replaying this really reminded me how unabashedly i adore this game. i love the story, i love the setting and the items and even the motion controls, janky as the may sometimes be. also still looks great, albeit a bit fuzzy around the edges (at least playing on an hd tv) - the art style's held up really well. we probably aren't ever going to get a more 'traditional' zelda again, and i'm fine with things continuing in the direction of botw because this is a long running series and most things that old need freshening up, but i can still appreciate the stuff in this game that got lost with the move to a more open-ended format.

a solid game. i appreciated the way it smoothed out some elements of the earlier ui (especially movement, which i'd always found tedious before). maybe felt a little too long at points but overall i was satisfied and i really enjoyed that final case. that being said i did sometimes feel like it had too many characters for its own good - klavier and pearl felt like glorified cameos (maybe pearl gets more to do in the dlc case? i didn't play any of that) and trucy was Just Kinda There. hoping that the 6th game juggles all the leads with a bit more effectiveness!

there's something about the metroid gameplay loop that i find innately satisfying, idk. although the diggernaut can die a thousand deaths my GOD that was hard.

i haven't played the original yet so i can't judge this as a remake tho i 100% get why people feel it misses some of the narrative resonance of the original. on the other hand, the introduction of teleport stations was a definite improvement and made me more likely to willingly backtrack, and that along with the map percentage counters means this is the first metroid game i've gotten 100% on! the scan pulse might make that a little easy but idk sometimes i DON'T want to bomb every block on the screen on the off-chance i find something. at some point i will play metroid dread and tbh this has primed me for having a Good Time with that

This review contains spoilers

why on earth does this point and click adventure game with no combat make you do a boss battle right at the very end...

there's obviously a lot of imagination at work, and i liked the world. the backdrops look great. at times it felt obtuse, and the controls on switch lacked precision. my big gripe was actually that movement felt awkward, which didn't particularly dispose me towards backtracking. so like...it was fine, but there was a certain stiffness to it that impacted my enjoyment.

it's a sweet little game - looks and plays great, possible to play in one sitting, etc. i'm currently playing another point-and-click translated to touch screen game on my switch, and that made me appreciate how cleanly this one got ported over in comparison.

four swords games (which i have no real way of playing) aside....this is my last zelda game. the difficulty with groundbreaking classics is that they're so often built upon by their successors, but the zelda formula is solid enough that i still had plenty of fun. helps that unlike oot it didn't have a direct sequel using the same engine that i can compare it to.

leaning between a 4 and a 4.5 for my rating. it's a great game but it can be a little obtuse at times (a holdover from the nes duo?). also i think this is a result of my formative zeldas being the two ds ones, neither of which have particularly hefty dungeons, but dungeons have never been my favourite part of the zelda experience - i like wandering around the overworld with new weapons, doing sidequests. being such an early zelda this one's fairly sidequest light, and OH BOY is it dungeon heavy. i actually enjoyed most of them once i got into the right mindset to do them, but i'd've maybe liked a bit more downtime between finishing one dungeon and going onto the next.

my aim next time i play it is to use the wii u restore point feature less. i'm sure i'll stick to that all the way up until that giant worm boss that knocks you down a floor.

pretty fun, compelling and stylish beat 'em up which is hampered by a few glaring flaws that get more obvious as the game goes on: unlocking new stages by increasing rank is fine at the beginning, when it means you can progress even if you can't beat a particular stage, but as it goes on and you only unlock one stage per two ranks, it begins to feel grindy. the other big problem is the lag: i played on normal for most of the game but i had to do the final stage on relaxed because the lag got so bad it felt unwinnable otherwise! my ranking would definitely be higher if not for that. also, given how much emphasis the advertising placed on the plot it would've been nice to have some coda showing that the protagonist had 'won'. maybe that's something you can unlock on higher difficulties (since again, lag made the final level frustrating rather than challenging on normal mode) but i doubt it. i enjoyed my time with it, and i'll probably come back to it every now and again, but it could so easily be a better game than it is.

This review contains spoilers

super fun!! there were actually quite a few really frustrating stars (dusty dune galaxy it is On Sight) but i always felt the sense of achievement once i completed them made up for the challenge! haven't played super luigi galaxy yet (i loved this game but probably not enough to play all 120 stars of it AGAIN immediately after completion) but it's definitely on the list. i was also...unexpectedly moved by the entire ending? something about the circle of life and the constant creation of new worlds really got to me i guess

fully forgot my 3ds had a microphone until that last puzzle lmao
great game!! i thought the train was a really good way of giving it more variation in setting in the first one, and i loved the story (even though the murder solution is kinda silly)

okay i apparently have a lot of thoughts on this game so in no particular order:

- i really liked the additions of rods, runes and flurry rushes. really added a lot of variation to the gameplay compared to the original hyrule warriors, which was basically combos + an item each for the recurring bosses. i like the original a lot but the combat can become tiring, which was significantly less of a problem here!
- it was nice to have a botw story with a lot of plot at its centre! i know people felt it went kinda off the rails but tbh i wasn't really expecting a 'true' prequel so i wasn't disappointed.
- i've actually been playing a bit of that game for my sister because she makes me do all the bits she finds hard and it reminded me how irritating i find to have a weapon break on you mid-combat - i like what this game has much more, where i get loads of weapons but can power up the specific ones i want to use and choose what stat boosts to apply to them
- as much as i like the adventure mode in the original hw i appreciated that the map here provides a more focused, contained experience which still feels fulfilling to complete! apart from the korok seeds, because by the time i got to the end and they were the only things i had left to collect so i was just trawling through stages i'd already played. i guess the moral is just pull up a walkthrough with their locations on the first go through but overall i think the skulltulas in the original worked better for what the game was - i'm not particularly inclined to comb over stages in this kind of game and maybe that's a me problem but it DID impact my enjoyment
- other minor quibbles: playing as the great fairy wasn't always great because the stages DEFINITELY weren't built with a character that size in mind, and sometimes the camera could be a bit janky. but otherwise i had a lot of fun, and enjoyed most of the 60+ hours i spent with the game

had a few too many Very Annoying Bosses (and i think the thing that gets to me in metroid games is not having to redo the boss but having to retrace my steps to the boss each time, so that spider thing ages from any save point REALLY got to me) and its opening actually made me appreciate why people complain about handholding in videogames, but all in all as high quality an experience as i've come to expect from metroid!

full disclaimer, i'm not big on sims. there's some that look fun! but i like games that give a sense of finality to them and tbh i actually really struggled in some ways with ending this here even though i wasn't really having fun (and the main reason i logged so many hours is because i'm away from home with limited games lol) because it didn't feel complete. it DOES however feel very repetitive after a while. i don't think it helps that it's a very simplistic text based sim where football matches are just watching a bunch of words scroll past, or that training doesn't actually seem to improve formations, so where's the tactics. it's compelling up to a point, but i played three in-game seasons and i think i've had enough at that point. plus i want to replay spirit tracks now which i'll probably get a lot more enjoyment out of lol.

i can't speak on this as a remake but i had a lot of fun!! i'm not a big fan of stealth sections in games (they stress me out and not in a good way) but they were manageable here. i also really thought i'd get a higher completion rate than 58% but I guess even when i was keeping track of doors and bombable blocks there was a lot i missed! also i think it's really cool that the game just. gives you the original metroid after you complete. i think more remakes should do that when they significantly overhaul the original, and i'll be sure to check it out at some point in the far distant future.

i was OBSESSED with the little octorok baseball game when i was a kid

this was the first sonic game i ever played. needless to say it didn't exactly set me up for the rest of the series