Did New Game+ this replay, right after Plague of Shadows. Still excellently, tightly designed. New Game+ made me use relics far more as a survival measure and made me notice the game’s tight design and just how good it is. I’ve followed this game since 2014, and it feels like coming home. That said, less checkpoints and the way lower health and less recovery could get brutal. Especially in that boss rush. I loved it. Also played the Butt Butt mode it’s still fucking hilarious. Writing is sparse but it’s strong when you recognize how much it syncs with everything the subsequent routes do.

It’s my first FE, so there’s nostalgia there, but due to how many times I played it in 2015/2016, I revisit sparingly nowadays, but make sure to pump my files of all their content I can. I have my litanies of critiques with the story (namely pacing), and some with mechanics, but it’s so fun to approach as a sandbox if you do engage with the grind, just to turn your brain to slop and tackle it with the most broken builds and child units ever. Also, the production value remains excellent. The amount of dialogue permutations, particularly if you marry characters like Chrom as I did this run, are amazing. When the game wants to hit emotionally, it bares its fangs quite well, and does fanservice better than Engage did, if I’m honest. Dialogue and localization are fantastic, and the graphics are still quite good to look at even now, barring the models’ lack of feet. Cutscenes and their shot composition are fantastic as well. I think the game does have its share of flaws, be they pacing or the orientalist designs Plegia is plagued with, with all the Plegian antagonists being dark-skinned when those who join you aren’t, and it is not necessarily the FE I play the series for, but it is a comfort food to me, and it’s important to realize things that bring us nostalgia can still hit today. I appreciate it for rewarding players who engage in the absurdities of its grind, whilst also having a fun challenge in higher difficulties.

If you can get past how repugnantly slow text scrolls, since there’s no speed option when playing natively, and even holding B to auto scroll it is still slow, which bogs the unusually tutorial infested earlygame down (seriously, there is a tutorial for getting sand tombed in this game), or how the game’s mechanics are simplified a lot, what with no IQ skills or hunger, as well as its reduced roster of Pokemon, which repeats quite often early on, there is a beautifully heartfelt story here. I think in spite of it being my least favorite PMD to play through, it has one of my favorite casts. The dialogue is extremely charming, and the cast on the whole feels like a large family who are consistently active in the story. There isn’t a single one who’s shafted narratively, and I really appreciate that. And though this plays the weakest, I think the PMD gameplay loop is fundamentally so solid that there’s no way I could dislike the game. It’s just. Terribly tough to sell someone on the earlygame, which is everything people accuse Gen 7 of being, and then some. And yet, once you overcome that hurdle, you’re rewarded with such a brilliant cast. I’m just not sure how to sell someone like that. “Keep playing bro, it picks up 1/3 in” is a tough thing to say, especially when the gameplay remains fundamentally simpler to other entries, and you will notice enemy repetition. But beneath that, you do have a beautiful story and cast elevated by a leitmotif-imbued soundtrack that pulls at your heartstrings. The replay made me like this game more. I understand its status as the “worst” PMD, and am generally inclined to agree outside of the original Rescue Team’s jank, but I’ll also call this game worth your time, just probably if you mod a text scroll fix.

Didn’t have the best of starts, but ended up turning out very solid. I played it all at once and thus, it felt like I was playing an entirely new game. Great roster additions, so now it’s got all the missing characters people wanted except for ROB and the fetish bee, and even Pauline and new colors for Birdo. It definitely isn’t as pretty as the base game, but god. It’s fun. And for its price? It’s a hell of a lot of content, and while I think they could have lightened on the Tour content, it’s also content I never got to play as I didn’t touch that game. So, yeah. I would say it’s pretty damn good for what it is. What started slightly rough evened out in the end. Rosalina’s Ice World still sucks ass 12 years later though.

A game is very special when it’s something that’s near and dear to my heart, yet lets me find new ways to approach and enjoy it or new details that I’d notice. Pokemon Platinum is that. Diamond and Pearl had a very interesting region with excellent lore, but it was tied to poor pacing and a ridiculously slow engine, along with a small Pokedex with limited variety. Platinum saw all of these flaws, and fixed them. Yes, it still runs somewhat slow as a product of being on the generation 4 engine, but it’s infinitely faster than what DP was. And adding 59 more Pokemon to the regional dex while tweaking others’ learnsets? It’s fantastic for replayability and variety, and improving the game’s pacing in terms of story and badge progression, on top of adding more dialogue really helps to build the world and make the characters feel tangible. Small things like visual tweaks, be they shading changes or additions of snow in some areas, or making the Lost Tower more haunted looking, to outright redoing some maps helps the game stand out, both in an individuality sense and also visually. It’s a treat to look at, and it’s fun seeing the same, good lore get expanded upon in a game that structures itself in a way that can hold my attention. It’s filled to brim with sidequests, and ensures that you will encounter the entire Pokedex’s worth of Pokemon in a regular run if you simply engage with its content, and that’s extremely rewarding to me. I took it at my own pace this run, engaging with daily content, fighting morning/night specific trainers and catching Pokemon that spawn only at specific times, and felt a stronger connection to the game for it. It’s a game I can always escape to, as Sinnoh fundamentally reminds me of growing up in the middle of nowhere in North Georgia, and staying with my grandparents on native land in North Carolina. It’s a mountainous, chilly region with a lot of myth to it, but that’s what makes it feel so much like a home to me. Coupled with the brilliant soundtrack, which changes depending on the time of day, it’s really easy for me to find myself immersed with the game, engrossed wholly. As characters are expanded upon dramatically, and the game’s pacing no longer feels like a slog which lacks in Pokemon variety, a game which is built upon a rather weak foundation emerges as frankly, one of the best in the series. There is a strong commitment to variety in enemy teams and movesets, and ensuring that the game’s areas all stand out in fresh and memorable ways, and the game oozes with charm for it. Playing for the first time as a child, and seeing the expanded Pokedex was mindblowing. Hell, seeing some trainer sprites move blew me away. As an adult, the game remains a “comfort” media of sorts, which I’ve replayed annually for the past four years. In 2021 and 2022 it was an escape from my father’s cancer diagnosis, and my own chronic illness, respectively. This year, playing it on a break of sorts from school, I’m unfettered and able to experience it purely as it is, and that is so precious and blissful. I cannot stress how much this game means to me.

So, I played the original mistaking it for the definitive. And now after playing both the og and its sequel, went to definitive. 100%’d it too. In retrospect, with full context, I only love the story even more. And the addition of content for Naru, with 2 new areas is great. Adding two new moves helps to diversify the combat, a gripe I had with the original, and makes movement feel more varied in how you approach it. It’s so nice. Also the qol of moving between fountains is great, and that’s what drove me to 100%. I’m glad I personally played both versions of this game, because this way it’s left me leaving the definitive edition loving it even more.