Pretty fun RPG, that's the best description I can give. Fun and sometimes challenging combat, incredibly beautiful animations and solid character progression. Whether you want to become a god or struggle with hard battles, this game's got you covered (although there's level scaling, so you can't really do low level runs that easily, for example). A pretty big annoyance I have is that, once you unlock the perk that grants you the ability to stack up demons' EXP, negotiating with demons on the overworld becomes an afterthought. You can still talk to them for the lulz and such, but there's no real reason why you should recruit them if you have the option to make a stronger version in the World of Shadows (place where you can create demons on your own).

Story feels tiny and a mere afterthought. The supposed dramatic and climatic moments don't really hit because the game never really builds up to them. There are also a few exposition showers here and there, so yeah, it's all over the place. If you're a SMT fan, though, well, it's got stuff that can probably wow you.

I completed all four routes, ~450 hours if I'm not mistaken, so, in that sense, you can bet it's got a lot of repetitiveness and very mundane tasks that you can complete quickly to keep progressing. It's very easy (hard in the beginning of Maddening, but manageable later on), too. Furthermore, allowing everything to reach level 99 is silly because you're never going to reach such heights, and, as a result, it's not very balanced.

With those things in mind, though, it's an excellent time sink and especially so if you don't mind god modes or self-imposed challenges. I would also argue that the cast suffers compared to previous ones in the series because everyone allied to you (Byleth and his/her little ghost) is very sympathetic to you, but it's still very likeable and there are a few standouts. I liked farming a lot to make everyone OP. When you're finished, it's so satisfying seeing everyone blasting everything in no time.

Great visuals, great combat, that's really all I can say. Narratives of all characters are serviceable, but this disjointedness of hearing full blown dialogues on top of barely-moving pixels just doesn't work for me, it's really awkward. Moreover, and this is clearly generic criticism, I despise that there's barely any interaction between the characters. It's cool to see the way they relate all the stories at the very end, but before that, not much noteworthy happens. It's kind of like a RPG maker game, hampered by the limitations of the resources.

Ultimately, this reason makes Octopath fairly uninteresting besides its RPG side.

There's a lot of stuff you can do in this game but not a single one feels particularly enticing. Story is alright, and Haytham's introduction remains peak Assassin's Creed (even though it's s little too long). When matters shift to Connor, things kind of get stuck, the story gets too boring, which is a very generic criticism against III but I really felt it, too. I find Connor's eventual disillusionment with the whole system very well done, I genuinely felt for the guy in the end.

When it comes to the activities you can do in the free roaming explorable areas, well, it sucks. I remember I liked getting the attention of lots of guards on a single street and accumulate. This was nerfed in subsequent games, so I felt bad m, for that, I liked calling those moments 'Assassin's Street'. I mention that because any other extra activity the game offers you is downright awful and simple, put in the game just for the sake of quantity. You can assault fortresses, but all of them have the very same defenses, just different layouts. You can get a ton of collectibles but thr rewards for doing so are nonexistent. You can embark on naval expeditions, but this is before Black Flag, so the combat sucks.

Desmond and company are unremarkable characters just as usual, so yeah, this is a veru forgettable game, too.

Any game with OPified dinosaurs must be automatically good in my book, and in this one you can fight them with melee combat! I would've melted had I played Ys VIII as a child.

But really, this game is amazing. It shows its age and intended hardware, but it was also
definitely built with the intention of making a fairly humble yet massively epic RPG of old. The combat follows rather simple mechanics but it just works, as Todd Howard would say. You dodge, parry and mash the attack button in the correspondent window. Not much to it, but this is maintained fresh until the very end.

There are no super big areas to explore, they're rather big corridors with some big circles to run around in-between, but they nonetheless feel dense and well-packed.

There are plenty of activities that keep you engaged, and the story has multiple sections with variations in the gameplay to let you breath a little and give you variety. In other games, these extra thingies often fall flat and you'd rather just return to the main game, but I'd say they work well enough here.

Only thing I can say against Ys VIII is that the narrative doesn't do it for me. Still, some characters are very likeable and I liked the voice acting.

It's kind of weird because, while I'd argue there isn't much here to grab your attention - the gameplay, for instance, isn't any fancier than other JRPGs and the narrative is fairly typical, this game held me there until the very end. Perhaps it's a combination of looking nice and having interesting scenaries, solid artwork, having a polished combat system and really diversifying the contents of each plotline. While that last thing might sound like any kind of good game, DQXI changes A LOT throughout its entirety.

Pretty easy game, maybe its most significant flaw. The lack of a timer certainly removes the strategic component that the original Pikmin barely had (since it's not too difficult, either). The introduction of stuff like the purple Pikmin and the spicy spray exacerbate this problem even further, and the former trivializes most enemy encounters and makes the other Pikmin types more situational, a problem that was more or less fixed with the rebranding of the type as the rock Pikmin. Still, purple Pikmin are not mandatory besides for carrying certain treasures and escaping the first cave, so there's that. Don't use them if you don't like them.

