Finally played all the songs in the Quest mode so I think that it counts as “Completed”, even if I'll probably keep playing this for a long time.
This is a nice entry to the series! I've been a Theatrhythm enjoyer since the very first vanilla 3DS game and I'm always happy to see that it's still alive and kicking. I feel like Final Bar Line is a clear case of “You Win Some, You Lose Some” - there are TONS of new characters and songs (they listened to me specifically and put more Mystic Quest songs in there), as well as new cards to collect and such. And the colours and light are so beautiful!
However, some of the charm from Curtain Call is lost in my opinion. I feel like this game took a step back for no reason when it came to stuff like the world travel songs - now the backgrounds of the worlds (although NOT during the battle songs, thank god) are all different kinds of standard world/cave/town/whatever areas that are juuust generic enough that they could fit into any Final Fantasy game, rather than the charming backgrounds in Curtain Call which had different landmarks and such depending in which FF game's song it was. I get that they can't make a customized background for every single area in Final Bar Line but it feels kind of like a letdown that they didn't even bother making a cute little world to travel through for the main titles as they did in Curtain Call, when this is supposed to be the newest, freshest, most content-filled entry yet… Sorry I keep harping on about the backgrounds, they were important to me. I also feel like the collectibles were a bit more interesting in Curtain Call, with the small descriptions on the cards you collected and such… if I'm being REALLY picky I also feel like the little level up-quotes by the characters were funnier in CC, here they feel a little generic to me. And why does my guy Mr. Mog FF6 only say “Kupo”?? His whole thing is that he's a talking moogle… oh well.

BUT as said, despite these things, this is a really fun game and I adore all the new music that was added. Even from really obscure titles!! And I love the addition of character-specific special moves, and the unique little handcrafted song thumbnails that respresent story moments in the games where those particular songs are playing is probably my favourite addition yet. The gameplay is great and I'm currently leveling up all characters to lv. 100, haha. I hope that when the next entry is released in 200 years it will have this amount of content AND increase the cute fanservice things that were scaled back in this entry. If squenix should know anything, it's that probably 80% of their fanbase (me) loves cute little nods to the series and meaningful collectibles.

Cute and relaxing!! And very strange. It has the most melancholic main menu music I've ever heard in a game. It's so cute and I love making a little world for dinosaurs and other animals to live in. And then you just watch millions years pass by while extremely melancholic music plays, with some of them facing extinction and some new creatures popping up with a colourful "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" message. Haha. It's such a weird mix of tone, I like it. And then you play the four main scenarios and all of them have endings that results in what is essentially an existential crisis? This game has been played by like 5 people in the world so I haven't even been able to find out if there are "good" endings to these scenarios, maybe I'll never know. But it's fun!
I do wish the main scenarios followed one continuous storyline, and maybe had other end goals other than "create humans" because that meant that most of these scenarios played the same in the 2nd half. But the mini challenges have different goals and restrictions which is nice!

Anyway I think more people should play this game because 1) it's fun 2) we have to figure out if the main character can have a happy ending or is doomed to live as a stranger in a strange land for the rest of their life

This is cool and I think it could be an interesting game to really sink your teeth into, but it will have to wait for me. I saw so many people (and even the game itself, iirc?) saying that the game mechanics are supposed to be hidden and obscure, that figuring out everything for yourself is the joy of the game, that you absolutely should NOT look up anything online -- but after a fun start and then hours and hours and hours of just doing the same thing over and over without progressing or understanding what I was doing/was supposed to do, I finally looked up some base mechanics which REALLY improved the experience for me. Unfortunately it was too little too late, and I have to put it away for the time being until I find it in me to play it again. So many hours on this and I haven't even done any rituals yet! But I do like the feel of it so I'll probably return to it, and possibly give it a higher score if I enjoy it.

I do love me some mysterious and unknowable games, but for me this was just a little too much - figuring things out is fun, but if you're going that route I think you need to give your players at least enough information to get things rolling, especially when your game has this level of complexity to it. I feel like it's extra important if your game uses one single mechanic, in this case placing cards, because if a player (me) doesn't understand that one mechanic then they don't understand how to play the game at all.
Maybe my brain is just too small, but I think I would have a much greater experience with this overall if the game wasn't so intent on not telling me its most basic gameplay elements - or at least, if I wasn't discouraged from looking up tips online. Those last hours I played after actually learning basic gameplay were much more fun than the 7-10 hours or so that came before it.

(Also I played the switch version and feel robbed, the card table looks MUCH cooler on PC. Too bad playing games on my desktop computer is the bane of my existence)

This is so cute and charming. The sprites and environments are so pretty, they really pushed the GBC graphics to the limit! I especially adored the love that went into the fish sprites. The game's dialogue is nonsensical at times in a way I find really funny. Pupil of the Raft Master, how cool you are.

