Amazing hybrid of a beat em up with fantasy roleplaying elements, full of interesting tools and tricks to help overcome all the crap the game throws at you. Multiple paths keep it pretty fresh, feels like I find new stuff every run I do. Steep difficulty solo, but feels a lot more manageable when you play it with a friend. Really love the presentation and variety of characters and even if you credit feed the shit out of it, it still manages to be a fun time. The controls definitely take some getting used to, but I think inputs and stuff are a fun expansion of the previous title, and it is obvious it is far more focused on aggressive play than Tower of Doom. That stupid fart cloud boss that keeps trying to eat you is a pain in the ass, though.

Incredible 1982 high score chaser game with fun jumping over obstacles while shooting mechanics. Simple and addictive. Levels are split in 3 parts, and every level speeds up the enemies and/or introduces new ones. Second section gives you cars and ambulances flying around like they're gmod ragdolls, honestly just a ton of fun. Never been as scared of ambulances in my entire life.

If I have one question, it's that I don't quite understand the difference between Original and High Score mode, considering both seem to have separate rankings but effectively seem the same. Does Original permit multiple coins or savestating and still let you end up on the leaderboard or something? I've mostly been playing in high score mode, but caravan seems neat as well.

dont buy this game if you are a hoarder or you will waste 23432532523 hours logging in daily checking the beach for some bottle with some recipe you already have 5 of, then buying up tom nooks entire stock only to never decorate the inside of your house properly and gaze into the gaping abyss that are the eyes of an empty hollow husk of a lazy type villager

To leave a genuine review, the town designing and building stuff has been expanded to a ridiculous degree with furniture you can just dump outside your house now. That alone pushes this game beyond anything previously found in the franchise and makes it incredibly engrossing gradually chipping away at building a cool town. It's not without it's flaws though, as villager dialogue is probably the worst it has ever been, and it definitely feels like the nail in the coffin for the more traditional AC gameplay found in older titles, focusing instead more on being a designing game than a life sim. But as that, I think it excels.

Also: personal recommendation but I don't time travel at all in this game, and I think it probably helps not burning out on this quite as fast. Or at least I got a few hundred hours out of it doing that. Big fan.

Hi no Tori is a very enjoyable japanese-exclusive scrolling platformer with a main mechanic reminiscent of Solomon's Key, but I would say it's definitely more of an action game and won't require nearly as much thought. It's VERY loosely based on the Osamu Tezuka manga of the same name, but I think they pretty much just grabbed Gaou and a couple of settings from the manga and slapped it together, because there's very little of it in the game itself. It still manages to remind me of the manga regardless, at least.

Gaou can place blocks that can be used as platforms to traverse the level and as walls to deter enemies, and are essential to progressing in this game. Doing it in midair actually places the block underneath the player, which allows for some fun speedy platforming tricks. Aside from this, Gaou can throw chisels either infront of him or straight upward, both of which come in handy, but they can't be used to hit objects that are on the ground, providing some additional incentive to make use of the blocks off of ledges and the sort. I really enjoyed the block mechanics and it made it one of my favorite famicom games to plug in for a quick run. When you get used to it, it's very fun!

One aspect that's a bit hit or miss is the game's weird structure: due to being comprised of various level loops corresponding to different time periods, it can be tricky to find the hidden passages to swap from one level loop to the other. For this reason, I recommend keeping an eye out for destructible terrain, and making (mental) notes of where places lead you to. When you actually get a feel for what route you would like to take, it can be cleared in a relatively short time frame. I suppose the exploration aspect will increase the amount of time spent when you go in blind.

The music in this game is not bad overall, but one track that particularly sticks out to me is the lovely rendition of the Hi no Tori OVA's ending tune that makes the game well worth finishing. The OVA for this particular chapter is also very good!!!! Would probably recommend it even over just playing this, although I think this game is definitely worth checking out, as well.

As a small tip: there's a means to destroy blocks or secret walls underneath the player by holding down and tapping jump 3 times on the same block, which can easily be missed when not having access to the manual.