Beyond that, Pikmin 2 is a really solid sequel, and the aforementioned issues can make up for cozier playthroughs. The cave systems allow the enemy roster to be even larger, and that is, in my opinion, the game's biggest achievement, it gives you a greater and more convincing impression that you're on an alien planet for the protagonist instead of more 'videogamey' situations the original and 3 put you upfront.

I believe this game also has the most interesting characterization that has appeared in any Nintendo game. It's simple and it's all text provided by the daily logs and Piklopedia, but it's also all about Olimar and his mundane preoccupations and interests. It's a sort of protagonist that is not common at all in Nintendo games.

The music is another department where the game shines, and it especially the caves a more atmospheric feeling.

Pikmin 1 and 2 are also best played on the Wii, I might add, the controls are perfect for them.

This remains my most anticipated game ever and it was... alright. It's a fairly serviceable entry but I don't think it lives up to the GameCube games. One way I can put it is that, while the original put you in an alien planet, 3 puts you in a garden, if that makes sense: it's less epic, less mysterious, less wondrous, but it still works, just not the progression one would've expected after a 9-year hiatus.

Biggest change that I find questionable is the music. Music consists of MIDI files in the GameCube games, whereas 3 uses orchestrated pieces. To me, the former compositions always sound foreign and mischievous, mysterious, whereas the music in 3 sounds cutesy in my ears. It's a drastic change in tonality.

On the gameplay side, as usual, everything is solid, I especially like the inclusion of micromanaging with the interactivity of the minimap; it's good for speedrunning and particularly makes mission mode a lot of fun. Pikmin mechanics work as usual, with the exception that the guiding whistle is gone, and I missed it. As a substitute, you can now lock on things and charge all your squad against them, but sometimes you just want to move a few Pikmin around or put to work just a few. Now it's a little more cumbersome to do this. Further, the equivalent of the C-Stick on Wii U and Nintendo Switch, predictably, now controls the camera, but you can't control neither the camera speed (and it's rather slow) nor the vertical orientation. So, yeah, controls could've been perfect on this one. Speaking of which, I liked the implementation they used for the Wii U, which allows you to launch Pikmin with the Gamepad screen. This feature didn't make it in Deluxe, though. Otherwise, Wiimote + Nunchuck is still the best combo.

There are other missing things as well, namely enemy variety and overall numbers, an area where 2 excelled at. The latter managed to give you the feeling that you were exploring a wild area in the perspective of the protgonists, but 3 gives you very few mobs, which indicates you that they're videogamey obstacles more than anything. I was specifically disappointed when I realized there was only one spotty bulbear in the whole campaign, for example.

The Piklopedia was missing in the Wii U release, and the Deluxe implementation is just barebones compared to 2's, which was a great source for humor, character development and worldbulding. There really isn't a replacement for these in 3.

More than anything, what disappointed me the most is that 3 tried way too much to be like the first game, instead of continue expanding the legacy of the first two games. This time the ship doesn't break apart but you still have to collect the main component in order to escape the planet. Four areas again with the same themes and of similar size, with a final one where the final boss is, who also holds the most important item. A welcome change, to be fair, is that bosses distance from the typical behavior they tend to have in the first two games, they're big, faster, can get out of screen, they have set pieces and you can't escape from them (with one exception), which makes them more similar to classic Nintendo bosses than Pikmin ones. Not enough to break the whole typicality, though.

In the end, you know which games are alsl third entries in their series, too? Super Mario Bros. 3, A Link to the Past, Super Metroid... And sadly, Pikmin 3 isn't the definitive Pikmin experience, still waiting for that... Have been waiting almost 9 years again, in fact.

It was amazing to see this gem totally renovated, made me proud of the fandom that had pushed this game for so many years. Only thing I didn't like was that when I played the online, the game plan was way too optimized LOL Kind of hard to keep up. Things like the placement of lumberjack camps and farms factor in a ton in the advancement of the matches, kind of reminds of the Super Mario Bros. speedruns, which hardly can get better nowadays. Still, that's not a problem with the game at all, but it caught me off guard for sure.

As a practical Lacrimosa of Dana successor, well, it's great, not as great but I was expecting worse, tbh. For starters, the setting, Balduq, just looks barren, flat and totally uninspired. Not like Ys VIII can brag about breathtaking scenaries but, you know, the greenery always looks nice no matter what.

So that was an underwhelming start but something I realized quickly is that this game liked to overstate the village raids' feature welcome way too much. Back in LoD, they were fine as a quick change of pace and something almost entirely optional, but here they repeatedly happen, and I wouldn't necessarily say it's a good thing even though the combat is great as usual. Fighting works great in conjunction with exploration, but when you exclusively fight for a solid 2-3 minutes or more, not so much. It's a drag.

This game also has more proper dungeons than LoD, and their design is not so appealing, I'll be honest.

Besides the aforementioned things, it's got the same qualities of VIII, so it's yet another great time. And to top it off, the great plot twist doesn't come from the game's main storyline, it comes from something more or less related, and for that reason I'm excited for what the devs do next.

But yeah, raids have to go.