100% achievements.

November 6th, 2023, marks the day I would begin my journey of playing Hellsinker. 5 months and a day to be exact. With interest spawning from a stray suggestion by a friend of mine, this would quickly result in an obsessive play-through which then graduated to an obsessive achievement hunt which would THEN go on infiltrate my personal life via absolutely wreaking havoc on my sleep schedule, even hijacking my dreams.

And I couldn't be more thankful.

Quite honestly, I'm not sure where to take this review, I'll let my fingers glide along the keyboard and post whatever crops up.

At 89.1 hours, Hellsinker sits comfortably at my #5 most played game on Steam. Despite this, I've only gone on to engage with the game in its entirety through the lens of 1 character. The game features 4 characters, 1 of which has 4 "Ordinance Packages" which change up their loadout. Essentially, this 1 character is 4 though their endings remain the same between loadouts. This leaves me with a staggering 1/7 true completion. In addition to this, each character does have a unique ending depending on their TLB progression, not viewable within the game's text sequence viewer. Though I've already gone ahead and watched a video showing their contents (SPOILERS (DUH!)), I'd still love to play the game to experience them firsthand.

Alright, what more is there left for me do? Surely after that I would have completed EVERYTHING there is to this game... right?

WRONG! THERE'S SO MUCH! THERE'S QUITE FRANKLY TOO MUCH! AND I THINK THE FUNNIEST PART HAS TO BE HOW ABSOLUTELY UNINTENDED MOST OF THE EXTRA STUFF IS!

I'll start by introducing this game's older sibling, Radio Zonde. Yes, I have played the game before, but I haven't really completed in a manner I find acceptable, so there's still this entire game for me to play. Much of the ideas regarding design both graphics and gameplay are very much seen within Hellsinker. 1CC for Radio Zonde TBD.

Following this game would then come Hellsinker but in the form of a demo, kinda? Colloquially the build is known as Hellsinker 0.95. This build is quite.... special. There's a bajillion changes from this version of the game to the Doujin and Steam releases and although I'd like to talk about them all day I'll spare this "review" the word count and cut to the main thing. This game, although presenting itself as a demo, actually holds within itself the entire game but more importantly the final stage(SPOILERS(AGAIN(DUH!))) accessible through dropping in some files graciously provided by the original poster. In a non-patched version, only stages 1-4 are playable. The cut special stages also feature 2 versions from what I understand looking at the channel. One version would then go on to become the Shrine seen in the Doujin and Steam release. The other version cut from the final releases feature something adjacent to a dungeon crawler style level (not spoilers).

Okay so. That's it right? Nothing more? There couldn't possibly be more?

But there is! All of these are from the game's Doujin release era (so like 2007-2011?) I'll tally up everything here:
>Doujin release (PURCHASED)
>Completion of said Doujin release (unsure if I'll do all characters TLB but I'll cross that bridge when I get there)
>Buying the fanzines (warning the page probably has some Not Safe For Work Ads so please use an adblocker <3 ) and then reading said fanzines (currently studying Japanese primarily for that)
>A 3D Hellsinker Railshooter fangame (Completed)
>A Puyo Puyo styled Hellsinker puzzle game (Completed)
>Another Hellsinker fangame though I don't really know what to compare this one to, check the IGDB page for more info (Completed)

...and that's it. At that point, I'll have fully exhausted myself on every possible official and unofficial expression of love for this game. Have I made it obvious enough how much I love this game?

I'm currently in ownership of pretty much every version of the game out there with their fan-patches in addition to the fan-games so if you'd like any of that please contact my either on Twitter or Discord @strawhatcanti. Thank you for reading. Until the next "review" goes up,

Keep your dignity.

Although I am not at the finish line of P3R just yet, I figured it would be best for me to put out something representative of my love for this game in between sessions, as my thoughts are more thoroughly collected. I am damn near close to 2 consecutive weeks of playing (12/14) and have just breached 60 hours of gameplay. On track to obtain a platinum trophy on my first playthrough, it feels good to be reminded of why I loved an older title I have played, and it feels even better to be reminded that the people behind said game still "get it."

Persona 3 Reload sits comfortably well above the other remakes and remasters of any game I have ever played, and it will continue to do so either for a long while, or forever.

