Well..... I feel weird saying I wasn't very impressed.

It's only fair to mention that I played Golden Deer on my first playthrough. I'm currently playing Black Eagles, and I intend to do Blue Lion as well.

It was a fine game. The story was... fine. I liked the intensity of some parts. The lore they built up around the continent of Fodlan seemed really intriguing to me at first, but nothing came to a satisfying conclusion after it was all over (something that I assume I paid the consequences for when choosing the "neutral" Golden Deer route. no resolute answers for those of us who don't pick sides and also think Claude is cute).

The characters are.... fine. I know it's kind of impossible to make every single character well-rounded in their personality and growth, but I really disliked the characters that seemed to only talk about One Thing and One Thing only (Raphael... I'm so sorry but I don't want to hear you talk about food for the umpteenth time. I know you have a family that you care about please talk about them more!!!!). My favorite Fire Emblem games definitely have those types too, but for some reason it really grated on me with this one.

The voice acting is pretty great. I'm really glad the Fire Emblem series is regularly being voiced, which makes me glad to listen to. The performances are good. Unfortunately, the stiff character models look really awkward to me.... I felt like I was going insane having to look at the same character movement loop over and over again during conversations. They all seemed so stiff and lifeless, despite the vocal performances. The prerendered cutscenes were cool-looking, at least.

Maybe I have a problem with the look of the game.... I like that it's more "serious" looking with muted tones and mature color palette, but it quickly becomes muddy looking and drab....... it has me begging to tear my eyes away from it to look at something to bring the life back into my vision. I feel like they could've made some little pops of color somewhere on the grounds of the monastery, but... I guess that's not what they wanted to go for.

It's been memed on, but the little details like the textures really are rough. They're just.. not used well or not mapped correctly. It looks a little lazy. Idk why I care so much about that. I feel really harsh on this game and I don't know why!

This game does have depth to it. I guess I feel bitter because I feel like I unknowingly chose the route that lacked all the interesting plot points. Did I....?

Anyway, I feel like this is a good Fire Emblem game for beginners, though I will say that the classroom system is disorientingly complex. Well, maybe not complex per se, but there's just a LOT of management to do and.... it has potential to be fun, but I found myself really anxious to get it over with after a while. I love min/maxing in games, but it wasn't that fun in this one. It takes way too long.

The pacing of this one really drags on, I guess I mean to say. For a game that potentially wants you to try all the routes, I feel like quite a bit could've been cut and it still would've been a great experience..... I just wish it was shorter!

If you're new to the series, its a good start perhaps.

I like this game a little less than Dragon Age 1, but I think it's a better streamlined experience.

It has a more solid plot to follow with, with more story scenes and your companions are more fleshed out. You don't get to travel very far, and the entire story takes place in one large city instead of having to traverse an entire continent.

It's been a long time since I played this game, but I can't remember much of it. It's the shortest of the three Dragon Age games for sure, and I think you can just hop in this one without having played DA1.

Also if you like to play mages in rpgs I am so sorry but you might want to skip Dragon Age altogether. They do nothing but shit on mages and treat them like maniac scum of the earth no matter what choices you make, so if you want to play well just brace yourself for that!

Varric is the guy ever.

I remember being kind of excited to pick up this game, what with the throwbacks to past Sonic games and all of that.....

It was fun for a little bit, and I like the option to play some stages in "3D" or "2D", but man it was so frustrating fighting the camera in this game.... Its not that Sonic is too fast or anything (he's supposed to be fast!), its that the camera isn't far away enough to get a scope of what's coming while you run. I was dying left and right, and falling into pitfalls and plummeting so often I had to just stop playing.

I adore the remixes and the music, though.

I didn't play this game for the longest time (maybe 5 or so years after its launch) because I was off-put by the new card battle system they put in it.

Safe to say, it's mostly fun with only a few bits of frustration here and there.

