So, it’s been a while, huh? The last review I posted on this website was my Owl House: Witch’s Apprentice review over a week ago, and since then, I kinda fell out of playing and reviewing games, especially since continuously attempting and failing HaraHara in Puyo Pop Fever over and over again was kind of starting to wear on my mental health. So I decided to take a brief break from playing games and worrying so much about making another review. However, on a whim, I decided I wanted to get back into making these reviews and knocking games off my backlog, so what better game to do so than with a really short one? As you can already tell, that game is none other than Mega Man IV… uh, no, not the NES one, the Game Boy one. Yeah, so all of the Mega Man games on Game Boy have abhorrently bad names in the US, so for the sake of not making it too confusing (especially since I’m going to be mentioning Mega Man 4 on NES a few times in this review), I’m going to refer to this game as Mega Man World 4 (or MMW4 for short) from here on. I remember getting Mega Man World 4 on the 3DS eShop after hearing that it was one of the better Gameboy Mega Man games (alongside Mega Man World 5), but I never really got to sit down and play it until recently. And after finally finishing it, I gotta say, for a Gameboy Mega Man game that remixes levels from the NES ones, it still manages to hold its own identity and plays really well, even if it has some strange flaws.

The first part of this game I’d like to discuss is the level design, possibly one of the most important aspects in making Classic Mega Man so good. But before I do, I’d like to really quickly discuss the gist of the Mega Man World games, as this’ll be pretty important when discussing Mega Man World 4’s levels. For those who don’t know, until Mega Man World 5, the Gameboy Mega Man games used remixed levels from the NES Mega Man games, usually with an original boss character near the very end. For example, Mega Man World 4 uses remixed levels from Mega Man 4 and 5 for its main levels, and after you beat all of them, you get to face Ballade before taking on the Wily stage. I often see people mention this as a detriment towards the Game Boy Mega Man games, but I personally didn’t mind this, as (at least for Mega Man World 4), the levels still feel really unique from their NES counterparts. I can’t comment much on the Mega Man 5 levels as I actually have yet to play that game, but as someone who’s played Mega Man 4 a billion times, the levels from those games still felt really fresh and new to me. Part of this comes from the fact that these levels usually opt for new gimmicks to be added to the stages, such as rising platforms for Bright Man’s stage, platforms you can shoot in Crystal Man’s stage, etc. But even with the levels that don’t introduce new gimmicks, they still feel unique because they’re using these familiar level concepts in completely new ways. It also helps that these levels are really fun as well. Hell, I prefer some of these Mega Man 4 levels over their NES counterparts, mainly Pharaoh Man and Toad Man’s stages in particular. A lot of the Mega Man 5 levels also feature branching paths, which is an inclusion I always enjoy from classic Mega Man and makes these levels all the more replayable. Overall, these levels are just generally really fun and well-designed, however, there are quite a few cheap sections that kind of plague the levels. These range from minor but annoying things like cheap enemy placements, to pretty deplorable game design decisions like not knowing to hold left before jumping down and then falling into a pit of spikes. The game also tends to suffer from pretty heavy lag, especially when you’re using a weapon like Pharaoh Shot or Rain Flush. Thankfully, the lag never caused any of my controller inputs to be dropped like in Mega Man 3, but the slowdown can still happen quite often. These issues can get pretty annoying, but they’re few and far between and they’re nowhere near enough to ruin the otherwise really fun level designs and creative concepts of the levels. My favorite was probably Napalm Man’s stage, not only due to the clever use of the gimmicks already present in that stage, but also for its cool original setpieces like the disappearing block paths and the fires that you can put out with Rain Flush. Environmental interaction before Mega Man 7? See, this is one of the many examples of how creative these levels can get. While none of these levels are like, super mind blowing or anything, they’re still really fun and feel really refreshing for a Gameboy game consisting of remixed NES stages. Alongside the original Wily stages and bosses, you can tell that this was the entry in the series where Minakuchi Engineering really wanted to make something original for themselves, as shown by the fact that a year later, they’d cook with Mega Man World 5, one of the most unique entries in the entire series to this day. All-in-all, the levels in Mega Man World 4 were just a really solid time all around and still felt new, even with the reused enemies and setpieces.

I mentioned how the new level gimmicks and the creative enemy uses made the levels feel more unique, but there are two more things that the developers added that made this entry feel fresh. One of which was the introduction of the P-chip system, which is sort of like a predecessor to the bolts seen in later games like Mega 9 and 10, where you collect them throughout your adventure and can spend them at the shop in between stages. Unfortunately, like in Mega Man 9 and 10, this system kind of leaves a lot to be desired. They suffer from the same problem as the bolts in those games where, aside from the Energy Balancer, you really only have E-tanks and Extra Lives left to buy, so if you’re like me and don’t really use E-Tanks, you don’t have much of a reason to come back to the shop or collect any more P-chips. Thankfully, Mega Man World 5 fixed this by adding a lot more cool stuff in the shop you could buy, like upgrades for your Mega Arm. As it stands though, Mega Man World 4’s P-chips are a cool idea in concept (hence why they’d be used again in later entries), but in execution, they could’ve been fleshed out a little bit more. Another element that Mega Man World 4 had that made it feel more unique is the collectibles. Well, I say it makes it feel more unique, but this idea was re-used from Mega Man 5, but in a slightly different way. In the Mega Man 4 levels, you can collect letters spelling “MEGA”, and just like in Mega Man 5, your reward for collecting these is the robot bird Beat, which I never used. Meanwhile, throughout the Mega Man 5 levels, you can collect letters that spell Wily, which… allow you access to Ballade and the Wily stages? I don’t know, that feels like kind of a weird requirement to be able to progress through the game, don’t you think? Eh, at least they aren’t too out of the way, so it’s easy to collect them all on your first try, but it’s still pretty weird to have some of your collectibles be required. Though, despite what it sounds like, I still very much appreciate the addition of these two features to the game, and they help even further in giving Mega Man World 4 an identity of its own.

Another thing that helps make classic Mega Man so good is its selection of special weapons. Mega Man World 4 has a pretty great weapon roster, though, part of that is kind of expected as half of its weapons come from Mega Man 4. Mega Man 4 genuinely has one of the best weapon selections I’ve seen in any game. Nearly all of them manage to be useful in some fashion and genuinely really add to the stages too. Likewise, the Mega Man 4 weapons brought over into this game are just as amazing as ever, with my personal favorites being Pharaoh Shot and Flash Stopper. Ring Boomerang kiiind of got nerfed as it can no longer pierce through shields, but the ability to pick up items from far away more than makes up for it. Even the Mega Man 5 weapons brought into this game are pretty decent, and the excellent Ballade Cracker is the icing on the cake. It’s an exploding weapon that travels fast, and can be fired in 7 directions, yet still manages to be more balanced than the Metal Blade. This weapon roster is just really solid overall. While not as good as base Mega Man 4’s roster, I still felt like the stages were very well built around the game’s weapon roster and they were pretty fun to use. Unfortunately though, as much as I’ve praised the Mega Man World 4’s levels and weapons so far, I really can’t do the same for the game’s main robot masters.

