To be fair, the original game was nearly flawless and the only things you could really do to improve on it would be giving me the dash as a default move from the very beginning and have something new that the leg armor parts could do in its place, and making the head part more useful, because aside from collecting another part, it's pretty much worthless. Does Maverick Hunter X do that? Nah, it's pretty much the original game with a little more story, which is appreciated, anime cutscenes, and a new coat of paint that looks pretty good for a PSP game. I don't get why they changed the armor capsule locations, though, it didn't really add anything substantial to the experience, but it was a harmless change, so whatever.

But that's just one part of this version, there is some really cool extra content like a prequel OVA that is unlocked after you beat it for the first time, and a new mode where you play as Vile in an obviously non-canon retelling of the story from his perspective. What sets him apart from X is the fact that Vile (unfortunately) can't dash, but he has many different upgrades you can play with and picking up which ones will be the most useful is the key to conquering the stages, which are harder then the ones from X's campaign.

There is one fatal flaw that makes Maverick Hunter X worse than the original, though, it's the fact that they fucked up the dash jump. I thought it was a problem with the emulator, but then I looked this up online and people who played it on an actual PSP also had the same issue, sometimes the dash jump just won't work and you'll do a regular jump instead. On the ground, it's easy to circumvent this by just pressing and holding the dash button for a split second before pressing the jump button. Dash-jumping from walls, though? Yeah, now you're at the mercy of X only dash-jumping when he feels like it, which ends up making some of the bosses harder than they should have been.

At the end of the day, a worse Megaman X is still Megaman X, and this is worth checking out for the extra content. It's just a shame that it doesn't do much to improve on the original game, and it's an even bigger shame that it wasn't successful enough to kickstart an entirely new series covering the first game all the way to X6. Imagine a timeline where X6's cool ideas and premise are actually put to good use instead of the shitbag of a game we ended up getting, we really do live in the worst timeline.

This is the first 2D Sonic game that feels experimental ever since Dimps was making 2D Sonic games. Unlike the Dimps games, however, this one actually doesn't completely shit itself on the level design department, and the gimmicks, both reimplementations of old ones and the completely new, fit in very well, keeping stages varied by always throwing something different at the player. The difficulty progresses pretty naturally as the game goes on and maintaining speed gets harder especially in the later stages, which might bother some people who are a bit too used to the 3D Sonic games or even Sonic Mania's overabundance of spectacle speedy moments with little interaction required from the player, but I can't do much about that aside from telling them to stop being bad at playing video games.

My biggest complaints are that the music is mostly bad/forgettable, which is a crime for a Sonic game, and the fact that the bosses have way too much waiting time until you're given a free hit after dodging their attacks. Yeah, I see why they did that as this game was made with multiplayer in mind and bosses would be demolished in a matter of seconds if they worked like in previous 2D games where you can hit them anytime you want as long as you manage to reach them, but in single player this just drags on and makes otherwise solid boss fights with challenging attack patterns into boring waiting games. Though the last boss for Trip's story can just go fuck itself with all the insta-kill bullshit and the last story boss did not need to be so fucking long without any checkpoints, what the hell were they thinking? The emerald powers are a neat idea, but for the most part they're extremely situational, so that could have been better executed too.

Since this was being made by Arzest, my expectations were honestly lower than Japan's birth rate looking at their track record, but I can tell they know what they're doing when it comes to making Sonic games at least. I mean, it makes sense, one of the leading guys is Naoto Ohshima after all, but yeah, Sonic Superstars isn't perfect by any means, I would even argue it's a worse game than Sonic Mania despite liking it a lot, but it is the most interesting 2D Sonic game we had in quite a while. I'm curious to see what they'll cook up next if Sega does end up making them into what Dimps used to be for Sonic back in the 2000s, hopefully they won't mimick Dimps and make worse games than their first 2D Sonic title as the years go by.

