A strong beginning and ending unfortunately don't make up for everything in between. When it works, it really works, but there's so much that doesn't that it makes this one hard to love.

This game is far too happy to waste your time at every opportunity. Whether it's a protracted sequence to follow an NPC, or mandatory things to progress only happening on specific days, way too much happens to prolong the experience to its detriment.

It feels like a lot of the writing missed what made the original work and tried to cover with meta nods and it just misses the mark as a result.

It was nice to go on another adventure with York, but I wonder if we really needed it.

Game rules.

Soundtrack? Banger.
Combat? Sick.
Characters? Chill bunch.

At its core, a straightforward STG brimming with variety. 16 ship all with different abilities, requiring you to approach the same situations in different ways, leading to more replayability than a lot of games can claim.

The Counter and Break mechanics aren't necessarily new to the genre but are well implemented and make taking risks feel very rewarding. Nothing quite like deleting all the bullets on the screen for a big score bonus.

Multiple difficulties and modes of play help to keep things fresh as you go through, Unlimited mode leading to absurd amounts of bullets on screen.

A very strong point is the mission mode doubling as a tutorial for several of the missions, helping you learn the mechanics and some tricks for survival.

1CC'd with all characters, all achievements obtained.

The rare game that clearly draws inspiration from Dark Souls but doesn't just try to replicate it, and is definitely the better for it.

Learning to use the different magic types to maximize effectiveness and take advantage of their various effects keeps things fresh.

Balancing melee, parrying and dodging in order to more quickly replenish mana stores, allowing for more frequent and more devastating magical attacks incentivizes taking bigger risks in a way that I found very enjoyable.

Nobeta herself and each boss character clearly had the most time spent on design wise. Basic enemies have far fewer distinguishing features, falling into a handful of distinct types. This does help to be able to more easily identify how to engage with enemies, which is nice, and most basic enemies have differently coloured variants, requiring shifts in tactics.

All around solid, and I'm looking forward to playing more of it.

You wake up at a train station in a small town with no memory of who you are, or how you got there.

Reminiscent of walking simulators (positive) such as Gone Home and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Nostalgic Train isn't a wholly new gameplay experience, but what it lacks there it more than makes up for in its setting and the sense of place it has.

Between glimpses into the stories and memories of people around the town and trying to find yourself, you are invited to take in the lovely small town of Natsugiri.

The sunlight as it breaks through the bamboo at the peak of the day. The ever-present buzzing of the cicadas. The bookstore, shelves covered in books with no one but you to read them. The elementary school overlooking the burbling river that runs through the town. The train station at the heart of it all.

Where you are is reinforced time and time again, the memories tied to where they occurred, over the course of the game's story building a fuller picture of the town and its inhabitants. Places once lacking importance take on deeper significance as events progress. They may not be present but the more you learn of them, the more the lack of their presences is felt.

The game features both a Free Mode, in which you can explore the town, find scattered notes giving context and history to certain fixtures you'll find, and the Story Mode, over the course of which you'll come to know the town, its inhabitants, and quite possibly yourself.