Turquoisephoenix
2018
Completely benign, short little game that I weirdly appreciate for having the "twist" behind the sword being cursed be "because there's a guy that owns a factory and he's using it to make cursed swords."
Fat Princess should thank its lucky stars that 2010-era Internet lingo is so old-fashioned that it barely registers as a "meme" anymore because there is nothing scarier than starting a video game and seeing the loading screen say "Now with more Internet memes!". (There's All Your Base and pwned jokes in this game, in case you're wondering)
As for the actual gameplay, I can't rate the multiplayer since I was unable to play it, but the single player campaign for this game is the most wonderful blend of frustrating and entertaining. I spent over 45 minutes on a match and I felt like a goddamn champion after I finally broke the stalemate.
Sure, some of that excitement wore off when the resulting story mode cutscene told me that Fat Princess got kidnapped again and I better go do it again, but in that brief moment, I was the greatest Captain of the Guard.
As for the actual gameplay, I can't rate the multiplayer since I was unable to play it, but the single player campaign for this game is the most wonderful blend of frustrating and entertaining. I spent over 45 minutes on a match and I felt like a goddamn champion after I finally broke the stalemate.
Sure, some of that excitement wore off when the resulting story mode cutscene told me that Fat Princess got kidnapped again and I better go do it again, but in that brief moment, I was the greatest Captain of the Guard.
2021
Wytchwood is a beautiful idyllic game with a unique storybook art style where you play as a justice-driven witch who has to compulsively grab every single useful twig, loose rock, and patch of grass off of the ground because by god, she's going to need it later, she can feel it.
The core mechanic of the game is exactly what you see in the trailer - you are a crone from the swamps and you will wander through the various locales, scoop up exotic ingredients by crafting various items that will allow you to find rarer items, and use them all together to reap punishment on the twelve horrible souls that definitely deserve it. (well, one soul is three people working together, but details, details) By the end of the game, you'll have morphed into a fairytale witch yourself because you'll have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of what is found where in the world and what it's all used for.
The game isn't being coy when it says its genre is Capital C Crafting over anything else - the biggest gameplay loop is "pick thing off ground, use thing to make a second thing, use second thing to gather third thing, use third thing to craft important item with other third things in a chain" and if that sounds overwhelming, then you will hate the later portions of the game where every step of the way is filled with like ten different Things To Get. Finding all the things isn't THAT difficult but there certainly are some reagents that will get on your nerves. I for one learned to hate jars of water! Perhaps you'll hate crab claws or mosquito needles!
But don't worry, it's not just digging up rocks and gathering bundles of straw. The game's story is where Wytchwood really shines, and it's what pushed me to keep going as I checked off each item in my woodland gathering shopping list. The main character is a wonderful grumpy little witch full of piss and vinegar and there's little dabs of dry wit in every written line and description. The dialogue and the storylines are all so distinctive and interesting, with each character getting a very stylish dialogue portrait, with a fun biting dark humor to them that fits the amazing art style.
It wouldn't be fun to be a witch casting dark magicks on someone who doesn't deserve it, and the game's twelve animal-themed antagonists all have interesting stories and a variety of reasons as to why you'll feel good about killing them and reaping their souls to give to Maybe Satan We Don't Know. The first villain I dispatched was a humanoid leech who was faking a plague outbreak so that she could fill an entire wine cellar with poisoned blood because, in her words, "black fever adds a certain nutty quality", and I did it because an old lady asked for me to find her missing husband. It's the little touches to the story that make all the relentless twig-gathering worth it.
But that does not stop the twig gathering from being relentless (oh god you need so many twigs), and so you craft craft craft until the game ends about 8-10 hours later, and the ending just kinda ends on a vague little plot twist. The words "repetitive" and "slog" are often used to describe this game, and I'd be lying if I said these were unfair. But! If you're the kind of person who finds peace in gathering up a stock of supplies and then gets a short burst of joy from being overprepared for the current fetch quest and being able to make the complicated object right then and there, this is definitely worth a try. No one is going to judge you if you decimate the forest's population of fireflies. Honest.