For the pros:

- Interesting mystery unfolds with the story
- Charming art style and pixel art
- Fun battle mechanic: deck building gets fun
- Surprisingly emotional beats in the story
- Interesting "new" characters introduced
- Namine

The cons:

- The beginning of the convoluted Kingdom Hearts plot
- Asinine way to progress through doors and floors in each level (getting screwed over by not having enough/the right random cards to progress)
- Boss battles are hard as hell, especially later in the game. But not in the fun way just in the "sudden random difficulty spike" way
- Required reading to understand the beginning of Kingdom Hearts 2
- Rehashed worlds from KH1 feels a little lazy

This game is so good, but it has a huge drawback; the pacing.

There's a looooot of padding in this game.... the dungeons/levels/chapters you're going through are agonizingly long with very little interesting environment to look at. I felt myself bored to tears at times with some of the levels, and it's really unfortunate because there's some things this game does really well.

Another misstep is that the companions you collect that give Mario his special abilities are painfully stale opposed to the colorful cast of characters in Paper Mario 64 & Thousand-Year Door. Its really unfortunate that this game is doomed to be compared with it's predecessors in such a way, but it's really shocking that they couldn't come up with more visually interesting partners.... Especially since the villains in this game have REALLY good design. What happened?

Despite all of that, this game redeems itself with one aspect-- the plot.

The plot is good. Really good. The dialogue is incredibly witty and entertaining as well. Peach, Bowser, and Luigi are given really great characterization and you can tell the writing team put in their A-game for this one.

The gameplay is alright. They took out the strategy aspect of it. As a fan of the last two Paper Mario games, I remember being incredibly disappointed that they nixed the turn based combat, but with how long the game is I can see why they did it. I try to be a little kinder about it now, but at worst its just nothing to write home about. You hop or pound enemies to fight them and they explode into coins. Its a much more streamlined battle system.

This game should be played!! It's a story you don't want to miss. Pushing through the long bits is worth it, in my opinion, but if you can't well... look up the cutscenes on YouTube or something.

Anyway. Mr. L.

To me, it's a perfect game.

The aesthetics, the original story, the worldbuilding, the characters... I think it knocks it out of the park with all of those elements. The decision to include Disney and Final Fantasy characters was an odd stroke of genius that we'll probably never see experimented with again. You can tell the writers were being as sincere as they could be while handling these characters, which was really cool to see. They all flow naturally somehow.

The music is one of the best in gaming, in my humble opinion. There's some arrangements of familiar songs, but loads of original pieces as well composed by the incredible Yoko Shimamura of Super Mario RPG fame. You can really hear her signature chords and melodies in this soundtrack which is just enchanting, bouncy, and sometimes melancholic. Her score gives the game such heart and unique personality.

The style of the game is so iconic as well. It's bright and colorful, and moody when it needs to be. It's kind of incredible that Disney allowed Square Enix to be so creative with their properties (something that definitely gets snatched away with Kingdom Hearts 3, unfortunately). It's always so much fun watching Sora interact with the Disney characters of the worlds he visits. Also the fact that they managed to get almost all of the original voice actors of Disney characters to reprise their roles was a real treat.

Part of me wonders what this series would've been like if there were never the inclusion of Organization XIII.... its not that I don't dislike them, but.... the whole story really became all about them after this game. I don't know... I liked everything before that got included. There was a lot of pure wonder in this game that I think got lost with the following titles. I miss that sense of wonder, but I can always go back to it when I decide to pick up this game.

This game is worth your time. Dearly beloved.

Adored this game to bits.

My favorite part of Animal Crossing was designing houses anyway, so this was a dream come true. If you don't like decorating/designing, then just skip this one.

BUT I love decorating. I love designing. I love Lottie. Yippee.

This game is so much fun in the most simple way possible.

I think the ideal way to play this is to rent it or borrow it from a friend. Spending your afternoon/night to power through this game is the perfect way to experience it (and at night is when you want to play it for sure). And most importantly, play it with a friend!

My wife and I rented this game when it came out from a Redbox, so we only had 24 hours to complete it. Luckily, it's already a short game experience.

And "experience" is really what I would call it. It's barely on the cusp of being an visual novel "walking sim". I think most people actually would call it a walking simulator, but I'm a little more lenient because I'm fond of this game I guess.

