Wanwanattack
Waaaaaaaay too easy for its own good (Umarida with Headshot genuinely breaks the game even on hard, but in a way I find extremely satisfying), but the story here is really frankly told in a way I find super refreshing, the plot takes some turns that had me yelling, and Waltaquin Redditch is just incredible. Very much an experiment, but one that a very small group is going to absolutely adore.
2022
The menus are extremely, extremely ugly, but beyond that it's Everybody's Golf. Everyone loves Everybody's Golf. I miss the character creation and structure of the last Everybody's Golf, but Sony exiled that series and I'm just glad Clap Hanz gets to keep on trucking, nobody does it like them.
2022
What a wonderful little game. I don't even care about the budget constraints and dungeon design, this one's all about the characters for me, and Arrow aside, I love all of them so much. I finished this in a very rough headspace, but the (good) ending was so sweet and empathetic that it really got to me through all of that. This is maybe my favorite RPG party in years, and I dearly loved the 70 hours I spent with all of them.
2022
I play like no deckbuilders because I am extremely not into the artstyle of most of them but this one has cute girls from a now defunct gacha game and uses them in place of all of your cards so it's good imo.
I never check out PS Plus stuff but my wife and I wanted something comfy to unwind with and whoops this slaps and we've put a ton of time into it whooooops.
I played this in a group and it was entirely us just screaming "oh my god what is wrong with this bird?!" and at one point an animal she was thinking of was "human" and anyway it's the best game of all time.
2022
The absolute best possible remake of a genuine classic. What a sweet, creative, deeply earnest game. I love it to no end.
Presents itself as a city builder but is really more of a super relaxed puzzle game. It's cute, laid back, and genuinely pretty addictive if you dig deep into getting good ranks. The art and presentation is super cute, too. Hard to dislike a game this earnest.
2002
The mascot character in this is doing a Cartman impression the entire time and the main character keeps saying "you can't touch this" with absolutely the wrong cadence.
Genuinely don't know if I liked it or not but I definitely loved it.
Genuinely don't know if I liked it or not but I definitely loved it.
Genuinely some of the tightest, most perfectly tuned combat you will find in any game. Every bossfight is so genuinely thrilling to tackle and when you eventually figure out what each fight wants of you and triumph over something that might seem like a total brick wall at first, it's more satisfying than basically anything else in the world.
It's the product of hundreds, if not thousands of hours of someone playing Etrian Odyssey back to front and front to back and so perfectly managing to turn what makes it so tense and fun and exciting into something far faster and more galaxy brained than even the most ingenious moments of any EO. There are 56 characters in this game, and each and every one of them is totally fascinating to play with, feeling totally distinct and exciting to use and figuring out how to make up to 12 of them at a time work in sync is just the best feeling thing in the world. I want to scream about how happy this games makes me. Playing it absolutely lights up the part of my brain that played Disgaea as a teen and upon realizing how deep its systems went, immediately declared it to be my favorite game of all time. On a mechanical level, maybe this is what I'd call the best game ever made. I honestly struggle to think of anything that makes me buzz as much as this does, and that's despite my wife Youmu being one of my least favorite characters here to use! It was an uphill battle from there and the game so firmly won me over that it didn't matter. The game told me I'd be an Iku fan going forward and I was powerless to say no to it. I wasn't before, I had no real opinion of her, but now seeing her gets me fired up and ready to spill out a dozen stories about fights she carried to a win when everything looked hopeless.
Then also when you finish the normal dungeon crawler story you get more dungeon crawling but everything is ratcheted up to insane degrees. It might've taken you 30 hours to get a party to an average level of 50, but suddenly you hit hour 100 and you're fighting bosses at level 12000 and how did it come to this? The game holds back nothing. I respect it so much. All the item descriptions are references to eroge that are filled with personal anecdotes like "the end scene in this game is one of the best things I've ever seen" because it is the purest expression of someone's deeply nerdy joy you can imagine.
Also I listened to the title screen music on repeat for like an hour when I was sad and came out the other end of it having written the best thing I've ever made, so when I say this game makes my brain light up, I truly mean it.
What a fucking achievement.