P.S. During the first four souls, I assumed that the reason there were animal people is because their wickedness had corrupted their form and they were all wearing the skin of beasts as the result of their hubris (especially with the Ox, who has a normal human family), only to enter a village and find out that no, there's also friendly animal people and this is just a setting similar to Shovel Knight where the humans and the animal men live together in harmony.
The core mechanic of the game is exactly what you see in the trailer - you are a crone from the swamps and you will wander through the various locales, scoop up exotic ingredients by crafting various items that will allow you to find rarer items, and use them all together to reap punishment on the twelve horrible souls that definitely deserve it. (well, one soul is three people working together, but details, details) By the end of the game, you'll have morphed into a fairytale witch yourself because you'll have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of what is found where in the world and what it's all used for.
The game isn't being coy when it says its genre is Capital C Crafting over anything else - the biggest gameplay loop is "pick thing off ground, use thing to make a second thing, use second thing to gather third thing, use third thing to craft important item with other third things in a chain" and if that sounds overwhelming, then you will hate the later portions of the game where every step of the way is filled with like ten different Things To Get. Finding all the things isn't THAT difficult but there certainly are some reagents that will get on your nerves. I for one learned to hate jars of water! Perhaps you'll hate crab claws or mosquito needles!
But don't worry, it's not just digging up rocks and gathering bundles of straw. The game's story is where Wytchwood really shines, and it's what pushed me to keep going as I checked off each item in my woodland gathering shopping list. The main character is a wonderful grumpy little witch full of piss and vinegar and there's little dabs of dry wit in every written line and description. The dialogue and the storylines are all so distinctive and interesting, with each character getting a very stylish dialogue portrait, with a fun biting dark humor to them that fits the amazing art style.
It wouldn't be fun to be a witch casting dark magicks on someone who doesn't deserve it, and the game's twelve animal-themed antagonists all have interesting stories and a variety of reasons as to why you'll feel good about killing them and reaping their souls to give to Maybe Satan We Don't Know. The first villain I dispatched was a humanoid leech who was faking a plague outbreak so that she could fill an entire wine cellar with poisoned blood because, in her words, "black fever adds a certain nutty quality", and I did it because an old lady asked for me to find her missing husband. It's the little touches to the story that make all the relentless twig-gathering worth it.
But that does not stop the twig gathering from being relentless (oh god you need so many twigs), and so you craft craft craft until the game ends about 8-10 hours later, and the ending just kinda ends on a vague little plot twist. The words "repetitive" and "slog" are often used to describe this game, and I'd be lying if I said these were unfair. But! If you're the kind of person who finds peace in gathering up a stock of supplies and then gets a short burst of joy from being overprepared for the current fetch quest and being able to make the complicated object right then and there, this is definitely worth a try. No one is going to judge you if you decimate the forest's population of fireflies. Honest.
P.S. During the first four souls, I assumed that the reason there were animal people is because their wickedness had corrupted their form and they were all wearing the skin of beasts as the result of their hubris (especially with the Ox, who has a normal human family), only to enter a village and find out that no, there's also friendly animal people and this is just a setting similar to Shovel Knight where the humans and the animal men live together in harmony.
2020
It's always a delight to play a quick and breezy little puzzle game that makes me question my own brain's spatial perception during its 2-3 hour runtime and ends before it overstays its welcome.
There's some good use Dualsense haptic rumblies in this game on PS5, although I'm not sure if it's a decent reward for having to move the playing fields and lines around with control sticks instead of a mouse.
There's some good use Dualsense haptic rumblies in this game on PS5, although I'm not sure if it's a decent reward for having to move the playing fields and lines around with control sticks instead of a mouse.
2015
It feels like Moco Moco Friends' destiny was to be an obscure PS1 game that some dude on a Neoseeker forum with an Escaflowne avatar insists is a hidden gem because he spent over a hundred dollars on a Japanese import, not a 2015 3DS title that...also happens to be over a hundred dollars.