The bosses are another one of the three key factors in making classic Mega Man so great. I mean, they’re what stand between you and the special weapons you get to use, so they’ve got to put up a formidable yet fair fight. However, most of the time, NES Mega Man bosses tend to be… not great? A lot of the time, they typically don’t have much of a discernible pattern, typically relying on the player’s location or inputs (like most of the Mega Man 4 robot masters), and having insanely hard attacks to actually dodge, so the fight just kind of boils down to, “who can outlast the damage race”, rather than actually learning the bosses’ pattern. Other times, it’s WAY too easy, and their pattern is so easy to cheese that you can basically get out of the fight scot-free. From my experience, this felt like the case with a lot of Robot Masters in NES era Mega Man, and it wouldn’t be until Mega Man 7 onwards where Robot Masters and their patterns started to reach their full potential in my opinion. Sadly, the Robot Master fights in this game feel a lot more like the former than the latter, which I guess isn’t really the developers’ fault as they did have to port over these fights. They did change up a few fights from the NES ones a little bit, such as Ring Man firing his rings towards you, making the fight play out almost completely differently from NES Ring Man. I really wish they did this for a lot more of the Robot Master fights in this game, because a lot of these battles just never felt all that challenging or satisfying to me. They’re made even worse by the fact that the screen is so small. Mega Man World 5’s Robot Masters felt pretty well designed around this, but here it just makes the fights feel a lot more cramped than anything. Honestly, if I had to change anything about this game, these fights would certainly be it, because if they tweaked these fights a bit like they did with Ring Man’s fight, I think they could’ve been a lot more fun. However, there’s a lot of room for improvement with these fights, and this is especially true for the game’s special robot master, Ballade.

Look, I love Ballade as much as the next guy. He’s one of the coolest motherfuckers that classic Mega Man has ever introduced! But MAN, this fight just does not feel good to play against. If you’ve played Mega Man 10’s 3rd time attack stage like I have, it’s seemingly a lot like the fight in that stage, and in essence, it’s the same idea. Ballade lays down a bomb to watch out for, jumps towards your location around 1-4 times, runs towards your location, and throws a Ballade Cracker, rinse and repeat. It’s actually a good idea, and has been done quite well in Mega Man 10, but unfortunately, we’re not reviewing that game. We’re reviewing Mega Man World 4, where this seemingly pretty simple fight is butchered by a pretty terrible execution. I have a few problems with this. One of which is that Ballade will stop dead in his tracks whenever he reaches your location, which doesn’t sound too bad, but trust me, jumping over him when he does this is a hell of a lot harder than it looks. He’ll usually stop as you’re making a jump, so you end up just crashing into him and taking a shit ton of damage. Mega Man 10 mitigated this issue by having him run to the end of the screen instead of at your location, so you won’t get blindsided by him just suddenly stopping in his tracks. Speaking of which, another thing that Mega Man 10 has going for it is that Ballade’s fight just feels more natural in that game. There, you didn’t have to worry too much about the amount of jumps he did just because you could react to it quickly enough, But in a game where the screen is shrunken down and the physics are a lot more floaty, it feels like it just doesn’t work. Put all this together, and you’re once again left with a fight that feels like it just boils down to “win the damage race”, which sucks, because in concept and design, Ballade is incredibly cool, but his fight definitely needed some more time in the oven before coming out. After you do inevitably win the damage race, you can move on to the endgame, but before we do, I’d quickly like to discuss the section that comes directly after this. After beating Ballade and getting the Ballade Cracker, you’re then thrust into a chase sequence. The ground behind you is breaking apart and you need to get past a ton of exploding missiles before you fall to your doom, preferably by using Ballade Cracker. However, because you’re so focused on moving as much as you can, and the missiles are basically clustered together, you’ll often end up taking damage from the blast radius. Plus, the layout of the room and the missiles are just really awkward to work with. Your best bet is typically switching between Pharaoh Shot, Ballade Cracker, and the buster, as those are your three best tools to work with when dealing with them. Still, this section really isn’t that fun to go through, and most importantly, just doesn’t feel necessary in the first place. Why even have a chase sequence here? Honestly, if there was one section I’d cut from the game, it’d probably be this. Thankfully, it is pretty short, and after all that’s said and done, we can finally move on to Mega Man World 4’s endgame.

I don’t have too much to say about Mega Man World 4’s endgame since it is pretty short, but I thought it was a lot of fun. Barring the two terrible Met cannon minibosses at the start, the Wily stages felt like what classic Mega Man end game stages should feel like. A gauntlet of everything you’ve learned so far, putting your weapon skills and reflexes to the test before finally facing off against the main man himself, Wily. Like I said, this endgame stage is pretty short, so you won’t have much time to test out your newly acquired Ballade Cracker (and no, the chase sequence does NOT mitigate this). I would’ve added a bit more to this stage, but other than that, it’s a pretty well done endgame stage, even if I don’t have much to say about it. After getting through the obligatory robot master rematches, you can finally reach Dr. Wily himself, and face off against one of the coolest Wily fights in the series. See, rather than just using your standard Wily machine, Wily decided to bring out the big guns, and you’re left facing a huge ass robot, which is just one of the coolest concepts for a Wily boss I’ve ever seen. The fight itself is also pretty fun too. The first phase, where you fight the robot’s chest, can kinda catch you off guard with how fast its hands come out, but once you start to get mentally prepared for when they come, you’ll be able to overcome it. Next up, you face off against the head, and it’s quite a bit easier than the chest phase, but it’s still pretty fun and creative, requiring that you shoot him while his mouth sucks you in. After you’ve beaten that, now it’s time for the final phase. You follow Wily into another room- aaand it’s just another Wily capsule. This is probably the lamest of the three forms, plus it requires you to use a special weapon to beat it, which I’m never too keen on. I don’t dislike it at all, but it’s pretty easy, especially if you use Pharaoh Shot to beat it. After you do, you get a cutscene escaping Wily’s fortress, Ballade sacrifices himself to save you, and then the game’s over. You just beat Mega Man World 4!

Man, I had a lot more to say about this Game Boy Mega Man game than I initially thought. I guess I just really like talking about classic Mega Man, so I guess in a way, this was probably the perfect game to get me back into Backloggd reviews. I had a really fun time with this one. It’s not anything super special, and yeah, it has a ton of strange flaws, but not only is it pretty well-designed, but it’s also quite creative for what they had to work with. You can really tell there was a strong desire to make something more original out of these Game Boy Mega Man games, and that would show when they’d release Mega Man World 5 soon after. And even though I’d typically recommend that game if you were to only ever play a single Game Boy Mega Man, I still wouldn’t overlook this Game Boy gem either. Even if you’ve played Mega Man 4 or 5 a lot, I can still say there’d probably be something here that you’d enjoy. (7/10)

Okay, NOW it’s about time I made a review of the game that has my profile picture’s character in it.

If you couldn’t tell already, I am absolutely in love with The Owl House. I love basically everything about it; its characters, its world, the artstyle, the overarching plot over each episode, I don’t even think there’s a single episode I disliked even a little bit. It might be my favorite show of all time next to Nichijou. However, this isn’t a review of The Owl House as a show, thank fucking god. Having to do Hazelnut Hex justice was already stressful enough, if I had to do that for a show as amazing as The Owl House, I think I would actually implode. No, the reason I mention all this is because when you start to get hyper-obsessed with a franchise, you end up consuming a lot of media related to it, like Youtube videos, merchandise, and of course, web browser games. So I decided that upon finishing Season 3 of the Owl House, I’d take the time to check out more of what it had to offer, including its first and only game; The Owl House: Witch’s Apprentice. And it’s uh… well, it’s certainly a web browser game.

The premise of this game is, as expected, pretty simple. You’re Luz Noceda, and you have to fulfill certain duties for Eda to progress through the game, such as getting parts of her body back, or gathering materials to sell later. The gameplay is sort of what you’d expect from your standard web browser platformer, though it occasionally breaks up these segments with changes to the gameplay such as flying sections or minigames where you have to sell materials at a market. You also gain more abilities during the platforming sections as you go along, such as the ability to create platforms out of plants, using a shell to knock over stacks of enemies, a double jump, etc. Aside from the main game, you can also clear special levels in order to collect relics, items which sort of just act like an extra collectible, though they do reference every episode from Season 1, which is a really cool detail for fans of the show like me. That’s pretty much all I have to mention in terms of the basic gameplay, and I gotta say that it has a pretty decent amount of content for a web browser / iOS game. Because of that, I actually have a lot to say about this Witch’s Apprentice, at least, a lot more than I initially thought, so let’s go into a bit more detail about the main crux of the game; the platforming.

