This was the first 2D Mario game to come out in my lifetime that didn't have the word "new" in front of it, and wow, this was a treat. The game is incredibly solid with a ton of charm and love put into it (one thing I felt the series has been lacking for a long time) and felt coherently designed with the world map being once again in conjunction with the levels for the most part (another thing the series has been lacking). I was worried the Talking Flowers would be annoying, but they instead turned out to be very funny and added so much flavor. The badge system was a worthy inclusion and was fun to play around with, and I think any concerns about it potentially breaking the game can be assuaged. I imagine it lends itself well to challenge runs too, and I'm really excited to see what speedruns of this game are like.

I'm struggling to think of any criticism I might have for this game, but all I can really say is that while it stayed pretty consistent in quality the whole way through, it never reached any particular highs or wowed me. It is, however, just a cute, charming, and wonderful game, and I can easily recommend it.

It's hard to be objective when a game feels like it was tailor-made specifically for you, so I won't even try. This is probably the most fun I'll have with any game this year, and I enjoyed every minute from start to end. It's pure fanservice for any Xenoblade fan, which also means I can't recommend playing it if you haven't played the others, but that's just fine, as this is pretty much the epilogue of the series. All of the characters were likable and had a fun dynamic with each other, and seeing Shulk and Rex as middle-aged adults who act like proud fathers all the time plastered a permanent smile on my face.

I especially want to highlight the gameplay, as it really improved upon what Xenoblade 3 had established (which was already very good). Upgrading your character's abilities is now directly tied to completing Affinity Missions, which are a variety of tasks that encourage the player to engage with the world; such as completing the collectopedia (yes, it's back for real this time!) by picking up the items on the ground, or the enemypedia, which is a similar concept but for defeating 1-3 members of each enemy in the world, building ladders, ziplines, and other infrastructure, finding landmarks and secret areas, etc. I would love to see this feature in other open world or exploration-based games, just because it keeps the game engaging long after the main campaign has been finished. The Community is back from Torna, but no longer locks story progress behind itself, and lets the player complete it at their leisure. While I don't think it adds as much charm to the world as the NPC relationship chart (pretty much a staple of the series a this point), it's definitely more akin to the Bombers' Notebook from Majora's Mask, and it's very satisfying to complete as you make people happier.

Saying I feel like I've fallen in love with Xenoblade all over again basically sums everything up.

YOU ARE ALL SHEEP

NONE OF YOU ARE IMMUNE TO PROPAGANDA

HOLLOW KNIGHT IS JUST OKAY

Edit (1/23/2022): I've played more (up to halfway through of the third area, give or take) and while I had more fun than my review originally indicated, I still stand by a lot of my points. I'm writing this about a month after I shelved the game, and I don't remember much of the music in the game except for the second area (which was a banger, to be fair). What I've played of the story was still very piss poor, to the point I hated advancing in the game because that also meant advancing the plot. Apparently you can now turn down the brightness in the game, a feature I apparently never got because every time I checked if I got the 1.2 update it wasn't there.

I can at least say I like the gameplay after spending more time with it. Beating the first major boss allows you to warp to each save point, which is massively helpful (and should have been given to you right from the start, imo). Battle system can be said to be one of Atlus's best, and exploring each of the areas is rewarding, as the Koroks (I can't remember what they're called, but everything in this game is forgettable) of this game give some pretty substantial rewards. Upgrading the Nahobino and your party of demons is fun, too.

It's just such a shame that none of it feels worth it when all you get are just one skippable cutscene after the next.


Original review:
TL;DR: A lot could be improved if there were checkpoints so you don't lose all your progress from a random "difficulty spike" in an otherwise easy game. These are also my first impressions after playing for ~4-5 hours, so I wouldn't consider them a review by any sense of the word.

First impressions: this was an impulse purchase, but it's one I'm finding myself regretting.

I really, really wanted to like this game and keep coming back to it, but I just get the desire to play something else every time I pick it up. This game gets boring in every aspect after about an hour, visually, musically, and in its gameplay.

I thought this game was pretty fun starting out, but after playing on hard for a little while I eventually found out this game is very easy 95% of the time and feigns its difficulty by sending you to your last save when you die, with save points being rather sparse. This is lame, and it also sucks, since it just makes playing the game become a chore when you die to a sudden "difficulty spike" (for lack of a better term - these were the occasional mob fights where they suddenly attacked my Nahobino all at once and also one boss on the verge of defeat). The battle system is like a slightly better version of Octopath Traveler's, so you can see again why I'd say it gets boring so quickly.