Luckily, it's very easy to hack your 3DS, and you too can be tricked by the cute monster designs and the catchy soundtrack into thinking that you're playing an overlooked masterpiece until you realize that it's more a charmingly bad RPG designed for infants than anything. There's quite a few design choices that are so uniquely terrible that you will yearn for the simpler things in Pokemon like "being able to pick up items by pressing A" and "evolving automatically when you hit a certain level".
Oh, and I got stuck in level geometry in the hub world, softlocking my game. I lost 20 minutes of progress. This isn't a hidden gem; this is a pebble on the side of the road.
But man, those little hedgehogs that are actual pincushions make everything worth it in the end, and the game is hitting the right notes of Interesting Choices that I want to see how it ends, even if the main character Moco is one of the most irritating main characters I've ever had to endure. Just don't try to go for 100% because the amount of grinding needed to fill out your Plushie Pokedex is lethal.
-----------
UPDATE
Okay so I wrote that review when I was 10 hours into the game and now that I've finally beaten the game, I gotta say...this game Goes Places in regards to its plot. You'll be sitting through ten hours of the most one-dimensional magical girls saying things like "mochi mochi excellent", "mukka chakka fire!", and "I'm hungry 8(" only for Moco to find out that her mom has been split asunder into two beings as the result of dark magic ripping her soul from her body and that there's some sort of matter vs dark matter type of dimensional entropy that's threatening to destroy multiple universes. You spend the final cutscene of the game before the credits roll standing in the void between dimensions.
Doesn't make the game any better, but this is the main reason why I completed this game instead of shelving it.
-----------
Bonus Section - The Interesting Choices Made By Moco Moco Friends
- The crafting system is entirely based on RNG. There's a mat harvesting mechanic in this game but instead of getting a bunch of different recipes and creating the exact items you need, there's only six recipes for six very broad categories (Heal, Equipment, Assist, Bloom, Awake, and Evolve) and you just pray to the RNG gods that your witch summons the item you need. This means you can't just craft a healing potion if you want to - you gather materials to get the chance to craft something that could be a healing potion but could be something that heals paralysis or blind.
...This is so much worse than you think, trust me. See, to evolve your critters, you need evolution items. Sometimes several of them! And there's a bunch of evolution items and a lot of monsters use the same one! I did NOT get the very specific evolution item that I needed at first so I save scummed. For a crafting system.
- The befriend system is also based on RNG. Other games like Yokai Watch and Dragon Quest also had something like this, but also having the crafting system be luck-based means that you don't feel fully in control with your little pink witch friend. Want to catch monsters in this monster training RPG? It's all based on vibes, my friend.
- Capturing monsters in this game reduces their level to 1! So you finally caught that monster that looked cool in that random dungeon! Good job! You finally beat the odds! Now you have to start at the very beginning with that monster and the exp gains in this game are just abysmal!
- Evolving your monster also reduces your monster's level to level 1 and yes, they will be in a weakened state until you can raise their levels again.
- No exp share either, which means your monster farm will be full of level 1 weaklings that just kinda take up space. Yes, this means that, if you want to start using a monster in your team, you're going to have to grind, and you're probably already grinding because you had to evolve one of your monsters.
- Your monster farm can only hold 60 monsters in a game with over 100 monsters. Because you, the player, needed to be punished even further.
- There's something called Awakening that raises the max level of your monster. Problem is, you also need a second monster in that exact same species in order to do this and yes, that includes the monsters you only get via evolution and yes, your monster farm will run out of space extremely quick. There is no need to use this feature at all so about 1/6th of the materials you harvest end up being a literal waste of inventory space.
- There's no bank and you lose half of your money if you wipe out. You have to pay money to evolve or train your critters.
- You can't skip or speed up the cutscenes. Before you go "what if I want to sit through the story", trust me on this one...
- I hate Moco's "my tummy hurts" noise. This is not a mechanic - I just hate it.
Luckily, it's very easy to hack your 3DS, and you too can be tricked by the cute monster designs and the catchy soundtrack into thinking that you're playing an overlooked masterpiece until you realize that it's more a charmingly bad RPG designed for infants than anything. There's quite a few design choices that are so uniquely terrible that you will yearn for the simpler things in Pokemon like "being able to pick up items by pressing A" and "evolving automatically when you hit a certain level".