The story revolves around a couple mysteries, and it's fun as hell to figure out where things are going. It's also a horror game, so there's plenty of fun jumpscares. It's like an interactive campy horror flick (completely intentionally, by the way!). The characters are pretty much every trope from a horror film, too. In what would usually earn a yawn and eyeroll from me, there's reasons why they're all like that so I enjoyed it a lot. Some of the characters have a growth arc too, which is cool to see.

Even when you think you may have the story figured out, it's still really fun to watch it unfold.

Some cons:
- The facial expressions have some jank. Dark Pictures studio just.. is like that. All of their games have really janky facial expressions.
- Some absolutely BULLSHIT deaths in this game. But mercifully, you can save and load often. In my opinion part of the experience is reloading and trying again. Some scenes will absolutely have you tearing your hair out (its kind of fun, to be honest)
- A couple characters are really really irritating. But hey, they're supposed to be older teens/college kids so maybe it's more realistic for them to act the way they do. I was able to push past it, but I can see if other people can't.

Like I said, this game is best played with two or more people watching you play. They don't even have to pick up the other controller for the co-op--just have some people around to watch the madness and mystery unfold. Great fun!

This game is the popcorn-eating equivalent to a Fire Emblem game.

The best part of it is the battles. Its fun to fight and level up, and the "engage" function adds some dimension to it. I thought at first that it was a cheap gimmick that just lets you win any battle automatically, but as you go further in to the story oooh boy it is definitely Not that. So if you think the engage feature is cheap, it does actually get challenging later on.

I honestly don't love the story of this one, and think it's kind of predictable and stiff. You can see where its going from a mile away, and leaves me with a really underwhelmed impression. I don't care about the mysterious girl. However the voice acting is A++ I absolutely adore the dimension the voice cast gave to these characters. It had me scrambling to unlock as many support conversations as possible! Super fun character interactions.

I like the character writing for the most part (stuff that's separate from the stale story, anyway). In my opinion, one of the best things about the Fire Emblem series as a whole is the support conversations, and these are really entertaining and fun. Its cool that you can have the characters support with the emblem characters, too (although those ones are very very brief with only two lines of dialogue per unit).

The art is.... hmm..... It's a hit and miss for me sometimes. I won't deny its very gorgeous, but I felt bothered that every woman had a childish face...? It was weird. The girls all had the same chubby cheeks and big eyes mostly. I like how the men are designed in this game, though. Again, the girls are cute looking! But I just didn't love the cheek thing going on. I dunno. Like it makes sense for the younger characters sure, but not the ones that are clearly supposed to be older.

If there's one more criticism I can fit in here, it's that I really don't love how the cutscenes and dialogue story scenes look. I hate the cheap-looking mocap animation....... and the backgrounds are just as offputting and flat as they were in 3 Houses, which I hated the look of. I hope IntSys is able to get more time to make their games or something so they can do a little more animating with the models they're working with.

Overall, I think this game is fun despite my criticisms. Don't expect a very deep story... its about as shallow as a puddle in my opinion, but it's worth playing for the fun gameplay. For once, I didn't mind that the story wasn't as strong.

A pretty good installment in the Fire Emblem franchise. Worth playing.

For one, I really love the look of this game; it's got this faded sepia color tone to it that gives it a little more character than FE6 & FE7. It feels more ancient, if that makes sense. Like you're taking part in an old story.

The story is good enough, I think. It was unique to me that the story splits off into two separate experiences (essentially an "easy" and "hard" mode), that eventually converge in the end of the game. You get to recruit different units in each route, so you won't be able to collect all of them in one run. Its fun and challenging to build different teams though!

((SPOILERS))

I think the story between Eirika and Ephraim and their childhood friend being the villain of the story made for a REALLY interesting tale! ...I just wish maybe there could've been more growth between them all throughout the story.... I feel like they didn't change much, or their arcs could've been a little stronger. It definitely tugs at your heartstrings in some parts, but I would've loved more depth to it. Just a bit more.

((END SPOILERS))

This game improves the leveling up slightly by introducing the "Tower of Valni" which is a place to level grind, but goodness its very slow. It takes ages to level up your units, but I suppose some kind of help with the leveling up is better than none. The past two GBA games definitely suffered in that aspect, and it was much harder to cap your units to level 20.