For the longest time, integration of styles and gameplay similar to that of Persona 5 never rubbed me the right way. I was anticipating this game to be a massive stinker. Something in the vein of Atlus trying to cobble together something to milk even more money off of their best selling game. I am sure most people are aware of Persona 5 Tactica, Scramble, and X. I am in not any type of position to commentate on their quality, but the reception of these games amongst my peers has led me to a train of thought to be quite weary of what Atlus decides to output next. But their continuations of an aesthetic spawned from their best selling title into something that is seemingly absolutely unlike it reeked of creative bankruptcy. That being said, I was wrong.

And I couldn not be happier about it.

Everything from the reestablished visuals, voice acting, to the gameplay and even the music. I have not the slightest hint of a complaint or grievance. P3R's UI is an absolute gem to witness, it is fluid, intuitive, and has an identity of its own. The new cast of voices are out of this world, Yuko's especially. All of the voice actors put on a spectacular performance and their ability to encapsulate you in the world of the game is unreal. Having finished P5R's merciless mode and not having that great of an experience, I decided to go into my P3R playthrough with merciless mode, and I am having an absolutely great time with it. Theurgies add much to the strategizing and in addition with keeping the "1 more" system, I enjoy the gameplay so much more for the depth it brings. All of the remixed tracks are wonderful in their own regards, at first stuff like "Mass Destruction" did not rub me too well, but over time I broke in and I love it much like the original track, likewise the others. Truly a remake that lives up to and, in some instances, surpasses the existence of its source. I can not wait to play through P3P and watch the films and whatever extra content there is to finish up the whole complete Persona 3 experience.

Persona 3/FES and Persona 3 Reload will atmospherically provide different experiences (assuming people care about that) but otherwise I honestly can not see a reason to not play this game. It feels so good to be in love with a Persona game again.

SUITS: ABSOLUTE POWER is a sequel to a game that didn't really need anything more to its story. Already ripping off of other tried and true ideas and mechanics, Absolute Power manages to evoke nothing interesting or innovating. The change in art style strikes me as strange as it tries to juggle between 3 styles. The paper-esque drawn visuals of the combat, the pixel sprites atop a drawn overworld, and the gritter drawn cutscene images. Maintaining absolutely no consistency, simultaneously incapable of honing the craft in any of the 3.

Combat is atrocious, to the point where the entire game is RNG based. The RNG mechanics can primarily be seen in his primary attacking skill, which has a chance to strike upwards of 3 times (at least as I've seen through gameplay). The attack multiplier increases the more times it hits, most of the time during late game if you're lucky enough to strike a 3x gunfire you'll just kill the enemy entirely. I was hitting shots dealing 6k damage, just absolutely trivializing any challenge that came my way. This doesn't help when, once you've reached halfway, every 5 minutes you'll reach a new store with new gear that just overpowers the hell out of your team, making enemy encounters less of a challenge and more of a tedious time waster. Eventually bosses became indistinguishable from regular enemy encounters and I hadn't even realized when I did something that would push the story along. Everything regarding combat and story is so sloppily put together. CEO has a skill that compromises defense for increased attack of equal value. Lose 30 def, gain 30 atk. Simple, right? Not quite, as whatever fucking math they're using just does not work whatsoever and more often than not you will feel absolutely no change in your attack, but you WILL suffer the loss of defense, making the skill absolutely useless. If you keep using the skill, your atk/def rise/decrease will get higher and higher, but you still won't see any noticeable benefits for your attack rising. Skills just in general are so bullshit and seriously not worth the effort of using outside of turn 1 for your other companions, as the hit rates are so egregiously low, you'd be better off just spamming your primary attack until the battle is won.

Combat is also brought down by the way in which the game engages with it, sending you on a fetch quest to end with a battle, then sending you on another fetch quest that ends with a battle, this is the formula for the entire game. All the comedic bits it sends you through are chronically unfunny and just completely annoying to go through as you meander through an ever larger monochrome world, constantly getting lost in the bleak appearance of everything. It isn't fun. Somehow, while upgrading engines, absolutely nothing on the first game was improved. Why was this made?

Music and story I'd like to talk about if there was anything worth talking about at all. Both equally unimpressive and forgettable. It's to the point where I'd argue that spending time talking about either would be a waste of my time thinking and writing about it, and then having someone read it would be just offensive to them and their time.