Oh, and I got stuck in level geometry in the hub world, softlocking my game. I lost 20 minutes of progress. This isn't a hidden gem; this is a pebble on the side of the road.
But man, those little hedgehogs that are actual pincushions make everything worth it in the end, and the game is hitting the right notes of Interesting Choices that I want to see how it ends, even if the main character Moco is one of the most irritating main characters I've ever had to endure. Just don't try to go for 100% because the amount of grinding needed to fill out your Plushie Pokedex is lethal.
-----------
UPDATE
Okay so I wrote that review when I was 10 hours into the game and now that I've finally beaten the game, I gotta say...this game Goes Places in regards to its plot. You'll be sitting through ten hours of the most one-dimensional magical girls saying things like "mochi mochi excellent", "mukka chakka fire!", and "I'm hungry 8(" only for Moco to find out that her mom has been split asunder into two beings as the result of dark magic ripping her soul from her body and that there's some sort of matter vs dark matter type of dimensional entropy that's threatening to destroy multiple universes. You spend the final cutscene of the game before the credits roll standing in the void between dimensions.
Doesn't make the game any better, but this is the main reason why I completed this game instead of shelving it.
-----------
Bonus Section - The Interesting Choices Made By Moco Moco Friends
- The crafting system is entirely based on RNG. There's a mat harvesting mechanic in this game but instead of getting a bunch of different recipes and creating the exact items you need, there's only six recipes for six very broad categories (Heal, Equipment, Assist, Bloom, Awake, and Evolve) and you just pray to the RNG gods that your witch summons the item you need. This means you can't just craft a healing potion if you want to - you gather materials to get the chance to craft something that could be a healing potion but could be something that heals paralysis or blind.
...This is so much worse than you think, trust me. See, to evolve your critters, you need evolution items. Sometimes several of them! And there's a bunch of evolution items and a lot of monsters use the same one! I did NOT get the very specific evolution item that I needed at first so I save scummed. For a crafting system.
- The befriend system is also based on RNG. Other games like Yokai Watch and Dragon Quest also had something like this, but also having the crafting system be luck-based means that you don't feel fully in control with your little pink witch friend. Want to catch monsters in this monster training RPG? It's all based on vibes, my friend.
- Capturing monsters in this game reduces their level to 1! So you finally caught that monster that looked cool in that random dungeon! Good job! You finally beat the odds! Now you have to start at the very beginning with that monster and the exp gains in this game are just abysmal!
- Evolving your monster also reduces your monster's level to level 1 and yes, they will be in a weakened state until you can raise their levels again.
- No exp share either, which means your monster farm will be full of level 1 weaklings that just kinda take up space. Yes, this means that, if you want to start using a monster in your team, you're going to have to grind, and you're probably already grinding because you had to evolve one of your monsters.
- Your monster farm can only hold 60 monsters in a game with over 100 monsters. Because you, the player, needed to be punished even further.
- There's something called Awakening that raises the max level of your monster. Problem is, you also need a second monster in that exact same species in order to do this and yes, that includes the monsters you only get via evolution and yes, your monster farm will run out of space extremely quick. There is no need to use this feature at all so about 1/6th of the materials you harvest end up being a literal waste of inventory space.
- There's no bank and you lose half of your money if you wipe out. You have to pay money to evolve or train your critters.
- You can't skip or speed up the cutscenes. Before you go "what if I want to sit through the story", trust me on this one...
- I hate Moco's "my tummy hurts" noise. This is not a mechanic - I just hate it.
2019
It's so satisfying to play a once-popular meme game long after the Youtube/Twitch spotlight has faded and finding out that it's a really charming little experience that still holds up on its own.
Also this game is way more British than I was expecting.
Also this game is way more British than I was expecting.
The best compliment I have for this game is that I have this hope that this is going to be the start of a whole new side-series for the Dragon Quest franchise and that we eventually get a sequel that irons out all the rough spots. This game is oozing with charm and they found the ultimate chill formula where you boot it up for a while like "hmm perhaps I will dig in the dirt in the volcano region this time", but unfortunately the actual game mechanics feel a bit undercooked.