It's the product of hundreds, if not thousands of hours of someone playing Etrian Odyssey back to front and front to back and so perfectly managing to turn what makes it so tense and fun and exciting into something far faster and more galaxy brained than even the most ingenious moments of any EO. There are 56 characters in this game, and each and every one of them is totally fascinating to play with, feeling totally distinct and exciting to use and figuring out how to make up to 12 of them at a time work in sync is just the best feeling thing in the world. I want to scream about how happy this games makes me. Playing it absolutely lights up the part of my brain that played Disgaea as a teen and upon realizing how deep its systems went, immediately declared it to be my favorite game of all time. On a mechanical level, maybe this is what I'd call the best game ever made. I honestly struggle to think of anything that makes me buzz as much as this does, and that's despite my wife Youmu being one of my least favorite characters here to use! It was an uphill battle from there and the game so firmly won me over that it didn't matter. The game told me I'd be an Iku fan going forward and I was powerless to say no to it. I wasn't before, I had no real opinion of her, but now seeing her gets me fired up and ready to spill out a dozen stories about fights she carried to a win when everything looked hopeless.
Then also when you finish the normal dungeon crawler story you get more dungeon crawling but everything is ratcheted up to insane degrees. It might've taken you 30 hours to get a party to an average level of 50, but suddenly you hit hour 100 and you're fighting bosses at level 12000 and how did it come to this? The game holds back nothing. I respect it so much. All the item descriptions are references to eroge that are filled with personal anecdotes like "the end scene in this game is one of the best things I've ever seen" because it is the purest expression of someone's deeply nerdy joy you can imagine.
Also I listened to the title screen music on repeat for like an hour when I was sad and came out the other end of it having written the best thing I've ever made, so when I say this game makes my brain light up, I truly mean it.
What a fucking achievement.
2004
Some fights last way too long and the final boss is terrible but this game fucks. The story is the right level of dumb, there's a button dedicated entirely to cool posing, and the skull on your UI is now a cyber skull so it's impossible to not love this game. Rocketbilly Redcadillac is the best action game character of all time. I played this with the gang and we had basically the best time ever and my thumb felt like it was about to fall off. 10 outta 10, perfect game.
2002
The fact that you move at such a slow, lumbering pace almost makes this feel like you're playing as Jason Voorhees but with guns and cool poses. It feels like the basic sketch of an idea, but I like the mood it sets and the visuals are really stylish for such an early PS2 game.
KLONOA IS MY FRIEND!!!!!
This review contains spoilers
Kizuna and Lien are the only straight couple who I will ever call cute. Their dance together was the sweetest thing in th universe.
Also, it bears repeating that Uchikoshi has one plot twist and he STILL gets me with it every time I can't fucking believe he pulled it off again I was fucking screaming.
I love him.
Also, it bears repeating that Uchikoshi has one plot twist and he STILL gets me with it every time I can't fucking believe he pulled it off again I was fucking screaming.
I love him.
This review contains spoilers
I think when I reached the scene where Oshtor's mom reveals that she knew what was going on the whole time, I was pretty confident that this was one of my favorite games of all time. What an incredible, sad, difficult, and ultimately extremely sweet game.
The way it handles the tension built up from Deception's amazing cliffhanger is so good, I was on edge for the first 20 or so hours in this game just because I was waiting for things to fall apart, desperately hoping they wouldn't. The game's handling of grief and identity are so, so good, too. Seeing all these characters as empty as they are at the start hurt so damn much, I kept wanting things to just get better, somehow.
And man, that the game has the same end as the first game, where everyone says their sad farewells and it hits even harder than it did there, only for the game to keep going and just get better and better, wrapping on maybe my favorite final boss ever, is staggering.
What a towering achievement. What an amazing culmination of everything this series has set out to do. I love it more than I can ever express.
The way it handles the tension built up from Deception's amazing cliffhanger is so good, I was on edge for the first 20 or so hours in this game just because I was waiting for things to fall apart, desperately hoping they wouldn't. The game's handling of grief and identity are so, so good, too. Seeing all these characters as empty as they are at the start hurt so damn much, I kept wanting things to just get better, somehow.
And man, that the game has the same end as the first game, where everyone says their sad farewells and it hits even harder than it did there, only for the game to keep going and just get better and better, wrapping on maybe my favorite final boss ever, is staggering.
What a towering achievement. What an amazing culmination of everything this series has set out to do. I love it more than I can ever express.