Before I begin my one-size-fits-all bitching and moaning, I would like to give Nintendo my sincerest gratitude in sacrificing this game upon their altars of public relations. I seriously could not imagine trying to play this game, knowing that real world is happening with it's cartoonish depictions. I'm sure Activision is more than willing to do the same for all their Call of Duty games, they could learn a thing or two from them. Since the game has finally released, I assume every war is now over. What a relief! Now I can game with peace of mind!

The constant delay gave me more than enough time to get over my initial shock of them remembering that this series once existed, and start bringing myself back on the level and stuff my inner fangirl back into their hole. The new artstyle for this game? Way too clean, I know it's WayForward's typical style, but I was never the hugest fan of it. Some COs like Lash look cute, but others just look drab. This isn't helped by the overly smooth animation for their in-battle portraits that look insanely cheap to me, it feels like I'm watching a bunch of vtubers in a multiplayer game. This is obviously pretty apples, oranges and melons. I'm sure some enjoy this new art style, but that's completely minor in the grand scheme of things, I would like to talk about the actual in-game graphics.

They are shit.

Awful. The most PepsiCo-sponsored corporate looking mobile 3D that looks tailor-made to run on the most budget cellphone you could imagine. I get that the Switch may as well be a shitty budget cellphone in comparison to my PC rig or the PS5/Series X, but surely you could've done better. It could be because it's hard to duplicate the original game's colorful spritework and backdrops that were created with the brightness of the GBA in mind to a more modern system with stock polygons, but I don't get why this unimpressive-looking mess also apparently runs at uneven frame rates. It clashes with the portraits of the COs, and this difference makes it even more noticeable. This is beyond my usual "sprites > polygons" bullshit when it comes to remakes, there's a clear winner and loser in this affair.

I know I'm going on purely about the visuals, but that's always the biggest change when these dreadful remakes pop up. If it looks shit compared to the original, then I don't care about the QoL improvements. It's great that they are there, but zooming out the map to see even more of the utterly dull landscape of this does little to excite me. I don't always have this attitude with remakes, I can be less mean-spirited. The Spyro Reignited Trilogy managed to survive my wrath despite it's glitches, and I think that speaks for itself enough considering my unspeakable adoration for the originals. A good touch could give an old game a new look for modern hardware that's pleasing for everyone, and this doesn't do it for me.

It's poop, I'm afraid. 💅

I would like to also bring up another thing, the price. It is outrageously rare that I would ever bring this up. I don't consider myself to be made of gold bars and pirate treasure, nor am I starving in the back of a McDonalds parking lot, but I know when something is fucked up. A few months ago the Metroid Prime Remaster was released, it was forty didgeridoos. I consider that game a nice glow up of a Gamecube classic despite it still being a bit much, this is a sixty didgeridoo mixed bag of opinions of two GBA titles that are very obviously running off the same rom file.[Biggest tell is AW1 Olaf losing his chair and Sturm no longer looking like Captain Snifit] I haven't had this feeling like I was about to be mugged since the Space Invaders Invincible Collection dropped, and attempted to put me into bankruptcy. It's way too much, you know the alternative. A sad day when your pricing approaches breathing distance of current-gen Taito re-releases.

If you're still interested, cool. The QoL will surely be nice, since underneath the Great Value presentation are still the skeletons of the gameplay by Intelligent Systems. However I consider this to be a mockery, and I no longer wish it to be in my kingdom. If WayBackward were gonna take up the reins, then they should've just done a new game [and it probably would've smelled even worse]. Maybe WayForward should've just made their way forward into a bottomless pit, because apparently their involvement would've made me angry regardless. I'm just hoping this remaster existing doesn't equip their GBA workers with the slow block when it comes to bringing the originals to NSO.[you know it's gonna be 2026 by that point]

I hope Arin Hanson accidentally bites into the world's most sour lemon, and has his mouth perpetually closed shut for the rest of his life.