I'll start with the story, since it really is the thing that tricks your brain for the first couple of hours that you're in for something amazing. Erik and Mia from Dragon Quest XI, through the use of a magic talking pig (named Porcus), a magic talking cat (named Purrsula), a stolen boat from a band of vikings, and a pair of crystal daggers, are transported into a Sorta Treasure Island Sorta Peter Pan-type world called Draconia that's built on the corpses of two colossal dragons Xenoblade Chronicles style and populated by friendly monsters. After going through literally the only dungeon in the game that isn't a series of small rooms, Erik and Mia end up helping a magic railroad run by several living suits of armor (one of the suits of armor is purple with flowers painted on her left pauldron to show that she's a girl armor) while they collect the Seven Colorful Dragon Stones and find Literally Treasure Island before a cool-as-hell pirate skeleton named Long John Silverbones does the same.
And they collect treasure along the way. Lots and lots of treasure.
The plot never gets more complex than this, but I embrace the simplicity. Captain Long John Silverbones is the main enemy of the game, remains the main enemy of the game, and never has a motivation more complex than "I want treasure". He doesn't even have a second form in his final boss battle AND he lives so you can interact with him in the post-game! For a Square-Enix JRPG, that almost feels illegal.
This game also wins points for falling into my favorite specific type of Dragon Quest spin-off; the playful monster-collecting game that adds some painful dramatic irony to the events that occur in the numbered titles. I love that I can run around as Mia, focusing only on treasure, surrounded by dragon magic, and traipsing around on giant piles of gold in my hideout full of monsters while all the adults around her tell her that she must collect ALL the riches in the world. I'm sure this won't awaken anything sinister in her, much like I'm sure that Terry DQ6 had a perfectly happy life after Terry's Wonderland.
Okay, I'm done praising the game. It's Unfortunate Flaws Time. Notice how pretty much every review of this game mentions how bad the combat is? I cannot understate this - the combat is pretty damn awful and probably one of the most barebones thing I've seen in this genre for a while, especially from an action RPG made by Square-Enix. About five hours in, it really began to dawn on me that Erik/Mia do not change equipment at all in this game where I'm supposed to be hitting things in real time and that's when The Horrors set in.
You see, Squeenix decided to be innovators and stick to a Slingshot-Based Gameplay style that just feels awful to use. Erik/Mia are stuck with a slingshot and a tiny little knife for the entire game's runtime and it's about as fun of a Game Feel™ as you would expect. You can't even really do anything cool with the slingshot beyond "get better rocks". Your healing and buffs? Also rocks! While your monsters move around in battle, you have to awkwardly aim your slingshot in real time and pelt their asses with Healing Bullets, which means that you're just SOL in case you want to apply any buffs to yourself.
Luckily, you do have your monsters. Once you get past the disappointment that you only have about 17 monster families and their recolors to choose from for a grand total of 74 buddies, the monsters are really fun to collect and battle with. For the most part. Since this game's command list is very limited (you just have "Attack!" and "Come to Me!" as commands), this means boss battles with more sophisticated strategies beyond "hit until enemy falls down" will often leave you with a wiped party because all of your dumb friends stood directly in the line of fire. This can and will be a problem in the later portions of the game.
I do like these little guys though. Sure, some of the monsters have really annoying voices (I'm looking directly at the Hades Condor line, the Killing Machines, and the Girl Slimes when saying this) and they all have a tendency to repeat their lines constantly but I like collecting monsters, hanging out with my monsters, recruiting monsters, and assembling a team of monsters that can best traverse the landscape. There's a lot of personality here.
They even added a DQ version of the Pokemon Shinies where occasionally, a monster will spawn in the overworld and it could be wearing a hat! Yes, this means that you can Shiny Hunt in this game with it's entirely RNG-style monster recruitment mechanic (you befriend monsters by hitting them with Buddy Bullets with your Slingshot and hoping they're charmed by your plucky kid charisma), and yes, you WILL watch that rare King Slime But With A Viking Helmet disappear without joining your party.
But then you'll find a Crystal Bikini and it lessens the sting a little.