HellSinker. is and probably will continue to be my favorite shmup I've ever played.

At its core, HellSinker is a seriously convoluted mesh of tight mechanics and even tighter gameplay that has kept me glued to my chair for numerous hour long sessions of excitement, anger, disappointment, humiliation, and awe.

Everything about the game is so engrossing. Music, aesthetics, gameplay, lore, you name it. Throwing bits and pieces of lore at the player for overcoming the impossible and, even in unlikely cases, tossing something your way for ragequitting.

Reaching new areas kept my heart pumping in anxiety for what challenges could possibly come next, with each completed stage seeing a measureable improvement to my skill.

It's hard to recommend this game to anyone who's a newcomer to the genre of shmups but for those already familiar with the gameplay of shmup titles, more specifically those who are fans of the ZeroRanger game, I implore you to drop what you're doing and play this game. You won't regret it.

Over the course of about 2 weeks and then some days I couldn't think of any other game. Genuinely keeping me up at night for having not completed the 1cc.

But in the end, on the 16th of November, my journey had come to a close...

... or so I thought.

See, in addition to the innumerous mingling of mechanics and systems, the game actually has one more oddity to throw at you for the ending. And after concluding my 3 hour session which I believed to be the ending of the game, I don't think words could relay the humiliation I felt for what I had thought was the ending of the game.

It was not until after a 2 day hiatus from the game where I had actually gone on to 1cc the game, start another hiatus, and then complete the post-game content (relatively) far thereafter.

In spite of its cruel difficulty, discouraging gameplay, and brutal mockery it makes of your failures, I have persevered and completed it. And I couldn't be more proud of myself for doing so.

I have a lot to thank this game for, first and foremost as the beacon which brought me back into the world of shmuping. Reigniting a flame which I assumed had spewed its last embers long ago. And second for kindling and sparking conversations with an aquantiance turned friend of mine.

Please play HellSinker. please. I think it's criminally underloved and I'm seriously so surprised how little fanworks I can find online. If you HAVE played HellSinker. I'd suggest playing the only known fangame SHAFTDIVER, it's an interesting experience to say the least.

Starting my "replay" of Termina I did not really expect to glean much more than I had from my first playthrough of this game. I absolutely adored the game more than I have most other games and I've viewed as much content as I could find online for it. I thought I knew every inch of this game, every single intricate mechanic, character interaction, etc.

And this couldn't be any further from the truth.

My most recently completed run was with Abella, I got endings B and C on the same save file and I have so much more to appreciate this game for in this run now that I've seen all of the general endings firsthand. The sheer level of labour put into this game is inconcievable to me. Just the quality put into an rpgmaker game alone leaves me dumbfounded. Building upon the world, mechanics, and systems present in the first game in such a splendid manner. I have spent many hours merely thinking about this game and truly I cannot find anything to complain about.

Diversity in this game just breathes so much life and uniqueness to the world of Fear & Hunger. Just within the 8 playable characters, there's so many attributes that give each character their own distinict feel. In design, combat, and even just how you go about the navigating the world. Every playthrough feels magnitudally different just by the starting character alone. The soul absorbption mechanic adds on to this and creates so much depth for the progression system and understanding of the lore and game world. I've poured so many hours into perusing the wiki and watching too many a video covering unique interactions between the cast members and how they interact with the world. Mind Read, Diagnosis, and the Party Talk are all so intricately created it genuinely breaks my fucking mind to think that this game was produced by one person.

Combat once again follows in the foundation established by Funger 1. Though remaining more-or-less the same, the new REV system brings so much more depth to combat and I love it. The already complicated puzzle that is within each encounter now has an additional layer of which has heavy impact on the outcomes. Management of REV points could be the make or break for an encounter, and being so limited on how many you can store in your backend at a time PLUS being forced to commit to REV point usage adds so much stress to the gameplay itself. It really does wonders for establishing the brutal and ruthless resource management that this game has.

Style is something that I will infinitely praise this game for. I've watched some of the speedpainting videos, listened to every track (some hundreds of times over), and read through just about all of the dev's comments to other people regarding the music. Thematically the game never falls short and everything feels just so perfect. Again, it's so fucking mindblowing to me that this game even came to exist.