Nier Automata resonated with me a lot, and I like the characters and story very much. The game might not particularly stand out from a gameplay perspective, but I think the combat system is serviceable, and they did a great job at characterizing the different actors with their combat and gameplay mechanics reflecting their overall personality and nature. I also really enjoyed the setting, but I just have a soft spot for overgrown ruins and out of use industrial architecture. The opening sequence of the game is really great as well, doing a great job in introducing the world and its inhabitants. Something maybe a bit more minor, but what also stuck out to me, is the UI being tied closely to the character's sensory perception in that it appears to be diegetic, so a part of the world itself, which becomes pretty apparent when looking at how it takes up slots of memory alongside things like the combat enhancing chips. In an era where UI seems to get streamlined and designed to be as "legible" and bland as possible, I appreciate when a game not just adds thematic flourishes to its UI elements, but incorporates them into the game world and storytelling. I feel like they probably could have gone even crazier with it, but it's pretty cool as is.
If there are some shortcomings I personally have regarding the game, it's that the STG sections seem kind of overly easy and intended just as a neat cinematic thing, I think they could have expanded on it a bit more, but I guess ultimately it just helps to spice things up a little and likely would have been more of a deterrent for many if it did have more mechanical depth or challenge. Alongside the hacking minigames, it definitely didn't feel quite as fleshed out as the rest of the game, although I still thought it was cool.
Definitely worth a play, but likely a bit hit or miss in some respects, for me personally it was definitely one of the most captivating modern games I've played.

Man versus the ghosts that haunt him, venturing into the darkest depths of the cavern, the mineshaft, in a perennial search for gold - the perfection of the mental, physical and spiritual. The burden placed upon him crushes his bones from the slightest elevation, his life hanging by (or quite literally on) a thread, ready to end with the slightest input mistake at any moment's notice. He may not even know that he can use flares to temporarily take out bats and end up trapped forever in an awkward poop cycle, desperately awaiting an opportunity before his declining oxygen levels spell out his demise. He may not know, but it doesn't matter, because he is giving it his best. And that's all you can do. The NES version of this game is a trial by fire, and I wouldn't want it any other way. Will you succeed, or will you perish?

Also the cart has a cute red LED on it that glows when the game is running!

I clocked over 700 hours in this on my 3DS. It's very very good and packed full of things to do, with tasteful nods to older games in the series like the inclusion of Dundorma/Dondruma from MH2, all the while still having it's own thing going on. Gore Magala might be one of my most favorite monsters in the franchise, alongside other great fights like Molten Tigrex, and several other things that appear later in the game that I do not intend to spoil. The weird randomly generated quest system that they added alongside all of this is a bit hit or miss, but I liked being able to get differently designed armor pieces with good skills like Honed Blade+3 on them permitting me to make some pretty cool looking sets even back then when most people ran around in clown suits. For me, I always enjoyed trying to push the most useful skills onto my gear while still retaining a sort of cohesion to it visually, and this may be the last game in the series where this feels somewhat doable without just outright slapping "layered armor" on (which doesn't yet exist in this game), although I am unsure as I did not get as much mileage out of generations.

The biggest issue I think is that the game is on a handheld. I personally always preferred console Monster Hunter due to the larger screen better reflecting the scale of the monsters, and the nice audio design in the older titles like MH1-3. I was also not a huge fan of mounting, but it is up to you how much you want to use it. The new verticality 4th gen introduced is pretty great, otherwise! Additionally, the control scheme on this one is kind of unfortunate unless you happen to have either a New 3DS or a Circle Pad Pro, the latter of which I used for this game and would highly recommend. I've always insisted on manual camera control in these games regardless of how awkward my hand had to be positioned to do so, but the analog stick being ontop of the dpad on the 3ds just made it outright impossible for me without the use of the circle pad. The game also lagged a bit for me when playing with more than 2 players on the original 3DS hardware, so I generally stuck to playing with just one friend at a time, or alone. The village content in this game is actually pretty good for solo play, providing a method of playing some high rank or G rank content alone before venturing into the gathering hall to do the rest, although you could obviously also just do that as with practically any monster hunter game.

This kart racer always eclipsed Mario Kart to me, I think the drifting and turbo mechanics just really ended up making me like this game more than any other racing game until then. Story mode is great, too. My only gripe is that you can't do story mode as Ripper Roo, but they fixed that in the remake. That being said, I still prefer this version over the remake, as it does not have that excessive store front and currency grinding stuff with skins diluting a lot of the character design and visual cohesion of the game.

My favorite track is Polar Pass!