The platformer levels, like I mentioned, feel pretty standard and while they’re still fun, they don’t really stand out too much. There are two reasons why I feel this way, one of which is the level design. The levels often revolve around looking for a certain amount of items, be it fire crystals, a cauldron, one of Eda’s body parts, etc. Because of this, the levels opt to be quite open, which I don’t mind, but there are points where the levels kind of suffer from feeling like you’re just going through the motions. Enemies are typically out of the way, and there aren’t too many setpieces that stand out within the level, be it gimmicks or just super memorable platforming sections. The other reason why I feel like the levels are pretty standard is because of your initial moveset. At the start of the game, you only start with your typical running, jumping and ducking. However, as you progress through the game, you start to gain more abilities which you can use in the levels, such as a double jump, the ability to plant trees as platforms, freeze hordes of enemies, and use a snaggleback shell to topple over stacks of enemies. While I think this is a fantastic idea, it kind of suffers from a weird problem. From what I’ve researched, this game was also ported to iOS, meaning this was designed for mobile devices as well. Because of this, all of these abilities are all relegated to the same button. And by the same button, I mean the jump button. Because of this limitation, the game only allows you to use these abilities in certain sections where in designated (typically sparkling) areas, so for example, whenever you see a dirt pile on the ground, that’s when you’re able to plant a platform for you to stand on. Unfortunately, it’s for this reason that the level design typically doesn’t take advantage of these abilities, so you don’t need to use them too often. Hell, I remember getting an ability that lets you make a platform out of a cloud, but I don’t remember using it once. So for that reason, the levels can end up feeling repetitive and samey for a lot of people. But contrary to what I’m making it sound like, I don’t think the level design of this game is bad. I mean, it’s certainly no Big Tower Tiny Square in terms of level design, but I still had a lot of fun with the levels despite their problems. For a browser game, it’s just engaging enough to get into it when you could be focusing in class instead.

I really only have one major issue with the level design, but before I get to that, I want to discuss the enemies. Aside from the abilities you gain later, you only have running and jumping to get you by. So, how do you deal with the enemies in this game? Well, by jumping on their heads, Mario style, of course! However, doing this feels kinda finicky. Most of the time it works, but other times you fall through the enemy and take damage. However, I didn’t find this too frustrating, as the damage you take really doesn’t matter that much, and this feels like the perfect time to segue into my biggest problem with Witch’s Apprentice; the health power-ups, or rather, the massive abundance of health power-ups that you just can’t seem to get away from. I’m not joking when I say the amount of health power-ups in these levels is egregious. Seriously, dodging the health power-ups might be harder than dodging the damn enemies! I’m willing to be more forgiving of the game’s other issues due to it being both a web browser game and an iOS game, but this is the one thing about Witch’s Apprentice that I feel like should’ve been changed. Before we move on, I have one more thing to address regarding the levels in Witch’s Apprentice, specifically the relic levels. These are bonus levels that you can play to collect relics referencing episodes from Season 1, however, the levels themselves are structured really strangely. Normally, the levels in the main game start you out in the town, then you go to the forest levels and then the market levels last. However, after collecting the 16th relic in the market area, the next area sent me back to the town? It feels like all of the relic levels are ordered strangely like this, and I don’t really take any issue with it, but I just found it pretty weird and I have no clue when I’m going to get the chance to mention this again.

Aside from the main platforming levels, there are two levels which opt to change up the gameplay. One of them is a flying level where you have to retrieve Eda’s body as it’s flying on a magic staff, meaning that you have to fly on a magic staff to get it back. This sounds like a really fun idea, but it’s kinda plagued by a terrible control scheme. Rather than using the arrow keys like a normal game, you instead have to hold the mouse to fly up, and once you release it, you go down, which is incredibly awkward and just not that fun to control. At least the level is really short, though I do think the potential for Kaznapped-esque shooter sections was kinda wasted here. The other aforementioned level in this game is one where you’re supposed to sell Eda’s stuff at the market within a certain time limit. This one was surprisingly really challenging at first because I thought that you had to drag the item to the person who wanted it. However, whenever I dragged it, it always moved really slowly towards the person and I would always run out of time. What you’re actually supposed to do is flick the item towards the person who wants it, which I had no idea was the case until I got game over, like, 6 times. After you figure that out, the level itself is pretty easy.

That’s normally where I’d leave the review at, but since this is an Owl House game, I want to talk about the game’s story real quick. The game’s story starts off with you having to do busywork for Eda, like getting back her fallen body parts, and gathering stuff to then sell at the market. However, once you’ve finished selling stuff, Luz realizes that she’s lost King at the market. Once you go back, however, the guard from the first episode has him captive, so you’ve gotta get stuff for this guy so you can free him. Unfortunately, it turns out the dude just conned you, and now he’s ready to make King into his lunch. So once you head back to the Owl House, you and Eda set out to stop this guy and get back King, and after you get him back, that’s when the game ends. It’s not really too much, but for a web browser game like this, it works fine enough, and captures the Season 1 energy quite well. Plus, all of the cutscenes are fully voice acted too, which, for a free web browser game, is genuinely sick. There are also dialogue options you can choose to change up the scenario, but these don’t really affect anything in the grand scheme of things as none of these characters remember any of what you chose. Overall, the plot works really well for what Witch’s Apprentice is going for.

The Owl House: Witch’s Apprentice has a ton of problems, but even then, I still had a decent enough time with it, and for a free browser game, there’s clearly a ton of effort put into it. I know for sure I would’ve been playing this game in class all the time had I discovered it back then. However, it kind of just makes me wish that Disney would let Dana Terrace cook and make an actual Owl House game on consoles and Steam. There’s a lot of potential when it comes down to the Boiling Isles and its world, we could go through Hexside and learn spells, hell, we could even do a Sonic Adventure thing where each main character could have their own campaign to go through. There’s a lot of untapped potential in this game and this franchise as a whole, so maybe someday we could finally see another Owl House game like this. As it stands, though, for a free web browser game, it’s pretty good. I don’t think my rating would be nearly as high if this wasn’t a web browser game that was also designed for iOS, but even so, I still enjoyed my time with it. If you’re a fan of The Owl House, I’d recommend giving it a try at least once. (6/10)

(Also, fun fact, I submitted this game on IGDB.)

It’s about time I made a review of the game whose main character is literally my profile picture.

…wait.

Hazelnut Hex has always been a game that just hit all the right buttons for me. Even as far back as when the game was announced on Nintendo’s Youtube channel, Hazelnut Hex intrigued me, especially as someone who was (and still is) obsessed with Touhou, but rarely got to actually play those games. That, alongside the game’s gorgeous presentation and charming premise, made Hazelnut Hex one of the games I looked forward to the most in 2022, and I am still absolutely thrilled to say that Hazelnut Hex did not disappoint. This is genuinely one of my all-time favorite games to play and revisit. And upon finally beating the game’s Moderate mode, I figured it was finally time to share everything that made me love this game so much, and why it’s stuck with me even after first playing it.

