If you play this game on PC it's actually not the worst thing in the world. It was a baffling design decision to create two campaigns (one of them costing an additional $20) instead of just focusing on making a campaign that's good all the way through. They have plenty of half-baked ways of varying gameplay that just make you realize how middling the gameplay actually is, having a few more enemy types would go a long way because most of the game is just zombies and generic goons with guns, there's about 3 B.O.W's outside of that, rarely encountered and even more rarely made fun, would've been nice to have a chimera or bandersnatch. This also brings up my biggest issue with RE6, the bosses feel too "on-rails", like your bullets barely do anything and you're just waiting for a cutscene to finish things. For the most part, the game is actually pretty fun, if i got to play multiplayer again i'd assume it'd be a lot better.

I like the aesthetic elements but anytime a RE2/3 character shows up it's just so meaningless, the fanservice is very middling in this game. I liked seeing the original characters a lot more than just seeing the old ones appear. They have a strangely large amount of effort put into playable characters in cutscenes, every one of them seems to have unique dialogue (i didn't play enough times to check what causes what dialogue), so to fully experience every single miniscule voice line you'd have to play both campaigns atleast 6 times each, which is wild. The voice acting is a point that sticks out as being notably good, Sherry's voice in this game is the same as in RE6 and she actually does a good job making herself sound notably younger, strangely she seems to be the only returning voice because the other characters sound like shit, yet another strike against fanservice.

The multiplayer elements are lacking due to the fact that most of the abilities in this game are absolutely worthless, so only 2-3 classes should even be played in the first place, less than the amount of players on one team.

Overall you can have fun with it, but you're pretty unlikely to in 2023.

What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk…Have at you!

For someone that enjoys Metroidvanias, I waited FAR too long to play Symphony of the Night. A game dissected so thoroughly not even the bones have been spared. However, there is still one thing that intrigues me about it. Despite the relatively low difficulty and being quite possibly the most overdesigned game ever with its encyclopedia of items, abilities, and enemies, I was never pulled out of the experience. But why? I had mixed experiences with its GBA successors, including Aria of Sorrow, but not Symphony.

The conclusion I have arrived to is the atmosphere. More often than not, Castlevania has been as scary as the kids saying Trick-or-Treat to you every Halloween. Superficial horror. I wasn’t around when Super Castlevania IV was released, but I feel it was the full realization of the original Castlevania’s journey. The desaturated colors and haunting soundtrack struck fear in the player’s heart, never letting them grow comfortable. Not even the improved whip could remove that feeling.

Symphony of the Night carries a similar tone. Despite how easy it was to become overpowered, the delicate concoction of color, sound, and music sucked me in. The chilling melodies of Dracula’s Castle, Dance of Gold, and Lost Paintings prove Michiru Yamane was born to compose this game.

Modern Metroidvanias like Hollow Knight have revealed cracks in Symphony’s design, like the bosses requiring little strategy and the horrible weapon balancing. Even not-so-great examples of the genre often avoid such shortcomings. However, as far as total packages go, you would be hard-pressed to find a better deal. An unmatched symphony of atmosphere and power fantasy.

Next Level doesn’t understand what made the original game so memorable. Dark Moon may have been a step back, but at least it attempted to flesh out the combat with the Strobulb and power surge. The puzzle gimmicks were also spread across multiple, cohesive mansions. Even if they never touched the first game’s mansion, they were believable as places. When fans wished for a return to a single mansion after Dark Moon, I believe what they really wanted was a return to a cohesive setting.

Despite Luigi’s Mansion 3 taking place in one hotel mansion, it has no sense of cohesion. Expected setpieces like a shopping mall, exercise room, and sewer exist alongside a prehistoric museum, Egyptian tomb, pirate cove, and a magic show. The mansion is a series of unrelated levels taped together, an unsatisfying compromise of the first two games’ design philosophies. Top that off with extremely repetitive combat against the same few enemies, cat chases that exist to pad the runtime, a gimmick that doesn’t enhance the puzzles as much as you think (Gooigi), and a lack of worthwhile items to spend gold on, and you have the most overrated Switch exclusive. The only reasons I’m not giving this one star are because most of the boss fights were interesting and the film studio was both conceptually neat and starred a ghost who isn’t hostile.