In short, fun little game. Repetitive, yes. Needed more time in the oven, yes. But damnit, I get a thrill out of hearing the corpse of a long-dead king go "My kingdom...destroyed" while his teammate turns to look at him with his round Toriyama eyes before saying "I'm jelly happy indeed!" as a ten year old slams a dagger in the dirt and unearths a statue of a character from a game that never received an English localization. It's a bit lacking in substance, sure, but I'm also glad this game exists and I'll probably spend more time than I'm willing to admit just in the Shiny Hunting.
I've already found a Killing Machine in a white top hat.
Also, a quick side-note. While I know that Koichi Sugiyama died in 2021 and it was most likely during production of this game, the asset-recycling in the soundtrack is so insulting. Most of the music in this game is lifted directly from Dragon Quest Builders 1 and 2 or from Dragon Quest XI and I'm gonna be real, I'd rather have a new composer actually write new music than whatever they went for here.
I'll start with the story, since it really is the thing that tricks your brain for the first couple of hours that you're in for something amazing. Erik and Mia from Dragon Quest XI, through the use of a magic talking pig (named Porcus), a magic talking cat (named Purrsula), a stolen boat from a band of vikings, and a pair of crystal daggers, are transported into a Sorta Treasure Island Sorta Peter Pan-type world called Draconia that's built on the corpses of two colossal dragons Xenoblade Chronicles style and populated by friendly monsters. After going through literally the only dungeon in the game that isn't a series of small rooms, Erik and Mia end up helping a magic railroad run by several living suits of armor (one of the suits of armor is purple with flowers painted on her left pauldron to show that she's a girl armor) while they collect the Seven Colorful Dragon Stones and find Literally Treasure Island before a cool-as-hell pirate skeleton named Long John Silverbones does the same.
And they collect treasure along the way. Lots and lots of treasure.
The plot never gets more complex than this, but I embrace the simplicity. Captain Long John Silverbones is the main enemy of the game, remains the main enemy of the game, and never has a motivation more complex than "I want treasure". He doesn't even have a second form in his final boss battle AND he lives so you can interact with him in the post-game! For a Square-Enix JRPG, that almost feels illegal.
This game also wins points for falling into my favorite specific type of Dragon Quest spin-off; the playful monster-collecting game that adds some painful dramatic irony to the events that occur in the numbered titles. I love that I can run around as Mia, focusing only on treasure, surrounded by dragon magic, and traipsing around on giant piles of gold in my hideout full of monsters while all the adults around her tell her that she must collect ALL the riches in the world. I'm sure this won't awaken anything sinister in her, much like I'm sure that Terry DQ6 had a perfectly happy life after Terry's Wonderland.
Okay, I'm done praising the game. It's Unfortunate Flaws Time. Notice how pretty much every review of this game mentions how bad the combat is? I cannot understate this - the combat is pretty damn awful and probably one of the most barebones thing I've seen in this genre for a while, especially from an action RPG made by Square-Enix. About five hours in, it really began to dawn on me that Erik/Mia do not change equipment at all in this game where I'm supposed to be hitting things in real time and that's when The Horrors set in.
You see, Squeenix decided to be innovators and stick to a Slingshot-Based Gameplay style that just feels awful to use. Erik/Mia are stuck with a slingshot and a tiny little knife for the entire game's runtime and it's about as fun of a Game Feel™ as you would expect. You can't even really do anything cool with the slingshot beyond "get better rocks". Your healing and buffs? Also rocks! While your monsters move around in battle, you have to awkwardly aim your slingshot in real time and pelt their asses with Healing Bullets, which means that you're just SOL in case you want to apply any buffs to yourself.
Luckily, you do have your monsters. Once you get past the disappointment that you only have about 17 monster families and their recolors to choose from for a grand total of 74 buddies, the monsters are really fun to collect and battle with. For the most part. Since this game's command list is very limited (you just have "Attack!" and "Come to Me!" as commands), this means boss battles with more sophisticated strategies beyond "hit until enemy falls down" will often leave you with a wiped party because all of your dumb friends stood directly in the line of fire. This can and will be a problem in the later portions of the game.