The first thing I want to cover is the game’s fantastic presentation. Like, everything about this game’s presentation is absolutely stellar. The catchy music, the artstyle, the character and enemy designs, the arcadey feel you get from playing the game, nearly every detail in this game feels like it has a ton of love poured into it. Hell, at the very start of the game, you get a screen referencing the “winners don’t do drugs” messages you’d see in US arcade machines, but instead it says, “Winner’s don’t skip breakfast”, which I think is just so damn genius and fits in so well thematically with the rest of the game. Hazelnut Hex is loaded with charming moments like this. The game’s boss dialogue, while short, was filled with little moments that made me chuckle, and as a pun enthusiast, it was fun seeing basically every enemy being named after a pun. However, I feel like where this game succeeds the most in terms of presentation is its art style. As a cute-em-up, the game definitely needs to strive for a cute artstyle, and Hazelnut Hex’s artstyle is just absolutely perfect for this. Everything is completely coated in pastel colors and drenched with purple outlines, and it all just looks incredibly pleasant without being too in your face. The way everything is designed ups the charm factor for me as well, specifically the characters and enemies. Even though a lot of the main characters show up pretty briefly, I found all of them to be memorable with great designs and fun personalities. My favorites are probably Jules and ESPECIALLY Nat. Words cannot DESCRIBE just how much I love Nat as a character, but I’ll probably save that for like a “favorite characters” list or something. The enemies have such cool designs and they’re animated so well, like, Chunderfins, my guy, did you have to go so damn hard on something that’s gonna appear for like, 3 seconds on screen? Also, I’m sorry, but can I just talk about how fucking FIRE this game’s soundtrack is? Just listen to Stage 5’s theme and you'll have a good idea on how fantastic this game’s soundtrack is. Honestly, I could go on and on about how much care and charm was put into this game’s presentation, but we’d be here all day, and we still have a whole game to talk about. You might wonder why I’d put so much focus on an aspect of the game that’s ultimately trivial compared to, you know, the actual game. But as I’ve mentioned in my Cat Girl Without Salad review, presentation still plays a pretty important role when it comes down to making games. When it comes down to it, Hazelnut Hex’s entire aesthetic and vibe played a huge part in why it stuck with me to this day. Overall, this game just absolutely nails the cute-em-up aesthetic, but has such an immensely charming identity that I can’t say I’ve seen in really any other game. Like Cat Girl Without Salad, the presentation really could carry this game alone, but I’ve gushed about it for long enough. How does the gameplay itself hold up?

Gameplay-wise, Hazelnut Hex is what you’d expect from your average Touhou-like shooter. You have your 3 different shot types, screen clearing bombs, the usual bullet hell fare. You also get a charge shot which, from what I know, is unique to Hazelnut Hex. It’s a really cool (albeit somewhat overpowered) mechanic, which allows you to charge up a shot that can pierce through bullets if you aren’t currently shooting. It can be really handy for people new to these games, but it can also be pretty risk-reward at times since you aren't shooting while charging up the shot, which is pretty nice. Aside from that though, that’s basically Hazelnut Hex’s gameplay. What you see is pretty much what you get. There isn’t too much setting Hazelnut Hex apart from your typical bullet hell at first glance, however, I don’t think this is a bad thing. Hazelnut Hex isn’t trying to be something super groundbreaking or introduce any new concepts, it’s just meant to be a really solid shooter game with a charming artstyle. what it may lack in totally unique concepts, it more than makes up for with its incredibly solid gameplay.

Rather than trying to establish something new in the cute-em-up genre, Hazelnut Hex takes what was already fun and polishes and refines it to an insane degree. This might be one of the most polished and well-designed games I think I’ve ever played. Seriously, I can’t think of a single section in this game that I disliked even a little bit, it’s just that fun. The flow of these stages are also immaculate. It’s so much fun to blast through enemies quickly once you’ve become accustomed to the game, and even if you haven’t, they’re still very fun to go through and are really well-paced. Simply put, it’s just a good, clean, fun experience. However… this is kind of where it starts to get hard to write about this game. Because Hazelnut Hex relies on its polish and great flow as opposed to something super standoff-ish (aside from its aesthetics and music), it’s kind of hard to write about what exactly I love about Hazelnut Hex without mentioning things that just apply to a great bullet hell game in general. Like, what would I write about that wouldn’t already apply to, say, Touhou 8, a game with a ton of polish in its patterns as well, yet also contains a player-swap mechanic? I don’t know, but I guess it can’t really be helped, so I’ll try to explain my love for this genre as best as I can. Please bear with me here!

One thing I love about Hazelnut Hex (and the bullet hell / cute-em-up genre as a whole), is that it can be really difficult to grasp at first due to the insane amounts of bullets on screen, but over time you eventually grow to learn the enemies’ patterns and mechanics, and can get to a point where you’ve mastered certain sections. Even the first stage can be overwhelming to someone who hasn’t gotten used to the game yet, as it has a ton of bullets flying towards you, and while it’s not so overwhelming as to make the first section nearly impossible, it can still be intimidating and take some time to get used to. However, as you make more attempts through the stages, you eventually get to learn more about what the stages themselves hold, how to deal with certain enemies, more about the mechanics of the game, and over time, you feel more of an incentive to get better and better at the stages. Hazelnut Hex in particular does such a fantastic job in allowing people to get more accustomed to its mechanics, which is why I think it’s a perfect bullet hell game for those entering into the genre. Like I mentioned earlier, Hazelnut Hex’s charge shot is a perfect tool for people new to these games, and can take a lot of the pressure off by removing a lot of what’s going on the screen. Plus, the game has unlimited continues, so you can beat the whole game in one go and see everything before coming back to it. Still, even with all of these helpful features, Hazelnut Hex still lends itself to being quite challenging. Bullet hells are, well, still bullet hells, and because there’s a lot of stuff flying on the screen, they require a lot of reflexes in order to avoid getting hit as much as possible. Even when you’ve mastered everything the level has to offer, you still have to put it into action, but when you’ve gotten to a point where you can finally zigzag past all those bullet patterns that intimidated you in the first level, you’re left with such a satisfying feeling that I couldn’t do justice through description alone. But I think what I love most about bullet hells is just how replayable they are. They don’t even have to have that much content in them, just having consistently fun dodging and shooting gameplay is going to make me seriously want to come back to them. They’re incredibly addicting and I really can’t tell you why. But there’s also something about bullet hells that make me want to get better at them and learn about their more nuanced mechanics. For example, Hazelnut Hex has a mechanic that they don’t explicitly mention, where the closer you are to an enemy, the more damage you’ll do to them, which is just such a fun thing to be able to put into practice. There’s a ton of other things like this that keep you coming back to it, like the game’s Moderate mode, genuinely one of the best Hard modes I’ve ever played in a game. Even little things like getting the boss dodge bonus (defeating a boss without using the charge shot) at the end of a boss battle make me want to come back and hone my craft even more. I don’t know what it is about the bullet hell genre in particular that makes me want to come back to it so often, but frankly, I’m not complaining, because each time I do, I have a ton of fun.

Though, now that I’ve talked about why I love bullet hells as a genre, what does this have to do with Hazelnut Hex in particular? Well, I say this because Hazelnut Hex captures all of these feelings perfectly and encapsulates everything I love about this genre. Sure, you’re going to struggle a bit as you first play it, and even when you’ve beaten the game, you’ve lost a ton of continues. But as you keep playing the game, you’re going to start to get more of a feel for it, until you reach that point where you can finally triumph over the game, and even when you do, you’ve had such a fun time that you still want to come back for even more. That’s what I love most about Hazelnut Hex.

Before I finish up this review, there are a few nitpicks I want to get out of the way. As much as I love Hazelnut Hex, it’s not perfect (I mean, no game is). So I’d just like to go over a few of its flaws that I’d like to see being fixed if Chunderfins ever decides to make a sequel to this game or even just another shmup in general. For one, this game is pretty damn short, only having 5 stages. While I’ve stated in the past that I typically prefer shorter games as opposed to longer ones, Hazelnut Hex is one of the few games that made me kinda sad that there wasn’t more, especially since in terms of extra content, you really only have Moderate mode to go off of. At first, I was thinking a sixth stage might’ve fixed this problem for me, as the main villain, Lamona, kinda just shows up out of nowhere at the end of Stage 5. However, as I’ve played more and more of Hazelnut Hex, I’ve started to realize that the main campaign is pretty well paced as is. I still think a 6th stage would’ve been cool, but I’d prefer something like an Extra Stage like in Touhou Project, as it keeps the main campaign flowing well while also giving players some new content. I think an Extra Stage would be cool to see in a non-Touhou game, maybe for this stage we could fight Ghost Lamona. I think that’d be pretty cool. There’s only one other issues with this game that I think is really worth mentioning, and that’s that the shot types are kiiinda lame? There’s 3 shot types, but there’s not much of a change between the three aside from range and speed, so you’re typically just gonna go with the one with bigger range. The 3 shot types definitely should’ve had more differences to each other, maybe one of them could have homing properties, one of them has low range but deals more damage, and the other could be your standard shot type. I really only changed one, but I think that would be enough, because this shot type lineup needs just a little bit more variety to make it great. Other than that, though, those are basically my nitpicks with the game. They’re really minor, and don’t do anything to ruin the game even a little bit, but I still felt like they were worth mentioning.