Albion Online é um MMORPG sandbox em que você escreve sua própria história, em vez de seguir um caminho pré-determinado. Explore um vasto mundo aberto que consiste de 5 ecossistemas únicos. Tudo o que você faz gera um impacto no mundo, já que em Albion, a economia é conduzida pelo jogador. Cada peça de equipamento é construída por jogadores a partir dos recursos obtidos por eles. O equipamento que você usa define quem você é. Ir de cavaleiro para feiticeiro é tão fácil quanto trocar a armadura e a arma, ou uma combinação das duas. Aventure-se no mundo aberto e enfrente os habitantes e as criaturas de Albion. Saia em expedições ou entre em masmorras para enfrentar inimigos ainda mais desafiadores. Enfrente outros jogadores em confrontos do mundo aberto, lute pelo controle de territórios ou cidades inteiras em batalhas táticas em grupo. Relaxe descansando em sua ilha pessoal, onde você pode construir uma casa, cultivar alimentos e criar animais. Junte-se à uma guilda, tudo fica mais divertido quando se trabalha em equipe. Entre hoje mesmo no mundo de Albion, e escreva sua própria história.

I really don't get it when people talk about Katawa Shoujo as if it was this absurdly depressing game that will leave you emotionally drained and sad when you finish it. Have we played the same thing? It's not even that I'm trying to say something like "oh its not even sad unlike my favorite obscure VN which is really much sadder than babbys first VN" like some pathetic elitist or anything. Like, because of what I heard, I just went into Katawa Shoujo expecting something that would break my fucking heart into pieces and give me the drive to finally end myself... Yeah, I wasn't doing too well back then. Anyway, what I ended up getting was probably the most uplifting game I've played in a long time.

Now, I ain't gonna be here saying Katawa Shoujo cured my depression or some stupid shit like that. However, it did contribute immensely to better thoughts at a time when I was at my lowest point as a shut-in with no future in sight. It would be easy to just take this game's concept and write some shitty overblown melodrama around it, but instead, you see that despite the hardships they go through, the characters in Katawa Shoujko still push forward and strive for what they want, they are defined by more than just their disabilities, and even the source of the drama in their specific routes usually don't have much to do with said disabilities.

What made this a deeply personal experience to me was exactly that, the game invites me to see beyond its concept, to see that its characters have relatable problems: Be it low self-esteem, social anxiety, issues with expressing your own feelings and understanding other people's, having a hard time adapting to your surroundings, being afraid of letting people get close to you and lose them in the future, etc. Through Katawa Shoujo, I got reminded that other people also have their sorrows and insecurities, and that letting mine keep me from moving forward will not do any good, it also helped me come to terms with the way I express my own feelings and have a better understanding of what it really means to love another person. Sometime afterwards, I ended up building the courage to get out of my room and have another try at life, things did improve, I got in and out of a few jobs, met some nice people out there and started to have an easier time opening up. Sure, I'm still not fully healed, there are still moments when I feel horrible and almost involuntarily distance myself from even the closest friends I have, I still get very anxious in social situations and some people still get frustrated dealing with me because I have a hard time expressing myself, but I can safely say that it's very unlikely that I will go back to how I was around late 2012 to 2014, and Katawa Shoujo is one of the reasons why. I just feel I walked out of this experience as a better person, and now I have things and people to live for.

This was possible because writers treat this subject in such a respectful and delicate manner that I can't help but feel their passion for this project. It's not a perfect game by any means, Hanako and Shizune's routes in particular have some noticeable flaws in their second halves, and you can make the argument that Emi's route is predictable, though I'm personally not too bothered by that. However, the stories, and their good endings especially, feel sincere and heartfelt, the way the characters feel like unique and nuanced people as opposed to full-on anime stereotypes also helped a lot. That along with the music and the way the backgrounds are taken from real places, it all evokes an eerily nostalgic and heartwarming atmosphere that I've yet to see another VN replicate, playing Katawa Shoujo just felt comforting all the way through.

Is this the best VN ever made? Probably not, even though I still do prefer it to most of the other ones I played, I do believe there must be better VNs I haven't got to try out yet. However, I cannot think of a better starting point for people who aren't much into the medium but have some interest in trying it out. Katawa Shoujo was made with all kinds of people in mind, and that's why it ended up having such a widespread appeal, with people still remembering it to this day and even media outlets who were initially skeptical about it ending up being pleasantly surprised. In my case, it just appeared in the right place, at the right time, and I could not be any more thankful for that.