The music isn't very good at all, which was unexpected from Atlus. The main battle theme sounds interesting at first, but once you start hearing it more and more the novelty wears off. The song that plays as you explore Da'at (at least the desert portion, if there are other areas at all) does a good job sounding bleak and empty - until again, the novelty wears off and it becomes grating. The scenery of (if there are any other areas) the first area is just generic post apocalyptic desert and not really anything I haven't seen before. Not only that, but the bloom is turned to all the way up to 11 so not only is the world hard to look at aesthetically, but also literally and I found myself having headaches when playing this game (there's also no way to turn down the brightness at all, ffs). This game also runs like ass on the Switch, and low FPS doesn't help when the brightness was already agonizing enough.

The only thing I can really praise Atlus for here are the character designs, but even that's hard when most of the demon designs were lifted from previous MegaTen games, which normally isn't a problem but it just makes things feel worse here. Speaking of characters, there are none! Although I did start off meeting the main cast, they were all extremely one dimensional and not the least bit entertaining. If characters are good enough, they can carry an otherwise boring game, but by the time I gave up on this I only encountered one of the main characters a second time, whose personality trait is that he's actually an undercover government agent. Wow!

You could easily describe this game as one word: "generic", but even then, if making progress was less of a chore, I could get past a lot of the flaws here. But these are just my first impressions. Maybe I'll come back to this game, but man, it's just not my thing, apparently.

I really like that Pokemon went in a brand new direction and basically made a big large Safari Zone where you can catch Pokemon all you want. The new battle system is fast paced and fun too and it felt like the game was really well balanced.

So why am I writing this review two months after I beat the game? Well, I did plan on holding off until I beat some of the post game stuff, but...I have no inclination to go back to this game whatsoever, especially after playing Elden Ring, which in comparison make this game's flaws all the more apparent. I honestly got bored pretty quickly with this game, and it did feel like a bit of a chore thinking about picking it back up each day I continued my playthrough. It looks really bad visually, overall lacking in any kind of polish and plagued by a lot of visual glitches. Although it's completely new too, I feel like it didn't add a whole lot. I like this new style, but I just wish it had so much more to offer. Oh well.

This has reignited my enjoyment of Rise. I've beaten the main story but I've sunk 60 more hours into the game without really thinking and playing this every day without getting bored of it at all. There's so much to do and it's so much fun to do all of it. The fact that there's still much more coming up through 2023 is really exciting too, and I know I'm going to get a lot more enjoyment out of this game.

I don't really have any criticisms. This is the best Monster Hunter since Generations Ultimate, and the only reason that game is better is because it has Ahtal-Ka. I love this game so, so much.

Amazing game with an amazing plot. Although the first game was already good, there were some aspects to it that undermined it, which this game took and improved upon to make an absolute banger of a game. Some parts of it were a little frustrating but overall not hugely impactful on my experience, I still had a blast playing this. Very well-paced too, with one of the best final boss buildups I've ever experienced.

I wish RGG wouldn't be so reluctant to use Yakuza characters where it would make sense, because a couple characters did show up, but kind of awkwardly didn't say anything at all and just stood there. Overall though, I love the Judgment cast a lot and I'm really sad that Yagami's actor may not be able to return to the series because his agency is awful.

One of the best games on the 3DS, although I got it day 1 in February 2014 and didn't finish it until June 2022 – eight years later. This is because I don't like that you have to play the game six times, but at least the characters are fun, the music is fantastic, and the story is pretty good! It also has one of the best implementations of the Final Fantasy job system ever and is highly customizable, which means the game welcomes you to break it, which is a lot of fun. New job combinations popped into my head all the time as I was playing it, and felt very rewarding when it worked – one of my favorite combinations which I used in the endgame was making Tiz a pirate/swordmaster, which allowed him to use the pirate's 4x damage output without using any MP, which let him always hit at max damage (9999).

This game is really good, but you have to have the patience to get past the tedium.

One of the most incredible gaming experiences I've ever had. My first experience with FromSoft's work and it was well worth it. Easily one of the best games of all time and should be remembered as one of the best examples to follow when making an open world game, although since so much of it is part of the identity of Dark Souls, it may not be super influential.

It makes use of its open world well. There's stuff around almost every nook and cranny, which makes exploration very rewarding, and it never felt like a problem when there wasn't. Art direction was really good, this game looks absolutely amazing, almost any screenshot could have been a painting or postcard.