And with that, that’s all I have to say about Hazelnut Hex! This was definitely one of my more… rambly reviews on this site, but I really can’t help it. If you couldn’t tell already, Hazelnut Hex is a game I’m immensely passionate about, and something about it definitely latched on to me ever since I first played it back in late 2022. I really can’t recommend this game enough, especially since words can’t describe how much I think this game rocks. I absolutely implore you to try this game out for yourself. It might not live rent free in your head like it does for me, but even if you only plan on playing it once, I can confirm that you’ll definitely have a great time with it. (9.5/10)

Before we finish, I want to give a HUGE shoutout to @Phantasm for helping me put together this review and for fixing it up. Absolutely give them a follow as they’ve been a great help and make excellent reviews. With that, that’s basically all I have to say for now. I’ll see y’all in the inevitable Owl House: Witch’s Apprentice review.

Cat Girl without Salad is a joke game (if you couldn’t already tell from the name). From what I’ve heard, it was based on an April Fools’ Day announcement by WayForward, but around 2016, they decided to make it into a real game. So it isn’t meant to be anything mind-blowing. That being said, there’s a ton of promising ideas here on display that I think could’ve made this game truly fantastic had they been fleshed out more.

The main gimmick of this game are the shot types that are meant to play like different game genres, ie. rhythm, platformer, puzzle, etc. This is such an insanely cool idea in concept and is a really clever way of integrating different genres into a shoot-em-up like this. In execution, however, well, it’s kind of a mixed bag. While a few of the shot types (particularly the puzzle and arcade ones) work really well for this type of game and happen to be pretty efficient as well, about 60% of them just kind of end up being really inefficient to use. Which is disappointing, because these aren’t exactly bad ideas. Like the rhythm game one. It’s actually a decent idea in concept, but it really needed some more time on the drawing board because not only is there not much of a reward for getting it, but it ends up being distracting as all hell too. You’re really just better off sticking with your peashooter as opposed to using this, and honestly, the peashooter is pretty boring with not much depth to it. While there’s a lot of potential on display here with all of these shot types, a lot of them definitely needed some time in the oven before being brought out.

Speaking of things that needed more time in the oven, the stages. Overall, they’re pretty boring. Because you’ll be using the peashooter most of the time, you’ll pretty quickly find that it doesn’t really do that much damage to enemies, so oftentimes you’ll just be dodging enemies that are just going to try to run into you. They don’t even really shoot that many bullets at you, so this is most of what the stage is usually going to be. However, I do have to say that the bosses are definitely the highlight of this game. Not only do all of them ooze personality, a lot of their patterns reflect this and are pretty fun to dodge at that. However, all of this comes with one major flaw that makes this game pretty hard to recommend. This game is three stages long. I’m not kidding. You can beat the entire game in about 30 minutes, MAXIMUM. You don’t even really get any extra content for beating the game. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind short games (in fact, I actually kind of prefer shorter games over games that drag on for too long), but three stages is just way too little for a game like this, especially since you don’t really get anything for beating the game. That, combined with the game’s easy difficulty and repetitive levels, means that there’s not much incentive to really revisit this game.

With all that being said, however, I can’t bring myself to criticize this game but so much. The charm and absolute chaotic energy of this game absolutely carried it for me. You can tell the developers had a ton of fun making this game, from the enemy designs to the boss patterns and ESPECIALLY the dialogue. I had a smile on my face nearly the entire time I was playing. To me, Cat Girl without Salad was carried by its presentation, and how much it relishes itself in being a joke game, and for what it’s trying to do, I think it works out pretty well. Because even despite its many problems, I still had fun with the game. I do think it’s a shame that its ideas weren’t fleshed out more, as the base of a great game is definitely here, and I really hope that WayForward decides to make another game like this. As it stands though, Cat Girl Without Salad is a pretty cute joke game, but not really anything more than just that. (6/10)

Ever since the announcement of the revival of Shantae: Risky’s Revolution, the canceled GBA Shantae game from 2004, I’ve been pretty hyped for the Shantae series. I’ve always enjoyed Shantae as a franchise as well as a character, but for the past few years the only Shantae game I’ve actually beaten is Shantae: Half-Genie Hero. So ever since 2024 started, I’ve been on a mission to play every Shantae game that I didn’t get a chance to finish, even replaying Half-Genie Hero. And while all of them absolutely have their issues, I had a blast playing through them and think they’re a genuinely fun time. However, out of all the Shantae games, there was only one I didn’t own, and that was Shantae and the Seven Sirens. I’d heard a lot of mixed opinions on this game. I heard it was kinda mid overall, but I heard that some enjoyed it as well. Nevertheless, I still wanted to give it a try before Risky’s Revolution came out, and once the game went on sale, I could finally give it a try for myself.

Judging from the 2 star rating I gave the game though, you can already kind of tell where this is going. I’m just going to be blunt when I say that this review isn’t going to be very positive. I’m sorry, but I really didn’t enjoy Shantae and the Seven Sirens that much. At best, the game just sort of feels like you’re going through the motions and is kind of just an alright Shantae game, and at worst, it feels incredibly unintuitive and frustrating. Like, it genuinely baffles me that this game came from the same team that designed the Shantae games before this. However, before talking so negatively about the game already, I want to talk about the things that I think this game does right, before explaining why I feel like it kinda squandered that potential.

First off, I really enjoyed the way the animal transformations were implemented. Rather than having to dance in place like in Half Genie Hero, the transformations are built-in to your moveset, so you can transform into an animal quickly with the press of a button. It’s kind of like how Pirate’s Curse handled its weapons, and while I don’t think this is nearly as satisfying, I think it still works really well and is a pretty huge step up from the game that came before it. This transformation system definitely needs to return in the next non-cancelled Shantae game. I also really enjoyed the dungeons in this game (for the most part). I feel like the dungeons are typically the best part of most Shantae games, and Seven Sirens is no exception. It has a lot of the clever puzzles and fun level design you expect from a Shantae dungeon. I also appreciate that it has a counter for how many Heart Squids are left in a dungeon, I think that’s a nice touch. Finally, I want to talk about this game’s art style. While a few of the main game sprites are reused from HGH, the new ones added look really nice and blend in well with the rest of the game. A lot of the character designs look very nice too, even some of the NPCs stood out to me. The new Half-Genies they added are a real sticking point, all of them are really well-designed. And man, the absolutely gorgeous artstyle of the dialogue portraits definitely help in making the game look very visually pleasing. I’d also like to give a shoutout to both the Studio Trigger opening animation and the animated cutscenes in-game, which are both stunning as well.