Given the strong following Next Level has, I’m fully expecting them to develop Luigi’s Mansion 4. But given their track record with the series, I doubt it will feature the best elements from all three games. The atmosphere and cohesiveness of 1, the combat of 2, and the bosses of 3.

I was not a fan of the forced backtracking for the Chozo artifacts, but Metroid Prime is a classic for many reasons. There is nothing I can say about it without being redundant, so I’ll just say this is the definitive way to experience it. The graphics are incredible while also staying true to the original atmosphere. A game looking this amazing on Switch without framerate issues didn’t seem possible, yet here we are. The Spring Ball and flexible control options were great additions, but I wish you could remap individual buttons in-game. I might be alone in this, but mapping the shoot button to A instead of Y makes no sense, as you will be shooting very often and will have to uncomfortably twist your thumb or use a claw grip to hit A and B at the same time for shooting and jumping simultaneously. This was the first Switch game I felt compelled to remap my Joy-Cons in the main menu.

Don’t let that deter you from buying this though. Metroid Prime Remastered is a must-have for your Switch, especially if you never played the original.

Remember how Baby Mario cried if you didn’t protect him in Yoshi’s Island? That was done to encourage more intelligent play. This is even more true in Pikmin. Unless you have mastered the game, you WILL lose some of your squad, and it is never not haunting. You might blame the AI when they get stuck under a bridge or stand in the shadow of a Wollyhop, but even these moments can be circumvented with better planning and skill. I lost many hundreds of Pikmin on my first playthrough, enough to where I wanted to do a second one. Here, I was able to reduce my losses by more than half and beat my day record by an entire week. The time limit guarantees the world never revolves around you, but even the smallest changes in strategy will make a huge difference.

I've literally played all the other Arkham games, but NEVER got around to the one that started it all, funny enough. So a good amount of this review is really just comparing it to what comes later, while still acknowledging the game based on its own standalone merits

But yeah, this shit rocks. I can 100% see 10 year old me getting lost in this game had I played it when it was new, everything from the atmosphere, music, gameplay, it all works together to really make you, say it with me now, feel like Batman

While freeflow combat and predator sections absolutely revolutionized gaming as a whole, its obviously pretty bare bones here compared to what came later. In fact, it started out pretty frustrating, but actually ended up like a pretty fun challenge not having access to knife counters, cape stun beatdowns, etc

What AA makes up for that the rest of the franchise seemed to lose overtime is atmosphere. Arkham Asylum is filled to the brim with detail and love. It's the most comic-booky out of the Arkham franchise (later games being more its own thing), and it works wonders with fleshing out the world that its set in.

The only honest to god issues I have with the game is that some of the level design is ass sometimes. Its really the only metroidvania in the main series, so its a little annoying when navigating some areas aren't as smooth as they should be with really weird placements of ledges and grapple points

Another SUPER big issue (that they fix in the sequels, thank GOD) is that not every interactable object is highlighted in detective mode. Doors and some collectibles just don't show up and its insanely frustrating to find some things and progress without knowing where the fuck to go. I spent 20 minutes wandering around the same place, because the placement of the doors were so obscure and painted the same color as the rest of the wall

Other than being a little dated, this is still an amazing game and I'm glad I finally got around to playing it after all this time!

The story, atmosphere, and scarecrow sections are all awesome. I also really enjoyed the Poison Ivy fight. Everything else though? I would say some of it is because it's a 15 year game, so some of it hasn't aged well. The combat, while simple and fun, is flawed. The game is very janky and clunky. Especially the camera and movement. As a person who doesn't care for stealth much, the stealth parts were very annoying. I probably spent an hour on some of the stealth sections, and it was frustrating. The game has some pretty high highs, and some pretty low lows.

Sometimes you've got to take a chance on a genre you aren't familiar with and give something new a chance. I did this is 2018 with Hollow Knight, my first metroidvania. I'd heard nothing but great things about it. After spending 15 hours getting lost and being bored, I stopped playing. My opinion on the genre was very sour to say the least. 5 years later, I decided to give it another chance with Metroid Fusion.

Subtle music alluding the mysteries that await, beautiful pixel art painting your screen, weird alien creature lining the hallways, waiting for you. This game excellently commands it's atmosphere to completely absorb you in it's world.