Funger's in-game world captivates me the most. All of the textbooks, flyers, papers, diaries, newspapers, everything. Nothing feels cheap in its delivery and nothing feels superfluous in its inclusion. I've read all of the pocketcat tales, all of the bibles, I cannot understate just how much I love how everything ties together both from the prior entry and from this one. Dialogues aside, the actual spritework and level design for the game itself is so magnificent and beautiful. Environments are put together and tracks are paired together like a match made in heaven. I cannot recall a moment where I've felt underwhelmed with the music and environment or annoyed with the design of an area. It's beautiful through and through. Character's and their relations to the world also do much to add depth and vibrancy to the characters themselves and those surrounding them. Again, the Party Talk and Mind Read mechanics are so perfectly executed and insanely deep. Nearly 3 hours of party talking paired with the mind reading ability (spoilers for obvious reasons). There's so much that you will miss out on sheerly because you don't play the game a certain way or don't unlock whatever skill. Characters in your party are also important because the Party Talk has unique dialogue based on those present/absent from the party. Words cannot express how much I love this system and how quite frankly fucking insane you have to be to put together all of this dialogue singlehandedly knowing that 90% of the playerbase won't even read a fraction of the interactions.

Miro has done a wonderful job with putting together such a game nearly singlehandedly. It's this game and Metal Gear Solid 2 that I believe are truly works of art. I'll admit I'm cranking out this "review" as something of a obligation because I want to write something of much grander scale but I lack the first-hand experience to do so. Think of this as something of a prelude if you would.

I'm currently 43 hours in and starting another run as Marina. This shit is crack. Help me.


STEAMDECK ADDENDUM:
I played this game on Steam Deck and it runs pretty OK. I'd suggest playing this on windows if possible. Unless you are running the latest protonGE version & the protondb fix for the game, you'll be fighting against massive fps drops very often.

The Denpa Men: They Came By Wave

Just what the fuck is a Denpa Men? er.. Denpa Man?

The Denpa Men is a trilogy (in the west, it's a tetralogy in Japan) of monster catching turn-based JRPGs exclusively played on the Nintendo 3ds. Judging off of their JP presence, I'd like to infer that it was massively much more popular overseas than it was in the States (or anywhere else for that matter).

But before delving into the game itself, I'd like to talk about myself and my relation to the game.

I have a lot of personal connection to this game, as with that, my viewing of the game inherently will massively differ from the viewpoint and opinions of others. I recall this as being one of my first true involvements with an online community surrounding a game à la being active within the space of creating YouTube videos on a now defunct google account and also participating within Reddit (🤓) communities surrounding the game.

So, why do I bring this all up?

I feel that my attachment and love for the uniqueness of the game doesn't go unfounded. When I heard about the deactivation of the Nintendo 3ds/Wii U Eshops, I came to the realization that this game will not, in any capacity, ever be able to be experienced in its true capacity. It was Pokémon Go before Pokémon Go. Utilizing just about all of the 3ds' features to their extent; camera + gyro functionality to capture creatures, utilizing both local internet connections and radio waves to generate said creatures, and other more menial features like utilizing streetpass & system play coins (albeit in the sequels) just simply cannot be recreated via any other means of playing.

A remaster for modern consoles simply couldn't work, maybe the Nintendo Switch could produce something of similarity, but there would be much lost upon the shift to hardware lacking the uniquely weird capabilities and features the 3ds had. Especially when clawing into the nature of the future games. This is all without mentioning the dual-screen feature of the 3ds.

Ok, enough talking about the unique mechanical aspects of the game, why I am throating this game front to back?

Denpa Men and more specifically The Radio Wave Men has a very unique take on the character collectathon genre of games. As stated prior, the generation of characters is tied to YOUR surroundings. It forces you to get up and move around to new locations to unlock more characters to find. Fighting a boss that requires a certain type of Denpa Man that you don't have? Time to get off your ass and get moving buddy you gotta hunt for that shit in the real world. I think by far this part of the gameplay was most appealing to me as a kid (and in retrospect as an adult too) because the 3ds already encouraged the whole "real world moving" for play coins and street pass. It felt great to have another bonus for carrying my 3ds around with me because at any time I could pop it open and check on the Denpa Men nearby to see if I was convienently in a spot that would generate characters to help me progress along the story.