That’s about all the positive things I have to say about this game. While Seven Sirens has a lot going for it, I don’t think it really outweighs the negative aspects that plague the game, so let’s discuss one of my main gripes with Seven Sirens; the level design. While I love Half-Genie Hero, my main issue with the game was probably the way its enemies were integrated into the level design. I mentioned this in my Mighty Switch Force Academy review, but the enemies in the game don’t feel like they’re placed there to enhance the levels themselves, they’re just kind of slapped in there because you need something to block your path when playing a game, right? So the enemies just typically feel like they’re kind of just… there, for no real reason. Unfortunately, Seven Sirens doesn’t attempt to mitigate this issue at all, and in fact, I think the level design is even worse here. Because while, yes, Half Genie Hero’s enemy placement can leave the game feeling quite bland to some, I still found the game fun because not only were the enemies fun to fight, but there was a variety of enemies placed throughout the stages so that all of the levels don’t feel too samey. Seven Sirens basically does the opposite of this. For most of the beginning of the game, they kind of just reuse the same crab, spider, and bat enemies over and over again. However, when they do introduce new enemies, they’re either underutilized as hell, or not fun to fight AT ALL. Like, there are enemies in this game whose entire gimmick is that they telefrag you. I’m not fucking kidding! There’s two of them, and they appear relatively frequently as well! But even aside from those enemies, most of the enemies in this game just aren’t that fun to fight. There will either be enemies that just kind of appear without warning, or ones that don’t feel designed around the fact that your main attack is a short-ranged attack. Like I said, occasionally they throw in some enemies that are fun to fight, but like I said, they’re often underutilized. It also doesn’t help that aside from the dungeons, the levels are pretty lacking in stage gimmicks, which just makes the levels even more repetitive than they already are. Now, contrary to what it might sound like, not all of the game’s levels are bad, but even at its best, the level design is just kind of… alright? It really just feels like you’re going through the motions. Like, yeah, this is certainly a Shantae game alright. I don’t know, it’s kind of hard to explain, but the levels just don’t feel very captivating to play or come back to. The only reason you’d really do so is because it’s a metroidvania, you’re typically going to come back to an area eventually. But overall, the level design and especially the enemy design in Seven Sirens just didn’t really click with me. They aren’t terrible or anything, but they certainly aren’t that fun to play, and certainly didn’t go well with the game’s other issues.

One of the biggest issues I had with Seven Sirens overall was the dancing. I don’t think I’ve ever had to use a mechanic more unintuitive in a Shantae game since the first game’s dancing. It’s REALLY bad. Now, in concept, it actually sounds pretty cool, especially alongside the other mechanics in the game. Along with getting transformations built into your moveset, you also get access to Shantae’s iconic dances, which allow you to attack enemies, heal yourself, and even interact with the environment? That sounds really cool, but unfortunately, with it came a myriad of problems that just make the dances more of a chore to use than anything. First of all, straight out the gate, enemies don’t get paused when using dances. This sucks, especially since it takes, like, three seconds for the damn dance to even show up. Compare this to Half-Genie Hero, where you can immediately select an animal, and the enemies are paused! But what’s worse is that these dances consume magic when used. This wouldn’t be a problem if, like I said, they were simply a way to attack your enemies or heal yourself, but no, there are multiple points in this game where the dances are required in order to progress. This means that if you come to a point where you need to use a dance, but don’t have enough magic, you have to go back and grind on the enemies in order to get magic. What’s worse is that for the Seer and Quake dance, ESPECIALLY the Seer dance, it’s not exactly clear where you’re required to use the dance. Yes, they do give you a hint as soon as you enter the room, which is nice, but you usually won’t know whether it’s for a collectible, for a few gems, or if it’s for something required to progress through the game, meaning that’s valuable magic down the drain. And what’s even worse than that, is that when you’re in a room that scrolls vertically or horizontally, you basically have to use the damn dancing multiple times to see where exactly you need to use it, meaning that’s even MORE magic down the drain, meaning that when you inevitably come to a spot where you DO need to use it, you either gotta grind on more enemies, or go back to the damn spa and come all the way back. It fucking sucks! And look, I understand for some of the dances why they need to use magic. Vera’s dance heals your HP, and Harmony’s does massive damage to enemies, so they’d need to use magic as to not be too broken. But why make them required in order to 100% the game? At LEAST make it so that you don’t have to use them to beat the game! And do you want to know the real fucking kicker? I almost never used these dances outside of their intended purpose. And… wasn’t that like, the whole problem that everyone had with Half-Genie Hero’s dancing? That you’d have to use a dance to transform into an animal, but just immediately transformed back most of the time?! You introduced a new transformation ability, but then have us use Half-Genie Hero’s dancing mechanic anyways, BUT WORSE?! Seriously, this might be the most baffling design choice of the entire game for me. And it sucks, because this mechanic seems like such a cool inclusion to the game, but it feels so cumbersome to use. They should’ve just focused on making them supportive, or making it so they don’t have to use magic. Hell, they could’ve at least had the courtesy to give us magic when we need to use the dances. Unfortunately, what we’re left with is a mechanic that ultimately just makes the game more frustrating to play than it needs to be.

Let’s talk a bit about the bosses. They’re not great. I know that the bosses aren’t exactly the selling point of the Shantae series, but never have I played a Shantae game where nearly all of them sucked. Let’s start with the Risky Boots battles. Risky Boots will show up in each dungeon to challenge you to a fight, kinda like Proto Man in Mega Man 3. But my main problem with these fights is that Risky Boots doesn’t have a clear pattern. She’ll either jump to a seemingly random spot on the field, or walk towards you, then do one of her attacks. I’m sure there’s some pattern, but it’s really hard to tell, so oftentimes, you’ll just stick onto the wall with the newt until Risky does an attack. These aren’t that fun, and there’s five of them. Regrettably, the siren fights aren’t much better. There’s the Water Lily Siren, which genuinely might be one of the worst opening bosses I’ve ever faced in a video game. You have to press on a switch in order to move the Water Lily Siren towards the light, but the problem is, the light changes every five seconds, AND she’s firing all this shit at you at the same time! Then, once you FINALLY get her to the light, you have to hop on platforms, and then FINALLY you can hit her. It sucks, and it’s not fun to have to do. The Coral Siren was alright, but she was really easy, and her attacks aren’t really that memorable. The Tubeworm Siren was just kind of annoying, mainly her final attack with the laser, as you have like a fraction of a second to hit it before the laser comes back up. The Angler Siren was pretty good, definitely one of the better fights in the game, but it still left me wanting a bit more out of it. Lastly is the Octo Siren, and it’s just kind of a memory game with slow moving projectiles coming towards you. It’s pretty underwhelming.

Finally, I want to talk about possibly my least favorite part of Seven Sirens; its endgame. I’m gonna start with the dungeon where you rescue Rottytops. Remember the Battle Tower from Shantae: Risky’s Revenge? Remember how that sucked and how all of the enemies were placed terribly? Yeah, let’s do that again, but with even worse enemy placements. After you finish that up, you get the Jet Octo and fight the Octo Siren, which like I said, is a pretty underwhelming fight. After that, Rotty helps you escape the underground, Risky summons an airship from under the island, and now you have a choice. You can go back and 100% the game, or you can challenge Risky. To be honest, 100%-ing the game wasn’t that bad, ESPECIALLY after you get the Magic Regenerating monster card. The only thing that sucked was one chest that they don’t give you a hint for in the laboratory, but other than that, it was kind of fun. However, I can’t say the same about Risky’s airship. Not only are there a fuckton of enemies scattered around with no rhyme or reason, but it also just goes on for way, WAY too long. I understand that it's supposed to be challenging, as it's the final area in the game, but nearly all of the difficulty here just felt artificial rather than actually being challenging. So after you go through some of the most frustrating enemy waves in the game, you reach the final boss of the game, that being the Seventh Siren, also known as the Empress. Her first form is actually pretty fun. Her attacks have clear telegraphs, they’re pretty fun to dodge, and overall, it actually feels satisfying learning this phase’s patterns and quirks. Probably the best boss battle in the game in my opinion. But if you’re worried maybe this first phase is maybe too good, rest assured because the second phase of this fight is probably the worst boss in the game. So, now you’re fighting a giant version of the Empress, as expected. However, now you have to jump on randomly moving rocks as a random accessory on the Empress’ body starts shooting a bunch of shit at you. Oh, also, you have to attack said accessory. That’s real nice. It’s not even a fight that’s too hard or easy, it’s just annoying as hell. You have to wait for the random rock to show up near the accessory, but not while it’s attacking, so you have to go back, and did I mention there’s also a big ass orb chasing you? This fight is honestly a mess and might be the only part of the game that genuinely doesn’t feel playtested. After you inevitably defeat her, you get your ending, a nice animated cutscene, and the game’s over.