Whilst the atmosphere is definitely this game's best aspect, it's not it's only merit. The movement is so tight and responsive. The story is shockingly good for a game with Nintendo at the start. The world is designed so intentionally and you always feel like you have outsmarted the game. It all combines to create an experience that captivates you through it's brief runtime.

There are some really stupid moments and even stupider bosses that hold this game back. The flower boss and ridley are so fucking stupid I don't know how any human beat them without the nso rewind feature. And sometimes the only way to move forward is actually asinine with how cryptic it is. But these are brief blights on what is a really fun little adventure, I think I will play more Metroid now.

Going from being a Metroid hater to positively loving this game may be unironically the most I have changed as a person in the last year.

This game is a crowning achievement in atmosphere. The music is so enchanting. The world is so detailed and alive. Few games manage to suck you in as well as this does.

Controls are razor tight and smooth. Samus controls like an absolute dream in this version. Coupling this with 60fps on the switch (how) is a match made in heaven. Truly a delightfully feeling game.

The story is ridiculously barebones, even compared to fusion where the entire story was just talking to a robot. Sometimes I would stop and think about like why am I going to beat these bosses, what am I working towards. I could not come up with an answer.

The late game Chozo artefacts really hurt the pacing. Meandering across the whole map to find the 12 weird McGuffins is very very boring. Some Metroid moments for sure but honestly not as bad as the 2D games I've played.

I guess Metroid is just sick and awesome now let me play the other 3D ones on switch.

edit: been listening to the soundtrack to this recently. jesus christ it is incredible. i really did like this game. maybe it was 5 stars? god i just loved getting sucked into the world of metroid.

Is this game good? Not really. Is it bad? Also not really, but I am going to be really mean to this game because it cost more than the new Zelda game did.

Going to start with the nice things. It's Persona so the music is amazing. There are a good 5 or 6 all-time bangers here. The stinker rate has also increased too though. Feels like some C-tier songs that didn't make the cut for the original game got jammed in here. But still, most of the music is pretty good. Easily the game's best quality. The combat is a pretty cool transition of Persona/SMT to the tactical genre. The way all out attacks work is really cool, it's the most imaginative thing in the whole entire game. The story has some sweet emotional moments and a nice message, but ultimately forgets that and trails off into kill god territory in a very forced manner, ruining any focus the game had. The element I thought I would hate the most is the chibi art style. I hate chibi. But to be honest, I kinda like it; it grew on me. It's just a shame nothing else did.

Okay buckle up. This game isn't that long, took me like 18 hours, but holy shit this game is SO FUCKING SLOW. Characters just talk and talk and talk about nothing. By the end I would skip any non voice-acted cutscene, and I am very confident this improved my experience with the game. If they couldn't be bothered to put an actor in a booth, I don't care. I am not going to watch 2 JPEGs grunt at each other for 10 minutes while they talk about stuff that doesn't move the story a single inch forward. I have never had less respect for the writing in any game ever. It being a non-canon spin off with no weight at all also doesn't help with the whole me not giving a fuck thing.

Even in combat the slowness is maintained, you must watch a long animation every time a gate shuts or a bridge lowers or a star explodes 30000 light years away. There is a fast forward enemy turns button in this game and somehow it's still slow, that is very impressive. Also, the enemies are fucking pathetic in this game, it is way way way too easy. Perhaps the easiest game I've played in like 4 years including full-on visual novels.

I read an article that this had like a 4 year dev time and that is fucking bonkers to me, yeah there was a global pandemic but even if you told me this had a 2 year dev time I would be gobsmacked. Everything about this game just feels so cheap. All 9 of the characters have 6 sprites each and 4 different noises that they use for 95% of the storytelling & cutscenes. There are a grand total of 5 enemy types in the entire game. All the enemies & friendly NPCs in each area are reskins of each other. There are only 4 different areas, the 4th of which is a grey cube land where every enemy is a grey recolour of the enemies from the rest of the game, and you fight the exact same bosses you’ve already beaten again but this time they’re grey too!!!

When this game launched it cost more than Tears of the Kingdom, Pikmin 4, Baldur's Gate 3, and Mario Wonder. That is fucking insane. I paid £2 across two Xbox game pass trials to play this game, and that is not much less than what I would suggest you pay for Persona 5 Tactica. Is there fun to be had? Yeah, for sure. But this is a budget title, buy it at a budget price.