I only had problems with some of the boss designs and the music. The final boss felt unfair purely because of how big it is, most of the time you're looking at its torso or running long distances toward it. During the former situation, it's very difficult to know when attacks are coming because they aren't signaled very well – it doesn't seem like a number of attacks have very good sound cues, which was disappointing. The music was okay – like Breath of the Wild, overworld themes were very subdued, being usually a single instrument playing a few notes at a time, which is fine. However, I don't remember any boss themes from this game, except for the final boss, which is the title screen music (which is very good, but I digress). I want to make it clear that this game feels out of place if it were in the running for the best soundtrack of the year, and I'll probably lose faith in humanity if someone says it is.

Overall though, a fantastic experience and I highly recommend it to anyone even mildly interested and willing to sink a lot of time, because you won't even realize how much you put into it (try not to forget to connect with your friends and family, ok).

God there were so many good ideas here but it fell flat on its face. The overall gameplay was actually better than I was expecting and sideways Wii remote was weird but simple enough to get used to, and it was surprisingly fun. The combat took a lot of the good parts of Prime and the main series and put them together in a pretty solid way (except you can't move in first person, why?).

However, exploration - the most important part of any search action/metroidvania game - sucks so much. The game is constantly restricting you (I don't mean the restricted suit powers), they really tried to crack down on any kind of sequence breaking by throwing invisible walls everywhere (even when bomb jumping you hit an invisible wall if you go above a low height), locking doors behind you constantly, and just overall taking any thought or enjoyment out of running through the space station. Atmosphere is okay, but nothing special. I can't remember any of the music in this game, even though I finished it minutes ago.

Dear lord what was that story. I heard it was bad but I was not expecting it to be that bad. I don't even know if it had any themes (what does "other m" mean anyway??) to it, it was just "Samus goes here does stuff with Fed army and her old CO". There was nothing necessary in the story that made this game worthwhile, even if it explains some things in Fusion, those were not necessary explanations to justify how bad this is. I'm totally fine with Samus having emotions and expressing herself more but not the way it happened in this game. It's almost laughable just how bad the story was.

Overall, I really wish this game had good writing. Even if the story doesn't matter at all, it would have at least made this game more enjoyable, at least if they were going to restrict the player this bad.

Giving it a 2 star because at least the gameplay was pretty fun.

A very easy contender for my GOTY. It was an absolute blast all the way through and extremely hard to put down. One of those games that I really want to learn the speedrun for just because it's so good.

I didn't seem to have as hard of a time with it as a lot of people apparently were, but there were some difficulty spikes here and there. Some of the recurring mid-bosses gave me the most trouble, but didn't hamper my enjoyment at all. The E.M.M.I. were great; while I didn't find them frightening or scary at all, they added a lot of tension every time I had to enter one of their patrol areas (also the blue EMMI was bullshit, throw that one in the trash).

I think the only real complaint I have with this game is the complete absence of accessibility options. You can't change the controls or even audio at all - the "options" menu just shows some trivial things and a controller map. This is something Nintendo is terrible with in most of their games and an issue I continue to wish they would address.

Overall though, Metroid's first new game in over a decade was a triumphant return to claim the throne of the genre. Like my other 5 star reviews, it's still not a perfect game, but it doesn't fall far from that bar. Super happy to say that Metroid is back, and I hope it finally gets the love it deserves. I'm over the moon.

With the first game, I only liked a handful of characters while the others fell flat. With this game, I liked every single character. I'm honestly impressed by how well this game was written, and how many of the problems the first game had were fixed in this one. The only thing I really disliked was one specific plot twist that involved the player needing to change their perspective (and I mean that literally), but this was probably the best mystery yet. There's a little too much of a reliance on the player needing to suspend their disbelief, but I can look past that because the rest of the game was so good.

I do feel like Spike Chunsoft games have a tendency to lead the player in the mystery instead of letting them solve it for themselves, but I think it was handled decently well here, since you see the story from two different perspectives and both characters (especially Mizuki) are pretty much sharing your experience as well.

Somnium segments were vastly improved over the first one, and now feel much more intuitive especially with a decent hint system helping you understand the rules of the dream, which was missing in the first (and felt like you were throwing random stuff constantly and seeing what stuck). There were also more puzzle segments beyond Somnium too, which is always welcome.

Overall, a near perfect game and fantastically written. Please play it.