There’s a LOT more I could’ve talked about in this review, like the mess that is this game’s story, or the lame monster cards, but I think I’ve made this review WAY too long already. If you couldn’t tell already, I’m not a big fan of Seven Sirens. But contrary to what it might seem, I actually feel really bad being really negative towards this game, not only because it’s from a franchise I love, and not only because it’s got a TON of good ideas under its belt, but because it genuinely seems like there was a ton of heart poured into this. It feels like they wanted to make something ambitious out of this, and as much as I want to applaud them for it, the end result just isn’t something I would consider revisiting. So all-in-all, if I had to describe this game, I think it would be like if “style over substance” was a video game. There’s a lot of style here, with great music, character designs, gorgeous visuals, but not very much substance in its level design as a whole. Yeah, the game’s got a cool new transformation system, but it’s also packaged with a worse version of Half-Genie Hero’s dance mechanic anyways. I do really hope that WayForward continues to work on some of the great ideas from Seven Sirens for future games in the series, but as it stands, I don’t intend on revisiting it anytime soon, nor can I really recommend playing it. (4.5/10)

Note: While I bought Little Noah: Scion of Paradise Special Edition, this review will mainly be focused on the base game as from what I can tell, the DLC that comes with the Special Edition comes with a few extra Lilliputs and avatars. (Though, I do recommend getting this edition, especially if it goes on sale.)

Little Noah: Scion of Paradise is a platformer rougelite where you collect little creatures called Lilliputs that fight for you when you press the attack button. Considering just how many creature-collectors there are out there, I'm surprised there aren't many out there that have tried this concept before, and it works out incredibly well as combat in this game feels incredibly rewarding. As you go further and further into this game's random dungeons, you encounter more Lilliputs, grab crystals (which is kind of how you level up as you go along), and get accessories which you can stack together and use to help build your Lilliput party up, and that's just the short version of what all can be in a single run. Honestly, I can't say I've played any game quite like this before, it's definitely a unique experience in its own right.

Before I get into why I like this game so much, however, I kind of want to start off with a bit of a complaint I have with the game. While the game focuses a lot on combat, I kind of wish it focused a bit more on its level design as well. And it’s a shame, because the game actually has some pretty cool stage gimmicks to work with, however, they’re usually either exclusive to rooms without any enemies blocking a treasure chest, or in special enemy gauntlets. That, combined with the fact that the combat rooms (which is most of the game) are laid out pretty similarly, and the game can end up feeling kind of repetitive, which could be a turn off to some people. However, I never personally minded it, as I think the game more than makes up for it.

Like I said earlier, this game’s combat is so satisfying. You fight with creatures called Lilliputs, which all have different methods of attack and even skills to use. But throughout my experience, I don’t think I found a single one to be useless, especially combined with the accessories you can get. Some Lilliputs also have elements, which synergize well with the accessories you can get and add a nice bit of depth to the game. The enemies throughout the game are also pretty well designed, and you’re incentivized to learn more of their attack patterns as you go through the game. And MAN, the bosses in this game are really good. Like most good platformer bosses, they can be tough as nails your first time around, but once you master their pattern, it feels really good to be able to get their rhythm down.

You also have a decent amount of variety when it comes down to the dungeon rooms. There are of course rooms containing crystals, Lilliputs, accessories, etc. There are also a decent amount of different rooms to encounter outside of that. There are shops where you can use the gold you’ve collected in your run to buy keys, accessories, Lilliputs, the like. There are also rooms with platforming sections, locking behind a treasure chest with plenty of goods in them, which you can skip using a key if you want. (I kinda wish they didn’t let you do that, not gonna lie.) You can also encounter enemy gauntlet rooms, some of which allow you to add element-themed hazards in order to get better rewards. Even in the basic combat rooms themselves, there are sometimes challenges attached to them which can net you extra treasure chests, which I think is a great way of incentivising approaching each room in a different way.

However, I think what the game has going for it the most is its progression. Slowly building up your Lilliput team as you collect more accessories to synergize with them works so insanely well for a roguelite, especially given that nearly every build you have is gonna be unique. It reminds me of one of my all-time favorite ROM hacks, Pokemon Emerald Rogue, and it has a lot of what made that game so fantastic. But unlike Emerald Rogue, Little Noah: Scion of Paradise keeps up that feeling of satisfaction even after you die, as you get mana for everything you collect throughout the game. You can then use that mana to repair your airship and get upgrades that help you in your future runs, such as new avatars and statues to put up. And while I did find the game to be a bit easy once you get everything down, the game also has more difficulty modes which is always nice. Overall, Little Noah is a very replayable game, something which is a must-have for roguelites like this.

One last point I want to very quickly mention about the game is its story. It’s kind of weird for this kind of story to be in a roguelite, but I think it still works relatively well enough for what it is. You’re Noah Little, looking for her father, when you get caught in a storm, and your airship conveniently crashes near some ruins. Now it’s up to you to repair it using the mana you collect throughout your journey. Throughout your exploration, you chase down a cat named Zipper, who serves as a guide through the ruins, but can’t remember anything else about what they were meant to be. The two of them form a bond as they chase down Greigh, who looks like Sephiroth with all the interesting parts of his design clipped off. He kiiiinda has a stupid motivation, but that’s my only real complaint with the story. I mean, it’s not mind-blowing or anything (I mean, there’s only, like, 3 characters to follow in the entire story), but I thought it was really cute, and I enjoyed the ending a lot. Plus, the absolutely gorgeous illustrations definitely made me even more attached to these characters.

Little Noah isn’t exactly a mind-blowing game or anything. It doesn’t perfect its craft to the finest degree like Annalynn or Mario 3, but all-in-all, it’s a unique game filled to the brim with charm. It has great combat, charming and lovable characters and Lilliputs, and most importantly, its progression is incredibly satisfying, from building up your Lilliputs to gaining new accessories, and even when you die, you still feel like you’ve progressed a lot in rebuilding your airship and discovering new things in each run. Overall, I absolutely recommend checking out this game, even if you’re not into roguelites. Little Noah is definitely worth giving looking into, even if only for the charming characters and unique premise. I know for sure that I'll definitely be revisiting it a lot. (8.5/10)

Annalynn has got to be one of my favorite games to come out this decade; possibly ever. However, when I last reviewed this game on my friend’s Discord server, I feel like I didn’t really do the game justice. I mean, I barely even described what I liked about the game. So, on a whim, I decided to reinstall Annalynn on my Switch, not only so that I could finally 1CC the game, but also to give myself a chance to re-review the game.

Annalynn is a game that’s meant to pay homage to 80s 8-bit arcade games, and as someone who’s a huge fan of games like Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, and Galaga, I can confirm that Annalynn nails these games’ style perfectly, both in terms of art-style and gameplay. But even without being inspired by Namco games, Annalynn’s level design is still incredibly well designed. The game starts out simple enough, with you just needing to collect all of the coins in each level while avoiding the snakes that try to attack you, but as the game goes on it starts adding setpieces to the levels that really help them stand out and are used incredibly well. And while the game is really difficult (ESPECIALLY if you’re going for a 1CC), it’s also fair. If you die at any point, it’s still your own fault, and the game heavily incentivizes you to learn how to better route its levels and use the stage gimmicks, which makes 1CC-ing the game SO damn satisfying once you finally pull it off.