I do like these little guys though. Sure, some of the monsters have really annoying voices (I'm looking directly at the Hades Condor line, the Killing Machines, and the Girl Slimes when saying this) and they all have a tendency to repeat their lines constantly but I like collecting monsters, hanging out with my monsters, recruiting monsters, and assembling a team of monsters that can best traverse the landscape. There's a lot of personality here.
They even added a DQ version of the Pokemon Shinies where occasionally, a monster will spawn in the overworld and it could be wearing a hat! Yes, this means that you can Shiny Hunt in this game with it's entirely RNG-style monster recruitment mechanic (you befriend monsters by hitting them with Buddy Bullets with your Slingshot and hoping they're charmed by your plucky kid charisma), and yes, you WILL watch that rare King Slime But With A Viking Helmet disappear without joining your party.
But then you'll find a Crystal Bikini and it lessens the sting a little.
In short, fun little game. Repetitive, yes. Needed more time in the oven, yes. But damnit, I get a thrill out of hearing the corpse of a long-dead king go "My kingdom...destroyed" while his teammate turns to look at him with his round Toriyama eyes before saying "I'm jelly happy indeed!" as a ten year old slams a dagger in the dirt and unearths a statue of a character from a game that never received an English localization. It's a bit lacking in substance, sure, but I'm also glad this game exists and I'll probably spend more time than I'm willing to admit just in the Shiny Hunting.
I've already found a Killing Machine in a white top hat.
Also, a quick side-note. While I know that Koichi Sugiyama died in 2021 and it was most likely during production of this game, the asset-recycling in the soundtrack is so insulting. Most of the music in this game is lifted directly from Dragon Quest Builders 1 and 2 or from Dragon Quest XI and I'm gonna be real, I'd rather have a new composer actually write new music than whatever they went for here.
2002
There's regular video game padding and then there's "you have to beat Story Mode eight times in order to get all the items for your special treasure room" Mario Party 4 padding. Why this Mario Party put such a focus on making sure you played with just the CPUs that many times is beyond me.
Decent Mario Party otherwise. Love Booksquirm. Hate the mega/minishrooms. Also I was very impressed with the water graphics in this game as a kid.
Decent Mario Party otherwise. Love Booksquirm. Hate the mega/minishrooms. Also I was very impressed with the water graphics in this game as a kid.
I just want to know what made Tecmo greenlight this game. What executive said "Yeah sure, you can make a sequel to Solomon's Key, a franchise that hasn't seen an entry in nine years, but it has to have the Monster Rancher brand. It's very important that you do".
2012
"Hmm, this puzzle game seems really benign. The gyro controls seem okay-"
"Tee hee! To get past the fourth level in the tutorial, you have to physically rotate the 3DS 360 degrees multiple times! That's the title gimmick! Have fun playing this in public! (＾◡＾)"
"...this was a Club Nintendo Gold Reward at one point."
"Tee hee! To get past the fourth level in the tutorial, you have to physically rotate the 3DS 360 degrees multiple times! That's the title gimmick! Have fun playing this in public! (＾◡＾)"
"...this was a Club Nintendo Gold Reward at one point."
It's a shame that the gameplay for this gorgeous sprite-based game is at "it's fine, I guess" levels of quality because the fact that we got an Epic Mickey/Castle of Illusion crossover that goes meta with the premise and says that Mizrabel and her Castle of Illusion ended up in the Wasteland of Forgotten Characters after people stopped playing the 1990 Sega game is honestly dope as hell and is the type of deep lore cut I wish Disney did more.
Also there are Pete Thwomps in this game.
Also there are Pete Thwomps in this game.
2013
This is Baby's First Management and Material Harvesting Sim and it's full of a bunch of different gameplay elements that were all done better in other games...BUT, when combined, it actually kinda works? This is a Rune Factory and a restaurant management sim with much lower stakes but it having a lower skill ceiling and lower risk means that it's much easier to come back to this game after a long absence without Mickey Mouse breaking your kneecaps because you didn't make his special Shining Star Waffle within the last three days. In making this for children, they accidentally made one of the more chilled out management games and I commend them for it.