Moving along the actual core combat gameplay, it gets a bit more nuanced than "catch Denpa Men, play game, win." The game was demanding and expecting a lot more of the player. Outside of the typical typings of your characters, there are multiple factors which have a hand in the usage of a Denpa Men. This image depicts most, if not all,of the various antennae that they can be generated with. DM1 has a more concise list, but DM2 and DM3 expand on the prior antennae types far more like I literally can't find a dedicated list anywhere online so you'll just have to trust me on this lol.

So, Denpa Men are generated on the following conditions:

Antenna: None < standard attacking antenna < single support/debuff < AOE attacking antenna < AOE supporting/debuffing
Color: Red, Blue, Teal, Orange, Green, White, and Black in addition to mixed color varaitions with their own unique stats
Cosmetic: Face, height, skin color, accessories, and head shape.

In addition to how the game creates a highly unique and customized expeirence on a per player basis, there's really not a set way to win the game that will cater to everyone. Two people within the same town might have wildly different party members as a result of what radio and internet waves are local to them and at that, a rare character (denoted by sparkles when appearing in the capture mode) that generated by you may not generate for anyone who goes to the location in which you caught it. Additionally utilizing radio and internet waves makes the game viable for just about anyone regardless of location.

I know I'm hopping throughout topics a bit hard here but please bear with me, back on the topic of combat. Your party will start out with a max capacity of 4 members, then 6, and then 8. It opens the doors further and further for party customization and resource management. As the location difficulty increases, you WILL need to catch more Denpa Men, more equipment to fit out your Denpa Men, and more healing items to get you through dungeons.

Ultimately, this culminates into an experience which, by its end, has you progress along a very basic and barebones story with combat and experiences far more unique than most other turn-based JRPGs I've played. But this game ultimately pales in comparison to the future titles, taking all of the unqiue aspects of this game and cranking it way the fuck up.

I'm surprised I've made it this far without making mentions of the artstyle or music utilized by the game. Lets talk about it.

Denpa Men are Katamari-adjacent little guys. I don't really know what to say about the artstyle if I'm being honest. It's pretty generic and the monsters are typical of that which you'd find in a JRPG. The music, however, is one of the aspect where the game shines.

The OST opts for a very electric sounding vibe. Listen to the title track of the game and you'll have a general understanding on the music of the game. It's unique and cute and I love everything about it. Some complaints I have are that there's 1 battle track so it can get pretty repetitive quickly but that's about the worst of it I think. The Boss theme and Great Demon King theme are fucking bangers though I'm never changing my mind on that idc if I'm biased or nostalgia blind idc that shit bangs. Enough of that, I think the music is pretty bangin'.

Conclusion: If you have a 3ds play this game. Or don't. Free will.

The foundation is perfect, the core gameplay leaves so much to be developed on top of the base idea. The door is open for so many opportunities.

And yet?

At first, you'll have fun for a bit. The gameplay is refreshing, the mechanics are really neat, etc, etc. After a while you'll realize the forumla barely changes or innovates on itself and eventually you'll realize it's like this for the entire game.

Mr. Shifty decides to rely on redundancy for about 4/5ths of the game. There's the occasional new enemy type, weapon type, or level design which might force you to slightly alter how you go about tackling the game, but a majority of the time there aren't really any major ideas or changes which enhance the teleportation mechanic. No upgrades and no interesting interactions via "shifting," it is what it is. Halfway through the game I was already feeling like getting it over with, they run out of content and new ideas to utilize so quickly and playing the game feels like an absolute chore. Its difficulty is founded on frustrating slop where they place enemies and weapons wherever they felt like without any real second thought to it, stage-design likewise. Some levels are stupidly easy and some levels are obscene in difficulty because there's no real thought behind level design. Some sections might have long periods of fights without a screen transition meaning you have to endure for however long it requires, and sometimes the screen transition happens 5 seconds after entering a room. If/when the game crashes, you're expected to restart from the very beginning of the stage because of an oversight. Fun!

On the topic of enemies, the AI is just fucking stupid. It's completely inconsistent in how it acts and at times just completely broken and unresponsive. They feel so rough and annoying to deal with. It doesn't help that it feels this way for over half of the cast of enemies.

Story doesn't really have anything to offer either, it's very elementary. "Big bad guy has something in his tower and you need to KILL him." The humor doesn't alleviate the boring story because it's just as bland and lame.