Also not to be cranky but when people call older games like these "obtuse" and "confusing" I just wanna shake their shoulders (lovingly) and say READ THE MANUALS. Pretty much all old games had manuals and you were expected to read them to learn the gameplay, not through in-game tutorials and such. Legend of the River King's manual has maps to ALL its areas (save for a small bonus one) and shows ALL the spots where you can catch different kinds of fish. It also shows and describes almost all of the games' items, rods, buildings, how you fish and such. Sometimes old games aren't confusing, you're just missing critical information that you're supposed to have access to. Pretty much all old game manuals can be found online so use them!!

The most confusing part for me was getting the wind chime, and since it was the only thing i couldn't understand even with a manual I looked it up online and stumbled into a nigh incomprehensible section of a gamefaqs guide from '99 that (after trying to make sense of it for a few minutes) managed to help me. I feel like the '99 gamefaqs guide only heightened the entire vibe of my Legend of the River King playthrough, so thank you Keith (the main writer's fake cousin(??)) who wrote the part of the guide I used. Fake cousin of the Gamefaqs Writer, how cool you are.

I feel bad giving it a lower score when I was so obsessed with this game at the start, but after the first 10 maps or so it all started to feel the same, with no variations in mechanics. The maps themselves change, but they all look fairly similar and have exactly the same elements — stations, lines and tunnels. This super minimalistic approach to gameplay has its appeal of course! But for me personally, I would've wanted something just a little more to make the maps feel different from each other. But still, I quite liked this little game, and I loved it during the first 2-3 hours or so! Don't be like me and set out with a goal to clear all the maps, take things slow and do a map now and then and I think you'll have a pretty good time!

As someone who has only played the very first Ace Attorney game before, this kind of blew me away. The presentation is so fantastic, the music is absolutely amazing and while I usually prefer 2D sprites to 3D models in games like these, the 3D models were so expressive and full of life! Very cool. The story in this engaged me with its longer sort of storytelling rather than in AA1 where the stories were (mostly) contained to their episodic formats. And while TGAA was plenty serious and dramatic, it was also funny and delightful. The game has a few issues for me, mostly contained to ch.4, but on the whole I had a very cozy and fun experience with this. Chapter 3 is a masterpiece, do not @ me it just is.

This gets 4 stars because I can't give it 4¼. But just imagine it's somewhere between 4 and 4½ stars.
EDIT: Okay it's been a couple of days and i am listening to the OST constantly and can't stop thinking about this game and the few problems I had with it feels like barely anything in comparison to how much I enjoyed it, so congrats TGAA1 here are your 4½ stars

One of those games that I, ever since its release back in 2010, thought "I need to play that sometime!" about. It only took some 13-14 years (time is not real).

It feels like this was one of the Iconic Indie Games of that era and that i saw sceenshots of it everywhere, and it has (had?) very unique and quite beautiful graphics, so it's no wonder people talked about it. The indie scene wasn't as big as it is now and there weren't really a lot of games that looked like this. I appreciate this game for what it brought to the table in 2010, and I had a good time with it :) I just think that it would impress me more if i played it when it was new, since the uniqueness of Limbo doesn't feel quite as unique in 2024. Which is fine! The graphics are still as beautiful now as back then.
But I do think that the gameplay and puzzles, while fun enough, are just okay, and the "atmospheric silent storytelling" of this type has been done so often now that it doesn't really create the Wow factor that it might have done back in the day (I'm sorry Limbo! I know you were one of the first!).

But yeah definitely give it a try if you're curious about it! I'm glad I did, it was nice to finally play this piece of Indie Video Game History (TM). It has beautiful graphics and some fun puzzles (and spiders!). Grab it at a sale sometime if you feel like it! :^D





(the spider should have been in more parts of the game)

I wish I was cool and had this as my favourite Kirby game but unfortunately i just think it's pretty fun. On the other hand that's not bad either!!
Some great ideas are presented here which I like a lot (Big sprawling map with connecting points!! Focus on exploring!! Beautiful areas!!), but the way you traverse the map is just a bit too clunky for me to feel that pure Joy of Exploring (TM). And with "clunky" i don't mean the movement physics, which are great by the way, but stuff like one-way doors and how easy it is to lose an ability you need to open a new path somewhere, which sometimes means you have to redo several rooms again just to get back to that point. It can make exploring frustrating rather than satisfyingly challenging (imo of course) which I really think is a drawback in a game that's all about exploring a big map. The first few hours was me just running through the same areas over and over, absolutely confused, haha! But that might tell you more about my lack of skills rather than the game itself.

Anyway it feels like I've only complained but I really did like this a lot, especially in the latter half of the game when I really got the hang of things!! I'd still recommend this game, especially for Kirby fans. It's a very cool experience! Also Cupid Kirby is the second best Kirby skill design in the entire franchise (number one is Fridge Kirby from 64). Also this game gave us the Dark Meta Knight boss theme so I am forever in its debt (even though he's a pushover so you only hear it for 7 seconds. It's okay DMK I'll still be your friend).