I have a soft spot for this game and how it plays around its limitations. From the characters to the storytelling, it oozes pzazz like few others, which combined with the creative execution of decision-making and the episodic way it plays, sticking together on-rails shooter and hack-and-slash gameplay, evoke a feeling of made-in-Nintendo Bayonetta 2. Alas, by the time I played it my analog stick was already drifting and the online modes were gone, so I couldn't enjoy it to the fullest.

Meme (so screenshot and musical video of caricatured friends and acquaintances) smorgasbord. "¿Sabías que... las vacas marrones dan leche con chocolate?"

The mere thought of playing this game makes me want to play Smash Ultimate. If that doesn't make it clear why I don't play LoL nowadays (and haven't played it with any semblance of regularity for the better half of a decade), nothing will. What I found most gratifying about the game was theorycrafting possible synergies in the qualitative design of certain items when built by certain champions. Playing the game itself is an utter waste of time, you can easily satisfy yourself elsewhere.

This game hit all the right notes. It successfully iterated and improved on many of the fortes of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon formula up to that point, and as such was bound to delight me. And delight me it did. That being said, Phanpy must be one of the worst Pokémon to turn into in terms of gameplay.

Smash on the go was a godsend (even if the 3DS is far from the best controller with which to play it), the roster was huge for its time (I must say I found myself missing some veterans, though), Smash Run was awesome (it should have been expanded on and featured in every subsequent Smash game) and customising fighters was unexpectedly entertaining. Let's just say I took two-hour shits for a good while after this game released.

The lack of portability really hurt the staying power of this entry in the series for me. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed what few novelties it brought to the table and it's still an Animal Crossing game at heart, it just wasn't meaningfully distinguishable from its much more convenient prequel and sequel.

I want to preface this review by saying I've never finished a Zelda game and back in 2015 I believed this game would change that. I thought I'd find the three-day cycle and the entailing themes enthralling, but couple the time mechanic with the sluggishness of the first temple plus my puzzling apathy towards Zelda gameplay, and it had me feeling both jaded and stressed. My 3DS has met a terrible fate, for the analog stick has since began drifting wildly, so I sadly won't be revisiting this game.

Pretty tight

The Mother series is full of love, from the first melody until it's over. Mother Earth was the first Mother song I remember hearing, it being Ness' and Lucas' victory fanfare in Brawl. Take a Time Passage from 2008 to 2020, Mother being the last game I played in the series. Coincidentally, I beat it the day before my great-grandmother passed away.

I'm not a fan of the trend of new Pokémon being conceived first as concepts and then as creatures, more blatantly obvious in Gen 8 than ever before, but even if this shift in design philosophy was already present in Gen 7, the Pokémon all felt like a cohesive part of Alola, so I sought to catch them all. The story had its good moments and the level curve was steeper than usual. I naïvely expected more in terms of advancements to the formula. Wrist flick like Z-move (for real tho, fuck Z-moves).

If the original Metroid was a coarse prototype of Super Metroid, Zero Mission is a functional reiteration of the formula, the next best thing when it comes to sequence-breakable 2D Metroid (nor do I think it reaches the heights of Fusion, but that's beside the point) and a nifty game at that. The ever so memorable Zero Suit section spices things up and lends the game an additional sense of identity, the framework it was working with already being fairly sound.

This is my most played Pokémon game and I didn't even reach the Elite Four. It was my first Pokémon game, I could go on and on about how much I relish Sinnoh as a region (HMs should be paramount), the Pokédex tops off those of previous gens, the OST is magical, I exchanged many a Pokémon and even won my first competitive battle (despite my ace being 20 levels lower than my best friend's Empoleon). A wonderful send-off to the classic Pokémon cycle, and the start of my personal Pokémon journey.

I was almost as invested in my brother's playthrough of this game as I was in my concurrent (at least until he started outpacing me) playthrough of SoulSilver. On an unrelated note, there's an unfinished Machos Veniese save file of HeartGold out there.

The sense of freedom and breadth of systems this game sets out to provide are all too soon rendered drained, bordering on counterproductive, by the fact that several of its flimsy components don't help but to disincentivise interaction with the rest of them. The whole experience rapidly devolved into a rudderless ordeal. Capturing the towers was cool, if nothing else (all the climbing and gliding surely wasn't). On another note, I wish it had been designed to take advantage of the Wii U GamePad.

This was my first Fire Emblem, so I had no idea how most of its systems worked and ended up having a harder time than most people will have you believe is possible with this game. Map bosses suck and I got to know next to nothing about the characters since I didn't know how to get support conversations (I only got 3 throughout the whole run). Even so, this is my favourite Fire Emblem of the three I've played when it comes to gameplay. I chose Eirika's route and benched Seth as soon as I could.