I think this is a good game to try out. It starts out in the middle of some action, so it has an exciting beginning to get you hooked on the story.

You absolutely need to play this game if you get the chance.

I've played PoR a few times, but I somehow always forget how awesome this game is. The story doesn't throw any punches, and its very refreshing to have the story focus on a character that isn't royalty (no, not even secretly).

The gameplay has improved a lot since it's GBA predecessors, and its a satisfying change from 2D to 3D. The animations are just a bit stiff, but everything else in this game is totally elevated. The character art is gorgeous, the music is memorable, and you'll be playing eager to see how the story concludes. Plenty of little mysteries as well, which give fun reveals later in the game. It's challenging at times like any good Fire Emblem game will be.

The character writing gets a special mention. It's really good. There's a lot of depth and brave writing choices (I mean that being, they weren't afraid to make mean characters. not everyone is bubbly and sweet). You really get the sense that these characters are doing everything they can to survive during this war.

If you choose one Fire Emblem game to pick up, I recommend this one. I recommend it even over my favorite titles. It's a good time, invoking, and engaging.

I only enjoy this game anticipating what units they'll add and what their voices will sound like :')

This game is so severely broken (and they continue to break it), along with an original story that REALLLLY sucks.

It's a little obvious they didn't expect this game to do so well because when its only the 3rd chapter of the story and they're going with the plot "we're fighting death itself", you can tell they didn't have any foresight to stretch the plot out. When they keep trying to amp up the stakes with each new chapter, it feels really lame............ ugh.

Anyway. This game has too many side things to do. I simply can't be bothered to care about it all. I've been on this game since day 1, but I just feel very overstimulated with all the different kinds of raids and battles and side battles and arenas to do... there's just too many. I don't even look or care about a lot of it.

And, of course because its a gatcha game, getting "orbs" to summon your blorbos is really hard to do. You need 5 to perform one summon. It gets difficult to collect that many very quickly.

At least the art slaps? The art is always really good, and a real treat since they get many different artists to contribute to the game. I like it like that.

I remember hearing about this game for YEARS and being really excited that it finally got an English translation. I was really eager to play this.

It's an interesting little gatcha app game in terms of story, but everything else is just you basic gatcha mechanics. There's loads of farming to do for leveling up your characters and their magic abilities which just takes an agonizingly long time to achieve. Having a "speed-up" option to hurry through the farming seems pointless when you could simply go a step further and skip the process entirely. It asks a little too much of your time, in my opinion. It can be fun when you're just starting out, but gets very tiresome the longer you're with it.

I wish the special event stories were a little more interesting, too. I found myself skipping them after a while and not reading anything so I could farm the special thingamabobs I needed for that event.

If there's one thing this gatcha game has going for it, it's that the artwork is REALLY pretty. The quality of the artwork is phenomenal, and I recommend at least looking up what all the special card illustrations look like.

Also. Choosing a "house" to join in the very beginning has absolutely no bearing on anything at all, from what I can tell. I was excited to join one of them, but then realized it didn't matter.

Hmm anything else....

Epel is the best.

This game had probably the most interesting story a Tales game has had in YEARS and they just.... threw it away.

I played this game every single day from it's launch until its closure, and I really lament what they did to it. It was a good game... I really liked the mechanics of the battles and the story of the main quest was interesting enough to have me actually anticipating the release of each bit of it every month or so.

If anything, this whole thing should have been a mainline title (without the things that made it a mobile game like arenas and raids and gatcha mechanics, that is).

I adored whatever blorbos I could manage to summon with the gatcha mechanic, and I really liked the special/seasonal units they would release (except apparently they were rehashed from another Tales mobile game? sheesh talk about low-effort).

The game chugged nuts, though. Even on its lowest resolution. I remember getting kicked from raids a lot. The arena was pretty broken, but hey I was kinda proud that I managed to consistently stay in the top 10 (I gotta brag about this somewhere, right? right.)

It would be a miracle if BamCo managed to re-release this game as just the story someday, but.... considering how poorly they manage the Tales series lately it probably won't ever happen.