Annalynn is overall a really fun game that does challenge insanely well, but it’s also got a ton of love poured into it. The references to other arcade games made at the time like the ropes from Donkey Kong Jr. show that the dev team had a lot of appreciation for these kinds of games. There’s also a lot of really cool little details to the gameplay that you wouldn’t notice unless you really think about it. Like, Annalynn allows you the ability to perfect all of the levels by hitting all of the snakes, getting the bonus, and not dying, which grants you 10,000 extra points and is a great incentive for replayability. Well, if you Perfect the first round, you’re guaranteed an Extra life, and by perfecting the first 3 rounds, you’re guaranteed another. Like, it’s not mind-blowing, but things like these are really neat and show that a ton of thought and care went into this game.

Speaking of replayability, for a $5 game, there’s a really surprising amount of content. For beating the game, you get a random mode which puts all the levels in random order and gives you access to power-ups and minecart levels. You also get a set amount of achievements to clear, even in the Switch version, and these are also satisfying to go after. There are also palette swaps to give Annalynn as well, earned in a similar way to beating the achievements. The point is, there’s a lot of incentive to come back to this game if the fantastic gameplay already isn’t enough. And for only $5? I gotta say that’s a great deal.

In case you couldn’t tell, I absolutely adore nearly everything about Annalynn. In fact, I think it’s a 10/10 game. Yes, I’m serious. Now, it’s not PERFECT, I mean, no game is. But any reason I’d have to criticize the game would be so minor that it’s really not even worth going over in the grand scheme of things. At that point, I’d just be doing a ton of nitpicking. And for what Annalynn’s trying to go for, being a simple, fun, challenging yet rewarding platformer harking back to 80s arcade games, I think it does so with flying colors. I don’t think Annalynn’s a 10/10 game because it’s the pinnacle of gaming. I think Annalynn’s a 10/10 because if you love Namco-style arcade games, or even platformers in general, I legitimately think you’re missing out if you decide not to play this. So overall, I couldn’t recommend Annalynn enough. Definitely check it out, even if only for a little bit.

Mighty Switch Force Academy was kind of a hard game for me to review, because not only did I really, REALLY not enjoy playing it, but it’s also hard to describe what exactly makes it so unfun without sounding like the unholy matrimony between an IGN reviewer and a broken record. But I really want to share my thoughts on this game, because there’s a lot for me to talk about, so much so that I created this whole account just to create this long ass review on why this obscure Mighty Switch Force spinoff is bad. So bear with me here, because I’m going to sound incredibly disjointed talking about Mighty Switch Force Academy.

For those who don’t know what this game is, it’s sort of a spinoff based on the Mighty Switch Force series, where rather than focusing on your player character, the whole level is in view, and you can see everything straight out the gate, from the girls you need to collect, to the enemies and player character. On paper, this doesn’t sound too bad, and actually kind of like a nice change of pace from the typical Mighty Switch Force gameplay. But taking a look at any of the screenshots or footage of the game can kind of tell you what problems it’s got already. So let’s get right into the biggest problem I have with this game; the character sizes.
Good god, these characters are fucking MICROSCOPIC in size. Like, it’s a bad sign when you actually have to SQUINT to even see where your player character is. Now, even though I think the microscopic size of these characters nearly ruins this whole game, I don’t actually think it’s a completely terrible idea for a game. I mean, look at Big Tower Tiny Square on Cool Math Games. What makes Big Tower Tiny Square work so well? Well, everything is a whole hell of a lot easier to look at, for one. The graphics are pretty simple to read so that you can focus more on platforming, and I mean, you literally play as a square. However, Mighty Switch Force Academy keeps most of the sprites from the base Switch Force games the same. If they simplified the sprites to have less pixels and made them more readable, it would’ve been a bit better, but since the sprites they reused are so detailed, it becomes a lot harder to even tell what’s going on most of the time. But Big Tower Tiny Square also works better as a smaller scale game just because the gameplay style is better accommodated for it. The game revolves around smooth platforming and the main challenge comes from seeing how well you can react to everything going on. The controls being fast and flowing well also accommodate for this. However, Mighty Switch Force’s base controls absolutely DO NOT work for this kind of game at all. Mighty Switch Force’s controls are generally kind of limiting, but they work well enough for a puzzle platformer. But when you’re already struggling to make out the what’s on screen AND trying to do somewhat precise platforming, even controlling the game kind of starts to become a fucking nightmare. But even with all the problems that come from having such tiny sprites, I still wanted to give the game a proper chance since I didn’t want to just leave my thoughts at, “Hurr hurr, the sprites are so tiny” Plus, the game has some good ideas under its belt, but this leads quite nicely into another one of my problems with Academy, the level design.

The game’s levels kind of fall under the same paradox that I was faced with when playing the original Mighty Switch Force. The game’s levels are well designed enough, but they aren’t engaging enough to make for a great action platformer, nor are they clever enough to make for a great puzzle platformer. So you’re kind of just left in this awkward middle where the game’s just kind of… boring and a bit frustrating. However, I still think despite that, Mighty Switch Force was still a pretty well designed game overall. But MAN, you really start to feel this hit hard when you’re an extremely tiny sprite. Like I mentioned before, since the controls aren’t fast paced like Big Tower Tiny Square, you have to slowwwwly make your way over to the next section of the level, which you do a lot because these levels are a lot less compact than that of the previous two games. The game does occasionally pull out ideas that I think are really interesting for a Mighty Switch Force game, like screen-warping and flipped gravity, but none of the levels really take advantage of these as much as I would’ve liked. They don’t really enhance the levels, they’re just kind of… there. These issues combined make a lot of these levels INCREDIBLY monotonous to go through, and fast. Plus, some of these levels are just straight up garbage. Iirc, I think it was Stage 10 with the huge blocks? I don’t know, but a special fuck you to that level in particular for having such precise jumps in a game like this. All in all, the main levels aren’t completely terrible, but they’re just incredibly tedious.

“Okay, so the main campaign isn’t great. Maybe this is meant to be more of a multiplayer experience” I said to myself, giving this game more credit than it deserves. Oh. My god. I couldn’t have been more wrong. In fact, the multiplayer just might be the worst part of this shitshow! So, I played the vs. mode with my sister, and from what I could tell, I think it works like this. So, you’re supposed to get the Space Hooligan as fast as you can, then take her to the big robot guy to get a point. You can also control the block-flipping while you have her. Repeat 3 times, one of the players wins. However, you can shoot the girl out of the other player, OR you can lose the girl while screen-warping, which is just fucking stupid. Sometimes, you can just… lose the girl, for absolutely no fucking reason. This mode is confusing as all hell, even for someone who’s finished BOTH Mighty Switch Force games before playing this! And at this point, we didn’t try the co-op, because we were both in agreement that vs. fucking sucked, but I can’t imagine that co-op could’ve been any better, because you’re playing the same frustrating game, but now you have to focus on a 2nd player! Seriously, I think the multiplayer in Mighty Switch Force Academy might actively make this game worse. It’s that damn bad.

I really wanted to give this game a fair chance, and I really did want to finish it. I’ve been trying to finish most of the games in my backlog before even starting up a backloggd account, and throughout the past year, I think I’ve been doing a decent job finishing a lot of my unfinished games. Even games I didn’t like, such as Mega Man 8 or Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi: Kaznapped, I was still able to finish those eventually. But Mighty Switch Force Academy is one of the first games in a long time where I all of a sudden just went, “You know what, fuck this. I’m not having fun, so I’d rather just spend my time playing a better game.” I haven’t experienced that feeling since I played Family Tennis SP, and that game is actual defecation on the face of the Wii U eShop. I know that some of you might be thinking I shouldn’t really have any right to review this game since I didn’t finish it, but I really don’t think I’ll be coming back to this one anytime soon. Personally, I still do recommend getting the Mighty Switch Force Collection as the Mighty Switch Force games are really good, but Academy to me just isn’t one of them. If you do happen upon the collection, skip this game. (3/10)