Sure, it's a bit hard to recommend this game since the sequel exists and the sequel has a lot of QOL changes, but also this game honestly has the better dungeon crawling and it also contains the Pirates of the Caribbean DLC (that I ironically had to pirate since I missed the eShop cutoff date) where you see Jack Sparrow harassed by a mean-looking Mii in an eyepatch.
Regardless of what game you play though, you end up turning Rabbit's garden into a corporate farm for your restaurant and watch as the cuddly animals of the Hundred Acre Wood all start pitching in free labor for your growing enterprise. Capitalism at its finest.
Sure, it's a bit hard to recommend this game since the sequel exists and the sequel has a lot of QOL changes, but also this game honestly has the better dungeon crawling and it also contains the Pirates of the Caribbean DLC (that I ironically had to pirate since I missed the eShop cutoff date) where you see Jack Sparrow harassed by a mean-looking Mii in an eyepatch.
Regardless of what game you play though, you end up turning Rabbit's garden into a corporate farm for your restaurant and watch as the cuddly animals of the Hundred Acre Wood all start pitching in free labor for your growing enterprise. Capitalism at its finest.
While this might not be my favorite version of the first MediEvil game, this is by far my favorite version of Sir Daniel Fortesque. OG MediEvil tried to make Dan seem at least somewhat cool but Resurrection was like "this walking corpse is a sopping wet cat of a man and he's bullied by everybody in town" and it was the perfect decision that enhances this character. Fantastic call to add so many additional cutscenes where it's just the animators flexing on how much they can make a jawless skeleton express complex forms of anxiety.
As for the rest of the game, honestly I had a blast with this even after just recently playing MediEvil PS4. People have complained about this game's change in tone from gothic horror to a more lighthearted spooky humor/horror blend but I think the game did a good job with the style change, minus a few hiccups by adding some light 00's-era ethnic stereotypes here and there. Course, I might be in the minority by saying that I actually didn't mind Al-Zalam. That opening cutscene is a really bad first impression but I like that Dan has a little guy in his head that occasionally yells "SMOOTH MOVE, DAVY JONES!" when he falls in a moving river.
Yes, controls and combat are jank but come on. It's MediEvil. MediEvil is in the same genre as Octodad where the jank counts as a form of character storytelling on Dan's part. Of course Sir Dan is going to awkwardly swing his sword like a doofus and occasionally get wailed on by bouncing pumpkins; he's a one-eyed undead loser who's main defining trait is that he ate shit and died.
Also this game has loads of Tom Baker content. Tom Baker should narrate the loading screens in more games.
As for the rest of the game, honestly I had a blast with this even after just recently playing MediEvil PS4. People have complained about this game's change in tone from gothic horror to a more lighthearted spooky humor/horror blend but I think the game did a good job with the style change, minus a few hiccups by adding some light 00's-era ethnic stereotypes here and there. Course, I might be in the minority by saying that I actually didn't mind Al-Zalam. That opening cutscene is a really bad first impression but I like that Dan has a little guy in his head that occasionally yells "SMOOTH MOVE, DAVY JONES!" when he falls in a moving river.
Yes, controls and combat are jank but come on. It's MediEvil. MediEvil is in the same genre as Octodad where the jank counts as a form of character storytelling on Dan's part. Of course Sir Dan is going to awkwardly swing his sword like a doofus and occasionally get wailed on by bouncing pumpkins; he's a one-eyed undead loser who's main defining trait is that he ate shit and died.
Also this game has loads of Tom Baker content. Tom Baker should narrate the loading screens in more games.
There's a fun gameplay and monster collection loop buried underneath all of this (think Yokai Watch Blasters with the serial numbers filed off and less charm) but man this is one of the most painfully unfunny games I have ever played. They named the multiplayer hub "The Covfefe Cafe" and an entire story chapter is themed around saying the same crap/kraken pun for an hour. It's like if a Facebook meme from your uncle's groupchat gained sentience.
You really gotta hand it to 'em - they certainly polished this 35-year old turd to a glistening, metallic sheen.