY SKELL, GETTING TREASURE, KILLING TYRANTS, COMPLETING MISSION, DOING AFFINITY MISSIONS, I LOVE IT I LOVE IT!!!!!
This game's music is fucking fantastic. They got a composer well known for composing many popular anime Hiroyuki Sawano to compose the soundtrack of the game, and he delivered so hard. There are too many fantastic tracks to name in this review, so please just look up the soundtrack on Youtube and listen to the music. Be warned though, a lot of the songs have really dumb and indistinguishable names, such as "no1=CODENAMEZ" or "no5=KAKU-WEST*→▲★★KAI", so if you don't want to look through all of that you can just listen to the tracks that have actual names, like Wir fliegen, Uncontrollable, or The key we've lost.
This is easily the Xenoblade Chronicles game I've enjoyed the most to PLAY. The other may have better stories, but I love this game in every other aspect besides story, characters, and art-style. The gameplay, exploration, mechanics, side content, and music made this experience absolutely divine and I believe this is the longest I've ever taken to finish a game. (A whopping 137 hours!) I'm very thankful this was the big swan song to my year, as it's one of, if not my favorite game I've played this year, heck, it could even be top 20 favorite games of all time, maybe lower! I suppose I've joined the crowd in wanting a remaster, or even a sequel.

An admittedly fun game, but the exhaustion on Persona 5 media has become nothing but apparent with this entry, which makes it lesser in my eyes compared to other persona spin-offs.
The story I feel is, while fine, doesn't really seem like anything new. There were a few times where I thought "Wow, this is like (other Persona spinoff) and other times I thought things were plain dumb. I do like the new characters, the villains were either good (Yoshiki) or comically dumb (Marie), and the big bad was massively underwhelming. Again, it feels like nothing new, it doesn't bring much to the table. I do like some of it's ideas, Erina's interesting, Toshiro is cool, and I just adore how Lavenza is written. The Phantom Thieves themselves don't get much in terms of development, and instead help the new characters develop as people. It's okay, but we see Strikers (which takes place after this game) further develop these characters, so it feels like a weird midquel in-between Persona 5 and Strikers, which is exactly what it is. All I'm happy about is that they didn't forget the events after they were over. The DLC's stories and characters were also fine, except for the villain who was yet another fraud.
The gameplay of this game is where it truly shines, I believe this is my first tactical rpg and I really enjoyed it. I don't know if I could play another however, if they don't have triple threats then I don't want it. That's where a lot of my fun came from. I loved clearing maps in as few turns possible and that's basically where the rest of my enjoyment came from. I also think it's neat they brought back sub-personas for this game.
Because it's a Persona 5 spinoff, it goes without saying that the soundtrack is fire. The tracks hit, the vocal tracks hit, it's all wonderful. I will enjoy listening to these songs religiously in the coming weeks.
All in all, a fun game, but I wouldn't be surprised if I end up forgetting it in the future. I HOPE it's about time to say goodbye to Persona 5 and bring in some new characters, because even if I DO love Persona 5, I'm more than ready for something new, and that's what this game showed me.